[7.3] Azortharion's Hunter Guides

[Arpexia]

Or he could learn to not get mad at the trolls? Crazy idea

yes, youre right and i know that.
but imagine if there werent these trolls, then there were no ban for azor.

Maybe he gets unbanned soon™ but we will always have his sheet here.

Question: does anyone have informations about blackhand (M)? someone from method sayd that they were stacking boomkins and hunters, but why is the question.
do they send them to the balcony to AoE the adds or are there multiple siegemakers up which makes multidotting so strong?

its because when 6.1 hits wednesday i want to go BM, my guild is currently @ furnace (M) and i really want to play BM @ blackhand with stampede (stamp in P1 and P3 and execute in P3)

[Deleted]

May I ask to post your simcraft numbers pretty please? >_< I'd like to know how much dps is gained-loss between haste>mastery in st and aoe and how much dps is gained-loss between mastery>haste in st and aoe. I mean, anyone got a number comparison so I can understand how much I can gain?

[Syncness]

Just run the sim yourself, replace enchant=50haste with 50mastery

[Nythiz]

/sadface that Azor gots banned again.
Dont know whats the problem of banning the trolls instantly to avoid flaming azor and getting him angry ...

You do realize that Azor here started flaming Effin for no reason really. He practically called his theorycraft useless as he doesn't raid at top end level. Thats a big part of what started this whole flamewar from the last few pages.

I respect Azor deeply for what he does and I'm mostly on board with his trains of though when it comes to applying theorycrafting in the right context for raiding.
But lately his contributions in this particular thread have been poor. He's trashing people more often than he is answering questions. He has such an enormous ego that trolls love to bait him and that he feels forced to get sucked into it to defend himself.
I know it's mostly not Azor's fault, but his personality really doesn't do him any favors on this part either :>

----

As for the Haste vs Mastery debate.
I think someone simmed it a few pages back and came to the conclusion that Mastery is only slightly better than haste for single target; but haste is quite a bit ahead of mastery for multitarget fights.
Problem is that it can be quite hard to sim this for good results and it differs a lot on a person by person basis as well.

The best approach one can do is probably do a reforge plot haste vs mastery on single target and multi target fights.

[Samfisher]

You do realize that Azor here started flaming Effin for no reason really. He practically called his theorycraft useless as he doesn't raid at top end level. Thats a big part of what started this whole flamewar from the last few pages.

I respect Azor deeply for what he does and I'm mostly on board with his trains of though when it comes to applying theorycrafting in the right context for raiding.
But lately his contributions in this particular thread have been poor. He's trashing people more often than he is answering questions. He has such an enormous ego that trolls love to bait him and that he feels forced to get sucked into it to defend himself.
I know it's mostly not Azor's fault, but his personality really doesn't do him any favors on this part either :>

----

As for the Haste vs Mastery debate.
I think someone simmed it a few pages back and came to the conclusion that Mastery is only slightly better than haste for single target; but haste is quite a bit ahead of mastery for multitarget fights.
Problem is that it can be quite hard to sim this for good results and it differs a lot on a person by person basis as well.

The best approach one can do is probably do a reforge plot haste vs mastery on single target and multi target fights.

For my current set of gear, Mastery is ahead in almost all instances. Changed sims from Multi gems and chants to haste + mastery scope and mastery gems and chants + mastery scope, Patchwerk and HecticAddCleave, both sims gave me Mastery as the best scaling stat.

[Deleted]

i fear BM might be nerfed even thou i love the spec, being 3rd on sim dps with no movement penalty and insane burst, i can see blizz getting excited and ruining bm like they hugely nerfed demo locks, so best enjoy BM while it lasts in 6.1 lol.

[Shadow Fox]

i fear BM might be nerfed even thou i love the spec, being 3rd on sim dps with no movement penalty and insane burst, i can see blizz getting excited and ruining bm like they hugely nerfed demo locks, so best enjoy BM while it lasts in 6.1 lol.

The BM "burst" isn't really a burst compared to a lot of other classes. BM has that unique trait where it's a Burst ability that is up really often, but isn't ridiculous amounts of damage.

Bestial Wrath increases damage by a ton, sure.
But Kill Command and Kill Shot are really the only Major Burst abilities Hunter's have as BM. Perhaps Barrage, or Powershot if a Player where to grab that talent.

Over Beastial Wrath's duration, you can only Kill Command once.

Now, on the AoE side, Beastial Wrath with Beast Cleave for that AoE, does some insane things.

