Hunter Rotation Notes Questions

[Ehiztari 0]

Could I get someone to decipher this for me please?

 

Quote

Cast Barbed Shot when the Frenzy buff on your pet is about to expire ...

What constitutes "about to expire?" Six seconds? Three? A half a second? The length of your GCD as modified by your Haste score?

 

Quote

... or when you close to 2 charges of Barbed Shot ...

Is "when you close to" - non-standard English for "are close to" or is that non-standard English for "are closing in on?"

In both cases, again, some specificity would be very helpful - what does "close to" mean here?

If I have 1 charge of Barbed Shot, that seems "close to" 2 charges of Barbed Shot, but if the author meant "when you have 1 charge of Barbed Shot" it seems to me that he would have said that.

If I have 3 charges of Barbed Shot and one is due to expire soon, that might fit the "are closing in on" meaning of "when you close to" but does that mean I fire off Barbed Shot BEFORE that 3rd charge falls off? It would seem to, as written. I didn't think that sounded correct, but there isn't any other way to interpret "when you close to" in the sense of "are closing in on."

This is a core ability and I can't for the life of me decipher what the author means here. The words are there, but they don't seem to fit together the way they've been presented.

Can I get some clarification here, please?

[jinsu2301 273]

12 hours ago, Ehiztari said:

What constitutes "about to expire?" Six seconds? Three? A half a second? The length of your GCD as modified by your Haste score?

Ideally, you want to cast Barbed Shot in the last possible second, so you don't drop your Frenzy stacks, which depends on how your GCD lines up, I guess, but it's also pretty risky to wait for that very last second. Just make sure Frenzy doesn't drop off, that's all. Track it with TellMeWhen or a WeakAura (there's one in the guide which will tell you exactly when to cast BS).

12 hours ago, Ehiztari said:

In both cases, again, some specificity would be very helpful - what does "close to" mean here?

It's actually pretty specific, since they are talking about charges of Barbed Shot and not stacks of Frenzy. You want to keep the cooldown on Barbed Shot rolling. You never want to just sit on your 2 charges. 

I also wanna recommend reading other guide besides this one. The Icy Veins writers do a great job, but it's always beneficial to get a different viewpoint from sites like wowhead or a class discord.

[Valks 2,375]

5 hours ago, jinsu2301 said:

class discord.

For Hunter, this is admittedly probably a tough one to get a different perspective from - Azor is the main admin/owner over there, so all the pinned guides are Icy Veins ones! ?

[Ehiztari 0]

6 hours ago, jinsu2301 said:

Ideally, you want to cast Barbed Shot in the last possible second, so you don't drop your Frenzy stacks, which depends on how your GCD lines up, I guess, but it's also pretty risky to wait for that very last second. Just make sure Frenzy doesn't drop off, that's all. Track it with TellMeWhen or a WeakAura (there's one in the guide which will tell you exactly when to cast BS).

It's actually pretty specific, since they are talking about charges of Barbed Shot and not stacks of Frenzy. You want to keep the cooldown on Barbed Shot rolling. You never want to just sit on your 2 charges. 

I also wanna recommend reading other guide besides this one. The Icy Veins writers do a great job, but it's always beneficial to get a different viewpoint from sites like wowhead or a class discord.

Jinsu,

Both TMW and WA are enormous resource hogs. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone not playing on a Windows-capable Cray.

I'm attempting to code class/spec/build-specific rotation/ability priority plug-ins for my own far-less-resource-intensive addon.

Because Icy Veins' information is generally well-regarded, I'm hoping to stick with a single, well-documented (if not entirely clearly documented), well-maintained site so I'm not having to make a career out of updates.

Because there are obviously non-standard uses of English in this I'm not certain if that's because the author didn't write it in English and it was (poorly) translated, the author did write it in English but wasn't a native English-speaker and made predictable mistakes that weren't caught by anyone, the author wrote it in English and was a native English-speaker and made mistakes that weren't caught by anyone anyway, or if there was some transcription error of what the author wrote in getting it onto the website.

