Hunterology: Shot Rotation and Quartz
Hunter Shot Rotations, Quartz, and the Honorary PhD in Mathematics we should all get
Blizzard has some happy news for the hunter community: provided the changes go on as they have said, Steady Shot will no longer clip Auto Shot! Why is this a big deal? Right now, Hunter DPS, while generally very large, has an overwhelmingly complicated interrelation of speeds, cooldowns, and hidden mechanics only surpassed by Enhancement Shaman and Windfury! The upcoming change eliminates most of the complication, hunters rejoice! But until Wrath of the Lich King, or any preceding patch that contains these mechanics changes, Hunter DPS remains a complicated endeavor.
Quartz
Quartz is a casting bar addon that has a ton of features useful for many classes, but it is an almost mandatory addon for a hunter looking to maximize their MQoSRDPS. Here’s a basic rundown on how it works for you:
The first element that is important is the swing, or shot, timer. It just tracks from left to right across it’s length. When it hits the right end, your shot goes off. As a note, I have found there is about a half-second delay for the animation to process, but the time the shot is sent to the server seems consistently applied when the swing timer gets filled.
The next most important element is the cast bar. It show the spell or ability you are currently casting. It shows the total time the spell should take to cast and fills from left to right as the time goes by. If the cast time increases due to pushback, it pushes the cast bar to the left and makes a note within the text of how much longer the cast will take. The right end of the bar has a red section. This section represents the lag in communication time between the server and you. What is important about this section of the cast bar is that if you send the command to begin a spell, it won’t reach the server until after the current spell is finished.
What does that mean, you ask? Every time you click a button (okay, not every time, some commands are processed on the local client, but most) your computer sends a message to Blizzard’s servers saying “I want to do something now!” Blizzard’s servers decide whether you can or not, and then send a message back to your computer and you either do what you want to, or you get a voice telling you you can’t do that yet and see an error message pop up on your screen. If you send a command during the red “lag” time, the servers won’t think you’re busy when they get the message and will let you do it without you having to wait until you really are done.
Shot Rotations
The hunter specs have different needs as far as DPS styles go. Beastmaster hunters have a fairly easy time of dps, Survival and Marksman hunters have a lot more work to so. Not that any one is better than another, they all bring different tools to the table.
Beastmaster hunters are going to provide the most dps. Don’t yell at me, yell at Blizzard. Personal DPS is high, pet DPS is high, Ferocious Inspiration is a great buff to party members. The nice thing about FI is that it helps casters out too, not just physical dps.
Marksman hunters are going to have solid personal dps, but it’s going to come at a cost of pet DPS (minimal) and mana efficiency (terrible). Trueshot Aura is a nice party buff if you are in a physical damage party but it’s lack of scaling weakens its effects as your raid dps improves.
Survival Hunters bring arguably the best buff: Expose Weakness. It buffs physical damage for the entire raid, not just the party. Downside to this is issues with mana (though not as bad as marksman hunters), good, but generally not excellent, personal DPS, low pet DPS, and a general lack of excellent gear to provide the insane agility values they require.
These differences result in a considerably different playstyle for each spec, but they all come out of a single theory on shot rotation: Steady Shot should always take less time than an Auto Shot, and it does not reset the shot timer. Before I get any further, it is important to mention that Auto Shot has a hidden “cast time.” As your shot timer ticks across, the last .5 second is a “cast time” for auto shot. If you move or take an action during that half second, auto shot is either delayed or reset, depending on the action. The trick, then, is to get your Steady Shots to fill up the dead time before that half-second cast time on Auto Shot.
The 1:1 rotation
The 1:1 rotation is the mainstay of the Beastmaster shot rotation and the basis for the rest. What it means is one special shot to one auto shot. Every Auto Shot has it’s dead time filled with one steady shot. The reason this is so useful for Beastmaster hunters is the haste effects of the Serpent’s Swiftness talent and the proc effect of Improved Aspect of the Hawk. It pushes shot times short enough you can’t really fit any more in-between.
