Hunter Help!

[CytianaMoonarrow]

I don't know if there's a Hunter thread somewhere in these forums on survival hunter raiding line-ups, but here's the thing! I need help!

When I raid on Cytiana, my line up is something like this;

Trash fight:

Black Arrow > Explosive shot > Serpent Sting > Steady shot x2/3 > Explosive shot > Kill shot.

Boss fight:

AP Trinket > What I just said above, only with more Explosive shots, serpent stings, steady shots, and black arrows. And a couple kill shots.

I gem for straight Agility. My agility clears at least 2k, and in my PvE set, I'm hitting 5.8 AP / 48% (rounded) Crit.

Yet, for the LIFE of me, I cannot seem to keep myself above 4k DPS. In ICC10 the other night, I was sitting between 3.8 and 4.1 the entire night, and felt like crap because of it.

Are there ANY tips that can possibly be given? I do have my dual spec as Marks, but really dislike using it, simply for the fact that I cannot get a feel for it, after being Survival for so long. But, I am willing to learn it.

Thanks! D:

[Wyrdassil]

Priority for a Survival rotation is:

Kill Shot > Explosive Shot > Black Arrow > Serpent Sting > Steady Shot until Explosive is ready.

Maybe you should get some armor penetration, because it might help you out a bit. But the rotation is important.


Edit-
Your spec is probably a little off for it, too.
Try looking at this, it might help too. (http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2009/01/suvival-hunter-raid-talent-build/)

[Selash]

First thing I'd ask is what does your PvE set and spec look like. Can't help you much until I see that, and from my experience, that's usually where the problems are.


Maybe you should get some armor penetration, because it might help you out a bit. But the rotation is important.

Armor Pen only helps shots that are physically based. And only half of the shots used in a survival rotation benefit from it, with the two signature shots of the survival tree not benefitting from it at all. What helps more for gemming and such as survival PvE is either straight agility (ideally) or attack power since attack power is what Explosive Shot and Black Arrow's damage is based off of.

[Wyrdassil]

Gemming for straight agility would be better than attack power, because you get the same amount of attack power by gemming for agility. Therefore it's a wasted gem.
But I do agree with you.

Your haste rating is fine, your crit is good, you have high agility, and you have decent intellect.
I would say the problem is either your gear (which is good, but there's always upgrades) or the spec that you are using, and I'm going to gather that it's the spec. Look up some of specs online, like the one that I linked you, and see if it helps. You don't need Scattershot for raiding. You need Noxious stings. Stuff like that.

[Selash]

She's also wasting waaaay too much of her gear's itemization in hit rating. You only need 8% or 287 hit rating as a hunter to guarantee that your shots will hit and she's sitting on 550. As for her gemming, she can replace two of her delicate shifting dreadstones (the ones in her polearm and cloak) in her equipment with agility since you only need one to proc the meta, and gemming for the socket bonuses is kinda pointless when the benefit from a straight agility gem in that socket will benefit you far more than the gem and socket bonus combined. The armor pen gem in the ring also can be replaced with an agility gem since as I mentioned previously, armor penetration doesn't really help a survival hunter. All it will do is increase the damage of your auto shot, kill shot and aimed/multi-shot slightly, and in my opinion, not enough to make it worthwhile.

Her enchants look fine aside from her leg enchants, which should be nerubian (+AP/+Crit) instead of icescale (+Stam/+Agi) and her boot enchant, since she has a redundant amount of hit rating. I'd reccomend putting Superior Agility (+16 Agi) or Greater Assault (+32 AP) on them instead.

The mark of supremacy should also be replaced immediately since you can do a lot better for a trinket there, and the hit rating isn't helping you any. You should hang onto it in case you get in a position where you need hit rating, but what would benefit you more and is relatively easy to obtain would be the Needle-Encrusted Scorpion out of the Forge of Souls.

As for glyphs and spec, I'll talk about that once I have a chance to study it.

[Selash]

Alright, what I post as far as talents are concerned are based on my own play style and spec, and I do some things differently I think than other survival hunters do. So take my suggestions how you will, and if you think I'm wrong, feel free to point out why and I'll give you my justifications for my own spec:

-1/5 Improved Aspect of the Hawk
Ranged haste is a somewhat important stat as a hunter, but this talent is primarily to help beast mastery hunters roll their face on their steady shot key faster since they have far fewer buttons to press than a survival or marksmanship hunter and since steady shot is all they can really do when multi shot and arcane shot are on cooldown. And, since you already have a decent amount of haste on your gear already, you can put this talent point to better use elsewhere.

