With my gear i see a 6dps increase, which is quite interesting because it increases other hunter's dps too if you are the only one to have it ofc

Hello, my guild is going to be starting on heroic Anub 25 today, and I was thinking if there were ways to increase my AoE dps for it since it will mostly be about spamming volley for this encounter.

I was thinking to try a build like this: 11/53/7

Taking 2 points from Imp.SS and one point from Rapid Recuperation and TSA each and getting Aspect Mastery instead. For me this is showing a decrease of around 70dps in the spreadsheet for a single target fight. So since I'll mostly be using Volley there the boost from improved steady shot feel like they shouldn't be that important anyway. Might be better even to not specc into Imp. SS at all and max Rapid Recuperation instead. Aspect Mastery will, apart from giving me 90 more AP, also reduce damage. Which although a small decrease might still be helpful.
Glyph of Kill Shot and Hawk for lack of better glyphs, Volley could be useful but I haven't done the encounter yet so I don't know how my mana will suffer there.

What do you think of doing something like this?

@Karlok #2353

It really depends on how you will pull this fight off. A common way to do it is to have 1 tank to tank 4 adds, hence that tank will need a Misdirect. I'm on that duty and this really lower my damage in this fight - since healers will pull aggro if I'm not there with the misD right away. I found myself usefull as BM spec on this encounter and on this particular duty.

Yes, Volley will drain your mana but a glyph will benefit a lot, and during kite phases (2x) you can easily chose viper aspect and get full mana. Looking at your current gear, I wouldn't head for Aspect Mastery. In my guild the adds go down easily without hunters doing Volley - normally we raid with 2 or 3 hunters. Instead we have the hunters glyph for TSA as well, and see how that Aimed Shot hit like a truck (on AN) with similar gear. Hawk, TSA, and then Kill shot or Volley would be my recommendation, and keep your current spec - perhaps event with 3/3 in IHM and skip ISS if you have +2 hunters in your raid.

Best of luck on the bug

Ok, obviously there is a point where ISS might become better than IHM for a single hunter, since IHM is just a static AP increase while ISS scales with the damage your AS or CS does. My bad to not take this into consideration. But with at least two hunters in the raid my statement stands valid again.

Any MM hunter that is not on pure AoE duty should have Serpent Sting glyph; it greatly increases Chimera DMG. My recommendation would be Serpent Sting, Kill Shot (as you'll be in 20% range for a while) and TSA. Heroism is norm popped @ 30% so i get little benefit from the hawk glyph.

Thanks for the input. I think I'll rather put that specc for my dualspecc, and I can switch to my usual specc if the AoE is sufficient without hunters. On the other hand though, wouldn't it be better to help out AoEing anyway, and if the adds die fast enough everyone can focus dps on the boss, instead of having some on the boss all the time, since AoE dps is greater than single-target dps?

We'll be using two add tanks so me and the other hunter will most likely be MDing one add to each tank while tanks pick up the other one. I'll have to see how we want to do it later and I can adapt to that.

Well, even with your results, its a wash for you but a benefit for your raid if you have at least one other hunter though.

I did run your gear and talents through the spreadsheet (with switching a deadly to a glinting to get the last 10 hit rating you were short), and the results came up with IHM being better. So I thought maybe you run with a different set up so I tried several different options. For every single one, IHM was better than ISS.

My standard rotation with AiS->CS->KS->SSx3/4: +23
My standard rotation but witout allowing upto 300ms wait: +13
CS->AiS->KS->SSx3/4: +14
KS->CS->AiS->SSx3/4: +14

I even tried the options with taking that hit gem back out, and I got about the same results in every case.

And yes, at some point ISS becomes better than IHM for a hunter alone, but even then it is still better for the raid if you have at least another hunter in it. For my analysis of current BiS gear, IHM is still coming out better for the hunter alone than ISS. Thus, I do not see myself putting point into ISS instead of IHM for quite a while still.

I've mainly use femaledwarf.com for calculating DPS and as many of you have pointed out, Priotising Aimed shot over CS (including picking up AiS Glyph) returns a higher DPS - for me it's around 50 DPS over CS prioritisation.

This doesn't sound right to me. I'm sure the numbers are true but I feel that CS should be MM hunter's top prio shot. I think Unholy DKs had a similar issue not long ago. What surprised me was when I turned off Sunder Armour and Savage Combat debuffs (we don't always have a Rogue or Warrior in our raids) AiS still came out higher. I have the Mjonir Trinket and less tan 300 ArP too.

If I dropped CS Prio and traded KS Glyph in for AiS, what would it mean for things other than just a DPS shootout? I'm guessing AiS will be more mana intensive as you wont get the mana reduction from ISS on CS. Also on adds or in maybe longer fights where the boss is at 20% or less for longer than usual, the loss of KS Glyph might also hurt?

After double checking, I am still seeing ~1 dps lost with my gear after swapping in a hit gem to stay hit capped. I am using femaledwarf.com to get the dps values, so it might be a little different than the spreadsheet?

But I do agree if you are raiding with one or more hunters and they don't have IHM, it's definitely a dps increase for yourself and the other hunters.

