The Survival Hunter in WotLK - Page 32

Fierra · 01/12/09, 8:32 AM

Originally Posted by Woodent

Most reasonable, but I undrstood Rezdan's question as a more general rotation one, not just pertaining to opening of combat. I don't see, unfortunately, how you would have all cooldowns match the same "three instants on my way towards the boss" pattern on 2nd, 3d, etc iterations, although, granted, that would have been perfect.

It doesn't work quite perfectly, unfortunately; I don't have my haste to the soft-cap, so my SS are somewhere around 1.7s instead of 1.5s, and Aimed is of course on a 10s cooldown; it usually gets fired every 10.5s or so, depending on how mobile the fight is. Still, it has been a good rotation thus far that has gotten me top dps on the majority of my runs into 5- and 10-mans, even before the SV buff we're expecting. However, point that I was simply trying to make was that SerS is worthwhile to keep up, but don't gimp your instant CDs since it does relatively small damage in relation to the instant shots.

Aern · 01/12/09, 2:14 PM

Originally Posted by sihyunie

I think any raid SV build should have some points in hunting party.
If your raid is guaranteed to have 2 ret/sp (I'm assuming at least 5 ppl in your 25 man raid don't use mana), I suppose you can just skip hunting party to max expose weakness or something and ignore this post.

In light of this talent, I figured I should do some math to help decide how many points to put in, since I don't remember seeing such post in this thread (This is a crude estimation).

In optimal dps rotation, you cast ES every 4, Aimed every 7, Serpent every 14 gcds (assuming serpent sting glyph). So one gcd is made up of 1/4 ES, 1/7 Aimed, 1/14 Serpent, and 15/28 SS. However, explosive shot has 3 ticks, so you get 3/4 ES ticks per gcd, thus in total, 9/7 hunting party relevant shots per gcd, or 6/7 shots per sec.
Raid buffed, SV spec can easily get 45% crit, and ES and SS have shot specific crit talents, so just for the simplicity's sake, say we have 50% crit chance, so, we have 3/7 crits per sec. Since Hunting party has 15 sec duration, you get 45/7 crits on average during a hunting party proc.
Now the uptime of hunting party is 1 - (1 - n*.2)^(45/7), where n is number of talent points you have in the talent.
This gives uptime of
1 pt in HP: 76.18%
2 pt in HP: 96.25%
3 pt in HP: 99.72%
4 pt in HP: 99.997%

1 pt in HP seems pretty good, and 2pt appears to be sufficient enough.
It seems that you might be able to get away with just 1 pt.

In a high end raiding guild, it seems to me that its very unlikely you will ever not already have 2 replenishment buffs. For 10 mans you might want hunting party, but if you have two replenishment buffs in a 25 man the points become almost completely useless. It depends on what you're guild normally runs, so for me it ends up being useless.

tachycardia · 01/12/09, 3:39 PM

It would make the wording of L&L a bit complicated, but it could be cool if it worked as such:

Serpent procs 1 free ES every time it expires. Traps proc it as usual. Can't have more than 2 free ES's per 30 secs.

Though I still don't like resourcefulness not benefiting L&L in PVP, and this would make serpent glyph bad.

Rezdan · 01/12/09, 8:03 PM

Originally Posted by Fierra

However, point that I was simply trying to make was that SerS is worthwhile to keep up, but don't gimp your instant CDs since it does relatively small damage in relation to the instant shots.

This was also the conclusion I came to but wanted to make sure there was some discussion.
My survival priority will be as follows because even with the 3% bonus to all damage done, you'd lose more damage by delaying any of those instants:
ES -> Kill Shot -> Serpent Sting -> Aimed Shot -> Steady Shot

Faldizzle · 01/12/09, 8:56 PM

Would using spell damage pieces be viable for survival hunters, especially with the buff to explosive shot in the upcoming patch? Not full spell gear but maybe some pieces to buff over all damage on explosive and ticks from serpent?

Rezdan · 01/12/09, 9:01 PM

Explosive Shot scales with Attack Power. So does Serpent Sting.

Roy Munson · 01/12/09, 10:05 PM

I was just wondering what a basic shot rotation macro would be for survival. I am specced survival now down to explosive shot and have picked up aimed shot from MM as well.

