Shet Up About Steady Shot
OK folks, the comments and emails have made us feel uppity. Please standby for a rant.
/rant on
What is Ranged Attack Power? RAP is a damage-modifier. The higher your RAP the more damage you do.
What is Crit? Crit is a damage-modifier. The higher your Crit the more damage you do.
What is Hit? Hit is a damage-modifier. The closer you come to being hit-capped, the more damage you do.
What is Attack Speed? Attack Speed is a damage-modifier. The faster your Attack Speed the more damage you do.
What is Mana? No, mana is NOT a damage-modifier. The amount of mana you have does NOT affect your damage.
Mana is a Resource. Converting mana to Damage is damage-method, not a damage-modifier.
“WHOA!! Time OUT BRK! That there is a total load of bunkum. We hunters use Mana for our shots and stings and THOSE are damage-modifiers, ain’t they?”
Yes. But mana is not. Neither mana nor your Mana-Efficiency are damage-modifiers. The whole Auto/Steady argument is based around this mistaken concept:
Mana Efficiency = DPS
And that is totally, completely, off-the-wall Wrong.
Hunter #1: Has a pool of 5000 mana. He fires everything he has, goes balls-to-the-wall crazy. He kills his mob in 10 seconds and has no mana left.
Hunter #2: Has a pool of 5000 mana. He uses an Auto/Steady macro. He kills his mob in 13 seconds and has 1500 mana left.
Who wins?
Hunter #1 did the same amount of damage as Hunter #2 but he delivered it in a less time. His DPS was higher. He used more mana, he consumed more resources, but he did more DPS.
New mob, tougher and with more health.
Hunter #1: Has a pool of 5000 mana. He fires everything he has, goes balls-to-the-wall crazy. He runs out of mana after 10 seconds and has to rely on Auto Shot to kill the mob, which takes 20 seconds.
Hunter #2: Has a pool of 5000 mana. He uses an Auto/Steady macro. He kills his mob in 15 seconds and has 1300 mana left.
Who wins?
Now this time, Hunter #1 didn’t have enough resources. He was not capable of sustaining that level of DPS and used all his mana before the mob died. That certainly wasn’t optimum, of course not.
And this is when Hunter #2 yells out, “DUDE WTF! If you used Steady Shot you’d do more DPS!” And while technically Hunter #1 would’ve done more DPS with an Auto/Steady rotation it wouldn’t be because that combination does more damage. It would because Auto/Steady automatically manages mana consumption.
It is entirely accurate to state that Steady Shot increases people’s DPS because it alleviates them from having to manage their mana properly. But if you effectively manage your mana yourself you can do a lot more damage than Auto/Steady spamming.
Look at our data. Our Arcane Shot does more damage per shot than Steady. Yes, Arcane uses more mana, but if we don’t run out of mana then SO WHAT?!
We do more DPS with Arcane Shot because we deliver more damage at a faster rate than we do with Steady Shot. Now if we were a different spec that might be reversed, we’re not arguing that. But for Beastmasters, Arcane is a more powerful shot. Look at the data, it’s all there.
If you had Infinite Mana what would you use, the most mana-efficient shot rotation or would you go balls-to-the-wall crazy? That’s the key, right there. As long as you can maintain your mana reserves then you don’t need to use the most mana-efficient shot rotation. You can go balls-to-the-wall crazy if you practice one very important thing:
Better Mana Management.
High mana pools, high mana regeneration, Fel Mana potions, Mana totems, Mana Oil, Vampiric Touch, and Aspect of the Viper. There are loads of ways to increase your mana reserves and mana regeneration rates. If you can keep your mana reserves high there is no reason in the world not to use Arcane Shot instead of Steady Shot.
Weaving Auto/Steady is the most mana-efficient method of increasing your DPS. We have no argument with this statement, it’s a fact, end of story.
Weaving Auto/Steady is the most effective method of increasing your DPS. Bullpucky.
If you can maintain your mana reserves, using Arcane/Multi/Steady whenever their cooldowns are up, and without affecting your Auto Shot delivery, will provide the highest-sustained DPS possible.
Nobody calls Auto/Steady “Balls to the Wall DPS” for a reason. It ain’t.