So a 20-33% proc change on a "free" Bestial wrath, that I'm going to try and delay for Uptime purposes when my previous Bestial Wrath is still active, is more just saying that we get an bonus sustained damage throughout an encounter.

Now, the extra Pet proc from the tier set, is insane. But there is a trade off there as well.
That second pet, appears to only be Auto Attack damage; It doesn't get any special abilities; And it doesn't benefit from Kill Command either.
It's more of a Dire Beast, only trading the Focus regen, into extra auto-attack damage.

And I don't know if anyone yet has confirmed or not that it can also Beast cleave, but my bet is that it doesn't get Beast Cleave. It's purely single-target auto attack for a lot of damage, that will also scale with a Player's stats.

[knitten]

Any thoughts on Challenge Modes? The Azor Guide does mention CMs, but that section hasn't been updated for a few weeks. I've got Mastery/Haste or Mastery/Multistrike on most pieces of my CM set; does anyone know if stacking mastery is still the way to go, or if I should be going through my saved gear for haste pieces instead for the normalized 630 ilvl of CMs? Thoughts on best trinkets for CMs?

[Dracodraco]

As I pointed out to Azor privately when he announced the initial statweights, there's a completly different reason Haste should be stronger than mastery (even on a single target) - consistency. While sims may show an overall gain from mastery, the more haste you have, the more frenzy stacks you'll gain, and the higher consistency of them you'll have. Same goes for the +20 focus returns from the pet auto swings, and we'll have to figure out if there's some specific stampede-breakpoint this time around that'll create haste plateus (considering it now lasts 40 seconds).

The BM "burst" isn't really a burst compared to a lot of other classes. BM has that unique trait where it's a Burst ability that is up really often, but isn't ridiculous amounts of damage.

Bestial Wrath increases damage by a ton, sure.
But Kill Command and Kill Shot are really the only Major Burst abilities Hunter's have as BM. Perhaps Barrage, or Powershot if a Player where to grab that talent.

Over Beastial Wrath's duration, you can only Kill Command once.

Now, on the AoE side, Beastial Wrath with Beast Cleave for that AoE, does some insane things.

So a 20-33% proc change on a "free" Bestial wrath, that I'm going to try and delay for Uptime purposes when my previous Bestial Wrath is still active, is more just saying that we get an bonus sustained damage throughout an encounter.

Now, the extra Pet proc from the tier set, is insane. But there is a trade off there as well.
That second pet, appears to only be Auto Attack damage; It doesn't get any special abilities; And it doesn't benefit from Kill Command either.
It's more of a Dire Beast, only trading the Focus regen, into extra auto-attack damage.

And I don't know if anyone yet has confirmed or not that it can also Beast cleave, but my bet is that it doesn't get Beast Cleave. It's purely single-target auto attack for a lot of damage, that will also scale with a Player's stats.

You get two kill commands in every BW, or you're doing something wrong, by the way. Not 1. 0->6->12 seconds if you hit KC as you hit BW. Worst case scenario, you reset BW with a KC, then wait two globals before hitting BW, so you can do 4->10 for 2x KC within a BW (and you'd probably want to delay a few seconds either way to build enough focus to not have to Cobra during BW either way).

[Shadow Fox]

Any thoughts on Challenge Modes? The Azor Guide does mention CMs, but that section hasn't been updated for a few weeks. I've got Mastery/Haste or Mastery/Multistrike on most pieces of my CM set; does anyone know if stacking mastery is still the way to go, or if I should be going through my saved gear for haste pieces instead for the normalized 630 ilvl of CMs? Thoughts on best trinkets for CMs?

Well, your gear get's forced to 630 anyway... I'd say, personally, to go for the Haste stacking if you plan to do them as BM.

But with 6.1 here in a day, I can't say what to prepare on for Challenge Modes as to what spec to go with accurately.

I'd guess if you have the 4p, Haste and BM.
If not, Multistrike-SV.

Just my thought though, seeing as Azor is gone, Effin may be the next best person to ask?

I'd still go in as BM though, simply because Multistrike and Versatility on my gear is nearly nonexistant.

[Deleted]

So Steady Focus always for BM in 6.1? Blink Strikes for AoE, Stampede for single target? So, for example Beast Lord Darmac, we would go BM with Steady Focus and Blink Strikes and Barrage?

What if the fight lasts under 5mins? Would you use Blink Strikes for any type of fight then? What happened to AMOC for it to fall this badly out of fashion?

[Deleted]

Shadow what are you actually saying? You talk a lot but don't say anything of value ever.

