Aerynlore

Having read through the first couple pages of the "quick and dirty" thread, and having checked out the mostly obsolete data in the locked threads, I'm putting this thread together to get be a common answers post. The idea is, we can point to this post for most questions that people will repeatedly ask.
Note: this is not a guide or FAQ for leveling, don't ask anything having to do with leveling, gearing for leveling, pets for leveling, talents for leveling, or anything that has to do with the game prior to reaching level 80.

Ratings And You

According to this EJ post (as of 2008-11-21), the following ratings are the key measurements hunters are looking at:
Hit Rating
To never miss a level 83 boss, hunters need 9% hit. At 32.78998947 hit rating per hit percent, this means:

Focused Aim	Hit% Needed	Hit Rating Needed
0/3	9%	296 (295.1099)
1/3	8%	263 (262.3199)
2/3	7%	229 (229.5299)
3/3	6%	197 (196.7399)
--	5%	164 (163.9499) *dranaei racial aura

Other ways to temporarily up your Hit Rating:
[Elixir of Accuracy]: +45 (1 hour - Battle Elixir)
[Snapper Extreme]: +40 (1 hour - Well Fed)
Also of note is that all +Hit Rating stats, and +Hit talents will transfer 100% to pets.
There is some debate about the validity of Focused Aim transferring to the pet, and if 9% is actually the hit cap. That discussion is happening in this thread. When that discussion concludes, this thread will get edited as needed.

Haste Rating
Haste grants the most DPS per Rating when it is still decreasing the casting time of Steady Shot down to 1.5s (equal to the global cooldown). At this point, you cannot fire SS any faster, so the value of haste lowers. A 2.0s SS fires in 1.739s with the 15% haste of your quiver/ammo pouch. This is what we use at the baseline, with a goal of 1.5s Steady Shot. That means we need 15.942% more haste.
The only talent we have to increase our base haste rating is Serpent's Swiftness, at 5/5 points gives 20% haste. Thus, the BM's Steady Shot (with 5/5 Serpent Swiftness) is already below the 1.5s cast time that we need. Thus: Beast Master hunters need no Haste on their gear to reach the 1.5s Steady Shot minimum threshold.
For everyone else, we need to look at: Haste translates at 32.78998947 rating to 1%.
So, that's 522.738 Haste Rating Needed for a hunter to reach the SS < GCD threshold.


Everything Else

Critical Strike Rating	1%	45.9060
Armor Penetration	1%	15.39529991

Other Stats

1	Agility	0.012	Crit
1	Crit	83.3333	Agility

Ratings And Your Pet
Pet's get a set percentage of some hunter ratings transferred to themselves:
22% Hunter Attack Power -> Pet's Attack Power
100% Hunter Hit -> Pet's Hit (including Talents)

Haste Rating, Armor Penetration, Expertise and Resilience do not transfer.

Useful Macros:

All macros have one of two points: maximize DPS and minimize buttons needed.
The first macro will allow you to take one of the two aspects off the bar, and just toggle between them.This second macro will fire Kill Shot anytime it can, which always has priority over Steady Shot when the target is below 20% health. The /script lines prevent the error message from displaying when you cannot fire KS. Autoshot is there to turn it on when you start to fire your first SS, so you will get one additional autoshot fired at the beginning of the sequence.
Frequently, players will attack pet special attacks to the end (or beginning) of this macro to ensure they get spammed.Many BM hunters wish to time their Bestial Wrath (3/3 Longevity and Glyph) with Kill Command.
More coming soon, as macros get fleshed out

Talent Specific Questions:
Beast Mastery
Marksmanship
Survival
Improved Tracking: Does not apply to Hunter's Marked targets, only what Tracking ability you currently have available. This means Imp Track can never apply to things like insects.

Additional Questions :

What gear is the best for XXX Spec? The WLK DPS Spreadsheet is the best place to get that question answered. Go and play with it. Additionally, Rawr Model is an excellent application for all classes (hunters, included).

