Elitist Jerks Weekly Recap 8/24/12

By
Tabana
– August 24, 2012

Every Friday Tabana brings you the latest discussions straight from the Elitist Jerks forums with a recap of what was discussed and links to the full posts so you can stay on top of the latest in hunter theorycrafting.

Beta Build 15983 8/17/12

In the Mists of Pandaria thread, Rivkah wrote, “Here are the current simulated damage numbers from my beta site in roughly the same T14H setup that simc is using (and including whichever talent gave me the best numbers, which might not match simc), including the % damage drop from the previous patch mechanics. Note that I’m using an orc for these tests.

  • BM- 107787.80 (4.1% buff), Talents: Fervor, lynx rush, glaive toss (this patch brought fervor back above dire beast again)
  • MM- 94351.04 (3.15% buff – updated), Talents: dire beast, murder, glaive toss
  • SV- 99627.55 (4.7% buff), Talents: dire beast, murder, glaive toss

Buff/Nerf Summary:

I did some raw calculations on a T14 heroic gear set. In this set I assumed 52k RAP and 15130.5 avg weapon dmg with a weapon speed of 3.0. With these stats here is a rough estimate of how much damage change there is to each modified ability:

  • Arcane Shot: 36% buff
  • Explosive Shot: 8.2% buff
  • Kill Shot: 40% buff

Notes:

  • Aspects have been moved from the old shared CD to the GCD
  • Careful Aim now gives 75% crit bonus

Formulas: [See the original post for build 15983 formulas]

Nerec replied, “It may be dumb, but why does a 36% buff to Arcane Shot + higher crit for Careful Aim + 40% buff to Kill Shot only increase MM overall dps by 0.7%. Shouldn’t it be more like ~3%. Seems like something is broken. I also assume that the the BM Number already includes the Command Perk nerf for Orcs?!”

Rivkah replied, “Yes, the BM number (as well as the other specs) already includes the command nerf in both the before and after, since that patch had hit already.”

I was surprised it didn’t bring up the MM numbers more as well. MM doesn’t use arcane shot during careful aim and doesn’t have the mastery buff that SV has to arcane damage or the damage buff from The Beast Within, and it spends some of the extra focus on aimed shot instead of arcane, so it may be just that the amount of value MM gets from arcane is lower, but I was surprised that the difference was so small.

On looking more closely it looks like readiness managed to get turned off at one point for MM in my settings, so turning that on brings the dps up to 94351.04. I’m not sure if it was off when I ran the before numbers, but I’m thinking it wasn’t, which would mean that the buff was 3.15% which seems more likely.

If anyone wants to start with my settings as a base for their own tests, this is what I’ve been using:
BM: Zeherah’s Hunter DPS Analyzer
MM: Zeherah’s Hunter DPS Analyzer
SV: Zeherah’s Hunter DPS Analyzer

Treal replied, “With the buff to Blink Strike, how is Lynx Rush still on top?”

Blink Strike: pet melee dmg * 6 on 20 second CD
Lynx Rush: pet melee dmg * 2 per attack (9 attacks total over 4 sec) on 90 second CD

Over 90 seconds you should be able to get 4.5 Blink Strikes per Lynx Rush

So for Blink Strike = pet melee dmg * 6 * 4.5 or pet melee dmg *27
vs Lynx Rush = pet melee dmg * 2 * 9 or pet melee damage * 18

I can see how on a very short fight, less than 40 seconds, Lynx Rush would be on top but for the remainder of the fight except for between 90-100 seconds. I’m calculating that BS is on top. [...]

Rivkah replied, “Keep in mind that casting either of these abilities also costs a GCD, so you have to account for the impact of the extra GCDs spent on blink strike. Also, you’re going to see more value from stacked damage buffs on Lynx Rush- Rabid will overlap with every other Lynx Rush and only every 3rd Blink Strike for example. The impact from readiness also gives favor to lynx rush, since you gain an extra cast every 5 minutes which is worth substantially more than an extra blink strike.”

Treal replied, “Readiness is what I was not factoring in. I see it makes a substantial difference when used very early and give LR a significant lead from the start and Blink Strike never catches up.”

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Cooldowns and Cooldown Management 8/17/12

In the Mists of Pandaria thread, IFreeman wrote, “[...] I have a few questions about CDs and CD management and certain behaviors. I believe the more feedback there is, the more accurate it will be. I have done much testing on my own but this to reaffirm all that and furthermore to get comments from the community. Assuming the fight is Patchwerk style and CDs will not be needed for any other phase:”

  • Would it be a DPS increase to use all CDs (including the focus generating ones i.e. Fervor) at once and together or line them up one after another? If not then what would be the correct approach?
  • I’ve noticed the pet continues to use it’s basic attack during Lynx Charge, would it be a noticeable DPS increase to hold off using Fervor and instead use it during Lynx Charge provided that both CDs are close?
  • Would it be a noticeable DPS increase to try and line up Rabid with other abilities or just leave it to proc on CD?
  • How should Focus Fire be treated with respect to other abilities? Would it be a DPS increase to not consume FF during BW or Lynx Charge and if so how many stacks of FF is ideal?
  • Do summoned pets i.e. Stampede, Crows etc benefit from haste procs or are they affected by the Hunter’s base haste at all? I haven’t been able to determine this but would the summoned pet attack faster if the hunter gains a significant haste or attack speed proc such as lust/heroism prior or after summoning the pet?
  • Would it be a noticeable DPS increase to try and use Fervor only when Cobra Strike is available? And if so how much of an uptime on Cobra Strikes would be ideal?
  • Is there any data that would support the idea of trying to manage pet’s basic attacks, for instance, with Cobra Strike only or when the pet is at 50 or more focus?
  • How important is to be Expertise cap? I understand DPS spreadsheets emphasize it’s importance but those of you who have done extensive Raid/Heroic testing on the Beta, would you also recommend the cap?

