Thanks to everyone for this excellent Survival Hunter thread (and others on EJ). They allowed me to transition to SV from BM and stay atop the DPS meters for my guild.
I'm stuck on how to improve my hunter. I was hoping you could take a look and let me know, if I wanted to improve by say 10%, what would be the easiest areas to improve? I'm pretty clear about rotations, trap dancing, and the like, having practiced a lot in raids and on target dummies.
I'm wondering if I'm missing something in my spec, gear setup, etc. that could help me make a significant improvement in DPS.
Thanks,
Sahn
Spec looks perfect. I take Hunting party myself, but that's a preference given that you've already stated you trap dance. I'm assuming some of your gear is new because it's not enchanted yet. A few things I would change personally would be to enchant your gloves for + 20 Agi, change your leg enchant to the 72 AP/22 Crit version, Icewalker for your boots, 22 Agi to your cape, + 10 stats to chest, enchant your Shoulders, and purchase the 25 Valor Badge Ring of Invincibility. All of those changes should even you out until you acquire better gear.
I'm wondering if anyone has recently seen a significant increase in LnL procs from serpent sting. Tuesday night I wasn't able to get in on the main raid naxx 25 we ran, but for maly and sarth 3 25, it seemed like I was getting quite a bit more procs. Probably closer to 1 per 45 sec or so, considering my usual proc rate on patchwerk is a miserable 1-2 per fight it felt like I was in heaven. I was wondering if anyone else had seen an increase in their number of procs or if its just one of those things that happens with procs.
Patch 3.0.8 Lock and Load now has a 3/7/10% chance to proc on periodic damage. (Up from 2/4/6%)
I'm not sure if that might have anything to do with what you are noticing or not. Perhaps your last Patch kill prior to this one was before 3.0.8? If not perhaps you were letting Serp Sting fall off for a while before putting it back up and you got better at making sure Serpent Sting is always up? I usually get 3 to 4 proc's on Patchy kills which seems to line up with the 45 seconds rule based on the length of the fight.
Yeah it might be the proc rate increase, really doubt its an increase in sting uptime as I do a fairly good job of keeping it up. I guess I was just hoping that blizzard was getting closer to making the proc rate more reliable, but I guess with their intention to give survival more trap effectiveness maybe they really do intend for SV hunters to be a trap dancing play style. I'm still hoping to see trap mastery removed and LnL made into an on demand 30 sec cd ability as our 41 point talent, but it seems like blizz likes having it available for other specs.
Thanks to everyone for this excellent Survival Hunter thread (and others on EJ). They allowed me to transition to SV from BM and stay atop the DPS meters for my guild.
I'm stuck on how to improve my hunter. I was hoping you could take a look and let me know, if I wanted to improve by say 10%, what would be the easiest areas to improve? I'm pretty clear about rotations, trap dancing, and the like, having practiced a lot in raids and on target dummies.
I'm wondering if I'm missing something in my spec, gear setup, etc. that could help me make a significant improvement in DPS.
Thanks,
Sahn
I'm confused about why you took Trap Mastery. I know the poster above me stated that you Trap Dance, but how does that help you with Trap Dancing? If you are using anything but Frost Trap then you are missing out on the double dipping from Serp Sting.
Like the poster above said, you gotta get your stuff enchanted. I posted on my blog crookedbow.blogspot.com about people that apply to guilds without having everything enchanted and gemmed properly and that it is the biggest red flag to decline the applicant. Even if you have blues and items that will be upgraded shortly.
The only other suggestions to what Macloud above stated already, I would gem differently. You could ignore the socket bonus and gem straight +16 Agility on your helm since the bonus is +4 stam. You are at 219 hit so another 11 points would cap yourself when you are partied w a Dreanie. You could regem your gloves with either Glinting Monarch Topaz and put yourself at 227 which will be slightly under cap or go Rigid Autumns Glow and be slighty over cap. You can also get a Buckle for your belt and add an additional gem socket and place a +16 agil there.
* edit... realized you don't have Icewalker yet. That will get you to 7% cap w Draenie.
Hmm, the spreadsheet says that 6/14/51 is about 40 DPS higher than 1/18/52 but will Sniper Training be worth the points when the patch changes to "stand still 6 sec"? Considering many bosses involve lots of moving around?
