Hunter discussion

[Kruf]

also got a really nice UI from him, can u link urs maybe?

My UI screenshot with full addon list is posted in this thread. Not going to upload a "pack" of it, since it would not just work (some addon profiles are tied to character name and so) and I firmly believe everyone should make their own UI that they are comfortable with.

also heres my armory link:http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kul+Tiras&cn=Astrodancer&gn=The+Last+Crusaders

• Ridiculously over hitcap
• Your wolf has weird spec
• Pretty sure you should gem agi, not arp
• Greatness is better than Mirror of Truth
• Use the Nightmare Tear to get a good socket bonus, haste isn't good
• No enchant on boots
• No enchant on cloak
• No tier pieces at all, you definitely want 2T9 + 2T10 to start with

With your current gear, over 8k dps should be doable, though. Obviously in a standstill, with all buffs and debuffs.

[Kruf]

¤3% haste from moonkin

This does not affect shots, though it does affect Volley and Revive Pet which are real spells.

This is why I use Chimera glyph in my normal setup. Most of the ICC fights have some adds you need to shoot, and having the glyph makes it possible to not lose sting on boss itself in some situations, which saves a GCD.

Yea. So one should just carry a stack of both Glyphs with them and on fights like BQ Kill Shot Glyph should be a better option ?

Yes, if you want to minmax to that point. On BQL it depends on when you get bitten though, if you get the first bite the difference between Chimera and Kill Shot glyphs is small enough that unless the kill is really tight (or you're trying to get into dps rankings... :D) it doesn't really matter.

With any haste buff. Obviously the bigger haste buff the better, but it doesn't really matter that much since any haste buff will make Steady Shot clip into GCD and after that you don't really gain that much more dps from haste.

More haste also means more auto shots, so having CotW with Rapid Fire would actually mean more DPS. Yea, I mean you are right, any haste buff will get your Steady Shot to 1.5. There is no haste cap for auto shot, is there?

Don't think there is. At least I saw my autoshot timer drop below 1.0 when I had Rapid Fire, hastepot and Bloodlust on at the same time.

And yes, more haste = more auto shots, but obviously you get more benefit if you also are speeding up your Steady Shots. I doubt the difference is noticeable over RNG factors, though - I just prefer having less haste up over longer timespan, 1.5sec Steady Shots are much nicer for rotation than 1.7sec ones...

But overall I'm still pretty shocked if I see the DPS hunters are doing on LOGS. I mean I'm like 2-3-4k behind in Damage Per Second. Just makes you wonder. Is gear that big of an upgrade, is it skills, is it luck, is it right gameplay or good raid setup. And most likely it's all of those combined. I just wanna figure out how to improve and do it if i can.

Most likely all those factors combined. Gear is a large factor, and the correct raid setup is a huge factor. Also if you're assigned to utility roles (trapping, kiting, MDing, etc) you can't expect to deal the same kind of dps than someone who can just stand still and nuke away.

[Kruf]

Ello ello, first things first, I'm not really here to ask you guys to hold my hand, I'm just here basically to get some tips which could potentially get a rise out of my DPS, in terms of min-maxing and such.

First off, the armory profile:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... Radioskpup

Gear looks good, talents look good.

Also, I raid at 300ms (Australian Player), eat Hearty Rhino and drink Flasks of Endless Rage (Just for convenience over using Elixirs of Armor Piercing and Mighty Thoughts). I also lack an Imp HM in my raids. And also, I love my troll, even if orcs are theoretically better :P

300ms is enough that it might start hurting your dps, I think - haven't actually tested, since I never have that high latency unless the server is acting up.

I'm not all that certain orc is actually any better with the current setups, as pet damage is relatively little of the total damage and Berserking is pretty good racial for our arpen builds.

I currently use the kill shot glyph because femaledwarf whines at me for using the Chim Shot glyph and the general consensus is that the Chimera Shot glyph is bad for players with my level of latency, Serp Sting and Steady glyphs are self explanatory.

As stated in the other posts, the reason why I use Chimera glyph is that it gives me higher chance of not losing my Serpent Sting on the boss on fights where I have to switch to adds. If you have enough latency that it's hard to keep the sting up even with the glyph, it most likely makes sense to go with Kill Shot anyway, as it's not a bad choice by any means even with low latency.

I'm not really going to bother you guys about movement / add fights in particular, due to the individual playstyle requirements needed to maximise DPS in those fights, but I'm just gonna ask for tips on how to maximise my DPS further in general, for tank and spanks and movement fights. Something like methods you employ in certain fights to give you that extra edge, and ways that you handle having to move (stagger stepping, disengaging, etc) and add swap. Perhaps even some gear tips (rather than chuck more ilvl at it) would help. I know that I'm doing well, but I know that a player can never be doing as much as he can be, and the only way to improve is to ask questions with his peers and superiors. I look forward to your response(s). :P

I'm not sure how much advice I can give without actually seeing a video of you playing, given you have all the basics right already.