However, it become your responsibility to modify your shot-rotation based upon the mana regeneration methods available to you. If you’ve got a shadow priest, mana totems, and an endless supply of Fel Mana potions, your clearance to go balls-to-the-wall crazy is granted. If you’re stuck in the MT and MH’s group and are potionless, the Auto/Steady rotation and Aspect of the Viper will probably help you the most.
Running out of mana in the middle of a fight is very, very Bad. But likewise, there is no bonus prize for finishing a boss fight with mana in reserve. The ultimate efficiency-goal is to watch a boss drop as you consume your last mana point.
Any mana you have remaining after a boss dies is Damage you didn’t do.
/rant off
P.S. Of course, we hope nobody takes this post as a personal attack. We expect lots of theorycrafting, number-crunching, STFU, and ElitistJerksFTW comments. As usual around here, that’s totally cool with us.
Edit: /mini rant on
We just looked at the WWS stats pics again. We did >25k damage more than the #2 and #3 total-damage folks and somehow Auto/Steady is going to make us do MORE damage? The people in our guild didn’t just fall through the Dark Portal wearing Winterspring greenies, folks.
/mini rant off
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47 Responses to “Shet Up About Steady Shot”
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That’s what I’m screaming. Last night I had this misfortune to be in the MT’s group during Gruul and with all the wipes I eventually ran out of pots. I had to resort to the Steady Shot/Auto-Shot with AoTV on to stay afloat. It was awfully boring and I just watched myself slip in the damage meters.
sigh. Vampiric Touch for mana. Vampiric Embrace for health. I don’t ask that you know how MUCH mana and health you get from them, but using the wrong name for the gain causes me to twitch. Probably as much as you’d twitch if I told priests to ask for a fire trap instead of an ice trap to hide behind.
Other than that small (and it is small) complaint… /agree /cheer.
Touch, touch, touch… gotta remember Touch.
Thank you for the correction, we do appreciate allowing us our ignorance of the other classes.
/agree
…though it’s Mana Oil, not Wizard Oil, and with dual wielding becoming viable for hunters in like 2 hours aaaan AotV buff it will be omgwtfbbqplsnerfhuntardsnowkkthxbai
BTW as much as I hated shot rotation macros I am now a convert. I have 3 on my bar, Steady/Auto+KC, Steady/Auto+KC+Arcane, Steady/Auto +KC+Arcane/Multi. The slow mana-scarce burn, the faster CC-safe burn and the fastest kill-this-boss-now burn.
Other than the annoying error sounds it works very well, much better than me manually trying to weave.
Gimping your DPS by using Viper instead of Hawk is ok for you, but using a manaefficient shot instead of manainefficient shots isnt?
Thats what I call a double standard.
Sayth of EU-Gorgonnash
You did, you also had barely anyone cracking 600 DPS on your gruul attempts.
You had a warlock being beaten on damage by TANKS.
Please, don’t be proud of beating that - get them caught up to you or you’ll be hearing a whole lot of “Okay, it’s a wipe, go stand in a cavein so we can beat the respawns and get another attempt!”
Mana Oil, thank you.
We “gimp” our DPS with AotV when our other alternatives aren’t available. In a guild full of druids, that happens a lot.
It should also be noted that there’s no reason at all you can’t switch between AotV and AotH during a battle. Run Hawk until your mana is at 60%, slam a Fel Mana Potion and Viper to get that mana back up, when the potion has run its course shift back to Hawk.
Nothing wrong with that at all. In fact, with the new mechanics of Viper, you’d all best get used to it.
Still… I believe you would do more DPS by always using talented AotH and Auto/Steady rotation while chainchugging pots.
Steady gets more benefit from the AP then Arcane, so eventually the Steadyshot damage becomes bigger than Arcaneshot damage.
Sayth of EU-Gorgonnash
I believe you would do more damage with a bunny strapped to a gun with no ammo and a few mugs of netherguarde bitter.
But unless I can back if up with some theorycrafting, DPS testing or some sort of evidence, it’s just a silly fancy.
Funny how that works.
@sayth
Arcane Shot doesn’t get mitigated by armor whereas Steady Shot does which is what does make Arcane ultimately do better.
We had trouble with dps on our first gruul attempt too. I tried to be nice, but eventually had to show the raid that my pet by himself… that’s right, just my scorpid maintained 300dps and that’s with pulling him back during caveins around the tank(7th out of 14dps people…) then people took their heads out of their asses.