The 3:2 rotation
The 3:2 rotation is used by Beastmaster hunters when they aren’t under haste effects (if it fits within their shot times as enhanced by Serpent’s Swiftness) and is the basis for Marksman or Survival hunters. The idea is that you fit three special shots for every two auto shots. For this style, you use the red “lag” time of your first Steady Shot to cast in instant shot, like Arcane Shot, before the Auto Shot cast time. Arcane shot is the best one to weave, but the cooldown on it might push it out of the 3:2 rotation. In a raid setting, Scorpid Sting is good to alternate it with. If there are no crowd-controlled targets, Multi-shot can be used as well. Serpent Sting is better than nothing, but the DPS and DPM it provides make it a sub-optimal choice.
Why this involves math
Any time you are not dealing damage is wasted time, hence the steady shot-auto shot rotation: you fill the wasted auto shot time with more damage. Rotations involving more shots are filling dead time with more shots and thus more damage. The hard part is figuring out just how much dead time is available to fill. Hunters are always dealing with haste effects so this is never as straightforward as it seems. Happily, Steady Shot and Auto Shot both scale with haste, so as long as Auto Shot is a half-second longer than Steady (it would take a lot of haste to get to that point) you can follow the 1:1 rotation. Steady Shot also does not reset the Auto Shot timer even in the half-second cast time it only delays it. If haste effects are pushing them that close, the Auto Shot only gets delayed. DPS is not as high as theoretically it could be, but it is better than losing the shot entirely. So the 1:1 rotation-no problem.
The 3:2 rotation, on the other hand, makes things much more complicated. For Beastmaster hunters, this rotation should only be used when not under haste procs. Under haste, just go 1:1. I’d suggest the same for Marksman and Survival: when you hit rapid fire or are under Heroism/Bloodlust, just go for a 1:1 rotation. When using a 3:2 rotation, the time of two Auto Shots needs to equal the time of two steady shots, plus a 1.5 second global cooldown, plus half a second for the Auto Shot cast time, plus any time for you to accommodate lag. Accommodating lag is why Quartz is so important for hunters.
The cast times are influenced by any passive haste on gear as well as your ammo pouch. Depending on how much haste you have, what your weapon speed is, and what ammo pouch you use, those numbers will change. It is important to balance all of those issues out. For the most part, Beastmaster hunters are going to look for the fastest weapon they can find. Since Auto and Steady shot will both scale, they will want the hits coming fast and steady. Marksman and Survival are going to want weapons that scale with haste to the exact interval they require to accommodate their shot rotation. Err on the side of slower weapons. A slower weapon will have more dead time (allowing easier shot weaving) and individual hits do more damage. A slower weapon for a Survival or Marksman hunter will probably result in higher DPS, even if they are the same DPS values.
Visiting the Dr.
Before trying to get all of this going in a raid you will probably want to get some practice on timing your shots, maybe play around with different weapon speeds and ammo pouches. Best way to do that is grab a few stacks of cheap ammo and go visit Dr. Boom in Netherstorm. Stand on the barrels and he won’t be able to damage you while you can fire away at him until you run out of arrows (or bullets, for the gun-lovers). Just dismiss your pet before you do that-no one wants to get blown up by bomblings.
But no clipping!
The absolutely most important thing to consider when using a shot-rotation is to not “clip” Auto Shots. If you begin casting Steady Shot before Auto Shot completes, the Auto Shot is delayed for the length of the Steady Shot and Auto Shot’s half-second cast time. That means the Auto Shot is losing up to two seconds per cast which is a huge sink for your dps.
Just a game!
This has to be one of the most annoying things to hear anyone say while playing World of Warcraft. Of course it’s a game; I’m under no illusions that a digitally created world I view through a 20′ LCD monitor is real. Perhaps there are some people out there who can’t sort out the difference, but that is not the group being derided with the comment, "It’s just a game!"
When I hear someone saying this, it is usually in the context of the silly casual v. hardcore debate, or someone responding to (usually) worthwhile advice about improving their play. "Sure (spec x) could be better, but it’s just a game. I like (something silly.)"
