Yeah I get ya, more of a "whats the best gear" thing rather than a "whats the highest number I can get".

Thanks Midnight for updating the spreadsheet in the 1st post. FYI the DST shot rotation is still set up as straight 1:1, not a 1:1 priority rotation (Multi>Steady). The current max DPS solution doesn't include a DST (?!) so it's OK for now, but if folk are trying out DST+(slower weapon) they are likely to forget to update the shot rotation, yielding suboptimal results. Ideally, update the DST rotation to match the other ones.

Anyway, I've got a new high # solution using the posted spreadsheet:
Hunter DPS 1496.79 73.90%
Pet DPS 528.62 26.10%
Total DPS 2025.41

To achieve this replace [Stormrage Signet Ring] with [Band of the Eternal Champion]. The proc for the exalted Hyjal ring is now modelled in the spreadsheet and it's a clear winner.

I know that people tend to get shouted at in this thread for suggesting changes to the parameters, but in the spirit of letting folk minmax stuff within their control like professions & gear choices: personally I'd have 'voted' for allowing people to select hunter & pet food buffs since they are super-common (does any serious hunter not raid w. player+pet food?!) and it would let folk try out +agi vs +hit food. Similarly, selecting elixirs vs a flask is another point of leverage - in our current max DPS solution a flask > an elixir, but this was not always the case & IMO a holistic "best gear" solution should be able to factor in the use of consumables that are freely available to anyone.

Last question: do we consider the 41/20 spec locked down too? I sincerely doubt there are any MM or SV solutions that top this currently, but if there were would we allow it since spec is completely up to the individual?

Because of the lost hit from the ring, replace a 10 crit gem with a 10 hit gem.

The dps goes from 2025.41 to 2025.70.

EDIT: scrap that, keep the 10 crit and use [Softstep Boots of Tracking] from Teron.

ends up with:

Hunter DPS 1509.87
Total DPS 2038.43
Ranged Critical Hit Chance 37.05%
Ranged Hit Chance 99.95%

I can confirm this on my spreadsheet - socketing [Shadowmaster's Boots] with +10agi & +10hit yields:
Hunter DPS 1497.29 73.91%
Pet DPS 528.41 26.09%
Total DPS 2025.70

This doesn't check out, you managed to swap the boots but left the 2 gems from [Shadowmaster's Boots] in the spreadsheet ([Softstep Boots of Tracking] aren't socketed). IMO at this point any substantial DPS upgrade should be scrutinized pretty carefully, I think we're starting to approach the max here.

Im not on the PC that I used when I made that change, but I guess I must of done that. I thought it took the gems away when you change items like that, my bad.

Need some Sunwell loot imo!

EDIT: Yup! I forgot to take out the sockets. It was late last night when I did it, I'll blame that :P

For reference, using the Teron boots (without a hit gem in another item) achieves 2024.44 dps. The leather Mother boots are 2025.70 (using a hit gem). And the Quickstrider Moccasons, my personal choice (zero stam turns me off an item) gives 2017.42.

Updated my post and the spreadsheet corrospondingly (including the +hit gem).

I have already described my reasoning why not to include buff foods a few posts ago. I didn´t consider hit rating food (didn´t exists by the time I started this thread), which might have a somewhat bigger impact on gear choice than pure agi or ap food. Still I don´t think this justifies changing the settings yet again. As Intermission put it quite good this is not about getting "the highest numbers" but about "what´s the best gear".

No we don´t if you happen to find a MM or SV spec that outDPSes the one posted in my op - feel free to enlighten us.
On a more serious sidenote - I´d love it if at some point we´d have more than one spec, propably with completely diffrent itemizations, competing for the top spot.

Changing all but one of the the Smooth Lionseye's to Glinting Pyrestone's brings us up to 2027.49.

Oh, along with this I changed the Rigid Lionseye to Glinting Pyrestone as well.

