In some interesting news on the Blizzard front, they’ve just announced that there will be no Blizzcon in 2012. And they announced it in an interesting way, as an after thought to a post about the Battle.net championships. Specifically, at the end of the post about the championships Blizzard said,

In light of our jam-packed schedule, we’ve decided to hold the next BlizzCon in 2013.

Certainly this is a big release year for Blizzcon, with Diablo III, Starcraft II expansion and a WoW expansion — but skipping Blizzcon and the anticipated Titan annoucement many were expecting at Blizzcon this year is a surprising move.

Ah well, I guess that means no pleasant California vacation in the cold Minnesota October this year — and no Blizzcon hunter party II. Which does remind me, however, that we got the WHU BBQ coming up in a handful of months. Hmm.

On a recent Hunting Party Podcast we were talking about the survival Lock & Load rotation, and the difference between firing two Explosive Shots back to back with a 0.1 second delay (plus global cooldown) vs. weaving an Arcane Shot in. I said something to the effect that the 0.1 second delay is theoretically better overall dps, but is also much harder to execute — so you’ll be more likely to day longer than 0.1 second, or not delay and end up clipping a tick. In the end, the dps difference between the two is so small that you’re probably safer just weaving in the Arcane Shot. I also think I said something to the effect of making that my new official recommendation.

Note: this is in reference to the 4.3.2 changes, when Arcane Shot will not longer be a part of Lock & Load.

I later got a question that is something I’ve seen discussed here and there online before often enough that I thought it deserved some clarification. One theory behind the delay-method is that the 0.1-second delay is a much better dps rotation because you’re firing you Explosive Shot almost-a-second sooner, and over the course of the fight that adds up to more Explosive Shots fired. This idea of getting more Explosive Shots from adding up the 1-second gain is not true, and that’s what I’d like to explain.

Also, let’s take a moment here and appreciate how much attention SV is getting to the most miniscule nitty-gritty bits of their rotation. It’s good to be the top spec — strutting around like MM did for years!

The Moar Explosive Shot Theory

In short, here’s the thinking behind the more Explosive Shots theory: by not weaving in that extra Arcane Shot you save 0.9 seconds worth of time every Lock & Load  (assuming you execute perfectly). So your last Explosive Shot, the one that isn’t a part of the Lock & Load, fires 0.9 seconds sooner. Over the course of the fight, that adds up until you actually got to fire more total Explosive Shots because of your Lock & Load rotation. If you figure a 5-minute fight with around 14 Lock & Load procs (currently about average with traps, and in 4.3.2 will be about average with Black Arrow) that means that you’ll save 12.6 seconds, which is time enough for two extra Explosive Shots!

Okay, that’s still not huge, but it does make a difference in the end and is worth considering. Those little things all add up and a few extra shots fired could be the difference between first and second place on the meters.

But… Lock & Load Time Savings Don’t Actually Add Up

The reason this thinking is incorrect is because you don’t get to save up all those 0.9-second time gains. Lock & Load resets the Explosive Shot cooldown, meaning that you can’t add the 0.9-second savings between multiple Lock & Loads.

Let me try to explain better by showing an example. The chart below shows the number of seconds that pass. At the start we have Lock & Load proccing, resetting our Explosive Shot cooldown. We’ll assume that Lock & Load procs on average every 20-seconds or so. Thus in 20 seconds we’ll see Lock & Load proc again, resetting the Explosive Shot cooldown and starting the cycle over. We aren’t going to worry too much about the shots that happen in-between, but focus only on the Explosive Shots, which we can fire every 6 seconds. The first column is the 0.1-second delay method (which we’ll just round to a full second) and the second column is inter-weaving Arcane Shot:

As you can see, we fire the exact same number of Explosive Shots. Even though we delay by a second in this chart, once Lock & Load procs again, both Explosive Shots are perfectly lined up again. Because of this you don’t actually get to keep adding that 0.9-second savings up. You get the savings once. Column 1 clusters it’s Lock & Load Explosive Shots closer together spending that 1-second later, while column two spreads those Lock & Load Explosive Shots out, spending that 1 second earlier. But both fire the exact same number of Explosive Shots, and have the exact same amount of time for other shots.

