Every Friday Tabana brings you the latest discussions straight from the Elitist Jerks forums with a recap of what was discussed and links to the full posts so you can stay on top of the latest in hunter theorycrafting.
- Simple Questions/Simple Answers
- Pets
- Marksmanship
- MM: Talents
- 4.3.2 Buff to Aspect of the Hawk 1/13/12
- Survival
- SV: Shot Mechanics
- Multi-Shot for Two Targets? 1/13/12
- SV: 4.3 Stats
- The 757 Haste Plateau 1/18/12
- Rivkah’s (Zeherah’s) Hunter DPS Analyzer at FemaleDwarf
- FD: Comments and Questions
- Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit
- Classic World of Warcraft
- C’thun 1/15/12
- Skeram 1/14/12
- Twin Emps Plausible Part II 1/13/12
- Twin Emperors Soloed 1/14/12
- Wrath of the Lich King
- Freya, Part II 1/14/12
Pets and Platforms in Madness of Deathwing 1/15/12
In the Simple Questions/Simple Answers thread, daimonie wrote, “Testing with a chimera showed me that my pet gets teleported to my side when I switch platforms during the Madness of Deathwing Encounter. By channeling his AOE, I could note exacly what he was doing.”
From my log, I can see that Ferocious Inspiration and Spirit bond were gained 9 times. This seems to be:
- Dismiss / Summon Pet
- Jump to Yellow
- Jump to Red
- Jump to Yellow
- Jump to Green
- Jump to Blue
- Jump to Green
- Dissmiss/Summon
Add in this from the start of the fight, found in the log browser
[21:13:27.796] Chimearon's Ferocious Inspiration fades from Splee [21:13:29.435] Splee gains Ferocious Inspiration from ÐazgûlWe gain the grand total of 9 – telling us that the buffs on our pets are reset when jumping, including Frenzy. Is this conclusion true, or am I missing something here?
Zeel replied, “Further testing shows that pets spawn on a new platform even if it dies on previous one. I don’t think Blizzard intended it this way, but whether it could be used for something new, I haven’t figured out. It’s unlikely that pet dies “by itself” in this encounter.”
4.3.2 Buff to Aspect of the Hawk 1/13/12
In the Marksmanship thread, Whitefyst wrote, “The 4.3.2 change to buff Aspect of the Hawk by 35% is about a 1001 AP gain for MM hunters, when including the 10% raid AP buff. The equates to roughly +1250 DPS.”
Although OwN is listed as an optional talent, it is was pretty much a mandatory talent and is even more so now.
This change also applies a greater AP penalty when switching to Aspect of the Fox, making the trade off analysis of whether it is worthwhile to switch to fox to cast SS while on the move a more limited decision. It is best to avoid using Aspect of the Fox as much as possible. [...]
Multi-Shot for Two Targets? 1/13/12
In the Survival thread, kardar asked, “Is it worth using multi-shot on 2 targets? Does one multi-shot on two targets do more damage than two arcane shots or maybe even an explosive shot? Would mainly like to know so I know if I should cleave like this on Blackhorn.”
Nooska replied, “Multi-shot does 120% weapon damage to any target it hits + damage from ISrS (via Serpent Spread). The alternatives, Arcane shot or Cobra shot (SS isn’t applicable, as no SV hunter would be using it anyway) do respectively 100% weapon damage + 4.83%RAP + 289 (AS) and 100% weapon damage +1.7%RAP + 276 (CoS) – both AS and CoS [are] increased by SV mastery, as is ISrS.”
