Help me help him?

[Sabbywabby]

Hello Hunters!

I come to you guys as a concerned guild leader/raid leader. Our hunter is pretty consistently our lowest dps and it's getting to the point where other raiders are starting to point it out. I don't know much about hunters, other than what I read about them. At times, he'll do really well. And then at other times, not so much.

We're a pretty casual guild, being only 1/13 heroic. That being said, I don't expect him to be performing at the same level as the top hunters in the world. I do, however, expect damage output that is within his gear level.

A couple things that I know need to be fixed are:

• Jewelcrafting needs to be maxed.
• Serpent Sting doesn't have high enough uptimes sometimes.

• Spec: Survival
• Item Level: 528
• Expectations: Do damage comparable to gear.
• Armory Link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...iodin/advanced
• Worldoflogs Link: http://www.worldoflogs.com/guilds/229331/
• Femaledwarf Link: http://www.femaledwarf.com/?setting_id=14999

Does anyone see anything fundamentally wrong that might can help?

Any help at all is very greatly appreciated.

[Krillen]

Ok, lets have a look. First of all he is missing a major glyph in his Surv spec which needs to be Animal bond and I would also put this in his BM spec as its our only mandatory Glyph for raiding, the others can be/should be changed dependent on the fight. The specs seem ok however, I would say as a SV hunter TOTH would be better for the majority of fights then dire beasts.

He has 4 piece, meta gem and 2 RPPM trinkets and now should really be be reforging/enchanting into haste where applicable.

He really needs to start using arcane shot more, his BA uptime is lacking we really need to aim for as close to 100% as possible (I know 100% cannot be reach btw). His SS seems to be up and down like a yoyo. He also needs to really start looking at changing his spec for different fights. TBH at his gear level he should probs be BM all the way through for optimal DPS, except maybe Tortos.

[lolo855]

nvm, gonna check em out now !

[Jeremypwnz]

Looking only at your most recent Durumu kill as I feel normal Durumu is as patchwerk as Throne of Thunder really gets (for Hunters).

He's not using Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, A Murder of Crows, Dire Beast enough. Missed out of an extra Rapid Fire or 2. As you mentioned his Serpent Sting uptime is really low.

He needs the Animal Bond glyph.

If he can drop about 1.5-2k expertise in the near future, that would be awesome.

There's also this thread stickied at the top of the page.

[HonneurVilified]

I wrote a lot of stuff originally but I like TL;DR versions of things. It boils down to him just not casting his abilities enough. Like, half as much as he is supposed to enough. It might sound super dumb and simple but he seriously needs to mash his keys, because he's losing the majority of his DPS from just not casting things. Reforging, gemming, talents, anything like that, are just bandaids that *will* help, but can only fix maybe 20% of his problem. The fundamental issue is that he is too slow.

[Deleted]

I came to the same conclusion as Honneur,

Looking at his council of elders was particularly clear in highlighting this. There is pretty-much no fight (except pure AoE fights) where an SV hunter should come out the end of it with anything but Explosive Shot as their top damage ability.

His uptime on Black Arrow was very low so I expected to see lots of damage from Explosive trap (as they share a CD) but there was none. More Black Arrow = more free explosive shots = more damage.

Dire Beast and Glaive toss were very under-used. They should be used on CD.

I notice that he actually used more arcane shots than any other special. More arcane shots is good only if everything else is getting used first (this may not be true in 5.4 depending on what further changes are made on the current PTR build).

22 Cobra shots in a 7 minute fight seems very low, it's how we get our focus back...

If I was guessing at his playstyle (and I am only guessing) it's that he isn't good at focus management on the more mechanic-heavy fights and starts resorting to spamming arcane when he has enough focus as it regens naturally. His dps on Jin'rokh was quite reasonable* so perhaps it's not that he doesn't know how to do it but that he struggles to do it when there's other stuff going on.