"...when you close to..." changes meaning if you look at the word "close" as a verb (if this is only a mildly malformed phrase) or as an adverb (if this is a badly malformed phrase).

The difference between the two is not trivial.

Assuming for a moment that it's the latter case, that "...when you close to..." means "...when you are close to...[having two ready charges of Barbed Shot]" then this makes more sense than what is written with one caveat regarding GCD Duration length.

GCD length can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by multiply the base GCD duration (known through select(2, GetSpellBaseCooldown(61304)) by (100 - UnitSpellHaste("player")). It's not perfect, but it's very close and while GCD is up, I just use the current GCD duration and save the computational time.

It's still unclear from the first pass at the rotation information when to cast Barbed Shot most effectively (in a way that has the best chance of getting and keeping 3 charges of Frenzy on your pet).

Novice use of Barbed Shot seems to be to fire it off, then fire it off again and then hope something procs so you can get a third stack of Frenzy up before the existing two stacks fall off. That's borne out as the apparent intent by a note later in the article about opening with two rounds of Barbed Shot.

It seems a better use of Barbed Shot to wait six and a quarter seconds after the first one to cast the second one and to drive the rest of your rotation around the gaps made available in that pattern.

• Base Time 0 - Barbed Shot Charge 1 - Frenzy Stacks = 1 - Expires at BT + 8
• Base Time + 6.25 - Barbed Shot Charge 2 - Frenzy Stacks = 2 - Expires at BT + 14.25
• Base Time + 12 - Barbed Shot Charge 1 has reset
• Base Time + 12.50 - Barbed Shot Charge 1 - Frenzy Stacks = 3 - Expires at BT + 20.50
• Base Time + 18.25 - Barbed Shot Charge 2 has reset
• Base Time + 18.75 - Barbed Shot Charge 2 - Frenzy Stacks = 3 - Expires at BT + 28.75
• . . . 

By casting Barbed Shot every 6.25 seconds Frenzy can be kept at 3 stacks indefinitely even without procs or help from Aspect of the Wild.

That would mean that (assuming you've precomputed your projected GCD duration and know it) if something ELSE in the rotation needs to happen within projected GCD duration of when your next 6.25-second-rhythm Barbed Shot is to occur, that whatever-it-is needs to be deferred.

Casting BOTH Barbed Shot charges in quick succession makes it almost impossible to get to 3 charges of Frenzy without a proc, though.

To me, a better rotation/ability priority list would be something akin to this:

• Barbed Shot every 6.25 seconds
• Kill Command on cooldown (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time)
• Aspect of the Wild on cooldown (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time or Bestial Wrath is up and within 5 seconds of ending (17 seconds if Barbed Shot is due next GCD))
• Bestial Wrath on cooldown (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time)
• A Murder of Crows on cooldown (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time)
• Chimeara Shot (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time or within 10 of focus cap (assuming single-target rotation here))
• Cobra Shot (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time or focus is below 90)

It might sound kind of intimidating to attempt to remember to fire off Barbed Shot every 6.25 seconds, but putting this at the end of the macro that fires it will help tremendously:

/stopwatch 6
/stopwatch play

Just take the shot after the timer expires - the natural delay in actuating it will cover that missing quarter of a second nicely.

Of course, you can set up a 6.25 second counter with other tools as well, but that one is the simplest.

