Beastmastery Opening Rotation Video

[Deleted]

Swap out BW with Stampede. So 2- RF + Stampede. BW is off the GCD so it can easily be macro's into other abilities.

The issue I have with your macro is that... no matter what you do you can only press it so fast, and Macroing shots together is not an option. By pressing the macro, shots that normally wouldn't have a GCD and could be macro'd into other shots can't anymore.

Other than that issue, I think your macro looks fine.

Oh, BW should not have been there, meant stampede.
So, this should be better then?

1. HM
2. MD + Pre pot
3. SrS
4. Stampede + Blood fury + RF
5. aMoC
6. DB
7. Macro

#showtooltip
/castsequence reset=40/ Bestial Wrath, Kill Command, Glaive Toss, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Arcane Shot, Kill Command, Readiness, Kill Command, Glaive Toss, Arcane Shot, Dire Beast, Bestial Wrath, Serpent Sting

Should i maybe delay the second dire beast in the macro and swap it's place with the SrS? This way the SrS wont fall of for 1 sec but the DB will be used under BW where an arcane shot could have been used instead.

[Deleted]

Already talked to you about this, but he appears to be correct after some testing. Honestly, I didn't think to test SrS on the new trinkets as SrS has always procced trinkets in the past. The real question now is whether or not it procs your Scope. With that said the priority is still not lowered. SrS is still more Damage than an AS, assuming you refresh it before it expires. This video has quite a few problems with it, not including the SrS, and I am in the process of making the next video, much higher quality, that will fix all of these things. For now, here is a rough idea of the opener I am currently playing with.

-10 Set up Traps
-5 MD
-1 Prepot
0 SrS
+1 MoC
+2 Stampede/Rapid Fire
+3 KC/Cooldowns
+4 Dire Beast
+5 Glaive Toss
+6 AS
+7 CoS
+8 CoS
+9 KC
Readiness
+10 KC
+11 DB
+12 GT
+13 CoS (Before your first RF expires)
+14 AS/BW (First expires here)
+15 AS
+16 KC
+17 AS
+18 AS
+19 AS
+20 AS
+21 AS
+22 KC
Once BW Expires, find a good place to pop your second Rapid Fire. By this point you should also have 5 stacks of Focus Fire, which can also be popped (Not with Rapid fire though)

Use your second Rapid fire to easily gain the focus cost for your second MoC, without losing any KC's.

.


Good afternoon everyone, Arktem,

I should start by saying, "Thank you," for spending the time creating the video to demonstrate your opening sequence.

5.3 has just landed and I was reviewing the opening shot rotations. I am always looking for improving DPS and I have reviewed your sequence in detail, however I am struggling to decipher it.

Let me try and break this down in full and collate the macro:

-10 Set up Traps
-5 MD
-1 Pre-pot

0 Serpent Shot
+1 A Murder of Crows
+2 Stampede/Rapid Fire - MACRO
+3 Kill Command/Cool downs - MACRO
+4 Dire Beast
+5 Glaive Toss
+6 Arcane Shot
+7 Cobra Shot
+8 Cobra Shot

+9 Kill Command
Readiness
+10 Kill Command

+11 Dire Beast
+12 Glaive Toss
+13 Cobra Shot (Before your first Rapid Fire expires)
+14 Arcane Shot/Bestial Wrath (First expires here)
+15 Arcane Shot
+16 Kill Command
+17 Arcane Shot
+18 Arcane Shot
+19 Arcane Shot
+20 Arcane Shot
+21 Arcane Shot
+22 Kill Command
...

+23 Rapid Fire after Bestial Wrath ends

Stampede/Rapid Fire Macro:

/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Stampede

Question 1:
Is this still current?

Context:
Since the recent patch (Blink Strikes - better with higher gear?) and as gear and set pieces kick in, does this sequence require updating?


Question 2:
Can you please explain how and when you use Bestial Wrath?

