This build lacks the survival mana regen talents that don’t directly improve your dps, such as thrill of the hunt and hunting party. This means on fights longer than about 5 minutes, or fights where you don’t have full raid buffs and judgement of wisdom, you will lose dps on this build compared to the standard suvival build of 0-15-56.

Um when you get into end game content that build will in no way give you max dps glyph of explosive shot is not needed point in master tec is not needed when you going into raid with 62% crit unbuffed 4% on a explosive shot is useless its not needed my current build does as much as a mm hunter and in aoe fight mm dosent even come close my overall dps in raids does waymore than any mm build. and thats overall Boss fights im right there with mm sometimes they out dps me sometimes they dont. we run with 3 hunters and all of us are pretty close in gear except our mm has the bis trinkets
Look at my spec on armory Bosco Black dragonflight Guild Heartless

Bosco, I hate to differ with you on a few points, but I must. First, AOE damage is basically a non issue. There are maybe three boss fights in the game where AOE would even play a role. Your greater AOE dmg on trash is a little “whoopdie-doo.” Second, if crit is your major DPS stat, 4% crit is nothing to be sneezed at. 4% into 10,000 is 400 (for you serious theorycrafters I know it’s not 1:1, just an example). Since this build lags the max MM build by just a couple hundred DPS, giving up another 300-400 = not so good.

The reason these specs are built this way is not subjective. Every possible combination of gear, glyphs and talent choices is taken into consideration and simulated thousands of times in the Simcraft engine. Just saying that ES glyph is ‘not needed’ doesn’t come to the level of having tested that statement a few thousand times under apples to apples conditions. My suggestion is to load you character into the engine and do a full series of runs. Then change glyphs and spec to match this one and log out so that you can pull the new info into the engine. I can guarantee you that you will do more DPS with that glyph and this build. I’ve done the same thing myself with all of my toons and the engine hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

With out thirll of the hunt and hunting party you will lose DPS in a sustained fight it is esental to have that mana return keeping you going with almost everyshot critting with close to 70% crit when buffed plus hunting party adds 2% more agility (three points are not need’d with high crit it has a 97% uptime acording to spreadsheets) otherwise you will have down time in viper doing 50% less damage. also imp AoTH is useliss for a survival build with explosive shot doing roughly 40-45% of ourn damage and steady shot at the lowwer end of thigns once you get your haste down to a 1.5sec cast time for steady shot the rest is just waste and very useliss ArP is more preferable at thsi stage to up white damamge

i hate to say this but with that build in a 10man raid alone you will have sever mana issues and even in some prolonged fights in 25mans with out thrill of the hunter and atleast two point in hunting party you will have mana issues. also consider that with t9+ gear you are allready gettign alot of haste anything past 1.5sec cast tiems on steady shot is not really need’d those points in Imp AoTH is wasted and should go into thrill of the hunt. i know simcraft will run and say big numbers but put into a 25man raid or 10man that spec will fall behind and have issues with mana having to rely on Aotv alot more thus spending alot more downtime doing 50% less damage

In the long run, playing the actual game with the theoretical max-dps setup is not especially productive. Stuff like Hunting Party is too useful too often not to take unless you’re strictly raiding 25-mans.

And even if you do optimize heavily, doing 7000dps on Saurfang is about as much as you’ll do in any practical raiding situation. The case where you can sit still and work your way through a flawless rotation for longer than ten seconds at a time just doesn’t happen in most fights. Knowing the best rotation is useful, sure, but only as a jumping off point to cramming more damage into what time, fight mechanics, available buffs, and personal playstyle will realistically allow, and all four will typically have more of an impact on the actual amount of damage you do than optimizing your rotation.

I’d be much more interested in articles demonstrating how to improve your playstyle than in ones about how to “improve” your spec for max damage at the expense of raid utility. But that’s probably just me.

how much will your dps improve if you switch to the new Shatter rounds epic ammo http://www.wowhead.com/?item=52020 the tooltip shows an increase of 24 dps over mammoth cutters http://www.wowhead.com/?item=41164 but how would this translate into an actual fight?
thanks in advance!

I actually find the MAX damage articles interesting. This gives you a place to start a build. Your build is a solid build theoretically and I see it as being a viable 25 man raiding build.

I run my hunter in SV and I run hunting party because I do not raid 25 man raids very often. I find that giving up a few points on the meter is not as important as making myself a more viable person to the raid overall. If I ran all 25 man content I might look at it diffferently. In my case though I run mostly 5 man and 10 man groups I find hunting party a must and I am still in top 3 for DPS everytime in 10 man and unless my rogue buddy or my Fury warrior buddie are online I am 1st.

