As I’ve been doing more and more research into patch 4.3 hunter changes, I’ve seen a few optimizations start to change, or almost change through a combination of our steady gear improvements and the 4.3 changes. The rough thing about these is that many of them don’t have a very clear winner — instead it’s hovering right on the edge between two different ways of doing things. For all practical purposes you could go either way and never see the difference, but for optimization we always want to identify which is best, even if the amount best is imperceptible.
Here are some of the changes that I’ve been looking into for the SV spec:
Explosive Trap vs. Black Arrow
I wrote about this before, how the reduced internal cooldown of T.N.T. looks like it’s making Explosive Trap look better than Black Arrow for the SV rotation, because you get so many more Lock & Load procs off of it. I’ve been spending a lot of time testing it, and from all the testing I’ve done Explosive Trap is looking better than Black Arrow. But there are complications.
Complication the first: you have to actually launch the Explosive Trap, which takes a variable amount of time depending on your speed of execution. In practice on the target dummy I can get that time pretty darned close to 1.5 seconds, but I wonder both how easy that is to execute in a chaotic boss fight, and how many hunters can actually get their launch time reasonably lower than 2 seconds. And that half second difference is pretty substantial — dead time is the biggest dps killer, far more so than gemming wrong or forgetting to use glyphs.
Complication the second: sometimes the boss is on the move for reasons having to do with the fight mechanics. Or flying in the air, for that matter. Obviously in these situations you’ll want to use Black Arrow, but it’s worth noting that Explosive Trap isn’t an always answer no matter how much better it is.
Complication the wtf: the most annoying complication is that FemaleDwarf does not agree with my number, and usually what I come up with is qualitatively pretty darned close to what Zeherah’s numbers say. The discrepancy makes me worried that I’m missing something significant. According to FemaleDwarf I’m only getting 3 extra Lock & Loads by swapping BA for the trap, and based on the numbers I’ve been seeing testing on the target dummy, that seems low. More disturbingly FD doesn’t think I’m going to get any extra Arcane Shots at all by using the trap. Black Arrow costs 35 focus and with the Glyph of Trap Launcher (major glyph) Explosive Trap launching only costs 10 focus. So that should easily be an extra Arcane Shot every 24 seconds or so, assuming I’m not waiting on focus for Black Arrow to fire.
For the time being I’m keeping the recommendation that Explosive Trap is better for stand-still bosses in the SV rotation guide, at least until I get a chance to talk to Zeherah and she points out something embarrassing that I overlooked.
Careful Aim vs Sic ‘Em
We’re getting very close to the point where Sic ‘Em is actually better than Careful Aim for SV hunters. This is because we’re now firing more Explosive Shots and way more Arcane Shots than ever before, which lets us get Sic ‘Em a lot more often. In fact my numbers show Sic ‘Em being just a wee tiny bit better — only double digit dps — and FD agrees with me on this one. But, there’s a but.
All of my numbers, and I think most of Zeherahs, use a lot of averaging for things like procs. And in that Careful Aim range, the first 10% of boss health, we have just about every awesome dps boost available to us going on all at once. We have the potion we drank just before the pull, Rapid Fire, anything that procs is procced boosting our dps to huge levels, all of it stacking multiplicatively and all of it further boosting the hyped up SV Cobra Shot that is doing nothing but critting. In practice our numbers during Careful Aim are much higher than the average numbers most of the math is based off of, which means the benefit from Careful Aim is much higher as well.
You could really go either way on this one and not see the difference at all, but for the time being I’m sticking with Careful Aim for SV over Sic ‘Em.
Arcane Shot Glyph
Okay, this one isn’t really close at all. The Arcane Shot glyph was always an option for SV that was slowly becoming more attractive, but with 4.3 it’s clearly awesome. We fire so many more Arcane Shots than before, with the tier 13 bonuses, the fact that we have so much more haste at higher gear levels, and from so many more Lock & Load procs — not to mention the extras if you use Explosive Trap in place of Black Arrow. This makes your top two glyph choices clearly Explosive Shot and Arcane Shot glyphs, with Kill Shot and Serpent Sting fighting it out for the third slot. Serpent Sting is better for AoE situations, while Kill Shot is going to net you more dps in a single-target fight.
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but remind me why we’re using explosive trap instead of immolation trap on this one?
Single target, wouldn’t immolation trap be better? (I’m actually using explosive just because immolation trap isn’t even on my bar and I’ve been too lazy to put it back on).
