Thank you Æthien.

2 other questions about the reapplication of Serpent Sting:
Does AotV make any difference?
Wouldn't it be better to refresh after 13,5 seconds?
Under perfect circumstances without any delay, you would start casting Steady Shot @13,5 seconds and cast Serpent Sting @15 seconds, letting the Trinket/BW boosted sting drop.

Also, out of curiosity (probably has been talked about, but I haven't seen it in my light trolling)... Would AotV be best used during BW if you were close to OOM? I would think the slight boost in personal damage + reduced cost of spells, would mean a very swift AotV mana regen.

Figure, Viper doesn't affect the +50% damage your pet is doing... It seems like the most efficient way to recharge mana on a long fight. Sorry if this was already brought up elsewhere.

Well, wishing to try out just the serpent line, where would this line go? Would it go directly under the !Auto Shot line in this macro?

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:UnregisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast Kill Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:RegisterEvent("UI_ERROR_MESSAGE");
/cast !Auto Shot
/cast Steady Shot

For some reason I figured putting a cast sequence like that into this macro (given that it uses a !Auto Shot line to fire before the primary Steady) would mess up the sequence. I know Auto shot fires independently but I just figured the Serpent sequence might interfere with it somehow given that the initial Auto shot is present in the macro. Hope I'm making sense.

Actually thats not quite true.
From the UI/Macros

/castsequence reset=n/target/combat/shift/ctrl/alt

Where n is a number of seconds. You can specify any number of these conditions separated by slashes as shown. Seconds are used as a timeout for the command. Each time the sequence runs, it resets the timer. If you don't use the macro within the number of seconds specified, the sequence will start over. This is a very important distinction because it means you cannot use a reset timer to account for cooldown. target resets the sequence when you change targets; combat when you leave combat; shift, alt, and ctrl when you activate the macro with one of those keys depressed.

Reset=14 means that if the macro isnt pressed within 14 seconds, it will reset the sequence. Since your spamming it, the reset timer never comes into play. The macro works fine when your standing still and dont need to pop any other globals. If you have to move or pop globals, the sting will fall off and the sequence will continue until it is completed (after 7 steadies are fired) and goes back to serpent.

I'm not sure you can even use more than one /cast lines in a 3.0 macro, unless one is a pet ability. I could have sworn I tried:

/cast Kill Shot
/cast Steady Shot

that type of thing, and it would stop at the /kill shot line and wait. Wish I had my game updated here on my Mac so I could try it out. Maybe I'm crazy. My understanding was, you'd need to do something like this:

/cast Kill Shot
/castrandom Steady Shot

And that a /cast could be replaced with a (/castsequence reset=blahblah x, y, z)

Anyhow, I don't use /cast !Auto Shot in my macro, and it casts serpent sting and auto at the same time. Or any instant shot + auto at the same time. So I don't think you need it... again, I won't be on my game tonight until 7 or so, at which time I will test some macros and figure out what's what.

Originally Posted by Masterdragon Actually thats not quite true. From the UI/Macros /castsequence reset=n/target/combat/shift/ctrl/alt Where n is a number of seconds. You can specify any number of these conditions separated by slashes as shown. Seconds are used as a timeout for the command. Each time the sequence runs, it resets the timer. If you don't use the macro within the number of seconds specified, the sequence will start over. This is a very important distinction because it means you cannot use a reset timer to account for cooldown. target resets the sequence when you change targets; combat when you leave combat; shift, alt, and ctrl when you activate the macro with one of those keys depressed. Reset=14 means that if the macro isnt pressed within 14 seconds, it will reset the sequence. Since your spamming it, the reset timer never comes into play. The macro works fine when your standing still and dont need to pop any other globals. If you have to move or pop globals, the sting will fall off and the sequence will continue until it is completed (after 7 steadies are fired) and goes back to serpent.

