Regarding the Sniper Training/Melee buffs position, on fights like PW/loatheb at least it seems pretty moot, since trapdancing provides such a ridiculous damage boost, and requires you give up on ST. I usually get 8 procs per 2:50ish PW, compared to 2-3 when at Sniper Training range.

This week I got only 6 thanks to screwing up a bit, and lost a few hundred DPS, inspite of better gear than last week.

edit: ok, "a few hundred DPS" is exaggerating, mental math on the bus says each trapdanced LnL proc is a net gain of around 19k damage, while the two LnL procs I missed this week were worth about 30k damage total. So a net loss of 30000/170 = 176 DPS lost.

Still, if that napkin math is right (I couldn't remember the average auto and steady damage figures :S), going from 3 LnL procs per 2:50 fight with no trapdancing to 8 with trapdancing is equal to: 19000 x 5 / 170 = 558 dps lost?

You'd need to be doing 9300 dps from just steady, aimed and ES before the 6% damage from Sniper Training would gain you that much DPS. Of course you could get lucky and get an LnL proc every internal cooldown, that'd still be a total of only 5 LnL procs in 2:50.

At the risk of beating a dead horse here... I have searched this post and i remember seeing it somewhere but can not find it so here goes...

I have 407 haste and depending on some gear swaps of stuff in my bag I can get 470ish...

At 407 haste it shows 12.41% haste on the paperdoll.

With 15% from quiver and 12.41% haste from gear - at what point do you not need any points in IAotH ?

armory link -http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Staghelm&n=Belbo

The haste softcap is 522.

I have a question about Steady Shot when Haste capped. Assuming my SS cast time was down to 1.5s and I'm using the Glyph of Steady Shot, is it desirable to try and fit 3 steady shots (or 2 SS plus 1 Aimed) in between each ES when considering server latency (I'm at about 100ms) and human latency? Also, I've read people recommending to wait for ES ticks during LnL. Is it understood to wait for all 3 ticks before firing the next ES? Any help I could get would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Ummm, that cannot be correct. First off, the travel time it takes to land is the same as the shot prior (unless you moved a great distance) therefore if it took .5s for your first shot to land, it would be the same .5s for the 3nd shot to land.

Second of all, it is not waiting 1.5 Seconds to fire the subsequent ES's... ES ticks 2 additional times every second. Therefore it is 2 seconds that need to be accounted for. 1.5 seconds is handled by your GCD then another .5s "pause".

This is the 3rd time I've seen someone talk about "travel time" and I wonder where they got it from.

I've seen this 522 number many times in threads and each time its noted as the soft haste cap number. Why? I'll assume there is more too this number than meets the eye. Currently I'm at 400ish haste rating and 12% haste. 10% haste is the soft cap, so where is 522 coming from? It would seem that 310 (and this is a less than napkin math number) would get you to 10% haste and the soft cap. It has to be some what accurate. I currently use ES-SS-SS-SS-ES rotation and have no problem getting that additional SS in with my 400ish haste rating. Please clarify.

You must be mistaken or something, 522 haste takes steady shot to 1.5 seconds, which is considered the haste cap because once its lower than that you're waiting for the GCD anyways. No doubt you can fit in 3 steady shots but they need to be 1.5 seconds each or else you push back the explosive shot slightly.

Edit: To slow he beat me, but yes with improved ret aura and aspect of the hawk you'll have more haste than you need with 400+

With Freezing trap being removed as an option post 3.1, why isn't Glyph of Immolation Trap considered in your analysis?

Errr... because we won't ever use immo trap again?
We'll be using Black Arrow, which happens to share a cooldown with traps.

Every time I see that glyph mentioned now I feel a pang of sadness...

The synergy between constant Immo Trap with ES, Trap Mastery and the glyph just looked so tasty and so impressive. And it was something that made sense.
The duration of the trap was cut down to being just manageable with ES on every CD. Miss just one and you would have to reapply. So there would be a more serious penalty to being a slacker or when you couldn't use ES for some time. Lovely.

Of course that entire idea is now gone the way of the Dodo, and I doubt it will come back now that Blizzard has decided to fit Black Arrow into the tree more properly. So I continue to wonder what the new exciting trap mechanic will be now that Trap Launcher is gone. Or will it slowly fade away like the trapdamage threshold?

I'm pretty sure that the immo trap refresh with exp shot averages out to be the same dps increase as using black arrow every CD. This is why black arrow was added, to compensate for the loss of immo trap refresh and trap launcher.

