Survivalist DPS suggestions

Anj said:

Ceyle, once upon a time, I was content with being BM. I was "geared" to hunt all the Spirit Beasts *and* almost passed out when I finally trained King Krush. I have to thank Garwulf for that. Now I have to thank you for making me curious about what SV and now MM has to offer.

Btw, I hit 4.4K when we went after Omen earlier. It went down to 2.8K at HoL but the funny thing was, I was #1 at Recount and it made our tank shut up, who went in all cocky and overconfident. Love it!

4.4k on Omen is great.  As for the heroic HoL?  Heroics are not a good metric to measure dps when you're a raid geared hunter (which you are) going in with other raid geared and skilled toons, the stuff just dies too quickly.  In other words the better your heroic group is the less damage and dps you will do, in a raid the better your raid group is the better your damage and dps will be.  Just as long as you are at your rightful place atop the meters then it's all good .

As for the MM spec, I love it.  That said I'd recommend you stick to SV for the time being, yeah MM has a simpler rotation but (you had to have known there was a 'but' coming) it's a little more complicated to play.  Why?  CD Management, making sure you pop that Rapid Fire right at the opportune moment to maximize it's effectiveness.  Not to mention Marks is hellaciously more mana intensive.  SV is far more mana effiecient and there is really one "Button o' Wiin" you have to concern yourself with, Rapid Fire.  True all hunter's have it, but MM hunter's get to use that little button o' win more often because of the Readiness and Rapid Killing talents (Hug's the Readiness and Rapid Killing talents), therefore they have to chose the moment when Rapid Fire (and Readiness) will do the most good through out an entire boss fight.  For a SV hunter it's a tad more easy when they should pop Rapid Fire.  Either at the beginning or right towards the end when the boss is bleeding really bad and he needs just a little bit more to push him into death.  Or if the boss fight is long enough (over 5 minutes) you may get to pop the Button o' Win twice (at the beginning and towards the end), which is well … awesomesauce (Yeah still reading too much Frostheim).

Which is another reason why Heroics are not a good metric to measure your overall dps, chances are you are only going to get the opportunity to blow your CD's once (maybe twice depending on the length of the Heroic), and CD's boost your damage and dps significantly.

And yes, you should keybind Rapid Fire and macro it with your pet's Call of the Wild since they both share the same CD of 5 minutes.  If you really want to get creative you can wait for a trinket proc before you pop Rapid Fire but since this is more of a SV Hunter 101 basics course I won't get into that.  That's a level  200 course and that will come later .

I read thru the thread and deff took some of the suggestions to heart yet need some guidance on my build as well since i was running BM then switched to SV for raids. http://www.wowarmory.com/chara.....;cn=Foxian finally got my Harppon and 2 pieces of T-10 yet can't get down the shot rotation for SV. Any suggestions would be greatly apreaciated and always love the site keep it up!!!

greyfoxx2002 said:I read thru the thread and deff took some of the suggestions to heart yet need some guidance on my build as well since i was running BM then switched to SV for raids. http://www.wowarmory.com/chara.....;cn=Foxian finally got my Harppon and 2 pieces of T-10 yet can't get down the shot rotation for SV. Any suggestions would be greatly apreaciated and always love the site keep it up!!!

Heya Foxian,

I think I can give you a hand here.  This is all meant as constructive criticism and in no way should it be taken as a slam towards you.  It is just in the interests of time I shall be blunt.  Good?  Excellent. .

First off, you're over the hitcap by 84.  263 is the magic number, being over it to such a massive extent (for the record I view being massively overly the hitcap as being greater than 2% over it others may disagree, but I like having a little extra hit to play with).  Hit rating has a hard cap meaning once you get to the cap you will always hit your target, since you can't hit your target more than always anything above it will gimp your dps as you could be using different gear with different more desirable stats on it that will benefit your damage and dps more.

We, meaning hunters, love polearms.  There's just something about them that yells, "Hey, that's a hunter weapon!" to us.  That said, your polearm is what has put you over the hit cap by 84 (there's something else that is contributing to your overcapped hit which I will get to in a little bit).  Be on the look out for some other melee weapons in the Heroic ICC 5 mans or ICC 10/25 (since I see you have the Ashen Verdict ring) that have +Agi and +Stam on them (either two Frost Giant's Cleaver's ( http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50787 ) or two Scourgeborne Waraxe's ( http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50411 ) would do nicely.  They drop in the ICC Gunship Battle 10 and 25 respectively), but not hit or expertise and you're golden.