Also, for the consideration of the theory crafters, here's my WWS report of a 36 minute dummy test. LnL in-game seems to proc a bit more than it did but I'm not too sure. Did a long dummy test to hopefully even out the procs. I am Serpent Sting Glyphed.
According to WoWMeterOnline, LnL had an uptime of 13%, and I almost never go more than 2 secs without Serpent Sting up. Just giving my variables to improve analysis =)
Sniper Training will be outright superior its new incarnation, as you will be able to take advantage of it while remaining in range of all relevant buffs (Ret aura, totems, etc). Yes it will still be less useful on some fights, but if you even get half uptime from it, it's still 1% dps per point. And even on movement-heavy fights like Thaddius and Heigan, it will still be up half the time, there are basically zero fights where you are CONSTANTLY moving.
What isn't clear, is if it will retain its secondary +crit to Kill Shot bonus. But even if it doesn't, it's still 1% dps per point.
Hey Sahn,
From my understanding the 6/14/51 build is only for when you are hitcapped since the spec leaves no floater points to be placed in talents such as Focused Aim. I'd adjust your spec accordingly or adjust your gems/enchants in your gear to hit the hit cap of 263.
I'd replace the enchant on your legs with the Icescale Leg Armor (75AP, 22Crit)
Replace 12 agility on your boots with Icewalker (12hit/12crit)
Enchant your cloak (22Agi), your chest (+8 stats/+10 stats although +8 stats is far cheaper and also your shoulders (enchant depends on rep with Sons of Hodir).
This is just nitpicking but maybe upgrade the enchant on your bracers as well. Any little bit helps. Anyway, hope I was able to steer you in the right direction. Good luck!
Weighing in on the 6/14/51 vs 2/18/51 debate- I recently sat down and did the math on how much damage I'm actually gaining from imp serpent sting and it came out at about 1.3% dmg for the 3 point investment based on my WWS reports. I had avoided going heavy in BM for awhile because I had needed the hit from focused aim but I finally got enough hit gear to drop all the points in it which allowed me more flexibility. I decided to try 6/14/51 this week and I have to say I was very happy with the results. Switching from aimed to multi really didn't seem to have any impact on the vast majority of cases. My damage was very solid and nobody could catch me on most fights (usually I can still get top but typically the lead is much tighter).
Personally I would say that at weaker gear levels, 2/18/51 is probably the way to go, but when you are very well geared out, 6/14/51 should edge it out as hit becomes more flexible, serpent sting becomes a smaller percentage of your total damage and the autoshot damage gain from the haste starts to weigh more heavily.
Another tidbit on the sniper training discussion- I added ret aura to my Elk setup today so I could track more easily if I was in range of it and I found that on Patchwerk I had to be within 15-20 yd of the boss to be in range of the ret aura, so sniper training was definitely out of the question. I assume that if I could get them to turn the boss sideways I could find a way to make use of it, but chances of getting a positioning change just to give the hunters more dps on that fight are slim to none so I think I'll start trying to trap dance that fight in the future till they change sniper training to be more useful. We don't have anyone else that provides either of the buffs you get from ret aura, so on any fight where I can realistically stand in range to get it, it'll definitely outweigh sniper training.
For Sahn- definitely make sure to get to 7% hit at least if you don't have focused aim- whether you need that last % will depend on if you can rely on a draenei group- I gear for 7% because most of the time I can get one and I have stuff I can swap in and hit food for the times I can't.
Personally I would say that at weaker gear levels, 2/18/51 is probably the way to go, but when you are very well geared out, 6/14/51 should edge it out as hit becomes more flexible, serpent sting becomes a smaller percentage of your total damage and the autoshot damage gain from the haste starts to weigh more heavily.
I really don't understand this at all and I keep reading it over and over again and it makes me want to pull my hair out.
There are a huge number of things you can do to increase your hit rating that are all vastly superior to sinking 3 talent points into something that doesn't even affect your pet.
- Accuracy Enchant on 1H (25 hit)
- 20 hit to gloves (20 hit)
- Glinting Monarch Topaz in red sockets (8 hit)
- Rigid Autumn's Glow in yellow sockets (16 hit)
- Hit Elixir (45 rating)
- Hit food (40 Rating)
Just using the hit food + elixir gives you as much hit as the three talent points you wasted in focused aim AND it applies to your pet. Just one point in Focused Fire adds just as much DPS as 3 in Imp Stings. You're basically getting the IAOTH points for free when you spec 6/14/51. If you really need Aimed Shot, then just take one point out of FF and put it in Aimed Shot for movement fights.
