As far as I know the spreadsheet can't account for trap-dancing at all, so the rotation is as you described.

That spec comes in about 25 dps higher for my best-in-slot gear setup. In reality it might be more or less dps than that depending on how beneficial trap dancing actually is. Trap dancing is going to have to be very good for me to consider using it personally though. Not every encounter is Patchwerk. The majority of raid encounters require a lot of movement, and I would be surprised if trap dancing is optimal in practice.

I don't think BM needs the Scorpid to remain competitive. 5400-5500ish dps in best-in-slot gear is about where I bet Blizzard wants BM, and every other hunter spec, to be at. BM without a Scorpid only really looks bad compared to SV. MM is also slightly higher than BM, but it also has a much more complex and mana-intensive rotation so in practice I think they'll be very close.

The gear between each spec actually is the same amazingly enough. The only thing that changes is the gems/enchants. I should also mention that I used a "reasonable" best-in-slot setup. i.e. no leather, nothing silly like the shoulders from Hyjal, etc.

I believe SV is at the wrong end right now. BM and MM are about where Blizzard wants us to be. SV is just overpowered currently. This is just my opinion/best guess, though.

ok So with the Hunter spreadsheet Live and PTR Version I have some interseting numbers of my Current spec. 50/21 BM. THis doesnt quite make sense in my head.

BM 50/21 Live Spreadsheet DPS: Total DPS- 3346.28
Hunter- 1853.33
Pet(Cat)-1492.95




BM 50/21 PTR Spreadsheet DPS: Total DPS- 5357.44
Hunter- 3216.80
Pet(Cat)-2140.64


As you can see the DPS went up for my pet and myself. This doesn't make sense in my head due to the Steady Shot, Pet, and Readiness Nerf. Can someone Clarify? Thanks

Either there is an error with your version of the spreadsheet or you must be inputting something incorrectly. You should definitely be coming out with over 5k dps in your gear. Check your talents, buffs, shot rotation, and pet rotation to make sure it's all accurate.

I am curious to see if these changes will go thru, the difference in dps from all BM and MM to SV is just staggering.

I just went thru a similar exercise with the spread sheet, and come to the same conclusion: more or less 10% more dps with SV than MM, and close to 20% when compared to BM, it has been a long time since i have seen a difference this large, and there is no trap dancing with the spread sheet....

Taylie, do you have the same buffs for both?

Excuse my ignorance, what kind of rotation is being used here? Serp -> Explosive -> Aimed -> SS -> SS repeat as necessary?

Yeah, pretty much.

Are you reaching the (survival) haste cap of 522.738 with this gear setup? If not, try to reach it and see how much of an increase in DPS it is, seeing as there will be more explosives.

This also leads to another point in the switch from BM to SV. As of now BM hunters could care less for haste, but SV does care for it so they can get Steady down to 1.5s. While gemming for Agi seems to be the most logical thing during the BM-->SV switch, would it be better to gem for some haste to help reach 522.738? [Deft Monarch Topaz] could be a good choice when re-gemming.

Why would haste give you more Explosive Shots? It's an instant shot on a cooldown; haste has no impact on how many times it is up, nor on its cast time since haste doesn't impact our GCDs. Haste only helps you squeeze out more gimpy Steady Shots, which, if you are using Aimed in your rotation, isn't very important.

Haste is still a bigger boost for Surv than BM, but I question any gearing toward haste over AGI, hit, or crit, all of which impact Explosive where haste does not.

From just gear along, most hunters will have about 370 base haste rating. A ret paladin for another 3% puts one just barely shy of 1.5s steady shots. The 1/5 in Imp Hawk (plus glyph) more than covers the difference about 50% of the time. I imagine hunters in late T8 or early T9 gear will have enough haste from gear to have sub 1.5s steady shots all the time.

The valuation of stats for SV tends to go: agi > ap > crit > haste. Hit naturally capped first.

Actually, haste does help you shoot more explosive shots. With a 6 second cooldown on explosive, you have exactly 4 GCDs (since we can't lower it with haste) in between there. If you only have quiver haste, you're looking at about one explosive shot every (2/1.15-1.5)*3+6 = 6.71 seconds (+latency) vs. 6 seconds (+latency) if you are at the soft haste cap for MM/SV. Throwing aimed shot in there is going to help but not nullify the effect of haste completely.

I'm not saying this makes haste worth going for explicitly (check the spreadsheet for that), but it does have some effect on explosive.

It's quite easy for any hunter spec to hit the haste cap without gemming for it. I don't think it would be worth gemming haste even if it were hard to hit the cap. Haste is just a mediocre stat for hunters. Regardless, the SV spec I listed numbers for is capped anyway. The only thing that changes as far as the best-in-slot setup from BM to SV is the gems. Attack power gems turn into agility gems and that's it.

It might actually be best just to gem for agility if you plan on respecing between each spec fairly often, since agility gems are just barely worse than attack power gems for BM/MM.

What do people do when you get an LnL proc? Just spam ES skipping the third tick or ES Arcane ES or just put a steady in between each of the ESs?

Considering Arcane and explosive shot are on the same CD, don't think you're gonna be throwing a arcane in between. Seems to me that throwing a steady shot in between ES's for LnL procs is the way to go. If you don't have steady capped on haste it can get kinda ugly though, so be careful.

Um. Except when LnL procs there's no CD on the affected shots for the next 2 arcanes/ES's?

The only way i see it is ES, Steady, ES.

You can't use 2 Explosive Shot back to back because you waste a tick or 2 and if you use an Arcane you'll be wasting an ES. You could use an Aimed or Multi shot though if they end up being a better slot filler damage/mana wise compared to the nerfed Steady shot.

