DPS problems.

[Oknaps]

Hey, so I was wondering why the hunter in my group doesn't pull adequate DPS?

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=2747&e=3096

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ausus/advanced

21,500 DPS. I am not sure why he starts so high, then he just goes back down. Any answers?

[Scryers]

Maybe he should try Surv?

[Oknaps]

Maybe he should try Surv?

I know nothing about hunters, would that actually help?

[Xami]

Reforging could use some work, but that's nothing major. I'm guessing that he/she isn't used to the 2pc T13 yet, as it alters priorities/rotation quite drastically for all specs.

[Oknaps]

Reforging could use some work, but that's nothing major. I'm guessing that he/she isn't used to the 2pc T13 yet, as it alters priorities/rotation quite drastically for all specs.

Can you elaborate on the reforging?

[Scryers]

I know nothing about hunters, would that actually help?

It could, I always do more deeps as Surv on my hunter.

[Oknaps]

It could, I always do more deeps as Surv on my hunter.

Okay, maybe I'll look into that as well.

[elyken]

Improved steady shot could have a higher up time. Especially considering its ultrax. Serpent sting up time could be higher as well. Though those would be small dps gains. no much more i can see from the logs besides the fact that he is not using call of the wild. pretty major cool down, using it along side rapid fire works wonders.http://www.wowhead.com/spell=53434/call-of-the-wild he has to spec his pet into it. One other thing is he has allot of crit and not allot of haste. Haste will allow for more steady shots in between chimera and arcane shots.

He only has 8 amied shots fired. He should be able to get at least 6 off in during rapid fire up time, he cast rapid fire 4 times that would entail, 2 aimed shots per RF cast. (guessing he only casts aimed shot during RF. As he should) During RF uptime, just spam aimed shots, if you have your call of the wild up along with a pot his numbers will fly up.

[Rine]

They can def pull more than 21.5 in there gear. They need to reglyph ans spec. tell them to use this spec

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#ccbMZfMGoGkMuroc

glyph acrane/rapidfire/steady. they can replace rapid fire with kill shot if your having burn phase dps issues

there ISS uptime is very solid, 2% away from my ranked ultraxion parse. Tell them to look out for there SS falling off.

Reforging to 1300 haste or less will ease the t13 2pc rotation. it appears that they are Aimed shot hard casting, and if you do this improperly it can relly hunter your dps. They should Arcane shot focus dump unless they have a 1.6sec or less aimed. Also judging from the log they where focus capping alot. Fixing these issues sould put them in the 26-28K range. However Surv is alot easier to play and with a 384 wep (vs 403) You will get solid results due to mm's weapon damage scaling.

Hope that helps

[Oknaps]

Swell, Elyken, and Rine. Thanks for your awesome posts. I'll be sure to look at it further tomorrow as it's quite late here. Hopefully this can help. I'd really like to kill bosses before 10 seconds on the enrage timer. I'd also like to see my DPS increase a bit because we kill the boss faster.

[Spikebebop]

Survival and marks are going to be very close on ultraxion. He was not using 2 piece t13 during the log posted, with it survival becomes more forgiving once you get the hang of it, and begins to pull ahead by a little more, that said, for what you're doing he can use whichever spec he wants.

Speaking of specs, first problem, his spec is wrong. Concussive barrage should under no circumstances be used by a pve hunter in dragon soul. Second, there are no interrupts so if you really want to maximize, he can also drop silencing shot, and even trueshot aura if you have a 10% ap buff in the group already (I think you do with enh shaman right? unleashed rage?). Most current mm builds run a 7/31/3 spec with 2/3 bestial discipline and 2/3 frenzy in the bm tree.

Enough about that bad spec, but along the same lines, his glyphs are also wrong. He's not hardcasting aimed shot enough to really make the glyph worth it, and glyph of kill shot is generally just wrong for mm. Should be running glyph of arcane shot since it should often be his focus dump and probably glyph of rapid fire since he uses it twice as much as other hunters because of readiness.

Thirdly, he should be using a ferocity pet, not a cunning one, and it looks like you don't have an 8% magic dmg taken debuff (locks, unholy dks, boomkins) so he should get a wind serpent for his ferocity pet, it will boost raid dps as well as his.