As for AotV. I switch to it during a fight, but if you’re going to go balls to the walls, all it does is slow your mana consumption, not regen mana. and when boss gets low on health, i switch back to AotH and go nuts again
Hey BRK,
Sorries butssss
/shifttusk ranton!
Although alot of people are irking your lack of steady shots as a mana efficiency issue this isn’t why adding steady would have upped your dps. Now sure mana efficiency is an issue but its rare a hunter running with hawk on and oil+fel will go oom on gruul or HKM. Heres where you problem is, its the cycles. So on your HKM klll sheet I see:
104 Autoshots 510
29 Arcane Shots 618
14 Multishots 663
3 Steadyshots 566
As you can see you’re right steady is the lowest dmg single shot. And yes if you have the mana and no CC issues you should replace steadies with arc/multi to up your dps at the expense of efficiency.
BUT
You are not replacing shots. If a hunter starts off with an autoshot, and fires 104 autoshots he should have 103 specials fired as a BMer. This is 1 special between every auto. Traditionaly for sake of ease many hunters rely on autosteady spamming. This in your case would result in 5 autoshots and 5 specials every 11 seconds or so.
5*510+5*566=2550+2830=5380 dmg in 11 secs before pet. This would be 489dps ranged pre crits.
In your case you were solely firing arc/multi (3 steadys in 5 minutes can essentialy be discounted) in 11 seconds you would fire 1 arcane and one multi resulting in
5*510+618+663=3531 dmg = 321 dps ranged.
So yes using no steady shots hurt your dmg output (as well as focus generation and kill comand procs)
But wait I still agree, using multi and arcane can up your dps.
BUT HOWS WHAIS?
Lets take the first case again:
11 seconds -> 5 auto+5special
make your five specials 3xsteady 1x arc 1x multi. Basicaly replace a steady with one of the more powerful shots for more dmg but crappier efficiency. But never not firing a special in this case we’d have
5×510+3×566+618+663=5529=502dps the highest
So hunters on the official forums all rant and rave about this calling it big fancy replacement rotation and so on. But basicaly BRK you need to increase the number of specials you’re doing. basicaly after any autoshot when arc/multi are on CD you need to snap off a steady.
Hope this helps you with your dps!
/shifttuskrantoff
off topic to those who think serpent sting is bad notice it does 660 dmg and would contribute the same as any of the specials here, think of that the next time you dont want to use it over a steady shot!
While the DPS argument is all the rage, I have to wonder why the argument isn’t more concerned with combat effectiveness. In normal situations, even as a BM hunter, I tend to run around throwing bandage heals, trapping rogue mobs, sending my trusty crowd-controlling gorilla, Knothead, around as a bodyguard for the squishies, and taking pot-shots at the main enemy when the opportunity presents itself. Now, while some readers may find this type of activity a bit wasteful when I could be sitting back pounding damage and stealing aggro from the tanks, I have enjoyed the thanks received from people I’ve kept alive in instances and raids and see my pet as expendable, not other players.
Slam me if you will, but I am sure there are those out there that have the same habits when in groups where area management is a critical necessity.
-Knotbeard, Knothead, and Bananas
P.S. First time reader, first time poster, new fan…
Thank you Shifttusk, for explaining it so well!
-Silver & Obsidian
I have a feeling that BRK is an engineer / scientist at heart - why not do the experiment!? You can become a convert or silent shot the critics! Though I am mathmatically challenged, Shifttusk’s argument seems to make sense to me.
@ all..
The arguement going back and forth here is just confusing those of us who are the hunter noobs, clickers, and macro-challenged.
What we need to see is some tests…
But, I also imagine, as one poster mentioned, that the type of mob and resistances play a part here as well.
Reliance on a macro might just get your arcane shots or something else resisted, and you wind up wasting a lot. On the other hand, no macro may mean a dps loss do the clicker fumbling.
/sigh
/sigh @ using a macro will not increase your resist rates what so ever. The only difference of macro/not macro is if someone sucks at timing shots they will be more acurate with a macro.
