[7.3] Azortharion's Hunter Guides

[Deleted]

arcane torrent vs a sprint

I find it highly doubtful that arcane torrent is even close to a 1k dps increase over not having it.

[Nemesiz]

arcane torrent vs a sprint

+ Belfs are way hotter than Worgen, this means belf players actually deal a little more dmg because they feel so attractive and fabulous. SimCraft takes this into account.

[Deleted]

I find it highly doubtful that arcane torrent is even close to a 1k dps increase over not having it.

That's the only difference between the two races as you your self pointed out.

[Deleted]

That's the only difference between the two races as you your self pointed out.

that doesn't answer my concern but ok

also do mirror images from the blademaster trinket benefit from orc's command racial?

[DeliriumHunts]

I find it highly doubtful that arcane torrent is even close to a 1k dps increase over not having it.

You can answer this with basic napkin math. You're getting 15 focus every two minutes, since that means it can always line up during rapid fire, with the 4 pc you're basically getting an extra Aimed Shot auto-crit (assuming you have decent luck with TotH). Looking at the current top Tyrant parse (since I happened to have it open), that hunter's Aimed Shot Crits averaged 157,468.8. If you get an extra 157k every 2 minutes, that's a 1,312.24 dps increase.

That, of course, would be the most possible that player could get from from arcane torrent, but it's easy to see how it could be a 1k dps increase.

[bandetyouko]

You can answer this with basic napkin math. You're getting 15 focus every two minutes, since that means it can always line up during rapid fire, with the 4 pc you're basically getting an extra Aimed Shot auto-crit (assuming you have decent luck with TotH). Looking at the current top Tyrant parse (since I happened to have it open), that hunter's Aimed Shot Crits averaged 157,468.8. If you get an extra 157k every 2 minutes, that's a 1,312.24 dps increase.

That, of course, would be the most possible that player could get from from arcane torrent, but it's easy to see how it could be a 1k dps increase.

That is probably the worst example to use....I mean really, Tyrant? In general 115-130k seems to be the average crit. Regardless, a 958+ dps increase from a single racial is pretty obscene, since it already processes an offensive racial in +crit.

[DeliriumHunts]

That is probably the worst example to use....I mean really, Tyrant?

ok yeah, I didn't really think that one through... :-P

but the point is, ~1k dps increase isn't inconceivable.

[Deleted]

ok yeah, I didn't really think that one through... :-P

but the point is, ~1k dps increase isn't inconceivable.

pretty sure was implying average not super rare best case scenario that will rarely be the case.

[Unusual]

pretty sure was implying average not super rare best case scenario that will rarely be the case.

Not be be a total dick, but he did basically do the math for you and you are unwilling to accept it because it is not "perfect". Well then, why don't you do the math yourself an not criticize those who are trying

[Azortharion]

Cheap idiots will be cheap idiots.

[Kennyloggins]

I think the guide should place more emphasis on the importance of high Sniper Training uptime, especially with HFC gear. I have seen a lot of hunters sacrifice a ton of damage because they do not micromanage their buff enough. Even hunters in high ranking guilds seem to not value ST enough. What made me think of this was looking at the public M Archimonde logs and seeing atrocious uptime across the board. The only hunter I saw with respectable uptime was a hunter from an Asian guild with 88%. It's totally possible to have that sort of uptime even if you're doing 'hunter jobs' like soaking fire. The difference between 88% and 70% is pretty huge, and I'm guessing most hunters with low uptime also don't try to micromanage their nukes around the buff to get higher benefit than what the uptime might suggest.

Yes, part of this is "know the encounter," but I think it's worth being called out specifically. People fall into the trap of "lol hunter is ez cast on the move' and then do shit damage because they run around like idiots.

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Oh yeah, I'm also a fan of having a dedicated keybind for /target boss1. When we were doing Gorefiend, I noticed I had delays between when I would kill a construct and when I would start casting my next steady shot on the boss. After making this macro/keybind, I started realizing how much time I had been losing clicking boss frames or hitboxes on any encounter with target swaps, not just Gorefiend. I'm curious if anyone adopts a similar strategy? If not, I recommend trying it out.

[Azortharion]

I might expand on Mastery, but it's not easy to guide with that. The guide supplies a tracker that I use to fair success myself. Other than playing around that, I am not sure what else to tell people. The 88% Asian log you're on about mostly gained uptime in phase 2. I got an 82% log from first kill myself (which is generally fairly carefully played). In the chaos of progression, I wouldn't like to extend the time I stand in the Seething Corruption pool things, even though it would probably be possible to maintain the buff there, you'd have to not only stand on the very edge (3 secs of standing still vs 4s cast time) to reliably make it every time, but also cut to 0.5 - 1s left before you die, and the edge of Seething Corruption is not always so lenient.

The /cast [boss1] Steady Shot deal was suggested a number of pages ago by Valtari.

EDIT: Just realized you just target boss1. The earlier suggested thing was to boss1 that Steady Shot since it does weak damage anyway, and more casts of it from saved time target switching will grant more damage in the end, prio targets likely included.

I don't personally use it, as I tend to be quite swift with switching, but I might pick it up.

[Kennyloggins]

Yeah, I understand that it's a difficult thing to guide on, and totally agree that there are plenty of times where you shouldn't scumbag it (like seething corruption, as you mention), but I do think it's something people generally overlook. On one hand, people shouldn't be encouraged to scumbag--but on another hand, sometimes you're doing a disservice to your group by not being more careful with your movement (e.g. 50% uptime in P3 Archimonde, a phase where DPS is critical, as opposed to something like 75-80%).