Lokrickreplied, “Many of these can at least be explored in the context of simc. As Gahddo and I were talking about profiles, we tried some, and the results were often a little surprising because we have so many abilities that interact with each other. But I’ll start by summarizing things that seem largely decoupled:”

  • As far as we (a motley but unspecified group) have been able to determine, haste has no affect on murder of crows, lynx rush, dire beast, barrage, etc. Therefore timing them with focus fire seems counterproductive.
  • Lynx Rush and Dire Beast are multiples of auto-attack, not basic attack. Therefore the wild-hunt multiplier behavior based on pet focus does not affect them at all. Thus they have no interesting interaction with either frenzy or fervor.
  • Bestial wrath should still be used primarily for focus-costing, instant shots. The two possible exceptions are Powershot (which benefits from haste but takes several precious BW GCDs) and stampede. Therefore, overlapping rapid fire or focus fire with BW would seem a waste. So far, stampede seems worth the GCD just for the buffed AP from TBW,

Some additional notes:

  • Arranging to stack cobra strikes and “wild hunt” by some means does look productive. 2x dmg with guaranteed crit is nothing to sneeze at, especially for BM. Because focus gains are so important, I believe it will be more productive to prioritize cobra strikes when the pet has focus rather than only use fervor when cobra strikes are up. For example, peak pet focus raises the priority of arcane shot, as does knowing that fervor is about to come off CD.
  • Gahddo found surprising simulation results with fervor: it may be worth triggering even before you are down 50 focus just to get the extra 50-over-time ticking, start the CD resetting, simplify readiness timing, etc.
  • Pets do inherit melee haste from hunters. That affects only their auto-attack though.
  • Expertise cap is likely crucial for raiding. It would take an enormous difference in DPS results to offset the predictability of being hit/expertise capped, and hunters can get to it in blues pre-raiding. The exponential value of increased armor pen, in WotlK encouraged physical dps to not be hit-capped, but we don’t have anything like that now. For example, Rageface needed >30k damage immediately to stop ripping someone’s face off; doing better on average was not as valuable. Similarly, doing better on Deathwing’s arm in exchange for missing on the elementium bolt would not “even out” even if the result was a better meter number. Further, it eliminates worry that special shots like tranq, silence, and wyvern will miss (and while often those have “never miss” behavior, that’s always subject to change/bugs).
  • Readiness has some surprises that demanded changes in the simc profiles. Many shots that could never overlap suddenly had to account for readiness. For example, black arrow, murder, lynx rush, fervor, bestial wrath, etc. all need a “!ticking” condition. That should be taken into account when doing napkin math for abilities as well.

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Beta Build 16004 8/18/12

In the Mists of Pandaria thread, Rivkah wrote, “Based on the changes in the latest beta build (16004), here are the latest formulas (note that I only updated abilities I had reason to believe had changed so it’s possible other numbers have been stealth changed).”

Spec Comparison:

Here are the current simulated damage numbers from my beta site in a T14H setup similar to what simc is using (and including whichever talent gave me the best numbers, which might not match simc), including the % damage drop from the previous patch mechanics. Note that I’m using an orc for these tests. I also modified these numbers after the post since I fixed a lot of bugs today and updated the profiles.

  • BM- 109044.13 (1.3% nerf), Talents: dire beast, lynx rush, glaive toss (this patch brought dire beast above fervor again)
  • MM- 100311.65 (no change), Talents: dire beast, murder, glaive toss
  • SV- 100587.32 (2.5% nerf), Talents: dire beast, murder, glaive toss

Buff/Nerf Summary:

I did some raw calculations on a T14 heroic gear set. In this set I assumed 52k RAP and 15130.5 avg weapon dmg with a weapon speed of 3.0. With these stats here is a rough estimate of how much damage change there is to each modified ability:

  • Black Arrow: 6.7% nerf
  • Explosive Shot: 8.3% nerf

Notes:

  • Dire beast change is just a tooltip error- the functionality is the same as the previous patch
  • I fixed the JC gems in my gear setup and changed it up a bit to better reflect changes made in the simc profile
  • I updated the proc mechanics on the Lord Blastington’s scope- it seems to have a fairly high uptime (about 45%), so that also impacted the damage numbers
  • Focus fire was reduced to 6% haste per stack again
  • Improved sting formula was fixed

Current Formulas: [...]

Read original post for build 16004 formulas

Tier 14 Set Bonus Disparity 8/18/12

In the Mists of Pandaria thread, Neruse wrote, “Have we brought up the disparity in T14 bonuses on the beta forums? MM and BM get roughly 5% total dps (4.5k and 5k, respectively) from the bonuses, though BM 2pc could use a nudge down to ~10% KC damage, but SV only gets roughly 1.5% total dps from the set bonuses. Given that the LnL proc rate is already close to the ICD, it would take a completely new effect to make the SV 4pc bonus give more than the ~500 dps it does now. The 2pc would only need a shift up to ~8% to be on par.”

Rivkah replied, “I’ll see if I can find an appropriate place to raise the issue. It’s definitely primarily an issue with the LnL ICD- this bonus probably isn’t very workable. The value of the 2pc is very tied to the current formula for explosive shot which keeps shifting.”

Also, now that the beta server is up I was able to verify that dire beast formula has not changed- same duration as before as well (15 sec). Improved sting formula is also fixed (that may have been last build but I didn’t check it till now).