Context:
At position +14, I see the first reference to Bestial Wrath and yet the line states “First expires here,” which assumes that you have previously triggered it. I have read the thread and it is possible that this is the first trigger as you are trying to avoid capping Focus. At position +3 you mention "cool downs," so I assume that this is where Bestial Wrath, Engineering Gloves, Kill Command and Rabid are triggered. If so, I would be interested to see your maco on this unless of course it is very simple and is simply a list of these commands casted in sequence.


Question 3:
What cool-down add-on do you use?

Context:
Serenity used to be a favourite and I use JSHB 4 - Formerly JS' Hunter Bar and JSMD. However, your videos show a very clear way of seeing the cool downs. This is particularly important because if you use a macro to trigger Stampede and Rapid Fire, you will only see one of them come off cool down. It is possible to put the icons somewhere on your screen but this starts to clutter up the UI.



Many thanks in advance,


Fiinn
Night Elf Beast Mastery Hunter
I Stab Your Face
Twilight's Hammer

Formerly: Fin, Infamous Guild, Outland

[Perrito]

Dont think this is posible if you have t15, so no isnt current.

BW should be used on CD unless you dont have more than 50 focus.

[eschatological]

Blink Strikes will replace AMoC now in 5.3.

You should pop BW right before a KC so you can guarantee you have 2 KCs in a BW (it used to be 3 in T14 4 pc, but no longer relevant). You have ~4s leeway on this, but if you pop BW while KC > 3s on its CD remaining, it's kind of hectic. Only ever delay BW as long as the CD of your next KC. With the removal of AMoC and T14 4pc (which made BW 16s long, I'd amend the opening to something like this:

-10 Set up Traps
-5 MD
-2 Pre-pot
-1 Cobra Shot to proc thunderhawk hopefully

0 Serpent Shot
+1 DB (DB has the benefit of being focus free, it has the downside that it might put you in serious danger of focus capping initially, esp with the focus regen from RF below)
+2 Stampede/Rapid Fire
+3 BW+other CDs/Kill Command
+4 Glaive Toss
+6-8 Arcane Shot (you'll be swimming in focus due to no AMoC, only reason to cast a CoS here would be to proc a thunderhawk that hasn't procced but it may not be worth it)

+9 Kill Command
Readiness
+10 Kill Command

+11 Dire Beast
+12 Glaive Toss
+13 Cobra Shot (Before your first Rapid Fire expires)
+14 Arcane Shot/Bestial Wrath (First expires here)
+15 Arcane Shot
+16 Kill Command
+17 Arcane Shot
+18 Arcane Shot
+19 Arcane Shot
+20 Arcane Shot
+21 Arcane Shot
+22 Kill Command
...

+23 Rapid Fire after Bestial Wrath ends

I'd squeeze in CoS maybe between the two BWs if you need to be more focus positive (esp to extend SrS through your second BW), but seriously, with the removal of AMoC in the rotation, BM is going to be swimming in focus.

[Deleted]

I like it, thank you Perrito, Eschatological, I'll definitely give that a shot and feedback on this.

I have to say though, although I know the statistics say that DB is worth so much more dps than TotH, in reality I'd say it is fairly close due to the fact that TotH generates so much more focus than DB and the 15s of no benefit of DB means that there are so many more CoS fired as a result and hence a DPS drop. I found that in certain situations that TotH has been slightly more beneficial.

I am still testing out results in raids though. Currently though with TotH I am keeping up with similarly specced Hunters with DB, hard to say for certain though. I will test the above opener though.

[Megazorrd]

Edit because I'm stupid

[eschatological]

If DB has low uptime, ToTH could possibly outperform it. You have to keep in mind, ToTH's benefit is "a number of free AS" every 30s (just as a reference time frame) whereas DB is "2 free AS plus the damage from the pet itself," which isn't insignificant. IIRC, my DB hits for about 14k per melee non-crit, non-buffed, which means under its worst circumstances, my DB does around 126k-140k from its 9-10 hits. For ToTH to outperform it, you'd need #of free AS - 2 (the free ones you get from DB) to be greater than 140k. That's about 3 non-crit, non-buffed AS maybe? The numbers may be a bit off, but it's essentially saying you need two ToTH procs which you use almost fully to equal the DB, every 30s.