I have no problem with people making choices in WoW for silly reasons. On my druid, I run around a lot of the time in dps gear with the heavy clefthoof pants on because I hate the way the clefthoof hide leggings (a skirt!) look. I bought my gnome engineer a snowy white griffon rather than crafting the copter because I like the white griffon and I don’t like the puffing and hissing and gear noises of the copter. So what?
I tend toward the hardcore end of the spectrum in a lot of my WoW tendencies. (How many people that have WoW blogs are not more hardcore than the average player?) And the fact that WoW is just a game is what makes it possible to be hardcore about it.
Consider: In whatever passes for real life, would you get together with 24 of your closest friends and launch an invasion of a well-defended fortress knowing some of you would not make it out alive? If the cost of failure is death, do you run through the middle of a battlefield shooting randomly? Of course not! We can get away with this because there is no significant penalty for failure. Failure costs time, nothing more. We are entirely free (within personal and group limits and within the rules and actions allowable) to try any silly idea we have for accomplishing something (Rogue-tank Gruul? You have got to be kidding…).
What better way is there for pushing your limits and abilities? Because WoW is just a game as long as you have enough other people going along with you, you can play to the very edge, stomp all over it, and keep walking. If you fail, so what? Just res and try again.
What I’ve come to hear when someone says, "oh, it’s just a game," is: "Oh, I just don’t care. I’m not willing to concern myself or engage myself with making the best or the most interesting use of my time in this game." That is an absolutely acceptable view to have. We all pay our $15 a month for access. The catch is that once you involve yourself in someone else’s game time, be it pvp, grouping, or raiding, you are not just playing on your dime, but theirs. And it’s a mark of courtesy and respect to use their time with great care.
Playing the group game
An interesting post from Treebound Cat left me thinking about how people see themselves in the interaction of the group in WoW. maerdred remarks:
…healers step up and offer to roll a new character to help the guild. We need more Holy Paladins! The Druids step up and offer to level a pally. We need more Rogues! “Hey, I’ll level a rogue.”
In both guilds, no matter what the need is, the healers are stepping up and offering to help. The DPS kind of flounder and offer to search the Guild Recruitment forum. The tanks, well they’re tanks.
I wonder how many people, when they first unwrapped the shrink-wrap on their copy of WoW, really thought to themselves, "Ooooh, I really want to play a healer; stand at the back of the group, click little green bars and buttons and not have to actually look at any of these pretty graphics the designers made for us. And as an extra, added bonus, I will have a heck of a time soloing!" I doubt many people opted for that course off the bat. Some did; a lot of those were probably people who played with groups from the beginning or were carrying over traits from another game. But so many players of WoW were coming to this from friends and coworkers, not from the MMO culture, and when they had to choose, I bet most people chose something fun like a pet-taming hunter or a fireball throwing mage. Maybe a dark, evil (but cute and innocent looking) Gnome warlock.
Over the course of playing the first few levels some people inevitably shifted their characters around and we end up with, roughly, the balance we have now. Classes that are fun all the time become the most populous, and people who like more niche rolls fill those rolls. When faced with the reroll question, most people are going to continue with the slots they fill because it is comfortable, the most habitual. And people are creatures of habit.
Is it that healers are generally more giving? Are they more Team oriented than the others? Is there a specific personality that draws people to healing classes? I’ve never once seen a hunter offer to put down his bow and roll a Paladin Tank. I’ve never seen a Fury Warrior drop his swords and offer to roll a Priest to heal.
There is a lot to this idea. When playing, I think you can divide the focus between the playstyle of the individual and the playstyle of the group. If you play in a group at all, you inherently weight those two issues. The mage loses dps time to polymorph, the hunter drops traps instead of steady shots, the shadow priest tosses a power word: shield here or there to help the group. In more extreme cases, some people will respec to fill a group need because they weigh the group success more than individual playstyle. Some people are just groupers. And some people just do their thing and everyone else can deal.
I have, however, seen fury warriors roll holy paladins, resto druids roll paladin tanks, warlocks roll both holy paladins and holy priests.