*I say reasonable but there's a lot of room for improvement, Dire beast was only used 3 times in a 3 minute fight when it could have been used 6/7 times.

As I said, I agree with Honneur above, it's not a case of little things but quite fundamental flaws in his playstyle.

EDIT: Forgot to mention this as a side-note: Even if he corrects all this, his DPS won't be stellar but that's not his fault, we're just behind the other classes generally at the moment, not by much but it's at the gear level he is currently at that we fall behind a little. Check WoL's highest damage rankings for hunters, you'll see what I mean!

[bendak]

He needs to hit more buttons basically. Glaive Toss isn't being used on cooldown, DoT uptime (SS, BA, AMOC) is low. Having low dot uptime is pretty punishing for Survival. Missing a glyph is probably just an oversight when he was switching them at some point, plus that's not a dps gain anyway.

Stuff like reforging to haste will help a little bit, but the difference is much smaller than being able to hit moar buttons. I have a feeling he is spending a lot of time at capped or very high focus.

One thing I would suggest for him is to use blink strikes (except on magaera!) instead of murder of crows. It's less buttons to push and less cooldowns to keep track of, which is where he's having some trouble.

[Aertea]

Most of the time, when someones significantly under-performing as a Hunter it comes down to the same thing: periods of inactivity.

Durumu was a 5:35 fight, but I only see about 4 minutes worth of GCDs/Cobra's being used. This basically means he stood around doing nothing for 25% of the fight. He needs to learn to push buttons while moving, that's the whole point of the Hunter class.

[Rackfu]

Just quickly looking at a early couple fights...


1) Did not prepot or use a pot during Jin'rohk or Horridon.... Is this happening on other fights?

2) Black Arrow uptime of only 60%.. Perfect usage of Black Arrow would be 83% (20 sec duration on a 24 sec cooldown).

3) On Horridon, an 8 min fight, he appeared to use Murder of Crows (2 min cooldown) only once. Could of used at least 6 times (with Readiness).

4) Also on Horridon, with all those adds.... Only used Kill Shot 4 times.... Does nice damage and no focus cost.

5) Not the biggest deal in terms of dps, but the fact that you are working on heroics and he still a profession less than maxed out would bother me as a raid lead.

[Bisso]

Tell him to mash his ability buttons.

If he needs reminder about some cooldown and uptimes. Please tell him to try out WeakAuras (or PowerAuras) and make him track all is uptimes like for exemple a big Serpent Sting icon that pops in his face when his current target doesn't have his Serpent Sting dot. (he should put it in the screen where he looks the most often during a fight)

same goes for Black Arrow, an big icon pops when Black Arrow is off cooldown AND his current target doesn't have one (from him) on at the moment (or have less than 2 seconds left).

These little helpers are pretty easy to setup and are life savers for people who easily lose track of abilities status throughout a fight, especially fights that require alot of a player's attention to not die.

[JSorrentino]

You need a new hunter that's not lazy.

[Artemol]

Underperforming

With 528 itemlvl gear, you should be able to pull 150-175k consistent dps.

His Reforges are wrong - Get ReforgeLite(Good for starters) - Pick Haste -> Crit -> Mastery as your prios.

Change ALL the "80 Agil & 160 Crit" gems to "80 Agil & 160 Haste" Gems.

Change T5 Talent From aMoC to Blink Strike.

Use the following Macros(For optimal CD usage, for someone with your current progress):

#Showtooltip Arcane Shot
/cast Arcane Shot
/cast Berserking(Racial)
/cast Rapid Fire
/use Saurok Stalker's Gloves
/use Tyrannical Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets
/petattack
/Petassist

&
#Showtooltip Cobra Shot
/cast Cobra Shot
/cast Dire Beast

&

#Showtooltip Kill Command
#showtooltip Kill Command
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Kill Command
/cast Beserking
/petattack
/Petassist

&
#showtooltip Stampede
/Cast Rapid Fire
/Cast Stampede
/cast Berserking(Racial)
/use Malevolent Gladiator's Badge of Conquest
/use Malevolent Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets

&
#Showtooltip Deterrence
/cancelaura Deterrence
/cancelaura Misdirection
/cancelaura Hand of Protection
/cancelaura Levitate
/cancelaura Slow Fall
/cancelaura Goblin Glider
/stopcasting
/cast deterrence

And most importantly... go Beast Mastery - It pulls ahead on ALL fights, except for Horridon & Tortos(If Survival is played perfectly there).