Using the link provided to the spreadsheet in the first post (which is using v40) and then copying all the data exactly from each tab to a v42 spreadsheet is showing at:

Hunter DPS: 1390.09
Pet DPS: 525.34
Total DPS: 1915.43

I was able to achieve 2006.77 DPS(still lower than the v40) by changing a few things:
Shoulders:[Gronnstalker's Spaulders] - Sockets [Glinting Pyrestone], [Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst]
Wrist: [Insidious Bands] - Socket [Glinting Pyrestone]
Boots: [Shadowmaster's Boots] - Sockets [Delicate Crimson Spinel], [Glinting Pyrestone]
Trinket1: [Dragonspine Trophy]
Trinket2: [Madness of the Betrayer]
Ranged: [Bristleblitz Striker]

Also, make sure to change the DST shot rotation tab to multi priority since it wasn't set up in the previous spreadsheet. Everything else is the same as the old setup.

EDIT: Changed the unhasted rotation to 1:1.x(mutli and arcane activated) like you did and it increased the dps to
Hunter DPS: 1499.26
Pet DPS: 515.72
Total DPS: 2014.97
I will send you my spreadsheet so you can see if I changed something I wasn't supposed to or forgot to mention a change in the gear I did make. Although my crit and hit% do match yours.

Sorry, I can't recreate your dps number on v42.
I swapped the Rigid Lionseye and all but one of the Smooth Lionseyes with Glinting Pyrestones (more would lower the dps again). I then changed the Berserker's Call with Dragonspine Trophy and the BBL with Bristleblitz. Checking all shot rotations I got the best results with 1:1.X (Multi and Arcane activated) for the non hasted rotation and 1:1 (Multi Priority) for everything else. Those changes lead to

Hunter DPS: 1498,99
Pet DPS: 505,34
Total DPS: 2004,33

Crit: 35,92%
Hit: 99,82%

If you get better resuls, would you care sending me the spreadsheet to midnight.wow@gmx.de?

Given the amount of things that seem to be getting overlooked as far as settings & such. Cheeky, do you think it might be worthwhile to add a macro button to set up the agreed upon settings for this?

Honestly, I think Cheeky has better things to do than creating a macro custom-tailored for this thread. That beeing said, I´d love for the import/export feature to really import every setting including buffs/debuffs.

Concerning the current Best-DPS-Build sheet - with Gurans help I found out about the 10 dps discrepancy, it seems like I simply forgot to turn on BoK for the pet on my version. Uploading an updated version for the first post now.

Take your time Cheeky. This is just a very minor step to make things even more convenient than they already are.

Why does latest update have [Bristleblitz Striker] with [Dragonspine Trophy] with 2014DPS which is less DPS then previous update that had [Barrel-Blade Longrifle] and no [Dragonspine Trophy] which was 2020ishDPS?

Was previous spreadsheet making [Barrel-Blade Longrifle] alot better then it actually is?

If you are not hit-capped numbers should be different now. Other than that (and a RED-related change that may or may not be a bug or correction) all other equations should be the same.

Edit: Someone pointed out elsewhere I saved a different value for latency. Make sure you change that to whatever you use.

Not it wasn´t. Actually the [Barrel-Blade Longrifle] without DST always was very close to [Bristleblitz Striker] with DST even before. It just happened to be that the best setup I knew about incorporated the former.
With the introduction of 42 and the two roll system (and anything else that might have changed) about every setup took some dps loss. I think to recall that the original setup scoring the 2020ish dps went down to about 2000ish dps with 42.

I´m very curious about what the "new" shot rotation will do to weapons with diffrent speeds though. This might have the potential to change our current results a lot more than any change since the start of this thread. I hope we´ll get some idea of how it really works and why it works the way it does soon.

I have a model that seems to get us 90% of the way there. But I think there is too much jitter/noise in normal gameplay latency, and in how often the system registers spammed macro keypresses to come up with something 100% accurate.

I am, as always, open to other ideas on how to tackle this problem.

For people using this best-of spreadsheet to help them select gear, I just thought I'd mention this.

You can use a [Glinting Pyrestone] in the Cursed Vision helm instead of the [Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst], and then change the [Glinting Pyrestone] in t6 shoulders to a [Jagged Seaspray Emerald].

