Shot Rotations was a term that became ingrained into our mind during Burning Crusade. Discussions popped up about using shot rotation macros versus hand-weaving. With the current state of Hunters I think it is important for people to shake off the idea of “shot rotations” in the sense we once knew them.
For example, raiding as a Hunter in Burning Crusade, if you were not the Survival Hunter in your raid, you were Beast Mastery and your entire “rotation” consisted of using Steady Shot at appropriate times. We can say this was a rotation because it didn’t change. Steady Shot has no cooldown and can be used at will.
Even Survival was able to call their DPS a rotation as they still only used 3 abilities or so.
I think in most cases people have stopped asking for shot rotation macros and have embraced that Hunters now use a large number of our abilities in order to maintain great DPS. A lot of people find the sheer number of abilities we use to be daunting, and some people have even said they prefer Beast Mastery because maintaining DPS is simpler, even if it is only one or two fewer abilities to actively manage.
The best way to think about Hunter DPS now is not about keeping a specific rotation in place but knowing which shots and abilities have a higher priority when compared to another ability. With so many different abilities all with variable cooldowns, things are not always going to be ready in the same order. That’s why knowing which ones are more important in terms of the DPS they provide is crucial.
As Survival, for instance, you have to consider Serpent Sting, Black Arrow, Explosive Shot, Aimed Shot, and Steady Shot as abilities you use on a regular basis with abilities with longer cooldowns like Rapid Fire and Hunter’s Mark tossed into the mix at various times. You can also factor in talent procs such as Lock and Load that are all going to modify our shot priority.
As an example, if Serpent Sting is about to fall off your target and Black Arrow is about to finish it’s cooldown, both abilities are an option to fire when your next global cooldown finishes. Re-applying Black Arrow to not only start the cooldown but start you chances at a Lock and Load proc take precedence over Serpent Sting, which since it has no cooldown and won’t proc anything on it’s own, can wait for the next GCD before you re-apply it.
The same is true for Marksmanship. Talents like Improved Steady Shot are best used with Chimera Shot due to the monster numbers it provides as well as reducing it’s huge mana cost. Being careful not to waste a valuable proc like that on Arcane Shot is huge, especially considering what type of numbers a critical strike would provide for your Piercing Shots.
With the current state of Hunters that’s why it is so important to be able to track our procs and shot cooldowns.
Not all abilities are created equal and this is where “the spreadsheet” helps us once again.
Under the “Shot Rotation” tab we can assign shot priorities to each of our abilities and run a rotation test to help us determine which abilities should come first when the option is presented to us. Most of our decisions are pretty easy to determine based off talents we might have. But for testing purposes we can play around in the spreadsheet, putting our shots in different orders of priority just to see how certain decisions affect our DPS.
So remember, when it comes to DPS, in most cases it’s all about keeping certain abilities on cooldown while knowing which ones are the best for us in terms of DPS when it comes time to decide which ones to use.
Any thoughts, comments, questions, etc, feel free to post them here or join us on the forums!
I disagree with the notion of BM having a simpler shot rotation. It is actually identical to the pre-Black Arrow SV hunter with arcane replacing explosive. Throw pet management on top of that and you have the hardest spec of hunter to play with.
That would imply that the other 2 specs don’t deal with pet management either. MM and Survival have to deal with pet control just as much as BM. While BM might rely more on their pet for DPS doesn’t mean the other 2 specs let their pet die. During any boss fight all three specs will do almost the exact same thing to keep their pet alive, be it casting Mend Pet, avoiding AoE, etc.
And my comment was not meant to imply that BM is a simple spec, but by definition it has the least complicated rotation compared to the other 2. I am not making it up when I’ve read people have chosen BM just because it has fewer shots to manage.
Yes it is correct it is implied that you do not have pet management with SV and MM. And this is true, I raid with 4 other hunters, yes 5 hunters in a raid XD, and I and one other are bm. The other 2 are sv and one mm. On pet unfriendly fights they just have there wolf sit beside them giving the passive howl buff. And they are still topping hunter dps meeter over us bm’s. Yes they don’t let their pets die but they also don’t send them to attack.
So far BM is the only class/spec that requires one player to be aware of whats going on at range and in melee of the boss. So anyone saying BM is the easiest spec in game is sadly mistaken.
Personally I think that MM and SV are flawed because their pet is only less than 1% of their dmg output. I would like to see them manage their pet and keep to their rotation, then I would say bm is the easier spec. I just dont like how blizzard has nurfed pets for them to the point it does not make that much of a difference if they are actively attacking or giving a passive buff next to the hunter. Wolfs have become retardedly good for MM and SV. Pets for hunters should always be 1/3 of your dps in mm and sv, BM more like 1/2 or 2/3’s. It is dumb that pet dmg matters so little for the other two specs.
