I get a lot of emails from people who are looking for help with their dps. It’s usually in the form of “I can’t figure out why my dps is too low, here’s my armory link, let me know, kthks bai.” I usually get several of these every day, and as I say in the FAQ, I no longer respond to these emails. I just literally do not have enough time to go over an analyze all of those armories every day, and quite honestly, I’m not going to say a whole lot that isn’t already said here on the site.
However, in the interest of not ignoring people entirely, I thought I’d write this little guide to analyzing and improving your dps.
1. Read the Guides!
First and foremost, go ahead and browse through the Guides Section of the WHU. We extensively cover what’s the best dps spec, talents, rotations, glyphs, gems, enchants, pets, pet talents, macros, addons and more. It’s all there.
I have to admit that I get a little batty when I’m emailed a question that’s answered in one of the guides. I don’t expect people to read through the hundreds upon hundreds of posts on the site, but the guides section is nicely organized with everything you need, complete with notice of when the guide was last reviewed and updated.
2. Measure Your DPS
Okay, if you think you’re doing everything right and your dps is still too low, your next step is to get to the target dummy and measure your dps. Do a nice series of 5-minute tests, and understand that your margin of error is in the hundreds of dps.
Your raid dps should be substantially better than your target dummy dps — after all, you have all those raid buffs and debuffs working for you! If your dps in a raid is close to the same, or even lower, than your target dummy dps, you then know for a fact that you simply aren’t doing your shot rotation correctly amidst the chaos of a boss fight. You are missing shots. Consider using an addon like Power Auras to show you when you’re shots are available.
As a reference, with full 25-man raid buffs (meaning you have every buff and debuff that helps hunters) you should be doing around 1.4 – 2 times your target dummy dps. This will also be somewhat dependent on how well the rest of your raid performs. Generally the better your raid dps, the better your dps will also be. And of course some boss fights are more friendly than others.
3. Spam Your Buttons
I don’t know if it’s changed since last I used it, but Quartz is a terrible way to measure and compensate for your latency. It’s not measuring your latency after all, it’s also measuring the delay in you hitting your button.
The best way to compensate for latency (and we all have latency) is to spam the button for your next shot a half second before it comes available. Odds become good that one of the times you hit it will be a fraction of a second before the shot is available, but by the time it reaches the server the shot is ready and fires off instantly. So just before the shot is ready — smashsmashsmashsmashsmash — and this will somewhat mitigate the effects of latency. Every really good player I know of any class does this, ’cause it just works. Also you avoid the danger of pushing a button and it doesn’t register. Over the course of a fight, this adds up.
DPS in Heroics
Understand now that heroics are a horrible, horrible metric for your dps. Your dps in heroic will change radically from run to run, even in the same instance. Unlike raids, in heroics the better the dps of the group, the lower your dps will tend to be.
You can read my WoW.com guide for full information on how to Maximize Heroic DPS.
This is a great post, and well times – on my server (Nagrand) patchwerk is the newest raid weekly ^_^
Great post. “Ultimately if you’re seeing a large dps loss from MM, the ugly truth is that it is a skill problem. Most likely you’re losing a lot of damage to moving, or you aren’t managing your cooldowns well.”
That’s what it ultimately comes down to. I know guys on Lethon with very similar gear to mine who are simply better at their jobs than I am and therefore do better dps. I try hard and practice….but like lots of skills …some folks are just “better”.
I have also seen folks with better gear than me who have no freaking clue how to play.
What’s your name on lethon?
I get asked a lot about hunter-ism, and my first response is always to go checkout The Hunters Union. They’ve got guides on specs, rotations, pets etc… blah blah blah.
Generally 10 minutes later to 2 days later I see them tooling around in a copy of my spec (the ArP Hunter build) without any understanding to why their DPS isn’t great. I then have to attempt explaining they shouldn’t be armor pen stacking and to go back and read the guides! Your alt half geared with triumph badges does not constitute end game raiding gear!!! Your sic 200 ArP wont cut it for the ArP build.
