When you get to very, very high gear levels and armor pen capped, rogues are generally the highest dps class (and all melee seem to do really well) — though the armor pen nerf coming will hit melee the hardest (and I’m giggling on the inside about that).
However, I want to stress that hunters can absolutely top the damage meters on the majority of all bosses for any of the gear levels most of us are likely to achieve. Lately I’ve been doing a good chunk of pugging – between trying to get the daily heroic in every day and pugging up VoA for Koralon (no drops for me yet, alas). I’ve had a chance to see a lot of players in action outside of my guild.
Believe me when I say the average player’s dps is abysmal. And it’s not based on class, and usually not on gear either. It’s just shocking to me how many people fundamentally don’t know how to play their dps class. Alas, even hunters do this. Perhapes even especialy hunters.
Amusingly in this heroic pug I was the only one with more dps than the tank - and more than all the other players combined - including the smartass who made this comment.
I spend a lot of time working on dps. I mean a lot. Happily, and one of the things I like about WoW, is that a lot of that time is entirely cerebral. You sit and you think and you do some math and you test out some spreadsheets and you compare that to target dummy and actual raid results. And with enough testing and reading what other people are doing and comparing and trying to replicate results – and of course practicing our huntery skills - we hunters absolutely can top the meters.
My last guild had a contest every week to encourage dps on Patchwerk, and I quote: "100 gold to the highest dpser who is not Frostheim"
I usually try to post recount results of raids now and again to show what we hunters can do, and I always use the “overall damage done” which I think is the most representative. Someone recently pointed out in comments that counts all the trash and aoe damage.
I think overall damage done is the best way to really judge dps effectiveness (though patchwerk was also nice for that). Any given boss favors one class, or one role. You can get lucky and do well, or get unlucky and do poorly, or have an assignment that lowers your dps (or screw up and die). Overall dps over enough boss fights averages out all that.
As good hunters, we optimize our characters for boss fights, not for trash. Because our ultimate goal is to help the raid succeed as much as we can – and the raid doesn’t need help killing trash. Heck, if we did no dps at all on trash it would still die. I assure you that my overall dps is significantly lower than my dps on almost any boss. Tons of classes will always beat hunters on trash. We have a good aoe now, but nowhere near the best. And that’s fine – I’d rather do better on bosses than on trash any day.
Anyhow, I’ve made a point of trying to capture some screenshots of single-boss dps as an example of where it’s at on boss fights compared to overall – and to show the huge variability from fight to fight, even within the same raid. These are all from the last few days – just where I happened to be and when I remembered to get a single-boss screenshot, with MM spec.
Auriaya 25 man
Ignis 25 man
Jaraxxus 25 man
Kologarn 10 man
Koralon 25 man PUG
Yea i used to have some faith in PuGs but now i see why ppl hate them so much. Koralon has brought this out in a big way. Im not the best geared hunt. still got some 7.5 on me. but i can sqeeze out a good 4.5k dps pretty easy on him 10 man.(havnt found good pug for 25 yet) The problem is new 80s try to get carried through this to get all the pretty purps that drop.
F#@k me ! 6K Dps !! I cry tears of joy when I break 4K
I agree with you though….I generally muck along through the trash and ignore any complaints ( in pugs…’cuz my guild knows better) Then when we hit a boss and “pull out the stops” I’m generally at the top or at least second to the other senior hunter in the guild.
It’s also fun sometimes in pug when guys are being twits……to pull all the ag off the tank and then misdirect it back …..although it probably does contribute to the “huntard” stigma
We had a really good VoA 10 PUG the night I picked up my 232 gloves and got my 2pc bonus. walked in, one shotted all three without wiping at all and I was top DPS (yay!) on all three. 4.7 average with spikes around 5.2-5.5. One of my guildies who was in the PUG with us asked me i nguild chat if I had respecced, lol.