How to Rotation?:

- Pre-cast Cobrashot with a pot.
- Serpent Sting
- Kill Command(with the macro BW is popped on the same time.)
- Stampede
- Dire Beast
- Glaive Toss
- Arcane Shot x3 (Depends on your focus Regen - Note that you pop RAPID FIRE here, using the macro above.)
- Kill Command
- Cobra Shot(If you got insane focus regen here, it's better to manually apply Serpent Sting later on)
- Arcane Shot
- At this point, you're around 10 seconds into the fight.
- Readiness
- Kill Command
- Glaive Toss
- Dire Beast
- Serpent Sting(if not refreshed from earlier)
- Arcane Shot macro.


And use Focus Fire @ 5 Stacks - Do NOT use it while your BW is active - aka pop it after 20 Seconds, if its up.

Other than that, keep Glaive Toss & Kill Command on CD, aswell as Dire beast - Refresh Serpent Sting with Cobra Shots.

Use your 2nd pot with Timewarp, or if BOTH your trinkets, BW and Rapid fire procs on the same time.



You SHOULD be able to pull 400-500k dps burst using this.
and then have a stable dps on 150-175k.


Yeah, i myself am 13/13 Heroic for a very long amount of time now ;P


This was tested on a very undergeared hunter, who was doing 25k dps playing like your hunter was(he had shit gear compared to me).
When i taught him this, his dps increased to 80-90k.
Yeah, he was below the 480 itemlvl.


Good Luck

[JSorrentino]

Underperforming

With 528 itemlvl gear, you should be able to pull 150-175k consistent dps.

His Reforges are wrong - Get ReforgeLite(Good for starters) - Pick Haste -> Crit -> Mastery as your prios.

Change ALL the "80 Agil & 160 Crit" gems to "80 Agil & 160 Haste" Gems.

Change T5 Talent From aMoC to Blink Strike.

Use the following Macros(For optimal CD usage, for someone with your current progress):

#Showtooltip Arcane Shot
/cast Arcane Shot
/cast Berserking(Racial)
/cast Rapid Fire
/use Saurok Stalker's Gloves
/use Tyrannical Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets
/petattack
/Petassist

&
#Showtooltip Cobra Shot
/cast Cobra Shot
/cast Dire Beast

&

#Showtooltip Kill Command
#showtooltip Kill Command
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Kill Command
/cast Beserking
/petattack
/Petassist

&
#showtooltip Stampede
/Cast Rapid Fire
/Cast Stampede
/cast Berserking(Racial)
/use Malevolent Gladiator's Badge of Conquest
/use Malevolent Gladiator's Chain Gauntlets

&
#Showtooltip Deterrence
/cancelaura Deterrence
/cancelaura Misdirection
/cancelaura Hand of Protection
/cancelaura Levitate
/cancelaura Slow Fall
/cancelaura Goblin Glider
/stopcasting
/cast deterrence

And most importantly... go Beast Mastery - It pulls ahead on ALL fights, except for Horridon & Tortos(If Survival is played perfectly there).


How to Rotation?:

- Pre-cast Cobrashot with a pot.
- Serpent Sting
- Kill Command(with the macro BW is popped on the same time.)
- Stampede
- Dire Beast
- Glaive Toss
- Arcane Shot x3 (Depends on your focus Regen - Note that you pop RAPID FIRE here, using the macro above.)
- Kill Command
- Cobra Shot(If you got insane focus regen here, it's better to manually apply Serpent Sting later on)
- Arcane Shot
- At this point, you're around 10 seconds into the fight.
- Readiness
- Kill Command
- Glaive Toss
- Dire Beast
- Serpent Sting(if not refreshed from earlier)
- Arcane Shot macro.


