I got a PM on the elitist jerks boards asking for help. A hunter had been asked by his GM to figure out what he was doing wrong. He has graciously allowed me to post my advice on this blog, so here goes.
First off, I looked at his patchwerk dps. It was quite good, and I thought “what’s this guy complaining about?”
I checked out his individual performance, and saw some key data:
His ratio of explosive shot damage to other types was way lower than I see on my patch kills. He also was not working aimed or multi shots into his rotation, instead focusing on steady shots. Aimed and multi are great shots when you move, but are still better than steady even if you’re standing still. His DPS on patch was great despite this, but I checked his buffs tab to see how many lock and load procs he got in the 2:40 minute fight:
4 lock and load procs is less than he would have gotten if he were dropping 24 second cooldown frost traps on the boss. This led me to check his armory.
No points in resourcefulness means 30 second traps. Taking points and dropping frost traps while they’re on cooldown means he should be able to get 4-6 lock and loads per minute, depending on serpent sting proc luck. While I was there, I also noticed these:
His hit rating is 6.8% from gear, and then he’s adding two points from focused aim bringing him way over cap to 8.8%. He would do well to regem and reenchant to fine tune his hit to closer to the cap of 8% .
Next up- a common mistake:
The third point in expose weakness gives you a fraction of the return you got from the second or first one. With his gear, he only needs two, and might even be able to keep a decent uptime on this with one.
Lastly, if he’s going to be dropping traps, he might as well get rid of sniper training. Those points would be better spent elsewhere.
What does all this mean? While his spec is certainly not bad, it’s not as good as it could be. Sniper training is as situational as dropping traps, and I believe that the trap dancing DPS increase is better than the sniper training one.
While he did well on patch, he would do better on fights like this if he made the changes I’ve suggested.
Anub is a fight where you can get at least two or three lock and loads per minute and you can have close to 100% dps time with all the adds that need killing. These adds make trapping easier too!
All that said, he’s competing in a guild that’s farther ahead than mine, so if any of my advice is bad for what he’s doing, I’m sure you’ll hear about it in the comments ;)
A couple things to note about your comments.
First off, sniper training is better than resourcfulness. The constant moving in and out of the fight isn’t worth the few frost trap LnL’s you’ll get. In most fights of WotLK currently, sniper training can be utilized, even if your guild gets mad for not standing with the group, if things are going correctly, then you shouldn’t be requiring massive heals to stay alive. I’ll post a WWS after this week’s naxx to back up my statements on that topic.
Second, on Anub’rekhan if you’re not standing at maximum range the whole time, there will not only be a dps loss from no sniper training, but there will be a higher chance of getting impaled, thusly losing dps while in the air.
After that bashing, it should be noted that the comments on having 2/3 focused aim and 3/3 expose weakness are spot on, and that this hunter needs to respec. With the gear that he’s sitting at, not to mention the buffs he’s receiving, there is no real point to spending the extra points in poor spots. Also, he really should be mixing in aimed shots to his rotation if he specc’d for it. Although the talent isn’t necessary to maximize damage in PvE, if you have it, there’s no point to not weave it in between explosive/steady or explosives during LnL procs.
Sniper training is not better than frost trap dancing, they’re about equal, and they’re exclusive of each other. Unless you’re good at trap dancing, in which case it’s better.
4-6 lock and loads per minute instead of 0-2. Think about how much damage that means. Side bonus, you get the melee range buffs (like shaman totems) that sniper training requires you to stand too far away from.
As for your WWS report, please go ahead and post one, but unless you have over 4 lock and loads per minute on standing fights (raz, patch), I’m going to assume that you’re doing it wrong and that the comparison is moot.
As for his “spending the extra points in poor spots”, I didn’t post his armory, but I can tell you that most of the gear he has does not have any hit on it. He’s already taken every single hit enchant he could, and a good portion of hit gems. An equivalent move could be changing all his agility gems for hit and dropping FA all together, but then he would be spending points in improved aspect of the dragonhawk, which is just a little less than the rule of thumb 1% DPS per talent point.
Lastly, you are not supposed to weave shots in between explosives if you have lock and load. You’re supposed to wait two seconds between shots, adjusting for distance if your distance to target has changed. That’s the GCD and a half second. You won’t clip the DOT, and you will be getting more explosives out the door.
http://wowwebstats.com/r2hrbss23z3wg?m
there’s the wws… this is with sniper training not resourcefulness, also note that on thaddius i started having major internet problems dc’ing almost every fight there on out save for kel’thuzad. as for not posting the armory, you gave us the name, that’s about all it takes to find them. this is with sniper training not resourcefulness.
Well, like I said- sniper training is competitive. Trap dancing can be better though if you know how to do it.
I was wondering since you did such a nice job with the analysis of Xursa’s WWS, I wanted to ask: What I can do with TOO MUCH HR? I mean I’m not over gemming or enchanting hit. It just happens to be that the gear I have on gives ~20 hit over the cap of 8%
Cross your fingers for an upgrade with no hit. Ideally, you want your gear to contribute enough hit that you’re not capped, but can cap yourself with gems/enchants.
I Hate to disagree but clearly listed on the tooltip for locknload there is a internal cooldown of 30secs, no matter how many traps you put out your still gonna end up with a max of 2procs per minute.
Go test it with a frost trap on a dummy. Keep serpent sting up, and apply traps as they come off cooldown.
I stand corrected however the tooltip is misleading, not sure why another proc is being allowed, not sure if its a bug or not.
It’s a bug. It’ll be fixed in 3.1.
It’s a bug, and using it is an exploit. Doing things “right” should also not have a chance to get you banned.