[7.3] Azortharion's Hunter Guides

[relentless92]

So should we use pure Mastery Gems AND Enchants according to the BM Universal Weights, or is it more comfortable to mix that to Haste Ench/Mastery Gem or something like that?

[Pinkbyte]

Pop it, else you will lose stacks and lose uptime. You enter BW with those 5 stacks falling of 3 seconds later, but with 3-4-5 stacks already waiting to be popped.
The thing with FF is the higher uptime, the better. You want that AP boost, that haste boost.
But I'm not saying uptime > everything. Even though azor says to use FF with any stack when casting BW, I prefer to cast it after Bw if stacks are <3. With luck, I'll get 3rd right as I enter BW, If not and if BW duration is <= 5s i'll pop it regardless of stacks.



No idea on that logic, a 5 min cd to a multi target fight makes no sense. The prolonged part makes sense, the more stampede casts the better. But with a multi fight target I would go aMocC, where aMoC's cd can be reseted, increasing uptime.

So should we use pure Mastery Gems AND Enchants according to the BM Universal Weights, or is it more comfortable to mix that to Haste Ench/Mastery Gem or something like that?

I jus changed everything to haste but i think ill be going with Mastery now.

[Hawg]

I hope I don't catch shit here for being too casual for this thread, but I for one am not willing to re-gem and re-enchant between fights, and really don't even like spending that ~7k gold every reset. So that means I want to pick the stat to gem/enchant that gives me the best bang for the buck. I'm already kicking myself for dropping more than 7k gold to gem/enchant (and reroll crafted gear) out of multi for haste.

Since I don't have the 4 piece bonus yet (hell not even the 2, only one piece so far) I have found that my BM dps this week and last has been below what I was doing as SV for every fight that I do (only 6/10 Heroic) except for the train boss, where BM barely won out. So, until I get the 4-piece, I've pretty much decided that I am going to stick with SV except for the trains boss.

So, before I jump on this weeks band wagon and re-gem/enchant/re-roll crafted gear I decided to figure out what stat weight would work best for a combination of BM and Survival. For lack of a better method, I simply averaged the stat weights for BM with SV from the current version of Azor's spreadsheet. Here is what I discovered:

It doesnt matter which BM-stat weights you choose (univeral, Single Target, or Multi) the best stat to gem/enchant if you will also be going SV is Multi.

If you are doing BM/MM your best stat is crit, but just barely.. Multi is still extremely close.

Here is the table showing the averaged stats:



The problem is that multi is just so much stronger than the other secondary stats for SV, that you are very gimped if you don't choose it. While for MM and BM, even though it may not be the strongest secondary stat, the deltas between the secondary stats are very small, meaning that if you choose the wrong secondary stat with MM or BM, you are still pretty good.

So, Long story short: If you do not have 4 piece tier, and are not going BM full time, you're best bet is to gem/enchant for multi.

[relentless92]

So with BM 4pc and planning to go full-time BM, Mastery it is?

[Devboy]

Bit of debate has arisen with some guildies on Mythic Beastlord. I'm thinking BM reigns supreme even if its purely for ST Boss damage, and someone else thinks MM will be stronger. Opinions?

I would run a Sim but I'm at work so bit difficult :P

[Bllets]

Bit of debate has arisen with some guildies on Mythic Beastlord. I'm thinking BM reigns supreme even if its purely for ST Boss damage, and someone else thinks MM will be stronger. Opinions?

I would run a Sim but I'm at work so bit difficult :P

For me BM and MM are very close after getting a 680 weapon and not having 4 pieces of T17, not to mention I've been "lucky" with crit/ms. So it will depend a lot of gear what is the better option for you.

However a general thing to notice though, is that BM will be more random since there is much more RNG in BM.

Are you having issues on Beastlord and which? Because MM certainly has some specific strengths compared to BM which is more a jack-of-all-trades.

But in general for pure single target it is going to be BM > MM in by far the most cases.

[Nythiz]

Bit of debate has arisen with some guildies on Mythic Beastlord. I'm thinking BM reigns supreme even if its purely for ST Boss damage, and someone else thinks MM will be stronger. Opinions?

I would run a Sim but I'm at work so bit difficult :P

That relies a lot on the job you need to fulfill.

