How to Hunter: A comprehensive Marksmanship raiding guide!

[ggshaman]

I play a Marks hunter, And I would like to add something. As for your major glyphs, they are wrong kill shot is never good becasue of the fact they all sims have a set time the boss is at 20% health while in game you have to compensate for the fact that other people do more damage then the sim says they do, The correct ones to use are sting TSA and steady. Also while EJ may say poting wild magic is good, it's not. 200 crit is nice becasue hunters have no crit cap but using 500 haste is better due to the fact you will never cap haste as a marks hunter becasue all the ideal gear has none on it other then the heroic sindy 25 neck. And that is not enough to cap you even with hero up.

[Sklug]

Incredible guide... So much effort put into it, this is definitely the best of the best hunter guides out there +rep from me

[Nitric]

I play a Marks hunter, And I would like to add something. As for your major glyphs, they are wrong kill shot is never good becasue of the fact they all sims have a set time the boss is at 20% health while in game you have to compensate for the fact that other people do more damage then the sim says they do, The correct ones to use are sting TSA and steady. Also while EJ may say poting wild magic is good, it's not. 200 crit is nice becasue hunters have no crit cap but using 500 haste is better due to the fact you will never cap haste as a marks hunter becasue all the ideal gear has none on it other then the heroic sindy 25 neck. And that is not enough to cap you even with hero up.

Read the line under the picture with the Potion of Wild Magic. And no, I've done the math - It depends on the fight length for Glyph of KS. I'll do the math when I get home from work today and show you. And if anything, Glyph of Chimera Shot or Glyph of the Hawk [6% haste] would replace Kill Shot. I commonly swap glyphs mid-raid depending on the fight.

I'll set some more top 100 parses this week - last week was just awful with disconnects and horrendous server lag.

[ggshaman]

Just so someone points this out DPSing on a hunter is incredibly easy, And I am saying that as a hunter. But TSA glyphs is really the only choice if you have any kind of gear, The 10% cirt is extremely good. Honestly I did not read the whole guide but if you explained how precising shots worked then you would also know another reason why glyph of TSA is better then hawk Chimera and kill shot.

And for those parses are you just counting hunters or everyone?

P.S. I am almost positive that you don't even need to refresh sting at all anymore no matter what the situation, Because they all refresh mechanics to do so with your current AP spells ect ect. But I could be wrong.

[Nitric]

Just so someone points this out DPSing on a hunter is incredibly easy, And I am saying that as a hunter. But TSA glyphs is really the only choice if you have any kind of gear, The 10% cirt is extremely good. Honestly I did not read the whole guide but if you explained how precising shots worked then you would also know another reason why glyph of TSA is better then hawk Chimera and kill shot.

And for those parses are you just counting hunters or everyone?

P.S. I am almost positive that you don't even need to refresh sting at all anymore no matter what the situation, Because they all refresh mechanics to do so with your current AP spells ect ect. But I could be wrong.

Can I ask what content you're raiding? Can you show me some of your DPS logs? I'd like to analyze them.

Also, please don't come in here spouting random facts without proof. I'm not saying that you're absolutely 100% wrong, but just saying them doesn't make it true.

---------- Post added at 05:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:48 PM ----------

And you're also wrong about refreshing stings. Chimera shot recalculates attack power benefits but it keeps damage modifiers rolling. This is why it's extremely beneficial to refresh your serpent sting [depending on the fight length] when you get Tricks of the Trade or your Expose Weakness [2pc T10] proc.

Chimera Shot also keeps your serpent sting critical % rolling [2pc T9], which is why it was previously beneficial to prepot a Wild Magic for the 200 extra crit rating. [200/45.91=extracrit that would roll throughout the fight as long as you maintained a rolling serpent sting on the boss.]

[ggshaman]

Well I am pretty much doing every thing but heroic LK, I could give you logs but they would be on my Death knight I rarely raid in my guild main run with my hunter. You can look at its' gear though Reginlief on Manonorth. "ALSO" it's not random facts, If you sim things well you will always find TSA on top of the other glyphs no matter what the fight, And the most math I have seen you do is the hit rating. If you could show me something where it says chimera shot does not refresh with your current AP that would be cool.