Lokrick replied, “After a round of bug fixes with Zeherah, simc produces the following values:

Spec none 2-T14 4-T14 2pc delta 4piece delta Totals
BM 105,097 108,051 109,350 +2,954 +2.8% +1,299 +1.2% 4,523
SV 101,619 102,729 104,692 +1,110 +1.1% +1,963 +1.9% 3,073
MM 96,385 97,793 100,609 +1,408 +1.5% +2,816 +2.9% 4,224

So it looks slightly more balanced after those bug fixes. In particular, the SV bonus both has more value after the ICD bugfix for lock and load. However, I agree with Zeherah that the SV bonus is delicate because of it’s sole dependency on ES damage and the cap of the LnL ICD.

Neruse replied, “I get similar results too. It seems that the placement of BA in the shot priority can lead to some fairly extreme swings in 4pc value.”

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Lynx Rush Details 8/19/12

In the Mists of Pandaria thread, Lokrick wrote, “Lynch Rush is an interesting ability. It currently sims as the highest dps of it’s tier, but the simulation is missing one important element.”

  • Lynx Rush: pet melee dmg * 2 per attack (9 attacks total over 4 sec)
  • The attack is yellow damage, and so does not glance
  • Basic and auto-attack continue during the 4 seconds
  • If you have multiple targets in range, it moves between them
  • If you have no pet out, the spell does not fire
  • The pet is moving around, so ~50% of that time, the pet is not behind the target. This also affects the basic and auto attacks during that time.

The last item means that at least 1-2 basic attacks, 2-3 auto-attacks, and 4 of the 9 strikes are subject to 7.5% parry and 7.5% chance to block. This will bring lynx rush’s dps down some (and make it more comparable to other talents in it’s tier). I’ll update when this behavior is incorporated into simc.

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Simulation of DPS at level 85 8/21/12

In the Mists of Pandaria thread, Trieste asked, “The 5.0.4 is supposed to go live next week if I’m not mistaken. Do we have an idea what the dps impact is for each spec at lvl 85? Is there somewhere I can simulate that?”

Lokrick replied, “Simc can simulate level 85 just fine, modulo bugs of course. When last I checked, we appear to lose a little bit of dps with the transition to 5.0.4.”

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Beta Build 16010 8/22/12

In the Mists of Pandaria thread, Rivkah wrote, “Based on the changes in the latest beta build (16010), here are the latest formulas (note that I only updated abilities I had reason to believe had changed so it’s possible other numbers have been stealth changed).”

Spec Comparison:

Here are the current simulated damage numbers from my beta site in a T14H setup similar to what simc is using (and including whichever talent gave me the best numbers, which might not match simc), including the % damage drop from the previous patch mechanics. Note that I’m using an orc for these tests.

  • BM- 107483.87 (2% nerf), Talents: dire beast, lynx rush, glaive toss (this patch brought dire beast above fervor again)
  • MM- 99429.07 (3.3% nerf), Talents: dire beast, murder, glaive toss
  • SV- 98728.49 (4.3% nerf), Talents: dire beast, murder, glaive toss

Buff/Nerf Summary:

I did some raw calculations on a T14 heroic gear set. In this set I assumed 52k RAP and 15130.5 avg weapon dmg with a weapon speed of 3.0. With these stats here is a rough estimate of how much damage change there is to each modified ability:

  • Aimed Shot: 8.4% nerf
  • Chimera Shot: 5.2% nerf
  • Explosive Shot: 16.5% nerf
  • Wild Quiver: 5.9% nerf

Notes:

  • Master marksman proc was nerfed to 50% proc rate
  • Frenzy was nerfed to 4% attack speed
  • 2pc T14 set bonus was nerfed for BM

Current Formulas:

See original post for beta build 16010 formulas

Beta Build 16016 8/23/12

In the Mists of Pandaria thread, Rivkah wrote, “Based on the changes in the latest beta build (16016), here are the latest formulas (note that I only updated abilities I had reason to believe had changed so it’s possible other numbers have been stealth changed).”

Spec Comparison:

Here are the current simulated damage numbers from my beta site in a T14H setup similar to what simc is using (and including whichever talent gave me the best numbers, which might not match simc), including the % damage drop from the previous patch mechanics. Note that I’m using an orc for these tests.

  • BM- 107483.87 (no change), Talents: dire beast, lynx rush, glaive toss (this patch brought dire beast above fervor again)
  • MM- 101229.26 (1.8% buff), Talents: dire beast, murder, glaive toss
  • SV- 100213.02 (1.5% buff), Talents: dire beast, murder, glaive toss

Buff/Nerf Summary:

I did some raw calculations on a T14 heroic gear set. In this set I assumed 52k RAP and 15130.5 avg weapon dmg with a weapon speed of 3.0. With these stats here is a rough estimate of how much damage change there is to each modified ability:

  • Aimed Shot: 9.2% buff
  • Chimera Shot: 5.5% buff
  • Explosive Shot: 7.8% buff

Current Formulas:

Hunter:

  • Aimed Shot: (avg weapon dmg + RAP * .2) * 2.8 + 19541 (suppresses autoshot)
  • Arcane Shot: (avg weapon dmg + RAP * .2) + 2306
  • Barrage: (avg weapon dmg + RAP * .2) * 6.4 (total damage to the primary target over 16 ticks, suppresses autoshot)
  • Black Arrow: RAP * 1.5 + 1870 (total damage, split over 10 ticks)
  • Chimera Shot: (avg weapon dmg + RAP * .2) * 2.1 + 2617
  • Cobra Shot: (avg weapon dmg + RAP * .2) * .7
  • Explosive Shot: RAP * .234 + 291.5 (per tick, there are 3 ticks)
  • Explosive Trap: RAP * .0546 + 246.767 (initial damage), RAP * .0546 + 32.4038 (per tick, there are 10 ticks)
  • Glaive Toss: (RAP * .2 + 872) * 4 (to the primary target, 2 will hit)
  • Improved Serpent Sting: serpent sting formula * 1.5 (does benefit from the 100% damage bonus)
  • Kill Shot: (avg weapon dmg + RAP * .2) * 4.2
  • Multi-Shot: (avg weapon dmg + RAP * .2) * .6
  • Powershot: (avg weapon dmg + RAP * .2) * 8 (damage to the primary target, does not suppress autoshot)
  • Serpent Sting: RAP * .08 + 1620.19 (per tick, ticks every 3 sec)
  • Steady Shot: (avg weapon dmg + RAP * .2) * .5 + 997
  • Wild Quiver: (avg weapon dmg + RAP * .2) * .80

Pet:

  • Bite/Claw/Smack: (RAP * .168 + 142) * 1.5 (standard pet damage multiplier)
  • Blink Strike: pet melee dmg * 6
  • Lynx Rush: pet melee dmg * 2 per attack (9 attacks total over 4 sec)
  • Kill Command: (RAP * .7 + 698) * 1.5 (standard pet damage multiplier)
  • Melee: (RAP / 14 * 2 + 311.575) * 1.5 (standard pet damage multiplier)

Summoned Pets:

  • Dire Beast: RAP * .2857 + 1246.3 per hit (attacks every 2 sec for 15 sec, attack speed scales with melee haste), now scales with BM mastery (not checked yet this patch)
  • A Murder of Crows: RAP * .206 + 560.834 per hit (30 attacks) – does not scale with BM mastery (treated as damage coming from hunter)

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Cooldown Stacking and Stat Priorities for Beast Mastery 8/23/12

In the Mists of Pandaria thread, quiver21 wrote, “Guys, i would like to hear your thoughts about CD stacking for BM. Do you think we should wait until Lynx Rush comes off CD and use it alongside Bestial Wrath and Rabid? (even though BW comes off CD 30 secs earlier?) And, if this were to be the case wouldn’t Kiroptyric Sigil be GREAT? It has the same CD as LR and it can also be stacked with BW and Rabid.

One more question; I am getting results like: Hit/exp.cap>Mastery>Crit>Haste for BM and SV. What about you guys? Consequently which is the worst stat that I should start reforging to hit/exp when the patch comes out? Of course I know about the haste plateaus, but, in general, which seems to be the worst stat?

Wyxz replied, “Use lynx rush on CD. Usually on combat you will have cds to use with lynx rush on 1st, 3rd, 5th cast and going. Use Trinkets are nice for stacking buffs, but at higher ilvl all trinkets are proc based.

Crit is better than Mastery for BM atm, because Go for the Throat passive. With more crit you will give more focus to your pet, he will use more basic attack and give to you more focus by Invigoration. Also stacks frenzy faster. Haste is the worst stat atm.

Nooska replied, “With the addition of so many more instants (including glaive shot at level 90) for BM, haste has become a “do not want” stat (also very much thanks to Focus Fire), mastery consistently beats out crit, but both are miles ahead of haste – both simmed and from an analytical standpoint.

The number one thing to notice with BM priority come 5.0.4, is that we may need to pay attention to maintaing SrS, as it is easy with BW and other instants to push to simply not get a CoS off in time. I’m seeing quite good results in the form of a steady “rotation” (its not, but it quickly feels like it) when making sure to add at least 1 CoS between each KC (so 2 CoS, 1-2 instants (depending on speed) if low on focus, and 1 CoS and 3 instants if high on focus (or with a TotH proc, though DB may (or may not) be better at level 85 – it is better at level 90) – it is a dps loss to delay KC more than by ~0.3 seconds, so we won’t have 1 CoS+4 instants unless we have a haste CD up (CoS casttime + latency/response delay must be at 1.3 seconds or lower to have 4 instants be a gain)

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Marksmanship Simulation 8/18/12

In the Hunter DPS Analyzer (MoP Edition) thread, Whitefyst wrote, “I finally had a chance to look at your MM simulation. The initial DPS was 96992. Here are some comments I have for increasing the MM numbers or possible bugs that need to be fixed.

