As we all know up until recently BM was owning face in terms of DPS specs. And along with it was an interesting shift in philosophy in the fact that gemming for Attack Power was proven to be more beneficial for Beast Mastery Hunters due to the way pet’s were scaling. But now that Survival is rocking the world, in order to accommodate the spec, Agility is once again our gemming selection of choice. We know there are a few talents that are directly affected by Agility which makes it so overly desirable.
The first one is Lightning Reflexes. This turns a Delicate Scarlet Ruby into 18.4 Agility. So we know that this means that it adds 18.4 Attack Power as well as .22% critical strike chance. And that is important when we consider the talent Lightning Reflexes is attached to.
Expose Weakness. Ah yes, our good ol’ friend Expose Weakness. Some of you might remember this buddy of ours. During BC raiding the size of your Expose Weakness debuff was directly proportional to how much the physical DPS loved you. Being your guild’s Survival Hunter was like a badge of honor. With Lich King, we keep Expose Weakness all to ourselves.
In my current gear I have 1306 Agility which would translate into an additional 326.5 Attack Power. And with my crit rate during a raid being near the 50% mark, keeping the debuff up is a non-issue (I love Loatheb! 103% crit is win).
We know that Survival is a crit based build. Survival Instincts, Killer Instinct, T.N.T, Thrill of the Hunt, Expose Weakness, Master Tactician, etc. All talents that modify are are designed around a critical strike. And of course we have the bread-n-butter of the build, Explosive Shot.
From my WWS reports, Recount, and even Matticus’ anonymous WWS from a 3D kill, Explosive Shot is comprising just around 35% of a Survival Hunter’s total DPS. Explosive Shot calculations at max rank look like this now:
[RAP * 0.16 + 428]-[RAP * 0.16 + 516]
So using my unmodified Attack Power the numbers looks like this:
[4469 * .16 + 428]-[4469 * .16 + 516] = 1143.04 – 1231.04
These numbers verify with that is displayed on my ability’s tooltip. Now we can’t ignore the other talents that are going to affect Explosive Shot. We know that Improved Tracking is going to give us a 5% increase in damage across the board. And it will also experience a 13% higher crit chance (on average) due to other talents.
In fact, we can revisit the WWS from our Patchwerk kill from a week or so ago. We learn from this that Explosive Shot was demonstrating a 57% crit chance. And on average it was hitting for 2000 with the highest one hitting for over 5300. That’s quite a jump from the 1200 on the tooltip. So how did it end up so high? Let’s see… start with:
- 4469 Attack Power
- 300 Attack Power from Hunter’s Mark (4769)
- 360 Attack Power from Flask of Endless Rage [Go Mixologists!] (5129)
- 320 AP from 20 stacks from Fury of the Five Flights (5489)
- 178.25 AP from Horn of Winter (5667.25)
- 46 AP from the food buff (5713.25)
Now we could get really crazy and start figuring out what kind of AP we are getting from Power Word: Fortitude, the stamina portion of the food buff, AP from intel buffs, etc. But with just a few buffs we have already added almost 1300 AP. Kings, Mights, MotW, etc are all unaccounted for. In fact here is a screenshot talking with the other Hunter on the same night I recorded the aforementioned WWS:
Survival is going to give you the numbers you like to see in a DPS meter. But the spec is different and you have to adjust. Don’t go in with your AP gems anymore. Keep 2 for your meta gem and resocket for Agility.
Also remember that Explosive Shot needs to take priority in your rotation, outside of maintaining Serpent Sting and Hunter’s Mark. I did a 25-man Vault last week with another Hunter in the group from one of the better raiding guilds on the server. While the next closest DPS to me was 700 behind, this Hunter beat me by 250. As far as gear goes we were pretty close stat-for-stat but he ended up with 13 more Explosive Shots than I did over the course of the fight. Pay close attention to your cooldowns using timers set-up in Power Auras, ClassTimer, or whatever it is to display accurate cooldowns. To keep a Survival rotation successful you need to anticipate cooldowns rather than react to them.