Interesting comment regarding Serpent Sting, although I’ll note that the base damage will be overall knocked down a bit by resistance. Main reason not to use a Serpent though, would be when you could use Scorpid instead. If another hunter has that responsibility, or it’s a non-melee mob, then that doesn’t apply. (Remember, it’s not, or shouldn’t only, be all about DPS.)
I haven’t been using Serpent myself anymore except on Shade of Aran when the Blizzard starts up and I have to shoot on the move. Although I’m also the only hunter at the moment, so if I want to see a Scorpid up there it’s gotta be me.
@anon
The point about macros and resists is that some folk won’t even realize that a third or half of their shots are being resisted.
steady shot > auto > steady > auto > special >auto lather rinse repeat… IF you’re in a good point and shoot fight!
It’s a rhythm.
We have an army of Sunfury’s in my guild now (the rogues will soon be getting them!) and I watch some of the non-officers and there always seems to be a point where their bow is down and they’re not shooting. They’re totally missing the rhythm of their weapon speed.
I’m able to maintain 800-900 dps on Gruul now… because I spent 3 points in improved range! No damage form shatters ever!
I use the above rotation constantly because it works. It’s a great base upon which to build. When haste procs (I even got the haste gem in my Merciless Gladiator helm), I just auto away until my specials cool down and fire them and avoid steadies because they clip my autos.
When I’m on the run, I use specials almost exclusively, but halt for a second to get that auto in there.
Again, it’s all about rhythm and getting comfortable with the tempo.
I’m all in favor of special shots, but weaving specials into my steady > auto rotation has really helped.
Every time I get a new weapon, I go to Dr. Boom and blow a bunch of ammo on him just to learn the rhythm of my new weapon…. once my rotation becomes rote… I can improvise.
Think of it like music. You have no right to jam and improvise until you know the notes, scales and chords backwards and forwards.
When you get the rhythm of a shot rotation down… you can improvise. You’re not thinking any more and reacting to the situation in a high dps fashion.
But if you blow your mana and have to resort to Viper and auto shot to recoup… you’re going to have a tough time with Gruul. On a long fight like that… good mana management while in hawk = dead dragon killer. I take 2 pots over the course of that fight and the last of my mana is spent the moment the one eyed chump slumps dead to the ground.
So, all that said… love the blog and am sending my hunters over here!
Perhaps the most potent arguement in shift’s post is that BRK is essentially “missing” 57 shots… what was going on during this time? Having those shots be steady shots might be difficult due to repositioning, but most of us pop arcane while moving on the fly, which would imply a larger usage of specials than steady. But this looks mysteriously to me like a lot of autoshot /afk or OOM shooting. Tsk Tsk.
P.S. We have now mastered gruul… but We might just skip mag and move to SSC or Loot reaver. Mag sucks >_< Not a fun fight. Even his trash mobs suck.
/agree with shifttusk
I agree with your argument, but there needs to be a slight adjustment to the logic.
Going balls to the wall isn’t just replacing auto shots with special shots. It’s replacing an auto/steady routine with auto/special/steady whenever special shots such as multi or arcane is c/d. while your rotation may pump in 150 shots in that duration, a steady/auto routine, perfectly executed will deliver 200 shots in the same period.
The math while not eloquent is pretty simple to figure out. That’s a sustained mana reserve routine of steady and auto.
If now you wanted to get your dps higher without the thought to mana, you can improve even further by weaving in your arcane and multi when it’s up.
So looking at your damage chart, you fired 150 shots. 50 of your auto shots had nothing weaved in between. If you weaved in all your special shots in between the other 50 shots and weaved in steady for the other 50, your total shots for the fight goes to 200.
Gaining 51 steady shot for you is equivalent to 28866 damage for that fight and would have increased your dps to 716. Given your spec and gearing for that fight that makes sense to me.
The really nice thing about this wws tool is that you can go search for some other highend guilds. Look for some runs with multiple hunters and see how they fared in terms of their shot weaving. You’ll find that most will have a very close special shots to autoshot ratio.
i don’t understand…are you just arcane shotting and multi shotting then just sitting there waitin for the cd’s to be up on them? that doesnt’ sound like balls to the wall dps…wouldn’t it be better in most situations to use a steady shot rotation with aoth on than to use a arcane/multi shot rotation with aotv? what do you do when you’ve got a 5 man pull and half of the mobs are shackled/sheeped/seduced? just arcane then auto till its up? and finally, if you’ve got the mana pool why not just toss an instant shot up inbetween every steady shot? for example ss–>arcane and auto–>ss–>ms and auto–>ss etc.
