A couple Survival questions and opener:

[Deleted]

Hello as the topic says, I'm looking foward to increase my DPS even more on some fights. Sometimes when the fight starts, I can even pull over 250k+ with opener and sometimes it suck balls and I'm at around 170-180k at start.

Here is the link to my armory:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...3%AAk/advanced

What is the best way to open on fight?
- the way, I do it is:
1: Potion
2: Explosive Shot
3: Black Arrow
4: Stampede
5: Glavie Toss
6: All CD's with procs + serpent Sting
7: Wait for [Lock and Load] Use Readiness to squeeze additional Explosive Shot
etc....?

I have my ENGI agi glove proc macroed into my explosive shot same as my racial and rabid
- should, I unmacro it and use it properly during the fight on [Trinket procs] ?

I'm also putting at around 100-110k single target DPS
- is it ok with my gear? or should, I do much more than that.

Which one of the abilities does more dmg when my agi trinket procs?

Is it better to use instant serpent sting on a target or refresh it with cobra shot when my trinket procs?

I don't really understand the shortcuts like: SRS etc... so if anybody can explain in normal way that'd be great. Thanks in advance.

[Jeremypwnz]

In no way is what I do the "correct" opener, but I'm quite fond of it and it bursts pretty high off the gate (Seen here).

Sometime before pull MD
-1 Pot (more like -0.01)
+0 Serpent Sting (SrS)
+1 Explosive Shot (ES)
+2 Black Arrow (BA)
+3 Rapid Fire (RF)+Berserking+Stampede
+4 Cobra Shot (CS)
+5 A Murder of Crows (AmoC)+Fervor
+6 Glaive Toss (GT)
+7 ES -- Procs and instinct come into play around here
+8 ES
+9 ES
+10 Arcane Shot (AS)
+11 AS
+12 AS
+13 AS
+14 AS
+15 ES -- And I don't really have anything set after this. I might Readiness>ES>GT>RF>more stuff though.

I think Tehstool said something about not using Stampede after RF but..

I'm pretty sure on Rabid, you leave that on auto cast for Survival.

[Danshot]

if there's a bloodlust on pull, do I need to get stampede out beforehand?

[Saoron]

no, they'll update dynamically.

[Glurp]

In my opinion 100-110k is lower than you should be doing but not so low you should be worried about it.

In general macroing gloves/racial would be a DPS loss because you cannot control or or line them up with other CDs properly. Rabid should also be on autocast too.

When possible I try to get a maximum duration buffed serpent sting however it is very hard to relaibly pull off and trying to do it could actually cost you DPS if you screw it up. Towards the end of my Blades of Renataki proc I try to get close to focus cap and either time a Cobra Shot to land with under 2 seconds left on proc or just apply Serpent Sting manually (2 seconds left on proc = 13.3k agi) then I'll let that tick for as long as possible by not casting Cobra Shot until I'm completely out of Focus. Fervor helps a lot there if it happens to line up.

I'm not sure how much of a DPS increase it is, but from testing on the dummy a Serpent Sting with 13.3k agi procced does about 3x as much damage as an unbuffed one.

[Skygoneblue]

This isn't directed at the OP at all, just in general... Why is there so much emphasis on "correct" openers in these forums? In fights that last 5-10 minutes, is the order of the buttons that you press in the first 10 seconds really going to make THAT much of a difference in the long haul?

Sure, seeing big bursty peak numbers might be fun, but it seems infinitely more important to me to maintain a tight rotation during the fight and to worry less about the opening sequence with the way too many abilities that we have.

[Glurp]

This isn't directed at the OP at all, just in general... Why is there so much emphasis on "correct" openers in these forums? In fights that last 5-10 minutes, is the order of the buttons that you press in the first 10 seconds really going to make THAT much of a difference in the long haul?

Sure, seeing big bursty peak numbers might be fun, but it seems infinitely more important to me to maintain a tight rotation during the fight and to worry less about the opening sequence with the way too many abilities that we have.