Last night we did another PUG VoA10 run and there was another hunter who pretty fairly outgeared me, 245 crossbow, 3 pieces 232 t9, etc… gearscore had them about 200 points over me, so I figured I had a challenge ahead to keep up and maintain my “rep”. pushing average of 5.2 I left this hunter in my dust by 1100dps!
He was still #2 in the raid, but it amazed me that the spread was THAT much.
I got my highest DPS, of 5221, on a 25 man Kologarn yesterday and received numerous whispers asking how I managed it with gear like the Nesingwary 4000.
It made me happy.
Thank you for making me happy Frost.
this site has constantly kept me on top of any pug chart i join, 25 naxx last night was a challenge with 2 hunters that were better geared than i was. we all did within 50 dps of each other the whole way through and were always on top. was a nice looking chart with all the green up therethat changes today though, i just became a warlock. (oh and for the record, we were all at about 2300ish on wow-heroes and all in sv last night, honestly have not seen many mm hunters on my realm lately. then again most of my free time is spent skydiving now. aiming for the frozen sea tonight with new macro)
:leans back, cracks knuckles:
Ahhhh, its good to be on top.
What are the rest of the slackers in your guild doing?
Thats naxx10 gear dps for the rest of them.
Not good.
Assuming you’re hit capped, is Darkmaw Crossbow > Widebarrel Flintlock? I currently have no hit gems and haven’t sacrificed any Agi/AP in my gear for hit. My flintlock currently has deadly monarch on it (as suggested in your very helpful gemming page), which means I’m deciding between 12 agi + 6 Crit versus 18 stam + 23 haste. I have horrible haste atm (143 with flintlock, 166 with crossbow, both w/o haste scope), but then again, it was stated here that Haste is probably the Hunter’s “worst” stat.
I’m lost and I need your guidance.
(I apologize if this in the wrong post)
And yes, I do realize I can place an epic gem – but the question still applies, inclusive of the best possible gem.
Parthias – go to the main guides page and find the one on EAP. It might be a little dated, but the general values for each stat for the various specs should be roughly the same. It’s a good place to start for comparisons like that.
….
When I’m top dps by a fair margin in 25M pugs, they have a tendency of failing. Don’t get me wrong, I love topping the meters, and usually do well enough to earn that spot or at least compete for it. But I feel a bit safer when I’m fighting with a few others for those honors.
And yes, as we all slowly come to realize, a lot of people don’t play their class well. A couple hunters who wouldn’t feign yesterday in VoA were infuriating me, for example. There are some excellent players, however. Lost in the “holy-crap-fail-PUG” mentality is that there’s occasionally an ego blow when I get punked by someone with similar or slightly lesser gear. I try to compliment those I see who fit that bill.
But yeah, Rogues. Trick them out in the best gear and they’re usually unstoppable. Hooray for the armor pen nerf!
I am curious about dps ratings and what I *should* be getting.
Lets say I’m kitted out in mainly level 200 gear, using a nesingwary 4000 for example. What should my dps rating be?
In heroics I normally hit about 2.5k – Is that crap or excellent? Yes, I usually top the meter but… hmmm…
I’ve also tried to stop gawking at Frost’s numbers and just try to knuckle down and work toward them myself. But I still can’t help but be impressed sometimes. Grats on 6K, a number I haven’t been able to approach yet outside of fights like Thaddius and Loatheb.
Jeez-o-pete! How did you get those numbers on Jaraxxis?!? Please enlighten me on what your role was exactly and what the rest of the raid strategy was. I have taken a HUGE dps hit on this fight but maybe I’m doing something wrong…and am facing it again this evening.
I did a VoA25 pug yesterday. Four hunters and guess which 4 ended up top
No serious, in my experience I pretty much always end up on top if it is a boss fight with some length. In short fights getting my hunter dps up to level often fails. The sting, mark, piercing shots, hawk fire and rappid fire thing only realy work well in longer fights in my experience.