He's missing engineering tinkers, could be because of new gear pieces tho.

His reforging is correct, don't listen to anyone who says he needs to get to a certain haste point to hardcast aimed shot, for what you're doing it isn't worth the trouble, and it's still situational. The yellow gem in his chest should be straight agi, minor issue overall. 50 agi to wrist is greater than 65 crit strike, again not a huge issue, and 50 agi isnt cheap.

Now for his actual play... It seems he does not fully understand his rotation.

Serpent sting only had 84% uptime, this should be 99%, cast it once, refresh every ten seconds with chimera shot, it's always up.

Now for chimera shot, he's not casting it nearly enough. It has a 10 second cooldown, and should be cast on cooldown except in certain situations, which for his skill level he shouldn't worry about. In the parse shown he cast chimera shot 27 times during a 350 second fight, should be more like 33+, so for him, cast chimera shot every ten seconds, it's a hunter's second highest dmg ability.

It also looks like he is not casting aimed shot enough. He should be casting aimed shot as his focus dump during every rapid fire, (in other words he should not cast a single arcane shot during rapid fire, ever) and also during bloodlust (again, never arcane shot during lust).

In general his rotation should be something like, start fight, put up serpent sting, chimera shot, rapid fire, steady shot X2, readiness, chimera shot, then steady shot to 50 focus and aimed shot, steady shot to 50 focus and aimed shot, for the duration of the first rapid fire. Once RF falls off, chimera shot to refresh sting, rapid fire, repeat steady shot/aimed shot rapid fire rotation. There is room for some variance, I'm not exactly sure if thats the perfect way to start, but it's how I start and I do much more dps on ultrax with much worse gear (not trying to toot, but I have played huntard before).

The rotation should be similar under bloodlust, he will just cast chimera shot on cooldown instead of trying to avoid casting it like during RF.

For the standard rotation, it goes something like chimera shot, steady shot x3, arcane shot x3 or 4 depending on focus and such, then chimera shot and start over. Depending on haste you can get an additional shot in there, either steady or arcane depending on focus at the time. It's good to note that while not under a haste effect he should try to not delay chimera shot whatsoever, except under RF it should be cast on cooldown, without question, before aimed shot! instant procs, and before refreshing improved steady shot if it falls off for some reason, only under RF should he delay, and only delay until serpent sting needs refreshed, serpent sting should never fall off (at least on this fight). He pretty much wants to cast chimera on cooldown, and steady shot just enough to keep improved steady shot up, using extra focus on arcane shot.

Generally, fixing and/or doing those things mentioned above should greatly improve his dps on ultraxion. The spec/pet information does not change for any other fights, but the rotation can shift some. Elitist jerks has a very informative markmanship thread that is nearly fully updated for 4.3. He should read and internalize it.

Apologize if there are run-ons, I know there are probably typos and spelling/grammar errors, I wrote quickly. Hope he can do better, maybe survival will be easier, maybe not, 2 piece messes things up for both specs, I think most of what I have written is correct for his current (newly acquired) gear.

Disclaimer: All of this is for the fight posted and person/gear in question, I know it doesn't apply everywhere all the time, I'm just trying to give the best overall picture for what looks to be a lost soul.

[Oknaps]

Holy cow, I was not expecting a huge response like that. That is quite a lot of information to go over. Also, to be honest, he's kind of always done terrible. We've tried to help him before, but it hasn't helped, haha. Maybe this will. Thanks again.

Also, we do have an enhance shaman(me), and yeah, we lacked the 8% spell damage buff I believe. Our DK is out of town, or away, I dunno. Kind of sucks.

[Deleted]

Beside possible "learning curve" tell him to disable combat text and recount. My PC almost dies when I've those on while dpsing ultraxxion giving me a steady 1-2 fps...