What is the best DPS spec? Initial testing suggests that the BM hunter will top the other specs for any fight that requires little danger to the pet and not much moving (killing Target Dummies). Markmanship seems to provide a close second, while adding more damage while on the move. Survival appears to be a close third, but provides the Replenishment buff to make up this.

What is the highest DPS pet? Early experiments are showing a close tie among the cat, spirit beast, devilsaur, raptor and scorpid. More testing in Heroic level 80 raids (25-mans) is needed before a conclusive decision can be made.

Why does my pet keep turning on or off certain abilities?
It's a known issue, and happens with quite a few pet abilities. These only seem to happen, though, with abilities that are not on the pet bar. Keeping Growl and Cower is usually a good idea if you don't want to worry about macro-ing.
However, if you don't mind another macro or two, you can make ones to turn abilities on and off, using the following commands:
/petautocaston name of ability
/petautocastoff name of ability

Is XX/XX/XX the best DPS spec? See the first question.
How should I gem my gear? See the first question.

Do the Tier-6 4 piece ("Increases the damage dealt by your Steady Shot ability by 10%.") stack with [Glyph of Steady Shot]?
According to Jaffi's Tests (as of 2008-24-11) they do indeed stack.

Does the Serpent Sting in [Glyph of Steady Shot] have to be MY Serpent Sting, or does it just have to be anyone's Serpent Sting?
Some definitive testing needs to be done to prove this one way or another.
Suggestions and corrects for what should be added to this initial post are welcome (and encouraged!).

 

Laxxz

Very helpful, I am wondering how the spirit beast competes with a devilsaur considering monstrous strength though, If anyone could shed a bit of light on it I'd appreciate the help.

 

Roman

Great post Aerynlore.

As for the macros- for a hunter that doesn't PvP much, you can consolidate all your melee abilities with the following macro:
This is on WoWWiki, but I thought I'd share it anyways.

I am also very curious about the spirit beast dps compared to the other pets.

 

H0mez

This second macro will fire Kill Shot anytime it can, which always has priority over Steady Shot when the target is below 20% health. The /script lines prevent the error message from displaying when you cannot fire KS. Autoshot is there to turn it on when you start to fire your first SS, so you will get one additional autoshot fired at the beginning of the sequence.
Frequently, players will attack pet special attacks to the end (or beginning) of this macro to ensure they get spammed.Is it possible to do something like this for Chimera Shot?

 

Aerynlore

For my melee abilities, I use:
And have Wing Clip on a difference button. Since Wing Clip no longer does damage, I don't see a need to spam it when in melee. What I would *really* like would be a macro that cast Wing Clip if the target was in range, and (no matter what) cast Disengage, but I'm not finding anything that will let me put a range conditional on a /cast.

 

flimflam

You might be able to use /castrandom Chimera Shot. Im not totally sure though since im Survival at the moment.

It works with Kill Shot which only works < 20% and has a cool down (like chimera)

So it just might work with Chimera shot.

 

Tleilax

I think it would helpful to add some mention of how the BM Longevity talent affects certain pet special abilities. Speccing into Longevity can actually lower DPS when raiding with certain pets - for example speccing more than one talent point into Longevity while using a cat will cause the pet to clip Rake applications on the target and result in lower damage output.

 

Xaraphyne

This used to exist, but they took it away with 2.0, among other conditionals like casting according to what debuffs were on a target.

Nice handy guide. Look forward to seeing it develop into a one-stop answer for all the common questions.

 

Mattaos

This is false. Try plugging a Cat on the spreadsheet and start dropping in points into Longevity. This subject was covered just after 3.0.2 was released prior to Nov. 13th. 1/3 Long is a DPS gain over 2/3 Long and 3/3 Long is a net DPS gain overall. The frequency of the initial attack is upped and the downtime between the second tick and the next refresh is greatly reduced with 3/3 Longevity. Plus, not to mention the impact Longevity has on Bestial Wrath and hunter DPS.