This is mostly seen in 5 man daily-rush-to-get-the-emblem jobs, where a rogue will easily out dps me overall, even though I often trash them in the bosses. I have to go in viper to keep mana up.
I mention this, as I wonder if this is how cathelism will be. If we will use focus, we will have no mana issues and a more constant dps, but probably lower peak-dps.
i gave up even caring about trash, i just generally pick a target and make sure i kill it, but with no real care. trash isn’t hard an ymore, not in the new stuff. besides, any barking about not pulling your weight only lasts until you do 30% of the total damage done on the boss, lol
Vael: I don’t think we do anything particularly special on Jaraxxus. I dps him, then the maiden when she’s out, then infernos when they’re out (hate infernos). Lots of target switching to lower dps.
I start dps on Jarraxus, and when he starts summoning the first maiden I shoot & scoot my way over so I’m in position when she pops out. When she appears I toss a viper sting on Jarraxus to keep my mana up (I do this every time I have to leave jarraxus). I always fire at least 2-3 more shots into Jarraxus before switching to the add (maiden or infernos) to give the offtank a bit of time to establish aggro.
I generally save all of my cooldowns for maiden burndowns (I use rapid fire on the first maiden). Infernos are my biggest dps loss, though I can sometimes get a multi-shot off on a couple of them. When I get legion of flame I jump-shot as I run.
Due to tossing viper on Jaraxxus when I switch to the adds, I can usually get through the entire fight without going into aspect of the viper. Oh, and if I’m fighting adds when Jarraxus is below 20%, I quick swap to jarraxus to fire off a Kill Shot then pop back to the add.
So that’s it — nothing special and I imagine the same thing everyone else does. It’s very likely I just got lucky crits or fewer number of legion of flame than usual.
First off Frost let me say I love this site, it has helped me in many ways. With that I gotta
say you seem surprise that the pugs you run with are “abysmal”, bro you are on a PVE server. Now I know a lot of people will disagree with me on this but I believe PVP players
are better ALL AROUND players then their PVE counterparts. I know I just struck a nerve
with some people but if all you focus on is PVE(raiding) and instances then yeah your gonna play with people who don’t fully know their class. I guess what im trying to say is
if people only focus on one aspect of the game then they won’t truly know their class that
they are playing. Like I thought the Hunter Pet Tanks Heroic by Arthemystia was really cool. yeah its awesome that hunters have that ability to be able to tank with their pets, but
How does he do in PVP which is the server hes on. I mean if the pet can tank heroics
why does it not kick ass in PVP. I don’t know, i’m tired and stoned and can’t think anymore. Leave me alone.
I’d agree that people on a pvp server are better at playing their class… in PVP. But you gotta understand that PVP and raiding are totally different and unrelated skillsets. Just because you’re a pvp god with a 2500 arena rating doesn’t mean you know the first thing about how threat and aggro works, or understand what’s required of a raider.
Likewise pet tanking is yet another totally unrelated skillset. Pet tanking is nothing like pvp, and very different from standard hunter PVE.
In general I think I’d expect people on a PVE server to be better at PVE and people on a PVP server to be better at PVP — just because server choice suggests what part of the game interests them more.
Thanks Arthemystia. I did read the EAP page before, but couldn’t remember where to find it on the site
Fantastic job you guys have done here – by far the *best* class site I’ve accessed. (By the way, now I feel bad I got the bow even after I got the gun – but hey, I was the only hunter anyway, topping the charts of course 
)
Creepnfreek is actually on my server, and we’ve chatted in-game a couple times. I’ve been trying to get him involved in a pet tanking foray, but it just hasn’t worked out yet. Haven’t forgotten about you though, bud.
But as to his point, drawing trends for entire server types seems suspect to me. Given the amount of time needed to be “great” at even one aspect of any class, it will really end up being based on the individual, not the type of server. Because I know plenty who are decent at a lot (BG’s for tanking gear has made me competent but not great at PvP recently, for example) but none who are, say, Arena studs and also end-game raid farmers. And also plenty on my PvP server who have never seen a bg or arena, odd as that sounds.