The start of the fight has Prepot, skull banner, stormlash and often Bloodlust. It is the most important window to do everything correctly and when you have all of your buttons ready doing them in the correct order makes a huge difference to your damage during this opening burst.

[Skygoneblue]

The start of the fight has Prepot, skull banner, stormlash and often Bloodlust. It is the most important window to do everything correctly and when you have all of your buttons ready doing them in the correct order makes a huge difference to your damage during this opening burst.

That's exactly my point. It's great burst during that opening phase, but it's such a small portion of the actual fight that it seems silly to fuss so much over the ability order. Probably just my opinion I guess... /shrug

[Deleted]

Ey Jeremy, why do you have Berserking macroed into RF?

[clevin]

I've been wondering the same as Skygoneblue - does the precise order in which you mash buttons really matter to your overall DPS/Damage over the fight?

For example, I get Serpent up first on the principle that dots run a bit longer. Then BA, then ES (I'm SV). BA is second to maximise my proc chance on Lock n Load... but is it really going to make any difference if I hit it 2nd or 3rd? If I cast Fervor > AMOC >Stampede or Stampede > Fervor >AMOC?

Somehow I doubt it... but has anyone simmed it? No, I'm not interested in subjective answers.... I can argue both sides as a matter of opinion. The only constraint I can see is that if you prepot at -2seconds you have about 22 seconds to get everything cast while your first pot is active.

[Glurp]

I said it, did you read? Potion + Skull Banner + Stormlash + Lust. Obviously you want to maximize everything you do during this point. If you want to be ignorant and do everything your own way then do so and everyone else doing it right will continue out damaging you all day.

If I cast Fervor > AMOC >Stampede or Stampede > Fervor >AMOC?

Prepot lasts 20 seconds and AMoC lasts 30. You want to AMoC as soon as possible to have as many ticks of it during your potion as possible. Same with Stampede, it lasts for 30 seconds so you want to have as much of it active with Rapid Fire+Prepot as possible.

Fervor is irrelevant as it only returns focus. Use it ASAP as long as you don't Focus cap or over right your previous Fervor buff after Readiness.


Feel free to go ask any top WoL ranking player if stacking your CDs together or using them whenever you feel like does more DPS. They'll probably laugh at you.

[Deleted]

I think you should look at it more like, the best way to spend your 100 focus at the beginning of the fight.

[Tehstool]

Just a heads up stampede lasts for 20 seconds not 30. So if you use it a few seconds after AMoC/what have you you will still get the full duration of the pre pot with it.

[Conjor]

You can botch up the Survival rotation to a certain extent and not have it affect your bottom-line dps in any noticeable way. The opener is a little different however, but the same fact still flies. As long as you hit all the buttons you need to hit, the order won't make that big of a deal.

Your burst damage will depend far more greatly on your rng with crits, RPPM trinket procs, ect. that hitting MoC before BA, or RF before Stampede really won't make or break your damage.

I've told this to many people trying to improve their DPS as a hunter: just focus on keeping everything on cooldown. Once you are comfortable with that, then you can worry about "priority". In fact, it will most likely just flow once you figure out how to keep everything on cooldown.

It sounds like a lazy-mans guide but it is what it is. Maybe I'm just that used to it and I'm reducing it too much...

[Sylvari]

What I don't understand about SV is how I can still pull more single target DPS as BM with 2 522 RP trinkets And stacking Crit>Haste. I know BM has been the better of the two but with my haste and trinkets I figured SV would pull ahead. Maybe it is my opener. 515 ilvl.

[clevin]

I said it, did you read? Potion + Skull Banner + Stormlash + Lust. Obviously you want to maximize everything you do during this point. If you want to be ignorant and do everything your own way then do so and everyone else doing it right will continue out damaging you all day.

I'm not interested in your opinion especially your little temper tantrums.