- - - Updated - - -

So Steady Focus always for BM in 6.1? Blink Strikes for AoE, Stampede for single target? So, for example Beast Lord Darmac, we would go BM with Steady Focus and Blink Strikes and Barrage?

What if the fight lasts under 5mins? Would you use Blink Strikes for any type of fight then? What happened to AMOC for it to fall this badly out of fashion?

From a dps standpoint BS will be better. But for mythic progress stampede since the packbeasts will die either way but having good burndps is actually good.

[Syncness]

So Steady Focus always for BM in 6.1? Blink Strikes for AoE, Stampede for single target? So, for example Beast Lord Darmac, we would go BM with Steady Focus and Blink Strikes and Barrage?

What if the fight lasts under 5mins? Would you use Blink Strikes for any type of fight then? What happened to AMOC for it to fall this badly out of fashion?

Stampede duration doubled, which means effectiveness effectively doubled.

[knitten]

Well, your gear get's forced to 630 anyway... I'd say, personally, to go for the Haste stacking if you plan to do them as BM.

But with 6.1 here in a day, I can't say what to prepare on for Challenge Modes as to what spec to go with accurately.

I'd guess if you have the 4p, Haste and BM.
If not, Multistrike-SV.

Just my thought though, seeing as Azor is gone, Effin may be the next best person to ask?

I'd still go in as BM though, simply because Multistrike and Versatility on my gear is nearly nonexistant.

I'm going in as BM regardless, pretty much. Tier bonuses are disabled in CMs, as are gem sockets, so those don't matter.

And while the gear is normalized to 630, stat weights aren't always the same in CMs as for raiding, which is why I'm asking; in MoP, some classes had drastically different gearing strategies in CM than for raiding (though hunter mostly stayed pretty much the same, which was nice).

[Deleted]

My only problem with BM on dummy tests, and with any buff to Focus Fire, is that it seems like sometimes the pet simply refuses to get to 5 stacks. Is it bad rng or what but often it gets stuck at 4 frenzy or so, and I've even seen the stack drop completely instead of go up to 5. Should we just use Focus Fire in cases like that?

[MrTharne]

My only problem with BM on dummy tests, and with any buff to Focus Fire, is that it seems like sometimes the pet simply refuses to get to 5 stacks. Is it bad rng or what but often it gets stuck at 4 frenzy or so, and I've even seen the stack drop completely instead of go up to 5. Should we just use Focus Fire in cases like that?

Yes, it's bad luck and yes you should use FF just before the frenzy stacks drop if you have less than 5 stacks.

[Haawken]

My only problem with BM on dummy tests, and with any buff to Focus Fire, is that it seems like sometimes the pet simply refuses to get to 5 stacks. Is it bad rng or what but often it gets stuck at 4 frenzy or so, and I've even seen the stack drop completely instead of go up to 5. Should we just use Focus Fire in cases like that?

Yes. 3 stacks is okay, 4 is good, don't wait for the 5th.

[Maxie]

So Steady Focus always for BM in 6.1? Blink Strikes for AoE, Stampede for single target? So, for example Beast Lord Darmac, we would go BM with Steady Focus and Blink Strikes and Barrage?

What if the fight lasts under 5mins? Would you use Blink Strikes for any type of fight then? What happened to AMOC for it to fall this badly out of fashion?

I'm probably going to run with Stampede even on cleave/aoe fights unless that part is what's important - which generally isn't the case.

How should aoe during BW look like? Is there any benefit to using multi-shot more than every 4s to keep up beast cleave? I also feel like it's hard to avoid casting cobra completely as multi-shot drains a bit more focus than arcane shot does.

[WarBringerPT]

I'm probably going to run with Stampede even on cleave/aoe fights unless that part is what's important - which generally isn't the case.

How should aoe during BW look like? Is there any benefit to using multi-shot more than every 4s to keep up beast cleave? I also feel like it's hard to avoid casting cobra completely as multi-shot drains a bit more focus than arcane shot does.

It depends on the number of targets and the priority of targets.
cleave but maintain single target dps:
MS, if enough focus for KC do KC, double cobra shot for SF, MS. While on BW KC-MS-barrage-MS

IF aoe is all you want, MS, double cobra shot, if lots of rage dump a KC else MS when beast cleave drops.

[Menubrea]

yes, youre right and i know that.
but imagine if there werent these trolls, then there were no ban for azor.

Maybe he gets unbanned soon™ but we will always have his sheet here.

Oh please, Azor pretty much ignores the trolls, but lashes out to anyone who ask something "stupid" or question his theory-crafting. He could avoid getting banned by not being a dick basically.