Break Out Your Basic Math Skillz
“Dear BRK … I play a deep MM hunter for PvE and my gear is centered around RAP. You see, the other day as I was going over my damage meter stats after a raid, I noticed to my horror that the average damage done by my SS were a good 100 points LOWER than the average damage done by my autoshots. Well as a mana thirsty MM hunter the dream is always to have autoshots as high as other people’s crits, but this is just crazy. Can you offer an explanation or venture a guess?
“Either there is something absolutely wrong somewhere or the SS simply has no purpose (who needs a 1.5 second mana consuming shot which does less damage than a 0.5 second autoshot with no mana consumption?), in which case something is also very wrong or I have reached the promised land of the autoshooting hunter already. Thanks, Nightcrystal.”
Can we offer an explanation? Of course we can!
You are a 5/50/6 MM hunter. This is more than deep-MM, this is buried. But before we lambaste you for the excessive MM-adoration, let’s talk about Steady Shot.
Steady Shot scales with a hunter’s RAP. The formula for calculating a Steady Shot is:
SS Damage = [ RAP * 0.2 ] +150
Nightcrystal’s RAP is 2327 (AotV cooking). So With AotH enabled, that would be an additional 155, for a total of 2482 RAP. His Steady Shot should average [ 2482 * 0.2 ] + 150 = 496 + 150 = 646.
Auto Shot is just a function of your weapon’s min and max damage, plus bonuses. For Nightcrystal, his Sunfury bow will produce Auto Shots that hit from 816-973 damage per shot. It’s a slow bow, so it pounds hard per hit. That’s why your Auto Shots are hitting harder than your Steadys; basic math.
So why do we bother with Steady Shot? Because the idea isn’t to replace Autos with Steadys, but to supplement them. We want to “Weave” our Steady Shots between our Auto Shots.
If we just hit nothing but Auto Shots, we would see..
Auto Shot! (1.5 second pause) Auto Shot! (1.5 second pause) Auto Shot! (1.5 second pause)
But with weaving our Steady Shots, we can attempt to replace those pauses with Steady Shots…
Auto Shot! (Steady Shot!) Auto Shot! (Steady Shot) Auto Shot (Steady Shot)
This is Shot Rotation 101. As you can imagine, the theory and math can get much more involved. There are variables and eccentricities that get involved: delays and cooldowns and clipping and clobbering and other bizarre concepts that are involved in developing more intricate shot rotations, and we’re not going to cover them now.
But what is critical to understand is that Steady Shot is used to supplement Auto Shot, not replace it. Don’t fret if your Steady Shot isn’t doing as much damage as your Auto Shot; your Steady Shot will do more damage than a pause.
If you’re in a rush, there are lots of resources that’ll teach you about Shot Rotations. Heck the BRK Forums is a great place to learn! Tell Guy and Manito hi, and say BRK sent you.
Edit: We honked-up the tooltip for Steady Shot and will revisit this post ASAP with a mondo-correction.
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13 Responses to “Break Out Your Basic Math Skillz”
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/yarh at teh MM hunter
wanna go 1-1 steady auto, spec BM
(try comparing your dps with an equal geared BM for once, and be amazed)
pop is a sound!
Hmmm, does the tooltip not say “base weapon damage plus[RAP*0.2+150]” meaning SS should do more than auto.
There is also another formula given on http://www.wowwiki.com/Steady_Shot which is:
Formula: DamagePercentageBonus*RangedWeaponSpecialization*(150 + WeaponDamage/WeaponSpeed*2.8 + 0.2*RAP + [Dazed: 175])
This is a bit more complicated and not sure how accurate it is.
Either way BRK has it right when he says some damage in between auto is better than none.
[...] BigRedKitty ha posteado una clase teórica digna de mención. Un hunter le escribe que no entiende porqué sus autos hacen más daño que sus steadys, y él le responde con simples matemáticas [...]
@Kaleta
Pop is a beverage that is know for the sound it makes when the carbonated bubbles burst.
Soda is something you bake with.