We have 5 resto druids, and only need 3. Two of them inevitably offer to roll something else to help the whole. We have 6 Rogues and only need 1. They all bitch and moan about why they didn’t get picked to run Kara. Why did he go instead of me? Me Me ME!
The thing about healing is that you can’t do it unless you have someone to heal. And no amount of healing alone is going to finish quests. WoW as a game is based on killing things. Being a healer is saying to the game "I want to be part of team," and I think people drawn to that playstyle are more likely to be the ones deriving enjoyment from the group playstyle. Some people just can’t do it, just can’t get into any playstyle other than the individual.
It’s part of WoW that we get into groups and go kill things together that none of us could alone. Each of us has to respect the group playstyle at least a little bit for that to work. I know the officers in my guild do- most have a handful of raiding alts of varying classes and roles and are pretty willing to respec, if need be, to help the group.
As a long term strategy, this is good. It’s nice to have enough variety that a lot of situations can be accounted for. Short a mage, no problem, I’ll switch. Oh, need a tank, no problem I’ll grab my paladin. Short term, the rogues have it right: if you need a holy paladin now, your best bet is not rerolling, but finding one that already exists.
Are healers predisposed to be generous and giving, is that why we’re healers in the first place?
I’ve met some very not generous and not giving healers. Often they’re progression whores. I will say that most of the really nice people I’ve met in WoW played healers. There may be something to that. I wonder if the Daedalous Project has any real info on this: how does personality affect playstyle? I would wager that there are so many reasons people play their classes and roles that the answer is so complicated as to be meaningless. But, then again, I, well, I’m a tank (whatever that was supposed to mean).
Gruul’s on Friday
Perhaps setting ourselves up for dismal failure, the StormSeekers hope to venture into Gruul’s Lair this Friday at 8 P.M. Eastern time.
With the incredibly large amount of guilds further progressed and the ease with which quality raiding equipment can be obtained, taking down the tier 4 raid bosses should be a snap! But it won’t be.
The first hurdle we have to clear is getting 25 people. Recently, we haven’t been able to run Karazhan without three to five non-guild members. Often, these PuG members are beneficial to our raid and I have no problem bringing them in (except as tanks. I don’t want to pug a tank). A lot of people say they want to run Kara and raid, but few bother to show up at raid time. Consequently, we have a couple of tanks and healers and dpsers basically ready to hit tier 5. But only a half-dozen or so. The rest of our membership flits in to WoW from time-to-time, expects to raid, doesn’t put in the effort and goes away for a while. The perils of the casual guild, I suppose.
Even if we had 25 people, we’re going to have a time of it trying to get 25 of the right people. I don’t know if we have a mage with the right gear to mage-tank. I don’t think we have any hunters with an NR set, nor a panzerkin. I don’t know if we can scrounge up 7-8 healers.
On top of that, the guild leader hasn’t been playing much (real-life commitments and all) and I haven’t been party to any discussions of strategy and composition if there have been any. We don’t have any sign-ups for this event. We haven’t had any active discussion of this event. It isn’t going to happen because no one has put in the work to push it forward. Even if it does, we will mostly have people undergeared who haven’t read the strategies or watched videos and it will be a long and painful night of wipes.
On the off chance that we do go, I have some things I need to get done before:
- Get a Belt of Natural Power crafted. I picked up the vortexes and need to farm about 5 primal life then track down a crafter. Short of the t6 belt, this will be the best I can get (not that I can get the t6 belt).
- Crank out seven more badges and pick up the new badge chest (Embrace of Everlasting Prowess). It’s such a huge upgrade from my current Heavy Clefthoof Vest it’s unreal.
- Hit up dailies on some of my characters: I need the gold to regem a bunch of gear.
- Try and work up fishing so I can do fishing dailies. Not because I care about fishing, but because the gem (Eye of the Sea) would be nice in at least one slot.
After that, I need to start hitting the battlegrounds hard again. With Arena Season 4 starting next Tuesday, I’ll be able to pick up a couple pieces of the Season 2 gear (spaulders and helm which replace the season 1 spaulders and helm I currently use) and pick up the Merciless Gladiator’s Maul for my DPS set. I’ll need thirty Arathi Basin tokens, twenty Alterac Valley tokens and 29K honor over what I have.