Allow me to echo everyone else by hitting a few points. Congratz on the 6k dps. I’m jealous and amazed all at once. I love your site, and I think I’ve learned alot from it, most of all I’ve learned to start paying attention and get interested in learning my class better. That was probably an ugly run on sentence. Oh Well.
I’ve pugged Koralon 3 or 4 times on 25 man. The first time we one-shotted him, amazingly. Apparently I was the only one doing him for my first time. Since then I’ve been in a horribly fail group (I blamed the tank for improper kiting). And then just yesterday I got a decent group that nailed him on the third attempt. I was I believe second dps with right around 5k (4.9ish I think). That was one of my better DPS moments (not including Loatheb, etc). It still amazes me to see people with higher gearscores than I getting blown away by me.
Im a mainly PvE guy. Love PvE. But I have a few friends that are big into PvP. One of them is a rogue. He’s a totally obsessive Wow Addict. Makes me look casual. And he’s mostly into pvp. But he’s started to get me interested, and he’s dragged me through bg’s enough that I’ve even started going by myself occasionally. And I’m getting pretty good. I agree that PVP and PVE are totally different, apples and oranges. But I think that both player types can learn their toon better by learning the other. I was pretty satisfied with my skillz as all PVE. But now that I’m getting pretty good at PVP, I’m finding some of the things I’ve learned there is helping my skills in PVE. My rogue buddy dueled me 4 times yesterday, and I won every time, much to his frustration. I can also out dps him by nearly 1k when we run instances, even though his guild is better about raiding than mine. At the same time, we ran Alterac Valley the other day, and I was late running into the rush to kill the boss (Van for the horde), but immediately took up my pve dps mode skills on him in my pvp gear. At the end, i checked recount and found that I out dps’d everyone else in the room by over 1k, and even out damaged them overall on that fight. Thats a situation where if they had practiced more pve they would do better in their cherished pvp bg’s.
Oh, and for the record, I got my T9.5 gloves from Koralon yesterday, already had the t9 shoulders. Lovin my warlockishness.
What I wanna know is why is everyone in your guild doing so little dps? Obviously at your gear level your dps is about right from what I have been able to see. Is everyone else just that undergeared? The rogues and mages in my guild tear me apart and I have seen bigger numbers. Granted me and our other hunter (who can out DPS me as well) are always in the top 5 but beating a mage putting out 9k-10k on bosses is difficult. 6k on ignis is respectable but why is there not a single mage on that list? Auriya which requires you to move quite a bit is pretty good as well.
By no means is this a hate post or a post trying to insult anyone in your guild but I’m just curious. Are the other dps in your guild undergeared? I guess undergeared to me may not necessarily be considered undergeared to other servers. Our server progression is fairly high (relative) and most people on the server don’t even do Naxx anymore.
And to reiterate the PVP argument. I agree that PVP and Raiding are two completely different aspects and require different skill sets, however. Hunters that have spent any amount of time trying to be good at pvp, generall have much better situational awareness and focus more on whats happenning around them as opposed to what the dps meter says.
Like I said not a flame post. I would welcome any input you may have and would like to possibly do a little theorycrafting with you if you would like. I don’t do the math part so well. Feel free to armory me. Thanks for a great site.
Xythoz – Stormreaver
yeah a lot of those have situational things: ignis slag pot, chasing adds in jaraxxus, getting the beam or hand a lot in kolo.
my dps check was in 25 toc anub. i could pull 5-6k single target nuking, but when he burrowed, my dps went to shiz. plus raid DEMANDED we use haste pots in phase 3 so i was in viper more than i wanted to be.
ive decided to switch back from gemming arp to gemming agil again. arp just seems to much like a multi-tasker, and ties me to grim toll (cuz i know i wont be seeing the mjonnir trink). i dont like having a build that depends on a 10 second proc, and god forbid it procs in at a bad time. agil feels much more well rounded. maybe in the future IF i have a better arp proc gem than grim toll and have more passive non gemmed arp, i may switch back, but for now, i think my dps is in agil.
correction, arp is a single tasker. agility is multi tasker.
