Why do all the guides suggest Dire beast over Thrill of the Hunt for survival?

[Dracodraco]

you want to prove how much Fervor benefits pets dps ...i want to see the whole picture and this fights is not good for it cuz of a MC that can mess it up thing.Since you said your gear ilvl are kinda a same i want to see Cobra shot and Arcane Shot numbers cuz thats very important.

Then go and find it yourself. I already did the napkin math for TOTH's average amount of focus gain over X amount of time a page or two back. I'm not going to start digging through logs just to repeat myself (just to recap - in extreme best case scenario's, it's on average one proc every 10 seconds. Going through about twenty logs, I have not yet been able to find any where that happened at all - rather, it seems to average out to about 1 proc every 13-15 seconds). If you don't know what to do with the numbers I've given, this is not a discussion that'll interest you in the slightest.

[Tehterokkar]

Then go and find it yourself. I already did the napkin math for TOTH's average amount of focus gain over X amount of time a page or two back. I'm not going to start digging through logs just to repeat myself (just to recap - in extreme best case scenario's, it's on average one proc every 10 seconds. Going through about twenty logs, I have not yet been able to find any where that happened at all - rather, it seems to average out to about 1 proc every 13-15 seconds). If you don't know what to do with the numbers I've given, this is not a discussion that'll interest you in the slightest.

Also as you already mentioned, TotH takes 3 GCDs of forced AS spamming, where Fervor could let you use AS, ES, BA or even aMoC without the need to use Cobra as much in between each of them.

Even on Wind Lord HC, where I play SV, I use Fervor instead of TotH, because I need the extra focus to recover from using aMoC right when the first pack of adds die and boss gets Recklessness. Also Fervor is the best for burst DPS out of the 3 choices currently. TotH can't be compared as burst, because you might not have a proc when you'd need it(eg. Elegon Sparks) and get screwed over.

[Spl4sh3r]

I take Dire Beast because it is more reliable than Thrill of the Hunt which relies on RNG. In theory they should be equal value (since placed in the same row), ofcourse they might not be since it is a balance issue. However I would always take an ability that is off GCD over an ability that uses RNG.

[Tehterokkar]

I take Dire Beast because it is more reliable than Thrill of the Hunt which relies on RNG. In theory they should be equal value (since placed in the same row), ofcourse they might not be since it is a balance issue. However I would always take an ability that is off GCD over an ability that uses RNG.

The purpose of the current Talent system is not to make every damn talent be worth the same in every situation, each talent has its ups and downs, and that is what they aimed for.

Talents are made to be situational, if a talent feels to be the clear choice for everything, Blizzard will either nerf it or buff the other 2.

Remember Monks in 5.0? The Chi gain tier, Power Strikes, Ascension, Chi Brew.
Ascension was NEVER used, it didn't bring anything useful, Chi Brew was rarely used by MW(Healer) Monks, otherwise all 3 specs used Power Strikes.
Come 5.1, Blizzard nerfed Power Strikes and buffed Ascension to provide 15% increased Max. Mana and 15% increased Energy regen, suddenly it became viable. Now it's just a preference for all 3 specs, Power Strikes or Ascension, or a on-demand burst-chi CD.

[Disfunctionz]

Something for you to think about.

If you a close to full focus cap, LNL procs, do you fire all the two free explosive shots knowing that this will focus cap you, or do you fire an explosive shot, followed by an arcane, followed by the rest of the explosive shots.

This sentence shows that you dont understand the point of what we are trying to tell you.
If LnL/ToTH causes you to get capped then yes, you obviously use ES/Arc and dump the procs.
But the point is it would have been better if you used better focus management to make that proc happen at lower focus so you could gain passive focus regen at the same time.
Now maybe RnG made it impossible to not focus cap at some point with a proc
That is ultimately the talents fault and yes the best way to deal with it is to use the proc over something weaker, but theoretically it would have been better if you werent focus capped.
meaning not being focus capped is a dps increase, witch basicly means being focus capped is a dps loss.
If you cant comprehend this,I dont know what to tell you, but this is my last attempt.

