We interviewed Kripparian, one of the world’s highest ranked hunters, for the Hunting Party episode 14. A lot of what he had to say will sound familiar to most hunters (shoot & scoot, stack cooldowns, etc) and I suspect he just executes far better than most of us 
However one fascinating thing he had to say was that he goes out of his way to time his cooldowns with his trinket procs. And I have to admit, this is not something I’ve given a lot of thought to before. In fact, he argues you can actually do more dps than the spreadsheets show as your max because they use averaging instead of intelligent stacking.
Here’s the Theory
First of all, this assumes that you have a trinket that procs. Since Darkmoon Card: Greatness is so amazingly awesome, probably every hunter has it unless they have Death’s Verdict. This proc is the key.
The theory is that since it’s an agility proc instead of ap, the various hunter cooldowns are not strictly additive, but are multiplicative.
For example: Furious Howl adds 320 ap. Greatness card adds 300 agility on a proc. In addition to increasing your AP, that agility also increases your crit chance. So by combining them you’re not only getting the 320 ap bonus from Furious Howl, but that 320 also has a greater chance to crit and do yet more damage.
Everything about this is perfectly logical and got me excited to take Furious Howl off of auto cast!
Kinds of Cooldowns
We hunters basically have 4 kinds of cooldowns to work with:
- Attack Power Cooldowns (Furious Howl, on-use trinkets)
- Haste Cooldowns (rapid fire)
- Agility Cooldowns (greatness or death’s verdict – procs every 46 sec or so)
- Multiplicitive Cooldowns (Call of the Wild)
The secret is to stack these in a way that gives you a multiplicative advantage. Combining two attack power cooldowns is purely additive — its the same dps gain overall as using them separately. But if you combine an attack power cooldown with one in any other category, it becomes multiplicative (with haste you have more shots getting that AP buff, with agil the shots with the buff crit more, etc).
Now agility and multiplicative cooldown categories are automatically multiplicative even with themselves and whatever else you add to them. So the secret is to make sure you combine your AP cooldowns (mainly furious howl) with cooldowns from other categories.
How to Do It
I’ve been playing around with this in my raids since the interview, and here’s how itworks:
Make a macro that triggers every cooldown. Also be sure that you are able to control all of them separately as well. Do NOT have anything on auto cast.
Start the fight toss up serpent sting and then blow every cooldown you have right off the bat (you’re trinket will proc within a couple shots). For most progression fights you’ll get to use your 5 min cooldowns again at the end of the fight if you use them immediately. Obviously this requires you to have a fight that lasts at least 5 and a half minutes.
If you’re MM, go ahead and readiness and re-rapid fire. I think it’s better to waste a rapid fire with no other cooldowns than to have one fewer rapid fires to use in the fight. The actual right answer to this will really depend on how long your fight is — on slightly longer fights you want to wait a minute on your 2nd rapid fire so you can combo it with the trinket and furious howl. This really requires you to be familiar with your raid group.
Now, every time your trinket procs, you’ll have Furious Howl available. I set up Power Auras to alert me to when my Death’s Verdict procs so I can pop Furious Howl and anything else available. Now Karippian is more badass than that, he uses an addon to track the internal cooldowns of trinkets and pre-emptively pops his cooldowns just before his trinket is likely to proc; however, I found that doing it my way only delays me by 1 shot at the most.
So basically that’s the idea — furious howl seems to be the key ability that you can combo with almost every single trinket proc. But in general use whatever cooldowns are available only when your trinket procs (the wait is never that long) unless the fight gives you a compelling reason not to wait (empowered light/dark on twins would be a reason not to wait, for example).
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I just rated this post 4/5 instead of 5/5 by accident. Sorry.
This is good. I’m so used to my rotation now it’s almost like breathing. This should add some more spice into it once again!
I do something similar with Power Auras and Grim Toll as well, but I’d be very interested to know what the name of the addon is that he uses to keep track of his internal cds.
If I popped everything at the start of a fight I think I’d pull ag off every tank I know…….maybe I need to look for more “hate filled’ tanks
Hey, in your guide you should export the settings for you power auras, so everyone could take a look at them.