With my current build I push out between 5 and 6 K in heroics and between 6 and 7K in raid situations. Now those are overall numbers for certain fights I can push it up to7.5 and 8K with out AOEing anything. Hit 7.3 K last night in a fight as a matter of fact.

In pit of saron heroic on the AOE mobs in the tunnels I do 15 to 20K (just wanted the guy above who was talking about AOE to know that all hunters using volley can do high AOE its no big deal). In most cases if you are AOEing you are actually doing the wrong thing. I find that when I leave volley out of my rotation and target single mobs we kill the groups faster in most cases anyway but there are exceptions to every rule.

I have been playing a hunter for years and I started as BM then I got into raiding and swapped to SV. I like SV it fits my playstyle and the difference between what I do and a comparably geared MM hunter is magrginal. No when it gets to the point where the MM hunter is 1K better dps i might start looing at it but for now I choose to stay with what I know.

Now what I would be interested in hearing is everyones views on Sniper training versus trap dancing. I currently use sniper training in my build but have considered changing that. I just do not fully understand how trap dancing works so I have been reluctant to try it. I manage in most boss fights to stay 30 yards away but sometimes sacrifice different auras and totem buffs because of it.

Lee
Derisaan SV Dranie Huntard Chosen Few Guild Leader
Leemo Enhance/Resto Shammy Chosen Few Guild Leader
Kirin Tor

Here’s the deal Lee:

If it’s just changing a glyph and not a completely different rotation and the engine says that glyph A is better than glyph B, you should notice an immediate and accros-the-board improvement in your DPS. I’ve used the data from the engine to also improve my priorities in a rotation which also improves DPS. The numbers you are seeing from the engine are based on a perfect player in a stand and shoot fight. Run the engine yourself with the setting turned down a bit and you’ll probably be able to get pretty close to what you see in game. Then make your changes and simulate. It may take a little getting used to, but I’ve found that the engine is great for simulating what your max “could” be under X conditions. Just set the conditions so that they match your play, and then you can get hard numbers on whether change X is better than option Y.

Overall, the answer is that if you set fight style to “helter-Skelter” and use the option for “good” instead of “elite” (since even a truly elite player is going to drop some packets and other things beyond your control, you can get a really good picture of what you should reasonably be able to duplicate in almost any boss fight in the game. Except for my stupid shaman in elemental spec, I can’t get anywhere close to even the “oh my god fire is hot” numbers. I may have to face that I suck a ele and just DPS with my mage (where I can match the engine numbers = sigh).

Cool I have advice on your Shaman because my only other level 80 toon is a Shaman. <ake him a healer they rock as healers I usually the number 2 healer in our raids behind the dang druids. I outheal evey priest I run with. Now with that being said I do understand the main way to tell if you are doing a good job healing is by how many of your folks die lol. Mine dont die lol. See I gave up DPSing with my Shammy to was to used to the big numbers I get from my hunter.

Anyway back to the topic now. You gave the answer I more or less expected it is based on a perfect stand and shoot fight. Toying with it can get it more accurate, that is useful as well.

Thanks again for the great work you guys do Law even when I do not fully agree with you I enjoy the articles. This is a excellent article.

Oh I just saw another difference I do not use Aimed shot I just throw a multi shot in there where you have aimed shot on the priority list. My understanding is that it really does not make that much difference DPS wise which of the two shots you use. I have seen some output numbers coparing the two and they are almost identical. I am by no means saying to not take aimed shot just offering an alternative to those that need a point or two in APOTH for the haste gain. I am getting ready to respec and remove these two points in APOTH and pick up Aimed shot and add another to hunting party and then run some tests to see how my DPS is affected.

Resto is my main spec on the shaman. Unfortunately since I can be counted on not to be a knucklehead I am asked to DPS on fights where only two healers are needed. Not because I am not the best healer, but because the other healers don’t do anything but heal. It only bugs me because the DPS output is icky and I’m having to try to build two sets of T10, and both sets suffer accordingly. It’s certainly better than it could be – I could be still playing my druid (and trying to build 4 sets lol).

I have a hunter and warrior ,i need to have an idea how to build my talent point

Someone on here sent me a message in game to my hunter Derisaan relm Kirin Tor. Please understand I am not ignoring you but I have not played the Hunter in a few weeks because I am leveling a Paladin tank at the moment. I will try and get on there tonight and answer your questons. I apologize for my delayed answers. Had my son not signed on my hunter I would not hhave even known you sent me a message again I apologize for the delay.