Welcome to the Conando Center for Hunters Who Can't Play Good
(And wanna learn how to do other stuff, too)
Introduction
So here's the deal: currently, IcyVeins has a great SV hunter guide, located here: http://www.icy-veins.com/survival-hu...-pve-dps-guide
It was recently remade with the help of Blood Legion's Kennyloggins and does a great job of covering the basics of the class. There's really no use restating all of that here, so that's the place to go if you're looking for a basic, comprehensive overview of the class.
However, there is still a bunch of basic theory crafting stuff that isn't covered by basic guides and keeps coming up in the forums. That's what this is for -- to consolidate a lot of those answers into a single place and provide an advanced supplement on how to be less terrible at hunter.
Table of Contents:
I: Gearing
II: Rotation and Priorities
III: How To Be Less Bad (Optimization)
- World of Logs
- Comparebot
IV: So Should I Ever Delay a Shot To get Explosive Shot/Glaive Toss Right off of Cooldown?
V: But Conando, I'm Just Not Skilled Enough to Get Everything Right Off Cooldown
VI: Kill Shot Weaving
VII: What Happened to Weaving Explosive Shots?
VIII: Pets
IX: Which Abilities Update Dynamically?
X: Conclusion
I: Gearing
As mentioned in IcyVeins, the general priority system goes Agi>Hit+Exp to cap>Crit>Haste>Mastery
The best way to determine everything past that is to just simulate your character. Both the web based FemaleDwarf and the downloadable Simulationcraft program do great jobs of this and are fairly easy to learn. In the end, the answer to every last question you'll ask is, "You should sim it." Unless the question is, "Should I fight this angry Samoan over here?" In that case the answer is always no. Are you crazy? Never mess with a Samoan. Trust me on this.
With that said, it's important to note that hunters scale mainly off of agility in both single target and AoE situations. This is important for a few reasons:
- It may mean breaking socket bonuses to get more agility. The best way to determine when to do this is by simulating your character, but generally 1 agility is worth at least 3 of a secondary stat.
- It usually means that item level is king when determining if something is an upgrade. While other classes may forgo a higher item level item for one with more desirable second stats, it's almost never wise to do this as a hunter.
A lot of people have been experimenting with Haste>Crit builds, so let me proactively address why I don't believe in these at all:
- Even if haste held a slight advantage in single target (which no reliable sim shows), crit holds a clear advantage in AoE.
- People seem to perceive haste's effect on RPPM to be larger than it actually is. In reality, moving from a Crit>Haste to a Haste>Crit build will only increase your proc chance by a relatively small amount. That chance is real and it needs to be taken into account, but the notion of haste builds pushing your proc rates into overdrive is just an exaggeration.
II: Rotation And Priorities
There's an important point at the center of everything I'm about to say:
Perfect DPS would be getting every ability exactly off of cooldown, never focus capping, and being completely GCD capped. That's the (impossible) goal we're aiming for.
With that in mind, let's talk about the rotation. In terms of Damage per Execute Time (or in layman's terms, which abilities hit the hardest), the order goes:
Stampede > Murder of Crows > Black Arrow > Kill Shot > Explosive Shot > Arcane Shot > Cobra Shot
But remember what I said -- the goal is to never miss a cooldown. When we go to build a priority list, we have to balance how hard each ability hits with how likely it is to lose a cooldown if we delay it. So, for example, Stampede hits the hardest, but it's difficult to lose a Stampede use because you delayed it for too long. On the flip side, Explosive Shot does less damage, but the short cooldown gives you a real possibility of missing multiple uses over a normal fight. So, considering that, the generally agreeable priority list goes something like:
Serpent Sting > Explosive Shot > Kill Shot > Black Arrow > Glaive Toss > Murder of Crows > Stampede > Arcane Shot > Cobra Shot
Ultimately, the most important thing to take away from that is that Explosive Shots are your top priority, mainly due to Lock N Load procs.
I'm going to make a somewhat controversial point, though: all of this is less important than you'd think. Here's why:
Believe it or not, just going by simulations, priorities actually aren't that important. In fact, a hunter performing a perfect rotation will only perform marginally better than a hunter performing a completely backwards one.
Don't for a second think that I'm telling you not to care -- perfect priorities are still a DPS gain and important if you're serious about min/maxing -- but what I'm telling you is that priorities are absolutely never the reason that you're doing significantly less DPS than you should be.