---------- Post added 2011-12-29 at 10:12 PM ----------

In general his rotation should be something like, start fight, put up serpent sting, chimera shot, rapid fire, steady shot X2, readiness, chimera shot, then steady shot to 50 focus and aimed shot, steady shot to 50 focus and aimed shot, for the duration of the first rapid fire. Once RF falls off, chimera shot to refresh sting, rapid fire, repeat steady shot/aimed shot rapid fire rotation. There is room for some variance, I'm not exactly sure if thats the perfect way to start, but it's how I start and I do much more dps on ultrax with much worse gear (not trying to toot, but I have played huntard before).

Most ideal way to start is ignoring everything but ISS and AiS. I get about 12 aimed shots of during the opening. (Mathematical perfect opening is 13 or 14 aimed shots..).

Our tank always puts up a countdown at pull. Around ~3 seconds left on the timer I MD -> pre-pot -> cast AiS -> 2x SS -> AiS -> AiS -> SS (not that sometimes it is better to wait 0.5 sec to get enough focus to get another aimed shot instead of wasting time on a full SS). Just keep in mind that he HAS to keep his ISS up at all times.

Rotation I use for rest of fight: CS -> AS -> 2x SS -> 2x AS (or 3, depending on focus) -> 2xSS.

I reforged to the ideal haste plateau for above rotation to be "fluent" and reforged the rest away to mastery where I already have crit on gear.

Last edit: Big fat kudos for you Spike for typing such a wall of text to help people out!

[Asrialol]

His reforging isn't "fine", Spikebebob isn't really giving accurate information it seems. (At least the rotation he mentioned is rather.. not right :P)

First about his gear and stuff. 1011 hit rating - he only needs 961. This is wasted stats, it might as well have been spirit. Despite what people think though, reforging errors wont cause you to do 10k less DPS than what your gear should allow you.

One thing I noticed is that he used Heroic Will 9 times, a total uptime of 54.8 seconds, 15.7% of the fight. This is incredibly high. First, he should always use Deterrence instead of Heroic Will. Second, he should always use it when Ultraxion has .5 seconds or so, or even less, time left on his cast. It seems to me though, as if he casts Heroic Will way too early, sitting outsite the twilight realm for almost the full duration. (Heroic Will lasts 5 seconds, he has used it 9 times and it's lasted for 54.8 seconds, which doesn't add up. Maybe I'm too tired to notice it..)

Either way, seems to me this is the most major flaw I can see - he's basically doing nothing for 15% of the fight.

His glyphs are rather weird. He has the Kill Shot glyph? Big questionmark for me, it's horrible for MM - specially considering the focus you're sitting with when you have the 2cp t13. His spec is also horrible, his pet did 2.4k DPS which is very low. Almost half of what my pet usually does. He also uses Glyph of Aimed Shot, which is fine, however he used 37 Arcane Shots and only 8 Aimed Shots, which I would assume is at the first 10% of the fight. Meaning, yet another horrible glyph choice, by looking at his playstyle.

In retrospect, if what I said about Heroic Will is correct, that's an easy 3k+ DPS loss. The pet could easily do 1.5k more DPS at least if he had his spec right, and with the correct glyphs and reforging, I could easily see him pull out an additional 800+ DPS. That means that there are a room close to 5k DPS that could be very easily fixed. Where the other 5k is, I dont know. 21k is very, very low for his gear level though.

[Oknaps]

Thanks again for your awesome responses. I am glad I found some people who are very knowledgeable with a class I have no experience past level 73 with, haha. Like I said, he's never been good, and well, I can tell he needs some help. I'll probably try to re-direct him to this thread, in hopes of not sounding too much like a huge jerk, but you said it right, 21k is very low for his gear. You guys rock.

[Blackmist]

Honestly, I think it's got little to do with reforging, although getting closer to the hitcap would certainly help.

If he's sticking with MM, use Aimed Shot more. Not nearly enough hardcasts of that. It's his first time on the fight as well, which never helps if you want to pull the top numbers. Focus dumping into Arcane Shot, in my experience, is not as good as sinking it into more Aimed Shots.

Going SV would probably pull better numbers. It got a pretty significant buff, and a 2 set bonus helps it no end.