Explosive Trap does more damage, ironically, and importantly has far more ticks, thus more chance to proc Lock & Load. Immolation does very slightly more damage per tick, but only has 5 ticks compared to explosive with 10 ticks (plus initial damage)
Thanks Frost. I vaguely remembered something like this.
Remember that bosses can only be affected by one Explosive Trap debuff at a time, so if you’re running with another Survival Hunter, you’ll need to make sure they aren’t using it too.
Actually that bug got fixed so we can have multiple hunters with Explosive Shot ticks going at once now.
That’s great news! Having your DPS tank cause someone else’s trap landed before yours was a real pain.
I realize that this post is from an SV perspective, but I have some optimization close calls to report for MM.
The first involves Kill Shot (KS). The benefit of KS to the MM rotation is diminished some since one of the benefits of using KS, which is the focus savings, is no longer much of a concern. In most cases, the only benefit of KS is the damage that it does. When using Arcane Shot (AS) as the focus dump, obviously KS replacement of an AS is beneficial due to the larger amount of damage that KS does.
However, when using Aimed Shot (AI) as the focus dump, the use of KS is not as straightfoward. In many cases, the focus savings of performing the KS is not needed (although part of the focus savings still helps in others). In addition, AI does about 1.75 times as much damage as KS, so if focus is not a concern, then as long as your AI cast time is under 1.75s, it is a DPS loss to replace an AI with a KS.
So the deciding factor on whether it is worthwhile to cast KS is whether its DPS is higher than the DPS of the current average Chimera Shot (CS) cycle being used in that situation. With high static haste stacking that is possible in T13 gear (about 27% from gear and Pathing) during a glyphed Rapid Fire (RF), the focus is balanced and the DPS of the CS cycle is almost as high as that of a KS, almost making casting KS useless in that scenario. Of course, this case is not a good example since stacking that much haste is probably not beneficial.
However, with normal static haste levels (which I anticipate easily being over 20% for T13 gear with good balance stats), glyphed RF, and some additional large dynamic haste effect stacked on top of it, like BL, the T13 4P proc, or the Starcatcher Compass proc, then the cast time of AI is low enough where it puts skipping KS as a higher DPS option over using KS. Of course, ideally we do not want to stack these effect on top of each other, but it can happen.
Thus, although there may be some extreme situation where casting KS can be a DPS loss when hasted and using an AI focus dump cycle, those are going to be extreme cases. In most situations, using KS is a DPS increase; however, you in most cases you do not want to replace a shot in the rotation with KS anymore. The maximum DPS seems to be to just add the additional shot for KS to the end of the CS cycle. This is because replacing an AI with a KS is a DPS loss if the AI is hasted enough (which it should be if we are using it) and because replacing a SS with a KS is a huge focus loss (of at least 24.32 with the T13 2P and even higher if your SS cast is capped), such that you will end up adversely affecting your focus balancing.
There are a couple more minor ones involving Termination and some of the glyphs, but I ran out of time. In short, although the benefits of Termination is reduced with the T13 2P, it still has benefits in enough situations where I still recommend 1 point in it over the alternatives.
I totally agree that a fast enough Aimed Shot is superior to Kill Shot, but I think the break point is a bit higher than just the 1.75 sec cast. Keep in mind that casting the Aimed Shot will also disable and then reset your auto-shot, so the cast time would need to be a chunk shorter than 1.75 before the dps is equal to KS.
Hey Frost:
As you were trying to compare between Careful Aim vs Sic ‘Em
Would you please include in “Improved aspect of hawk” comparison also?
Alternative option is to take points away from Improved aspect of hawk and move to Careful Aim or Sic’ Em.
I’d have to stick to BA on single target imo. In practice LNL is primarily about luck and BA has been ticking some serious numbers for me
Stat wise for sv, i’ve been going crit and mastery, running with as low amount of haste as possible, t13 2p makes me think haste isn’t that valuable now. No proper testing done apart from just speculating in raids.
were you hitting multiple dummies with your trap and getting additional procs that way?
I think you get more procs due to the faster tick rate and duration of explosive trap.
Nope, just one dummy. Explosive Trap just has substantially more ticks than BA, which means more chances to proc.
Would LOVE to see more about this: Is Haste now the worst stat? Can I/Should I be reforging *into* Mastery more than Haste? Have the plateaus changed?
What about Dreadfire Drape vs Batwing Cloak vs Dreadfire Drape (H)?