In other news, I didn’t raid tonight because Comcast was doing “maintenance” in my area. In fact they still are. For 24 hours now. I am getting constantly disconnected in WoW, I didn’t get a chance to watch Chuck since Hulu doesn’t seem to preload very well and requires the aiblity to have a strong stream constantly. Thanks goodness for the “Save draft” button in WordPress.
It also seems the Hunter mentioned in the other post has no interest in moving on. Some folks on Twitter today we’re talking about playing on PvE and PvP servers and when Pike replied to me about never ganking people somehow that became “defending youself” from “that prick.” Well, I tried. Not much to do about it now. Oh well.
I still want to put the macro through its paces. Once Comcast is done with whatever they are doing. Thoughts, comments, etc etc. Post ‘em. Especially if you have any burning interests that might warrant a post.
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I’ve been using the macro from Tyrae in both 10 and 25 man Naxx. It works great on the surface, but still falls a bit short when it comes to Explosive Shot priority. It seems that it gets “stuck” once in awhile where it refuses to fire ES. I’m using PowerAuras so I can see when ES is up and it seems to just sit there while my other shots (SS, Aimed) are firing beautifully. I just weave ES in manually whenever I notice this happening.
I’m not sure at this point what is causing this quirk. I’ll continue playing around with it to see if I get different results. If I come up with anything I’ll be sure to post my findings. Hopefully, others are looking at this as well.
So far, it is pretty good but as the mantra goes, “it is not as good as hand weaving”. However, I’m not a twitch player and I’d rather be watching the fight, my positioning, saving the healers, etc. than watching my bars/cooldowns. Great blog by the way!
Jeeze, Dro, you have the most interesting Twitter conversations. :P
To pile on to your comment about explosive shots, there’s some interesting discussion going on about treating aimed shot (or multi) as though it had a 12 second cooldown, and always firing it off after your 2nd explosive shot of any non-LnL cycle. The underlying thought, of course, is “thou shalt always fire explosive shot every 6 seconds no matter what, amen.” Also should note that explosive shot ticks adjust in real time to RAP and damage bonuses, so I think it’s actually beneficial to prioritize explosive over SrS or HM.
On the “never gank anybody” subject, I tend to walk up to flagged horde who leave themselves vulnerable (ie, low hp/mana or severely underleveled) near me, /bonk them, then /shoo them. Basically, I’m saying, “quite tempting me to take advantage of you.” What can say, I’m a carebear.
Oh, and if you ever want to mount a viking longship raid on comcast, let me know. They have a monopoly on service in my area and I can’t bloody stand them.
It’s funny you should post this today.
I was having a convo with my bf today about my survival spec and not getting my dps up
As you can see I have pretty damn good gear and yet going up 3500 dps even on Patchwerk never happens. EVER.
He thinks I’m not keeping up with my traps/hunters mark/ distance from the boss stuff.
Traps I’m definitely not…some bosses are just easier than others so its a boss by boss scenario for me and distance well…distance just isn’t doable on all the bosses in Naxx…as you well know.
So, my guild had me respec to get hunting party for the healers mana…is that really worth it for them? Do you know?
My other question: Power Auras, ClassTimer- which one of these does a sufficient warning to let you know whats going on? I have one now I’m not sure which addon it is cause I’m at work but it’s like a little graph of everything and it counts it down but it’s not exactly what I need. I want something like DBM or something that flashes across the screen “LOCK AND LOAD” or “HUNTERS MARK EXPIRING” or “SERPENT STING EXPIRING”, is there anything like that?? I just feel like I’m always looking at my buttons and the debuffs the whole fight.
also are there any addons to let me know if I’m far enough from the boss for Sniper and all that to proc? I know this makes me sound super lazy but mid fight in survival spec it sometimes feels like you have a million things u need to be paying attention to.
Also, as far as shot rotation- instead of putting a point in Go for the Throat I put it in aimed shot…was that a good idea or a bad one? I figured the dps from Multi/Aimed is the same and with Aimed I don’t have to worry about accidentally hitting something else.
