So with all of the server problems in Icedown last night, I did not get a chance to login and test out all the new stuff. However, with the flood of comments and emails I got, a very common question was: What is going to change?
(of course the other common question was “What is best now?” I can answer the first, but not the second until I can do some final testing).
What Will Change:
- MM Talent Build will change
- MM Shot Cycle may or may not change, need some investigating
- SV Talent Build will change
- SV Shot Cycle will change
- Your pet talent build will change
- Your glyphs may very well change
- Your tenacity pet will no longer be the gorilla
- Armor Pen is better now, but will have to evaluate just now much better
- Your macros will change ever so slightly, if they did indeed change the way Kill Shot works with the GCD
- And of course, about 75% of the frickin’ guides on this site will have to be rewritten!
When Will WHU Have Answers!?!?
In all honesty, I don’t know if I’m going to have any time at all today to login, so I may not have definitive answers for you until Thursday evening/Friday morning (I usually blog in the mornings). I can tell you that early unconfirmed reports suggest that SV may in fact still be ahead (alas most builds tested use the nerfed Sniper Training, which gives good results on a target dummy, but works shittily in actual raids).
And in a perfect storm of kicking Frostheim in the balls, I have a trade show to run this weekend, so I’m probably not going to get all the guides updated until the middle of next week. Here is the Frostheim priority list for gettin’ stuff done:
Gettin’ Stuff Done List
- Determine new best raid build ASAP, post brief note on build and shot cycle
- Update all guides that have not changed (’cause, you know, that’s easy)
- Update full guide on new best build and shot cycle
- Update all other build talent and shot cycle guides
- Update pet build guides
- Update anything else that needs updating
- Finally write the glyph guides, now that the new glyphs are out.
I apologize to everyone that I’m not getting answers up faster. The server problems last night combined with RL business that can’t be avoided (believe me I’d avoid it if I could) has brought this huge patch at the worst possible week.
Loading ...
Frostheim, how much do you love this game?!!!!!!
… and we love you for that.
man i know you like helping people and bettering the future of hunters everywhere, i see, understand, and commend that, but bro i feel for ya. all these expectations and what not. i am curious as anyone to see your conclusions but as for me, take all the time ya need.
youve given us plenty of information to go on and start working out our own builds and our own tests. even with the variances from 3.0.9 to 3.1, we should be able to come up with some ideas and builds of our own. im actually kinda glad youre delayed, gives me time to do my testing and compare to your results, see if what youve taught has sunk in.
Damn dude.
Your awsome!
No apologies necessary. Your guides have helped me considerably but don’t rush for our sakes get things done on your time. In the meantime I will persevere in trying to figure out my own SV shot progression…
so don’t take too long with your science.
Has anyone figured out how to manage the “Black Arrow” shot??
Admin
For the most part you want to use Black Arrow as often as possible. I’m a fan of holding off on firiing it for the first time for one or two shot cycles — since it has a damage mulitplier associated with it, I like to make sure that all of the proc stuff in SV is up and active before I hit it the first time.
The SV shot cycle stays almost identical to what it was, except for tossing in Black Arrow whenever it’s up.
Last night I very much didn’t like the SV shot cycle. I previously hadn’t used multi-shot much but recently have started. Adding Black Arrow just made for one dandy night. I was talking with my hubby about the differences between our characters (he’s currently a holy pally). Mostly, he can spam and I can’t. He has 3 buttons, I have 7.
But I do have to say… I don’t know if it was just an off night with new content or hastily put together builds, but I was on par with the two other hunters last night. It was nice.
Oh Frost.
Whomever would give you any kind of crap for not going out of YOUR way and investing YOUR time is not someone that deserves your time and efforts! I do believe I’d still be trying to get into Heroics without your guidance, instead of topping the DPS meter in our guild pre-3.1,
Since Paladins have lost a bit of their DPS, I fully expect Hunters, as a class, to still stand on top! It feels like SV still has the same great flow that I’ve come to love!
-Daddyodwarf (Stonemaul)
i’m just interested to see a all buffs up trinkets included Crit Kill Shot… its going to be a beautiful thing… anyone catch a glimpse on how much damage they blew out? *can’t wait…. i agree with quiverless take thy time, those that pay thier dues should only need to fine tune thier build from your later post but should def be able to keep thier own on just looking over the builds and wieghing thier options and/or go to wowhead or something and build your talents there to look at them in a whole. but once again as i always say you guys are awesome and just keep up the good work on your own pace not ours. =)
Frost take your time and enjoy your weekend.You helped me allready a lot !
Thx for that allready !
Thanks for doing this – really great work.