This results in a loss of only 0.35 dps on the spreadsheet, but gives two advantages:
- You get the 6 stam bonus from the helm socket. (one of my great annoyances is people that do not value stam for raiding)
- Both your blue gems are in the shoulders. So when Sunwell comes around and you start replacing gear, the chances of having to regem other items is reduced, as only a shoulder upgrade will cause a lack of blue gems, not a shoulder OR a helm. On the flip side, if the shoulder does get upgraded, you need to get 2 new blues instead of 1. Thats what my trusty [Don Alejandro's Money Belt] (with Jagged+Shifting) or [Twinblade of the Phoenix] (with Delicate+Jagged+Shifting) is for!

Once [Band of the Eternal Champion] is fixed in the spreadsheet [Stormrage Signet Ring] may end up being better again, although you would have to switch all those [Glinting Pyrestone] back to [Smooth Lionseye] again. We'll see once it's fixed.

Hey guys, it's been a while since I posted here. I've actually come a long way towards getting some of this gear setup. After about 1 year of weekly Gruul's I saw my first ever DST drop. Luckily leading PUG Gruul's for over a year gains a little appreciation on a server, so there were no problems with me getting the DST.

I've basicly gotten all the difficult extras, now I just gotta get the meat of the build, the Tier 6. I've been passing on it because I don't intend to make the switch until I have all four pieces, and our shamans can make some immediate use of it. I should get the T6 within the next month though. So far, lacking the core the T6 as I am, I'm really enjoying the build. I will admit that I don't bother doing a 1:1.5 rotation when I'm unhasted, but with DST, Quick Shots, Bloodlust, and Drums of Battle, I'm almost always hasted.

One thing I was considering as I read through some of the recent posts, Curse of Shadows is almost always up on a raid boss, and it actually increases the gap between this build any any build that contains a BBL which does not use arcane shots. It's worth considering, and brings the max DPS to 2,018.47. I'm glad we took out improved FF. I think that was definitely a positive change.

I'm sure Cheeky will read this, so thanks Cheeky for modeling the Eternal Champion proc. Is this 3:2 shot rotation legit? You think it's here to stay?

Using the spreadsheet on page one (v42) and tinkering around with the Custom Gear tab on the spreadsheet, I've found a high DPS of 2218.72 using the new gear posted on the WoW news websites. The new gear seems very promising for us, especially the new crafted chest piece from leatherworking.

Hunter DPS 1683.27
Total DPS 2218.72
Ranged Critical Hit Chance vs. Level 73 34.33%
Ranged Hit Chance vs. Level 73 100.00%

Main Hand - Shiv of Exsanguination
Off Hand - Shiv of Exsanguination
Head - [Cursed Vision of Sargeras] - Socket [Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst] [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond]
Neck - [Choker of Endless Nightmares]
Shoulders - [Gronnstalker's Spaulders] Socket - [Glinting Pyrestone] - [Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst]
Back - [Shadowmoon Destroyer's Drape]
Chest - Embrace of the Phoenix - Socket [Crimson Spinel]x3
Wrist - Gronnstalker's Bracers - Socket [Crimson Spinel]
Hands - Fletcher's Gloves of the Phoenix - Sockets [Smooth Lionseye]
Waist - Groonstalker's Belt - Socket [Delicate Crimson Spinel]
Legs - [Bow-Stitched Leggings] - Socket [Delicate Crimson Spinel]x3
Feet - Gronnstalker's Boots - Socket [Rigid Lionseye]
Ring - Hard Khorium Band
Ring - [Signet of Primal Wrath]
Trinket - Blackened Naaru Sliver
Trinket - [Dragonspine Trophy]
Ranged - [Bristleblitz Striker] - Scope - [Schematic: Biznicks 247x128 Accurascope]

Keep this in mind that this wont be exact, as I assumed that the Blackened Naaru Sliver would be up 100% of the time after you got the 10 stacks on (such as [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] on fights where you don't have to move lots). In reality, the dps would suffer due to the process of stacking it 10 times. If we just assume using madness over the new trinket, we'd still be at 2127.43 with [Madness of the Betrayer] and re socketing two 10 critical strike rating gems for 10 hit rating gems.

This gear also lacks hit, but a Biznicks is a quick fix for that. In the end, I can't wait to get my hands on the new gear!

Are you sure that the latency is set to 200ms?

Honestly, one of the things I look forward to modeling most is 4 pc T5 and 4pc T6. Even if it's not the end all see all best DPS, (and it may be) that's some very good bonuses for a BM hunter.