Noob alert — I understand what the term “proc” means (that something’s become available to be used) but what is it short for? I assume it’s an abbreviation of a longer word, but I can’t think of anything that makes sense…. Yeah, yeah, I know. Give me a break; I’m new to this level 80 stuff
I have this exact post in draft
Darn you to heck, Frost!
I’ll be posting episode 13 today, and 14 on Monday. I know it’s a little fast, but there’s no reason to let them stagnate
I will also be writing up a guide on how to configure power auras (as well as possible the addon Kripparrian uses) soon, and I’ll link this post on it.
Actually David, “proc” more precisely means “is used” than “is available.” You “proc” an on-use ability like Rapid Fire; you can only do it when it’s available, but the “proccing” is the act of using it. Similarly, a trigger that has a random chance to be used “procs.” That can only happen when it’s available (i.e. cooldown is up) but the proc is the activation.
Not sure what it’s short for exactly; process maybe?
Member
I was going to ask your thoughts on when to use Berserking as I switched from a NE to a Troll, but I believe I found my answer, can’t wait to try this out this weekend.
Actually, “proc” is a silly gaming term to mean a random effect happening. Rapid fire is controllable, and as such is generally not called a proc. Greatness or the armor pen from grim toll, however, is not controllable so is called a proc.
It is a term from back in the old MUD days where some weapons had random effects like this, and they were referred to as “special procedures”, or “procs” when they were shortened. At least, as far as I know. I wasn’t gaming back then.
programmable random occurrence
in other words when something has a chance of going off at random, and it does, that is a proc.
Been clearing TOC25 for weeks and have still yet to see 1 Death’s Verdict drop.
It can get frustrating considering it’s the last monumental upgrade for all 4 hunters and the mass of melee DPS. It’s mainly sad that i just busted my suicide kings position to upgrade a 232 to 245 just because I got sick of waiting. That means it will drop next week and I’ll be crying in the corner last on the list.
Should Survival hunters be really specific and even wait til talents like Expose Weakness and Master Tactician proc, as well? My power auras are config-ed to show them, but they certainly don’t have the nice rate like Greatness. Is it worth it?
I failed to thank you in general for pointing this out. It’s a brilliant concept hat I have thought of, but poo poo’d it because I didn’t think it would be rewarding after averaging out effort over reward.
Does he discuss what addon he uses to calculate internal cooldowns?
Keep talking to the top hunters. These little tips after you pretty much have everything else out of the way are great.
@Zat – Krip mentioned that he uses an addOn called heatsink to track his trinket cooldowns. He said it’s a little outdated but gets the job done.
It looks as if it was updated about when 3.2 hit, so I don’t know if it will work with Death’s Verdict.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/heatsink.aspx
Admin
Regarding my power auras — I do have most of them listed over here: http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/09/frostheims-power-auras/
If you can, stack. If it’s going to cost you another RF/trinket pop/whatever because you’re waiting, don’t. If there are “on dps” and “off dps” phases, don’t. NB, ya, go for it. Jaraxxus, I’m hitting my trinket on the portals every time regardless of other procs because more dps on the portal is more important than more overall dps. Movement fights, I’m lucky to have 20 seconds to sit on the boss, I can’t wait for all my procs to align.
I disagree with matching FH with other cooldowns because waiting on FH decreases its uptime over the course of the fight, which is a dps loss. The longer the fight, the more you wait on FH, the fewer casts of FH you get if you try to match it up to other cooldowns. Short fights, go ahead. Long fights, I’d separate the buffs.
Admin
Actually, Furious Howl and your trinket procs match up almost perfectly I’ve been finding. As long as you control FH manually (and don’t forget about it) you’re not waiting more than a handful of seconds.
This is great, I’ve always thought that I should keep the howl off auto cast. It mixes well with trinkets and rapid fire.
Contributor
Ah, MUD’s. Euripedes, you don’t know what you were missing.
Anyway, damn this to hell for being so logical. One more thing to learn to micromanage?! Like jump shotting, I’ll probably put it off a while until my guilt gets the best of me (or when one of the other hunters in my guild beats me one too many times). Dues payin’ ain’t easy…
hmmmm… this kinda sounds like old news. Have been playing this way since TBC, its just logical math. However the furious howl and greatness proc is a new thing for me. But starting with serpent sting and then use all abils and trinkets is just a simple way to boost your dps immediately in the start.