Then, you take into account that the 1 GCD for DB's damage requires 5 from AS, and the 4s difference is about 2-3 CoS which do non-trivial damage, and it becomes very hard for ToTH to compete.

DB just looks lower, sometimes, because you get less AS and the damage is shifted to this guardian pet, which also shows up separately on WoL and things like that. It's a matter of perception.

[Arktem]

.


Good afternoon everyone, Arktem,

I should start by saying, "Thank you," for spending the time creating the video to demonstrate your opening sequence.

5.3 has just landed and I was reviewing the opening shot rotations. I am always looking for improving DPS and I have reviewed your sequence in detail, however I am struggling to decipher it.

Let me try and break this down in full and collate the macro:

-10 Set up Traps
-5 MD
-1 Pre-pot

0 Serpent Shot
+1 A Murder of Crows
+2 Stampede/Rapid Fire - MACRO
+3 Kill Command/Cool downs - MACRO
+4 Dire Beast
+5 Glaive Toss
+6 Arcane Shot
+7 Cobra Shot
+8 Cobra Shot

+9 Kill Command
Readiness
+10 Kill Command

+11 Dire Beast
+12 Glaive Toss
+13 Cobra Shot (Before your first Rapid Fire expires)
+14 Arcane Shot/Bestial Wrath (First expires here)
+15 Arcane Shot
+16 Kill Command
+17 Arcane Shot
+18 Arcane Shot
+19 Arcane Shot
+20 Arcane Shot
+21 Arcane Shot
+22 Kill Command
...

+23 Rapid Fire after Bestial Wrath ends

Stampede/Rapid Fire Macro:

Question 1:
Is this still current?

Context:
Since the recent patch (Blink Strikes - better with higher gear?) and as gear and set pieces kick in, does this sequence require updating?


Question 2:
Can you please explain how and when you use Bestial Wrath?

Context:
At position +14, I see the first reference to Bestial Wrath and yet the line states “First expires here,” which assumes that you have previously triggered it. I have read the thread and it is possible that this is the first trigger as you are trying to avoid capping Focus. At position +3 you mention "cool downs," so I assume that this is where Bestial Wrath, Engineering Gloves, Kill Command and Rabid are triggered. If so, I would be interested to see your maco on this unless of course it is very simple and is simply a list of these commands casted in sequence.


Question 3:
What cool-down add-on do you use?

Context:
Serenity used to be a favourite and I use JSHB 4 - Formerly JS' Hunter Bar and JSMD. However, your videos show a very clear way of seeing the cool downs. This is particularly important because if you use a macro to trigger Stampede and Rapid Fire, you will only see one of them come off cool down. It is possible to put the icons somewhere on your screen but this starts to clutter up the UI.



Many thanks in advance,


Fiinn
Night Elf Beast Mastery Hunter
I Stab Your Face
Twilight's Hammer

Formerly: Fin, Infamous Guild, Outland

Hey, sorry for the late response. Had a few extra days off this week so I've been pretty lax in checking threads.

Question 1: No, this opener is by no means current or optimal. Although you can still have a rough idea for what to do based off of this opener. The opener definitely needs an exact update. I'm hesitant to say exactly what though. Blink Strikes is currently a strong alternative to MoC, although I am not convinced it's as strong as people believe.

Bestial Wrath is basically just used on cooldown. There isn't much too it. Someone pointed out on the EJ forums that BW is bugged with your KC, so that if you KC/BW in the same macro your pet will not benefit from the bonus damage. A simple macro with all cooldowns off of the GCD and macro with with AS or simply keep them by themselves and pop them separate works fine.

I'd like to point out the timing for BW in this breakdown was based on t14, including 4p, so the BW was much longer by comparison. A new breakdown would be very different.

/use 10
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Blood Fury
/cast Berserking
/cast Rabid

This is the basic macro. I also had Kill command linked there until someone pointed out the bug.
-------------------------------

/cast [@target] Kill Command

This was the kill command string.

I also have recently added a simple
/cast [@pettarget] Claw

Due to the current bug with pet basic attacks.