But otherwise I do: Serpent Sting, Explosive, Steady, Steady, Aimed, Explosive, Serpent, Steady, Steady, Explosive, Aimed, Serpent, Steady, Steady, etc. I try to throw a frost trap at the boss every so often for LnL to proc if possible.
I am just trying to actually be a serious dps contender so any thoughts or reflections on what I am doing wrong would be greatly appreciated. Also, any spec changes that I should do are welcome. I am a lump of clay, mold me! lol
I just saw your Power Auras post so nevermind that whole question :D
The 13 extra explosive shots could easily result from getting lucky with LnL procs. Last night in VoA25 I got only 2 procs happen, and that was after the boss got below 50%. Serpent sting doesn’t do the trick for me anymore.
@Arkesia, check out http://www.bigredkitty.net, he has a great post with a video about setting PowerAuras to show when things expire or proc. Also he mentioned in one post about a RangeFinder addon.
Hehe, drama and stuff happens, though I play WoW to escape issues like that, not get more of them =P Sometimes my readers/commenters or twitter followers or whatever have issues with each other, heck, even my friends both in real life or in game/guild have issues with each other sometimes (that one is possibly the worst to have to deal with)– depending on the situation I will either step in and try to help… or stay out of it.
This is one of those “stay out of it” siutations I think; I only know bits and pieces of the background of this whole thing and I figure it’s not really my business. So, I will just continue on my merry way and continue to be civil and friendly to everyone, and try not to talk about any underriding conflict between bloggers– not because I want to ignore anybody, but because yeah, it’s not my place to say anything really!
Anyways in other news, despite my previous suckage at Surv, I figure if I get into raiding again anytime soon I’ll probably have to spec back to it (my weekly Naxx group dissolved when the people who set it up randomly transferred servers on us, so I haven’t done much since then)– does trap dancing help a lot? Cause I wasn’t doing any and my DPS was made of fail, so I’m starting to think that might help a lot. Though I suppose it doesn’t help that I’m largely gem’d and enchanted for AP x_x
Pike’s last blog post..Rumors of My Rerolling Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
@arkesia: i was looking over your spec and gear and actually I can help you out quite a bit! First of all, especially with your gear, you do not need as many points in Expose Weakness or Hunting Party. you can easily get away with 2/3 (maybe even 1/3!) in EW, and you only need a max of 3/5 in Hunting Party (2/5 might be pushing it, I’m sure someone else can help with that).
As for the rest of the SV tree, It is my personal opinion that sniper is completely worthless atm. The distance requirement is silly, and you are better off trap dancing. Again, this is only my opinion. Some people like sniper. However, with dancing you will have a much greater control of Exblo shot, and you are less likely to miss LnL procs. Plus, you’ll gain more damage from using immo traps against bosses rather than frost traps.
For the points in MM, i suggest definitely getting the two points in GftT. It really is a nice dps boost, although it will require you to really be on top of your pet… they do die frequently against some naxx bosses.
Finally, there are some points you could place in the BM tree. you should have at least 3 points left if you dont take sniper, and you can put that in IAotH. That will increase your dps as well.
this is the spec that I use… although I am currently experimenting with 3/5 in Efficiency rather then in IAotH, simply because i use aimed shot so much I blow through mana :P
3/16/52 although you can also put 5 pts in IAotH and take a point from trap Mastery/Scatter Shot, and a point out of GftT.
Sry for the loooong post. :P
Sniper’s boost to KS crit is active no matter what range you stand at, and is the primary reason to take it. There’s been some very interesting analysis by Rikvah showing that you stand to lose a butt-ton of damage from melee-generated buffs if you actually stand far enough away to use sniper’s percent-damage boost.
Trap dancing is (generally) optional. If you master trap dancing (ie, can perform it with minimal shot loss on the movement phases) it will add dps to the tune of a couple hundred or so. If you do it badly, it can be a dps loss. It’s also encounter-dependent. If you’re motivated to really squeeze the most out of SV, by all means, try it, but be advised that you should be able to get good results out of SV without it. If you are having a hard time with SV dps when not trap dancing, trap dancing is unlikely to solve the problem- there’s likely another issue that needs to be addressed first.