Dues Payer
manually doing furious howl, i never would have thunk it.
ive been doing this with grim toll procs for a while now. id hit my rapid fire/berserking when grim toll procced because it speeds up both auto and steady show, two shots that benefit from armor pen. of course situations varied, and i usually wouldnt wait terribly long but i tried matching them up.
i dont find that grim toll and greatness proc together, thought i thought they had similar internal cd’s. hmmm.
Admin
I don’t think Survival wants to wait for their various procs — it gets too undependable, and Greatness/Death’s Verdict is a bigger deal anyway, so concentrate on stacking with that.
Unfortunately survival doesn’t have as much ability to stack as MM does with their 4 rapid fires each fight.
Phew…hunter advice..you saved me. After all the Hrist filled posts and awesome tanking I was considering rerolling a warrior tank. this gives me something to think about. Hopefully I’ll be able to pull out some awsomesauce dps.
Might have to get greatness now…still too poor. Sigh I’m bad at at retail
Well, that certainly does add more micromanagement…The procs do seem to line up pretty consistently, although I found that my “rabid” was using up some of the pet focus when Greatness hit, and I’d have to wait a few seconds for the macro to be useable. (Spam Spam Spam.)
Although I wasn’t top DPS in ToC25 last night (it was the night of fist-slamming DC’s), I still finished with 5.8k on Northrend Beasts, which was a personal best. Thanks for the tips!
So this is what Ive been doing lately and maybe if anyone has any advice or criticism it would be great. Im a troll hunter, MM build designed for top personal dps (craned, nesingwary) Ive been macroing a few different things together so that I have two dps burst macros for a while now. The first incorporates FH, CotW, and RF (with a little script line to take away error messages if CotW or FH is still on cool down).
#showtooltip Rapid Fire
/cast Furious Howl
/cast Call of the Wild
/cast Rapid Fire
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
And the second uses trolls berserking, FH, and a potion of speed (with the same script to take away error messages if Ive already used a potion, or FH is on cool down).
#showtooltip Berserking
/cast Furious Howl
/use Potion of Speed
/cast Berserking
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
Any suggestions on best timing to use them (also have another version of the second one right beside it that doesn’t use the potion if Im anticipating needing a crazy alchemist potion later on). Now Im using macro 1 till rapid fire finishes then readiness and hitting it again (to catch the last bit of FH and CotW with the new rapid fire) and that brings me pretty close to when FH is up again, and when it is I hit the second macro (as berserking is not refreshed with readiness). All together this gives me a big sustained burst of dps for close to a minute and my procs will have happened at sometime during this stretched out burst. On most boss fights I also get the chance to do it all over again (without the benefit of CotW as its still on cool down second time around). Would there be a better way to time this with procs? It already seems that Id be in burst mode during my initial procs anyway. Any advice or insight would be appreciated!
Dues Payer
Very interesting I will certainly have to look into this.
If you are MM, make sure to recast Serpent sting after you pop all trinkets/abilities and have stacked as much as possible.
“Serpent Sting remembers damage modifiers of the initial application; it remembers RAP of the current application; both can be modified on further applications via recasting Serpent Sting or from Chimera Shot.”
http://huntsmanslodge.com/3646/raid-ready-serpent-sting.htm
Fawatam, that is nice … except when you fire your next CS, it will be the normal sting value again. So you’ll have a few seconds/ticks higgher sting dps, but have also used a GCD you could have used for another shot …
Note, sometime in the past, your tacts did work actually. However Blizzard fixed this a long time ago. For addititive bonusses, don’t refire your sting, as it will not help.
On EJ, they did a lot of testing on this. You tactic however still works for multiplier additions. So e.g. in EoE raids where you get the % bonus by standing in killed sparks, and reapply it will stay on for the duration of the raid even afterrefreshing with CS.
I am much to useless to make the macro. Can someone help me? It would involve rapid fire, engineers haste buff to gloves, darkmoon greatness card, rapid fire, and furious howl.