Prepot lasts 20 seconds and AMoC lasts 30. You want to AMoC as soon as possible to have as many ticks of it during your potion as possible. Same with Stampede, it lasts for 30 seconds so you want to have as much of it active with Rapid Fire+Prepot as possible.

Fervor is irrelevant as it only returns focus. Use it ASAP as long as you don't Focus cap or over right your previous Fervor buff after Readiness.


Feel free to go ask any top WoL ranking player if stacking your CDs together or using them whenever you feel like does more DPS. They'll probably laugh at you.

When you have sims to show that the order of openers matters materially to the dps a hunter does over the course of a longer fight let me know. Until then, take your attitude, fold it until it's all corners and shove it. And given that you don't even know the duration of a main CD (Stampede) and don't recognize that you'll need Fervor to cast AMOC since you wo't have 60 Focus after casting SS, BA, ES, I'm not really inclined to put a lot of faith in what you say.


For the rest of you... the point isn't whether to use CDs early on, etc it's whether the precise order really matters. These threads pop up from time to time and I've always wondered whether the order matters a lot or not as long as you get stuff off when your prepot etc is active. Obviously, on short fights a material difference will affect things... but on 7+ minute fights or fights like Horridon where there are lots of add control (and it's thus not a Patchwerk environment)...?

[Skygoneblue]

Feel free to go ask any top WoL ranking player if stacking your CDs together or using them whenever you feel like does more DPS. They'll probably laugh at you.

And they'll probably be nicer about it than you. Stop being a snarky prick about an honest question.

Besides, Clevin and I are asking about the ORDER of the abilities. No one is debating if it's a good idea to stack your cooldowns or not, that's obvious. What we want to know is if putting Serpent Sting up ahead of Black Arrow is going to have some kind of detrimental impact on your ending DPS.

People seem to want to have a bulleted list of their first 20 buttons that they need to press, which I guess is probably the result of a game culture that has been dumbed down to cookie-cutter specs and BIS lists.

[Glurp]

And they'll probably be nicer about it than you. Stop being a snarky prick about an honest question.

Besides, Clevin and I are asking about the ORDER of the abilities. No one is debating if it's a good idea to stack your cooldowns or not, that's obvious. What we want to know is if putting Serpent Sting up ahead of Black Arrow is going to have some kind of detrimental impact on your ending DPS.

People seem to want to have a bulleted list of their first 20 buttons that they need to press, which I guess is probably the result of a game culture that has been dumbed down to cookie-cutter specs and BIS lists.

Things like putting SrS before BA won't do much, it might give you an extra 20k damage throughout the whole fight. The more important thing is the order in which your major cooldowns fit in there for things such as maximum uptime during the pre-pot.

In WoW there are a lot of minor things you can do that might only account to 500 dps each, but once you add all those little things together it can make a big difference in the end which is the main difference between top WoL rankers and regular players.

[Conjor]

What I don't understand about SV is how I can still pull more single target DPS as BM with 2 522 RP trinkets And stacking Crit>Haste. I know BM has been the better of the two but with my haste and trinkets I figured SV would pull ahead. Maybe it is my opener. 515 ilvl.

Most likely your opener is skewing your view on the effective damage. BM's on-demand burst is very nice if it can be used effectively. There are very few fights where I would really want to play BM due to its damage being higher in particular places (Heroic Iron Qon if you were wondering).

---------- Post added 2013-04-01 at 03:40 PM ----------

in the end which is the main difference between top WoL rankers and regular players.

I would consider the main difference to be padding and/or buff feeding. How often do you see effective damage netting you a top WoL parse outside of the first few weeks of the tier?

[Glurp]

I would consider the main difference to be padding and/or buff feeding. How often do you see effective damage netting you a top WoL parse outside of the first few weeks of the tier?

It can depend on the fight for the padding. I've seen top 5 ranks with a normal number of shaman/warriors/rogues on patchwerk fights.