MM Hunter DPS Rotation Questions

[Alejandro 0]

I've been unable to sleep or do anything else besides going over Azortharion's post on the MM hunter. I watched his videos and recorded myself during raiding to study my rotation. I'm having issues with my MM hunter because I feel as if panic when deciding on what to do between moving or because I come close to cap or others which I will note below.

My questions are this:

 

1) Once in a while I'll go into the marked shot rotation but then proc Lock and Load right when I enter vulnerability. Is it best to burn up the 2 extra Aimed shots even if you focus cap? I normally use this to my advantage if I have to move but sometimes I feel as if I just burnt through 2 aimed shots in the beginning of vulnerability and lost a good amount of DPS.

 

2) I did some gear changes last night so my Haste is at 12%, down from 15% because I ran into an issue where if I spammed two arcane shots, I couldn't fit two aimed shots in but if I did arcane and two aimed shots, I would have to hold on DPS for a second or two to get the two aimed shots to hit on the last two seconds with vulnerability. I know it's 1-2 seconds of no DPS but I feel that's also wasted. Is there some kind of haste dead zone where it's better to have less haste after a certain percentage then to get 15-16% haste? I know Azortharion mentioned 18% haste you can do Arcane, Arcane, Aimed, Aimed.

 

3) I've been using Raidbots as a cheap way to sim myself. Granted this is meant for a raid setting with Patchwork style fight but the issue I have is even on a Heroic Goroth or even the training dummy I'm seeing a huge loss of DPS from what Raidbots says I should be at. For the dummy I flask, pot and rune. No food or blood lust so that is a DPS loss but even on Goroth I'm doing about 200-300K less DPS than what Raidbots says I should be doing. I've watched my rotation and it does need to be cleaned up a bit, but nothing that I would constitute a 200-300K loss of DPS. How accurate is Raidbots?

 

4) I'm currently using Skada damage meter in fights. Azortharion mentioned you can track the 2/4pc bonus but was wondering what damage meter to use that might point this out? In Skada I can only see how much the 2/4 pc procced and not how many Aimed Shots I got off during the proc.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[Khallid 110]

First off, do you have any logs? It could be helpful to check if you're doing something odd.

 

1) Lock and Load should be used basically immediately (as long as Vulnerable is up, don't use them if Vulnerable is not up). However, what you wrote about focus capping doesn't make sense. You can't spend focus during Lock and Load; they are free shots, so casting them quickly is the only way to prevent focus capping. Waiting would extend the overcapped period of time. You also want to avoid Lock and Load from proccing when the previous Lock and Load is still on. It can happen.

Lock and Load casts Aimed shot as an instant cast on global cooldown, which is shorter than the casting time for an average Aimed Shot. You will easily be able to hit the two Aimed Shot from Lock and Load and then a third Aimed shot during the same Vulnerable, and you'll be pretty high on focus for the next Vulnerable. Basically when you get Lock and Load you skip the Arcane Shot at the beginning of Vulnerable.

 

2) Haste caps are pretty annoying for MM hunter. Haste will also increase your focus regen, so there is no "dead zone" per se, but not being an expert I would stick with 12% or 18%. It's worth noticing that having 1% or 2% above a haste softcap can be useful because often there's a bit of lag between the moment you click and the moment your character exectues the skill in-game. A bit of extra haste will shorten the global cooldowns so you never fail. 

 

3) I find it pretty common to hit about 150k below what raidbots says during a raid boss. It's a matter of execution. MM is very punishing for small mistakes.

 

4) Warcraftlogs works much better than Skada to track these sort of thing.

[Luthixx 138]

Continuing on from what Khallid said, have you got WeakAuras that track your 2pc/4pc? Would be worth investing in if you haven't.

Also, Bloodlust makes a massive difference especially to a class whose main CD buffs their haste anyway - it would make quite a massive difference on test dummies.

MM is indeed a very punishing spec in terms of movement and casts, have you got an armoury or warcraftlogs link for us to look at so that we might be able to see where your downfalls are?

If it makes you feel any better, I normally parse 95+ percentiles but some fights I can be >200k below my sims depending on what happens during the fight or if I have additional mechanic responsibilities.

[Alejandro 0]

Here are logs for a quick alt-night run in Normal ToS Kil Jaeden fight: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/YQhT8xnrVDGLgC2m#view=analytical 

 

RIght now I only have WA for the vulnerability tracker which is helping a lot. I guess I still don't understand how to really play around the 2/4 pc. I just assumed that if you can keep doing marked - arcane - aimed - aimed and then arcane to 70 that the buff should stay up almost the whole time.