For cleave-distance multi-target situations, this:

• Barbed Shot every 6.25 seconds.
• Chimeara Shot (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time or within 20 of focus cap)
• Kill Command on cooldown (unless withing Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time)
• Aspect of the Wild on cooldown (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time or Bestial Wrath is up and within 5 seconds of ending (17 seconds if Barbed Shot is due next GCD))
• Bestial Wrath on cooldown (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time)
• A Murder of Crows on cooldown (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time)
• Multi-Shot (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time or unless there is time to wait until the next GCD cycle if last shot was less than 4 seconds ago)
• Cobra Shot (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time or focus is below 90)

This assumes the standard build without the Rapid Reload trait being in play. For that one, this:

• Barbed Shot every 6.25 seconds.
• Chimeara Shot (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time or within 20 of focus cap)
• Kill Command on cooldown (unless withing Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time)
• Aspect of the Wild on cooldown (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time or Bestial Wrath is up and within 5 seconds of ending (17 seconds if Barbed Shot is due next GCD))
• Bestial Wrath on cooldown (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time)
• A Murder of Crows on cooldown (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time)
• Multi-Shot (unless within Projected GCD Duration of Barbed Shot's next time)
• <no Cobra Shot in this rotation/ability priority list>

 

Edited May 14, 2019 by Ehiztari

[jinsu2301 273]

2 hours ago, Ehiztari said:

Both TMW and WA are enormous resource hogs.

I mean, I use a mildly overclocked 4670k and my framerates are fine, even when using both those addons with raidwide checks and all. I have tested raiding with and without addons and it makes zero difference in performance on my system, and that's an old midrange system. You don't need a supercomputer to run a simple buff tracker.

2 hours ago, Ehiztari said:

By casting Barbed Shot every 6.25 seconds Frenzy can be kept at 3 stacks indefinitely even without procs or help from Aspect of the Wild.

This doesn't work. Eventually you will have no Barbed Shot charges left, and your Frenzy will drop. After the forth or fifth shot, Frenzy falls off. Just think about it: Frenzy lasts a maximum of 8 seconds (9s with FF trait), and Barbed Shot has a 12 seconds cooldown (and the charges do not recharge in parallel, they charge one after the other). Unless you are able to reduce that CD below 8s through haste, your Frenzy will always drop without procs.

2 hours ago, Ehiztari said:

It's still unclear from the first pass at the rotation information when to cast Barbed Shot most effectively

Because there is no clear answer to this, other than keep Frenzy up, refresh it in the last second, and keep Barbed Shot rolling. Even the best of the best often just turn on a weakaura to track CDs and buff uptime and eyeball the rest of it. That's what makes them skilled players.

3 hours ago, Ehiztari said:

Novice use of Barbed Shot seems to be to fire it off, then fire it off again and then hope something procs so you can get a third stack of Frenzy up before the existing two stacks fall off. That's borne out as the apparent intent by a note later in the article about opening with two rounds of Barbed Shot.

You only do a double BS opener with the Primal Instincts trait since that one gives you an extra charge of BS, as is explained in that exact section of the guide. 

 

Also, you are getting weirdly hung up on that one sentence simply because the author forgot an "are" in there... it happens. Like I said, it's made clear from context and just the way the spec works, that what the author meant was "when you are close to 2 charges".

[Ehiztari 0]

5 hours ago, jinsu2301 said:

8 hours ago, Ehiztari said:

Both TMW and WA are enormous resource hogs.

I mean, I use a mildly overclocked 4670k and my framerates are fine, even when using both those addons with raidwide checks and all. I have tested raiding with and without addons and it makes zero difference in performance on my system, and that's an old midrange system. You don't need a supercomputer to run a simple buff tracker.

The addon itself isn't the issue, other than is a horrible mess of spaghetti that even the devs don't understand any more (their words, not mine). The issue is that the templates for creating "auras" in it generates code that is redundant and if you run more than a very few of them you end up running the same loops over and over each frame. Some very simple changes to how they structured the data pulls, which I pointed out to them, would remove most of that.

I've had single WA suites that have dropped my frame rates from 150 to 80 in normal usage and made my UI unplayable in raids.

5 hours ago, jinsu2301 said:

8 hours ago, Ehiztari said:

By casting Barbed Shot every 6.25 seconds Frenzy can be kept at 3 stacks indefinitely even without procs or help from Aspect of the Wild.