I use the addon called NeedToKnow. Very simple to use. I also have my entire UI uploaded if you'd like to view the rest of my addons (It's in my sig)

I'll be happy to do a complete update for the opener in the near future, probably next week, but I am simply on vacation .

[Deleted]

Thank you for the ever so detailed reply Arktem.

I've been testing macros out and I found that same issue with KC.

My three macros ended up like this:

#showtooltip Rapid Fire/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Stampede

#showtooltip Bestial Wrath
/use 10
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Rabid
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

#showtooltip Kill Command
/cast Kill Command
/cast Claw

I looked at your UI and there are some excellent elements to it but I notice you used the most brilliant serenity addon, did you modify this or is this now outdated on your UI? Do you happen to have a current UI, fully brought up to date for 5.3?


BTW I removed the "at" target and pet target from the macros because the forums won't let me post them since it thinks that they are links or email addresses.

[Woogster]

I also have recently added a simple
/cast [@pettarget] Claw

O crap what bug am I missing??!

[Arktem]

Thank you for the ever so detailed reply Arktem.

I've been testing macros out and I found that same issue with KC.

My three macros ended up like this:








I looked at your UI and there are some excellent elements to it but I notice you used the most brilliant serenity addon, did you modify this or is this now outdated on your UI? Do you happen to have a current UI, fully brought up to date for 5.3?


BTW I removed the "at" target and pet target from the macros because the forums won't let me post them since it thinks that they are links or email addresses.

Yeah it's not current. I haven't actually updated it in awhile. The addon I use now is JSHB, with basically everything but the focus bar turned off. I prefer minimal.

O crap what bug am I missing??!

Currently pets don't seem to be using their basic attacks, even if the attack is on auto cast. It changes fight to fight, and it doesn't effect dummies. But if you have your pet bar showing and pay attention to it on some fights, you can see that your pet focus caps a lot and the ability just sits off of cooldown. A simple fix until Blizzard finds a solution, just macro that into all of your shots. Not ideal, but we do what we can.

[eschatological]

JSHB and Serenity are the same author, he just massively updated Serenity and repackaged it under JSHB, JS being his initials.

[Windthorn]

Not seen an update for 5.3, hope JSB keeps the add on up to date.

[Wega]

if i may ask a more basic bm question: how do you make use of focus fire, on cd if 5 stacks or is it better to delay it until you drop out of bw/rapid fire?
also big thanks for pointing out the kc bug with the rather convenient macro

[Ruffles]

I also had Kill command linked there until someone pointed out the bug.

What's the bug? Is it still bugged?

[Arktem]

if i may ask a more basic bm question: how do you make use of focus fire, on cd if 5 stacks or is it better to delay it until you drop out of bw/rapid fire?
also big thanks for pointing out the kc bug with the rather convenient macro

Right now, and eve before the change, it's by far more beneficial to use BW on cooldown, with the exception being Rapid Fire. If your pet gets even 1 more Basic Attack off because of the focus gain, it will outweigh any damage it would of gained otherwise.

Basically, I just pop it at 5 almost immediately.

if i may ask a more basic bm question: how do you make use of focus fire, on cd if 5 stacks or is it better to delay it until you drop out of bw/rapid fire?
also big thanks for pointing out the kc bug with the rather convenient macro

If you make a macro that has both BW and KC in the macro, even if BW is popped first. The latency makes it so your KC does not actually gain the 20% damage boost.

[Deleted]

Hmmm, I'm afraid that I still am at odds with this sequence, lets focus on positions 10-14:

+10 Kill Command

+11 Dire Beast
+12 Glaive Toss
+13 Cobra Shot (Before your first Rapid Fire expires)
+14 Arcane Shot/Bestial Wrath (First expires here)

.

After Readiness, there is no BW listed in the sequence. Position 14 says that BW will expire here; it can't it wasn't triggered and even if it was just after readiness it will not expire by position 14. So please correct me if I am wrong but am I right in guessing that position 10 should actually read:

+10 Kill Command/Cool downs (inc. BW) - MACRO

Position 13 does not make sense to me; it states "before RF expires" but we haven't hit RF since the Readniess and technically we won't trigger RF till position 23 (after BW expires). CoS kind of makes sense if focus is running low, else SrS would make more sense at this point, would it not?