  1. PS not being calculated correctly. It does not appear that PS is being calculated correctly, which greatly hurts MM DPS. [...]
  2. Rapid Recuperation not incorporated correctly. [...] MoP Wowhead still shows me the 12 focus every 3s, so unless this ability has been nerfed (and WoWhead is not showing the nerf) to 6 focus every 3 secs, FD is missing about half the focus from RR.
  3. Aspect of the Iron Hawk not implemented. Both WoWhead and the WoW talent calculators show Aspect of the Iron Hawk also providing 10% AP. The ability is red on the FD talent calculator showing no DPS effect, and when selected or unselected, the DPS does not change. Obviously, this affects all of the hunter specs.
  4. Should not stack RF and BL. The Sim starts not only with the back to back RFs but also Heroism. This is not ideal and ends up being a lot of wasted haste for MM. [...]
  5. Unideal CA phase shot priority. When looking at the CA phase only of 30s duration, a few items are not ideal with the starting rotation, these include:
    • a) Starting with 2 SSs to get the Steady Focus buff. This wastes all of the focus generated by the 2 SSs – which is roughly 37 focus. Furthermore, after the 2 SSs all the sim uses is all instant cast abilities that do not take advantage of the SF, RF-Stampede-MoC-GT-DB-Readiness-GT-DB. [...]
    • b) Other focus is being wasted as the start as well, even with delaying the first 2 SSs casts. RF is cast increasing our regen, but then the sim casts Stampede and DB, both which cost no focus.[...]
    • c) Currently, after casting RF, 7 instant abilities are cast that are not affected by RF, except for Stampede. These were listed previously in a). To better take advantage of both RF and Readiness, if it is worthwhile to use all of these abilities, then I suggest moving the MoC, DB, and GT initial casts before the RF cast. [...]
    • d) Just like we defer casting SrS and CS during the CA phase, we need to evaluate whether it is beneficial to cast these other abilities during the CA phase. Below is an analysis of each of the abilities currently being used in the CA phase in the sim. Also note that each ability used other than AIs and SSs also slightly reduce the chance for MMM AI Procs. [...]
  6. Move RF Lower in the Priority. Moving RF to just before Readiness in the priority list is a small 9 DPS gain. Nothing big.
  7. CS wait time is too large. Waiting a whole 0.5s to cast CS is too large.That is half a GCD. Considering all of the abilities that we have that do comparable damage to CS, waiting that long can be a huge DPS loss. I suggest halfing the amount to 0.2 to 0.3s. This is what I did in Cata. FD seems to favor this with about 180 DPS gain.
  8. Stat priorites. Since abilities are still being modified, it is hard to exactly determine which stats are best, especially what the ideal amount of haste is. Since it seems that initially in MoP that an AS rotation is the best option and that somewhere between a 2 SS and 3 SS rotation is focused balanced. This information kind of drives the ideal haste amount (not considering latency). [...]

Rivkah replied to Whitefyst’s post point by point:

  1. This was definitely a bug- it was using the old single talent point value for piercing shots which was bringing it down a lot. I fixed it and that should be far more correct (right now it just tracks the number of crits of the appropriate shots and takes 30% of the crit damage and adds it up, but because of the bug it was only taking 10%).
  2. This was the same bug as piercing shots and it’s been fixed. It seems I missed a few corrections to these talents that had multiple talent points when I converted to the new talent system. I did a look through to make sure I hadn’t missed any others and I couldn’t find them, but if you notice anything else strange let me know.
  3. Iron Hawk just replaces Hawk, which has the exact same 10% AP bonus. So it isn’t really a damage talent, it just gives you damage reduction while in hawk. I’ve verified this in game- are you seeing something different?
  4. I do have 2 options in the settings which somewhat give you control over this- there is a minimum focus shot speed to activate haste cooldowns, which prevents additional haste cooldowns from being cast until the speed passes that limit. If you have ideas about better ways to give control over this without making the options too complicated that’d be helpful. When I use that setting, it seems to reduce dps, but that may be due to less than ideal shot choices (or due to delays in readiness use).There is also the option to set what time into the fight to use heroism. There isn’t really a good way to control right now what priority to use for haste cooldowns- I’m not sure if this is worth putting in but I’ve been considering it.
    1. a) I’ll try to think of a way to give more control over the steady focus behavior without overwhelming the settings. With regards to some of the other long CD abilities, one issue is that things like stampede you will want to cast early if you’re prepotting so you can get the benefit from the prepot on it, so I expect often hunters will want to cast it very early on. We also will want stampede to be during RF to benefit from the extra pet regen which may help us get an extra wild hunt or basic attack. I’m not sure how best to provide control over the use of those abilities.You can move MoC above Stampede and it will cast first (although there is still the SF issue). Right now the default shot priority is somewhat loose with the talent shots due to the way I set it up, but I’ll work on improving that once we’re clearer on our real priorities.
    2. c) I’m assuming this is primarily a suggestion for the profile and not the site. If you want to optimize the MM profile setting and give me a link to the new version, I’d be happy to use it- I haven’t spent much time on optimization of it. Make sure to grab the latest one I’m using though (Zeherah’s Hunter DPS Analyzer) as it’s been tweaked a bit.
    3. d) I’ll take a look at what abilities might make sense to disable during CA and see how to add options for it without overwhelming the user.
  7. I’m happy to change the default value for this if we can figure out what’s a reasonably appropriate number for all the specs. I haven’t spent a lot of time analyzing it. People can always change the value but I’d like the default to be good.Thanks for all the feedback and helping me find the bugs. There’s a lot of tweaks I’d like to do to the code and settings yet but it’s been challenging finding time to work on it, so it’s extremely helpful to have detailed feedback.

Whitefyst replied, “Thanks for the quick fixes. [...]”

1) and 2). Glad to hear these were easy fixes.

3) Nope, you have it right. That was just my misunderstanding since I am not on the PTR. I was just reading the talent out of the replaces Hawk context.

4) Yeah, I use the BL setting all the time. The BL timing comment was only in regards that we do not currently have the optimal setting. I have not tried the other setting for a while and kind of forgot about it. I will check it out again.

5a) Good point on the prepot.

5c) Yes that was a suggestion for the profile setting.

7) The suggestion on the wait time was for the Max MM DPS profile only. Since we are reporting numbers comparing the specs, It helps to make sure that we have as close to max as possible for each spec. The previous numbers had MM way lower, which was very depressing for me. So I am hoping to find some changes to the profile settings to improve the numbers.

Once again, thanks for the great work on this wonderful tool.

Whitefyst added, “Both PS and RR look much better.”

I also see that the T14 4P is implemented too. That threw me off at first since I do not think it was showing up earlier today. This obviously affects the required haste amounts. For SS to be GCD capped during RF only requires 3.896% haste (or 1656 haste rating) from gear.