You're right, I should have been more clear- when your gear is _very_ weak, I still think 2/18/51 can make more sense, but once your gear is more solid you should do what you can to transition out of it. I agree that using focused aim long term is not ideal and that hunters should be looking towards gearing out of it, but the reality is that when you're first starting to gear up hit is not that easy to come by and you don't have a lot of gear flexibility.
I have a friend who just hit 80 this week on his hunter and is just starting to gear up. Yes he could have spent a lot of money to try to cap out hit via gear, but until his gear gets upgraded it made a lot more sense to go with the hit talent. When you first hit 80 you don't have many sockets to even work with- you're wearing what you've managed to scavenge from quests and drops in instances mostly. Hit to gloves isn't too bad, but accuracy on a 1H when you're still gearing out? That runs about 800g in mats on my server. Titanium weapon chains are a more realistic option, but most hunters will probably start out using a runeblade and using a 1H enchant on that is probably a waste. Hit elixirs and hit food are not cheap- it's an option but most raids will just use a feast so you're out extra gold for food if you're picky about what you eat, and elixirs instead of a flask are costly if you end up wiping much.
According to the spreadsheet, at my gear level, 1% hit for the pet is worth 10dps. So definitely it's compelling to work your way out of the talent when gear allows, but I'm being realistic- not every hunter is well geared when they start out as survival- heck these days almost every hunter I see is survival. When focused aim does make sense, then you're obviously not going to be able to get that 1 pt in focused fire, and then it becomes a question of whether you are gaining more from the haste than the stings talent. When I compared those two directly in the spreadsheet, I found they were almost neck and neck.
I'm confused also by your "just take one point out of FF and put it in aimed shot" comment, since you are only going to have one point in it, and as you pointed out it's a pretty large damage increase compared to the alternatives. I would never recommend someone take aimed shot over FF for PvE. But if they are already needing the focused aim talent while gearing up, then they won't have FF anyhow and then aimed shot can make sense.
I meant that Aimed shot for movement fights or when you are trap dancing can give you more of a DPS boost than FF. Imagine a fight like OS3D where you are constantly moving and without Aimed, you are stuck with explosive every 6 seconds and refreshing sting.
I don't have the math to support that statement at the moment, but if you want I can look through a WWS of that fight when I was spec'd into aimed and see how much damage I got from it.
I meant that Aimed shot for movement fights or when you are trap dancing can give you more of a DPS boost than FF. Imagine a fight like OS3D where you are constantly moving and without Aimed, you are stuck with explosive every 6 seconds and refreshing sting.
In my experience on OS3D, I do need to move frequently, but only for a second or two at a time. It's rare that that time coincides with when my aimed/multishot is up anyhow. So I can see it sometimes delaying multishot, but it's not like you can't use it at all. I suppose if multishot was up everytime you had to move and you had to delay 2 seconds to use it you'd be losing one multi every 50 seconds, which is a damage loss. Math based on my average multishot puts that at 67dps lost. So I suppose it could be a fairly significant amount on a fight with a lot of movement. My spreadsheet puts the 1 point in focused fire at a 53dps gain. If your only concern about damage was on high movement fights like OS3D, it's possible that it might be worth gaining 14dps on those fights in order to lose 53dps on most fights I suppose.
If you plug it into the spreadsheet with my gear, the [Blue Aspect Helm] is a 40 dps downgrade. However, it is included in the highest dps possible thread in most if not all of the gear setups, so I would get it if you could.
In my experience on OS3D, I do need to move frequently, but only for a second or two at a time. It's rare that that time coincides with when my aimed/multishot is up anyhow. So I can see it sometimes delaying multishot, but it's not like you can't use it at all. I suppose if multishot was up everytime you had to move and you had to delay 2 seconds to use it you'd be losing one multi every 50 seconds, which is a damage loss. Math based on my average multishot puts that at 67dps lost. So I suppose it could be a fairly significant amount on a fight with a lot of movement. My spreadsheet puts the 1 point in focused fire at a 53dps gain. If your only concern about damage was on high movement fights like OS3D, it's possible that it might be worth gaining 14dps on those fights in order to lose 53dps on most fights I suppose.