[Namarus]

This sentence shows that you dont understand the point of what we are trying to tell you.
If LnL/ToTH causes you to get capped then yes, you obviously use ES/Arc and dump the procs.
But the point is it would have been better if you used better focus management to make that proc happen at lower focus so you could gain passive focus regen at the same time.
Now maybe RnG made it impossible to not focus cap at some point with a proc
That is ultimately the talents fault and yes the best way to deal with it is to use the proc over something weaker, but theoretically it would have been better if you werent focus capped.
meaning not being focus capped is a dps increase, witch basicly means being focus capped is a dps loss.
If you cant comprehend this,I dont know what to tell you, but this is my last attempt.

I never once said that with proper focus management you cannot avoid focus regeneration loss.

I addressed the point people made that procs that focus cap you are a waste of dps. This is not the case.

I never said that you should play with high focus to get focus capped. You seem to be arguing about something that I'm not talking about.

[Deleted]

Dire Beast + Glaive Toss = Pure single target.

Thrill of the hunt + Barrage = AoE fight or a fight that has majority of it being AoE.

---------- Post added 2013-02-24 at 06:16 PM ----------

Also as you already mentioned, TotH takes 3 GCDs of forced AS spamming, where Fervor could let you use AS, ES, BA or even aMoC without the need to use Cobra as much in between each of them.

Even on Wind Lord HC, where I play SV, I use Fervor instead of TotH, because I need the extra focus to recover from using aMoC right when the first pack of adds die and boss gets Recklessness. Also Fervor is the best for burst DPS out of the 3 choices currently. TotH can't be compared as burst, because you might not have a proc when you'd need it(eg. Elegon Sparks) and get screwed over.

Yes it uses 3 gcds. But if you think about it, you have plenty of time to fill those in your rotation when your ES / GT is on cd, which you should do.

--- When using ToTH on Windlord hc, I never have focus issues and certainly don't need fervor to rely on having focus for aMoC.

[Disfunctionz]

If you have a string of TotH procs with only a single open cast in between them, you end up focus capped. This is lost DPS.

No it is not! Being focus capped is is not a DPS loss if you are doing your highest dps ability.

This is what I was ultimately replying too.
The person was right.
whether it's the procs fault or not, its still a dps loss overall.
especially if you can get another talent that doesnt cause, or has a lesser chance of causing focus capping.

You dont lose dps from the talent itself, but youd lose dps from the negative focus regen that the talent causes.

[Chrisbox]

Fervor isn't on the GCD dude just try it lol.

[Banzhe]

Either I'm the only hunter on the planet with No GCD Fervor, or you've been reading a bit of misinformation.

This tbh, it's impossible lacking focus in the current state unless your mindless spamming AS which then means your not keeping up EA (and possibly not keeping 95% uptime on BA)

[Lokrick]

It only showed better on Simulationcraft, which has been notoriously known to be a steaming pile of garbage for hunters. Femaledwarf simulated the hunter specs far better, and had Surv ahead of the other two in DS. Even NOW, it's a steaming pile of garbage. Go and take a look at the SV profile for example, see how many errors you can spot because no good hunters are helping them with BiS lists, etc...
Just for emphasis, I'll go ahead and write it up:
509 tier over 516 heroic elite.
Sunwrought (Tsulong) chest over tier.
Random-drop belt over sha belt.
Relic of Xuen over bottle of infinite stars.
Hands are enchanted with haste.
Taoren is reforged out of mastery into crit instead of out of haste (and alot of other idiotic reforges that prioritizes haste over mastery).
I will also save you the trouble and tell you that BM is much the same (except they got the tier pieces and shoulders right this time... But used the 509 jagged hornet bracers which are only aviable through the BMAH if incredibly lucky as part of the BiS setup. Still using wrong belt, trinket, stat priority, etc).