Generally, when movement is needed, I try to not break a steady shot cast, especially if it's past the halfway mark. If possible, I use Disengage, however on some fights it makes sense to save the cooldown for possible emergency situations. If you can wait before moving it makes sense to wait until one of your instant shots is ready so you have something to do while moving. I do stop to fire an auto shot while moving if there's time when moving, but generally only once during the move, if I'm going far enough that I'd need to stop more than once I try to use Disengage instead.

I noticed you don't have any points in Rapid Recuperation - do you ever have to switch to Aspect of the Viper? If you can get a little more hit from gear and use 2/3 in Focused Aim you can have a point in Rapid Recuperation which helps a bunch with mana, which obviously helps with dps.



After all this, however, the most important thing and the reason why I think I'm on World First kills is not absolutely maximal dps (I'm sure there are people who micromanage better for slightly more dps) but rather playing well - not making mistakes, doing your best to fix up mistakes made by others and not panicing if something goes wrong. Patience also helps on those long nights of beating your head to a wall repeatedly for hours and hours... ;)

[Kruf]

I'm not from EU, but i know your the number 1 guild. Just wanted to seek advice and tips on my hunter.

Toon Name: Tenshi
Server: US
Realm: Stormscale

• Wrong meta, use Relentless Earthstorm
• Missing enchants
• Enchant agi on gloves, not ap
• I suspect (didn't check) that Greatness would be better than Banner of Victory

Log from our 25man ICC encounter
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/t2cdkqzm ... amageDone/

Unless there's some kiting or other funny stuff going on, you're doing something very wrong.

On Deathwhisper, you have 68+95+1=164 autoshots. If you had the gear you have right now and assuming no haste (in reality you get IAotH procs and such) that would be 164*2.4sec = 393.6sec = 6min 34sec - fight duration is 8min 37sec. What was happening during those missing 2 minutes? On other shots the situation is even worse, unless I miscalculated somewhere you had only about 3 and half minutes of active shooting time.

On Marrowgar you have much better autoshot stats, nearly 4.5 minutes out of 5:10 which is pretty okay given the bonestorms. However, on active shots, things don't look so good: slightly over 2 minutes worth of active shots in 5:10 fight? Also, how did you manage to only shoot one Silencing Shot, it has 20sec cooldown so one would expect there to be 15 in a 5:10 fight. The same can be extended to other shots: expected 31 Chimeras, you had 20. And so on.

If you want to do good dps, the first thing to do is to practice your rotation so you never idle. Also it's much better to just shoot a Steady than to do nothing, so if you for some reason lose concentration on your rotation just keep pressing Steady until you can get back to it.

I'm planning to gem ARP, wanted to ask for your advice on gear and such.

Don't. You can't get enough of it for it to be better than agi.

[Kruf]

I try to stack my cooldowns alot, but I am wondering what you normally would do on lets say.. Deathbringer Saurfang? What cooldowns do you pop in the start of the fight? I usually save my CotW for Bloodlust, and blow most of my cooldowns at the start of the fight. Should I use readiness early? On putricide for example, I use CotW at the start of the fight as I get to use it twice during the fight.

I usually blow everything at the start, so I can get them again in the fight - most of our kills are pretty fast so even then I might not be able to get everything used on the second round. Also, as you noted, all trinkets with reasonable procrate will proc instantly once fight starts (assuming they're off ICD) - which is a good moment to have your cooldowns running.

Should I blow cooldowns before or after attacking the boss and wait for trinket proccs?(They usually procc in the start xd)

The difference is probably minimal, but the way I see it is I don't want to waste even half a second of my cooldowns, so I blow them after I have sting and mark up on the boss.

Scenario #1: Blood Fury/Rapidfire #1, SrS, CS, (ICD Trinket proccs), AiS, Readiness, CS, AiS, SS spam/pop rapid fire(as soon as Rapid Fire #1 is over) - Continue rotation.

Scenario #2: SrS, CS, (ICD Trinket proccs), AiS, Rapidfire #1/Blood Fury, Readiness, CS, AiS, SS spam - Continue rotation. Save Rapidfire #2 for later trinket proccs ?

Here's my typical Saurfang scenario:

Before combat: MD, prepot haste.
Combat: Sting, Chimera, Aimed+Silencing, Rapid Fire+Call of the Wild+Blood Fury, Readiness, Chimera, Aimed+Silencing, Steady, MD and normal rotation after that.

The fight is so short that I won't get my second cooldowns unless I blow them right at the start, and since my trinkets will proc almost instantly it's a good moment anyway.

Secondly; Should I replace NES with Greatness or something similiar and gem arp?
I have around 700 arp passively from gear at the moment with 1 arp gem in my ring(had no other gem at the time so I just thought it would be a "good" idea to socket it while my ring was fresh and new). Should I replace it with a 20 agility meanwhile?

I'd suggest testing with femaledwarf and/or simulationcraft. Sorry, I'm just getting a bit too lazy to check out things for everyone who comes asking for help ;) I suspect Greatness will be very close or worse than NES with your gear, though.

Remember that once you start running over the soft arpen cap without any arpen gems it might be a good time to start looking for other trinket choices. Herkuml War Token isn't horribly bad, and Whispering Fanged Skull is great.