This doesn't work. Eventually you will have no Barbed Shot charges left, and your Frenzy will drop. After the forth or fifth shot, Frenzy falls off. Just think about it: Frenzy lasts a maximum of 8 seconds (9s with FF trait), and Barbed Shot has a 12 seconds cooldown (and the charges do not recharge in parallel, they charge one after the other). Unless you are able to reduce that CD below 8s through haste, your Frenzy will always drop without procs.

I stood in front of a trio of Elite Raider targets for fifteen minutes and kept it up the whole time (discounting the 12.5 seconds it takes to get to the 3rd stack starting). It never occurred to me that it was because of the extra Barbed Shot from Aspect of the Wild or that I had a one-second cushion built into my Frenzy stacks from Feeding Frenzy (I apparently did a good thing following Icy Vein's advice on Azerite Traits).

6 hours ago, jinsu2301 said:

9 hours ago, Ehiztari said:

It's still unclear from the first pass at the rotation information when to cast Barbed Shot most effectively

Because there is no clear answer to this, other than keep Frenzy up, refresh it in the last second, and keep Barbed Shot rolling. Even the best of the best often just turn on a weakaura to track CDs and buff uptime and eyeball the rest of it. That's what makes them skilled players.

Given that keeping Frenzy at 3 stacks as much as possible is vitally important to optimal BM Hunter play and the written instructions in that section don't come close to describing a method for doing so, I'd say that the author failed to express how to do so. "watch buff uptime and eyeball the rest of it" is just weak writing for "I don't know how to tell you how to do this" and at this level, I'd think something better would be provided.

6 hours ago, jinsu2301 said:

9 hours ago, Ehiztari said:

Novice use of Barbed Shot seems to be to fire it off, then fire it off again and then hope something procs so you can get a third stack of Frenzy up before the existing two stacks fall off. That's borne out as the apparent intent by a note later in the article about opening with two rounds of Barbed Shot.

You only do a double BS opener with the Primal Instincts trait since that one gives you an extra charge of BS, as is explained in that exact section of the guide. 

I wasn't implying that the complete Icy Veins rotation/ability priority list said to use a double BS opener, only that it was included later in the article. Even WITH that, you will have a hard time keeping 3 stacks up consistently. My accidental experiment in this proves this, at least to me. I kept 3 stacks up for 15 solid minutes. Granted, I've got both Primal Instincts and Feeding Frenzy on my gear and maybe that's the trick, but when I tried blowing two BS at the beginning, it was virtually impossible to keep 3 stacks up. If I staggered them by 6.25 seconds, it worked fine. I *did* miss the specific influence of Primal Instincts and Feeding Frenzy, though. Sloppy on my part.
 

6 hours ago, jinsu2301 said:

Also, you are getting weirdly hung up on that one sentence simply because the author forgot an "are" in there... it happens. Like I said, it's made clear from context and just the way the spec works, that what the author meant was "when you are close to 2 charges".

If indeed, that was the error and I said I was going to assume that, then it's still an error. The fact that the word "close" can, in that malformed phrase, be read as either a verb or an adjective and that which it is read as changes the meaning of the sentence, my "hang up" here is that I didn't know for sure which meaning applied.

From your response, and from others, I'm going to assume that my initial assumption was correct. The word is used in that malformed phrase as an adjective.

As to "it's made clear from context" - I have to disagree with you. An experienced BM Hunter will know what is meant here, but an experienced BM Hunter likely doesn't need this article. A novice BM Hunter, one looking to find definitive information here, would run up against the same ambiguity that I did (this whole thing was brought to my attention by a guildie attempting BM Hunter play for the first time who ran into it and asked me what it meant).

[Azortharion 60]

The later you can refresh Frenzy to it expiring, the more 3-stack uptime you are going to have. Depending on your latency, reaction time and practice, you may be able to refresh it at 0.5s on the timer, or 0.05s. The latter is ideal.

You double-BS the opener, Aspect of the Wild, and then you usually cast the 3rd Barbed Shot when you're about to cap on charges. In this way, you get to 3 stacks very quickly without compromising your ability to keep it up for a long time.