No hunter worth anything listens to that site - except maybe Devai, because he seems intent on claiming the relic > the bottle... For whatever reason he thinks it's better (I have literally had 8 people ask me that question because of him and his stream <___<)
Use FD to simulate the average dps you'll do and you get a much clearer picture. And it's usually ten times more accurate than SC.

The "notoriety" in part comes from issues during development of new xpacs and in part from hyperbole like this. Let's separate the simulation mechanics from the specific profile. The profile that simc uses is not a BiS recommendation. This particular profile was built early (e.g., before the Relic was nerfed), and was used for dps matching and validation between femaledwarf, Blizzard, and simc. I and others rely on the community to provide good profiles, and we'll happily take improvements.

SimulationCraft is generally quite accurate (and indeed has found bugs and revealed issues to Blizzard); the exceptions are memorable mostly because they are exceptions. Female dwarf and SimulationCraft use different simulation mechanisms. Because femaledwarf estimates the results using formulas, it is generally quicker to update with changes. Because SimulationCraft runs the events of the fight (averaged over thousands of simulated fights), it takes longer to implement and requires more effort to use, but can provide a lot more flexibility and accuracy. For example, it's hard to accurately model haste effects, stacking buffs, RPPM behavior, probably the re-origination trinket in the kind of sim that femaledwarf uses, whereas they can be accurately modeled in simc. Similarly, simc supports multiple fight scenarios, changing priorities in different conditions (e.g., CA or execute range), different amounts or human error, etc.

But the mechanics are entirely separate from the profiles. Your specific objections above are solely gripes about the profile I happen to use (plug it into FD and you will get similar numbers). When I stumbled across this message, I grabbed your profile, removed level upgrades (which we don't use in T14H profiles), reforged, and checked it in instead. I reforged for Crit > Mastery > Haste for BM and Crit > Haste > Mastery for SV and MM (because that was better). The result was BM 126586, SV 120707, MM 118489. So thanks for the profile update!

We now have T15 support in "review" state, which is to say we believe it's correct, but it will lag announced parameter changes (e.g., it doesn't have the chimera reduction from +50% to +25%). I discuss on EJ how you can apply those form the command line. We'd be delighted with reports of specific inaccuracies (e.g., pet Bite is too high) or recommended T15 regular and heroic profiles (as with the T14 profiles, the ones there are adequate placeholders). Also it may be that mmo-champ is a good (or better) place to generally solicit profiles examples. Thanks!

[Nemesis003]

If you have a string of TotH procs with only a single open cast in between them, you end up focus capped. This is lost DPS.




This is what I was ultimately replying too.
The person was right.
whether it's the procs fault or not, its still a dps loss overall.
especially if you can get another talent that doesnt cause, or has a lesser chance of causing focus capping.

You dont lose dps from the talent itself, but youd lose dps from the negative focus regen that the talent causes.

you are wrong, you can never "lose" DPS if you are always doing the max damage bilities you have up. just because you capped focus doesn't mean you lost damage it simply means you capped focus. If you capped focus because you were not doing your highest damaging abilities then you lost damage.

[Dracodraco]

The "notoriety" in part comes from issues during development of new xpacs and in part from hyperbole like this. Let's separate the simulation mechanics from the specific profile. The profile that simc uses is not a BiS recommendation. This particular profile was built early (e.g., before the Relic was nerfed), and was used for dps matching and validation between femaledwarf, Blizzard, and simc. I and others rely on the community to provide good profiles, and we'll happily take improvements.

SimulationCraft is generally quite accurate (and indeed has found bugs and revealed issues to Blizzard); the exceptions are memorable mostly because they are exceptions. Female dwarf and SimulationCraft use different simulation mechanisms. Because femaledwarf estimates the results using formulas, it is generally quicker to update with changes. Because SimulationCraft runs the events of the fight (averaged over thousands of simulated fights), it takes longer to implement and requires more effort to use, but can provide a lot more flexibility and accuracy. For example, it's hard to accurately model haste effects, stacking buffs, RPPM behavior, probably the re-origination trinket in the kind of sim that femaledwarf uses, whereas they can be accurately modeled in simc. Similarly, simc supports multiple fight scenarios, changing priorities in different conditions (e.g., CA or execute range), different amounts or human error, etc.