-1/1 Aimed Shot
Not a bad choice so long as you use this in your rotation. In certain fights, like Gluth, where there is a chance that the boss can recover their health, this can minimize the amount they recover and is also another nice instant shot that you can weave between Lock and Load procs or just use to avoid falling back on steady shot. Just remember that it shares a cooldown with Multi-Shot, and if you're using that over Aimed Shot in your rotation, then this point becomes worthless.

-1/1 Scatter Shot
In raids, this is, at best, emergency crowd control or for saving your ass if you pull threat off the tank during trash and Feign Death is on cooldown. I never use it when I raid, and if you're going for a dedicated PvE spec or looking to boost your DPS, put this point elsewhere.

-1/1 Wyvern Sting
Also not really useful in a raid and is at best emergency crowd control. However, if you spec for the talent in the tier below it that it's connected to, then this becomes a useful point. (See recommendations below)

-3/3 Expose Weakness
This is a good talent for the survival tree, and is a nice proc when you DPS. However, putting a full 3 points in this talent is something of a waste since a 2/3rds chance of it procing is enough for it to be useful. Consider taking a point here and sticking it elsewhere.

What I recommend:

-1/2 (at least) Go For the Throat
This is an excellent talent overall and a traditional DPS talent since it gives your pet a lot more focus to work with for their abilities, even at 1 point. And more focus means more damage coming out of your pet since they'll be waiting less for the focus they need to use their abilities.

-3/3 Resourcefulness
While the trap and melee ability benefits of this won't help you, it reduces your mana cost of Black Arrow by 60% and it's cooldown by 6 seconds. And, when Black Arrow increases all of your damage by 6% and allows Lock and Load to proc, you want to be using it as often as possible.

-3/3 Noxious Stings
If you're going to spec for Wyvern Sting for PvE, this should be the reason why. It turns your Serpent Sting into what I like to think of as a mini Black Arrow since it increases all damage you put out on your target by 3% while you have Serpent Sting on your target.

Glyphs:
-Glyph of Kill Shot
Some hunters argue that this is a better DPS increase than other glyphs and prefer to use it over things like Glyph of Serpent Sting. I am not one of them. In my opinion, since it really only becomes useful at the tail end of a fight when you actually can use Kill Shot, it's something of a waste.

-Glyph of the Hawk
If you follow my advice and take the point out of Improved Aspect of the Hawk, then this glyph will become totally useless to you and will need to be replaced. Irregardless, this is more of a Beast Mastery glyph than anything, and (as far as I'm concerned) isn't a very good one at that. Then again, I haven't played Beast Mastery in years, so my thinking is probably off on that. Either way, you can do better.

Recommended glyphs:
-Glyph of Steady Shot
This will greatly help boost your DPS output since you should always have serpent sting on your target in a raid and will therefore benefit from the additional 10% of damage that this gives to your steady shot when Serpent Sting is active on your target.

-Glyph of Serpent Sting
The 6 second extension this grants to your Serpent Sting's duration means that you'll be spending less time and mana refreshing your sting and increasing your overall damage output since it increases the total damage Serpent Sting does without decreasing it's DPS since it will tick for the same amount, just for an extra 6 seconds.

Also, I noticed you don't have a wolf amongst your collection of combat pets. This is arguably the best pet to use as a survival hunter for PvE since it's roar gives you a 320 AP boost for 20 seconds, which is a very nice boost for both your Black Arrow and Serpent Sting. Go tame one as soon as you can.

[Nymare]

Elitist Jerks.

Shot priority/"Shot Queue"/whatever!
This thread. (http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t42519-best_possible_dps_shandaras_wotlk_spreadsheet/) Wyrdrassil is correct on the survival shot priority.

Cuddle it. Love it. You can also search the hunter forum there, too, to hopefully help you better understand how to gem for your spec as well (pasted a found thread link farther down this post).

The linked thread above is very, very helpful and updated constantly with the optimal shot priority and talent spec/glyph for each tree AND it comes with a spreadsheet for you to download and play around with if you so choose.

More specifically, it has the shot queue/spec/glyphs/pet and pet spec all in the first post under the fixed values for the spreadsheet.