 

Tleilax

Yes, I am referring to the most recent version of the spreadsheet - version 77 from 11/7/08. It shows a DPS loss when putting more than 1 point into Longevity while using a cat.

I do not know if this is a bug with the spreadsheet and/or whether or not this is the case with DPS testing on a training dummy on live as I have not performed such testing. I discovered this issue from playing around with BM talent specs on the spreadsheet.

EDIT: I was using spreadsheet v77a. I just downloaded the newest version of the spreadsheet which is v77b. What I reported appears to be a bug with spreadsheet v77a as I am now seeing the mechanics you describe Mattaos in the new version of the sheet. 1/3 Longevity is a DPS upgrade, 2/3 Longevity is a DPS downgrade due to Rake clipping, and 3/3 is again an upgrade. Sorry for the misinformation, carry on!

 

CaseyTheRetard

Small typo in the haste formula: You use "I" twice here, the second one should be "T".

 

Har

So if someone wanted some dirty average rules of thumb when comparing gear in Northrend, what would they use? Does 1% armor penetration give about the same DPS as 1% hit or crit? How much attack power (on average) is needed to offset a loss in some of these?

I am intimidated by that spreadsheet- could someone who knows how to use it help me out?

 

Aerynlore

It's understandable that you'd be a little intimidate by the spreadsheet. It gets detailed, and fast. We can look into putting together a quick and dirty version of the it, though I'd feel more comfortable letting Shandra take care of that.

However, the quick and dirty:
1) Cap your hit.
2) Cap your haste.
3) Work on Crit, AP and some Int helps, too.

Armor Pen has turned into a pretty worthless stat from a lot of what I'm reading. It might pick up at some point, but is a rather cheap itemization stat.

 

Ele

You cannot have a range conditional unfortunately, anyway if this can help you, I tested this macro, but it will require 2 keypresses to work properly (spam it when in melee range):

EDIT: I tried it also with the 2 commands inverted, and since Disengage is off the GCD, it works with a single keypress:


EDIT #2: if you think this macro is worth listing, it's been tested personally and works like a charm, I posted it in the simple questions, simple answers thread:

It will fire BW, KC and CotW along with an available trinket; Note that CotW is toggled in "autocast on" and will fire up a split second later (when the pet has an available global cooldown). A second keypress will togle CotW autocast off.

EDIT #3: to the original poster. In your steady shot macro, you have a "/cast !autoshot" line, you have to edit it in "/cast !Auto Shot" (as two separate words) else it will not work.


Forgive me for the multiple edits, but I'm testing these macro in game before posting them here, and I thought multiple consecutive posts would be a bad idea

 

Har

Maximizing ones DPS is the goal here, so if an item drops that costs hit but makes up the DPS in crit or something, I'd say that the new item is the right choice. To paraphrase, 1% hit > 1% crit > 1% armor pen? I'm assuming that for PvE, most people will spec beast master and take serpent's swiftness and thus not need haste.

So the question really is: how much of another stat do you need to justify losing (or not gaining) 1% hit?

 

Zerlu

I'm using a Worm for a tanking pet (for flavor...I'm not a fan of the gorillas really) and thus far its performed admirably. Tanking aside, their appears to be a problem with Autocast priority. When leaving both Charge and Acid Spit on autocast, the pet will stutter step its way to the boss until it hits 30 yards and then Spits, after which it Charges. Ideally I would rather have it Charge, then AS, rather than vice versa.

I have a workaround, however would appreciate if anyone would inform me of something simpler:

Followed by:

This works, although its kind of a pain at times.

 

Echion

From what i have read, the best pet for BM 51 pointer is a Devilsaur or cat(close)

But i heard numerous things about a scorpid being A LOT better if you let a full stack of poison apply, then use aspect of the beast and cycle between some things....

Could anyone clear up how to use a scorpid efficiently?

 

Lerastes

Question about BM. Is it worth it to use anything other than Steady/Auto or should Serpent Sting be worked in? I've found random mentions of Serpent Sting when discussing BM DPS but nothing solid about rotations. This is if someone else is using Serpent Sting, so you get the benefits of the Steady Shot glyph regardless.