But the mechanics are entirely separate from the profiles. Your specific objections above are solely gripes about the profile I happen to use (plug it into FD and you will get similar numbers). When I stumbled across this message, I grabbed your profile, removed level upgrades (which we don't use in T14H profiles), reforged, and checked it in instead. I reforged for Crit > Mastery > Haste for BM and Crit > Haste > Mastery for SV and MM (because that was better). The result was BM 126586, SV 120707, MM 118489. So thanks for the profile update!

We now have T15 support in "review" state, which is to say we believe it's correct, but it will lag announced parameter changes (e.g., it doesn't have the chimera reduction from +50% to +25%). I discuss on EJ how you can apply those form the command line. We'd be delighted with reports of specific inaccuracies (e.g., pet Bite is too high) or recommended T15 regular and heroic profiles (as with the T14 profiles, the ones there are adequate placeholders). Also it may be that mmo-champ is a good (or better) place to generally solicit profiles examples. Thanks!

You might very well be right that it's only "notorious" because the times it has failed are noteworthy. I just generally believe Simcraft is far too much effort to use, compared to Femaledwarf, which is much more user friendly (atleast to me), along with (usually) being more accurate. I didn't mean to offend you, but it's been a "gripe" of mine for a long time that everytime a "profile" is made, and people start quoting simulationcraft.org as "how the class is going to do", the gear is *always* less-than-optimal. If I understood your post correct, then using my gearset over the one you used on simulationcraft.org gave BM a 3.5K dps lift, surv 1K, and MM ~100. Which puts BM ahead of both rogues and shamans on that graph, instead of below, making us seem alot "better" =p.
I'm sure if you ask around hunters in "top end guilds", they'll be happy to help you with gearsets and playstyles - atleast I won't mind.

Also, when was the relic ever nerfed? As far as I recall, the only "nerf" to the relic was a tooltip update to reflect the downgraded values in challenge mode?

[Disfunctionz]

@Nemesis003
You obviously didnt read my initial argument to why its an overall dps lose.
If your capped you gain less passive focus witch translates into an overall dps lose compared to not being focus capped.

[Lokrick]

You might very well be right that it's only "notorious" because the times it has failed are noteworthy. I just generally believe Simcraft is far too much effort to use, compared to Femaledwarf, which is much more user friendly (atleast to me), along with (usually) being more accurate. I didn't mean to offend you, but it's been a "gripe" of mine for a long time that everytime a "profile" is made, and people start quoting simulationcraft.org as "how the class is going to do", the gear is *always* less-than-optimal. If I understood your post correct, then using my gearset over the one you used on simulationcraft.org gave BM a 3.5K dps lift, surv 1K, and MM ~100. Which puts BM ahead of both rogues and shamans on that graph, instead of below, making us seem alot "better" =p.
I'm sure if you ask around hunters in "top end guilds", they'll be happy to help you with gearsets and playstyles - atleast I won't mind.

Also, when was the relic ever nerfed? As far as I recall, the only "nerf" to the relic was a tooltip update to reflect the downgraded values in challenge mode?

I vaguely recall the proc rate on Relic was reduced in November. The profile (which I just replaced) is from October 12th of last year.

Just to be clear, I also think femaledwarf.com is an awesome tool, and definitely very convenient, and I would have flailed wildly on the simc shot computations without Zeherah's testing and help! It simply cannot by it's nature be as accurate because it does not model all the things that go into a fight. As for easy to use, once you are setup, it's pretty painless, but you do have ot get over that small setup hump. I vastly prefer the command line myself, because it's easy to repeat tasks I've done previously. For you, I did

simc armory=eu,laughing_skull,dracodraco

and got the results with a default action list. To be able to mess with your profile, I did

> simc armory=eu,laughing_skull,dracodraco save=dracodraco.simc

and then later ran it with

> simc dracodraco.simc html=draco.html

With the ability to change the action list (in any text editor), you can mess with what circumstances you fire of fervor (there was a question at one point whether to wait for the pet to need it), when you pop a second potion (on BL? on the second Stampede?), alternate ways to incorporate kill shot into your finishing rotation, etc. You can also setup specific raid events (e.g., corresponding to events in a particular boss fight) and explore different priority approaches for dealing with them. Oh and of course since you can sim multiple players of different classes in the same run, you can sim your entire raid group, including specific strategies, to see how some group strategy might work out.