—-
The Point BRK is trying to make is maximize your damage by constantly making damage when you can make damage.
I was MM all pre-BC. I kept it up through this February when I came back from seven months of not playing, heard BM is the sh!t and went BM. I didn’t like the shot rotation, shooting faster, so went back MM. Then my guild “pressured” me going back to BM. Now the only time I’m not #1 in raid damage is when I’m dead. 41/20/0 ftw! I spam a 1-1 shot rotation that includes Arcane Shot and KC, bound that to my mouse’s scroll wheel. I could afk in some boss fights if I could find something to keep moving the scroll wheel
OP, why are you playing a “deep MM Hunter for PvE” when thousands of pages of proof have been presented in numerous forums that show MM is an inferior spec to both BM and SV for raiding?
If you are one of the hunters that insists “I can do more damage as MM” or, “I have never been out-DPS’ed by a BM Hunter” or “I never use macros because I can manually weave my shots more efficiently (sorry BRK, but I believe you are a recent convert to macros)” or some other such nonsense, you will soon find you will not be invited to higher-end raid content. The mediocre DPS and utility you bring to a group as MM can and will be easily replaced by a BM Hunter or a number of other DPS classes that are more capable than you.
Please do the research to learn this for yourself or at least read the thousands of pages of proof that has already been published. The additional speed and pet damage of BM, plus the FI buff to your group, make BM superior to MM in all stages of raiding, INCLUDING T6.
@ heymikey
You are so correct.
Good to see there are a few more people out there who appreciate all the research others have done.
I got some of the hunters in the guild to try out your shot macros and there damage has went way up so a steady shot rotation does a lot more damage.
I’m thinking of trying to find me a good SV spec even if I haven’t been running my hunter as much(been running my holy pally too much) but we are having a lot of trouble with traps not holding in heroic instances. But would SV make they big a deal with trapping in heroic?
@ Kaleta & Deadrabit: You are both correct, pop is a sound, and soda is something to bake with. A soft drink is properly refered to as “soda pop.”
Whats I dont understand is, i took a break from warcraft between november and uh… april this year. Other RL pressures meant i didnt have the time/inclination to play. And at that time i was dedicated BM hunter, had been reading BRK for a while so already had the 41/20/0 spec, and was serious in my commitment to BM, that was the way i wanted to play, yet was being told by my GM and by others that “You need to spec SV if you want to be invited in future (we were doing kara at this point).
I come back in April, suddenly, BM FTW! I get invites all over the place, the other two hunters in my guild that raided frequently, specced MM and SV respectively have both specced BM.
I gotta ask, what changed in that time, or did IQ’s suddenly rise while i was away and everyone suddenly appreaciated BM for what it is? I.E. awesome.
People don’t have to play the spec that mathcrafters insist is The Way. It’s more important to be a good hunter and player than the “perfect” spec. I’d rather someone be engaged and enjoy the game they’re playing, not keybinding a macro and watching TV. As a tank, I prefer someone who knows how to trap, feigns death, and turns off growl over Ferocious Inspiration from a huntard. FI is amazing, but it’s not a dealbreaker if you don’t have it.
I cannot vote in the poll. That picture on the side is neither a “soda” nor a “pop”. It’s a Coke.
BRK, thanks for coming through for me with the explanation. I am sure you get a lot of mail.
Why do I play deep MM? I suppose I believe that it should be that each talent tree has a purpose and a right in the raid. Of course real life (read: WoW) is different.
I remember matching DPS stats with another hunter in a previous guild (she was cookie cutter BM), who had somewhat better gear than me at the time. On burst damage on mobs I could outdo her just about. Longer fights like bosses, I would of course run out of mana, and she’d leave me well in the shade.
My raid leaders in the past have never put pressure on me to respec, because they know I show up with every possible buff, elixir/flask and scroll and keep fighting, squeezing every drop of damage out, till my very last hit point.
But of course, the lure of the #1 DPS spot in the charts is very tempting. I just wish each DPS class would have an equal shot at reaching that with each talent tree.