That's why I was hoping that by pinning all of the instant abilities (sting, kill shot) to the /castsequence, and making it so that it can never reset before 14s or target change by adding an additional KS (that can't be cast because of the CD), that it would then spam steady shot using the /castrandom line directly after. The sequence would never be able to advance completely by design, so the reset would still occur?

That way, you wouldn't need to stand still for the /castsequence to play out as expected.

Question I can't answer right now because I'm at work is, does this actually work (does it ever fire steady shot):

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

I think I'm already using a variation of that which replaced my Arcane Shot keybind (all instant abilities for shooting on the move):

/castsequence reset=target/14 serpent sting, arcane shot, arcane shot
/castrandom kill shot

But maybe it's never been firing KS. KS is built into my current steady macro, so I wouldn't have noticed. I think I was seeing what you talked about above - Sometimes, it felt like the timer reset - maybe due to the arcane shot going off and resetting the sequence timer.

:: EDIT ::

In that case, another thing I'm going to have to try is using 3 types of casts in one macro to see what happens:

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

that way the sequence line only has 1 job - cast sting, then reset on target or 14s. If it can't ever step to the next shot in the sequence, maybe I can force it to do what I want. No clue if any of that works though =) Just rambling at this point. Sorry heh

:: EDIT V2.0 ::

None of the above ideas worked - Bummer. The "reset" command gets reset every time you spam the key, so booo. I have 2 macros I use now, one for steady spam w/ kill shot, and the other for applying serpent sting and using arcane shots / kill shots on the run.

A question to all the people using the macro to automate the use of Kill Shot.

What are you doing to about being in the right Aspect so you don't shot a half power kill shot?

It's a terrible idea to clip dots (serpent sting) in normal situations. Losing your final tick negates the gain from being under tbw/trinket. An average steady damage of 2500 would mean you lose 250 damage for shooting without serpent applied, while clipping the sting would be a loss of 600 damage from missing a tick.

Of course, it's not even possible to do something as stupid as roll a serpent sting buffed from tbw/trinket(s) since you will get the message "a more powerful spell is active" once your buffs fade and you try to reapply the sting.

I have one silly question:
If two hunters have same spec, almost same stats, but one have Scorpion Pet and other Cat. Also fisrt have Nerubian Conqueror and second have Drake-Mounted Crossbow -- so can this differnce between them give an advantage of pure stable 500 dps in boss fights?
Or may be im doing something wrong ( im the second one ) ?

Thx !

I could see it being possible. The scorpid is a very powerful pet. But the RNG could of just not have gone your way. Are you doing anything you think could be hurting you?

Cats and Scorpids are both very high DPS pets right now. Though Scorpids are Tenacity, their poison debuff is largely competitive due to the nature of 25 man raid buffs. Right now it's ticking for ridiculous amounts. There's a catch though. Only ONE of the hunter's scorpid is going to be able to put its poisons up. It's a pain, but it's been like that for awhile now. Cats on the other hand get a lot of help from their Rake being buffed by Druid skills. So either one of them is competitive, and usually the numbers between two hunters then boil down to gear, Trinket uptime, pot usage, etc.

To answer your other question, yes. Yes a 141 DPS gun is going to be a lot more DPS in the long run than a 129 DPS crossbow. This is because BM hunters' dmg output is sustained DPS, meaning DPS over time. Given that the other weapon is 12 points higher than the other, those numbers really start to add up. It's very possible for a hunter with the crossbow to be around 200-300 DPS lower than the hunter with the gun IF the other hunter is utilizing his CDs in the same efficient manner.

POI: The gun and the bow has the same dps

The weapons he listed are 129 and 141. The heroic Crossbow is not as high of a DPS weapon as the gun off 10 man KT.

And another thing: Alex234 plays an alliance char, which means that it's possible that first hunter is a dwarf - he gains another 1% crit from racial while using gun.

Edit: looking at his guild in Armory shows this one using KT's gun - draenei. So it isn't case this time.

sorry just a rather simple question here?

does stings stack?
if there are two scorpid stings on the same target, will the target miss more?
if there are two serpent stings on the same target, will the target take the damage of the two dots?

