Help my raid group's hunter

[Breccia]

So my guild is trying to move further with progression, and tonight that meant Flex Garrosh. Yes, Flex is progression for us. It's not inspiring.

Anyhow, after our failure to kill Flex Garrosh some of the raid members are looking for various ways to improve. My task is the hunter Karlis.

This is his Armory. As you can see, his ilvl is 547 and he's carrying a 561 crossbow.

This was tonight's log. As you can see, he's getting a 114k overall DPS (150k if you ignore the time he spent dead). For his gear (especially that weapon) this feels low, and not just because it's the lowest in the raid group by a wide margin and below one of the tanks.

This was a new fight for almost everyone and we're still working on the mechanics, but the hunter seems to be in a pretty bad spot overall. Yes, other people need help too, but that's not why I'm on this forum. What can this Hunter do, either as a general Hunter improvement or as Garrosh-specific Hunter advice, that will help? I'll take anything at this point.

EDIT: One more thing: "tell him to get the legendary" is great advice in general, but won't help here.

[clevin]

Hmmm.... I think this is a pay attention to uptime and use stuff on CD issue. His Explosive Shot count is low (it's a 6 second CD not including LnL prods) so you can calculate how many ES's he should have by dividing 6 into the fight time in seconds. Your 5th attempt he was alive for most of it...let's say 8 mins. He should have 75+ ES shots, has 34. Black Arrow uptime is low as is SS. What I'd do for him is to have him get some Weak Aura strings for everything that's on CD (Explosive Shot, Black Arrow, Glaive Toss) and have it put up a big annoying graphic at the top of his screen that sits there until it's used. Also get a dottimer so he can track SS. Now, there are mechanics in that fight that can cause some issues until you learn them (for example, if he runs over the kill and Engineer), but in general, this just feels like he's forgetting to use abilities when they're off CD and that's usually solvable by using a UI add-on that bleats at you when stuff's off CD.

Stat-wise... he can drop some hit (there's a hit/agi gem that should be pure AGI) but once he's down to 7.5% hit he's fine. I'm sure someone will pick at something there, but the stats look reasonable.

Talents - if he finds himself focus starved, drop DB and get Fervor. On demand focus and faster regen for a bit is nice. Learn to pool a bit of focus too, you should rarely be under 30 for long.

[Daetur]

It looks like he's the only DPS in your group besides the other hunter without a legendary cloak. And while I'm not saying "just get the legendary!," I am saying that he'd probably be doing about the same dps as the mage and lock if he had it, so don't be too hard on his performance compared to some of the others in your group. It would net him like 50 million more damage over the course of a night, looking at the logs- which is pretty close to the disparity overall between him and the other lower DPS. Just be aware of that.

What can he fix right now, though?

His Explosive Shot usage needs to go up. That's the biggest thing. It's really, really low. He needs to make sure the Serpent Sting and Black Arrow are up as close to 100% of the time as possible- just put BA on Garrosh if adds are up that are going to die before a full BA cycle. His BA uptime is poor, which means he's not getting as many Lock and Load procs for free Explosive Shots- he needs to keep BA up to get those procs, and then he needs to be prioritizing ES.

Much smaller, but I would highly recommend that he swap Glyph of Mending out for Glyph of Animal Bond- it's going to help your healers more than they realize. I also prefer Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera instead of Narrow Escape or Posthaste (except in certain situations on Heroic). If he needs something to lock down the Empowered Whirl adds with, try Binding Shot- it can also be used to stun the adds, and Wyvern Sting isn't getting him any benefit on Garrosh. None of these changes are required, though.

There's no shame in progressing in Flex. That's what it's there for! Good luck with Garrosh!

[Aldarana]

Stat-wise... he can drop some hit (there's a hit/agi gem that should be pure AGI) but once he's down to 7.5% hit he's fine. I'm sure someone will pick at something there, but the stats look reasonable.

Leave the agi hit gem in, its the correct choice. The socket bonus makes it so he's getting more agility that way than with a straight agi gem, ignore the extra hit. He hasn't reforged the mastery on his TED to crit.

Talents - if he finds himself focus starved, drop DB and get Fervor. On demand focus and faster regen for a bit is nice. Learn to pool a bit of focus too, you should rarely be under 30 for long.

Thrill of the Hunt would probably be better than fervor. Its a passive so nothing to press and you can just play like normal, nothing special really that he should worry about with it.