I've done some reading through the forums, and haven't found an answer to this question.

Currently doing 10 man ToGC without a rogue or warrior for the 20% armor reduction debuff. I was considering grabbing a wasp for the 5% debuff, but wasn't sure if it would be a notable enough buff for the raid, over the loss to personal dps. The members that would benefit would be myself (MM hunter), the blood DK tank, enhancement shammy, and the prot pally (very minimal, of course).

Worthwhile?

I dropped Enchanting yesterday and rerolled Engineering. The goal was not really to increase my DPS, it was moreless something I ever wanted to do and also I like it for PvP.

However I am surprised right now that the Spreadsheet values 20 Agi on Gloves higher than the Hyperspeed Accelerator. I am pretty sure that stacking it with Rapid Fire / Heroism /Call of the Wild would be a DPS increase in most Bossfights.

Any thoughts on this?

If stacking haste is your style, AND you don't dip way too low into the GCD, I'd suggest pairing haste effects two by two.

- Rapid Fire + Glove Enchant
- Readiness -> Rapid Fire + Haste potion
- Heroism + Whatever's off cooldown (enchant, RF, trinkets, if you stumble across any)

Otherwise, just use them in succession for a quasi-permanent speed increase, to which I personally subscribe.

My spreadsheet shows Hand Mounted Pyro Rockets are superior to both those glove "enchants" by >10 dps. You certainly cannot "stack" effects of the rockets with other buffs, but it is more of a fire and forget ability if you macro it to one of your shots.

Ok, but wouldn't stacking haste (Rapid Fire, Potion of Speed, Gloves enchant and Heroism or any combination of those) be better if you use them during a Mjolnir proc rather than chaining them without the proc? And usually its not only one of your trinkets that procs, but both Mjolnir + DMC:G or Mjolnir + Death's Verdict.

I remember that there were discussions about stacking or not before, but none of them included trinket procs. So if someone could do some calculations about this, it would be really great. Until then my gut feeling says to stack when the procs are up, instead of chaining.

Correct me if I am wrong,
But in order to achieve maximum DPS, you want to pair Multiplicative buffs, not stacking buffs.

I think it's fair to disregard the cast time for SS because it is at or around 1.5sec with the application of one haste buff, and that includes Rapid Shots.

simply Stacking buffs (which I do not recommend) would be getting a 1k AP proc and triggering a 2k AP buff. This adds for burst, but neither actually affects the DPS potential of the other buff. Likewise, getting bloodlust and using a rapid fire just speeds up your shots more, but doesn't improve dps potential of either CD.

buffs should be paired alternatively, if you get bloodlust (haste buff), you want to blow an attackpower trinket, that way you maximize the damage potential of all the extra shots.

Similarly, you want to save your potion of speed for greatness proc for the same reason.

the caveat here is the third-fourth-fifth buff you stack. As long as you've properly paired 2 buffs, any additionally stacked buffs are still multiplicative. But, if you want to maximize the value of each of your buffs, you want to use them together, pairing haste+damage.


My suggestion:
Pot'o'speed - Mojinar Runestone
Rapid Fire - Greatness/Deaths Choice
CotW - Bloodlust

This pairs haste and damage buffs, as well as pairing non-player activated buffs with those that can be fired on demand. (Hopefully you're pets furious howls will line up with rapid shots.)

For me personally, I am not a big fan of holding onto cooldowns. If you hold onto some of your cooldowns for say 30 seconds while you wait for a proc, it might result in you using those cooldowns less in the overall fight which I'm sure is a bigger dps loss. If you know the fight is a short one and you will only get say 1 rapid/readiness/rapid no matter when you use it (twins) then sure I think it's natural to stack it. With longer fights, everything falls back to priority for me.

I don't think we are on the same page here.

Lets say that we get a medium long fight as an exalmpe. Shortly after the pull, chances are that both of your trinkets will proc at the same time (Mjolnir and Death's Verdict as an example). At that point, you use Rapid fire, Potion of Speed and CotW (haste gloves enchant if you have it). By doing that you maximize the number of auto shots you get during the 10-15 secs of burst.
The other option is to stack even more haste by waiting with your CDs for the time you get Heroism if the fight is short enough and you won't lose a pair of Rapid/Readiness by waiting or if you time the use of your CDs with the time Heroism is called. It involves a bit of luck with the timing, but it is doable.

Now, if my feeling is correct, the increased AP, being ArP capped and having all those haste buffs up at the same time will net you more damage than if you chain the haste buffs. And as R00k!3 said above me, there was some theorycrafting done a while back that showed a small advantage of stacking vs chaining. And if someone, good enough with numbers, can spend some time and give us the answer, it would be awesome.

Yes, I may not have been clear enough, but the definitive answer is yes, stacking is better assuming you understand how to stack. By this I mean, attack power does not stack beneficially with attack power, and haste does not stack beneficially with haste. (when these are the only buffs on the stack). But when combined, and/or with a 3rd buff on the stack, they ARE better.