Greetings from Austria,
Lyra
I love you Frost…
dude, for the money i’m sending ya, u’d think u could get this done!
wait, i don’t pay ya…so the immense help u provide here is icing baby!!! take ur time and enjoy the game! really appreciate what u do here!!!!!!!
Hey! Surprised to find a fellow Icecrownian(?) the runs an awesome blog like this! Keep of the good work!
Pfft. Slacker. But yeah, take your time. I’m sure the breathless masses will be able to wait a week or so, myself included.
Managing numerous CD’s is SV’s biggest new challenge. I use the Power Auras mod to help me, since manually following everything, especially in a busy raid, would be impossible. Those without a clean system for following CDs might benefit from going MM regardless of raid dps simply because it will undoubtedly be easier to manage.
It’s also entirely possible that dual spec might be useful for raiding, one for stationary bosses and one for mobile ones. That would REALLY be paying our dues for maximum raid dps.
hmm..i am not a fan of the new Lock and Load..i guess more trap dancing for me or freezing arrow. Anyone using aim shot in their new cycle?
Well, if you want to use a trap, doesn’t that mean you can’t use black arrow? I thought black arrow triggered the trap cooldown. Perhaps this is what frost was talking about not using black arrow right away so you lay a trap to proc L&L once and then switch to black arrow to sustain it? Man, BM 4 Life
Give me convenience!
I spent quite a time on glyphs and this was my outcome. Hopefully it helps you a bit (the numbers are related to boss fights)
1) Explosive Shot: increases by 4% chance to crit ES (read increases by 4% chance to do ~250% of damage – in other words increase of ES damage by 10% – 0.004 x 2.5 = 0.1). ES is typically around 40% of total damage, it means the glyph gives 4% overall damage increase
2)Kill shot: decreases CD of Kill shot to 9 seconds. Lets do some maths here again. Lets say bossfight lasts 5 minutes. It means ~ 1 minute of KS usability. Without glyph, you fire KS 4 times. With glyph you fire 7 times. That is 75% increase of shot that was contributing on your damage by roughly 5%. That is ~8% overal damage increase. Off course, you lose 3 Steady shots per minute…
3) Steady shot: 10% damage increase of shot that contributes on your damage by ~10%. That is 1% overall damage increase
4) Aimed shot: CD desreased to 8 sec from 10. This gives you one more Aimed shot per minute which you would fire instead of one Steady shot. Aimed shot dmg = ~150% of steady shot dmg, no better general quantifier on this glyph…
5) Serpent Sting: Increases length of Serpent sting from 15 to 21 secs. Infact this makes you fire SpS 3x in a minute instead of 4x times, giving you one free Steady shot per minute
6) Hunter’s Mark: increases bonus AP from HM from 300 to 360, which is flat 60AP buff
7) Aspect of Hawk: increases haste by 6%. In another words, AutoShot deals 6% more damage. AS deals roughly 20% of total hunter damage, that means this glyph gives you little bit more than 1% (0.06 x 0.2) overall damage increase
If my math was correct, i would go for Explosive Shot, Kill Shot and the third one? All are around the same i would say….
Thank you frost for the “Black Arrow” advice
I have not been able to find any inscriptionist with the new Explosive Shot glyph…..anybody else having the same troubles finding it??
Thank you for the glyph information….from your numbers it looks like Aimed shot glyph would be the 3rd best choice (unfortunately I do not have that selected as a talent since I chose Survival and BM as my two “duel spec” choices)
Well, the “problem” with explosive shot glyph is that it is crafted from BC reagents.. You have to buy 2 pieces of one of 8 BC herbs, have it milled to 2 Nether Pigments, then craft Ethreal Ink of it, buy resilient parchment and finaly make that glyph… I saw people advertising on trade channel to sell any glyph for 30G…
my early tests are showing that my wolf is out performing my raptor. not alone, of course. but me and the wolf getting the howl every 20 out of 40 seconds seems to be better than what save rend puts out by itself.
i dont play with kitty cats so i wouldnt know about how they fare now.
Admin
“Deep Fried Egg wrote: If my math was correct, i would go for Explosive Shot, Kill Shot and the third one? ”
I think you have several problems with your math. I haven’t run all of the numbers yet, but here are some of the errors:
—NOTE: I’m not suggesting the results are correct, I’ve yet to run all the numbers in the ways I usually do. I’m just pointing out math errors or errors in assumptions in the way he calculated things—
1.) I have no idea what you’re doing in your math here (0.4% x 250%??) The increase in damage is 150%, because you’re already getting the base 100% damage. Thus 40% of your damage is being increased by 1.5% per percent of crit. So each percent of crit increases your overall dps by 0.6% (.4 * .015) — so 4% crit increase is a 2.4% dps increase — unless I’m missing something in my calculations (it’s early, and I slept little).
