help with hunter DPS

[Helms 0]

Howdy all,

So recently hit 520, but I keep thinking my DPS isn't improving as much as I would like.

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/bleeding-hollow/Helms/simple

Recent log: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-81o5xme0uvuc0csw/sum/damageDone/?s=691&e=1214

Per noxic, i'm supposed to be in the 140k range x.x

For primordius and dark animus I was having issues with trying a different build so I'm only really looking at the Durumu fight.

I'm specced BM, and I try not to ever get focus cap. Still need to work on getting a higher uptime on sting, but other than that, was wondering if anything else I'm missing.

Thanks!

Edited June 28, 2013 by Helms

[Gymer 2]

I'll see what I can do to help a fellow Hunter. Initial observation is that we still scale appallingly with our ranged weapon. You have the weapon (double upgraded Thunderforged? I want to kill you for this...) but your dps is low.

Armoury:

Nothing seems wrong with your gems or enchants, though I would probably look at using some pure Agi gems over the mixed Haste gems. Professions you should drop Skinning for Engineering. Synapse Springs with Bestial Wrath is too good to not have. Swap Dire Beast for Fervor (on demand Focus is more valuable for most fights), and swap Blink Strikes for A Murder of Crows which should be popped with Bestial Wrath every two minutes (again, Synapse Springs will boost this as well).

Talisman of Bloodlust is a crappy trinket. Drop it for the Valor trinket if you dont have Rentaki's Soul Charm. At Heroic gear levels haste becomes better, but for normals you want the Agility proc trinkets.

A big upgrade would be the LW 522 boots. If you don't have a guild that stores Spirits for crafting then it'll be an expensive purchase but they are you pre-HC BiS.

Logs:

So the Durumu fight. Problems that I can see:

- You were the only Hunter yet only had 95% uptime on Hunter's Mark. Naughty. You should have 99.9% uptime (logs don't always track this at 100% for some reason).

- Serpent Sting uptime was really low. No Serpent Sting for the last two minutes of the fight. TWO MINUTES!

- Barrage on a single target fight? I would take Glaive Toss.

- Bloodfury was not cast with Bestial Wrath after the pull. You should be stacking this as much as possible.

- Focus Fire uptime was quite low.

- Your Shaman cast Stormlash Totem at the end of the fight. THE END!!!

- No Crit Banner? Naughty Warrior...

- The fight was eight minutes long during which you cast 53 Kill Commands. You could of cast 80. That is a MASSIVE dps loss.

- I'm not seeing a Flask or food buff. Thats 1300 agility your missing. Also, no pre-pot or potion in the fight. Again, that's stats you're missing.

- Last thing; I know Stampede is a piece of crap right now and barely worth the GCD, but you only cast it once.

It looks a little negative (I guess it is really), but these are the things that need changing. With that weapon you should be smashing the meters compared to the numbers your doing at the minute. Biggest one is the Kill Command issue. Press that button. Every. Six. Seconds.

Good luck fellow hunter

Edited June 28, 2013 by Gymer

[Xinto 18]

To start, thank you for posting some info, it really helps with advice.

There are some good tips from Gymer.

So I'll begin with gear:

Massive grats on the weapon (envious doesn't cut it!)

Gem wise: Neck pure agility, Belt, pure agility

Have you simmed to check is haste is better than crit? Atm with only your trinkets working on real PPM (and one of them very poor) I would imagine a crit build would be better for your dps.

Also can you not get closer to hit cap? I know its simm'd otherwise but I always make sure I am capped, this is down to preference really though.

These are all minor issues really, but every little bit of dps adds up! Changing one of the above wont make a noticable difference, but 5-10 minor changes like those will start to become noticable.

Talents

Barrage > Glaive Toss (single target fight)

Blink Strikes and AMoC are very close to each other, you can get greater benefit out of AMoC as Gymer described but you could end up losing more dps "trying" to do such so Blink Strikes is a safe option since they are so close, it will also allow you to concentrate more on KC on cd.

These all depend on the fight anyway! And should be switch accordingly.

So the logs, I would say, get power auras (weak auras) or something like to track serpent sting and the multitude of other things too. [bIG KC button flashing in the middle of your screen when usable is a good choice to up the usage]

Fervor is good but yet another thing to monitor and can cause your serpent sting to drop off more often (you end up needing to cast cobra shot less frequently as you don't need the focus!)

Simple things like working on your shot priorities can easily bump your dps up a good bit.