/cast rapid fire
/cast furious howl
The other once are non-cast, but act by themselves.
Or am I missing your point???
Note however, I’d suggest don’t just blindly use a macro made by someone lese, because you think it will automagically make your dps better. Know what you are doing. So if you cannot do it without a macro, don’t use one. (Of course, if you can, then using a macro, will make it easier/faster.) So first try a bit on teh dummy to get a feel for what is actually happening.
Using macro’s blind is usually a dps loss.
So, what is that addon he’s using? Anyone?
About the macros using potion of speed, I would hesitate and take that out. 2 reasons, most people will be prepotting, taking the pot 2 seconds before the boss pulls, so in effect getting an additional consummable for each fight (its really good, because as frosthelm says, all your procs will go at the beginning). If your guild is berserking at the beginning of the fight, a potion of wild magic would probably be a better choice.
2nd reason, you don’t want to use your pot during berserking, so you will want a little more control of it, then having it tied into your macro.
Contributor
Leisant – Not sure what mod he’s using, but various mods can do the same thing. I have my Power Auras set to show me when Greatness procs, for instance.
….
I worry about macro’ing Rapid Fire and a pot only because our trinket procs will inevitably happen during movement in some fights.
Anyway, I’ve been toying around with doing this. Right now I only have Furious Howl and Call of the Wild macro’d, with Silencing Shot and Kill Command thrown in as they are with many of my shots. I may add a potion though.
I have power auras with greatness also, but tracking the internal cooldown no. I just found heatstrike which does it perfectly. It tracks everything actually, but I set it to just track greatness and grim toll.
I was talking to another hunter in my gulid about Furious Howl, previously I had only ever put that on auto cast as it was up so much. But, with greatness, the proc rate is only off by about 5 seconds, so only in long fights would the extra Furious Howl’s be missed.
Call of the wild times perfectly with rapid fire, so yeah, I already had those macro’d togeather. Actually as I am writing this, I just remembered that in my MM spec, I had an extra point because the 10 percent buff was being provided by a shaman, so I put a point into rapid fire. I think… they may not share the same timing now… whoops.
Silencing Shot and Kill command are automatically macro’d with every shot I have in my rotation.
Ok been thinking more about this. I really don’t like the idea of mixing Furious Howl with greatness TBH. Its an ap mix with ap/crit. I would much rather mix furious howl with Quick Shots which is 5/5 for me (MM). Since the uptime is so high, I just leave furoius howl in auto cast.
I came up with this with napkin math, not sure if its the best. You guys are smarter. Anyway I did the 320 ap bonus from furious howl and added in my own person crit, plus the crit increase from greatness to find a number (11.3) for me. Then I did the same 320 divided by my auto shot percentage of over all damage (because it is the only thing effectively influenced by haste for me) added my own crit and then the haste bonus of quick shots and came up with a number (18.3).
So, what I am doing is pre potting which will help my initual grim toll and greatness procs, then doing a rapid fire/readiness macro once the pre pot wears off, then rapid firing my next greantess proc. Then haste potting my 3rd. The 4th can’t have a bonus, but then the 5th and 6th can benefit again from rapid fire/readiness.
Thoughts? Did I approch the math wrong?
I think it would be best to leave call of the wild on auto cast as its 5 minutes and my rapid fire is 3 minutes. Also, I don’t think I can do much about timing blood lust with any ap bonus as I have much more control over haste buffs.
I can get /cast Rabid to work, but not /cast Furious Howl. Any ideas why
Admin
Have you tried it when you aren’t in combat? Perhaps your pet had no focus at the time.
Member
Frost,
Could you (or someone) please post the import file for Darkmoon Card: Greatness and Death’s Verdict for Power Auras. I have looked on the web for a base config to modify, but nothing seems available.
Thanks in advance,
Zeea
Want to be clear about DMC:G and Death’s Verdict. I have read elsehwere and have begun to believe that these two bad-azz trinkets do NOT share an ICD… so therefore when reading your article I was confused that you alluded to a hunter needing one or the other.
I don’t see why you couldn’t use both. Can someone else confirm this?