I think MM is better if you need more damage on the spears, as the Careful Aim and Kill Shot are going to be great on them.
BM is great allround with solid single target on the boss with solid cleave capability on the adds.

I quite liked survival as well as you can dot everything up with some proper play. But either way it's going to depend on what your group needs.

If you just want big numbers, I'd opt for BM with cleave on adds.

[Termi]

What 2 Trinkets would I go with for BM, when I have:
HC - Meaty Dragonspine Trophy
HC - Beating Heart
M WF + gem - Trigger

?

[Deleted]

Is it just me or is BM at maidens really underwhelming?
Keeping cleave up for 3 targets just doesn't seem worth the effort.

[Deleted]

Bit of debate has arisen with some guildies on Mythic Beastlord. I'm thinking BM reigns supreme even if its purely for ST Boss damage, and someone else thinks MM will be stronger. Opinions?

I would run a Sim but I'm at work so bit difficult :P

MM will win on boss damage. The fight is no movement bitch, the little AoE you can do takes nothing out of your single-target rotation and there are a multitude of Careful Aim and Execute phases on each of the mobs.

[Deleted]

What 2 Trinkets would I go with for BM, when I have:
HC - Meaty Dragonspine Trophy
HC - Beating Heart
M WF + gem - Trigger

?

MDT with Trigger

Is it just me or is BM at maidens really underwhelming?
Keeping cleave up for 3 targets just doesn't seem worth the effort.

It's very much worth it - did you forget to use SF or something?

Question: Does anyone know the best opener with DB? I don't know if Azor put it anywhere, cause I can't seem to find it. Do I really do CS KC CS even without SF?

[Perfectionlol]

Question: Does anyone know the best opener with DB? I don't know if Azor put it anywhere, cause I can't seem to find it. Do I really do CS KC CS even without SF?

I am still preparing for BM by practicing occasionally but my gear is not quite ready for the swap, so I will not comment on the best opener. However, I believe Azor has an updated one in his guide in recent days.

As for the CS->KC->CS;
KC is considered a pet ability and does not interfere with the CS->CS sequence, you will still get Steady Focus.

[Tehterokkar]

It's very much worth it - did you forget to use SF or something?

Question: Does anyone know the best opener with DB? I don't know if Azor put it anywhere, cause I can't seem to find it. Do I really do CS KC CS even without SF?

Stampede > DB > BW+KC > Barrage > AS

[Deleted]

Quick question: considering the worst case scenario, where no BW reset has occur during the first 20 sec in combat, is it worth to cast FF at whatever stacks you have when stampede has 20 sec left on duration ?

[HottieDorf]

Question for those running with spirit beasts: do you leave Spirit Mend on autocast? Currently I do not, I have it included in a "healing" macro that includes healthstone and tonics, in the hopes that when I hit the button whatever is available will heal me. Yes I know warlock cookies and tonics share a cooldown, so if I hit the macro and they're still on cd then Spirit Mend will go off, right? I'm kinda derp about writing macros :P

[akaTheDude]

Question for those running with spirit beasts: do you leave Spirit Mend on autocast? Currently I do not, I have it included in a "healing" macro that includes healthstone and tonics, in the hopes that when I hit the button whatever is available will heal me. Yes I know warlock cookies and tonics share a cooldown, so if I hit the macro and they're still on cd then Spirit Mend will go off, right? I'm kinda derp about writing macros :P

I was wondering the same thing. Will Spirit Mend on autocast heal random party members in the raid or will it ONLY heal me?

[Aldare]

Question for those running with spirit beasts: do you leave Spirit Mend on autocast? Currently I do not, I have it included in a "healing" macro that includes healthstone and tonics, in the hopes that when I hit the button whatever is available will heal me. Yes I know warlock cookies and tonics share a cooldown, so if I hit the macro and they're still on cd then Spirit Mend will go off, right? I'm kinda derp about writing macros :P

Yes it does, I have the exact same macro. Be aware however of the range on Spirit Mend, which is only 25 yards. As a ranged player you will often be further away than this which means your pet will have to run closer to you when you hit your macro before the cast actually goes off. Whenever the boss mechanics dont restrict me from doing so, I will generally try to move closer to the boss and thus my pet before hitting spirit mend so the pet doesnt have to come off the boss to heal me.