I’m a big proponent of the SV spec for newer hunters (or lost hunters) just because it’s easier, and even at full 232 gear (and below) you’ll never notice a difference between SV and MM. Hell even at mixed 245/251/264 gear I barely see a difference in MM and SV, the ArP build is just starting to noticeably beat out the RNG gods (and not by more than 100 +/- 50 DPS).
I dont know if people are lazy or just stupid. The cynic in me says both.
Anyhow, nice work yet again, Frost.
I believe that while you can produce acceptable results with SV by just reacting to your cooldowns, you gain almost as much if you can plan your cooldowns and reduce the movement DPS loss the way you describe.
Spamming explosive shot is bad! I suppose you could turbo smash it as long as you would wait for a global cool down, but if you clip your explosive shots during Lock ‘n’ Load, you’re wasting mana and time. I’m sure you know this, Frostheim, but you left it out of your post. This is a common mistake for beginning Survival hunters.
Frost, I see you gave us a little insight into your personal shot rotation. This should be a great little DPS boost. Been timing my cooldowns and using Readiness after Rapid Fire, but starting with Arcane and Serpent should help a lot before blowing my other cooldowns. Of course i’m guessing that on multiple targets for initial aggro you use MD, Multi-shot and Volley.
Why can’t people look this shit up on the internet on their own? It boggles my mind. there’s this whole world of info and knowledge at your fingertips. USE IT. You play WoW for 4-6 hours a day but you can’t do 2 hours of research on the internet every once in a while?
Another thing people don’t realize is hunters are easy to learn TOUGH TO master. I specced SV shortly after wraith and I feel like I’m still learning and mastering my SV rotation…and I’ve done countless heroics (I’ve only been on a couple raids..i don’t raid much). Stick with your spec and just keep practicing. Your DPS will improve with practice and gear upgrades.
And as others have mentioned, a couple common SV hunter mistakes are not timing their explosive shots during LNL, and not being still long enough to activate sniper training which, apparently is challenge in some raids do to having to move around alot, and in heroics with mega-tanks who chain pull and are always a group of mobs ahead of the rest of the party.
Good post.
Strangely enough, I find MM much easier to play than SV. On occasion I’ll switch to SV if we’re missing a replenishment buff and I notice a large dps decrease. It could be that my gear is tailored for MM, or just lack of practice, or maybe I’m just more proactive than reactive. I think I’ll take a look at your SV guide to see if I’m missing something.
There are a lot of situational rotations
For most AoE pulls I use MD, explosive trap, then volley. It’s great for when there’s over 10 mobs and the AoE cap comes into play.
For Saurfang I time my Aimed shot so that when the beasts appear I can use multi-shot instead.
Fights that run about 4-5 mins I save my second readiness until after the boss is below 20% for the extra Kill Shot, then do the fourth rapid fire, chimera, aimed, etc… But if fights go long enough for six rapid fires you should be aware of that and not save the second readiness for 20%, but use it immediately and save the 3rd readiness for the extra kill shot.
And letting new SV hunters know about clipping explosive shots is huge, most have no idea about it. Heck some high end raiders may not know. I went back and forth between pausing or using steady shot between them when lock an load proc’d and no other shot was available.
There are a lot of tidbits lost when people are too lazy to read everything combined with using logic to supplement. I mean the guides aren’t that long.
Actually, Patchwerk isn’t a great measure anymore. Once in Tier 9 gear, a raid can blow through Patch in just over a minute, maybe even faster. No progression fight is that short; Hero/BL up for 50% = insane dps. The numbers are ridiculous and have no meaning other than ego stroking.
I prefer to measure my dps on the same boss within a month. “My dps on our week 1 kill of Giant Doom Monger was 200 less than on our week 2 kill but about the same as our week 3 kill. Why?” The data is more “real world” than the idealized (and now obsolete and trivial) Patchwerk fight.
Why the SV hate? MM may have cooldowns to manage, but SV’s rotation is much harder. Screw up the rotation and cry as your dps plummets. Fire BA at the wrong time and cry. And as Euripides mentioned, losing Auto Shots and SS’s effect SV, too. We may fire as many SS’s, but they hit as hard as MM’s SS’s. And SV’s Auto Shot is about the same percentage of damage as MM. You make it sound like SV is faceroll compared to MM. It’s not.
one of the things that I’ve seen with better players is definitely spamming, which you mentioned.