Lol in fact I just simmed your gear and TSA simmed about a 100 DPS more. just thought I would add that

[Nitric]

Weird, I simmed it and it came out as a DPS loss. I'm not sure what sim you're using [please don't say Rawr]. Are you switching the food to ArP food?

Let me do a bit of math for one second here.

Here's some math I did previously: Note this is with the 20% buff and before I had significant gear upgrades [not hardcapped ArP]. Also note that this is math for Kill Shot v. Chimera

situationally it'd be a DPS increase to swap to Glyph of Chimera Shot on fights that are shorter in length. I've actually been doing some math on the subject:

I was using my latest log to see test which was at the 20% buff and before I had a few significant gear upgrades and these were my results.

Kill Shot Crit: 40k
Non-Crit: 15k

[again, 20% buff before ArP capped]

Festergut-H: 3:57 second fight = ~47 seconds in Kill Shot range. 5 Kill Shots with glyph, 3 without. Average 75% crit rate means that on average 4/5 of those would be crits, thus giving me an approximate 80,000 damage boost over the non-glyphed fight, which is ~337.552 DPS upgrade.

Glyph of Chimera Shot: 3:57 second fight means that 23 Chimera Shots would go off without the glyph, assuming that they're fired on cooldown, which they should be. With the glyph, which reduces the cooldown by 1 second, that'd be an extra 3 Chimera Shots. Using the same WoL parse, we'll find that the average Chimera Shot damage including the serpent sting damage is as followed:

[Also note that the initial chimera shot damage and the followup serpent sting damage are not linked as far as critical strike goes, IE; you can crit with the initial damage but that doesn't guarantee a serpent sting crit.]

Crit: 16,600 damage.
Non-crit: 6200 damage.

Sting Crit: 8100 damage.
Sting non-crit: 3300 damage.

Again, we'll assume that we have a 75% chance to crit during a raid, which means that 17 of the Chimera Shots would crit without the glyph [also meaning that 17 stings would crit as well].

This equates to roughly 24700(17)+9500(6) = 419,900+57000=~476900 damage/237=~2012 DPS.

Glyph:

24700(19)+9500(7) = 469300+66500=535800/237=~2260.75-2012=~248.75 DPS upgrade.

---------- Post added at 07:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:27 PM ----------

In addition, sometimes the TSA glyph is wasted because of having over 104% crit.

Fully raid buffed, I have 71.15% crit. Add 12% from Improved Barrage for Aimed Shot. Lets say my Iron Dwarf procs granting 700 Crit rating.

700/45.91 = 15.24% crit.

71.15+12+15.24+10 = 108.99% crit with Aimed Shot - That being said, we also have to calculate for the fact that DBW only has a 28.5% uptime, with approximately 1/3 of that being Iron Dwarf. On average, I'll be over-crit cap with Aimed Shot for 10% of the fight, essentially wasting the itemization on it.

Now let's assume that we get a Vrykul proc [700 agi * 1.14 (kings+CE)] That's 9.975% crit.

71.15+12+9.975+10 = 103.125% crit.

THIS IS ALSO COMPLETELY DISREGARDING DEATH'S VERDICT PROCS.

[ggshaman]

I think you are making way to many assumptions on the exact gear people have, If you are talking about high end gear no one is going to be using DV, STS is so much better. If you are talking low end gear people are going to not have the crit So it would not be a waste. I guess once you get REALLY high end gear and start gemming agy again you will go over crit cap, In which case yes CS or hawk would be better. You are basing most of the things you say on gear you have, excluding the "wild magic" thing with t9. Hunters are a class that change almost person to person. your GCDs change with the amount of haste you have, or some item has less of one stat compared at another of the same iLevel. While you may be able to math out a general idea or base line amount it's really up the the person to make the most out of their class. Like If you take my hunter vs your hunter, Mine has very similar gear but has a bit less crit, making TSA glyph much better then the other two, and it will be for a majority of the people reading this. And I use female dwarf to sim stuff for my hunter.

[Nitric]

See - I like when people post responses with logic. I'll rep you and edit my guide - I appreciate well-reasoned input.

[042279]

this guide is coming from another site, i saw and used this guide a long time ago on the forumsite of ENSIDIA , one of world's best pve guild.
here is the link form the guide i am talking about : Ensidia

[Mayx]

Great guide! Would really enjoy a guide for the PvP aspect aswell!