Because Lock & Load procs fairly often and resets the Explosive Shot cooldown, we fire the same number of every shot whichever way we execute the Lock & Load rotation.

The only advantage of the 0.1-second delay method is that every now and then you’ll have a fight where that break point when Lock & Load procs is in between column one and two — for example if L&L procced at the 17 second mark instead of the 20 second mark, then we’d have seen an extra Explosive Shot. This situation will be pretty rare and highly variable, but every now and then you’ll have a fight where it happens, so theoretically the 0.1-second delay method is a tiny bit better, but in practice you really won’t see the difference even when you’re executing perfectly.

This is why when I update the guides for 4.3.2 I’m going to switch to just recommending a shot be interweaved. In practice I think that method removes the risk of clipping or delaying too long (humans aren’t good and 0.1-second timing) and in the vast majority of cases your dps for the fight will be unchanged.

Kruf, a hunter from top progression raiding team Dream Paragon, was our guest on the Hunting Party Podcast last weekend. We talked to Kruf about the state of hunters in very top tier raiding, and there were a lot of great reader questions for Kruf as well. I don’t know exactly when Euripides will have the episode up for download — hopefully soon, and certainly sometime this week (it varies greatly, and speculation is that the time-delay is correlated with the movements of the moose population in Canada).

I thought the conversation with Kruf was interesting enough that I’d highlight a few points from it here, since the vast majority of WHU readers don’t listen to the podcast. As with all things, this is just one data point and the opinion of one hunter, but I think we can all agree that the opinion of a hunter in one of, if not the, top raiding guilds is an opinion worth giving a lot of weight to.

Based solely on my memories of the show, here are some of the salient points. It’s worth noting that these are specific to heroic-modes, and not normal modes, where in the view of a Dream Paragon player, anyone can do it easily.

• In Dream Paragon’s 25-man progression fights, they had either 1 or zero hunter slots. For their farm fights hunters are welcome (and he pointed out that some farm fights for them are difficult enough that not just anyone can come).
• The reason for the lack of hunter slots is both the comparatively low hunter dps, lack of burst dps, and lack of survivability cooldowns.
• They had situations in which an undergeared alt was brought in over a much better geared main, because that class was so desirable (in this case, rogue).
• Kruf thinks that the 4.3.2 changes may well be good enough to get hunters into progression fights.
• The biggest 4.3.2 change in Kruf’s eyes is the Deterrence buff.
• Kruf currently plays Survival, which he reports is the highest single-target dps spec for very well-geared hunters.
• Kruf currently uses an Explosive Trap launching rotation, and not Black Arrow, for the added dps from more Lock & Loads and lower focus cost (resulting in more Arcane Shots)
• The thing Kruf is most excited about in Mists of Pandaria is the talent giving hunters a 15% damage reduction (Aspect of the Iron Hawk (though on closer look that may not help against most raid damage, since it applies to “direct damage”))
• The ability Kruf would most like to see hunters get is a good damage-reduction cooldown that did not turn off our ability to dps.

There was of course a lot more to the show, but these were the big ones that stand out in my mind. And what Kruf says seems pretty representative of what the hunter community as a whole has been saying. And it seems that Blizzard agrees based on the buffs they’re putting in 4.3.2, both to raw dps and giving hunter some kind of survivabiliy cooldown for all those boss abilities that cut straight through deterrence. Better yet, we’re seeing even more of this addressed in early Mists of Pandaria design hints — though Kruf also felt that most of the talents as they are now in MoP have a single “right” answer, though you’ll occasionally change those up from boss to boss.

At any rate, this is a show that I highly recommend giving a listen to once it’s up for download, even if you don’t normally listen to the podcast. A very good look at the state of hunters in very top-end raids and why we’re seeing the changes that are coming down the pipe.