I hear ya on Anub’arak. Especialy since I’m on orb duty for that fight!
i pulled 5.2 k of at archavron, or however its spelled. i know its vry good. but whats the top dps achivable by a hunter nowadays?. just curious
, and btw frostheim, u own 
. and btw, im at a 213-245. item level, so whats the best talent for me? MM or surv?. and btw yeh arp is single agi multi. and u should only gem arp if u are MM 
I’m not sold on ArP. I do 8k+ on Koralon as Survival. With the nerf coming to ArP I don’t think it’s worth it. I’m hoping frost can come up with some numbers as I am terrible with them. However pulling off DPS like that does require a very high gear level.
Xythoz
Based on the values listed on the EAP section, it means that the 180 AP flask > 45 Agi + 45 Intel Elixirs even for Survival? Or is my math horrible?
They certainly are some interesting numbers there. I only really see my overall dps when our guild posts the data from raids. I tend to only use recount on the dummy when testing something. Other than that I find it gets in the way of me playing the game. I’m just happy to be pew pewing well and making sure I’m timing my rotations correctly
Hmm I don’t know where you’re coming from exactly on the horrible dps in pugs. I mean sure we’ve all seen the 800 dps pally or 600 dps hunter.. but generally when I join a pug the dps is above 2.5k
Anyone can pull 2.5k with ilvl200 gear so long as they know their class, I think you’re just unlucky
Maybe they were all newly lvl’d alts xD
good lord, i switched my from gemming arp to gemming agil again, bought an upgrade with triumph emblems, and somehow lost 500 dps on target dummies XO. i could do 3.8 – 4.1 with the arp build, but now im doing 3.3 – 3.6. ive tried both an agil gemmed build with and without arcane shot (i prefer without, though its a bit more dependent on being stationary), played around with different things. ehh frick, guess i’ll see how it does in raids :\
ya know, i dont care that im not on the top of the charts, but i do want to be on the top of what i KNOW i can do. if someone does more than me, kudos for them, but if i do lower than my potential, for shame. drives me to the freaking dummies and whoo there goes my daily gold.
Guys you should’nt worry about hitting hights of 6k 7k dps. unfortantly getting that high is a gear issue but as alot of frost’s posts are about squezzing every last drop of dps out of what uv got now. Thats the raiding hunters way. weather its CD management or working an extra few hours to get the badges to swap out that gem for an epic gem ect.
Ive been realy lucky last few months my guild has realy got good progress so ive picked up some realy awsem gear even managed to get the highest gear score on my realm. but the items ive got wouldnt of helped me if it wasnt for this site and a few others i use for tips ect, So when I pugged naxx 25 today and got almost 8k on patchwork, almost twice as much as nearest dps which was another hunter btw
. i thought id come on and just thankyou frost for all ur help over the last 12months ive been playing wow and keep up good work m8
yours gefro, BDF realm EU
As much as i really love this Forum, there is more to playing wow than dps meters. To many are caught up in this whole thing about being number 1!!!!! on dps meters…. at the end of the day, who really cares who is number 1 as long as you reach your targets of killing the boss as a team.
Cea,
Happily for us dps mesmorized folks…more dps usually means more raid success… as long as FD isn’t resisted of course >.< but ur right. Topping meters means squat if the raid is not successful. I love reading all your opinions! Frost breaking 6k I'm jealous and impressed…Jealpressed. that's what I am. =) Keep up the good work!
Thanks to Frost and Arust! I ran Uldar for the first time ever. Undergeared… should have been looking for upgrades in Naxx, Sarth and EOE. Even in 5 man heroics… boots and rings for example. (Dragonstompers and a green quest reward ring) Specced your raid MM build swapped a few glyphs and hey presto, I topped the dps on Razorscale. (Forgot to reset after Flame Leviathan. Priest heals was 2nd or 3rd thanks to her work in the tanks
.