[Spikebebop]

To Rockmahparty, that's the other rotation I've seen tossed around in discussion, and it may well be better in terms of dps, but I was going for a less complicated solution since this player is clearly unfamiliar with some of the more intimate workings of hunter dps. If he gets the hang of it I would not be at all surprised if your rotation plays out better than mine, but how may I ask are you getting 12 Aimed shots in during the first RF? Or by opening do you mean Careful Aim phase? Or perhaps the first 2 RF's? Please be clear, the OP has no real knowledge of hunters, as stated, and if I'm confused by "opening" I'm fairly certain the OP and hunter in question will be also.

Also, for the outside of RF phase, Rockmahparty's rotation is probably correct, I was conjecturing an approximate rotation, but I have not played Marks with 2-piece yet... listen to him.

To Asrialol, his reforging was "fine", it wasn't optimal, obviously, (though it has changed since both of our posts, and now is possibly worse? idk he's 4 under hit cap, .03%, I always think of reverse "price is right" rules but it's so close it may not matter), but being 50 over hit cap was only something like ~100 dps loss, rather than going into complicated math I chose to leave it be as there are many more pressing issues at hand.

Also, Asrialol, good observation about Heroic Will, its uptime is way too high, even if he's experiencing lag or has a high ping, the earliest he should be using Heroic Will during Hour of Twilight is with 1.5 seconds left on the cast, ideally with the .5 seconds or lower stated above. I chose not to mention Deterrence because you have to click it off, or use a cancel macro, and this is something a little more complicated. Again, I tried to avoid complication. And Asrialol is also correct, 9 Heroic Wills times 5 seconds is 45 seconds, the 54.8 number doesn't make sense, idk what that's about though.

Now for the multiple posts I've seen quoting 8 Aimed shots, this is not true, he had 8 Aimed shot hard casts that did not crit, he had 11 that did, and 11 Fire! procs cast, totaling 30 Aimed shots overall, 19 being hard cast, still not nearly enough given 4 RF periods and a Bloodlust.

Regardless of what has been said, now that his spec and glyphs are correct, he may need to get over hit cap, he may be fine 4 under, I'm not sure, but the main issue will be maximizing his Aimed shot's during RF and Bloodlust, and making sure to use Chimera shot on cooldown outside of RF.

@Blackmist, the general consensus on Aimed shot versus Arcane shot from what I have read is that casting Aimed shot with any more than a 1.8 second cast time is worse than casting Arcane shot, and unless under dynamic haste effects (trinket procs, bloodlust, RF) he should be using arcane shot as his primary focus dump. I don't remember off the top of my head if Ultraxion's aoe pushes back my shots, but if it does, that makes Aimed shot even worse.

Final word, someone may be able to better clear this up than I, I've seen hunters in LFR drop traps prior to the pull, I don't know if they trigger, but if they do that's a very minor dps increase also.

[Deleted]

Honestly, I think it's got little to do with reforging, although getting closer to the hitcap would certainly help.

If he's sticking with MM, use Aimed Shot more. Not nearly enough hardcasts of that. It's his first time on the fight as well, which never helps if you want to pull the top numbers. Focus dumping into Arcane Shot, in my experience, is not as good as sinking it into more Aimed Shots.

Going SV would probably pull better numbers. It got a pretty significant buff, and a 2 set bonus helps it no end.

Aimed shot has real gain over arcane shot after Careful Aim fase (maybe with high gear level and lots of haste). AS and AiS end up with around the same damage done. For started I'd stick with AS. (works better when you have to click the button or get the debuff, move, switch target, less hardcasts = more dps on those fights)

To Rockmahparty, that's the other rotation I've seen tossed around in discussion, and it may well be better in terms of dps, but I was going for a less complicated solution since this player is clearly unfamiliar with some of the more intimate workings of hunter dps. If he gets the hang of it I would not be at all surprised if your rotation plays out better than mine, but how may I ask are you getting 12 Aimed shots in during the first RF? Or by opening do you mean Careful Aim phase? Or perhaps the first 2 RF's? Please be clear, the OP has no real knowledge of hunters, as stated, and if I'm confused by "opening" I'm fairly certain the OP and hunter in question will be also.

Yeah I mean with the first 2 RF's. "The opening" of a MM hunter :-) (And later on two, doing >60k dps on tendons is nice :-) )