Admin
The problem is that they proc off of different things. At the beginning of combat, both of them will proc darn close to each other, but very soon they get very out of synch, so they aren’t happening at the same time.
There’s nothing wrong with having both, just they won’t be up at the same time for most of the fight. If you have both trinkets, time your cooldowns with the Death’s Verdict proc, since that’s the bigger one
Interesting concept indeed, was playing around with it on the test dummy and I definitely saw an increase there. Will be fun to see if I can apply it in a raid now and not stand in a fire at the same time. I also stole an idea from your power aura’s article (viper setup) and set one up to show if my trinket proc (greatness in my case) is active and FH isn’t. Helps me remember I’m suppose to be casting it manually and not have to keep such a close eye on all my proc’s.
Luckily I have DV right now. I am trying to refrain from buying DMC:G in the hopes that the Whispering Fanged Skull falls into my lap sometime within the next couple of raid cycles.
Can you explain more about the different things these two (DV/DMC) proc off of? Both indicate they proc off of dealing dmg… and DMC says healing too.. but I’m not healing anyone. Since 3.3 I don’t need to heal my pet ever.. so they theoretically should be proccing at similar times?
Admin
Greatness procs of damage, whereas Death’s Verdict procs off of crits. So Greatness generally procs significantly faster, and by the third proc they’re pretty out of sync. A bit unlucky and the 2nd proc they’re halfway there.
I have 3 nice trinkets but cant decide what to use i have nes, greatness and whispering fang skull, im a MM arp specced hunter.wich 2 would you choose?
Any idea which procs/cd’s stack and dont stack?
Trinket 1
Trinket 2
Furious Howl (wolf)
Call of the Wild (pet talent)
Blood Fury
Expose Weakness
(imp) Hunter’s Mark (+glyph?)
….
Would be nice to know which can be used together and especially which ones benefit from call of the wild’s 10% to make the CD/proc use even better.
Long time reader, first time poster. I saw this and decided I wanted to try this out, so I looked for the Heatsink addon to find it had not been updated in 5 months. I did find this:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/internal-cooldowns.aspx, just updated today, so it should work with my Death-bringers Will. When I get a chance to test it out I will post up again.
you have left out a very important “cd” use.
At the pull (you may even be incharge of pulling) you should either use a potion of speed, or macro /use [nocombat]potion of speed
the macro ensures u dont use the potion if combat has started.
this gives u roughly 90% of the potions effect at the pull, while u have MD running for the 4 sec’s and most proc’s pop together (DV/Dmc:D/DW aso aso)
after 2 mins, the potion of speed CD wears out and u can use it again.
Member
very nice post..i;m new in raids and my experince is poor yet but can some1 explain the “shoot and scoot” method?ty in advance
Contributor
Marx – If you’re new to raids, don’t worry about shoot-n-scoot at the moment. Focus on your spec, rotation, gems/chants, fight knowledge/awareness, and things like this article on stacking cooldowns whenever possible. Shoot and scoot is when you move in between auto-shots so as not to lose a single shot even while moving.
Tbh, I can’t fathom how Kripparian manages this with any regularity. Maybe others have cracked this nut more thoroughly than I, but in general just trying to limit your movement in fights is plenty good. Knowing the fights themselves helps immensely with this, because you can anticipate when movement is needed and minimize it.
Contributor
As a caveat to my above post, shoot and scoot could also refer to moving in between global cooldowns, in which case you’d fire a shot, move before the next one is ready, fire a shot, move, fire, move, etc. This is easier to manage.
Frostheim
You mentioned that Kripparian uses an addon to track the internal cd’s of his trinket procs, do you know what the name of that mod is or is it custom?
Member
As part of the process of going back and listening to all of the podcasts I’ve missed, I’m just now getting into properly stacking my cooldowns. Thank you all for the above advice on the topic. Does anyone know if Greatness and the proc from the Ashen Verdict ring share similar icd’s? I haven’t had a chance to research this myself, and just wondering what others have already discovered. Also, is Heatsink still the best addon for tracking icd’s?
Member
tyvm for reply Arthemystia..i;ll try to minimize movement during the fights..Frostheim and the others keep the good work with excellent posts..regards