I totally understand your frustration with how people use profiles (and occasionally helped tone it down in Blizz feedback threads). When we were first implementing for MoP (that's when I started coding for simc), the hunter module was ahead of the curve on implementation and accuracy. As a result, I dragged my feet on rolling out better profiles because I didn't want the hew and cry of "nerf hunters" simply because the other modules hadn't been implemented yet (then I got busy and didn't have time to update it). I envy FD in that there's no "default profile" for people to point at . However having the raid profiles did highlight that a few class/specs were way over the top. That's one area where Blizzard didn't believe it; on review we both found bugs in the sims (mages were too high) and that the sim was still right and mages were over the top (because of unexpected synergies). Please help separate the sims from the profiles, though!

And post some T15 profiles!

[Namarus]

If you have a string of TotH procs with only a single open cast in between them, you end up focus capped. This is lost DPS.




This is what I was ultimately replying too.
The person was right.
whether it's the procs fault or not, its still a dps loss overall.
especially if you can get another talent that doesnt cause, or has a lesser chance of causing focus capping.

You dont lose dps from the talent itself, but youd lose dps from the negative focus regen that the talent causes.

Prove it. Everything I've read from "excellent" theorycrafters has said otherwise. So perhaps you would show with examples why they are wrong.

[Disfunctionz]

Its very simple logic.
No math has to be present.

You A. are not capped and have your procs. You use them and gain FULL passive focus at the same time increasing your overall focus in the course of a fight witch increases your arcane/cobra ratio.

You B. are capped and have your procs. You use them and gain LESS passive focus at the same time.

Your saying that using the same procs/abilities and gaining LESS focus is better than using the same procs/abilities and gaing MORE focus?
I think its pretty obvious that more focus is better given the fact that the procs/abilities will still get used, do the same dmg, and cost the same amount of focus capped or not.

I swear I have explained this simple logic 7 times by now in this thread.

[Namarus]

Its very simple logic.
No math has to be present.

You A. are not capped and have your procs. You use them and gain FULL passive focus at the same time increasing your overall focus in the course of a fight witch increases your arcane/cobra ratio.

You B. are capped and have your procs. You use them and gain LESS passive focus at the same time.

Your saying that using the same procs/abilities and gaining LESS focus is better than using the same procs/abilities and gaing MORE focus?
I think its pretty obvious that more focus is better given the fact that the procs/abilities will still get used, do the same dmg, and cost the same amount of focus capped or not.

I swear I have explained this simple logic 7 times by now in this thread.

You have proved how to conserve focus. You haven't proved that this is more dps which is the point.

[Dracodraco]

You have proved how to conserve focus. You haven't proved that this is more dps which is the point.

Actually, he has. Use logic for a second here. What he's saying is:

Option A gains you 2000 focus over a fight, and will put your Cobra shot (lesser damaging shot) and arcane shot at a ratio of X:Y - let's take two completly arbirtrary numbers that has nothing to do with reality (because I'm too sick to start doing math), and say 50 cobra shots to 75 arcane shots.
Each cobra shot hits for 10K on average, each arcane shot for 20K, totalling 2000K damage.
This is the option where your passive focus regen is wasted.
Option B gains you 2200 focus over a fight, and puts your CS/AS ratio at 50:85 instead - a total damage of 2200K.

Obviously there's things like global cooldowns etc, but the logic should be VERY easy to follow, Namarus -
The more focus you gain, the more high-damaging focus shots you can fire, and the less low-damaging cobra shots you have to fill in, giving you a higher dps.