An ilvl 397 ranged has a dps of 888.2, an ilvl 397 geared hunter will have ~28k RAP (from browsing a few FD profiles) the math then becomes:
Multishot cleave:
(1.2*(888.2+28,000/14)*1.8)+(0.3(28,000*0.4+(460*15/3))) = 6,239+4,050 = 10,289 damage per target per second at the cost of 40 focus per second. The 4,050 damage is multiplied by SV mastery.Arcane shot “spam”:
(888.2+28,000/14)*1.8+28,000*0.0483+289 = 5,199+1,352+289 = 6,840 damage per second at the cost of 22 focus per second – unglyphed, glyphed it increases to 7,661 damage per second at the cost of 22 focus per second. All of this damage is multiplied by SV mastery.Cobra Shot spam:
(888.2+28,000/14)*1.8+28,000*0.017+276 = 5,199+476+276 = 5,951 damage per casttime at the gain of 9(18) focus per casttime. This damage is multiplied by SV mastery.To make a complete realistic comparison, I need to factor in the SV mastery, browsing World of Logs and checking the SV hunters, I will state that ~15 mastery (including the gratis 8 points) is a reasonable amount to expect in ilvl 397, leaving the following damage amounts:
MS: 10,897 (per target)
AS: 8,810
CoS: 6,844Now factoring in the focus cost, this gives us the figures of:
MS: 272.4 DPF per target
AS: 400.5 DPFWhile these figures make it intuitive to go MS for 2+ targets over AS, we have to remember that you burn through your focus at twice the rate, meaning more CoS, faster, to keep your ES going – while I haven’t done any ES comparisons above (because it has a CD so it isn’t spamable), ES, with the stated amounts of RAP and mastery, will deal ~28k damage with all 3 ticks for 44 focus, and is more DPET than any of the shots and more DPF than MS on 2 targets. This means that with 2 targets you want to use ES whenever possible, and if there are no damage mitigations resulting in a situation where you have to focus one target down before engaging the next, MS is more DPS even on a single target when directly comparing MS and AS, but it is far from sustainable.
A rough estimate of sustained fire says you will need 1 CoS per AS to sustain (with 2t13) and 2 CoS per MS to sustain making the “real damage” as follows (on 2 targets):
MS: 35,482 damage over 1sec+2xCoS
AS: 15,654 damage over 1sec+1xCoSWith a CoS casttime of 1.6, this comes out to:
MS: 8,448 dps (over 4.2 seconds)
AS: 6,021 dps (over 2.6 seconds)Keep in mind that ExS is still wanted on CD as long as there are only 2 targets (which is what we are looking at here), so while you can do 2 complete “AS spams” between ES you can only do 1 “MS spam” and 1 extra ability. Also keep in mind that this assumes that there is no kill priority, and does not take into account debuffs on the targets which will vary depending on which target the other members of your raid are on and what debuffs they apply and how. [...]
Lilbitters replied, “I was also curious what exactly SV hunters should do when there is only 2 targets. I know it’s kind of a crude way to test it but this is what I did:”
- Used my default SV profile and removed Rapid Fire from shot priority and disabled Bloodlust.
- Set fight length to 30 seconds and 1 minute for each scenario [...].
Lilbitters tested four scenarios and concluded, “It’s clearly a DPS increase to use the standard SV shot priority while also maintaining rolling Serpent Sting on a secondary target and refreshing it with Cobra Shots for a shorter duration, but as the combat length extends to 1 minute, the advantage greatly diminishes to barely beating out the Multi-Shot focus dump.”
While it is a slight DPS increase to use Explosive Trap instead of Black Arrow, it should only be used if both mobs will definitely be within the area of effect for the entire duration. [...]
Lilbitters then tested the four scenarios assuming three targets and concluded, “it is clearly most practical as well as the highest DPS to use Multi-Shot and Explosive Trap on three or more targets, which is as expected. This holds true at both the shorter 30 second and longer 1 minute combat lengths.”
In the Survival thread, Asrial asked, “Whats the reasoning for promoting the 757 haste plateau? With the 2pc T13, haste effects, LnL and other things, I don’t see how gearing for this specific plateau will give any benefit since the times we cast 3x CS [are] quite rare.”
Nerec replied, “At the time t11 was [the] highest tier, mastery [did] scale slightly better [than] haste after the plateau. After several updates (BA Buff) in t12, mastery scaled better than haste. How [could] haste be better with t13 2pc, which [...] reduces the amount of Cobra shots needed even further?”
The impact of haste on SV abilites are:
- shorter CoS cast time
- more auto-shots
- focus-reg [...]
Mastery [has] impact on [the] following abilities:
- BA / Trap
- Serpent Sting
- Arcane Shot
- Cobra Shot
- Nature Dmg procs (Vishanka)
In my last WOL Profile on Ultraxion, Auto-Shot does 15%, Pet does 10% and just for the number: Kill Shot does 3%. Therefore haste is nice for 25% of our dmg, ~70 does favor mastery.
The goal of a haste plateau was to have a near focus neutral rotation which supports our Explosive Shot the most. Thus the best use of the given timeframe between 2 explosive shots. This leads to 757 haste + x modified through everyone’s latency to get as tight uptime between each Explosive Shot [as] possible.