And use Focus Fire @ 5 Stacks - Do NOT use it while your BW is active - aka pop it after 20 Seconds, if its up.

Other than that, keep Glaive Toss & Kill Command on CD, aswell as Dire beast - Refresh Serpent Sting with Cobra Shots.

Use your 2nd pot with Timewarp, or if BOTH your trinkets, BW and Rapid fire procs on the same time.



You SHOULD be able to pull 400-500k dps burst using this.
and then have a stable dps on 150-175k.


Yeah, i myself am 13/13 Heroic for a very long amount of time now ;P


This was tested on a very undergeared hunter, who was doing 25k dps playing like your hunter was(he had shit gear compared to me).
When i taught him this, his dps increased to 80-90k.
Yeah, he was below the 480 itemlvl.


Good Luck

Good write-up for a hunter with their progression. One caveat. /stopcasting needs to be used twice. The first one stops a current cast of something like Cobra Shot, and the second stops your auto-shot cast.

[Deleted]

I'd advise him to drop skinning and go Engineering, the Glove "enchant"(or W/E you wish to call it), Synapse Springs gives you (almost)2k Agil, and is great for DPS.
activating this in a macro is /use 10 just add this ( /use 10 ) to the macros mentioned above.

[Thursley]

Good write-up for a hunter with their progression. One caveat. /stopcasting needs to be used twice. The first one stops a current cast of something like Cobra Shot, and the second stops your auto-shot cast.

Your conclusion is right but the explanation is backwards, which makes it kind of confusing. The first /stopcasting stops your auto-shot but leaves your Cobra Shot cast (or whatever it may be) still going, so the second /stopcasting cancels that and allows you to use another ability. If the first one stopped the current cast then you'd be able to use another ability after just that since auto-shot wouldn't interfere. WHY the first /stopcasting interrupts auto-shot instead of a casted ability I have no idea.

[Deleted]

Underperforming


#Showtooltip Cobra Shot
/cast Cobra Shot
/cast Dire Beast


Good Luck

I don't understand why you would have Dire beast inside of your Cobra shot,cobra shot will always go off, and dire beast wont.
This isn't 5.1 anymore when you could macro in Dire beast into any macro and still get it off, that was removed.
easiest and only way to use direbeast -> click/push the keybind that you have keybound "Dire Beast" to.

[Tehstool]

#Showtooltip Kill Command
#showtooltip Kill Command
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast Kill Command
/cast Beserking
/petattack
/Petassist

Don't use this. Have a separate bind for BW. Sometimes you may not want to use it and it has a tendency to cast kill command before BW while macrod like this.

[gulder]

#Showtooltip Cobra Shot
/cast Cobra Shot
/cast Dire Beast

Both spells are on the GCD. This will not work.

[Rackfu]

Underperforming

With 528 itemlvl gear, you should be able to pull 150-175k consistent dps.
Good Luck

Whoa.... That might be good info for someone wondering how to squeeze every drop out of their class and get that extra 1-2%

This hunter is just forgetting to use his big cooldowns and not using his important rotational abilities on cooldown.

Don't overwhelm him.

----

Also, don't "/use NAME OF ITEM" to use equipped gear.

Instead:

For engineering glove enchant: /use 10
For first trinket: /use 13
For second trinket: /use 14

[Namarus]

#Showtooltip Deterrence
/cancelaura Deterrence
/cancelaura Misdirection
/cancelaura Hand of Protection
/cancelaura Levitate
/cancelaura Slow Fall
/cancelaura Goblin Glider
/stopcasting
/cast deterrence

This macro is really really bad for novice hunters. If you are a hunter who spams your buttons this macro will fuck your deterrence.