Edit: Refer to the post below.

This might be silly, but I don't think it was previously discussed.

The one thing I started thinking about in talenting is the usefulness of mana regen spells. Obviously we gain DPS when talented into Careful Aim, but my question lies in the category of Int softcapping. I'd really like to explore the options of on an average boss fight what the softcap would be for us to go OOM.

I say this because after playing with some numbers in the DPS spreadsheet I was finding that talenting into Invigoration depending on the boss fight would result in a 0 dps gain. During trash it's pretty much impossible to go OOM (and we can quickly viper/eat between pulls to consistently be at full mana).

With this said I was hoping that people who enjoy the number crunching a lot more than myself wouldn't mind looking into this and possibly drawing a conclusion from Int softcaps (with respect to going OOM).

Thoughts?

I think that would be interesting to look into. I'm finding myself going OOM quite often even with a replenish effect. So because of this, AoTV uptime is pretty high.

I've been taking a mostly different approach to the "maximize time to OOM" theory, and working on the "maximize DPS during Dragonhawk time" approach, and it seems to be looking good. Almost every boss fight that I've seen so far have some fantastic opportunities to switch to Viper, either because we're moving (Anub'rhekan, Four Horsemen), or we are all getting stunned (Maexxna). While many of these will only grant the first tick of Viper (at the 3s mark), every little bit helps.
I save my Rapid Fire for Viper, to minimize the time I spend there, as it seems that I gain more DPS by being out of Viper faster than the DPS gain from using RF during AoD time.

+Int and +Agility seem to be the two contenders for the +Stat slots. Both are a 1-to-1 ratio for AP (assuming proper talents). Agility ups crit, and Int ups mana pool. This is information we all know. Now, from purely anecdotal evidence (one of these days, I'll remember to post my WWS's), I'm getting more DPS from stacking AP on gems and enchants then any other stacking. I've tried with maximizing +int (to the point of DW +int enchants), maximizing +agility, and maximizing +attack power. As Best Mastery, stacking +ap seems to be outpacing the rest for total DPS over the course of an entire fight.

Remember that you have to look at two DPS numbers when you are calculating your total DPS:
[DPS under AoD]*[Percentage of time in AoD] + [DPS under AoV]*[Percentage of time in AoV]

Adding Attack Power will up the DPS under both columns. Adding Int will increase the percentage of time in the first column, and slight up the DPS under both columns. So it's a delicate balance, and it's hard for any spreadsheet to accurately track all boss fights, all trash, and all buffs.


On a different note, does anyone else notice that BM hunters are tearing up the DPS charts in raids? Including things like Patchwerk, and I'm seeing most instances where BM hunters are pummelling even the rogues. Anyone else expecting a nerf soon?

Well, I just put up about 5200 dps in a 5-man heroic HoL on Loken... My pet was #2 for the fight at about 2650. Pretty sure the mage and ret pally were not too happy about it.

But, that's what happens on short Bloodlust fights with 50/21/0. Not sure 5-man content is nerfbat worthy... but we'll see how things play out.

I don't understand why people are so worried a nerf is incoming. Our PVE dmg is highly dependant on a spec that's only remotely viable in a strict PvE environment. So what that the boss dies 2 min faster with 4 BM hunters in a raid instead of 2? The fact remains that Blizzard tends to balance things around Arena. We all know it's true. Given that pets are still balloon animals in arenas in terms of their survivability, I don't see a reason for Blizzard to lower our raid DPS any lower than it was with the removal of our benefit from Windfury (ranged haste benefit for those that don't remember or didn't read patch notes)

I've had a good read through each thread and while it has been suggested, exact numbers haven't been given.

At what haste rating does it become sensible to remove one talent, two talents etc. from Improved AotH? I guess I'm asking as a Survival hunter who wouldn't be going any further in the BM tree than the first tier.