I hate (OK, I’m kind of a jerk) to disagree with Tealyon, but I have to disagree with a number of things that he said.
EW: Nothing wrong with 3/3 there, if you NEED the points to get up the tree. I am currently 3/3 there, as I’m only 51 in Surv, with no HP. I do wholly agree with him on HP though, when I was running it I was 2/5. (respecced from a 1/18/52 to the 6/14/51 maxdps build, @work, can’t throw up links easily.)
Sniper is far from completely worthless. Trap Dancing is great, if you are capable of doing it. I’m not going to argue that. But, Patches is not a mobile fight. If you can’t find that magic range on that fight, there’s a larger issue. =p There are a lot of fights where you won’ tbe able to make it work though, so I understand NOT taking it. I’m just not in that camp. I’d rather have it when I CAN use it, than not take it because it’s not always up.
2 points in GffT is kinda overkill. Surv, can easily see 50% crit on many shots, and my gear allows me with all procs to run at like 53%. Not accounting for talents that boost particular shot. I’ll try to watch my pet more, but I can’t see her being focus-starved.
Surv should have AT LEAST 1 point in IotH, with the Glyph, if not more. The boost from that is big, and glyphed, 1 point is still 9% haste. Worth it.
Efficiency? Nah. With a Ret pally judging Wisdom, which most raids should have, mana issues should only exist on the longest fights. If you know you won’t have one, I can see speccing it, but I would run the numbers in the spread sheet to see if it’s a gain or not. I tend to think it won’t be.
Remua’s last blog post..Further Thoughts
To Arkesia,
I’m using a fairly similar spec to what Tealyon linked (actual: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=coZ0eVoMhZe00i0cIhxdAhck ). I personally like Sniper Training, not so much for the 6% damage if your far enough, but the 15% crit. That portion of the talent isn’t affected by the ranged requirement that the rest is, last time I knew. There’s still some fights were you can get yourself to max range though, you should be able to pull it off on Anub’Rekhan, Heigan, Loatheb, Patchwerk, Sapphiron and Kel’Thuzad as long as you position yourself and let your tanks know they need to watch their positioning too. Sartharion from time to time too, depending on how many drakes you have up and which side the waves are coming from.
Once I get a little more haste (closer to 14%) I plan on looking into dropping IAotH for Trap Mastery or Aimed Shot and using Glyph of Multi-Shot or Glyph of Aimed Shot instead of Glyph of IAotH. This will in turn require a more trapdance centered rotation but still. As of now I’m doing 4.4k DPS of the theoretical 4.5k on spreadsheet, so I’m fairly content in the meantime.
I personally feel 2/2 in GftT is unnecessary. With ES having about a 50% crit chance, and many other attacks also having high crit rates and no longer having 50 focus LB’s, it’s not really necessary. I think spreadsheets have shown it to be a 5-6 DPS increase for BM and not much higher for SV.
i agree with Tea ,Arkesia your gear is good and your dps should be considerably more you may look into your shot rotation,the poweraura addon helped alot once i got it figured out i dont miss timings of shots.As with the gear i have, i see 4000dps in naxx first nite i spec Sv i do trap dance some on certain bosses when i am able too lol.Your shot rotation looks correct except i dont use aim shot.
GC posted on the Damage Dealing forums a little while ago that they ninja-hotfixed explosive shot, and so far it looks like the knocked about 10% of its damage off via the coefficient.
Thank you guys for all your tips/suggestions. I am going to try the 2/5 in HP later since tonight we are running a 25 man and it doesn’t seem necessary at all to put points in it. I also think I am going to try Drotara’s choice of putting 3 points in Serpent Sting since I use that a lot….generally speaking…it makes sense to me and 2/5 in IAotH. I’m throwing 1/1 in trap mastery for Gluth….and going to go get poweraura right now!!! wish me luck!