People I think, sometimes just don’t realize what this means; literally pressing the key for x spell, over and over and over as quickly as possible until it goes off, and then you have to be doing that for the y spell in your rotation as soon as the first one goes off, and so on. Your fingers do not get a break.
one of the problems with game mechanics also that further compounds the latency issue, is that a spell is not cast until you release the key for it. One of my guildies found an addon called snowfallkeypress that instead makes spells go off *as you press the button down* instead of as you release it. this may seem tiny, but that difference can cut into your latency, and in combination with spamming, actually make a difference in your dps.
I would also have to disagree with you that MM is harder than SV. the rotation in MM *is* priority based, but the way the shot cooldowns work together make the priority fit into a pretty set rotation, and if you get good alerts as to when your trinket/t10/culling the herd procs are going off it is easy to set yourself up to take advantage of those. whereas survival really is more priorities and balancing those when you get lock and load procs, know, that in combination with keeping up your serpent sting (something that MM hunters don’t have to do at all) as well as knowing when to blow your cooldowns, which are fewer and further in between than in MM, so you have to use them more carefully, make Survival much more difficult to play really well. It also doesn’t help that you’re probably going to be itemizing a little differently if you’re SV, and that many people are going MM main/ SV off, so MM gear and itemization take priority.
whee text wall!
Call Me Bias:
I’ll start off by saying, yes, I am an SV hunter. More to the point, I am also tired of the assertion that MM is more difficult to play as than SV. Without getting to deep into rotation and movement, SV has just as much to watch out for in their rotation as an MM hunter and with the addition of LNL in the SV arsenal, an SV’s rotation is disrupted, although it be for the greater good it is a disruption none-the-less. As for movement, MM may rely on standing still for their auto-shot and steady shot, but on the other hand, a SV hutner with glyph of steady shot and sniper training is also reliant on standing still for their bonuses. With all this said, Call Me Bias, but SV is on par as far a difficulty of rotation and movement “planning”. BM…let’s not go there
*chuckles to self, reading email*
Tlord,
Neither spec is difficult for a good player, but I think planning your rapid fires to go along with your procs is more difficult than noticing LNL. In SV I never even had anything tell me LNL proc’d, I just noticed that the Explosive shot got to be used multiple times in a row (with a short delay between each) or Explosive shot, Aimed Shot, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Explosive Shot then back to the grind. It’s just a priority game. I never thought LNL messed up my rotation because I never use a rotation, but a priority and Explosive shot is only behind Kill Shot.
It’s easier to overlook not using rapid fires or not using them at the right time then it is to press Explosive shot three times in a row.
Neither is really harder, I just think if you are a bad/new player over looking or misusing rapid fires is more detrimental to your DPS. You can’t really do anything wrong with LNL procs except clip your damage, which is easier to fix than noticing 10-15 seconds procs. I have power Aura’s so the procs are easy to notice which makes it a null point, but we’re talking about huntards not people.
There is no set rotation for MM, just as there’s no set rotation for SV. You can get into a groove, but there’s no rotation.
Just keep that in mind. This whole post is about huntards, not dedicated do your research tweak everything you can hunters. A dedicated hunter can master both specs just as easily as the other. I just think bad players can get away with more in SV.
1) read the guides
YES, there is a wealth of information locked away in these few pages. id give anything if my other classes had sites were the information was laid out so plainly and centralized. i went from noob to not noob and its all thanks to the information already available. every chance i get, every hunter i talk to, i direct them here before i stop speaking with them, bar none.
3) spam your buttons:
ive gotten into the habit of this, but i found an interesting problem. if the mob dies while im spamming and i dont stop myself in time, ill pick another target in site and auto shot them (the instance shots are usually on CD, 95% of the time its an auto shot). i THINK its the “/cast !Auto Shot” portion i have on all my shots and have been meaning to test it. anyone else run into this auto shot pulling from spamming?