I have the non-heroic Dreadfire Drape – is the Batwing Cloak a big enough upgrade where I should get that before other Valor gear (since no cloaks drop in dragon soul)? Even the non-heroic version has more agility than Batwing Cloak..
For my character, Batwing Cloak provides only a 15.2 dps increase (before raid buffs) over non-heroic Dreadfire Drape. It’s going to be the last thing I purchase with VP as it’s simply not a good value. For comparison, the Amulet (another piece that doesn’t have a DS drop, unless I’m missing something) provides a 77.81 dps increase.
(that last line should say “over the i378 JP amulet”)
Seems the “Best SV Raid Talent Spec” guide hasn’t been updated to match what you say here about Careful Aim — the guide says we’re better off spending the points elsewhere and the spec image shows two points in Sic ‘em instead of CA.
Hey Frost? The way you’ve been gushing over the SV changes lately, does this mean that SV is taking the lead in dps?
I say this because Marks has been getting really tricky for me lately, and I’m fairly certain I’m screwing up my ‘rotation’ somehow.
Could you comment on Marks with the T13 2-piece?
Thanks
I have a feeling that if you have the 2p T13, SV is going to be better since you lose your no focus cost Aimed Shot proc from the t12 4p. However, once we get the 4p T13, i think with that haste buff, hardcasting Aimed Shot will probably put mm back on top.
But I think the important thing is to build a benchmark with both specs. If your guild isn’t in an extremely competative mode, they probably would have no problem with you trying another spec to see what it can do vs your current one. I’m going to try SV next week I think.
Definitely give sv a try, but only with the t13 2 set bonus, also going pure mastery/crit and using arcane as a dump alot with the standard exp shot and BA might surprise you just how much dps its pulling atm.
I recently changed from being mm for over a year because the rotation seems very awkward with the 2p bonus. I’m also very competitive with my dps, me and this other mm hunter were pretty much neck and neck on all fights, but changing to sv, i just own everyone’s faces now. xD
@ Onenutmcgee
Concerning the T13 2P impact for MM, please check out my post on EJ.
In my opinion, the T13 2P bonus is better than the T12 4P. Although the T12 4P resulted in focus free AIs periodically, it may not always have been utilized on AIs. It could have been used in some instances on CS or AS/KC. Plus, the T12 4P proc occurred inconsistently and could not easily be planned for. Thus, it often was used unideally and resulted in focus overrun and DPS loss over the ideal situation.
I believe the T13 2P is superior for a couple of reasons:
1) It is a consistent benefit for which our shot selections can be planned around to reduce the amount of focus capping. Your shot selection per cycle and focus consumption is much more consistent per CS cycle, allowing you to be able to get into a better shot rythym with less proc monitoring for potentially higher consistent DPS.
2) The focus saving is roughly equivalent or even better with the T13 2P. When unhasted and doing the minimum 4 SSs per cycle, it provides a consistent 36 focus per cycle. When hasted and performing additional SSs per CS cycle, it can be providing an additional 45 focus or even more in some situations.
On the other hand the T12 4P may have saved you 50 focus on an AI, but it only saved 44 or 22 focus on CSs or AS utilizations. Even if all procs were used only on AI (which is an unreasonable assumption) and a T12 4P proc occurred every CS cycle on average (which is much more frequent than actually occurred), you could potentially save at most 50 focus per CS cycle assuming that no focus overcapped due to the proc.
With using the minimum 36 focus savings from the T13 2P, as long as the T12 4P proc occurred less often than once every 1.38 CS cycles, then the T13 2P provides more of a focus benefit than the T12 4P. If you also account for more SSs being performed on some hasted CS cycles gaining more focus from the T13 2P, the highesr chance for overcapped focus on the T12 4P, the utilzation of some T12 4P procs on lower costing focus shots (CS and AS/KC), and the liklihhood that you received less than 1.38 T12 4P procs per CS cycle, then the T13 2P is definitely superior.
Frost, I was interested to see that Arena Junkies now recommends that BM prioritize mastery over haste.
http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t110880-cataclysm_beast_mastery_4_3_a/#post1819062
I assume this is because of the new tier bonuses. Do you agree with this stat priority?
Yes — for pvp. This isn’t new either, mastery has always been much better for pvp. Partially this is because haste is so much less useful in pvp, but it’s also because burst damage is so much more important. You’d rather do less dps overall if you could make the damage more bursty and get whopping big crits. And BM mastery combined with the right coodlowns can make for crazy huge Kill Command crits.