Refreshing every 6.25s only works if Barbed Shot charges regenerate on an individual basis, but they do not. I would think that you'd notice this when playing the game, therefore I'd like to see a warcraftlogs report of you maintaining 3 charges of Frenzy for 15 minutes continuously for further investigation, if possible.

The missing "are" is just a writing mistake of mine that I have not caught, it'll be fixed. ^^

 

[Ehiztari 0]

On 5/15/2019 at 4:09 AM, Azortharion said:

The later you can refresh Frenzy to it expiring, the more 3-stack uptime you are going to have. Depending on your latency, reaction time and practice, you may be able to refresh it at 0.5s on the timer, or 0.05s. The latter is ideal.

You double-BS the opener, Aspect of the Wild, and then you usually cast the 3rd Barbed Shot when you're about to cap on charges. In this way, you get to 3 stacks very quickly without compromising your ability to keep it up for a long time.

Refreshing every 6.25s only works if Barbed Shot charges regenerate on an individual basis, but they do not. I would think that you'd notice this when playing the game, therefore I'd like to see a warcraftlogs report of you maintaining 3 charges of Frenzy for 15 minutes continuously for further investigation, if possible.

The missing "are" is just a writing mistake of mine that I have not caught, it'll be fixed. ^^

 

Regarding the 15 minutes issue, I addressed that. Serendipitously I have managed to optimize my azerite traits for reducing the relevant cooldowns and increasing the number of Barbed Shots available and hadn't factored that into my observation run (as mentioned above).

I understand the issue regarding the desirability of 3-stack uptime on Frenzy. That's the point of this - to dig deep into the how of it.

Warcraftlogs are made available to me through a couple of raid groups I casual with, but I've no idea where they get them from or how to generate them (or, frankly, how to read them correctly).

I've been depending on custom code and custom reports to monitor my ability usage.

As part of testing of my rotation/shot priority code, though, it would behoove me to look at those as well. I'll see if I can't find out how to generate those.

While you're here I do have one other question that came up in a mythic run last night.

Let's say you're running along in a boss fight just fine and you're holding 3 stacks of frenzy.

Just before you're due to renew that, to hit Barbed Shot, you get stunned or mind controlled or something and you lose the stacks.

Do you have a preferred strategy for rebuilding to 3 stacks again or is it just hit Barbed Shot on cooldown and hope for the best.

I had in mind to code for a non-opener, "I lost my Frenzy" situation in my addon and thought the best result might come from waiting for AotW to come off cooldown and leave Barbed Shot alone until it does and then treat it like you're starting the opener rotation again, but I wasn't sure if you had any experience with that.

[Azortharion 60]

If you drop all of your stacks for any reason, your best bet at getting up to 3 stacks and holding onto it for a long time is to start your "new" Frenzy when your Barbed Shot is close to hitting its second charge (the SimulationCraft APL currently defines this as "1.8 charges", assuming 20% Haste and a 10-second Barbed Shot CD, this means that you start your next Barbed at ~2 secs left till you reach 2 charges.

Alternatively, if you have Bestial Wrath and no Frenzy, you would always Barbed Shot.

Alternatively, if you end up in a situation where you are entirely unable to cast even Cobra Shot (i.e, you would otherwise have deadtime), you cast Barbed Shot if it has >1.4 charges just to fill the time.

Aspect of the Wild has a 2-minute cooldown, waiting for it to come back before starting Frenzy would be insanely wasteful. Barbed Shot not only provides Frenzy to your pet, it also does a good chunk of damage and provides a small chunk of Focus. Keeping it off 2 charges is vital.