He'll want to pay more attention to some of his buffs. On most pulls he has lass than 10% up time on Rapid Fire and as Survival with the 2 piece he should have around 30% up time. Rapid Fire is off the GCD and you can just hit it off cool down, if he wants he can macro it into Arcane Shot. Just to say it again, Explosive Shot should be used on cooldown. It has a low focus cost so saving up for it shouldn't be to hard. Looking though some of the logs I'm not really sure what your hunter is doing with a lot of his time, make sure he's always doing something. He does get off a lot of Kill Shots, my guess is he hitting them because they light up, which is good, but I think it might also mean that he's only using ES when it lights up. Given the low Black Arrow uptime that isn't very often. Based on those guesses I'm going to say this: Thrill is going to make his Arcane Shot and Multi-Shot light up he should ignore this. Do not hit them until they don't light up anymore, just use them like normal.

Clampy's Wear Auras or JS Hunter Bar maybe of some help, both work fine out of the box and should help him with his debuffs and using abilities on CD.

[clevin]

Leave the agi hit gem in, its the correct choice. The socket bonus makes it so he's getting more agility that way than with a straight agi gem, ignore the extra hit. He hasn't reforged the mastery on his TED to crit.

Ah, good catch, I was replying while dinner was cooking... But do reforge out of the hit if he can.

Thrill of the Hunt would probably be better than fervor. Its a passive so nothing to press and you can just play like normal, nothing special really that he should worry about with it.

For him that might be better. I liked the control Fervor gave me. Not really a wrong choice there though.

[bpolak]

Like other said, BA uptime and ExpShot usage are both a bit low. Not the hardest thing to change though. He should definitely be running Thrill of the Hunt. It gets better with his 2 set than Dire Beast does, and it makes the four set slightly easier to work with, not to mention the four set improves it just slightly.

Other than that, keep in mind he doesn't have the legendary cape, and both of his trinkets are pretty garbage for survival so until he gets one of those three I wouldn't be too harsh on him. Harrom's and Assurance are both HUGE upgrades for survival, and Assurance is huge for BM as well. He just needs a few more good pieces and you should see some vast improvements.

[NatePsy]

Missing Legendary Meta gem too, he should really get on that quest.

[Xionyus]

By looking at his armory I have to say that:

• He has two piece. His talents are wrong, wrong, wrong. These below are the go to talents for Survival, DPS wise. You don't want to mix and match (ex: Blink Strikes + Thrill of the Hunt). The choices I gave below synergize with each other for specific reasons.

1. Get Fervor + Blink Strikes
   
2. Get Thrill of the Hunt + A Murder of Crows.

• Narrow Escape is a PVP talent. You want Crouching Tiger, Hidden Chimera for 90% of fights in SoO. It reduces the cooldown on your only defensive CD by a minute.
• Glyph of Snake Trap and Glyph of Mending??? I see Glyph of Mending sometimes if you are soloing something, but Snake Trap? Get rid of them both and get Animal Bond (100% necessary, it buffs healing received) and either Glyph of Liberation / Disengage.
• I'm trying to look at logs, but it's hard to find one where he isn't dead. He seems to stand in a lot of crap (ex: Desecrated Weapon, Annihilate, not popping CDs for Whirling Corruption). He died to adds once or twice as well. If he isn't going to Misdirect the adds to the tank, tell him to count to 5 and then start attacking them. It sounds rude, but it's honest. Also, just throwing this out there, don't put DOTs on mind controlled people. It killed your hunter buddy in a couple cases.
• He isn't using Explosive Shot. Hardly ever. It is the MAIN ability. It's like an Affliction Warlock not putting up dots and just using Malefic Grasp.
• He isn't using Black Arrow. Same as above. He has a 12% uptime on it when it can easily be at 100% with the Assurance trinket, which he does not have. So it should be around 66%.
• Serpent Sting uptime needs to be above 90%. The one attempt where he didn't die it was at 78%.

Seems like he needs to look up a rotation on Icy-Veins or something.

[Artemishowl]

Everyone else pretty much nailed the point in the head in. I just really think TED is meh for survival =/ Tell him to just make sure he's going for the 4 piece around the leggings, and aim for the leggings off norushen. Not much else to comment on.. how far is he in his legendary quest??

I really think he's very pvp-minded with his set up too, as previous posters stated. No one really uses wyvern sting in pve > binding shot, binding shot has a lot of useful properties in combat on various fights.