My pet comprises 10-15% of my total DPS as Survival. 1% is a completely wrong number for any Hunter who uses their pet. I manage my pet on melee unfriendly fights just as a BM should. Just because your Hunters don’t doesn’t mean that’s how it is. A good Hunter should be taking advantage of their pet any time possible.
In fact on fights like Mimiron your pet is more prone to dying if they are *not* attacking as Bloodthirsty is crucial for keeping a pet alive.
There are very few situations where a pet can’t do anything. Any Hunter ignoring their pet’s ability to DPS regardless of spec is gimping themselves. Almost any situation where I do choose to keep my pet by my side, a BM Hunter would do the same thing.
Saying Blizzard nerfed pets to near uselessness is completely wrong.
10-15% is greatly inflated, you must be running naxx numbers. I’m talking about Uldar. Our pets dont scale that much anymore.
The point I was trying to make is that they still dont use pets at all and still overshadow BM in dps.
Dont get me wrong players can still manage their pets in SV & MM but blizzard has given the option to opt out of using pets as a dot. If you can manage your pet and keep up your SV rotation you have got some skills and I applaud you.
Anyone else want blizzard to remove our dead zone completely and let use shoot mobs in the face. I don’t see a problem with it, it will be like casters our shots will get interrupted and we will still get cleave affects on us. It would completely remove the problem of hunters forced to stack to avoid wipes on trash and bosses. Also give us the ability to stand in the rune that are in melee range of the boss, so we can also have a boost.
As for pvp, to kill us all you do is walk towards us [I know we have kitting ability, but honestly every class has an a ability to counter our kitting and we are still pretty much useless in a dueling environment(blizzard expects us as a class to only arena successfully in fives)]. I would be nice to have the opponent make the choice of weather or not to get up in our business without consequences. Dont get me started with pet survivability in pvp.
No, I am referring to Ulduar numbers. From my last WWS, my wolf did 15.6% of my total DPS on Kologarn. Hodir, he did 8.9%, 17% during Decon, etc.
Is our pet survivability low? Sure, as Zenge has pointed out on the forums, many hard modes are capable of one-shotting pets. And I am in no disagreement regarding PvP or anything. But from a complete PvE standpoint saying they do no DPS is silly.
This is a reply to Drotara.
When did I say they do no dps? Did I say the pet was dead for the fights. To find out the dps of your actualy pet download an addon like recount. Then tweak it to show your pets dps. Now take any boss encounter you think you did high dps on. Add your pet dsp and your dps then divide that number by your dps number and you have what % of dps your actual pet did. If you are sv or mm spec dominant with zero points into bm [this is the highest dps spec, check Elitist Jerks, sv spec has zero points in bm and mm spec only has points into IAOH] That number is nowhere near 15% for pet dps more towards 1-5%. Raw math does not lie.
I am not going to bother re-typing what I have already typed. You can pick out what you will but you don’t, or refuse to see the big picture.
Well I’m done looking for advice here as it looks like you guys dont do any factual research. The stuff you do come up with is from half truths from Elitist Jerks forms, and even then you get the facts mixed up. When you get people to write columns they should do the actual research to back there facts up.
To all hunters who take there class seriously. Please read everything with a clinical eye and look elsewhere for second opinions. Dont take what is written for fact, even the most delusional people can see truth in…
I am sorry you feel that way Skins. But my numbers are not made up. Your first comment stated that They did less than 1% of their DPS. If you were referring to all Hunters or the Hunters in your guild, either way 1% is not an accurate number for other Hunters.
My pet numbers came from Recount, uploading combat logs to WWS and WMO. Even theoretical numbers provided through Shandara’s Spreadsheet are higher. If I based numbers of *nothing* but the spreadsheet, it a perfect DPS scenario my pet would do 18% of my damage. But not every fight is Patchwerk.
All my information is based off real data so I am sorry you feel that I am pulling them out of nowhere. Hope you find what you are looking for somewhere else. As for what I write, it has been tested and checked.
skins:
I’m not going to be as nice as Drotara…
You are an ignorant huntard. You talk about raw math, but you obviously have no idea how to perform simple calculations. SV pet dps is *easily* in the 15% range. I see this in WWS, dejawow, recount, my own *correctly done* math.
SV Pet dps is not, and never was or will be 1% of our dps. If it were, most people would never even bother with a pet.
You really are being a stupid moron here. Before you start spouting off about people not doing factual research and shite like that, you need to learn to do simple math. What kind of idiot can’t do math and then has the balls to flame someone simply because their numbers didn’t agree with your piss poor results?