Ardeaf replied, “If Mastery were really better than haste above 757, then when I reforge all the haste I have that’s above 757 into mastery, I should see a dps increase. I do not.”
Reforging out of mastery as much as possible: 41109.69
Female Dwarf: Reforging out of mastery [...]Reforging out of haste as much as possible (try to get to the 757 softcap): 40662.98
Female Dwarf: Reforging out of haste [...]I essentially gained ~500 dps by going from the recommended “softcap” value for haste to just completely dropping as much mastery as possible.
Lilbitters replied, “Changing settings ends up changing the results to be at least equal or in favor of Mastery>Haste”
- Uncheck “Don’t emulate known bugs”
- Changing latency to something closer to what I actually experience (~50), arguably lower or 0 with ability queuing
[There were a few other differences between your profile and mine, such as Shot priority, pet talents, cloak enchant, all of which also increased the DPS in both of your profiles, but more in the higher mastery build.] Additionally, “Enabling Public Test Realm changes” further gives higher benefit to Mastery instead of Haste.
My profile for an example of settings (PTR changes not yet enabled in this profile)
You can just manually adjust stats at the bottom of the gear tab to simulate reforging. Changing +800 Haste and -800 Mastery (and various other values) all seemed to be slight DPS losses for me until I get back down to roughly under 1300 Haste which shifted in 1 additional Explosive Shot over the 5 minute fight which ended up being a slight increase.
Vishanka 403 vs. Horrifying Horn Arbalest 410 1/14/12
In the Hunter DPS Analyzer thread, Yarx wrote, “I noticed that Vishanka, Rachen der Erde is higher rated than Horrifying Horn Arbalest. Isn’t there something wrong with the calculation?”
Pichuca replied, “[...] There is no rating on items whatsoever unless you equip them on an specific character with its gear, talents, race, etc. Being a troll can be one of the reasons of seeing the bow above the xbow, but without more info there´s no answer to that.”
Rivkah replied, “Without your setting links I can’t confirm the exact reason, but it’s quite normal for trolls to get higher results from normal Vishanka than heroic Horn, especially for SV.”
Some of the reasons for this are:
- SV scales poorly with weapon damage
- SV mastery affects the bow proc
- The horn is .1 speed faster than Vishanka, which makes it a bit weaker than it would normally be comparing items 7 ilevels apart
- Trolls gain 179 crit rating from using a bow, which helps compensate for the gap in ilevel
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Sepultura wrote, “About C’thun, I never tried him alone but after seeing how a rogue and a dk made him makes me think that probably is easier for us then for those 2 classes with the standard MM spec.
We still can heal with chimera, the Ouro damage and his adds is nothing special and we got the advantage to be ranged and the 2 or 3 seconds we got might be enough to kill one tentacle (of two) needed to down the boss. I’m missing something or this might be an easy boss for us too?”
Onin replied, “I’ve already done several attempts on C’thun using the Ouro method. The problem is that Ouro teleports you out of the stomach very fast, usually before the tentacles even render, making you unable to attack them. It becomes a majorly chaotic fight of trial and error, and eventually that minor damage from everything hitting you will add up. I think a spirit beast is again optimal for it.
I don’t think a legitimate kill is possible, even if you do manage to one-shot the tentacles as Durendil suggested before you cannot reach the teleport pad before getting instantly killed. At least, I doubt C’thun would decide not to kill you during his vulnerable mode. Perhaps a Cardboard Assassin is enough?
Onin later added, “Small update: Make sure to use a “/target Flesh /cast Arcane Shot” macro or similar, it speeds up the tentacle killing and you really need to kill them as fast as possible.”
Generally I just give up on the chase after about 10 swallows; the spawn rate of the big tentacles increases as the fight goes on to the point where you’re barely able to move at all. It requires significant luck to kill the tentacles before Ouro pulls you out, and you’ll have to kill C’thun within the duration of that one Weaken, but it’s completely plausible! [...]
Onin later announced, “C’thun is dead! Arguably the illegitimate way. I didn’t Fraps it because my PC isn’t the best and I was afraid the lower framerate would reduce my chances. But I have screenshots:”
http://i.imgur.com/RoqRh.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Ae9wU.jpgTactics:
Phase 0: Before the fight, you will need to pull Ouro up to C’thun’s room. No problem here, only a slight note that you’ll want to dismount as it is possible for him to reset if you go too far away. Just kill any Scarabs that reach you.Phase 1: Just kill him. You might need to be careful of his eyebeam if your DPS isn’t high enough, but that’s simple as cake.