Another thing to think about is that there times where a blaze or whelp will get close enough to a drake that your multi may hit them as well and give you a little more damage. So, mobile damage with AimS isn't king on OS3D.
My shot rotation can only be done as ES->SS->SS->ES. I can actually fit a Aimed Shot in once in awhile. Is this due to latency?
The only problem with weaving in this manner is to delay the next cast and the last/first ticks of the old/new explosive shot. I'm not sure if you problem is due to latency but unless you're at the soft hastecap (15% unbuffed or talented+impAotDH) your SS is going to run slightly over the last tick of the last ES. Its seems such a fad and just annoyance, but recently I've gone from 1xx/51 to 6/14/51 and you really notice the difference with how tight a rotation is.
Perhaps its down to cooldown management, out of LnL sometimes its beneficial to wait 0.5-1s for the next cooldown, but during LnL, use whatever you can between ES whenever you can. SteadyShot,SerpentSting,HuntersMark,Aimed/Multi.
Theres a lot on here saying you should manually watch or time the ES ticks and not use a filler shot, but if you're anything like me and slightly impatient, think the hunter should be a faster class than waiting on different jazz ( /remember BM spam) in my opinion you're not going to lose to much DPS on an otherwise tight rotation.
I'm from the B column of hunters who find trapdancing an unnatural playstyle. I typically rely on SS for my LnL procs, but if the procs aren't happening within the first 10-12 secs of SS, I confess to getting impatient and springing a trap on the boss or nearby add, just to get the internal LnL cd timer cycle started sooner. However, a late SS-LnL proc does create an opportunity for massive burst damage with a triple-LnL-proc:
I haven't found any addons that adequately track the internal LnL cd timer, so I was able to modify an existing addon (used by druids to track Eclipse cd) that now properly tracks LnL's internal 30s cd. I would share it with the hunter community as soon as I figure out if modifying someone's else addon to make your own violates any authoring/publishing rules.
I really don't understand this at all and I keep reading it over and over again and it makes me want to pull my hair out.
There are a huge number of things you can do to increase your hit rating that are all vastly superior to sinking 3 talent points into something that doesn't even affect your pet.
- Accuracy Enchant on 1H (25 hit)
- 20 hit to gloves (20 hit)
- Glinting Monarch Topaz in red sockets (8 hit)
- Rigid Autumn's Glow in yellow sockets (16 hit)
- Hit Elixir (45 rating)
- Hit food (40 Rating)
Just using the hit food + elixir gives you as much hit as the three talent points you wasted in focused aim AND it applies to your pet. Just one point in Focused Fire adds just as much DPS as 3 in Imp Stings. You're basically getting the IAOTH points for free when you spec 6/14/51. If you really need Aimed Shot, then just take one point out of FF and put it in Aimed Shot for movement fights.
Well, you're right that dropping 3 points into FA isn't worth it. But it's not the choice between Focused Aim and Focused Fire, it's the choice between Focused Fire and Aimed Shot. Some people like the flexibilty of the Aimed Shot better than the pure DPS of Focused Fire.
So if you decide to go for flexibility at the cost of some DPS, then it is 1/18/51 (the point in Hunting Party is debatable) plus the last point. That last point has four options: Improved Aspect 2/5, Focused Aim 1/3, Go for the Throat 2/2 and Expose Weakness 3/3. Out of those options, Focused Aim is the best. Try modeling this in the spreadsheet, just pick IAotH 2/5, gem around it, then pick 1/3 Focused Aim instead and regem.
That build gives you a lot more flexibility: Better stings (ticking while running), another instant (that you can use while running), you do more DPS when your pet is down (I know that shouldn't really happen, but it does sometimes) and the flexibility of picking gear with less hit.
I'm trying 6/14/51 now, have been 1/19/51 for a while. Friday's the next raid, I'll see if there's a big difference (but I'd be surprised if there would be one).
Then again, all this may be irrelevant with the next patch, depending on what the bonus in Hunting party is. Oh, and there's a third option that I want to try someday: 1/16/54
This might be an oversight, but assuming you wait a half second after GCD per shot, it takes 6 seconds to fire the free explosive shots unless you're clipping the last tick of the dot. Your pseudo-timer shows a 4 second timing.