In other words, nothing was lost except now we don't have to try and keep immo trap up flawlessly (except now we are managing more awkward cooldown buttons).

I did a little testing on PTR today to check out some of the changes.

With regards to sniper training, it looks like anytime you stand still for 6 seconds (in combat or not), you get a buff on you which lasts 15 seconds. When the buff applies or refreshes, it doesn't reapply again till another 6 seconds have passed without movement. So basically you can move, and as long as you stop moving at least 6 seconds before the buff wears off, you won't lose it. In general I like the implementation, although I'm a little concerned about the constant buff and combatlog spam it seems to be causing at the moment- I'm not sure if they can do anything easily to fix it. The most logical thing would be to have it only activate in combat, but that would mean we would never have the buff for the first 6 seconds of the fight which would be kind of annoying (although I suppose it could auto activate when entering combat).

I also did some looking at black arrow- it looks like currently only rank 1 is in game. I can't seem to find a formula on how it scales with AP, does anyone know the scaling? With self buffs only, it was only coming in at 1425 total damage, which would mean that trap mastery would only be a 4.75dps gain per talent point, which is too low to be worthy of note. Obviously it'd be much better with full buffs but I'm not sure how the damage scales so I can't tell if it's enough to be worthwhile, and I don't know if they plan on implementing higher ranks of it. I'm not sure how high the damage needs to be on it to make trap mastery worth the talent investment.

Hit capping is very worthwhile. You generally will do better by capping with gems and gear than by using focused aim, since your pet does not benefit from focused aim, but if you can't reach it reasonably with gear then it's an option. Until you reach the hit cap, your best bet is probably to go hit/stam in blue sockets, hit/agil in red, and hit in yellow, and as you meet the hit requirement you can switch to more agil heavy gems (you can also choose to ignore the socket bonuses and skip the stam entirely, but since you get some dps benefit from stam as survival it's not as compelling as it would be for most specs). I looked at your gear but I'm guessing I caught you in your PvP set (I sure hope you don't have that many stam gems in your PvE gear and I don't know why you don't have 35 agil on your weapon).

I highly recommend testing out your gear and spec changes in the spreadsheet if you can use it, it'll give you a much better idea of what effect changes will have on your dps.

I also notice you aren't revered with Ebon Blade- you should make that a priority so you can get a helm enchant- it really doesn't take long to get the rep, you can get a ton of it just from doing the questline in Icecrown and there are several dailies.

You actually have a lot to fix. First off you are wearing 4 Leather items which 2 have Expertise and your ring has expertise as well. Expertise does nothing for you, replace ALL of those items ASAP. In addttion, Mail items with Intellect will usually give you higher DPS over Leather due to Careful Aim (with a couple exceptions on higher tiered items such as Adroit Handguards) . You need to learn how to gem. Never use the + all stats gems, for Survival choose Agil > AP gems. Tailoring? Change that to something else such as JC... besides the JC only gems and items it will also make it easier for you to max out socket bonuses and meta requirements.

Massacre for your staff enchant, even +85 AP if you can't afford Massacre. Don't gem for haste. Get the Ebon Blade head enchant.

You probably want to keep tailoring. There is a new tailoring enchant that will proc AP on hits. Something to consider if you already have tailoring.

I wouldn't probably waste massacre on that weapon, I would hope he'd eventually get something better and it's pretty expensive. But 35 agil or 85 AP are totally better than what he has. Last I checked in the spreadsheet, 35 agil came out slightly ahead of 85 AP and whether it's cost effective probably depends on how cheap BC mats are on his server.

Greater Savagery (85AP) is superior to 35 Agility by a small margin. It's also dirt cheap, going for about 50g on my server.

Does that enchant include ranged hits? And is it superior to other profession perks? Keep in mind that Leatherworking and JCing may have other BOP profession only items (i.e. T5/T6 raid items), where Tailoring would have that as well those items would not be utilized by Hunters.

Agil > AP for Survival. And once you change out your gear with Expertise your hit will be different than where it is now. Then take the delta and reach cap through gems. Once you have hit cap gem the rest in Agil. Socket bonuses are sometimes best ignored... just evaluate each piece to determine the best strategy.