Now, with that weapon, I would like to point out it boost SV's dps more than BMs, not saying you should switch to SV for all fights (or even durumu) but have you simm'd (female dwarf is the best) to see which spec comes out on top? For me there is only a 4k difference between the two and its easier to "lose" dps as a BM since so much relies on the first 20sec of the fight.

Talking about openers, I peaked at ~280k for the opener compared to your ~210k, I am similar geared (not in terms of weapon ... grr)

So for the openner one of the thing I do is to make sure to casrt Dire Beast just before BW for focus, Cast BW, KC, Readiness, KC ad so on so you can fit 3 KC into that first BW. I often fill with a cobra shot or two for focus once the first BW has ended before the next and then pop BW followed by KC. Also note not to have them macro'd together as BW doesn't often take effect before KC hits (no arrow flight time to account for), even if the macro has BW before KC. To help account for this I pop Rapid Fire with my first BW (as I will be readiness'ing moment after), which helps with focus and will still be up for the couple of cobras after the first but before the second BW.

Hope this is useful, I will have another peak through you logs but Gymer did a good summary of some main points which do need addressing.

Still 110k isn't bad for the gear level and indeed for your raid group, but it can be better =)

[Khalam 3]

I agree with most of the above.

My opinion is that BM is far stronger than SV (I am using SV crit reforges and still do 10-20k more dps in BM). I simmed both and I should do better in SV but the reality is different.

Blink strikes is best talent for BM right now. While AmoC increase your burst, it is not worth another cooldown to watch.

Dire Beast vs Fervor. I switched to fervor due to very small difference between those two. Sims are often showing DB does more attack than it actually is (they overvalue dps gain). When you need aoe burst fervor is far superior, same goes to target switching and moving target fights (your DB will barely attack anything due to running all the time). It takes few pulls to get used to fervor but its really nice talent.

Sims also take into account your raid setup. Your warrior is not using banners, shaman used totem at the end and you are not using pots/flasks/food. With your gear you should be aiming for 125-130k on single target fight.

Lastly noxxic is crap, or even beyond that. Use FemaleDwarf or SimulationCraft.

[Xinto 18]

I think the difference between SV and BM is small enough for your preference and experience to be the determing factor as to which you do the most dps.

I sim (femaledwarf ftw) only ~2k difference (BM>SV) but often see 5-8k difference the otherway (SV doing better than BM).

I enjoy both but have more experience with SV even though I am currently raiding BM for a good few of the fights and have been practicing with it exclusively in my weekly LFR's to close the difference. It has better synergy with Megaera than SV for Megaera (for my raid group anyway).

Good call on Fervor btw, I will test that out myself, tried it the other night as SV for the nest's on Ji Kun, works a charm there.

[Khalam 3]

Try using simcraft to determine better spec. For me the difference was quite huge and seeing the logs it seems that BM is superior to SV on single target.

It may be due to my eqipment cause simcraft is showing all secondaries as equally useful (for BM), that may be the reason why BM is pulling ahead since all the stats are good :)

[Helms 0]

Thank you for all the advice everyone.

Will work on these changes and hopefully have an update soon =)

[Xinto 18]

Let us know how you get on and if you find anything contrary to what we have suggested, its always great looking into playing better.

This topic has got me analysing how much I am missing out with my signiture shots ... which is more than I would like to admit!

[Gymer 2]

Talking about openers, I peaked at ~280k for the opener compared to your ~210k

Something I didn't mention in my commentary was the opening dps and perhaps I should have. Your opener makes a massive difference to your end dps. Make sure your whole team is coordinated over this. You should have:

- an in game countdown with DBM (not vent or mumble due to possible lag issues)

- ONE person assigned to pop Bloodlust

- your Shaman should be popping Stormlash a second after the pull

- your Warrior should be poppind his crit banner at the same time as Stormlash

- EVERYONE should be pre-potting (we pre-pot with 2 seconds to go before the pull because........)

- EVERY CASTER should be pre-casting (so prepot at -2 then cast your Cobra Shot at -1. This should force your trinkets to proc and add even more stats boosting your numbers)

On my team this is how things work. We stack the crap out of our CDs at the top of the fight. Even our tanks pre-pot strength for the opener to make every little bit count. This puts my opener to between 300-320k depending on the gods of RNG. This is WITHOUT ANY LEGENDARY ITEMS and a 502 Tortos bow that is not upgraded. Stacking your CDs at the raid wide level will help you smash the numbers. Hope that helps as well :D.