One thing I noticed, is that the Druid Growl glyph gives 8% + hit.
And I wouldn't know why blizz would give it 8%+hit if the hitcap is 9%.
Then again, Blizz does more weird things >.>

I can support the trend toward 8%. I'm not one to analyze every move I make in every encounter of an evening, but on Sunday I had zero misses in various Patchwerk tries (heroic difficulty). Same goes for the other bosses we've encountered in Naxx so far and also Sartharion on heroic difficulty. Having said that, I think might have been even below 8%, for my gear is constantly changing these days. Anyway, so far I don't see the 9%-rule valid anymore.

I would not support the 8% trend because of murphy's law.
if you can miss, you will miss, and at the most inappropriate moment where it wipes the raid

Well, that's exactly the question. Because if the cap is at 8%, there's no Murphy's Law to apply. Besides that, I can hardly think of a situation where a miss on my side would wipe the raid.

There's someone on TKA too who is testing, think he's done over 7k shots at 8.02% hit with no misses.
and about the same amount of pet attacks with no misses.

I had an aimed shot miss once, misdirecting an add at Magtheridon to an offtank which wasnt well geared. well, one thing led to another, eventually it ended in a wipe.

but now that I have read the linked thread, I see that people have zero misses with a considerable sample size and just are under the assumed hitcap of 9%. this looks like good news, or a bug that will be fixed :-/

Well, Agi is red, and Int is yellow, so the real question is +int vs +Crit. Personally, with crit ratings in the low 20's, I'm thinking gemming yellows with crit is probably best for now (though I am trying +Int atm anyhow). There might be a sweet-spot, however, where your crit is just high enough to keep a steady stream of Cobra Strikes going for your pet... Just not sure what that number is yet. Probably low to mid 30's, but that's just assumption.

Once you're there, though, you might try +Int and xfer more AP to your pet while increasing your mana pool and replenishment tics during a raid.

About Hit
Ok, so before this thread runs on to five pages just going back and forth about Hit, I'm calling a stop to it here. Discussion about Hit, Hit Rating, Focus Aim and best values needs to be solely talked about is this thread about hit.

About Pets
Questions about pets should go in this thread, and if there are some reoccurring questions, I'll put them at the top of this post.


I think this thread is going to get readjusted to be more Q/A style at the top, and point to all the relevant threads from there. Hopefully, this will help spread out the discussions. Keep asking questions, though, and we'll see what else regularly comes up.

So assuming I'm hit capped, am I right in saying I've been wrongly led into using +27agility gems, when in fact +54AP Gems (JC only) are proving to be more worthwhile on DPS?

On another note, has anyone got any concrete evidence on whether AotB is better/worse than AotD?

Thanks.

That will depend largely on a number of variables that will be unique to your character, and so to get an accurate answer, you should use the WotLK DPS spreadsheet

This topic was brought up previously in this thread (1 page back) and might find some additional answers here.

Holy crap, do people even read posts anymore? or do they blindly hit "Reply" on the first thread they find?
Nearly the exact same question was posted three above yours, and the answer to that is right above your post. Please, if you are going to ask a question, at the very least read the first post and last page of the thread.

The quick answer to your question isn't one you are going to like: go play with the spreadsheet.
Agility, AP, Int, Crit, Haste, ArPen - they all have varying degrees of effectiveness based on your current gear. Plug it all into the spreadsheet and start shifting things around to see what works best for you.

I know the spreadsheet can be overwhelming at first, but the more you use it, the easier it is.

I've perused the main treads of this forum and found out these certain points which i must consider to maximise my own dps. Please correct me if i'm wrong. Thanks.

1. Hit cap is 8%. Tentatively at least, stats have shown this to be true.

2. I need not be concerned about haste rating as a BM hunter, mainly because the haste added by serpent swiftness and quiver is more than sufficient.

3. In order for glyph of steady shot to work, i'll need my own serpent sting.

4. At the moment, devilsaurs and cats do almost the same dps. Maybe the former is greater, but its greater hitbox is a downside. Scorpids may be able to achieve better performance, but only if 5 stacks of poison is on the target. Putting an extra point in exotic pet mastery can be thus debatable. However, in the upcoming patch, Blizzard will look to boosting the prowess of exotic pets.

5. For bm spec, certainly i must get FA, lethal shots, but i can consider dropping points from mortal shots to survival talents, namely imp tracking and survival instincts to attain an increase in dps.

Points 1 - 4 are correct, with a "tentative" on #1.
Point #5 is going to depend on gear, encounter and raid composition.

I would just like this point from the OP clarified:

Is this to say that
1) 1 point of haste rating is better than 1 point of any other rating before the soft cap, or
2) 1 point of haste rating before the soft cap is better than 1 point of haste rating after the soft cap?

The intended meaning is #1, although #2 is also true of course (because that's what a soft cap means).

Nope, not for a very long time now. All part of blizzard's 'play the game not the mod philosphy' back around the start of TBC

Would this work?

/castsequence reset=target/15 serpent sting, kill shot, kill shot
/castrandom steady shot

... since kill shot's CD is longer than the 15s sting reset, it basically prioritizes shots like this:

sting
kill
steady

Slightly less than ideal, since i think kill shot would be nice to prioritize. But, this is the only all-in-one way I can see of easily doing it.

Can't test it atm, since i'm not on my gaming machine. I also usually add /petattack or /petdefensive in one shot macro, and leave it out of the other... helps increase pet dps time on adds, trash, etc., but gives me one to use if i need to pull the pet out.

Anyhow, if 15s is still too long on recasting sting, then maybe make it 14 or 13... gotta take into account the steady cast time etc.

No it wouldn't, since...

/castsequence reset=target/15 serpent sting, kill shot, kill shot
/castrandom steady shot

....this macro tries to apply sting everytime you spam macro, but...

/cast kill shot
/castsequence reset=target/14 serpent sting, steady shot, steady shot, steady shot, steady shot, steady shot, steady shot, steady shot

...should work, it tries to use kill shot everytime you spam the macro and will use sting every 14 sec. (1sec. before it expires)

Isn't it better to let the last tick deal its damage, than refreshing it at after 14 seconds?

2/3 Ticks of Serpent Sting should outdamage 10% of an average Steady Shot.

you apply Serpent sting while under the effect of trinkets/BW to boost it's dps.
letting it drop would thus result in a dps loss over time.

I figured if it didn't work, it would be because it would hit the kill shot part and not jump down to the next line for steady. Looking at it, I'm not sure how it would spam serpent, but I haven't actually tried it so... ;P

I was under the assumption that the /cast and /castsequence commands could both be used with a follow-up /castrandom line to add versatility.