Just for the hunters who haven’t read the guides your missing out , if your SV and lock and load procs do not and i repeat do not spam explosive shot you need a shot in between otherwise your removing the damage ticks from your last shot and replacing with another. Your much better to fire a shot in between to get the full ticks damage as well as the shot you fired in between , if your a explosive shot spammer your losing DPS. Frost has already explained this in his posts and thats why ever hunter should read the guides here there awesome and very easy to understand.
Why do you start with Arcane, Frost? I dont recall ever reading that here. Unless I’m missing something fundamental, which I probably am.
Is it worth waiting for your trinkets to proc if Rapid Fire and Readiness come up early or just blow them immediately?!
The other MM shots get more from armour debuffs etc. Arcane is purely magic damage and hits for its full amount first up. By using Arcane first Frost is allowing time for Hrist to apply sunders before he uses Chimera, Aimed and Steady. Arcane is dropped from the rotation on the boss after this. (True min-maxing for a marginal dps increase, I was droping arcane in my first rotation before sunders were fully up in the normal Agi priority)
Arcane is also the first shot an ArP MM hunter fires at an add that joins the fight. (See reason above & it will always be off cooldown)
SV is considered better for fights Saurfang because so much damage is done to the beasts. Looking at my raid parses I was averaging 50/50 on Saurfang and beasts. Thats 50% of my physical dps not being helped by armour debuffs.
Good post for nubs, but boring =b (<– reads the guides).
was expecting another fun/funny frost post with interesting points, but alas, not my day i suppose =/.
Love the post, as a poor performer I got some hints on how to improve. I think I will try out a survival specc as well to see what that does for me, being a noob at both wow and being a hunter I have only tried out BM and MM as far.
However, I must have missed something crucial as I cant see how to be able to get 4 Rapid Fires in a 4 min fight. I use the same MM specc that is suggested on this site and that gives my Rapid Fire a CD of 3 minutes.
What am I missing, how can I get 4 Rapid Fires in a 4 min fight?
Figured it out, “Readiness -When activated, this ability immediately finishes the cooldown on your other Hunter abilities except Bestial Wrath”.
This post has definitly increased my DPS, I had totally missed that it removes the CD on Rapid Fire. I usually save Readiness for the end of the fight to squeeze out an extra Kill Shot, but not anymore!!
Thank you!
I’ve been raiding Hard Modes as SV for a long time recently switched to MM and found it a lot easier.
-Fewer buttons to push.
-Only 1 dot AND it self-renews (!!)
-More CDs to blow
-Less RNG (no Lock N Load procs)
-Supported by 3.3 itemisation (ArP is on everything – stop trying to fight it!)
-No need to regem (Agi MM is viable!)
-Movement management easier (To clarify: movement is always a DPS loss. However it’s easier to use Steady Shot to regulate movement than attempting to track Sniper Training ticks IMO)
SVs waiting for the right time – this spec IS easier. Make the change today!
@ Zat,
IIRC, multishot works like any other multi-target/ splash damage on the blood beasts, i.e. severely reduced damage. Unless you’re talking about using it to grab initial aggro, then ignore what I said.
“Quartz is a terrible way to measure and compensate for your latency”
I can’t thank you enough for this comment, I had been using Quartz as a timer for my Steady Shot since I thought a more accurate bar would give me a preemptive on when to press exactly.
After re-reading some of your material, removing quartz and relying only on instinctive timing and Power Auras I was able to reclaim >800< DPS.
Love your work man!
Keep it up.
I have that problem of mobility as MM, i tend to loose sometimes alot dps when moving, stil trying to deal whit it but is not easy for me, i tend to switch to SV in fights i cant deal movement for now for not loose DPS, but hey…anyone who sayd hunter is a noob class is completly wrong, harder class i ever played in WoW to master. Keep the good work Frostheim
I use Koralon the Flame Watcher in VoA for my personal DPS metric. You get to do him every week, its single target, there’s very little movement, and the fight lasts a reasonable amount of time unlike Patchwerk. Since I pug VoA the group buffs I run with change every week, but my guild’s raids have enough variation in them that I can’t plan for a specific buff layout anyway.