One more thing to weigh with black arrow/serpent sting reapplications is do you want to put serpent back up first so you can get more shots on the target while you’ve got black arrow up. Somebody’s probably run numbers on it that show I’m wrong, but if not it’s something to think about.
Well unless I am mistaken, Black Arrow also affects Serpent Sting since it applies to all damage that you deal. Those type of decisions can make a difference. In this specific scenario however, it is how often Serpent Sting falls off and Black Arrow’s cooldown finishes within the same GCD. :)
This is all good info, but there is a very clear set of priorities for survival at least. ’s a post I did on it a while ago.
Quick question, the thing thats showing your cd on the screenshot is PowerAuras right?
It sure is.
So that is power auras? My PA only does symbols, to my knowledge. How do you get it to have symbols and timers?
slowwolf.wordpress.com
P.S Your commenting system won’t let me put in my website! :O
Won’t let you put in your website? As a link? Hmmmm.
But yeah, symbols and timers. Just use the “Use own Texture” checkbox when setting up a shot timer and setting it to be an “Action Usable” under the “Activation by:” drop-down box. Then you’ll have the timer tab to set that up as well.
Depending on how you spec you can still get yourself to a place where you have a true rotation.
If you spec into MM and pickup the improved steady shot talent then you are going to want to get into a rotation. By glyping accordingly you can get into a rotation of:
Chimera > Aimed > Arcane > Steady 2-3
This rotation shouldnt change because if you are at the soft haste cap (or near enough to it) and glyphed for chimera shot then you will be firing CS every 9s and have all your other abilities lined up perfectly with your GCDs.
As ImpSS does not get consumed by other steady shots even if you proc it off the first steady shot in your rotation it will be there by the time you get to the chimera making most benefit out of this talent.
However saying this the improved steady shot is a little lack lustre and i would only spend a couple of points in it if i was going for a 7/57/7 type build and was sufficiently geared in high end uldar gear
You should check out event horizon. Spotted it in a screen shot from a rogue in exodus. Gives a nice moving timeline that shows dot up time and cd duration. Search for Event Horizon on youtube for a good demo.
I looked that up, that’s pretty funny. It’s like Guitar Hero for WoW. Looks nicely done too.
Hey Drotara, I’m really liking the power auras setup you have their and I want to duplicate it for my SV and MM specs, problem is I have no idea how to work PA at all. I’m fooling around with some stuff trying to get something that looks like what you’ve got but there is a lot of junk to deal with. If its not too much of a hassle, I would really appreciate any help you could give me on how exactly you set it up.
I am going to see about packaging up my UI for folks, if not for anything but making Power Auras easier.
That would be awesome, for the most part I’ve got the handle on power auras now, only problem now is I’m trying to get one to show up for when serpent sting is on the target, and start a 21 sec timer for how long its going to last, and then have them both disappear when serpent sting isn’t on the target. So far I haven’t gotten that working, but I’m loving the shot timers so far. Gonna use this for both pve and pvp cooldowns.
You should take a look at a new addon called watcher – works wonders for these kind of things
I always found Power Auras a little “clunky” when it comes to tracking shot CDs.
I would deffinately second Ugrim’s reccomendation of - Watcher -
or - Shot and Awe - for tracking your but oriority ques/rotations.
I personally perfer shot and awe as it allow you to set up a priority que list and the addon will give a graphical representation of which shot you should be firing next (based on the prefered que you provided and which shots are on cd
I can recommend for managing cooldowns and priorities. Easy to use and set up.
Wow, excellent topic. Without ever visiting EJ or using a spreadsheet, what you speak of in terms of SV priority, while also using Power Aura as a key tool, is exactly what I’ve been doing since SV became a viable raiding spec. Good article, well written.
I’m loving the change actually. Used to be BM back in the day when they ruled the world and I was used to the old Steady Shot/Arcane routine. Left the game for about 8 months and came back to find it was all changed, respecced MM and was just baffled by the priority system. I love it now though, keeps me on my toes. Only thing is I tend to get tunnel vision just checking cooldowns on the action bar all the time, anyone got a suggestion for getting round this?
try using some of the addons mentioned and use them for tracing your CDs. Position the addon in such a way that you can divert the majority of your attention to a different area of your screen so you are able to see things such as void zones more clearly
ie have a CD tracker just to the left or right of your character
This is pretty much the only way i was able to stop myself tunneling until i was used to the system.
Wow is evoling into the “rotation” game or the “priority” game. Managing my cool downs in order to maximize efficiency is not what I want to raid for.
What are you talking about? It has always been that way, you just cant macro your way to win now. I prefer it the way it is now for a number of reasons. The main one being that its easier to sift through the seas of horrible hunters to recruit good ones.