Since you have a programmer's view point, you might find the SimulationCraft APL formulation useful (just the relevant bottom part of the APL):
 

Quote

actions.st+=/barbed_shot,if=pet.cat.buff.frenzy.down&(charges_fractional>1.8|buff.bestial_wrath.up)|cooldown.aspect_of_the_wild.remains<pet.cat.buff.frenzy.duration-gcd&azerite.primal_instincts.enabled|azerite.dance_of_death.rank>1&buff.dance_of_death.down&crit_pct_current>40|target.time_to_die<9
actions.st+=/barrage
actions.st+=/cobra_shot,if=(focus-cost+focus.regen*(cooldown.kill_command.remains-1)>action.kill_command.cost|cooldown.kill_command.remains>1+gcd)&cooldown.kill_command.remains>1
actions.st+=/spitting_cobra
actions.st+=/barbed_shot,if=charges_fractional>1.4

If Aspect of the Wild is coming up soon, you would usually try and emulate the opener by dumping whatever Barbed charges you have and then using Aspect (assuming you have Primal Instincts of course, which most people do).

Digging into the rest of the details of the APL, maximizing 3-stack uptime is a simple matter of:
 

• Refreshing as late as possible (thereby getting maximum duration out of each Barbed cast).
• Starting a new Frenzy when you have close to 2 charges banked, thereby effectively increasing the amount of Barbeds you will have available throughout your Frenzy.
• (More advanced) Using Aspect of the Wild and Barbed Shot in a way that lets Aspect not only do its usual thing of increasing your damage, but also providing you a healthy "refreshment" to a Frenzy buff window which may be close to running out. Usually this is simply a matter of dumping your charges right before casting Barbed.
• Never reaching 2 charges of Barbed Shot (since you'd be wasting its cooldown at that point).

 

The danger with attempting to formulate rotations with addons and in custom code as you mention is that things that are extremely evident just from playing the game might not be factored into the code that you are doing. BM in particular is a fairly proactive spec, at least when it comes to Frenzy and stuff. A player can make decisions on the fly that an addon or SimulationCraft APL might not be able to.

In my opinion, at least, playing the game should come first, and then APL's and custom code should be derived from what you learn while playing the game, to try and put what is instinctive into "computer language", if you will.

[Khallid 110]

On 5/13/2019 at 6:58 PM, Ehiztari said:

Could I get someone to decipher this for me please?

 

What constitutes "about to expire?" Six seconds? Three? A half a second? The length of your GCD as modified by your Haste score?

 

Is "when you close to" - non-standard English for "are close to" or is that non-standard English for "are closing in on?"

In both cases, again, some specificity would be very helpful - what does "close to" mean here?

If I have 1 charge of Barbed Shot, that seems "close to" 2 charges of Barbed Shot, but if the author meant "when you have 1 charge of Barbed Shot" it seems to me that he would have said that.

If I have 3 charges of Barbed Shot and one is due to expire soon, that might fit the "are closing in on" meaning of "when you close to" but does that mean I fire off Barbed Shot BEFORE that 3rd charge falls off? It would seem to, as written. I didn't think that sounded correct, but there isn't any other way to interpret "when you close to" in the sense of "are closing in on."

This is a core ability and I can't for the life of me decipher what the author means here. The words are there, but they don't seem to fit together the way they've been presented.

Can I get some clarification here, please?

In my opinion the easiest way to keep Frenzy stacks up is to hit Barbed Shot when the Frenzy buff has 2 seconds left. That's it, as simple as that. I give it such a wide margin because GCDs get in the way. If you're in the middle of a GCD when the buff timer reaches 2 seconds you'll still be fine, you just keep pressing Barbed Shot. But if you keep attacking until the very last second you might get stuck and be unable to hit Barbed Shot at the last moment because the GCD from another attack prevents Barbed Shot from firing.

When Frenzy eventually does fall off wait for the charges to recharge, otherwise you won't be able to stack them up. But don't let it sit at 2 charges. Like jinsu said, it seems you might've misunderstood the difference between the word "charges" and "stacks".