Thirdly; Should I replace my neck with anything? I know there are good alternatives out there, but which one should I aim for?

That of course depends on what you can get your hands on, however for an easy upgrade I'd recommend the arpen neck from ToC10 (or the hc version if you can, of course). Next upgrade after that is the arpen neck from Sindragosa (any version of it, though the 25man is obviously better overall).

I am the hunter called Ambivalence in the log.
Here's a log for Deathbringer Saurfang 25, with the 5% damage increase buff. You may also take a look at what I did for other bosses and see what I could have done better etc. Did I do it right for saurfang?

On a quick glance you did good on Saurfang, especially given the Bloodlust was in the middle of the fight so you didn't have trinket procs up for it. Just about the only thing I notice is that you used haste potion when you didn't have any useful procs up - could have saved it a bit for when something is procced.

On Festergut and Rotface you're a bit low, but I didn't check for the exact reason, could be that some important debuffs dropped from the boss or something. Also I don't know what kind of tactics you use so I don't know how much you had to move around.

[Kruf]

Hi all and Very GZ for LK kill!
Armory Link: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet ... em&cn=Nyme
WoL report: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/fne5 ... 079&e=9375

So, i'm raiding as Surv and i got a question for you.
After agi and crit the best stat for a surv hunter is haste or ArP?
I'm going to take much ArP as possible in surv gear but some friend told me for surv ArP is not so good and haste is better cause surv crit a lot and do more autoshot is better.

On the other hand, with arpen both your autoshots and Steady Shots hit harder - while haste (after softcap) only affects your autoshots.

Here's some statvalues for your SV spec from simulationcraft:

Code: Select all

  Agi      Sta      Int      AP      ArPen    Hit      Crit     Haste    Wdps
1.8411   0.3485   0.7569   0.6786   1.5000   2.6358   0.9816   1.1039   4.7713


Those imply that in fact arpen would be better than crit in your gear and SV spec.

I usually do from 9k to 10k dps on fight were i dont got a specific task in my gear as u can see in the log, 9k dps with 3vile glass on festergut, is it good?

That's a decent number - simulationcraft suggests a bit over 10k (without the 5% zone buff) on a "stand here and shoot until it dies" fight - but of course getting Vile Gas will drop your dps.

And i have a question on MM "rotation"
I'm thinking to respec MM but i don't played MM yet in WoTLK and i don't know the exact priority (Arcane Shot is used in MM?).

Arcane shot is used depending on gear (and when moving). Check the first post in this thread for the basic rotation.

[Kruf]

The base armor I took is form your calculation kruf, But I am assuming that is the effective armor on ICC raid bosses? cos in Ulduar the effective armor on bosses was 13084, I really wasn't sure abt this 10K armor please let me know if my armor values are not exact.

I took the armor value from EJ - while I don't always trust their theorycrafting without confirming it myself, I think this ought to be accurate. It's also the same value as used in SimulationCraft which seems to give pretty accurate results.

Note that this is the armor value of all bosses now - it was changed at some point after Ulduar release when they changed the arpen formulas.

[Kruf]

http://www.wowmeteronline.com//combat/log/1557573

DPS looks mostly okay, I'd expect a little more with the 5% buff but there doesn't seem to be anything horribly wrong with what you're doing.

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet ... Aftershock

Don't see anything wrong in gearing besides that enchant on boots - you have 5.70%+3%=8.70% hit, so why bother with hit/crit enchant instead of agi.

I pre pot every fight i can. Use arp food and arp elixir as still under hard cap. However and can change Zod's to stake thrower to reach hard cap if that would yeild better dps. This is a bad idea as per Female dwarf.

Which version of Stakethrower do you have? I'm tempted to think the ilevel 264 version would be better than 264 Zod, given how horribad the proc on Zod is.

One thing i have noticed is that my steadies are at 1.7 cast according to quartz as i only have 52 haste with out AOTH proccing not sure if this is that big of a issue.

That's normal - haste just isn't such a good stat that it'd be worth to pick up any item based on it.

[Aftershock]

yea pretty much what i thought. thanks for taking the time to look tho man. Its only the 251 version of Stakethrower falls a little behind Zod's

[docktor]

Hello,

I just put my toon through simulationcraft and see that my theoretical DPS should be at 9725, but I have never seen my DPS break 9k. I feel that my rotation is up to par. I usually use rapid fire and readiness at the beginning to allow for them to come off cooldown before the end of the fight.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-shee ... cn=Docktor

I'm pretty sure I'm not ready to gem ArP yet because that would only bring me up to a value of around 772 ArP, after gemming. I am currently saving up for my T10 helm. I received my T10.5 pants from VoA 25 and am planning on holding on to them until I have enough emblems to buy the T10 hands and have a replacement for my pants. I run ToC 25man every week, but have not seen Deathbringer's Will, Death's Verdict, or Whispering Fanged Skull drop yet. We are currently 5/12 in 25man and 9/12 in 10man ICC. I am also saving up for craftable ICC boots.

Is there anything that you see gear wise that I can do differently to maximize my DPS other than waiting for drops?

Also, do you use an addon to see when your procs are up?