GEMS
WotLK Gem Index by spec (http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t39733-wotlk_gem_index/) (edit) Although, you seem to have a pretty good handle on your gems aside from that one armor pen one.

I've been happily out of the hunter business for a while now, but if I recall correctly, Marks is the only spec that should concern itself with Armor Pen and, even then, it should only do so after it's gotten a certain amount from the equipped gear. Without searching, I do not know what that magic number is, so good thing this isn't about Marks! For survival, I always gemmed for pure agility (crit from agi > pure AP, iirc?).

The above link hasn't been updated since mid 2009, but I think is still viable, with discussion as recently as January of this year. Someone please correct me if that's wrong. But yeah. AGI/Crit is (was?) big for Survival.

edit: I see on the gem page it keeps saying "Blue: Not recommended" and put Nightmare Tear (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=49110) under prismatic. You can only use 1 nightmare tear in your set. Put it in a blue slot. In addition: Shifting Dreadstone (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=40130). It has agility and the stamina, however, thanks to Hunter vs. Wild (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=56341), the stamina isn't a waste. Keep in mind, though, that if the item bonus is something other than more agi or somesuch and you don't need to meet your meta requirements (Relentless' requirements are stupidly easy to meet), you should probably gem for AGI.


HIT RATING
The hit cap is 263 (http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2008/12/hunter-hit-rating-guide-level-80/), unless you're talented into Focus Aim, which you shouldn't if you're not having trouble reaching the hit cap with your gear. Selash is right that you need 8%, but not I'm positive where he got the number he posted. Anything over 8% is wasted and should be re-itemized in favor of [almost anything else].


Edit: Oh good LAWD that's a lot of hit :o ... yes, I just looked at your armory. I'd switch out that trinket for almost anything else, drop the icewalker enchant on your boots for AGI, and then... yeah... I don't know. I have no idea what else you have access to. But, really, open a charity for under hit hunters or something. Wow. XD

editedit: and get a wolf >.>

[CytianaMoonarrow]

Alright. I've been at work the entire day.. forgive this lack of response.

Selash, if you ever get on Falnanne again, I'll meet you wherever you are, so you can take a look at my gear. Most of it is between 245-251 now.

As to my hit rating problem;

The [Mark of Supremacy], at the time, was about the only trinket I could get, and one of the best ones for me. Now.. I have to wait for either Death's Verdict to drop, or find another in ICC10/25, or get the [Needle Encrusted Scorpion] from FoS. Unfortunately though, everytime I've gone to FoS, it hasn't dropped for me (fff-!), but I am at this point, looking to replace it. It was ironically, one of my best pieces, when I was doing Ulduar 10 with some Fabled Order members.

(Btw.. TEAM SUPER AWESOME BURRITO... what happened to us? ;-; )

Note: I am, at no point in my gear, gemming for hit. That comes with the gear, unfortunately. And at this point, as I'm upgrading most of it into ICC gear, there's not much I can do, besides facepalm, and wonder when this hit-coaster is gonna be over.

Daz, Arp Gemming benefits MMS hunters more, simply because most of their shots aren't magical, they're solid melee shots. IE: They're hitting you for what they are. Explosive shot is a magic shot. Black arrow, a magic shot. Neither are hitting you for melee damage. I've known for awhile that Surv - straight Agi shots.

My gemming:

15 Stam/10 Agi on Polearm - PvP gem. Activates the meta in both helms. My weapon is both my PvE and PvP weapon.
10 ArP in ring - A test. I'll probably switch it back. I wanted to see if more ArP might be fun for PvP. It wasn't really.

The rest is straight Agi, or Agi/Crit, depending on my funds at the time.

EDIT: Nienor is my PvP pet. Varda (Cat) is my PvE pet.

[Qabian]

http://femaledwarf.com/ ?

[Turnip]

Agility provides 1 AP per point. 2 AP is equivalent to 1 AGI in terms of itemization costs. AGI also gives CRIT and Armor. Full AGI gemming is superior for Survival hunters due to the scaling from BoK/Paw/Lightning Reflexes.

The rotation posted above is correct.

Ideally you're activating your meta with a Nightmare Tear and have everything else gemmed for pure AGI.

In terms of pushing overall DPS you might want to check out Krip's DPS Guide (http://www.youtube.com/user/Kripparrian#p/u/19/VgDjG_0ecTI).

Besides that make sure you're not dropping Sniper Training, which means you need to move right after the buff refreshes, and make sure that you're in range of totems. Pre-HM and make use of your globals. Best of luck!