Now, I can understand that you may not want to get rid of your polearm, I can certainly understand that.  It's big, it looks so damn good with the Massacre enchant on it, and did I mention it yells, "Hey!  I'm a hunter weapon!"?  Seriously, if it hadn't put me so far over the hitcap I would probably still be using it, it is that good.  Given that I am more than a little sympathetic towards that problem let's look at some other places where we might be able to lose some hit shall we? 

You have one point in Focused Aim that is contributing to you being over the cap, to put it bluntly that 1 point is wasted and could be better spend elsewhere (I'll link a SV build here in a second), if you move that point into something else you would then have a 9% chance to hit and then there is the T10 Shoulders ( http://www.wowhead.com/?item=50117 ) which have no hit on them at all, just by doing that you would bring your hit rating more in line.  You would still be overcapped, but not massively overcapped.  Not to mention you would have a more optimized build and some shiny new shoulders.

And now, ze SV build…

This is pretty much the Raiding SV Hunter's Standard build ( http://www.wowhead.com/?talent.....hsd:NAfM0z ) along with the attendant Major Glyphs to maximize the build's full potential.  I threw Minor Glyphs in there as well, but feel free to change those you if wish.

Ze Shot Priority…

Kill Shot (When available)

Explosive Shot

Black Arrow

Serpent Sting

Aimed Shot

Steady Shot

Rinse and Repeat

Since you have the T9 Bonus Serpent Sting is higher up the priority list.  If you didn't have it then Serpent Sting would be fired after Aimed Shot.

Notice I did not use "shot rotation", as that term is a bit dated.  This is the priority you want your shots to go off in.  Meaning, before Kill Shot is available Explosive Shot always get priority.  Do not delay Explosive Shot for anything as doing so will result in a net dps loss for you, the hunter.

I noticed you said you are having problems with the SV rotation, I can guess that the problem is due to getting a Lock and Load to proc, as getting one of those will screw up the shot priority list more than a little.  I talk about L and L a little further up in the thread, and since I tend to get a bit wordy and ramble more than a tad , I'll just link it here ( https://huntsmanslodge.com/foru.....stions#385 ).

Hope this helps .

Ceyle, thanks again! That gives more light to what DPS really means.

I'm still enjoying SV though. Maybe I'll try MM at Cataclysm.

What about simple macros?

I'm an old BM/MM hunter that recently dusted the ole hunter off for ICC raiding. Kill command should be macroed to everything you do. I also have my attack set to target my focus' target so I'm always on the tank's target starting out. (We all know how hard our first burst is)

Another suggestion is to macro your rapid fire and trinks into a one button "pew pew" for your boss encounters. This gives you good management of your CDs while saving barspace.

I also use Forte and with alittle tweaking its great. I changed the size of my CD bars, changed the colors so that I can sight the CD instead of reading the text. I first started using Forte on my tank in ICC25 on Festergut. The 3rd phase is all about CDs and I needed to monitor them better.

Just a simple change in macros and better CD management can put your dps thru the roof.

Thanks alot for the tips and spec suggestion i tinkered and my GM was very happy with my DPS in SV missed out in a ICC run but gm was impressed. Will continue to read up and handle those L/L procs thanks again!!!

Banterloft said:

What about simple macros?

I'm an old BM/MM hunter that recently dusted the ole hunter off for ICC raiding. Kill command should be macroed to everything you do. I also have my attack set to target my focus' target so I'm always on the tank's target starting out. (We all know how hard our first burst is)

Another suggestion is to macro your rapid fire and trinks into a one button "pew pew" for your boss encounters. This gives you good management of your CDs while saving barspace.

I also use Forte and with alittle tweaking its great. I changed the size of my CD bars, changed the colors so that I can sight the CD instead of reading the text. I first started using Forte on my tank in ICC25 on Festergut. The 3rd phase is all about CDs and I needed to monitor them better.

Just a simple change in macros and better CD management can put your dps thru the roof.

Yeah, simple macros help your dps significantly.  I have my Kill Command macro'd into all my shots, the one good thing about patch 3.0.8 was taking all hunter abilities with more than a 30 second CD off the GCD.

I wish I could macro my trinkets but unfortunately they're all procs with no on use one :(.  Thank god for Power Aura's is all I have to say.