I audited my guild during the week and I was the worst geared raider in the guild but I was consistently keeping in the top 3 on the dps charts. SO THANKS again Frost…Arust. You guys are legends…even if you are scum Alliance. BTW that was my first time running Uldar ever on any toon. Third time Ive ever been in a raid.
Cea I don’t think that Frost is saying “LULZ DPS METERZ!!!IONE!SHIFT!!!1″ I think hes trying to get accross that the DPS meter is a great tool to ensure that you are maximizing everything that you have available to you. And a little epeen flexing. Cause it’s fun.
Cea: It’s not about being the best. It’s about being *our* best. Because it’s fun to know you’re doing something very well. It has nothing to do with beating someone else. And being our best helps toward your goal which, yes, is the most important aspect. On that we agree.
here’s a tip for xt if you r survival. frost trap the adds and your lock’n'load will be proccing like crazy. my last kill was at 7643dps with a 232 wep and 226 or lesser ilvl gear.
Hey, thanks for posting boss specific recount meters. Everyone has their own preference for meters, I didn’t intend to suggest that trash dps is meaningless (just that it’s significantly less important).
For the record, every single one of your meters posted in this thread is 25% to 50% greater dps than in the post http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/09/a-weapon-called-the-word/ so by posting overall dps meters you’re actually selling yourself short as well.
Also, PuG’s do suck, as a freshly dinged 80 warrior alt, with the blue quest reward axe from the Zul’Drak Ring of Blood quest, I topped damage in a Naxx PuG that I went into with 0 epics…
Frost I just wanted to again thank you for your site. I just switched to MM from SV after getting my 2 piece bonus from my t-9 set. At first I was concerned because I could not see a big difference in Heroics. That all changed on Patchwerks. I hit 6200 dps and had the top spot for overall damage and DPS. Your sight rocks. I look forward to your thoughts on suggested modifications to the MM spec (if any) with the 2 piece t-9 bonus. Again, thank you for your efforts.
Well I did say it was trash dependant yes for the reason like I got in Ulduar 25 last week. Hodir’s trash, decided to pulls 3-4 packs of the worms and just aoe them to speed it up. I was on 13K DPS =P
It sometimes shows as more than you would have done seperatly depending on how you deal with trash. Yes some boss fights are more fiendly to other classes but a Hunter should be able to hit 5K in every fight regardless of the fight itself.
Hey there,
I’m a casual gamer at best- I’ve gotten some decent pre-raid gear, but have only run Naxx once or twice- so I don’t have much raiding gear. I read a fair bit about rotations and that palarva, and I don’t think i have any problems there, but my DPS is sitting around 2.5k, on a good day, with buffs in a heroic. I was wondering if you could alter some of the gear guides to give us poor chumps some rough indication of what sort of DPS we might hope to do against dummies etc with the (ballpark) gear in the articles? This way, I will be made aware of any sweaty great errors I’m making, leading to my shameful dps.
Not sure if its a good idea to viper sting Jaraxx because his max mana pool is like …………..
Hey, guess i am a little late on reading this post, but i do thank u for your website. From reading your site, and others, i have been pulling 6k for a long time, now. All the hunters in my guild are the same, wehn one of us is not pulling our wieght, we sit down, hit the forums, and see whats going on. Mostly before i had totc 25 man gear i was still pullin 5k -5.5k but only after i learned all i could about my class.
It’s sites like this that make it possible. Keep up the good work.
Couldn’t find the best area to ask this so here it is? What is the best recommendation for (raid) consumables? I currently use Guru for 5 mans and Elixir of Agil for raids. I carry Mega Mammoth meals in case no one drops fish feast. I know there has to be some additional stickys and chewies that I’m not making use of. What are you other raiders using?