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I was wondering the same thing. Will Spirit Mend on autocast heal random party members in the raid or will it ONLY heal me?

It will heal whenever someone drops below 50%, doesn't matter who it is. Would be nice to have a Spirit Mend autoheal for yourself only, but I don't believe that can be set up.

[Effinhunter]

How indicative are those of an actual situation though?

When the difference is 100 dps, how can you trust your sims enough to reflect the real world close enough?

When you say appropriate priorities, do you mean how an actual player plays with all of its minor mistakes and dynamic-ness and fight mechanics interfering with decisions or a robot doing the same fight length 24/7?

I think the current single target talent recommendations (Steady, Stampede, Barrage, Adapt) leave very little room for major excuses from hunters being suboptimal of sims. If anything, because of the potential for AoE burst padding in most fights, we often parse higher not lower. There are no abilities that require the hunter to be stationary in the current BM talent configuration, so perfect play is much, much easier to do in current BM than it was in FS-enabled SV or ST-enabled MM, for instance.

Anyway, to answer your insinuation, I think I've made it pretty clear in both of my last posts that 30-100 dps from gear sims is nothing compared to playing well and not leaving too many high priority abilities on the table. The interesting thing about BM is that ilvl trumps just about everything else as no secondary dominates to the point of overwhelming other stats as we see in SV and MM (ms and crit, respectively). So, in other words, for BM, take the upgrade.

However, I just don't buy into the argument that the difference between a human playing BM hunter and an automated playing of a hunter is so huge right now that sims are poor indicators of human BM hunter potential. BM is as close to a purely mobile spec as there is in the game right now, so no one should be able to claim that hunter movement makes good play impossible. Responding to mechanics, other than stun/incapacitate/LoS/loss-of-dps mechanics like petrify on Gruul, should not significantly hamper hunters. Similarly, the bosses and single target focuses do not have ridiculous movement phases that would cause Stampede to be a hindrance (i.e., pet attack misses as a boss moves significantly and quickly), and if they do have some weird movement phases, this can be planned for as the CD for Stampede is significant and so small delays there are rarely going to cause someone to lose an entire stampede for the fight.

The point of the sims is to try to give us information to help us play better, give us something to strive toward, and to answer questions about perfect play and gear. For gear-related decisions, sims tend to help us understand the interplay of stats, procs and CDs so we can figure out which stats are highly favored over others. It is up to us to test these out in game and report to Simcraft developers when discrepancies arise. As far as I can tell from testing, the current sims appear to be pretty accurate.

But with BM, perfect gear is rarely the major deciding factor (other than just acquiring the 4 pc asap). Using abilities and pooling focus appropriately are going to be the keys to good parses or hitting the sims for the kill times your guild is capable of. Lucky procs are icing on the cake.

[HottieDorf]

Yes it does, I have the exact same macro. Be aware however of the range on Spirit Mend, which is only 25 yards. As a ranged player you will often be further away than this which means your pet will have to run closer to you when you hit your macro before the cast actually goes off. Whenever the boss mechanics dont restrict me from doing so, I will generally try to move closer to the boss and thus my pet before hitting spirit mend so the pet doesnt have to come off the boss to heal me.

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It will heal whenever someone drops below 50%, doesn't matter who it is. Would be nice to have a Spirit Mend autoheal for yourself only, but I don't believe that can be set up.

Good to know. As for Spirit Mend healing only you, could you include a "cast [@self]" bit in the healing macro? Like I said, I'm derpy about macros, would that work?

[Rugtoad]

Good to know. As for Spirit Mend healing only you, could you include a "cast [@self]" bit in the healing macro? Like I said, I'm derpy about macros, would that work?

Making Spirit Mend cast on yourself is easy - what they're talking about is making it auto-cast only on you, instead of anyone below the health threshold.

I don't believe there's any way to do this, so it looks like you have 3 options:
1. Set it to auto-cast, and it'll heal whomever falls under the auto-cast requirements.
2. Make a macro to cast it on yourself manually, and use like a Healing Tonic
3. Macro it into Arcane Shot and forget about it, likely wasting many uses due to having high health when you hit the macro.

I personally have a macro for it to cast it on my mouseover target (clique-style), or with an alt modifier, myself.