Iru · 01/12/09, 10:35 PM

Prioritise ES > AS (if you have it and think its a reasonable dmg/mana trade-off) > SS

Keep Serpent Sting up as much as possible, but don't throw your rotation off to do it, i.e. if Serpent sting falls of with less than a GCD or so before ES is of cool down, fire the ES first.

Ryas · 01/12/09, 10:35 PM

Originally Posted by Roy Munson

I was just wondering what a basic shot rotation macro would be for survival. I am specced survival now down to explosive shot and have picked up aimed shot from MM as well.

There is a search option, however, I'm sure the EJ moderators will let you know that soon enough.

I will answer the question though. On live, you want to use Explosive Shot (ES)->Serpent Sting (SerpS)->Steady Shot (SS)->Steady Shot->Steady Shot->Explosive Shot. Then using Serpent Sting in place a Steady Shot whenever it falls off. In the case of a Lock and Load proc, you want to ES->SS->ES->SS->ES

Once the patch goes live:

ES->SerpS->Aimed Shot (AS)->SS->SS->ES, using an Aimed Shot in place of a Steady Shot when its off CD, as well as Serpent Sting in place of a Steady Shot when it falls off.
In the case of a Lock and load proc, ES->AS->ES->SS->ES.

chicimono · 01/13/09, 1:50 AM

can freezing arrow proc LnL(including boss fights aswell as normal mobs)? if so would it be viable to put points in sniper training?

Cranch · 01/13/09, 1:59 AM

Originally Posted by chicimono

can freezing arrow proc LnL(including boss fights aswell as normal mobs)? if so would it be viable to put points in sniper training?

Yes, but only if the mob is not immune to freeze traps. Since bosses are immune, you'll need to drop a different trap.

Hmm, I wonder if snakes wandering over to the boss would count...

ankah · 01/13/09, 5:51 AM

I have a question, and I am not sure exactly where it should go, here, or in the PTR stuff or in the spread sheet, so apologies in advance.

Just like a lot of other hunters, I have been doing a lot of research and number crunching with the SV build that is in the PTR now, and trying to decide if I should switch from MM to SV.

In my particular case, as well as the case of quite a few MM hunters that I have spoken with these past few weeks, I am the only source of TSA to the raid. That guarantees the 10% buff has a 100% uptime. How important is that uptime? Does the combination of Abomination's might and Unleashed Rage cover the raid for the duration of most if not all boss encounters?

Using the current version of the spread sheet(81f), I see a 10% increase in dps by changing to SV, keeping the same gear, and just changing out gems, with TSA or any 10% attack power buff. Take away the 10% bonus from SV, and it falls just short, less than 1%. If the uptime is not 100% it would also affect every one else, making things even murkier for me.

If some one could help me out with their thoughts and perspectives, and if there is a solid idea of how much uptime DKs and Shamans have on their 10% buffs it would be a great help.

Ikuzo · 01/13/09, 6:47 AM

Originally Posted by Cranch

Hmm, I wonder if snakes wandering over to the boss would count...

They do, but someone would have to trigger them first, obviously. At which point you already have your LnL procs.

Fierra · 01/13/09, 7:41 AM

Originally Posted by chicimono

can freezing arrow proc LnL(including boss fights aswell as normal mobs)? if so would it be viable to put points in sniper training?

Again, the search function can show you that this question has already been discussed and answered in another thread.

NO, freezing arrow will not proc LnL on bosses, though it will on most normal mobs; it is treated like a Freeze Trap, and bosses are immune to those. The enemy must set off the effect of the trap, so Explosive, Immolate and Snake traps all work equally well for bosses. But if you want to trapdance, you need to close fairly close.

Incie · 01/13/09, 7:41 AM

Originally Posted by Ryas

Once the patch goes live:

In the case of a Lock and load proc, ES->AS->ES->SS->ES.

I've been considering this and at a certian gear level wouldn't ES scale enough so that using ES,ES,ES would be the highest dps for a LnL Proc? You would only get 7/9 ticks of the three Explosive Shots but you would start the cooldown for ES three seconds faster than using ES,AS,ES,SS,ES. Doing this for two LnL procs would give you an "Extra" ES over the other rotation offsetting the loss to 1 Tick every two LnL procs.

Do you think this would result in more dps?