2) Kill shot. If you’re assuming 1 min of 20% or less (fair assumption) then you’re gaining only 2 Kill Shots. You can’t round up – because you either fire the ability or you do not. Only whole numbers count. If you assume that Kill Shot is 5% of dps, that’s a 71.4% increase — which translates to a 7% contribution from Kill Shot — or a 2% increase in dps. Note however that the math for this has to be done very differently, taking the average damage of Kill Shot into account — not just tweaking the percentage contribution.
3.) Steady Shot — it’s a 10% increase to your *Steady Shot* damage – not overall damage. If Steady Shot is, say, 25% of your dps, then this glyph increases your dps by 2.5%
4.) Aimed Shot – sounds good
5.) Serpent Sting: sounds good, but we can’t compare this without translating it into actual numbers.
6.) Hunter Mark – Yup
7.) Aspect of the Hawk: Auto Shot is more than 20% for most SV hunters. The increase of haste by 6% does *not* increase AS damage by 6%, because this ability is not always up. Also, the haste granted by the ability also lowers the cooldown of Steady Shot (to the soft Haste Cap), which also contributes to your dps.
Actually, this is probably a really good example of why theorycrafting is so hard and the kinds of mistakes that are easy to make. Would you mind if I turned this into a post?
“Aspect of the Hawk: Auto Shot is more than 20% for most SV hunters. The increase of haste by 6% does *not* increase AS damage by 6%, because this ability is not always up. Also, the haste granted by the ability also lowers the cooldown of Steady Shot (to the soft Haste Cap), which also contributes to your dps.”
Hawk Glyph seems to have some reverse-scaling to it…. in other words, the worse your gear (haste-wise), the greater the benefit. I’m personally no where near the Haste softcap, so I *feel* like this will be a solid 3rd option.
Also, Auto contributes such a large portion of BM damage, this may be a good choice over there as well (I went 53/11/7 for my 2nd spec)
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Baelgun&n=Zyrinx
Frost,
.
Of course you can use the useful parts of it in you post.
- I did terrible mistake on explosive shot, ther for sure has to be 0.04 x 1.50, not 2.50.
- Kill shot: you could have gain 2-3 shots (whole number) because you could fire 7 KS in final minute (1 initial + 6 x 9secs). To fire 5 KS without the glyph one minute might not be enough: possible lag + possible wait for global cooldown. That is why I counted increase of 3 KS. Then i made the same mistake, the increase should be only 0.75 x 0.05 ( = ~4% increase). I used the percentage contribution to generalize results (which in turn might not be that exact). I could have used Exact numbers, but they would have been irrelevant to most of people, it is kinda hard to quantify all stuff, you know
Steady Shot: we both wrote the same although i didnt write it exactly. I was counting with 10% dmg contribution of steady shot which gave me 1% over all
Hawk Glyph: I dont know what i was doing there…. That bonus haste is not up all the time so it makes it less useful. Autoshot contribution might be 20-30%, agree, depends on particular fight. Although i know that haste also decreases the cast time of SS, the increase in haste from this glyph is not large enough to allow you to shoot this filler shot more often, i think (whole numbers, again
I hope this little post has brought more light into what i wrote
Good luck in Ulduar
Hawk glyph again: it doesnt let you increase the number of SS fired, however it might marginally decrease the delay between each ES… Still, I think this glyph is not much interesting. And now I leave finally
On a less complex topic than theorycraft….
Whats everyones new Tenacity pet, and pet builds? The only other one I see with a tanking ability is the turtle, of which there are none in the level 80 area. Gotta grind those 5 levels. The worm of course looks nice, but we cant all be exotic BM’s.
While the gorilla may not be the best tank anymore, he might be a good utility pet for raiding. A beefy pet who can tank in a pinch, intervene a healer, and an extra counterspell effect might not be so bad to have around as an option.
Quivering, get a kitty. Wolfie’s raid buff was nerfed, so there’s no reason to be running with anything else at the moment.
oh really was it? How nerfed? Less than 320AP? Or after all it will not stack with BoM or BS? Any blue post about that? BTW, hunters from Ensidia have raptors as pets and these guys clearly know what to do, they killed Yogg-Saron today…
Admin
Wolf’s AP bonus now stacks, but only affects wolf and hunter. It is awesome.
Its still early for me. in my head, i can do more with 20% ap bonus for 20 seconds every 40 than any pet can with their ability, be it rend or whatever. thats just in my head, the bottom line may not be so. not everything in my head is best for dps lol
i dont tame a cat for one reason: if i cant have Cringer, i dont want a feline (unless turns out they just run dps circles around other pets)
*Hugs his Plague Hound* Your such a good boy!