How do you do your macros? Add Kill Shot for each regular shot like so?

/cast Kill Shot
/cast Explosive Shot

and then

/cast Kill Shot
/cast Serpent Sting 

and so on...?

Slightly OT. I was using my BM build earlier and was surprised to see I'm pulling 3.3K on a dummy. So I've decided to use BM for 5-man "quick" randoms and SV for raids. It should be nice to use KingKrush again -- would be nice to see some players go in a fit upon seeing a BM in the group. 😉

Anj said:

How do you do your macros? Add Kill Shot for each regular shot like so?

/cast Kill Shot
/cast Explosive Shot

and then

/cast Kill Shot
/cast Serpent Sting 

and so on…?

I wouldn't, Kill Shot is on the global cooldown and using macro's for shots usually results in a dps loss.  You're better off manually weaving your shots according to the shot priority.

As for what you can Macro?  Shots and skills that aren't on the global cool down such as ...  Kill Command.  A lot of hunter's trigger it manually since they have more of an instictive feel for when it will do the most good.  That said, I am not one of those hunter's lol.  Since not using the skill will result in a dps loss I have it macro'd into all of my shots.

Simple Kill Command Macro:

#showtooltip Serpent Sting
/cast [@pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/cast Serpent Sting
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

You can change the /cast to whatever shot as well …

#showtooltip Explosive Shot
/cast [@pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/cast Explosive Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Just be sure to make a new macro or else you will overwrite the previous one.

A Steady Shot/Kill Command Macro needs to be set up with Steady being the last command executed, because if you don't Steady Shot won't go off, doh!

#showtooltip Steady Shot
/cast [@pettarget,exists] Kill Command
/cast Steady Shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

Slightly OT. I was using my BM build earlier and was surprised to see I'm pulling 3.3K on a dummy. So I've decided to use BM for 5-man "quick" randoms and SV for raids. It should be nice to use KingKrush again — would be nice to see some players go in a fit upon seeing a BM in the group.

Seeing that dino go all big and red has got to blow some minds .

Thanks for explaining that Ceyle. I've been confusing Kill Shot with Kill Command. lol.

Heh, easy to do.

Guess what? I hit 5K dps earlier then averaged 4K ending #1 dps in that PoS pug. I got lucky because Lock and Load proc'd several times. The funny thing is, I was "just" using the default WoW UI (with a modified sFilter addon). Less is more, huh?

Anj said:

Guess what? I hit 5K dps earlier then averaged 4K ending #1 dps in that PoS pug. I got lucky because Lock and Load proc'd several times. The funny thing is, I was "just" using the default WoW UI (with a modified sFilter addon). Less is more, huh?

Wooo!  4k in a heroic is well ... awesome?  No, that's not quite good enough ... Awesomesauce?  Yeah, there we go.  Awesomesauce :D.

And yeah, sometimes less is more when it comes to the UI.

As a suv hunter sitting at 7.5k dps, i have a few suggestions for u on maxing ur dps. First, congrats for the 3 spirit beasts man, i got loque jacked from under me by a druid for the acheivement. ok, here is the list version:

1: level that wolf to 80!!!! Furious howl is the best pet dps ability there is, get it up there!

2: i saw that your an engineer, i am too, and the tinker enchants are some of the best in the game, you want to put the nitro-boosts on your boots for the +crit, and the hyperspeed on your gloves for the haste boost, it really increases dps, just macro it in with stuff, as it helps get off procs more often.

3: you are definitely hit capped now, so you can get rid of the +hit gems for more agi, which will boost dps

4: I like your gear, you have some peices better than mine lol, (boots, neck, weapon), just make sure to get +agi enchants on it all, besides your 2-hand

5: your spec, for the most part pretty good, but as you have high mana i have a few sugesstions. As long as you raid with a shaman, ret pally, or have enough pallys to end up with wisdom, you dont need the mana efficency in the spec, so you can pull the 6 points our of hunting party and aimed shot, you still want recourceful for the Black arrow CD cut, you do want another point in expose weakness though, and once you get the T10 2-peice boost, throw the other 5 in improved aspect of the hawk, as you want the speed boost to get the proc as much as possible, personally, i pull out aimed shot and put it in focused fire for the 1% damage boost, and i just use multi shot instead

other than that keep up the good work, show the world that huntards rule