I also see that there is more difference between the ISS behavior options for the <= 4s and <=3 cases. The 3s setting starts the fight with a SS pair, but the 4s setting does not, which is more desirable and a 1052 DPS gain. However, this option does allow for the first AIs to be cast before SSs. I would think that we would want the SSs first since the 15% to 25% haste buff really speeds up the AI cast times (by about .335s each of both AIs in this case).

I am also feeling more and more confident that we will want to disable GT during the CA phase (unless there are multiple targets).

Rivkah replied, “I don’t believe I changed anything in the 4pc modeling- did you maybe test with a gear set that wasn’t wearing the 4pc? I did add the 4pc T14 to my beta haste calculator today, which btw should be up to date if you find it useful to figure out specific haste points.

Can you think of a good logical way to give control over the ISS rule? Do we want to disable the rule entirely during careful aim or would that be too much? Maybe disable it if certain haste buffs are active, but that could encompass a lot. Or I could maybe have an additional option that applies the rule only if focus is below a certain amount? Or I could just delay applying that rule in the first x seconds of the fight. Any ideas that don’t greatly overcomplicate things? MM already has more options than any other spec and I suspect the list will get longer since it’s so special.

Whitefyst replied, “I cannot think of a good set of ISS rules to start the fight since there are so many variables in play, especially with being able to chose from so many abilities now to use or skip during CA phase. The Sim I did started with:”

MoC
DB
GT (would want to disable this in CA phase)
RF
Stampede
Readiness
DB
GT (would want to disable this in CA phase)

After this there was 97.56 focus. So the decision to perform at least one AI first is a good one and what I would do in game since we are hasted with RF.

Now that I analyze the situation more closely with taking into account the much higher focus regen with DB going than what I was used to in Cata, doing the 2 AIs before the first SS is the best thing to do since we do have the AIs still hasted by RF and we would waste about 63 focus if cast the 2 SSs first and would still waste about 14 focus if only cast 1 AI first. We definitely should cast 1 AI first, but it is debatable whether casting the second or not is most ideal. As far as modeling goes, I would not worry about it.

If the 2 GTs are disabled, it is about a wash focus-wise since the 30 focus that is no longer is spent is roughly counteracted by the focus regens over their GCDs.

Rivkah replied, ” I added a few new options to help with the simulation:”

  • You can now turn off focus savings for murder. This isn’t recommended unless you also don’t have focus saving for your money shot enabled and you have a min focus set for arcane shot, as you might never end up casting murder.
  • You can disable glaive toss during careful aim (I also moved the arcane shot setting for this to the MM only section)
  • You can now set the number of stacks to use focus fire at. I doubt it’ll become profitable to use it below the max, but I was cleaning up some focus fire code anyhow and it was easy to add this option

I also added in estimated damage reductions from parry to Lynx Rush (and to other abilities your pet might use during Lynx Rush). For now this also applies to Kill Command (currently it just applies a flat reduction to all pet abilities assuming 50% chance of parries for the uptime of lynx rush), although it occurs to me that you probably would try to time lynx rush between kill commands to avoid the risk of a parry, so I may take that out later, or switch to actually tracking attack counts during lynx rush. I still have a faint hope that maybe they’ll realize it’s silly to have a pet ability which forces the pet to attack from the front randomly and change it, so I don’t want to go all out in the implementation yet, but I doubt they’ll change it.

Whitefyst replied, “Thanks for adding that option. As anticipated, disabling it during the CA phase is a DPS benefit by about 250 DPS in the case I did.”

However, I thought that after disabling GT that using SrS/CS instead would be even a greater DPS benefit. This is because CS itself has damage consistent with GT, but with adding in the SrS damage and the PS damage is much higher. Although it is slightly better than using GT during CA phase, it is considerably worse than not using either. So I would only recommend using CS during the CA phase on fights where the self-healing over that first 10% of boss health is needed.

Due to DB’s focus gains and high deamage, it is definitely still useful to use during the CA phase since it gives more focus for more AIs. Also a single cast gains about twice as much focus than an SS cast does and still does much more damage than an SS. Even with 100% crit and PS damage for the SS, DB does over 4x the damage in FD. Thus, I see no need to add in an option to possibly disable DB during the CA phase as I had mentioned as a possibility previously just to have the option available for messing around. We are going to want to use DB as much as possibly since it is essentially is a direct replacement for extra SSs that do not maintain SF with doing both more damage and providing more focus than that SS.

In fact, I would almost put DB higher on the priority list than CS but still is better to have CS higher on the priority list if CS and Db are up at the same time due to the CS cast clearing focus space for the full regen from DB, while with the other order, there is a greater possibility for focus wasting.

Lokrick replied, “I implemented the actual pet movement to get a more direct simulation of the dps impact of the pet moving. In this implementation, on each lynx rush bite, there’s a 50/50 chance whether the pet is in the front (and thus subject to parry and block) or the back. These sims were run against T14H BM; since they only affect pet damage, they are a pretty good estimate of the impact. Frenzy uptime was 81.6% rather than 81.7%; there was no noticeable dps impact other than the pet dps below. [see original post for data] Note the reduced crit. My hypothesis is that it’s because every other lynx rush correlates with heavy agility procs. Thus those misses for kill command and base attack are more significant than misses outside the lynx rush time.”

Rivkah replied, “It was pointed out to me that focus fire wasn’t properly costing a GCD. I’ve fixed this, and while I was in there I also noticed it wasn’t properly multiplying the pet regen by the number of stacks. So it may be a net dps gain in the sim, but I figured I should bring it up so people understood where the change came from.”

Because it’s now on the GCD, I have changed Focus Fire so it is no longer automatically cast and instead is a selection in the shot priority. This means that any saved setting that needs to have focus fire will need to be manually updated to include it (and you may need to refresh your browser cache to get the shot to highlight). I also removed the option to disable focus fire, since now just leaving it out of the shot priority does the trick.