Anyone playing on Argent Dawn that wants to hit up Gruul’s Lair and enjoy a night of frustration and probably screaming on vent, let me know!
A note: I hope the wowhead links work. I finally got around to editing the header.php file but I’m at work, so none of this loads for me.
Development Plans
Keredria of Tree of Life has mixed the corporate world of the warcraft world to come up with her "development plan." While I am forced to agree that these usually are a waste of time, they can serve as useful tools and help in clarifying goals and providing focus in achieving them. Keredria tells us:
So here in a nutshell is what it looks like. It starts by asking:
* What are your short term goals/plans?
* Your long term goals/plans?
* What are your 3-4 areas of skills/knowledge that are your strengths?Then in the next part you have to come up with a couple of "development needs" (bleh… corporate mumbo jumbo). And for every need, you list out:
* Why is this a priority?
* What is your action plan to achieve this need?
* Do you need anything to achieve this need?
* What are possible obstacles and constraints?
* What are the projected results and how will you measure success?
What are my short term goals /plans? This is an interesting question all by itself. Mage from 69.3 -> 70 is one. Raid at least once per week is another. I need to spend more time figuring this one out is a third.
What are my long term goals/plans? Somewhat easier of a question to answer. I have 4 level 70 characters, with a fifth quite possibly this weekend. I would like to have nine. I have a Paladin and a Warlock at about 50, so they won’t take long, but the rogue from 35 and the Warrior from 16 will take more work. I would like to tank Brutallus. This is a crazy dream, but I would love to go toe-to-toe with him on Lushere (druid tank).
What are 3-4 areas of skill or knowledge that are my strengths? A chance for hubris! I am a fairly good player. I know the classes I play well, I know the theorycrafting behind them, I have no problem doing the research outside of game to support that.
Development Need #1: Lushere needs Tier 4
Why is this a priority? Even if I never tank Brutallus, I want to "be on the path" (1)(2). Overall, I have gear that I can go into Tier 5 content with, but it would not be enough to excel. The Tier 4 set bonuses for feral druids are really good, particularly the two piece bonus in context of cat-form dps. I know that as a druid tank I will be spending a disproportionately large amount of time not tanking and that means I need to be able to both tank and dps at those end-game levels.
What is your action plan to achieve this need? I have to continue running Karazhan until I can get the two pieces from there and attempt to organize or join runs to Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon’s… Lair?
Do you need anything to achieve this need? Sadly, 9 to 24 other people in appropriate class balances that have goals of their own that can be worked on by pursuing those activities.
What are possible obstacles and constraints? There are two giant obstacles: The Stormseekers guild can barely and only sporadically field a Karazhan run, let alone move into 25-man content. Goals related to content progression may require changing guilds, which I am not happy about. The second obstacle is that even if The bosses are defeated, there is no guarantee that the items I desire will drop or that I will get them.
What are the projected results and how will you measure success? Honestly, the projected result is that I will fail. As of today, I lack the desire to guild hop which is probably the only way I can accomplish this. Success is measures in having the items or not: no equivocation possible.
Development Need #2: Four more 70s
Why is this a priority? I like variety in play, sometimes jumping from character to character every twenty minutes. I like the flexibility (when other goals are not in conflict) in being able to fill a wide variety of party roles/
What is your action plan to achieve this need? Continue leveling my additional characters.
Do you need anything to achieve this need? Time.
What are possible obstacles and constraints? Few things can interfere with this. The only issue is whether I devote sufficient time to this endeavor or not. The additional characters will not be well-geared or progressed, that is understood up front, but time is the only issue.
What are the projected results and how will you measure success? This one is constrained primarily by the release date for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. I may not finish by that point (at which point the goal becomes ten level-80 characters) but it can continue past that. Success is measured by character levels. Again, objective.
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Hm. Not sure what else needs to be added. I’ll call this a work-in-progress, I think.