Phase 2: [...] You need to kill the two Flesh Tentacles inside of his stomach, then defeat C’thun while he is Weakened. To achieve this, you need to be Swallowed; however, being Swallowed makes C’thun instantly kill you after a few seconds due to his wipe mechanics. Therefore we have Ouro to teleport us out. Sadly this means that the majority of the time, we only spend a fraction of a second in the stomach, and simply have to pray for enough time to hit a Flesh Tentacle.
Make sure to have a macro ready along the lines of:
/target Flesh Tentacle
/cast Arcane ShotTherefore, the real challenge in phase 2 is getting swallowed as often as possible. For this, you need to dispel Stomach Acid, by running into the center of C’thun’s hitbox. You’ll get knocked back, and soon enough Swallowed again for another chance.
To make matters worse, you’ll be taking constant damage from Avid, Mind Flays, Ouro’s scarabs, and big tentacles. Make sure to dispel any Hamstrings you’re afflicted with and AoE down any Scarabs, but otherwise I’d advise to ignore any other adds and focus purely on dispelling as often as possible. The spawn rate of the tentacles increases as the fight drags on, and they will eventually kill either you or your pet, if you don’t get him down fast enough.
Once you’ve got a lucky break and kill both tentacles, simply pop all cooldowns and get him down. [...]
Side note: Legitimate kills of C’thun are impossible. There is no situation in which C’thun will not kill you inside the stomach. You cannot reach the teleport pad fast enough, no abilities will save you, and neither will managing to kill the Flesh Tentacles. You cannot prevent being swallowed, either.
Side note 2: I’ve noticed my World MS increasing substantially after attempting these C’thun kills. I’m thinking the exploit puts some kind of strain on the server somehow, so I’d advise not to power too many attempts in a row, give it a soft reset after a few wipes. It’s in your own interest as you don’t want the instance to freeze on you just as you manage to weaken C’thun, like happened to me >.<
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Chaser wrote, “I hope no one uses the send pet in and feign death method against Skeram anymore. Just dismiss pet and do it without a pet. To gain distance you climb the stairs and jump off the stone structure, Skeram has to go around and you can shoot him while he does that. It’s a lot faster that way.”
Onin replied, “You can stay out of Mind Control range for Skeram. The range on MC is 40 yards, but as his model is rather large you can attack him from more than 40 yards away. Killing him this way is extremely easy.”
Twin Emps Plausible Part II 1/13/12
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Sepultura wrote, “The problem with going other specs but MM is the heals. I don’t dedicate too much time to solos but you could also go BM. Pet attacking physical one, you attacking caster.”
You can macro glyphed Raptor Strike to target the closest enemy, hit him, and back to the same target, more because of the enraged adds hitting you. If you really want to maximize dps you can make macros (target=whatever) so all your spells hit the caster but the auto shot is still hitting the physical one. [...]
Onin replied, “You pretty much have to MD after a teleport to prevent Vek’nilash from running up to you. Your pet will take a little while to get back to him and depending on their distance he might reach you in melee which costs you more DPS than a single MD click would.”
Targeting Vek’lor likely won’t work because you cannot Widow Venom him. You’d need a LOT more DPS on him to break through the healing than on Vek’nilash with the help of Widow. Dealing additional damage to him is still worth it, though, as they share all damage taken. Vek’lor only heals stronger.
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Chaser wrote, “I did it today as BM, was quite easy actually.”
Spec : Some weird BM spec not tailored for this fight at all (pretty sure this would be easily doable with spirit bond MM spec as well)
Gear : ivl 389, 4pcT13
Pet : Spirit beast specced 100% for dmg
Length : about 10 min, didn’t pay attention to exact time it took but certainly more than 6min
Tactic :
- Made sure to keep widow venom on melee emp at all times
- I used a focus macro for serpent sting and arcane shot on magic emp. [...]
- Whenever adds built up I’d feign death, MD and spam multi on melee emp a couple of times, or lay down explosive traps at my feet. I didn’t really care if I aggroed neutral adds since they died pretty fast. You can also move toward the melee emp and in a circle around it and multi on the boss and it will often kill the little adds on you much like in DS when you clump up on yorshaj.