Sorry, my last sentence should have ready “steady/special to autoshot ratio”
J,
I agree to a point, double specialing:
Auto->Steady->Mult/Arc->Auto
Generaly isn’t a good thing for a BM hunter. The majority of BM raid builds include 5/5 imp aoth and also will often be using the dragonspine (as long as they are not using don santos speed weps). Now with sunfury as BM unhasted my attack speed is 2.10 seconds.
With a 2.1 speed I can when not hasted fire off two specials without clipping. 0.0 autoshot 1.5 steady GCD finishes and I fire arcane then the .5 second autoshot cooldown finishes right at 2.0 seconds. But if the player has any latency its really going to end up crazy to fit a second shot into there and will most likely end up clipping the autoshot. If you download quartz timer with the swing timer you will see easily when this happens.
This effect only gets worse when you include the effects of Imp Hawk or the dragonspine. But these bring you close to the 1.5 second attack speed which would be idea.
@ Zem,
Mag is not bad at all once you get the dps for the adds and then the flow of the fight down. His trash is annoying but Loot Reaver trash is WAYYYYYYYYYYYY worse.
Perhaps the most potent arguement in shift’s post is that BRK is essentially “missing” 57 shots… what was going on during this time?
Well, we most certainly don’t have Gruul on farm.
A lot of our time is spent running hither and yon, screaming at the computer, freaking out, yelling obsenities into Vent, and cursing the people who are keeping us from getting our T4 Leggings.
Really, we’re learning where to stand to get out of the Cave-Ins and avoid each other for the Shatters.
One should never judge DPS during a learning phase of a boss fight. Getting the strategy right is much more important. We won’t beat Gruul until we do both, though, that’s obvious.
@ BRK - 100% right learning a fight mechanic is way more important than 50 dps on learner attempts. I was looking at the HKM kills as far as the dps figures though.
To everyone out there, movement in fights throws our whole arguement out the window. At this point the best thing I find to do is use a macro when i can settle in and spam any instants and stutter walk while running from aoes etc.
Yes, BRk, if you’re new to the fight, clearly you’d have a lot of moving around. I just would think that’s why you’d have more instants in relation, but perhaps you always start with auto, which I do not.
Shift, we actually had enough dps to get three adds dead every time before he unbanished, but after that (I was tanking on my warrior) we didn’t have the heals to keep me and the other two remainging tanks alive. I’d die in just a few hits. Only 7 healers was not enough, not by far. And there is so much chaos in the fight, and the upgrades are so slight…
I’ll toss in my ideas as another hunter in a guild that is still chasing that first Gruul down. HKM has been going down consistently, though…
I agree with the others that say there is a disproportionately small number of specials in the wws info we’ve seen. Let’s just look at the latest one I’ve seen:
Auto: 510dmg, 0 mana, 104 hits
Arcane: 618dmg, 230 mana, 29 hits
Multi: 663dmg, 275 mana, 14 hits
Steady: 566dmg, 110 mana, 3 hits
As you stated, mana efficiency is completely irrelevent unless you are in danger of running out of mana. But what would happen if you replaced those 29 arcane shots with 58 (29*2) steadies? Well, say you can only get a steady in between 2 out of of every 3 autos (because of running around, perhaps). Since BRK’s shot speed is just about 2 seconds, we can say that he’d do about 2 steadies every 6 seconds, which is how often he could do 1 arcane. So the time to do 29 arcanes would be the same as the time to do 58 steadies. Let’s consider the damage and mana consumed
29 Arcanes - 17922dmg, 6670 mana
58 Steadies - 32828dmg, 6380 mana
Again, the time frame is the same, so doing steadies INSTEAD of arcanes would increase damage AND decrease mana consumption. So 29 arcanes and 3 steadies is a bad balance.