Frostheim, your advice on hunters is outstanding! Thanks to you I switched over to MM a while back, and my raid teams are loving it. I was working with the shot rotation you posted last night and immediately saw an increase in my dps. I still need to do some playing around with timing of Rapid Fire and and Readiness, but I like what I’m seeing.
One question that came to mind was in regard to the timing of Readiness after Rapid Fire. Should I be waiting the 15s for RF to drop off before using Readiness, thus getting the full benefit of RF, or is it actually worth it to use Readiness right after applying RF? Currently, I’ve got RF macro’d to my Chimera, so I’m only seeing a few seconds of my initial RF before it goes off with my next Chimera after Readiness.
Thank you again for all your work!
Yes, you want to use Readiness very quickly after your Rapid Fire so that the cooldowns end about the same time. Do NOT macro Rapid Fire into any of your shots!!!
The idea is you hit Rapid Fire and your auto shots speed up. You hit Readiness to reset your cooldowns…. now Rapid Fire is still going. You want to get the full benefit from rapid fire before you hit it again.
And ideally, you’re timing rapid fire to stack with your trinket procs.
Great! Thank you for the advice. I’ll be trying it out tonight.
Hei Frostheim (me=kind of first time poster, long time lurker), first of all. Thanks for months of help
. My DPS would’ve never been anywhere where they are now if not for this blog posts. You mentioned the power auras addon, I have seen that addon also recommended on Elitistjerks. Have never tried, but just might. I use an addon called watcher, specifically design for hunters shot rotations, although nowadays is flexible enough for other classes to use it. Have you had any experience with this addon? if you have, do you still recommend Power Auras?
Really great article, Frost – thanks ever so much! This hit home with me as I’m struggling with this exact issue right now. I spent the last year as SV and just recently made the switch to MM. I’ve seen an overall drop in my DPS and I think it comes down to my skill level. I am working very hard to improve and one of the areas I need the most help with is adjusting to keybinds – yes, I’m a clicker! I know that I’ll never see the true potential of MM unless I can break myself of that habit. Does anyone have any tips or tricks to learn how to effectively use keys instead of clicking?
I hope I don’t get killed with hate here, but I too am a clicker. Not only that, I am a (cue shock and horror) keyboard turner as well. So I would like to second Grambo’s request above. Are there any exercises you can suggest to break the “clicker” mentality? I have heard rumors about the quests in Vanilla for the legendary bow, which were essentially designed to “train” huntards into real hunters. Since I didn’t start playing WoW until after BC dropped, I never got the benefit of those quests.
On a side note, I have been lurking for almost a year now. My desire to keep paying my dues to my guild and our raid team and switch to the better (only in a DPS sense, put on your goggles now
) spec finally prompted me to post. I am pretty sure I have hit the magic gear level where MM far outweighs SV, but even on the dummy I am having difficulty managing MM shot priority and cooldowns to match my current SV output. The good news is I put up 8.6k on Patchwerk 10 man last night in SV (no pally buffs and no Heroism).
I am not sure if this is the place, but I definitely wanted to thank Frostheim, Arust and their raid team not just for great hunter information but also for many hours of entertainment with the blog posts and comments.
Bozelf on Proudmoore – http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Proudmoore&cn=Bozelf
Zat,
Not once in my post did i ever mention rapid fire so I’m not sure why your trying to belittle what I’m trying to lay out. Not once do I try to say that LnL is hard, It’s just something that is a disruption to what you refer to as ” a groove “. What your trying to get at with your post is beyong me other than to talk about getting your rapid fires off with your procs vs. noticing LnL. You say neither is hard with your auras so again I’m lost as to what your trying to say other than they are both equally “difficult” to play…which is what I was saying to begin with. The one part I do agree with you on is, Yes, this post was for people having issues with dps, and wether you like it or not, everyone can improve on what they are doing, hence my post regarding some of the small obstacles that get in the way of the “huntards and do your research tweak everything you can hunters” alike.