- Obviously MDing between ports is useful but as BM even if I messed that up my pet would get aggro back very fast.
Note: On Wiki they say that since they share a health pool, and since Magic emp has less HP, the dmg you do on magic emp reflects more dmg on melee emp. For example, since magic emp has 1M HP, and melee emp 1.6M HP, if you do 1000 dmg on magic emp, the melee one takes 1600 dmg. I don’t know if it’s true but after doing 100% physical dmg on my first try (with steady, multi and kill command on melee emp) splitting my dmg between the two proved to be MUCH faster for me. [...]
Onin replied, “I respecced BM, found myself a Ghostcrawler, and killed Twin Emperors as well.”
Turns out my first suspicion is correct: Targeting Vek’lor is a bad idea unless you have nothing else to use anyway. Spamming Cobra Shot I could barely even touch their HP bar, whereas spamming Steady Shot gave enough damage to get them down. So basically, maximizing DPS on Vek’nilash is more important than maximizing DPS on Vek’lor, although in the end you want both to take as much damage as possible.
Chaser replied, “I did it this way too with steady on melee emp. But you’re saying you tried to do arcane+cobra on magic and kill command+auto on melee and that didn’t work?”
Onin replied, “Yes, I did noticeably less damage in total using Cobra on Vek’lor. After all the goal of the fight is to kill one of the two Emperors, and Vek’lor heals more, therefore focusing damage on Vek’nilash is better.”
Chaser replied, “What I don’t understand is that when I tried to use a purely physical dmg rotation on the melee emp (KC on CD, steady shot and dump focus with multi), I couldn’t kill him before enrage and he was going down way slower than when I dumped my focus with arcane on magic emp. Something doesn’t add up for me about how they share health or share damage taken..there’s something I don’t understand.”
Onin replied, “As far as I understand it goes like this:”
- Whenever one Emperor takes damage, the other Emperor takes an equal amount of damage.
- Every 2 seconds, both Emperors heal each other for 20k health.
- Vek’lor has less health than Vek’nilash, but he also takes 25% more healing because of Widow Venom.
- When one Emperor dies, the other automatically dies too, no matter its current hp.
- What we’re not sure about is whether this difference in health means that the shared damage is percentage based. I’m inclined to say it isn’t, because of points 3 and 4 combined; as suggested, damage on Vek’lor would hurt Vek’nilash more, whereas my experience would disprove that, and the shared death makes it mechanically unnecessary.
So obviously using Multi-shot as dump rather than Arcane Shot is worse because you’re just doing straight-up less DPS.
But you’re right that it’s odd. If you have the most DPS through magic damage on Vek’lor, then more damage should reflect onto Vek’nilash, and it shouldn’t matter. I don’t really have a clear answer, and, who knows, I may just have had a bad attempt when I tried with Cobra. I can do further testing next week.
Goldschakal added, “Killed Twins as Marksman with a cat. DpS was around 23,5k and my item level is 399. Serpent Sting + Chimera Shot on Vek’lor (aka my focus aka the magic guy) & Widow [Venom], Steady Shot and Aimed Shots at Vel’nilash (aka my target aka the normal guy).”
Caribald replied, “I just killed them using the exact same strategy (other than that I used a Ravager). [...]”
Youtube upload of solo Twin Emperors: [WoW] Hunter vs Twin Emperors – YouTube
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Onin wrote, “I’ve been doing some Freya attempts, and I really can’t see any effective way to get rid of the Lasher adds. Durendil wrote he feigns death and then just spams Multi-shot whilst running around them, but I take so much damage doing this that I can’t survive two spawns of Lashers in one attempt. Should I just pray for luck to only get one Lasher spawn?”
Durendil replied, “For Freya, there [are] always 2 lasher spawns. The lashers run as fast as you do when they are stunned. What I did was FD to group them up, then spam multi-shot and run like hell.”
In a straight line, not around them. With pet on passive so he would be in healing range. If you need to turn, use the big tree, so lashers don’t take a shortcut. Of course, since with current gear we have more than enough dps for the elemental trio, it’s a good idea to use Rapid Fire. But then again, last time I tried Freya, I couldn’t handle the lashers either (and I was the one who killed her in the first place)… They really are difficult. It’s a matter of practice.
A full index of all Elitist Jerks posts recapped at the Wow Hunter’s Hall is maintained in the Index of Elitist Jerks Hunter Forum Posts.