If you want to do max dps, though, as others have stated, you should put one special in between every auto. While you do spend some of Gruul running, we all know you can’t auto shot while moving. If you are using auto shot, you can be using specials in between them. If you wanna be mana efficient, use just steady and auto. If you want to max dps, use multi and arcane whenever cooldowns are up and put steady in other spots. NEVER let a rotation go by without adding a special unless you are oom. And if you are only going to use one special, make it steady.
brk and shift, I certainly agree about the learning aspect.
But just in defense of why the point was brought up for me. It’s been my experience that when there is a lot of moving around, such as the Void Reaver fight for a hunter, your parsed information on the type of shots skews heavier towards special shots such as arcane and multi and not as much auto shots. While not trying to discount the learning factor, if auto is the overwhelming make up of the shot, it’s likely that running and scurrying was not a huge factor.
Keep up the good work BRK in representing us hunters.
I looked at some of your Kara data and you are right, you guys have a bazillion druids. The nice thing I guess is that you are always guaranteed to have Leader of the Pack.
@ Shift.
Not sure what you meant about double specialing. I’m guessing you probably mistook what I meant. I only weave special shots in between auto and only one per auto. With dragonspine, Improved Aspect of the Hawk, shot clipping almost becomes an issue for me, but I’m not a BM hunter, so it manages to stay at 1.9 speed or something like that. My most optimal shot is going auto/steady. Going all out, it goes to arcane/auto/steady/auto etc….
Props to BRK for providing this site. It is fun to read and I’m sure it takes a lot of effort.
But…
BRK, dude, quit being so “old guy stubborn”. For Pete’s sake, try out the macro on a few raids. Compare your results to a non-macro raid. I don’t understand why you are so afraid of The Macro.
#showtooltip Steady Shot
/castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/castrandom [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
Seriously, man, you espouse doing as much damage as you can, yet you stubbornly refuse to use something that will dramatically boost your DPS. I don’t get it.
ElitistJerksFTW. Auto/Steady is the way to go and those who fail to understand this are lesser hunters.
@ boom: That sort of comment and attitude is more suited to the official forums, not here. If you don’t have something constructive to contribute, please don’t ruin the signal-to-noise ratio for the rest of us.
BRK, if I’m out of line, feel free to deduct some BRK Cool Points.
Sry, noob question,
I was under the impression that specials like Arcane (and maybe Multi and Serpent) will not interrupt Autoshot nor clip it. Am I wrong on this assumption?
Now this is interesting BRK:
You tell people to shut up and by doing so, you just provoke a discussion about the obvious lack of steadyshots in your WWS tables…
Your rant here more or less lists facts that are obvious. But, the fact that you did not perform to the max of your potential during these Gruul tries is equally obvious. Maybe not to you, yet, but to the rest of the hunterworld.
If you want to max DPS´, and really don’t care about mana efficiency, then you should NOT NOT use a special that would have been available! And if you have been standing still long enough to fire an autoshot, there would have been the time for at least one special. Steadyshot maybe? At least this is the one special being on a cooldown below autoshot ratio. It may not be the highest damage special, but it may be the only one not on cooldown! It is mana-efficient ON TOP OF THAT!
Maybe you should revisit shot-rotations. What you wrote here deserves a new approach!
Have I mentioned that I have tried to cover shot-rotations in my blog, lately?
/target reader
/cast misdirection
Cheers, Xi
You don’t have to use a macro for it if you don’t want to, but steady>all.
Why would blizzard screw up aimed shot then give us steady shot if we weren’t meant to use it?
Steady is the new aimed shot, that is even said by blizzard themselves.
It’s cast time is such that it can be spammed, especially as BM. 2s autoshot (or there abouts), 1.5second cast on steady+the 0.5s auto ‘cast’ time fits perfectly.
This gives little room for kill commands and arcane, but thats where the macro makes it easier to use. It is all possible manually though assuming you have binded your abilities.
The facts and figures are in these comments, You can do more DPS if you used more steadys in your rotation, or just more specials in general.
Gruul is a fight where you don’t need to move much at all. Ranged DPS only need to move out of 2-3 cave in’s MAX over the course of the fight, and you get a shatter every 45-60 secs or so (can’t remember, not been there for 2months :S) and you can avoid being thrown across the room by ground slam by turning around and standing on the rocks briefly before continuing DPS until you ’shatter’.
Hunters can easily break the 1k dps value with few kara pieces in the fight. Pet’s barely die, moreso if you have a shadowpriest in the group, just pull them out when they are stood in a cave in, that is the only raid damage they will ever take.