So if you decide to go for flexibility at the cost of some DPS, then it is 1/18/51 (the point in Hunting Party is debatable) plus the last point. That last point has four options: Improved Aspect 2/5, Focused Aim 1/3, Go for the Throat 2/2 and Expose Weakness 3/3.
I see other options with 2/5 Hunting Party or Trap Mastery.
Yeah well, there are plenty of options, but I picked the DPS talents, and both Hunting Party 2/5 or Trap Mastery won't improve your DPS. I think 1 point Hunting Party is enough with easily 50% crit buffed.
Hey guys, I'm trying to figure out which way to go with specs. Currently I'm 3/17/51. I've heard debates of whether or not to use Aimed shot in a rotation or not..
My rotation so far is apply Serpent > ES > SS >SS >SS > ES without procs for LnL..
When it procs I've been doing ES>SS>ES.. I feel like my rotations are pretty tight, I do my best to keep an eye on it at all times, with maybe one shot slipping through the cracks per an entire fight.
I'm averaging 3k dps on most fights, peaking around 3.5k dps. I keep hearing of SV Hunters hitting 5-6k dps, if this is correct, any advice based on my gear, spec, rotation that could help would be greatly appreciated.
Deadlyarrows, I'm guessing you just switched to survival as your gear is gemmed all wrong. You always want agility gems, not AP for survival.
In terms of rotation- you always want to be using either aimed or multi (depending on whether you have aimed) when you can- the only shot that should take priority over it is ES. Any information you read which indicates that aimed/multi should not be in your rotation is outdated and based on information prior to 3.0.8.
I would definitely recommend adjusting your spec. You have 6.71% hit without talents- the hit cap is 8% (7% if you can rely on being grouped with a draenei). Yet you have 3 points in focused aim, which puts you over the cap. I would suggest at least getting your hit a bit over 7% (pet hit is rounded down, so you want to actually be over the % mark to be safe) and then if you don't have a draenei available you can use hit food. You can then take the points out of focused aim (which doesn't give your pet hit) and go for a better damage version of the spec. I would suggest you try 6/14/51- especially with your low haste you should be getting solid benefit from it and focused fire is a good damage talent.
In terms of damage output, some of it is due to gear and spec and rotation. But some of it could be based on the buffs you have available to you and the average damage output of your raid. If you're in a raid that takes 5 minutes to kill Patchwerk you are going to have lower dps on that fight than one that does it in 3 minutes, just due to the fact that long cooldowns add significant dps, and on a shorter fight a larger percentage of your damage is affected by them.
Deadlyarrows, I'm guessing you just switched to survival as your gear is gemmed all wrong. You always want agility gems, not AP for survival.
In terms of rotation- you always want to be using either aimed or multi (depending on whether you have aimed) when you can- the only shot that should take priority over it is ES. Any information you read which indicates that aimed/multi should not be in your rotation is outdated and based on information prior to 3.0.8.
I would definitely recommend adjusting your spec. You have 6.71% hit without talents- the hit cap is 8% (7% if you can rely on being grouped with a draenei). Yet you have 3 points in focused aim, which puts you over the cap. I would suggest at least getting your hit a bit over 7% (pet hit is rounded down, so you want to actually be over the % mark to be safe) and then if you don't have a draenei available you can use hit food. You can then take the points out of focused aim (which doesn't give your pet hit) and go for a better damage version of the spec. I would suggest you try 6/14/51- especially with your low haste you should be getting solid benefit from it and focused fire is a good damage talent.
In terms of damage output, some of it is due to gear and spec and rotation. But some of it could be based on the buffs you have available to you and the average damage output of your raid. If you're in a raid that takes 5 minutes to kill Patchwerk you are going to have lower dps on that fight than one that does it in 3 minutes, just due to the fact that long cooldowns add significant dps, and on a shorter fight a larger percentage of your damage is affected by them.
So completely remove all points in focused aim, + get Aimed shot? Would the rotation be something like Serpent>ES>SS>Aimed? Is there anything else I should change in my build? Thanks for the reply and help here..
EDIT: What about enchants, should I still keep the AP, or do those need to be agi too?
02/13/09, 7:02 PM
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