Point of note re Blink Strikes, it is now SO fast that the pet reaches your target long before your arrow lands (esp. with the macro'd claw command). This means for low level mobs you wont be able to loot them and your pet will have ripped their throats out before your arrow lands (hence you pet killed them not you.) In Raids, your pet is pretty much dead after the first couple of seconds, even with MD up, because it seems to pull aggro first on certain fights.

Got to say though, Blink Strikes really works now compared to aMoC.


So after extensive testing at the dummies I found that the sequence looks closer to this:

-10 Set up Traps

-5 MD

-1 Pre-pot

0 Serpent Shot

+1 A Murder of Crows

+2 Stampede/Rapid Fire - MACRO

+3 Kill Command/Cool downs - MACRO

+4 Dire Beast

+5 Glaive Toss

+6 Arcane Shot

+7 Arcane Shot

+8 Arcane Shot

+9 Kill Command

Readiness

+10 Kill Command/Cool downs - MACRO (inc. BW, racial and engineering)

+11 A Murder of Crows
+12 Dire Beast

+13 Glaive Toss

+14 Cobra Shot
+15 Arcane Shot - (Bestial Wrath expires here)

+16 Rapid Fire

+17 Arcane Shot

+18 Arcane Shot

+19 Arcane Shot

+20 Kill Command

+21 Arcane Shot

+22 Arcane Shot

+23 Cobra Shot

+24 Arcane Shot / Cobra Shot

+25 Arcane Shot

+26 Kill Command

...

+27 Rapid Fire after Bestial Wrath ends

.



isn't it better to do this though:

-10 Set up Traps

-5 MD

-1 Pre-pot

0 Serpent Shot

+1 A Murder of Crows

+2 Stampede/Rapid Fire - MACRO

+3 Kill Command/Cool downs - MACRO

+4 Dire Beast

+5 Glaive Toss

+6 Arcane Shot

+7 Arcane Shot

+8 Arcane Shot
+9 Kill Command

+10 Arcane Shot
+11 Arcane Shot
+12 Arcane Shot - (Rapid Fire expires here)

+13 Kill Command

+14 Readiness
+15 Kill Command/Cool downs - MACRO (inc. BW, racial and engineering)

+16 Rapid Fire
+17 A Murder of Crows
+18 Dire Beast

+19 Glaive Toss

+20 Cobra Shot
+21 Arcane Shot

+22 Arcane Shot - (Bestial Wrath expires here)

+23 Arcane Shot

+24 Arcane Shot / Cobra Shot - (if needed)

+20 Kill Command

+21 Arcane Shot

+22 Arcane Shot

+23 Cobra Shot

+24 Arcane Shot / Cobra Shot - (Rapid Fire expires here)

+26 Kill Command - (pre-pot expires here)

This way you get the most out of your pre-pot (Virmen's Bite) and you get the same benefit as position 2 at position 16.

[Wega]

thank you very much, i'll try to keep that in mind!

[eschatological]

There are a few problems with your rotation, Lionel. The assumption is you're popping BW at +3 (where it says "cooldowns"). BW even without the t14 4pc lasts 10s, so it'll be expiring at +13, and you pop the second BW at +14 (like the original rotation suggests). Readiness resets the CD of BW, but you don't pop it immediately because the first one is still running. You pop Readiness DURING that first BW because you want to fit in 3 KCs in the first BW (at +3, +9, and +10).

Also, in your "new" rotation, you have KCs at +9 and +13 when the CD is 6s. Also, you have Readiness on a global by itself at (+14) when it costs no GCD. And RF lasts 15s, not 10s.

[Deleted]

I am learning a lot from this thread, thank you everyone. I am also learning about syntax; I didn't realise that the numbers were seconds, I thought that they were simply a unique ID per line.

Let me think about this and redo the sequence again.

When would you pop aMoC?