 

Auran

This could be a very silly question but I'm sure I'm not the only one who has wondered about it without taking the time to test it. For the sake of the 1st tier Survival talent (Improved Tracking), can we assume a mob with Hunter's Mark on it is considered as being "tracked"? In other words, do I need to actually switch what I'm tracking based on the boss or will HM do the work for me?

 

KraxisSingular

You need to actively track the target. Mark just marks it on your minimap, it doesn't track in that sense.

 

Laxxz

If you have glyph of steady shot, then yes, serpent sting should be kept up, 10% damage on steady shot is nothing to sneeze at.

Also to avoid a double post but still contribute a bit, I've made a macro for farming or on the last few % of a boss so you can sustain some kind of dps that should keep you at a constant level of mana.

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Kill Shot
/castsequence reset=combat Steady Shot, Aspect of the Dragonhawk, Steady Shot, Aspect of the Viper

It does require a bit of spamming, but other than that, I find it works very nicely. If you have any comments, or anything you would change, feel free to let me know.

 

Luinwen

I was under the impression (after reading the WOTLK-discussion for a long time) that it has to be YOUR sting on the target to get the bonus from the glyph. After searching the thread now, I wasn't able to relocate that information.
Can anyone clear that up for me please?

edit: I have finally found the post from a hunter who tested it in the big WOTLK-thread here: Steady Shot Glyph - unfortunately no logs - I would be very interested in a definite answer.

 

Vasago

Hi,

Great ressource, I think there is an error in the hit cap calculation though:

Simple typo by the looks of it, but worth correcting

 

Aerynlore

I've updated the various typos. Thanks for picking them up. Even the little ones that account for a tenth of a percent can still throw off a formula down the line by large amounts.
In the end, there is no definitive "X% [+DPS Stat] > 1% Hit". The reason for this is that 1% to hit when you have 8.5% to hit is worth slightly less than 1% hit when you have 4% to hit. If you need to compare two items, and see which is of greater value to you in the overall context of your specific gear, you need to plug your numbers into the spreadsheet. There really is no magic formula that will accurately compare two specific items while ignoring all of the other armor slots.
The actual DPS difference between the pets is too close to call right now. There are too many variables that we can't account for in a formula to definitely say which pet is the pet for non-BM and for BM hunters. I've not run with a scorpid before, so perhaps someone can start a thread about using your pets effectively. Or, posting in this thread would be a better place.
Be careful with a macro like this. GC has said that he recognizes that hunters can spam Aspects and do a sort of "aspect twisting" they very much do not want us doing. Hints have been posted that if hunters are
"aspect twisting" too much, they will revert Aspects back to how they were if they can't find another solution. As such, I will refrain from posting macros that actively encourage "aspect twisting".


On Steady Shot Glyph
Before we have more speculation being passed all around, will someone please test this, posting both the person's WWS/CombatLog who has the Steady Shot Glyph, and the person who does not have the glyph. That way we can get a definitive answer. Until we have definitive, conclusive results... please, no more hearsay.

Ratings to pets
Has anyone been able to find a listing of the direct conversions of Critical Strike % from hunter to pet?
Also, does Stamina or Health Pool transfer to the pet, and at what rate?
I know Attack Power transfers at 22% Hunter -> Pet. Hit transfers at 100% Hunter -> Pet.
Haste, ArPen, Expertise, Defense and Resilience do not transfer.
(in fact, I'll add this info to the top post)

 

Faerdael

Also for Aliiance raids, assuming you have a dranaei in-raid, the hit cap can go as low as 5%.

0/3 9% 296 (295.1099)
1/3 8% 263 (262.3199)
2/3 7% 230 (229.5299)
3/3 6% 197 (196.7399)
---- 5% 164 (163.94994735) (*dranaei racial aura)

Throw in [Snapper Extreme], and Horde can cap out at 157 from gear, and Alliance at 124.