I think a simplified rule like this is good enough for high uptime. There's no need for an excessively complicated set of rules that may or may not increase your dps by 1%. The actual uptime of Frenzy stacks varies wildly with gear and talents, particularly how much Haste and Crit you have, as well as using One With the Pack or not. A high crit build using OWtP can get a lot of Wild Call procs and keep 3 stacks of Frenzy for a lot longer than other builds. The cooldown of Barbed Shot will also drop below 8 seconds during Bloodlust which allows you to recover charges of Barbed Shot without dropping the Frenzy stacks. So a perfect timing to hit Barbed Shot isn't something you can describe in general.

Edited May 25, 2019 by Khallid

[Ehiztari 0]

@Azortharion: I've coded the logic listed above, with some caveats (I include a check for the need for an interrupt in there and I'm going to add a check for pet health resulting in a prompt to "Mend Pet" at a priority generally below keeping Frenzy at 3 stacks, but ahead of that at need - can't have Fluffy dying on me in the middle of a fight and keep my DPS up).

I came to the same conclusion about restoring 3 stacks of Frenzy of they drop off either because RNGesus abandoned me mid-fight or because I got stunned or knocked-back too far to have a target when I needed to fire off Barbed Shot - hold off until I have 2 charges and Aspect of the Wild near-enough to being ready to use to milk it for a 3rd.

In that case, I think my "delay the 2nd shot" tactic MIGHT be useful because if I have 2 charges of Barbed Shot and AotW is, say 12 seconds from coming up, if I fire both off immediately, you'll have 1 stack up for 1.2 seconds (my personal GCD with my Haste adjustment), 2 stacks up for 9 seconds, and then at 10.2 seconds you'll have 0 stacks and the AotW charge of Barbed Shot won't really be doing you much good. If I fire the 1st and wait 7 seconds to fire the 2nd (assuming you have Feeding Frenzy), then you'll have 1 stack of Frenzy up for 7 seconds, 2 stacks of Frenzy up for 5 seconds, and then back to 3 stacks for as long as you can keep the rotation going.

I have strong, efficient code for projecting GCD cooldown duration, so the data I have about how long before I have to do certain things is very accurate.

Likewise, I've captured the proc-shelf-life time for Barbed Shot as well so I can accurately factor that into my rotation (if a proc for that shows up, there isn't any need to fire it immediately if holding off for a few (very few) seconds will make the difference on keeping the NEXT necessary Barbed Shot at the right time).

@Khallid : My addon tracks the cooldown remaining on the current GCD and has a predictive algorithm for the expiration of the next, and next-next GCDs so I can be very precise about sending a prompt for any given ability.

Essentially, though, I build in 1/10th of a second of leeway into each cooldown cycle to allow for reaction time and I assume the user won't necessarily wait until the very last microsecond to fire off Barbed Shot.

Essentially, it moves from GCD to GCD and indicates what to do in that cycle.

I haven't looked at other addons that do this, so I don't know if my approach is novel or not, but when procs have hit right, I've been able to exceed my Raidbots sim DPS estimates even without raid-level pots/flasks/food.

Not for long, of course, but for a minute or two at a time, yes and it's very much dependent upon RNGesus helping out with procs (not missing any 3-stack moments).

I'm not looking to produce 100% uptime of 3 stacks of Frenzy - I'm certain that isn't possible. But it is possible to indicate what the best path to getting there or staying there is.

[Khallid 110]

11 hours ago, Ehiztari said:

@Khallid : My addon tracks the cooldown remaining on the current GCD and has a predictive algorithm for the expiration of the next, and next-next GCDs so I can be very precise about sending a prompt for any given ability.

Essentially, though, I build in 1/10th of a second of leeway into each cooldown cycle to allow for reaction time and I assume the user won't necessarily wait until the very last microsecond to fire off Barbed Shot.

Essentially, it moves from GCD to GCD and indicates what to do in that cycle.

Oh Ok, I see why you would want more details to build the algorithm. I didn't realize that was the case.

[Gaelicgal 0]

Any of you have a macro of this rotation? A "One shot" per say?