Elite Jerks BM guide also list Master over Haste and they are referring to PVE
http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t110880-cataclysm_beast_mastery_4_3_a/#Relative_stat_values
I messed up and said Arena Junkies when it was actually Elitist Jerks. So this is for PVE raiding, not PVP.
Do you agree that with the new Tier bonuses Mastery has surpassed Haste for BM? Take a look at the link and see what you think.
It is my opinion that with the new 2p, SV and BM are both very focus positive, and the value of haste is diminished. Currently for SV, my un-hasted rotation is simply explosive, cobra, cobra, arcane. When black arrow comes up, I simply replace an arcane with an extra cobra and pop off the black arrow. I prioritize crit, mastery, then haste. Of course, once you start getting your hands on the new trinkets, and the 2h and bow from DW, you’ll have a lot fewer stats to play around with, and tons of nice new agility instead. As for the comment on prioritizing mastery over haste for BM, I fully agree with this. I’ve ranked on several fights for BM, and even am top 50 world for BM on 25 h morchok. Of course, as Frost always says, doing the mechanics properly and maintaining the proper rotation is gobs more important than any choices you could make with your reforging.
Is the difference between Black Arrow and Explosive Trap a big difference or not?
The 1.75s is the point where casting an AI is a better choice than KS when looking at the two shots alone and when focus is not a concern.
You are correct that the actual decision point is at a much faster AI as I indicate later. The decision to cast KS or not depends on whether its DPS is higher than the DPS of the current CS cycle, which includes the CS, AIs and SSs. The DPS of a full CS cycle does not exceed that of KS until the AI cast time is nearing the GCD.
I honestly don´t see CA to be even a far competitor agains Sic’Em. Unless you need to push the boos down quick on the first percentages (which is not the case on any of the DS encounters) Sic’Em yields far better results. most of the fights out there in DS, even more in heroic, have heavy burn phases and the majority of them are at low health %, in which CA is just useless. Talenting CA you could end doing more overall DPS (by a very small margin, whatsoever) sacrificing better output for the 90% of the fight, where DPS does really matter.
On the other hand, once you get the 2 pieces of T13, you will be firing 2, 3 or maybe 4 CoS during RF, and generally a very few more during the rest of the CA phase.
HC morchok: DPS is irrelevant during the first 10%, he will do only 1 stomp whatsoever, and the burn phase is last 20% when he hits like a truck.
HC zon’ozz: Again the careful aim phase, despite of being relatively long, sums for a very minor part of your DPS. as the combat goes further, you do more dps, hence Sic’Em is more useful with the time.
HC yorshaj:imho is the only arguable boss for CA. Even then, target switching favours pet damage if you keep the pet on the boss all the times. Ideally you will start dpsing the oozes with an almost full focus bar, for more burst. When you need to regain focus the ooze is already lower than 90%.
HC hagara: boss drops fast from 90%. Also the burst phases are at lower health and for the iceblocks you are not getting any benefict of it.
Just some examples for the first 4 bosses. Ultraxion HC despite of being a boss where you mainly fight against the enrage timer, it comes harder and harder the lowest he is so you want to make the hard time shorter, which is not the CA phase.
Note that you don’t case Aimed Shot during Careful Aim range (since always critting Cobras do more damage). You say “Sic’Em yields far better results” — do you have any data for that? A FD link at least? The best skew I can get for Sic ‘Em is a measly 90dps difference, and that does not take into account the benefit of all the buff/proc multiplicative stacking.
With all of that in the mix, your net dps increase should be larger (slightly) with CA over the course of the fight, though more frontloaded.
Obviously this is something that can´t be simulated on anyway, beacause the sim just doesn´t know when is important to max your DPS and when it can be trivial. I do not deny that CA can be more “raw DPS”, but the benefict of CA concerns a very small part of a fight, while Sic’Em beneficts you during the whole fight. Think on 2 different scenarios, as HC or non HC ragnaros or HZ or non HC zon’ozz.
The DPS on ragnaros in the first phase is completely irrelevant: once you reach the DPS to push him to interphase with only 4 traps, no more DPS is needed in this phase. After that, is where DPS matters: you need to push him to the second interphase asap, ideally in 3 rounds of seeds. After that, you need to push him into phase 4 before the 3º and 4º meteors ir it is instantly a wipe. and in phase 4, you obviously want to kill him asap.
What is the benefict of CA in this fight? 0. Meanwhile, having Sic’Em talented provides you with more DPS over the whole fight.