So why are you at the bottom of the meters? That leads us to the next section…
III: How To Be Less Bad (Optimization)
Like I mentioned earlier, perfection is getting everything as soon as you possibly can after it comes off of cooldown. Are you getting an Explosive Shot off every 6 seconds? Are you using a Glaive Toss every 15? Using every Lock n Load proc immediately after you get it? Problems with these things account for the vast majority of DPS problems.
Luckily, they are easy to track and evaluate. There are two main ways to do this (both require you to have World of Logs parses):
Method 1: World of Logs
A really quick (and not entirely accurate way) of gauging a hunter's play on a single target fight is to look at ability uptimes. Ideally, a hunter should be at close to 100% uptime on Serpent Sting, around 43% uptime on Explosive Shot, and in the ballpark of 78% on black arrow. RNG and fight mechanics can push those numbers either way.
As I mentioned, that method isn't entirely accurate. The correct (and more tedious) way to do it is simply to divide the total fight time by how many times you used the ability (both hits and crits). Specifically:
Explosive Shot: Total fight time in seconds divided by: ((hits + crits) - (Lock N Load procs x 2))
This number should ideally be less then 7. Perfect usage would put it around 6.2 or 6.3. Lock N Load procs can be found in the "Buffs gained" tab.
Glaive Toss: Just pick one of the two categories and it's just the simple: Total fight time in seconds divided by (hits + crits)
This number should ideally be under 16.
Keep in mind that those numbers would be perfect play in a 100% patchwerk fight, and they're numbers that most hunters can't hit. They're simply something you're striving for, so if you're falling a bit short don't freak out.
Method 2: Comparebot
Simply go to http://raidbots.com/comparebot/ and enter a parse of yours and a parse from a top ranked hunter. Then compare how often you're using each ability and find which abilities they're using more than you. While this method only shows comparative data (as in, it's still possible that the hunter you're comparing yourself with isn't perfect), the advantage of this method is that it lets you see things like Arcane Shots and Cobra shots -- things that the other method can't really gauge.
IV: So Should I Ever Delay a Shot To get Explosive Shot/Glaive Toss Right off of Cooldown?
Generally, no. Delaying very small amounts (under half a second) is a DPS gain, but delaying things more than that (especially more than a global) is a larger DPS loss. Having a 6.0 sec/Explosive Shot means absolutely nothing if it comes at the cost of bleeding Arcane Shots.
V: But Conando, I'm Just Not Skilled Enough to Get Everything Right Off Cooldown
Addons. Addons Addons Addons. WoW is really just a game about information. They dump an almost impossible amount of information for you to sort through and if you can accurately react to everything, then your play will be perfect. That's how you improve as a player -- discovering what information you are having trouble reacting to and making it easier for you to manage by changing your UI. There are no epeen points for doing things purposely hard -- never has a top tier hunter criticized for using a UI that makes things too easy.
Doing it your way is the most important part about this, so I won't tell you which addons to use. Go to www.curse.com and test some out until you find ones that work for you. Or go onto the UI sticky and see what other people have done.
VI: Kill Shot Weaving
Because Kill Shot has a flight time and only resets after the first shot hits the target, it's possible that you might not be able to do a straight Kill Shot -> Kill Shot at max range. While you should ideally just not be at max range whenever possible, if you find yourself in that situation it's best to weave an instant cast (Explosive Shot, Glaive Toss, Arcane Shot) between the first and the second.
VII: What Happened to Weaving Explosive Shots?
MoP changed the mechanics of Explosive Shot to make it impossible to clip. Even though you still lose ticks from casting several in a row, the damage of those lost ticks is rolled into the remaining ticks.
VIII: Pets
The basics of how pets work can be found in the IcyVeins guide and a complete list of all the pets and the buffs/debuffs they bring can be found at http://www.wow-petopia.com/ , so I won't go into that.
One thing that needs to be mentioned though is that Tallstriders bring AoE sunder armor, which is the only AoE sunder in the game. It's the obvious choice if you don't need to bring another buff. They're also annoying as hell and totally worth it.
IV: Which Abilities Update Dynamically?
Stampede, Dire Beast, and A Murder of Crows all update dynamically, so there's no use to wait for procs to use them. Serpent Sting updates with each Cobra Shot, meaning that it updates constantly and there are no haste breakpoints. Black Arrow is really the only ability that snapshots stats and may be worth using in conjunction with procs.
X: Conclusion
As with anything, this is no means complete. I'm sure there are a ton of things I missed, so if you'd like to see more sections added just let me know!