I also recommend for a newer raiding hunter to go with blink strikes FOR NOW as well as thrill of the hunt, and develop weakauras to keep track of various dots, procs, and timers of important CDs.

Honestly he just has a lot of timeless pieces that need to be fixed, the heavier core mechanics have been mentioned (black arrow uptimes should be above 66%~ish without AoC, SS is bad ES is bad you know the deal), and just change his talents around so he can practice his core abilities first and then work in AMoC and maybe (arguably) fervor.

[Deleted]

Another good trick that many hunters are unaware off is putting your pet on passive at all times and using a /petattack macro.
This way his pet will stay on garrosh all the time and won't lose dps from running between the adds, engineer,... etc.
If he doesn't want to do this then blink strikes IS A MUST. Even then I still recommend getting the habit of using such a macro on all fights.

[Illana]

Just seems like a case of not knowing/caring about his class. Give him a week to improve and if nothing changes just bench him for someone who can be bothered to research his class for at least 10 minutes. I can't believe you carried this guy all the way to garrosh.

[Artemishowl]

Just seems like a case of not knowing/caring about his class. Give him a week to improve and if nothing changes just bench him for someone who can be bothered to research his class for at least 10 minutes. I can't believe you carried this guy all the way to garrosh.

I mean honestly it's only flex, this is a chance to learn outside of the pvp grounds or whatever someone else does in game besides raiding, and really try to get a grip at it. If he cares enough to improve or learn from this thread, we saved a hunter brethren! I just feel like this dude's just really stuck in the pvp clouds heh.

[Azortharion]

8.7% Black Arrow uptime on a 5+ min fight. o.o

Tell him to shape up then bench him (if he won't/can't), it's not hard to press some abilities on cooldown.

[Illana]

I mean honestly it's only flex, this is a chance to learn outside of the pvp grounds or whatever someone else does in game besides raiding, and really try to get a grip at it. If he cares enough to improve or learn from this thread, we saved a hunter brethren! I just feel like this dude's just really stuck in the pvp clouds heh.

He would be horrific in pvp with the evidence presented as well. Tbh I think it's most likely ebayed or playing with horrific latency

[Artemishowl]

He would be horrific in pvp with the evidence presented as well. Tbh I think it's most likely ebayed or playing with horrific latency

Or he's just really new. I don't know, maybe he even clicks for all we know o-o we're talking about a guild that is progressing through /flex/, not heroics. Some players obviously need a little bit more attention to being eh, guided the right way, than others.

[Deleted]

Yeah, to clarify and make it short:

Track his DoTs, keep them up. Press explosive shot.

[Littlepinch]

For taking a lot of dmg from the desecrated Weps - Tell him to glyph disengage ( when he see's the wep dropping, all he has to do is turn his back towards the next stackpoint and disengage ) with this he will not get hit by the weps at all and can still focus on his shots.

Binding shot is really good for inside the transitions ( theres a pic somewhere in a thread here for binding shot positioning ) ill try to find it and edit.
With this you can stun all 3 adds in one group within the transition.
Heres the pic - http://i.imgur.com/ZJud7wW.png

As everyone else pointed out ( uptimes - uptimes - uptimes )

[Deleted]

For taking a lot of dmg from the desecrated Weps - Tell him to glyph disengage ( when he see's the wep dropping, all he has to do is turn his back towards the next stackpoint and disengage ) with this he will not get hit by the weps at all and can still focus on his shots.

Binding shot is really good for inside the transitions ( theres a pic somewhere in a thread here for binding shot positioning ) ill try to find it and edit.
With this you can stun all 3 adds in one group within the transition.

As everyone else pointed out ( uptimes - uptimes - uptimes )

I don't think that's really the issue though. You dont need to stun anything on flex/normal tbh, only on heroic. He needs to just learn to press shit on cooldown before he starts thinking about more "advanced" play. The fact he's taking desecrate damage is most likely from him tunnelling his bars and sitting in it when it lands.

[Littlepinch]

I don't think that's really the issue though. You dont need to stun anything on flex/normal tbh, only on heroic. He needs to just learn to press shit on cooldown before he starts thinking about more "advanced" play. The fact he's taking desecrate damage is most likely from him tunnelling his bars and sitting in it when it lands.

I do agree with you, but starting with good habits early is never a bad thing.

I do the stun the adds thing on normal just cause im so used to doing it.

[Firebert]

Get him to install SpellFlash and Bitten's SpellFlash for Hunters, this will greatly improve his uptime of Serpent Sting/Black Arrow at least.