Also I wanted to bring up the Sniper vs Dancing debate. I thought the general consensus was trap dancing on Patch > Sniper will yield higher DPS... last nights Patch kill had a equally geared Hunter out dps me who was Snipering while I was dancing. I had many more ES shots them him, but his Crit was through the roof at 72%. In fact he isn't hit capped while I am. I am wondering if this was RNG or perhaps something to look at and consider in the Sniper vs Dance debate. WWS reports are as follows:

Wow Web Stats (Sniper Hunter)
Wow Web Stats (trap dancer)

Granted I am new to this high pop server and still getting used to the lag, my dps has been a few hundred less in most cases but I thought it interesting that in this case Sniper out did Trap Dancing.

I'll try to help out a little by fleshing out what others have said some.

First, regarding desirable stats:

* Hit (yellow) - this is your most desirable yellow stat (and usually most desirable overall stat) until you are hit capped. For me, 1 hit ~= 2.9 AP (~1.45 normalized)

* Agility (red) - this is your most desirable red stat. As a base stat, it scales with both Kings and talents and gives both AP and crit. Its exact value relative to the alternative red stat (raw AP) is something you'd have to get from the spreadsheet. For me, 1 agility ~= 2.6 AP (~1.3 normalized)

* Intellect (yellow) - this stat is what generally makes hunter gear better than rogue gear, giving you both AP and a larger mana pool. For me, 1 int ~= 1.1 AP (~.55 normalized)

* Crit (yellow) - self explanatory. For me, 1 crit rating ~= 1.5 AP (~.75 normalized)

* Haste (yellow) - probably never a good gem choice for SV hunters (although we get it on gear in spades). For me, 1 haste rating ~= 0.9 AP (~.45 normalized)

* Armor penetration (red) - hunters should never gem for this, comes on a ton of gear. For me, 1 ArP ~= 1.4 AP (~0.72 normalized)

* Stamina (blue) - helps you live longer, and we get some AP from it. For me, 1 STA ~= 0.54 AP (.4 normalized)

With these things in mind, there are some things that stand out with your gear:

* too much leather
* lack of enchant on head
* wrong enchant on shoulders
* wrong gem in chest (one of those purples should be replaced with +16 agi)
* wrong gem in hands (should be +16 hit)
* wrong enchant on hands (should be +20 hit)
* wrong gem in belt (+4 stats should be +16 hit)
* low-level gem in boots (should be +16 hit)
* Anvil is not a PvE trinket. I have to believe you've got something better
* low-level gem in gun (should be +16 hit)
* wrong enchant on melee weapon. Even the +85 AP would be an upgrade

It must vary based on gear. In the spreadsheet with my gear 35 agil comes out 3dps above 85 AP, and 110 AP comes out 10dps above 35 agil. What's the differential for you?

Oh I don't doubt that. However the Immo glyph must have been added DPS to that. But even so it wasn't any loss of potential DPS I was lamenting. It is that fact that here we had a nice fitting ability, something that they told us they had in store for us (meaning the 'new and exciting trap mechanich' in this case). It was just the thing. And it matched the tree.
Now we have an ability that is a bit wonky, technically fits better into the MM tree, and is boosted by talents that's supposed to boost traps alone... Forgive me if I sound a little negative, but it really isn't terribly elegant is it now? What has happened is that their initial idea had to be scrapped and they had to dust off an old ability from the beta. But it doesn't fit, so it looks out of place. It is overall a really good ability, and I will say that their 'backup' plan appears to come out as a nice save overall. So I won't complain about Black Arrow itself or it's DPS capacity (overall I actually like that). Just it's implementation... it reeks of a last minute save, and the more it is made to fit in, the more it looks like it is being forced into the tree rather than made fit.

My apologies, you are right that at certain gear levels 35 AGI does become slightly better. I'm not sure what the cutoff is though. At one point it showed 85AP being slightly better. With my gear 35AGI is 5 DPS and Massacre is another 4 above that.

This is one of those things that only the spreadsheet can confirm for each individual.

Sniper will outdo Trap Dancing on almost any fight. I mean, yes, I do drop traps on Maexxna, Loatheb, Noth, Gluth, Thaddius, but the only one of those that can even be considered Trap Dancing is Thaddius. I'm at Sniper range on all of those other fights.

As for your crit rate, it's random. I've had parses where my crit rate is 80%, and others where it's 65%. The shortness of the encounter will have this effect from week to week.

3/10: Wow Web Stats
3/03: Wow Web Stats

Note the massive difference in crit rate. Pretty much the same buffs, same gear, kill time was similar. 44% on auto shot on week, 60% the week after. 49% steady, 70% the week after.