When two 15sec static AP trinkets proc in a 30sec time frame, it doesn't matter whether they proc at the same time or chained, the damage done is the same. If one of them is armor pen or haste, now one buff is increasing the effective buff of the other, as more buffed shots are fired.

The same goes with stacking all of your buffs at the same time, if you have 3 AP buffs blow at the same time, you'd be a fool not to pop other cooldowns (otherwise as I explained just above, the 3 buffs would be no better if they proc'd together). One haste buff gets applied to all 3 of the stacked AP buffs. Popping another haste buff, (while not buffing the first haste buff any) would also be affecting the 3 stacked AP buffs. Same goes for Arpen, it's just a 3rd class of buff, slightly different in that it Does stack beneficially with itself (other Arpen buffs)

I think that theoretically answers the question about stacking vs chaining. But Logistically the discussion of whether it is beneficial to save the Readiness Rapidfire for another trinket proc, vs, getting it back on CD asap, depends on the length of the fight, and perhaps the internal cooldown on your trinkets.

In that discussion, For Short fights, I think that this might be a case where an on-use trinket might shine, (used on the 2nd & 4th rapid fire)

About Attack Power you are right, but as the post above you explains, stacking Haste results in more Auto Shots than chaining, someon did the math for that a while ago.

In reality this is what I do: I basically blow all my cooldowns at the start of the fight and after that as soon as they get off cooldown. If some get off cooldown close enough I still try to stack them. Exceptions are obviously fights where overall dps doesn't matter that much while you need to burst in some phases (Jaraxxus, Twins).

Raid boss fights are prolonged fights. DMC:Greatness and Banner of Victory (my trinkets as example) have an excellent proc rate. Haste tinker to gloves is only on a 1 min cd and to get the most out of it,it should be macro'd to every shot. Rapid, Call, racials and Readiness have decently long cd's. So, I do NOT save cd's for anything. As soon as I have MD'd the tank and got off my first round of Serpent, Chim, Aimed I go right for Blood Fury, Call, Rapid Fire, and then repeat using Readiness. This means that I will be able to use the cd's again once and maybe twice before the end of the fight. Waiting to use longish cd's means you are unlikely to be able to use them again before the boss dies and thats a net dps loss.

Personally I've been blowing my cooldowns (CotW and Rapid Fire) as soon as I see my first Runestone proc (which usually coincides with a Paragon proc) on any fight long enough to allow 2 CotW usages (basically just Northrend Beasts (H) or Anub (H)) and it seems to work well as justified above. What I'm not so sure of is my 2nd rapid fire, and my Readiness uses.

What I usually do is use readiness as soon as Chimera and Aimed have been fired during CoTW+Runestone, fire them again, and then not use the 2nd rapidfire until my 2nd Runestone proc. This leads to the following questions:

i. Is it worth using a GCD on readiness during Runestone+Cotw+Paragon? Yes, doing so means getting an extra pair of very buffed up chimera and aimed shots, but it means losing 1 steady shot to the Readiness GCD, and trading 2 steadyshots for chimera and aimed. With runestone procced, those steadyshots are hitting for quite a lot already.

ii. Is it worth waiting for the 2nd Runestone proc 45~50 seconds later before using my 2nd Rapid Fire? Doing so offsets every other Rapid Fire and Readiness cooldown later in the fight.


Question (i) I'm pretty sure I can answer easily enough for myself by looking at my shot damages in the spreadsheet with the buffs edited in, I suspect the answer is that I shouldn't use the readiness till the procs have worn off - the difference is probably quite slight though, since even after procs I'm making the same trade, it'll just be that chimera is worth relatively more outside a runestone proc than inside. Since Runestone doesn't last as long as CotW, perhaps it would be best to use Readiness once Runestone has worn off but while CotW is still up?

Question (ii) my head hurts trying to analyse, especially with how much our kill durations vary, so if anyone else has considered it, your conclusions would be appreciated.


On a related note, I've found the mod InternalCooldowns - Addons - Curse extremely helpful for this kind of thing - basically it'll fool your UI into thinking items with internal cooldowns (like runestone, greatness, death's verdict) have actual cooldowns. So whatever display you normally use to monitor cooldowns on usable abilities/items will also start showing the internal cooldown on your proccing trinkets once they proc. Note that you'll have to do a bit of editing as I noted in the comments to add the various versions of Death's Verdict/Choice. I found this a lot easier to pay attention to than a mod like Procodyle that adds separate UI to monitor ICDs.

If you use the 2nd Rapid Fire 50 secs later, that means that the next Readiness will be available before the next Rapid Fire, meaning you either lose a Rapid Fire, or you delay Readiness by quite a bit. Either way, I don't think it's worth it.

About your other question...well I don't know. What I do however, is slightly different than you. Basically I wait for the first Mjolnir and Verdict proc to use Rapid Fire + CotW. Then I fire Aimed - Chimera and the Steady shots. Then, after I fire the next Aimed and Chimera, the first Rapid fire is just about to wear off, I use Readiness, Rapid Fire and then the next Aimed - Chimera.

Also, for tracking the ICD on the trinkets, Heatsink - Addons - Curse works too. However, you have to manually add Death's Verdict. All the other trinkets should be there.