They hotfix nerfed Explosive Shot.
God forbid we compete with warriors, (post 3.0.8) elemental shamans and DKs. I don’t feel as bad being outDPS’s by a mage. That’s what we should be doing. but when I’m going overdrive just to barely be at the same level or below the above classes, and they keep tossing nerf after nerf. How long before you just quit or reroll?
Yup, ES nerf hurts. I lost about 500 DPS on Patchwerk this week. :\
Well now I know why I am 500dps short, was QQ’ing about it last night.
Anyways, reason for this post ADD-ON that everyone should be using, ((((((((((((((crange2))))))))))))))) this very very light add-on lets you know when you are in the sweet spot for sniper training.
really – go get it now, why are you still reading this?
@Remua: actually there is no reason to hate disagreeing with me! :P I wanted to simply give potential ideas for her spec; I was pretty much aware that there are multiple ways to look at Sniper, and some people like it and others don’t. I DO 100% agree that her crit is more than high enough to only need 1pt in GftT, but since she had no points in it, it was a place for a potential dps increase. Also my experimenting with Efficiency didn’t really prove anything definitive, except that I’m going back to 3/5 in IAotH.
@Fosters: The addon crange2 might be ok, but make sure to get 2. I got cRange and it’s buggier than a roach motel.
As a general question to everyone, has anyone tried a macro for trap dancing? So far, I’m using
/cast Aimed Shot
/cast Immolation Trap
/cast Mongoose Bite
I sometimes Disengage at the end, but usually I jump back right when mongoose bite happens, so when I land, I can jump back right into my rotation, or when I disengage, I start firing in the air.
Blizzard says that Marks is right where they want it. I guess tonight after regemming/chanting back to Marks we’ll see exactly what they feel it is.
My opinions of Surv thus far are as follows.
1. Good DPS.
2. The spec is boring and while there are many aspects of the spec such as trap dancing that would require some consideration I am a traditionalist and I’ve been pew pewing from 41 yards my entire WoW career. The whole running in to “trap” a boss is pretty ridiculous in my opinon.
3. The spec’s rotation is clunky and requires too much heed to our timers/CD’s and doesnt allow for as much focus on leading my raid as I would like.
4. If I wanted to play a shadow priest, I would roll one, not so much in regard to the the replenishment but the constant decisions regarding explosive shot when deciding to hold a steady for .8574832 seconds to fire off the ES faster.
5. Who’s idea was it to include sniper training and trap dancing mechanics in the same spec? This person clearly plays a warlock or chickenwing.
Sorry if I am bringing a negative tone to your blog here Big Drotara I’m just very much at odds with the direction they’re taking us. I don’t like playing my heart out only to fall massively short of the effort I am putting out compared to other skilled players.
-Zenge aka Josh.
Not negative at all. We’re all about opinions and different views on things. Survival is definitely all about watching shot cooldowns. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that at all. I will be curious to see what numbers you put up as MM and how you like it in a raiding scenario.
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=100191
Terrable pvp video, but about halfway through the hunter shows his AP during a patch fight, the damage he does is insane.
Also, need more Aratar.
@Drathas My Warrior is such a poor sod. Still sitting in Season 2. But dang it, he is dual-wielding Hand of Rag and the Runeblade of Baron Rivendare. So at least he looks cool. Oh what I would give for race changes though.
Last night in OS25 I noticed a significant drop in my dps (almost a full 1k dps less), not knowing the ES nerf was in effect. I was bewildered and checked stat for stat with other hunters in the raid. It finally hit me that I’ve been using rank 1 ES for the entire 2 months I’ve been survival! I went to the trainer and tonight I was top in Naxx10 again.
This really goes to show how SV is highly gear dependent. I was already in full Naxx gear when I switched to SV and my dps seemed fine. If it wasn’t for that nerf I probably would have never found out my stupidity!
Lupius – that might explain why I sucked so bad at SV all this time o.O
Pike’s last blog post..Coming Out of the Raid Closet