BM hunters are probably the highest single target DPS class in the game at the moment so being higher on damage is expected, other classes should be hitting at least 450dps minimum if you want to kill the boss, getting beat by a tank is a no go, even if you die early!
When my guild first learned Gruul, we set a 450dps minimum limit. Anyone below that was replaced by people who can manage it. People who repeatedly killed people with shatter were also removed and we got him down with 23 people on our first kill a few months back (24 but one died instantly lol).
As each kill went on, we upped the dps limit until people learned how to play properly. They were pushed to actually better their characters etc. The number of people running around without proper gems or enchants was crazy, they make a major difference to characters stats
Anyway….
Steadyshot ftw
Clearly what we have here is a case of BRK ego running wild. I must admit that BRK ego is fun to read, but is blinding objectivity.
Do not claim that the math supports your cause and then not provide any. When shift provides math to the contrary, do not claim it was a learning fight and you were moving alot. Do you fire autoshot while moving? Clearly the disagreement is your ratio of autoshot to special shot.
Do not flash your damage meters with you on top and expect everyone to accept that your play was flawless. You missed out on a lot of damage that could be improved. That is all people are saying. Grats on #1 on the damage meter, but you can do more and the people here are pretty uniform in how you can do it.
If you had Infinite Mana what would you use, the most mana-efficient shot rotation or would you go balls-to-the-wall crazy?
(Kill commands where appropriate)
auto
steady
arcane
auto
steady
multi
auto
steady
(scatter shot if specced for - it still does damage!)
auto
steady
arcane
auto
steady
(silencing if specced for)
auto
steady
multi
auto
steady
etc
etc
etc
whereas you would appear to completely miss out the steady.
so who does more dps?
Look at our data. Our Arcane Shot does more damage per shot than Steady.
This is infact incorrect.
Lets look at your data, read the tooltips carefully.
http://wowwebstats.com/duz3ax1lzcxgg?s=5181-5517&a=24
Arcane shot
Total damage: 30958
Total NON CRIT shots: 29
Crits: 23%
Average damage therefore is not what is listed there (which ignores the crits….)
It is the following:
30958 / Total shots (29/0.77) = 821.988 dmg per shot.
Steady Shot
Total damage: 4614
Total NON CRIT shots: 3
Crits: 40%
4614 / Total shots (3/0.6) = 922.8 dmg per shot.
This data is skewed somewhat due to getting 2 out of 5 crit on steady, but like you said, look at your data.
Arcane shot also has a 6 second cooldown, steady shot is a 1.5 second cast (which is same as gcd) so you could if you wanted spam 4 steadys in the same time you could do 1 arcane. So which does more effective DPS?
Steady by AT LEAST 50%
Steady shots also mean more crits, more kill commands, more chance of hourglass proc, more chance of abacus proc or whatever.
So I’m getting royally confused. I used to believe that BRK’s “rotation” was auto-arcane-auto-multi-auto-steady(because no cd’s are up-auto-arcane(or multi)…..basically replacing steady with arcane or auto but still doing steadies when arcane/multi cd was not up. Is he now saying that every other or third auto shot rotation he has nothing weaved in? Doesn’t take much theorycraft to realize that not weaving a shot in between autos will not maxamize dps. I think the real question is given enough mana, will auto-arcane-auto-multi-auto-steady-auto-arcane-auto-multi…. outdamage the standard auto-steady-auto rotation. Or in other words, ignoring mana does arcane and multi hit harder than steady. I don’t think weaving steady and an instant between autos is an option w/o clipping using a 2.8sec weapon.
-Pakasmohks
Is he now saying that every other or third auto shot rotation he has nothing weaved in?
Look at his stats that he posts, He fired 5 steady shots (3 non crit, 2 crit) in 5 minutes of combat.
@Pakasmohks
If we are going to take mana out of the equation, there really is no question that there should be at least one special between every autoshot. Should you delay the launching of an auto shot by trying to squeeze 2 specials in between 2 autos? Well, that’s a different discussion.