That's exactly the way I have been going through the rotation at the moment on live and on the PTR. Aimed is a nice filler, I'm not exactly sure on the math relating to it and its mana efficiency, but it has nice damage output, and obviously gives the ES time to tick, so that you can then apply the next one from your LnL proc.

Obviously Aimed is better for the 1-target scenario, but perhaps in multiple target situations you might use Multishot.

I've pretty much been sticking to Trap, Sting, then spam this until trap is off CD:

/castsequence steady shot,
/cast kill shot
/cast explosive shot

It should alternate SS / ES if both are up, so you don't overwrite your dot. Sting falls off a second or two before the trap CD is up (with sting glyped anyhow), but who cares. Trap --> Sting --> Macro makes for a simple rotation.

I've been debating the whole ES overwriting itself issue internally for a while, and prior to 3.0.8 it was clear that it made sense to weave another shot in between the ES to keep the ticks from overwriting. But with the huge buff to ES...I'm not really convinced that is the right way to go anymore.

When L&L procs, you have to wait for ES to come off the cooldown before you can take advantage of the proc. After the last shot is fired, the cooldown starts again; whether you go ES/arc/ES or ES/SS/ES/SS/ES, the last ES starts the cooldown. So in any six second window, you have three options:

A) ES/SS/ES/SS/ES, which takes 6 seconds assuming you have steady maxed. You get full damage from your ES shots, but it took 6 seconds to burn through that.

B) ES/ES/ES. Takes 3 seconds, but you only do 7/9ths of the ES total damage. (for simplicity, assume the middle shot will only do 1 tick of damage, and the first and last do the full 3.)

C) ES/Arcane/ES. Takes 3 seconds, but you only do 2 full ES and 1 Arcane.

Now assuming a ~35% base crit rate and 5000 AP (and no other scaling factors), your ES will do on average 6758 damage, or about 2250 per tick on average (from my tables posted earlier).

If your arcane shot does more than that on average, it may make sense to use that to avoid losing the one tick. However, the advantage of B & C is that you are now 3 seconds ahead of A before you can fire off your *next* ES.

On a second L&L proc, you'll be a full 6 seconds ahead of a fellow SV hunter on the number of ES shots you've managed to get off.

Someone may want to sanity check my numbers (as this is all very rough right now), but with the improved ES, it looks like you may want to just go ES/ES/ES on an L&L proc just to get the ES cooldown started as soon as possible again. Heck... it may even be better to wait that 0.5 seconds after the GCD to get the full ES damage and only set your timer back 4.0 seconds instead of just 3.0. Come to think of it, that does sound better since you'll do an extra 4500 damage during that one second. I'll have to figure that scenario out as well, but want to put this out now for debate.

Lets break it down:

Since the difference between the rotations is 3 sec lets assume 3xLnL Rotations and add 2 SS/SS/ES for B+C cause they are faster.

A) ES/SS/ES/SS/ES (7.5 sec)
3xLnL = (9 ticks of ES + 2 Steadies) * 3 = 27 ticks of ES + 6 Steadies

B) ES/ES/ES (4.5 sec)
3xLnL+2xSSE = (7 ticks of ES) * 3 + (3 ticks of ES + 2 Steadies) * 2 = 27 ticks of ES + 4 Steadies

C) ES/AS/ES (4.5 sec)
3xLnL+2xSSE = (6 ticks of ES + 1 Arcane) * 3 + (3 ticks of ES + 2 Steadies) * 2 = 24 ticks of ES + 4 Steadies + 3 Arcane

Markemp makes an excellent point there. The real crux to this thinking is actually this:
In 3.0.8, we look to be essentially be moving to a "FCFS" (first come first serve) rotation not unlike to Ret paladins for our instants. Part of effectively doing this is maximizing the number of casts of your best DPS abilities first (damage per second abilities, not damage per cast mind you). Increasing the number of instants cast vs flat auto/steady is going to be a large part of how you increase your DPS. This post by Avitus in the pally forum is probably as good a starting point as any in that regard, I suppose.

On that note, Markemp's option B or C would be right on point; the only question is does the initial hit of ES do more damage than your arcane shot? If so, then ES/ES/ES is the winner, otherwise its ES/AS/ES. Currently on live, the answer is no, in 3.0.8 this may not be the case. Steady shot is at the point where you really want to defer that until you have nothing better to do, and certainly not use at the expense of delaying your potential total explosive shots over a fight duration.

A note on the haste gem comments above, haste rating has actually performed very well for MM and Surv to date up until the steady cap. Some of the confusion may be around percentages I am guessing. Is 1% haste better than 1% crit? No. Never has been. But haste rating is a different story, since its only 32.8 haste rating for 1% vs 45.9 crit rating for 1%. That really why haste rating was viable to fill a yellow gem requirement.

All of this appears to be moot come 3.0.8 however, since you will likely be using a 6s instant, a 10s instant, and a sting/chimera refresh in a standard rotation. That will mean steady will comprise of roughly less than 50% of the total specials fired, and even less in regards to % of damage dealt, and as result haste will be weak for anyone. I'll have to revise the gem index, but I'm going to wait until this stuff comes live to do so.

In 3 L&L rotations though (assuming trap dancing, so ~1 min), won't you still get in 1 more full ES if you use one of the 4.5 sec rotations (B/C)?

In 4 L&L rotations, you'd get 2 more ES shots in.

Can't you just calculate the DPS you would get for each of those scenarios before you use that last explosive shot? The last explosive shot will start your normal rotation.

A) (ES+SS+ES+SS)/(3+SteadyShotCastTime*2)
B) (ES+Arcane)/3
C) (ES*2/3+ES*2/3)/3


Calculating this for my own gear, C comes out ahead of B just barely and should also scale better with gear. A is well behind, even if steady capped, and even if one of those steadies were replaced with an aimed shot.