Warlord Zon’ozz: he has a bigger than average HP poll on both normal and heroic, so the CA phase is longer than average. You get a good benefict of CA in this boss, no doubt about that. but again, the fight mechanics favour greatly Sic’Em, as while in the CA phase, you deal your normal DPS, while after the 1º black phase, you will be dealing at least 150-180% of your normal DPS, and after the second you will be way above 200%. And you will have Sic’Em during that time.
As I said, is not about raw numbers, where CA might win on the course of a fight. But that is just for personal epeen touching. Whenever the fight has a burn phase outside CA range (which in DS are ALL of them) Sic’Em is the best option, maybe not for personal DPS, but it is for the raid as you will be doing more dps when it is more needed.
On the other hand, I have not seen a single hunter who raids at a certain level (not only the ones at the top 100) talenting CA over Sic’Em
This is one case where real raid mechanics are over any simulation data you can get.
Oh, about that, there is one thing that screws numbers in favour of CA on FD: CA lenght of the fight is set at 10%, which it rarely is, as the first 20-30 seconds of a fight are usually the ones where the raid DPS is on his higher level, more when you pop BL at start, shortening a lot the CA phase
I’ve always thought CA was pretty much useless for Survival on most boss encounters, especially ones where damage done during the last 50% matters more than the first 50%.
I also agree with Pichu that if FD is modeling it that the first 10% of the bosses health lasts 10% of the fight length, then it is severely inflating CA’s value. Any progression focused raid will be pre-potting and blowing short dps cooldowns at the start of a fight, thereby pushing the boss through that first 10% far faster than any other 10% health phase except maybe the execution phase or when heroism/bloodlust is up.
Hey there. This is a really great post, and I’d like to ask something. On most of the fights (excluding Tltraxion/Spine/Madness?) you can lay down an Explo trap just by the boss, and then Black Arrow into the pull, since the trap lasts for one minute and triggers a 24 second cooldown on BA. Which is a nice dps increase, and you’ll most likely get 2 LnL procs during the first BA/Trap. I’d assume that’s a clear DPS upgrade (Trap+BA on target), but is there any fight where you could set this up and not screw your dps up?
I’d think about doing it on Hagara, when she goes into the special phases, and ask the tank to run her over the trap and keep her there; I don’t think it’s applicable in any other fight, is it?
Hey Frostheim, what’s your thoughts on ‘pre-casting’ trap launcher? Lately what I’ve been doing is casting trap launcher ~5-10 seconds before my explosive trap comes off cooldown; giving me the buff. When explosive trap comes off cooldown, I can cast it quickly without having to worry about using trap launcher’s strange/buggy mechanics.
I’ve noticed that you said it takes you ~1.5 seconds to get an explosive trap down; effectively losing .5 seconds worth of DPS time. With this method I haven’t noticed any loss in time, as the trap launcher buff doesn’t trigger a global cooldown.
I believe that with the T13 2pc bonus, the value of CA is dimished quite a bit, since we cast fewer Cobra Shots to gain enough focus for Explosive Shots and such, unless there is math to prove that spamming CS and not dumping our focus through Arcane Shot in the CA phase is optimal. The only fight I could possibly imagine CA being more valuable than Sic’Em would be Madness of Deathwing where we have multiple targets with large healthpools to make the CA phases longer.
Does the reduced number of Cobra Shots with the 2pcT13 bonus mean Sic ‘Em again becomes better than Careful Aim once you have that bonus?
Hmmm hmmm good discussion here. Imho I’ll be sticking with Sic’em as I have since 4.2 just because I do consider it’s more important to keep my dps higher at end of fights. However if you want to top the charts don’t forget Careful Aim is good, even without careful i’m bursting way way to well compared to ppl in equivalent gear. I imagine that plus CA. Good job Frostheim, and good replies everyone. Over the next few days i’ll try and weigh the mastery/haste conflict see what i can come up with and l’ll tell all you FROSTY FANS (that’s what we are) which results i’m getting. <3 Ekiselx
I’m also using ExT rotation on stationary bosses with pre-Trap launcher 5-6sec before trap cd runs off. I think it’s the best way to keep rotation tight. The only DS bosses that requires BA rotation in my opinion is Ultraxion and Madness (except if my cd runs off before regenerative bloods pop out). Frost, how is your experience with LnL rotation? EJ posts that the dot clipping is almost gone.
I don’t really do explosive trap at all. Sometimes it misses and that will screw you up. I rather just go with black arrow