Hunter: Useful Add-Ons/Mods - Page 5

Tellez · 03/19/09, 8:49 AM

Hey!

Just wanted to ask you a question regarding a addon Gaahl.
I can see that you are using Quartz, and you have a ES Dot bar.

Can you please explain me how did you set it?
And wouldnt it be better if you set it only to show 0.5 or 1.0 seconds?
In case you are using it for the LnL procs.

Thank You.

Enova · 03/19/09, 9:21 AM

I don't know what you're using right now, but, personally, I use Quartz only for cast bars for myself, my target and my pet and for the swing timer.

I use NeedToKnow to keep track of the duration of pretty much everything else, including short term buff durations (Heroism, Rapid Fire, trinket procs, Lock and Load, Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot DOT and Hunter's Mark). The main advantages I see over Quartz as far as multiple timers are concerned are flexibility, accuracy and less memory usage. I would honestly suggest using NTK over Quartz, but if you really want to stick to Q, you can set it up as a 'Target Debuff' bar.

Tellez · 03/19/09, 9:36 AM

Hey Enova.

Actually i use the same setup as you, Quartz for casting bars and NTK to track my dots and buffs/debuffs.

What i wanted to know is about the ES Dot bar, if i understand correctly Quartz enables you to set a timer bar to for example track ES Dot, this way u can use it to LnL procs.

The way i wanted it to work was like, i shoot the ES shot and it would start the timer bar for 0.5/1 sec, this way i could timer better the ES spam in LnL procs so i wouldnt overwrite the previous ES dots.
Do u understand what i mean?

ES->0.5/1 sec->ES->0.5/1 sec->ES (if there is no need to renew SerpS or HM)

Iru · 03/19/09, 10:44 AM

You don't need a timer bar for that, you can have Quartz track the debuff on the target just above your cast bar, although I'm not sure exactly how I made that appear. I think its the (de)buff tracking module; the same mechanism also tracks HM but doesn't seem to track SrS.

EDIT: Enova has described the same mechanism.

Nagisamuro · 03/19/09, 11:17 AM

Originally Posted by Tellez

Hey!

Just wanted to ask you a question regarding a addon Gaahl.
I can see that you are using Quartz, and you have a ES Dot bar.

Can you please explain me how did you set it?
And wouldnt it be better if you set it only to show 0.5 or 1.0 seconds?
In case you are using it for the LnL procs.

Thank You.

Wayfarere suggested the technique in the Survival Hunter in WotLK thread.

If you have Quartz, you can macro your Explosive Shot with a line that says "/qt ESDot 2". When those 2 seconds expire you can fire your next Explosive Shot knowing that you won't clip the last tick of the previous one.

It makes sense to use 2 seconds, not 0.5 or 1 - it begins counting down as soon as you fire it, it doesn't wait for the GCD. Explosive shot will tick once on impact, a second time 1 second later, and the third and final time 2 seconds after impact. You want to fire you Explosives 2 seconds apart during LnL to allow each to tick all three times. As long as the travel time from your bow to the mob has not changed, the timer technique works very well.

Bullshot · 03/19/09, 11:19 AM

Originally Posted by Tellez

Hey!

Just wanted to ask you a question regarding a addon Gaahl.
I can see that you are using Quartz, and you have a ES Dot bar.

Can you please explain me how did you set it?
And wouldnt it be better if you set it only to show 0.5 or 1.0 seconds?
In case you are using it for the LnL procs.

Thank You.

If you're using Quartz, just create a macro with
/cast Explosive Shot
/qt ESDot 2

This will create the timer bar which counts down from 2 to 0. Of course you can replace "ESDot" with any text you wish.

EDIT: Beaten.

Nooska · 03/19/09, 12:22 PM

Originally Posted by Lilbitters

I screenshotted the stats of all the new gear for anyone curious:

Conqueror's Scourgestalker = T8.5
Valorous Scourgestalker = T8

http://tinyurl.com/newhuntert8

Can anyone tell me what addon is being used to display the delta of the gear pieces in the quoted screenshot? Thats one of the things I spend the most time on doing manually, so an addone that does it would be nice (I haven't seen it before)

Edit: typo

Tellez · 03/19/09, 12:34 PM

That should be Rating Buster.

Curse : Rating Buster

Gaahl · 03/19/09, 3:01 PM

Originally Posted by Enova

I don't know what you're using right now, but, personally, I use Quartz only for cast bars for myself, my target and my pet and for the swing timer.

I use NeedToKnow to keep track of the duration of pretty much everything else, including short term buff durations (Heroism, Rapid Fire, trinket procs, Lock and Load, Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot DOT and Hunter's Mark). The main advantages I see over Quartz as far as multiple timers are concerned are flexibility, accuracy and less memory usage. I would honestly suggest using NTK over Quartz, but if you really want to stick to Q, you can set it up as a 'Target Debuff' bar.

I used need to know for the last couple of months but am trying the Quartz timer at the moment. The difference, of course, is that with need to know it gives you the time the dot is actually on the boss, while the timer from quartz ticks off the two seconds immediately after firing explosive shot. With Quartz, as long as you stay the same range you can just fire your next ES when the timer expires. With NTK, you have to judge the flight time of your shot for the 2nd and third LnL (assuming you don't interleave). I may still go back to NTK and drop the timer - it just feels more accurate.

Midnight · 03/20/09, 7:46 AM

After reading about the AddOn Face Mauler in the Cat DPS Rotation thread in the druid forum I started working on a similar AddOn for Hunters. Even though the Hunter priority list propably is somewhat easier than the feral cat one and it might even be frown upon here I was hoping it´s ok to discuss it and get some quality theorycrafting advice.