[Azortharion]

My experience was that creating max distance to shit like Rain of Chaos was fairly important (with the alternative being deterrencing through, but that's a bigger DPS loss that I generally saved for when I was low, and when Dark Conduit timings were coinciding with other shit). I managed 68% in p3. If I were to eliminate Seething Corruption downtime (and not try as hard to make max distance to Rains of Chaos), it could probably be 80%.

In my experience, staying alive is more important than DPS in the third phase of Archimonde Mythic, since (at least with our strat), if everyone is alive and the tanks are sacrificed when you want them to, the DPS will be there, we even managed with a 728 Hunter dead from the first Seething Corruption.

[Kennyloggins]

Totally agree that survivability is more important, and yeah DPS isn't that critical if you can afford to sacrifice multiple source tanks (I really hate that you can do that, though). That said, we did have a number of low percent wipes where DPS was low because we lost some people and couldn't sac enough sources, and those pulls could have been kills with a little extra DPS. We did end up killing him a minute ahead of where we had wiped on our best attempt prior to that, though, so yeah, not having anyone die is preferable.

[Ailylia]

Oh yeah, I'm also a fan of having a dedicated keybind for /target boss1. When we were doing Gorefiend, I noticed I had delays between when I would kill a construct and when I would start casting my next steady shot on the boss. After making this macro/keybind, I started realizing how much time I had been losing clicking boss frames or hitboxes on any encounter with target swaps, not just Gorefiend. I'm curious if anyone adopts a similar strategy? If not, I recommend trying it out.

So you're editing this keybind on every boss encounter or is there some automagic way to do this? I can see the advantage, especially if you could just put a priority in there somehow. (I'm thinking "/target A; /target B; /target C" where C is the highest priority. or something)

[Rocksteadee]

boss1 will always be the 'main' mob during the encounter, the first one showing on the boss frames.

[eschatological]

Yeah, like the above poster said, "boss1" is a global variable like "target" or "focus" or "party1" which can be used in macros to target the first boss in the boss frames (if you don't have boss frames showing - you should).

Blizzard has actually gotten fairly good at determining what should be boss1. For example, in HFA, Mar'tek is boss1 until she runs around, then berserkers, then fel casters, and sieges come out in their own frame, etc. It isn't just a random pick of which add becomes boss1. Of course, if you need to switch to a fel caster while a berserker is still up, that you have to do manually.

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Edit: Also, even though you got it right, I want to make this point for other posters:

If you ever want to make a "target priority" macro, your highest priority should be last. Since targeting something is off the GCD and indeed not a spell or ability of any sort, it can and will go through all the /target lines to find the target. If it's /target A; /target B; /target C, and A and C are up, it'll target A for a microsecond and then switch immediately to C. If A is your priority, you're fucked. If C is your priority, it's all gravy.

[Donkeywing]

Even hunters in high ranking guilds seem to not value ST enough. What made me think of this was looking at the public M Archimonde logs and seeing atrocious uptime across the board. The only hunter I saw with respectable uptime was a hunter from an Asian guild with 88%. It's totally possible to have that sort of uptime even if you're doing 'hunter jobs' like soaking fire. The difference between 88% and 70% is pretty huge, and I'm guessing most hunters with low uptime also don't try to micromanage their nukes around the buff to get higher benefit than what the uptime might suggest.

You say that now, but ST on m archimonde for hunters is extremely depending on your tactics - taking myself as an example here. I cant keep up ST as much as I want to because in p2 I litteraly place the fire out of range of the boss, its a sacrifice we chose to make because it was acceptable, but it leads to significant dps drop (and ST drop). On top of that I have to cross 60yards(no joke) when we prepare for the bad overlap, as part of our tactic. Azor mentioned something about p2 aswell.
In p3 we have hunters taunting/knocking the infernals, which generally results in movement aswell, unless you get good infernal spawns, good stuns, etc. On top of that you are probably full aware that a a bad mark can easily drop ST for a long time, tactical decisions to spawn conduits to the concer of the far right when assigned to left, moving into the green beam for a short amount of time and ofc seething corruption. I guess 70-80% uptime is a reasonable amount but still I wouldnt judge too quickly, theres alot of things to keep in consideration, imo. You can easily have a really shitty try on that fight in regards to ST, in my experience.

My main point however is that alot of it depends on your tactic. I think picking M archi to measure ST uptime is a terrible example. Maybe you could make a case for p3 specifically but still in your orginal post you drew it out across the entire fight. Of couse some tactics will be highly favourable for better dps(higher ST). I get what your saying though and generally I agree, me for one I couldve had higher ST uptime on at least the kill try but to a certain extend theres really not much I can do about it. I'm confident this is not only the case for me, but many other hunters aswell, which is why you are probably seeing it across the board.

I could write some more but I dont think thats nessecary. Its more a frustration I had myself on that boss in regards to ST. It is certainly not something I overlook.

[Deleted]

I agree that sniper training uptime on mythic archimonde depends almost entirely on your guilds strategy and assignments, specifically how your soaking positions are set up. Some strats may indeed completely screw you over, and in ours as an example there are several moments where I'm forced out of range of the boss entirely if certain people get shackled. I wouldn't read into the log uptimes too much. It was also one of the reasons I opted to use talisman over coil for our kill. The only boss in the instance I used it on, and I absolutely hated playing with it

Although I do agree that keeping ST up is way more important in HFC than it used to be, mostly just due to itemization. At the end of BRF I was running with minimal amounts of mastery (8% mastery bonus) in my MM gear, while in HFC I've found myself with up to 18% which means any downtime starts to become devastating to overall output. Just have to take what you can get, and sometimes it's all the crap with mastery on it.