I vaguely recall the proc rate on Relic was reduced in November. The profile (which I just replaced) is from October 12th of last year.

I don't recall that at all, to be honest. Only the tooltip-fix, and the tank one being fixed to have a base stat.

Just to be clear, I also think femaledwarf.com is an awesome tool, and definitely very convenient, and I would have flailed wildly on the simc shot computations without Zeherah's testing and help! It simply cannot by it's nature be as accurate because it does not model all the things that go into a fight. As for easy to use, once you are setup, it's pretty painless, but you do have ot get over that small setup hump. I vastly prefer the command line myself, because it's easy to repeat tasks I've done previously. For you, I did

simc armory=eu,laughing_skull,dracodraco

and got the results with a default action list. To be able to mess with your profile, I did

> simc armory=eu,laughing_skull,dracodraco save=dracodraco.simc

and then later ran it with

> simc dracodraco.simc html=draco.html

With the ability to change the action list (in any text editor), you can mess with what circumstances you fire of fervor (there was a question at one point whether to wait for the pet to need it), when you pop a second potion (on BL? on the second Stampede?), alternate ways to incorporate kill shot into your finishing rotation, etc. You can also setup specific raid events (e.g., corresponding to events in a particular boss fight) and explore different priority approaches for dealing with them. Oh and of course since you can sim multiple players of different classes in the same run, you can sim your entire raid group, including specific strategies, to see how some group strategy might work out.

Thing is, I don't personally care about factors that lessens dps, because it doesn't matter in my choise of gear - I'd want the best theoretical output for my gear, which FD shows me just fine.
I can see when it's usefull (testing a talent like Fervor), but on the other hand, if you put in the wrong numbers (like a wrong gearset), you'll arrive at a value regardless, and you'll have no idea if its correct or not.

I totally understand your frustration with how people use profiles (and occasionally helped tone it down in Blizz feedback threads). When we were first implementing for MoP (that's when I started coding for simc), the hunter module was ahead of the curve on implementation and accuracy. As a result, I dragged my feet on rolling out better profiles because I didn't want the hew and cry of "nerf hunters" simply because the other modules hadn't been implemented yet (then I got busy and didn't have time to update it). I envy FD in that there's no "default profile" for people to point at . However having the raid profiles did highlight that a few class/specs were way over the top. That's one area where Blizzard didn't believe it; on review we both found bugs in the sims (mages were too high) and that the sim was still right and mages were over the top (because of unexpected synergies). Please help separate the sims from the profiles, though!

Yea, the simcraft was very well done for the start of MOP, which is why I got so annoyed when it basicly "tanked" and went back to the "Why would I use this, the gearset isn't even optimal"-thing later on.
It's also true that it's really, really annoying when people take Simcraft as the "gospel truth", but it serves its purposes - I wouldn't want to do without it. It's just not my prefered tool to check what item I want to upgrade, my statweights, or which talent to use <.<

And post some T15 profiles!

Give me a link to a proper profiler that can interact with a reforging optimizer and I'll have a BiS set done by tomorrow (assuming they don't change anything).

Oh, and one thing - how come haste pulls ahead of mastery for surv, and by how much does it pull ahead? I'm firmly convinced that mastery should pull slightly ahead after the serpent sting buff on singletarget, and massively on more than one target.

[Disfunctionz]

Thanks Draco for doing some maths for me.
And ultimately I just wanted to say that overall the passive focus you would lose from toth is probably not much(although it may be depending on your focus management, but theoretically speaking anyways)
My biggest thing was I didn't want people to get the misconception that its okay to be focus capped.(that can potentially be very damaging to a lesser experienced/knowledgeable person)
If you messed up your focus management, and your going to cap, then yes you should use your highest dmg ability, but you should optimally not put yourself in that position in the first place.
And if the talent fully causes you to cap, then you have to include that in the package of the talent.(witch will ultimately devalue it)