Top Hunter Shots

[fowillia]

So Ive been looking at some of the stats and is it just me or do you find it a lil weird that our top two shots in a Marks dps rotation are ones we cannot control - Wild Quiver and Autoshot. With those two shots laying down roughly 40+% damage it's kinda sad that we have have 60% for skill or as some people call it.

[Deleted]

skill

World of Warcraft

?????

[amul]

Still better than assassination rogues, they do a good 70% of their damage from poisons+auto attacks

[grassidas]

I was wandering about the same thing the other day. Autoshot in gereral provides a large chunk of our damage, in all specs. And the reason behind it is...PvP.
Due to the nature of our shots (specials being instant) they would "apparently" be overpowered (in a PvP setting) if they provided much damage.
On the other hand, buff steady/cobra too much, and specials would become obsolete in PvE.

So what did they do: Large white damage + mediocre special damage + low steady/cobra damage = combetitive PVE performace, without hurting PvP (since autoshot doesn't play that much role in pvp). At least thats my take on this.

[ASO]

WOW is an "autoattack" game. Everything we do just adds flavor, but they seem to really lean towards having Autoattack be a very important, if not the most important, part of doing damage.

I can't find the exact blue post, but they have said something akin to "removing autoattack and having all attacks be intentionally cast is an interesting design, but it's not what we want WOW to be like."

[Lysah]

It's a lot easier to balance abilities that do 5-10% of your total damage than 40-50% (ulduar explosive shot...). If half your damage is white, it's easier to adjust your damage to match other classes, and if your main abilities do 8% of your damage, it's easier to balance them against your other specs. Buffing a shot that only does 1/12 your total damage won't change your DPS like buffing one that does 50%.

[grassidas]

WOW is an "autoattack" game. Everything we do just adds flavor, but they seem to really lean towards having Autoattack be a very important, if not the most important, part of doing damage.

I can't find the exact blue post, but they have said something akin to "removing autoattack and having all attacks be intentionally cast is an interesting design, but it's not what we want WOW to be like."

I have read that too. But i don't think they meant it like "we want most of player's damage done to be passive". The whole re-design of the talent trees, reducing the passive bonuses etc makes me think that. Unfortunately though, if you are into damage meters and knowing where your damage comes from, hunter class does feel a bit "passive". Large portion of our damage comes from abilities that aren't (mostly) under the players control.

[Thundercougr]

I have read that too. But i don't think they meant it like "we want most of player's damage done to be passive". The whole re-design of the talent trees, reducing the passive bonuses etc makes me think that. Unfortunately though, if you are into damage meters and knowing where your damage comes from, hunter class does feel a bit "passive". Large portion of our damage comes from abilities that aren't (mostly) under the players control.

I'm fairly sure they didn't mean "we want most of player's damage to done to be passive", because I remember seeing a blue post saying they wanted to change Rogues, specifically Assassination, as a major chunk of their damage was passive (From auto attacks and poisons). I would say what Lysah said is correct. Personally, I've never really thought about why auto-shot was such a large chunk of our damage, but I mostly attributed it to the number of auto-shots fired in a combat (Which is a pretty obvious statement because you have to have them shot a lot to rack up :P).

Hell, I remember in Pre-BC getting like 2k auto-shot crits and thinking that was OP.

[Barani]

I have read that too. But i don't think they meant it like "we want most of player's damage done to be passive". The whole re-design of the talent trees, reducing the passive bonuses etc makes me think that. Unfortunately though, if you are into damage meters and knowing where your damage comes from, hunter class does feel a bit "passive". Large portion of our damage comes from abilities that aren't (mostly) under the players control.

That was one of the main changes for Cata Hunters. Where there was a Blue-Post about MM 3.3 Hunters having Auto Shot, Steady Shot, Piercing Shots all top 3 damaging abilities and how they wanted to bring the player and not the free-be damaging abilities that happen to be most of your damage pie. So now they buffed Wild Quiver which made it a 4th of the passive abilities. And then Arcane Shot which is the dump and is like Pre-4.0 Heroic Strike in the sense that its also in that top ability mix.

[harky]

It's a lot easier to balance abilities that do 5-10% of your total damage than 40-50% (ulduar explosive shot...). If half your damage is white, it's easier to adjust your damage to match other classes, and if your main abilities do 8% of your damage, it's easier to balance them against your other specs. Buffing a shot that only does 1/12 your total damage won't change your DPS like buffing one that does 50%.

This. Remember the recent buff, and then nerf to Explosive Shot in beta? That's what happens when you start messing with something doing 40%+ of your damage. If you slightly over-tune something suddenly the spec does insane DPS. Probably the best example is to look at how wildly Arcane Mage DPS fluctuates when Arcane Blast is changed. They go from top notch to complete crap from tiny tweaks to one ability. It's hard to balance.

Now, that said, I do think Marks having so much of its damage from procs/white damage/etc is bland. Same with Mutilate Rogues. Marks controls ~50% of their DPS, BM controls ~60%, SV controls ~80%. The part that does bug me is knowing that as long as I don't waste GCDs, or over-cap Focus and as long as I use my cooldowns I'll do well as Marks. Marks would need to be way out ahead of SV right now for me to switch back and since that isn't the case at 80, or 85 I doubt I will be unless Marks is changed. Same reason I stopped doing PVE on my Rogue when it went button-mashy in ICC. Sucks, I've always loved Marks.

[Shiikarii]

If anything, you could use this to improve your dps during raids. If auto shot is one of your highest damage dealing abilities, plan out the fight so you will be doing a little moving as possible. Download a swing-timer addon that will allow to to move around your auto shot firing.

[Theonehit]

Hunters grr i h8 them now

[tibben]

I'm actually enjoying Survival right now. There's enough room for you to make mistakes that a good survival hunter and a bad one will certainly show up in the dps charts. But the priority system/rotation is not so overly complex that you have to download an addon to tell you what to do next (unless you have autistic-like mathematical skills) like the feral kitty rotation or else you do like 65% of what the top people in your class can do. I'm hoping survival does not get nerfed into the ground. As long as it stays competitive with MM or BM I'll be happy to stick with it.

MM seems kinda boring to me. Like you said, with enough Mastery it leaves little room to show off your skills.

[grassidas]

I can't see how Surv is working atm. Focused starved all the time, need to spam steadies which doesnt provide any benefits + the need to manual refresh serpent. I was having a REALLY hard time trying to keep serpent/BA-explotrap on and casting ES on cd. Maybe reforging to haste instead of mastery makes the spec viable (i went for the later) i don't know.
I've seen level 85's surv damage and it looks great, but as far as lvl 80 is concerned, i lose 1-2k dps, and i don't think its a matter of correct playstyle.