Whitefyst replied, “Did you change anything else? I do not see anything else in the version history.”

I had a setting saved from just a couple hours ago today that I have reloaded several times all with the same result of 101397. I just reloaded it, and it now provides 102827 DPS for a 1430 DPS gain. Unfortunately I did not save any copies of the shot totals or anything from the previous loads to compare against the current value to see what results changed. The settings look to be all the same with no values in the Custom Gear Stats. I do see that in the Stats From Gear table that the AP value is blank. I do not recall it being blank previously.

Rivkah replied, “Actually it’s normal for stats from gear AP to be blank. The only actual AP we usually get from gear is the leg patch and the new MoP leg patches don’t have AP anymore. It’s only showing you AP actually on the gear, not calculated AP from the agility on gear, so I don’t think that’s likely to have changed for you.”

You may have caught me in the midst of another update- I did 2 more changes after my original update (they’re in the version history but might not have been yet when you looked). The first one was the one that probably changed your dps- I retested Dire Beast today and verified that it is scaling with haste (only melee haste like pets, which means it doesn’t benefit from rapid fire, focus fire or steady focus), which it wasn’t when I tested it quite awhile ago. So I modified the dps calculation to reflect that, which gave it a big boost. It’s overcalculating it a bit right now because I’m not accounting for dire beast lasting past the end of the fight, but I’ll go back and address that later when I have more time.

The second change I made won’t affect dps at all, but it will be useful for people doing a lot of tests on my site- I added a setting which allows you to turn off the stat valuation calculations (i.e. the dps per stat). This is the slowest part of the dps calculation, so by turning this off you will speed the time to get your results considerably. This setting is stored as a cookie, rather than with your saved settings, so it will persist until you turn it off or back on again.

Lokrick added, “After fixing/working around a bug that was leaving the pet in front of the boss, the avoidance and block rates were 0.3% and 0.1% respectively for kill command and basic attack (still 3.6 for lynx rush). The actual dps effect was in the noise except for 2-300 dps difference for lynx rush.”

Whitefyst wrote, “With the shot numbers that FD provides, I just completed an updated analysis in T14 heroic gear for the tipping point where casting AI as the focus dump is better than AS. [Read original post for analysis]”

The following conclusions can be drawn from this:

1) MMs definitely want to be using AS as their focus dump when unhasted.
2) The AI cast time at which AI becomes better to use as the focus dump is somewhere between 1.424s and 1.597s. I suggest using either 1.6s or 1.5s as the new default value for maximum speed to cast AI setting.
3) Without the T14 4P haste bonus, it may not be beneficial to cast AI during BLs. It requires at least 10.42% (when assuming exactly 1 autoshot is suppressed during the AI cast) and possibly up to 23.84% haste from gear (when assumming 1.25 autoshots are suppressed per AI.
4) With the T14 4P, it is advised to cast AI during BL with the recommended haste amounts.

Is anyone else seeing a similar tipping point? What is a good estimate to use for the number of autoshots suppressed during an AI? [...]

I did some tests in FD with a 1 min test case during the Standard phase with BL active through most of it at the 5442 haste rating (12.80% haste) from gear that I had in my quick optimal case. AI cast time in this condition is 1.438s. I lowered the maximum cast time for AI to 1.4s, and DPS increased by over 500 DPS. Hence, in FD, it appears that a 1.4s cutoff may be better and that AI should only be cast during RFs or BL plus some haste proc.

During the CA phase with 100% AI crit chance, then it is always better to use AI as the focus dump, even with no haste on gear and no dynamic haste effects. Also latency affects this number some since it affects the number of ASs that can be performed during an AI cast.

Nerec replied, “Don’t pin my down on that, but I tested the behavior of slam on a warrior alt on live servers few weeks ago [...]. Slam dont interrupt the swingtimer, but rather just suspends your current swing for the cast and resumes to the exact % of the progressed swing.

Can’t check it right know, but if Aimed use the exact same behavior, to rather suspend the swing/autoshot than interrupt it, with a normalized weapon speed (2.9/3.0) you will be able to math out something like:

  • haste * weaponspeed = time between autoshots
  • casttime(Aimed) * time between autoshot = lost autoshots
  • lost autoshot * ~dmg of autoshot = lost dmg due to casted aimed
  • etc..

Rivkah replied, “It looks like the formula I’m currently using to simulate autoshot suppression (which I assume is based on aimed shot mechanics we discussed during Cata) is: (Average Aimed Shot Shot Cast Time / Weapon Speed + .5) * Aimed Shot Count = Autoshots lost. I’m not sure if that’s really the best formula, so I’m open to suggestions.

Whitefyst replied, “I have been doing some analysis with assuming 1 autoshot lost but with using 1.25 to be conservative, especially since 1/4 of an autoshot and its expected WQ damage does not change the analysis too much. I have been using both values to provide kind of a range.”

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Wait Time for BM Shots 8/20/12

In the Hunter DPS Analyzer (MoP Edition) thread, Nooska wrote, “On the wait time for the big shots, for BM I’ve had increases (of varying degrees) down to 0.3 seconds (at the standard 150 ms latency) and 0.2 seconds with 25 ms latency (the latency I have real world) – 0.2 has shifted a bit up and down with haste values though (I assume because of losing or gaining 1 shot somewhere from the combination of 0.1 second wait differences). 0.3 is the ideal I’ll be recommending for BM, haven’t seen that be anything but a gain with the same variation of haste values.