[CytianaMoonarrow]

Alright. An update!

Spec:

Based on what I've been told, I've gone with Selash's route mostly, howbeit tossing one or two points between two talents it was recommened to spec into.

I've dropped IAotH (BM), gone with 1/2 Go for the Throat (MMS), 2/3 Noxious Stings, and 3/3 Hunting Party -- cut out nearly to the same layout that my PvP spec is, only minor adjustments.

Pet:

Varda - Cat - 80

Apparently I should get a wolf? (Btw, I r in ur mountains, tamin' ur frostwolves)

I respecc'd her last night as well, putting points into Cobra Reflexes, Dash, Rabid and one into Bloodthirsty.

She ended up staying alive longer (Whee!).

Gem:

That one ARP gem is gone. I may farm for a PvE staff, that way I can gem it with AGI, or simply keep the one Blue to activate the meta, and switch out the 15 Stam/10 Agi in my cloak.

The benefit from it all in the end?


http://i339.photobucket.com/albums/n469/ravynsfaery/improvedDPS.jpg

Still a little low, but hey! I realized last night, my PvE spec has no glyphs! DERP. Getting on top of that /right/ now.

Thanks guys! =D

[Urivial]

God, Daz is just utterly terrible ;)

[Kyrion]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y7MGWW1Xqc

[CytianaMoonarrow]

>.> i wonder what the cast sequence macro is.

[Selash]

Agility provides 1 AP per point. 2 AP is equivalent to 1 AGI in terms of itemization costs. AGI also gives CRIT and Armor. Full AGI gemming is superior for Survival hunters due to the scaling from BoK/Paw/Lightning Reflexes.

Correct, except for the fact that AGI does not give hunters armor. It gives us dodge. You're thinking of feral druids.

EDIT: Okay, I'm wrong. 2 points of armor per point of agility. But the armor bonus is still not something a hunter should focus on, since they shouldn't be taking hits to begin with.

[Moknim]

Still a little low, but hey! I realized last night, my PvE spec has no glyphs! DERP. Getting on top of that /right/ now.

What everyone said is pretty much dead on - you somewhat fixed your spec, but I would drop 2 points out of Hunting Party to max Noxious Stings (1% more damage all the time) and a point in IAotH for random hasteness. 1 point in there will keep up replenishment pretty much 100% of the time.

If you are really worried about your DPS, MM will most likely be better for you at your gear-level.

I really wish ICC10 didn't have so much hit on nearly every hunter piece.

[Wyrdassil]

Carlos, what she fails to show is that I was beating her on DPS, or was 100 away for almost EVERY other fight except that one, in ToC25.
=P (And my gear is way worse. XD)

You DO need a wolf. The AP boost from Call of the Wild is fine, but the other AP boost from wolves will be even more of an advantage to anything Varda can do.

[Nymare]

>.> i wonder what the cast sequence macro is.

The posted link is from the very beginning of Wrath. Err, I mean, "Old video is old!" Hunters have since been nerfed modified. Incase you're curious, it looks like it's just serpent sting then chimera shot/steady shot spam. lolscorpidpet.

[Rethius]

http://i42.tinypic.com/25p5ocw.jpg

http://i39.tinypic.com/19r29v.jpg

http://i41.tinypic.com/156sl0m.jpg

http://i41.tinypic.com/2yjyo21.jpg


http://i41.tinypic.com/rays13.gif

[Rand_Shea]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y7MGWW1Xqc

I showed you that video, you poser. Give credit where credit is due!

[Feorn]

http://i41.tinypic.com/rays13.gif

What? Mad cause a shadow priest geared to the teeth only pulled 7k DPS on what looks like Valkyr? I don't understand.

[Rethius]

What? Mad cause a shadow priest geared to the teeth only pulled 7k DPS on what looks like Valkyr? I don't understand.

Lol.


No.

[Feorn]

Lol.


No.

I still don't understand. It must be an alliance joke or something.

[Faeriel]

Just back away slowly before the crazy dwarf bites you. You should know better, Feorn.

[Wyrdassil]

Rethius is just jealous.

[Rethius]

Just back away slowly before the crazy dwarf bites you. You should know better, Feorn.


I still don't understand. It must be an alliance joke or something.



You both must have been away for quite some time.


My name is Naama, just one of the Earthmother's many children.