But the data we’re seeing from BRK is that he’s only filling about 1/2 his auto shot gaps with specials. Now, if he’s saying mana wasn’t an issue at all, then using arcane and multi whenever available is fine, but failing to take advantage of the other half of his auto gaps by filling them with steadies means he’s losing serious dps. And if that opportunity was purposely missed because it WOULD have caused a mana issue, then the fact that he was choosing arcanes and multis instead of steadies is a different but still serious mistake.
Basically, he should have at least as many specials as autos. If mana was no issue, he should have filled those extra gaps with steadies. If mana was an issue, he should have replaced all those arcanes and multis with steadies, since steadies provide much more damage for the mana.
So I guess we’re wondering what BRK is trying to do. He says:
If you can maintain your mana reserves, using Arcane/Multi/Steady whenever their cooldowns are up, and without affecting your Auto Shot delivery, will provide the highest-sustained DPS possible.
But his WWS data shows him missing a LOT of specials. I can’t figure why. Either he just didn’t bother because he was distracted (I use a macro so it’s easy to do) or he ran out of mana (which means he should have DRASTICALLY changed which shots he chose).
There’s a problem when you’re sitting at 2 autos to every 1 special. You should be closer to 1 auto to every 1-1.5 specials.
I’ll break it down really simply. Auto shot is what it is. When it comes to the hunter’s damage,
BRK does his Auto Shot dps * 1.5
I do my Auto Shot dps * 2.5
The difference? I put a steady in between every auto, and add in multis and arcanes when possible.
“I think the real question is given enough mana, will auto-arcane-auto-multi-auto-steady-auto-arcane-auto-multi…. outdamage the standard auto-steady-auto rotation. “
Yes but not by much. Arcane and multi for all builds seem to hit harder (this is at 1750ap bm/2100ap mm levels). You gain about 80dmg per shot replacing steadies with multi/arcanes when they are up but you up your mana consumption per 10 seconds by almost 30% (i forget the exact mana costs of multi/arc) we used to be able to downrank 2-3 ranks and still see a dps boost but this no longer works.
“I was under the impression that specials like Arcane (and maybe Multi and Serpent) will not interrupt Autoshot nor clip it. Am I wrong on this assumption?”
You’re wrong. Autoshot has a “hidden cooldown” what it basicaly means is autoshot can’t fire for a certain ammount of time after a special/spell is cast this includes instant shots, mend pet. I’m not sure but I think kill command is exempt. Regardless the basic idea is you nee .5seconds after you fire a special before an autoshot will fire. If you fire a special too late it will clip or push you autoshot back.
All this stuff about Steady Shot looks remarkably like your typical 2H Warrior Imp Slam rotation, with AutoSwing-Slam-AutoSwing-Slam being the base rotation to allow Rage generation + damage generation. If that’s the case, then stuff like Arcane and Multi would stand in for Mortal Strike (it’s usually 2H Arms) and Whirlwind, which are weaved into our (admittedly much longer) white swing times. So if a Hunter rotation is the same basic concept as a Warrior rotation, class mechanics notwithstanding, then yes, stuff is definitely being missed by not Steady Shotting. That being said, if SS is like Slam, and can’t be cast while moving, then yeah, BRK is not going to have many SSes, and therefore not be able to maximize his DPS. This much I would think to be obvious, and from that, I would think the obvious thing to analyze would not be a Gruul fight, but something that’s on farm that doesn’t require so much thought/work/moving. Say…Illhoof? Or is that too long a fight for balls-to-the-wall?
“That being said, if SS is like Slam, and can’t be cast while moving, then yeah, BRK is not going to have many SSes,”
This is close to right, the difference is unlike a mele autoswing the ranged autoshot requires the player be planted/not moving for half a second. Most raids require movement at 70 but not so much that you cant stop and channel a steadyshot.
“Illhoof? Or is that too long a fight for balls-to-the-wall?”
Generaly too long for balls to the walls expecialy when you need to burn mana on chains.
umm… where do the stings fit into all this?…
umm… where do the stings fit into all this?…
One of the hunters has to fit Scorpid Sting into a gap every 20 seconds. Don’t use Serpent, unless you want to be hated by all the Warlocks in your guild.
(aka, knocking off a high-DPS Corruption with your low-DPS sting is a bad idea)
@BRK: Who was responsible for keeping Scorpid up in those fights? Those shots don’t show up in WWS.