I know this sounds stupid, but CHECK YOUR EMBLEMS. I had 104 emblems of triumph and just spent em all on hc gear (i hardly ever get 2 raid with my guild due 2 timezones).
My dps went up by 1-1.5k
For the clickers out there
play on your laptop and do not use a mouse. That’s what it took for me. I use the mouse pad for camera and to click for loot, mining, etc. But to fight, it is just plain impossible to use the mouse pad, so you have to key bind. I use WASD for movement, numbers (right above WASD) for main skills (shot rotations). I use the “late numbers” (098) for utilities, like pots or scrolls. My disengage, healing (draenei), BM (when soloing) abilities and the necessary melee are on my ÅPOI and ÆØLK (norwegian keyboard, but you get it, the right most keys, two rows of 4 keys for quick actions), TAB circles enemies and ^ (right next to the “enter” key) circles friendlies.
I use the same set up when doing my alts (shaman and DK), atack on numbers (tab circles enemies), healing on letters (^ circles friendlies). Is equiv. to left hand moves/attack, right hand defends. Other utility abilities and some key aspects are SHFT + number of F1 or F2. I pretty much keep all I need within a few cm of my fingers when they stand on the typical “machine typing” starting position (all fingers in second row, indexes in F and J), which is the fastest way to type.
Might not help you much, but it does wanders for me.
ok im getting 4.2k dps on the heroics dummy test, does that mean ill do around 7k-8k in raids?. is that good for my gear or am i doing something wrong with my shot rotation?
heres my shot rotation
Chimera shot
aimed shot/multi-shot/kill command as a macro
serpent sting
Arcane shot
Steady shot/silencing shot as a macro
Steady shot
then repeat the process(excluding serpent sting as chimera shot refreshes it)
i dont have a single raid or frost emblem item yet. mostly heroics dungeon drops and couple of t9 and emblem quatermaster trade.
to be more specific here is my armory http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dreadmaul&cn=Balfaer
oh btw that dummy test result i also used rapid fire and mark of supremacy to begin with. then i kept dpsing from full mana all the way to empty.
Hey, I’ve been a proud Horde Hunter who mainly PvE’s as a MM (I PvP BM) for 3 months. Today I FINALLY reached 80 (it is my first toon) However, I have this giant issue with my DPS being super low. Your site really helped me get my DPS up from 400 (yes, it was really that bad) to like 800, and I can even reach 1k if I’m lucky. My question is, is this normal, this being my first toon and all? And could you please put up a guide to what your DPS should look like depending on your lvl/heirloom/etc? And is it possible for a BM to have as high a DPS as MM? Cause I don’t.
PS, The person who referred me to this site saved my ass and I am eternally grateful.
I’m at a steady 2K dps now, and am looking forward to Fridays event!
What does he mean by -all cooldowns- in his rotation in this article :
Typically I start a fight with Arcane Shot – Serpent Sting – ALL COOLDOWNS (knowing trinkets will proc within seconds if they haven’t already) – Chimera – Aimed – READINESS – Chimera – Aimed – etc.
Thanks
Spamming the button gave me a marginal increase in dps over just clicking, but I don’t see it as the end-all to raising dps significantly.
i Didnt Really Knew Where to Post this, So ill Put it Here
The Thing is Like This : Im in ICC (and Before That) and im Doing 6K DPS Without CDs, And About 8-9K DPS TOPS With CDs, And Now im Doing Around 4K Without CDs and About 6FRIGGING K DPS! With CDs
I Dont Really Know Why, Rotation is the Same i Change the Cloak
from [Hammerhead Sharkskin Cloak] http://www.wowhead.com/item=40721
to [Shawl of Nerubian Silk] http://www.wowhead.com/item=50764
At First i Was Thinking that was Cause of the lost +43crit&hit rating but then i thought
i Got a +44 Agility from Cloak Alone, Then a +20Gem From Gem and a +4Agi From Right Gem
What Could it be??? If you Can Help me Thanks!
I just found all this and I am so glad. Already respec’d and will be going through all the guides to get the best out of my hunter. I love you guys. ;_;