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SimC Updated for Build 16004 8/18/12

In the SimulationCraft for Hunters (Panda Edition) thread, Lokrick wrote, “Simc (in svn) should now be up to date with build 16004. The Dire Beast change is just a tooltip bug. After another round of comparison, Zeherah spotted bugs in Lock and Load’s ICD and the 4T14H bonus. Those are now fixed. The resulting dps (improved gearsets, legendary gems, etc.) is:

109154 Hunter_BM_T14H
104740 Hunter_SV_T14H
100619 Hunter_MM_T14H

Bug reports and profiles welcome! (Lord Blastington’s scope still needs updating).

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Ranged vs. Melee Haste Logic 8/21/12

In the SimulationCraft for Hunters (Panda Edition) thread, Lokrick wrote, “The ranged vs. melee haste logic is not correct, which affects all specs. Among other things, ranged-only haste being inherited by the pet, and focus fire is not granting the pet stacks*6 extra focus. I’m still straightening it out, but it will be at least another day. Thus take the hunter sim numbers with an extra grain of salt. This was provoked when someone reported to Zeherah that dire beast is now affected by haste. I think the net effect will be to bring BM down and the other specs up, but that intuition is guided by possibly buggy interim results.

Edit: The issue is now fixed. It indeed brings the three specs (at least with their current profiles) closer together:

108,271 BM
105,392 SV
102,745 MM (without incorporating Whitefysts suggestions).

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Aspect of the Hawk GCD 8/22/12

In the SimulationCraft for Hunters (Panda Edition) thread, Nerec wrote, “Nothing great, but can you get rid of the gcd used to switch into aspect of the hawk in the beginning of every sim? Warrior as Hunter will start in their main “stance/aspect” and don’t use a gcd in-fight to change into it.”

Lokrick replied, “In a debug log for just hunters, the activation doesn’t take any time. Thus, you can do hunter-only testing (e.g., different CA sequences) without an issue. I believe that the simulation is implemented so that combat only begins at the first harmful action. I’ll check later whether it’s getting caught with a GCD in a raid with other classes or some such, and make sure the GCD doesn’t get spent for it at the beginning of combat. Thanks for the report.”

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Hunter Spreadsheet (Original Post) 8/23/12

Esoth started a new thread: Hunter Spreadsheet: “Available to download here. At the moment this should be considered in an early alpha stage as only my eyes have looked at it extensively. I would not be surprised if most people prefer Rivkah’s excellent web app or SimC, but if you are interested in taking a look, feedback in this thread or in PMs would be greatly appreciated. Again, it’s probably not in a stage where it is worth using to counter some argument you see in FemaleDwarf or SimC (yet!).

What it does
This is not a real simulator although I do try to model “typical” behavior which includes averaged percentages but does account for stacking buff behaviors. I tried to include a bunch of possible conditions when building a rotation to account for a decently robust priority system. More on that below.

The “update” button is only used to update frequencies. This was the only way I knew how to get around circular reference warnings.

Limitations
Since things like proc rate are assumed to occur at a fixed rate, the behavior is not going to model probabilistically possible but unlikely events such as going through two black arrows without an LnL proc or having 100% Focused Fire uptime. It also means a graph showing the relative value of haste as gear improves is going to look like a jagged, awkward step ladder as it adjusts to the average modeled in the spreadsheet, whereas in a simulator it would look much smoother. (There are downsides to simulators too and this thread is neither meant as a refutation or support of one).

How to Use
This is currently only supported in Microsoft Excel. Sorry. It may work in OpenOffice but it does use a bit of VB macros and I have no idea if they work in other programs.

Everything is divided into tabs that are color coded into general categories. The first two, yellow tabs are general overview and setup which you can mostly ignore for now.

The green tabs are for the bulk of the user input.

Gear – Enter your race, equipped items, enchants, gems, and reforging. The light green cells are meant to be edited and everything else is not (this goes for the spreadsheet as a whole). If you want to account for some correction it is recommended that you use the “Hand Adjust” line on row 101 instead of editing the cells that contain a formula
Talents & Rotation – Select your specialization, pet spec (ok, you won’t ever want to change this for pve), rotation (for the most part this has a 1:1 correspondence with the spec you want to use unless you have multiple rotations that support a spec – like with MM), and talents. The rotation option selects from one of the four pre-built rotations detailed here. You probably won’t want to change this – I wouldn’t likely release a version that has anything less than the ideal, but there are options here to do so. Consider it advanced settings.
Buffs – self explanatory
Gear Planner – There are two parts here. At the bottom you select which options you want it to consider. For instance, right now I have it rate everything from the latter two of the first three MoP raids as worth 0. The top part suggests better gear based on stat weights.
Custom Gear – enter any custom items in here, if it’s not otherwise supported

The orange tabs show calculation steps. There is nothing to edit here, but one of the things I personally like about spreadsheets is being able to see the math involved (including where the author made a mistake or could be improved).

The blue tabs show a detailed breakdown of how your talent and rotation selections were modeled in your gear. This is where to look if you think I’m modeling something wrong. The analysis tab also has several pretty graphs to appease the Ezra Klein fans.

To do

  • Needs the ability to import/export files to local disk so that new versions can be downloaded
  • Needs armory support
  • Needs more item import and validation

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Pet Bugs Fixed in the Beta 8/11/12

In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Durendil wrote, “Forget about pets. I’ve just done some testing, and, for example, the armor increase passive isn’t working. Also, ferocity pets have as much health as they did before, so they didn’t change that. And last stand still doesn’t work. So pets are still buggy [...]

Steevnash replied, “Seems in one of the many recent new builds they’ve fixed both of those. The Armor Passive from Tenacity tree is pushing the armor all the way up to about 20.5k (44% damage reduction). As well as Last Stand is now functioning properly.”

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