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.
- Simple Questions/Simple Answers
- Pets
- Pet Attack Macro Bug 8/8/11
- Traps
- Beast Mastery
- BM: Timing your Cooldowns
- Focus Fire and Bestial Wrath 8/9/11
- Marksmanship
- MM: Talents
- Resistance is Futile 8/10/11
- SimulationCraft for Hunters
- SimC: Updates and Suggested Improvements
- Matrix Restabilizer Procs 8/9/11
- Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit
- Fall of the Lich King
- Scourgelord Tyrannus Heroic 8/8/11
8/8/11
In the Simple Questions/Simple Answers thread, Lokrick posted that pet targeting using pet attack macros is not working correctly:
Today I noticed a bug in /petattack. I’m trying to find ways to make up for the changes to pet stances to both increase “time-on-target” (i.e. move to a new target quickly) while allowing me to assign the pet to attack a particular target. The “assist” stance precludes assigning the pet to a target while attacking another (e.g., on Alysrazor, assign a ravager to debuff a hatchling for the tank). To solve this, I switched to just “petpassive” and macro’d “/petattack [@pettarget,exists][]” into several shots. My expectation was that the pet would attack my target ASAP if it was unoccupied, but would otherwise stay on its current target. Instead, it made my pet switch to my target immediately. After some testing, petattack still checks the conditional, but ignores the target assignment. The alternative “/petattack [@pettarget,noexists]” seems to work, however. It invokes petattack on my target if the pet doesn’t currently have a target.
After more experiments, “@focus” works as expected, and the variant with an additional separator “/petattack [@pet-target,exists][]” works as expected. Apparently, the issue is in parsing “@pettarget” in this particular case, since it works fine in the “/petattack [@pettarget,noexists]” variant. Since that second variant is both shorter and doesn’t trigger an action unless necessary, it’s probably still preferred. As for casting of pet abilities, only targeted abilities (e.g., Growl and Ravage) change the pet’s target; Rabid does not. Thus, “/use rabid” or “/use [@pettarget,exists]Rabid” can be macro’d into shots without changing the pet’s target.
I also noticed that manually clicking a pet ability (e.g., Ravage) causes the pet to switch to my target rather than apply it to its own. My question: is that historically how those abilities worked (or is that likely a bug which might get fixed)?
8/6/11
Trap Breaker Detection Add-ons
In the Simple Questions/Simple Answers thread, Miiri asked for advice on add-ons to detect crowd control breakers:
While raiding, I have issues sometimes of my Freezing Trap breaking before the tank pulls, and I was wondering if you guys had any suggestions for add-ons I could install so I could see who broke my CC.
Bjoepie replied “Recount can show you who broke CC and what type of CC was broken.”
Nooska added “BigBrother can also announce it either to yourself, the party or the raid if and when CC is broken.”
8/9/11
In the Beast Mastery thread, Namarus joined an ongoing discussion regarding Focus Fire and Bestial Wrath.
Previously, VGwow had stated:
I’m seriously in favor to use FF macro’d but, as said before, the ability queue especially on RF phases makes its usage a little bit annoying. One thing that I really recommend is took FF as a single button, this will also help to manage when and/or what place to use it to maximize dps by managing attkSpd during the encounters, especially in long fights.
Namarus replied, “Isn’t this a dps loss? I mean don’t you want to have full stacks of Frenzy when you use Bestial Wrath. If you are just using Focus Fire whenever the cooldown is up your pet losses that extra damage.”
pichuca answered, “Usually you don´t overlap FF and Bestial wrath; either you delay BW a few secs until FF is off , or you delay FF if BW is coming off CD soon. In both cases your pet will have all 5 stacks.”
Namarus responded, “That is not the case if you just blindingly macro it to other abilities. Which is what I am pointing out.”
8/10/11
In the Marksmanship thread, Arash described observations on the Resistance is Futile talent:
Regarding the RiF+4pT12 proc. I aquired the 4pT12 today and tried out if it works with RiF. The result being that if they proc at the same time, KC uses no focus and funds the player 40 focus (unglyphed).
I also noticed that RiF occasionally procs on not-moving bosses (Ryolith before pull, Ragnaros while not emerged) which would make it a considerable DPS gain (leaving out the points in Marked for Death e.g.). Any thoughts on that?
8/9/11
In the SimulationCraft for Hunters thread, alienangel asked if Matrix Restabilizer procs were currently working correctly in action lists.
I’ve tried “buff.matrix_restabilizer_haste.up” as well as “buff.matrix_restabilzer_haste.up” (since that seems to be the spelling in the code), both make the sim die. Also no buffs seem to be showing up on the result page for Matrix Restabilizer under Procs, where it used to before.
Lokrick replied that the procs were being modeled correctly:
It works in last night’s build. I added a bogus “actions+=/cobra_shot,if=buff.matrix_restabilizer_haste.up”, and see cobra shots firing for MM (and I see the buff in the result).
Zimeron asked which version alienangel was using:
What version are you using? I fixed the typo before a release was ever made, so the correct name is the matrix_restabilizer_haste. For future reference, you can run a sim to steal any buff’s name from the buff list and then add it to your action list.
alienangel replied:
I was seeing 420-5 at the top of the Results page, which seems to match the latest download available at the page I downloaded it from (simc-420-5-win32.zip – simulationcraft – Patch 4.2.0 Release 5 *Win32+Source* – World of Warcraft DPS Simulator – Google Project Hosting). That’s dated 2 days ago and I don’t see a more recent binary available on the download page.
And yes I was looking for the buff name to steal off the bufflist, it was listing any buff for MS even on successful runs. I’ll try a fresh install instead of overwriting my old directory, and I guess follow up in a support ticket if I still have problems, thanks.
8/8/11
In the Soloing Old Instances for Fun and Profit thread, Beace posted an alternative to kiting Scourgelord Tyrannus, the final boss in the Pit of Saron:
We know he can be done with some rather intricate kiting, as shown previously in this thread. With high enough gear lvl (I’m at 374 at the time I’m writing this), he can now also be brute forced.
MM spec, MD a pet of your choice, and unload with full cooldowns from start. After some ~10 seconds he’ll place the debuff on you, but I just ignore it and keep nuking (pet will die a few seconds later). With some luck, Tyrannus should now be at some ~60%. The first iceblock should come very soon after your pet dies, I just make sure I’m far away with ice patch inbetween us, and eat the stun. After this, I just start kiting him through ice patches in Fox, and use double Deterrence to avoid the next two iceblocks. If the kill is fast enough, you won’t see another iceblock. My last kill took 1m50s.
A full index of all Elitist Jerks posts recapped at the Wow Hunter’s Hall is maintained in the Index of Elitist Jerks Hunter Forum Posts