So far it works very much like mentioned feral druid addon in that it´s got some static rules which it uses to decide which shot to propose next. For example the survival algorithm looks roughly like this:

if ooc and no HM on target -> cast HM
elseif target hp <= 20% and KS CD ready -> cast KS -- only PTR, assuming macroed KS for live
elseif last ES >= 2s and ES CD ready -> cast ES
elseif AimS available and CD ready -> cast AimS
elseif MS CD ready -> cast MultiS
elseif no BA on target -> cast BA -- only PTR again
elseif no SpS on target -> cast SpS
elseif HM running out in less than 10s -> cast HM
else -> cast SS

Actually it´s even a bit more complicated (eg. LnL proc back-to-back ES) but you get the general idea.
Now what I´m kind of unhappy with is the static nature of the algorithm.
Take the following situation right after casting AimS:
AimS CD = 10s, GCD = 1.5s, ES = 1.6s
If you just follow the algorithm without any adjustments it would propose SS (assuming HM and SpS are up and running) which obviously would be bad. Now I could go ahead and include a reasonable threshold which has to be exceeded in order for the AddOn to propose lower priority shots but it would still be somewhat static. How do I set these thresholds? And wouldn´t the actual threshold be dependant on equipment, buffs, talents etc?
I´d prefer if I could somehow dynamically calculate the tresholds/priorities but I can´t think of an algorithm to do that. Any help or thoughts in this direction would be appreciated.

Aelfwinn · 03/20/09, 11:29 AM

Is it possible to have your AddOn obtain the cast time for Steady Shot? If so, you should be able to use is as the basis for your threshold. For example, you could have the test to fire Steady Shot be "If the cool-down of shot X is less than the cast time of Steady Shot, wait for shot X". Since the cast time of Steady Shot takes into consideration all of the buffs, gear and talents currently in use, all the calculations are done for you already and the AddOn will be dynamic.

Using this, your code would look something like this:

if ooc and no HM on target -> cast HM
elseif target hp <= 20% and KS CD ready -> cast KS
elseif last ES >= 2s and ES CD ready -> cast ES
elseif AimS available and CD ready -> cast AimS
elseif MS CD ready -> cast MultiS
elseif no BA on target -> cast BA -- only PTR again
elseif no SpS on target -> cast SpS
elseif HM running out in less than 10s -> cast HM
elseif ES CD >= SS cast time and AimS CD >= SS cast time and MS CD >= SS cast time -> cast SS
else wait

What this will do is have your AddOn check to see if any of the higher priority shots has a remaining cool-down less than the cast time of your Steady Shot and if so wait for that shot. The only time Steady Shot will fire is if no other shot will be pushed back because of it. You could also use some percentage of the SS cast time as your threshold to adjust for the situation where the cool-down on shot X is only slightly shorter than your SS cast time. For example, it might not make much sense to wait 1.7 seconds to fire ES if the cast time of your Steady Shot is 1.8 seconds. What you will need to determine is what the acceptable push-back, if any, is for shot X.

Grummy · 03/20/09, 11:39 AM

I suggest looking at the code for Shock and Awe. It is a fantastic addon for enhance shaman that shows the priority based rotation. I am not an addon expert at all, but I was reviewing the code the other day and it looks like you are able to obtain all the information that is required to build the survival hunter version of the addon from function calls. This would be a fair amount of work though and the survival hunter rotation isn't that complicated. A few Power Auras for hunter's mark and serpent sting, a cooldown watch for explosive shot and multi/aimed shot, and whatever mod you want to use to track LnL is all you need.

Midnight · 03/20/09, 12:14 PM

Doing as you proposed would take the problem to the other extreme. Instead of never waiting for an ES or AimS you´d always wait. As you said yourself this doesn´t make anymore sense then the way it works right now. I´m also aware that I could choose a reasonable threshold (even a percentage of steady shot cast time) which would yield better results than either of those extremes. What I´m interested in, is an accurate mathematical algorithm to find the exact threshold if that´s even possible not just something that sounds about right though. If the threshold doesn´t deviate a lot depending on buffs, spec, proc etc it might even be sensible to use a static value after all but I won´t be able to make this decision unless I´ve got a way to calculate it first.

Concerning Shock & Awe - I´m not convinced hunter and shaman mechanics are similar enough to really help me with this problem.

Pyros · 03/20/09, 12:29 PM

I have a question that's not related to the whole survival cooldown stuff, I'm trying to figure when Feign Death is resisted, but I can't seem to find a way for it to display in the combat log, which makes it hard to figure how to have MSBT display it(since I have no idea what kind of event I should monitor, and the few tests I've done don't work). I'm wondering if there's a lightweight addon doing it, or if anyone knows how to pickup the resist message, besides having to watch the usual wow error message area(which I usually don't).

Iru · 03/20/09, 12:52 PM

Originally Posted by Midnight

I´d prefer if I could somehow dynamically calculate the tresholds/priorities but I can´t think of an algorithm to do that.

Does this post help?

Specifically, you have

(ES + SS*2)/6 = (ES + SS*3)/x

Solve for X and it will be the maximum time alloted for you to fit in the 3 SS's before it is a DPS loss. X-6 is the amount you could delay the subsequent ES.

I am assuming the addon would be able to retrieve the current damage values for each shot on the fly so that you can solve the dps differential dynamically. I think you could safely ignore the differential between SS and anything other than ES; for all other shots the decision tree that Aelfwinn posted should be fine.