maanantai 26. tammikuuta 2009
Rotation analyzing again with training dummy
I'm going to do two separate tests; in the first one I will NOT use Aimed Shot as part of my rotation, instead I do: Explosive, Serpent, Steady, Steady, Explosive, Steady, Steady, Steady and refresh Serpent Sting whenever needed. In the second one I'll be weaving Aimed Shot after Explosive Shot whenever it's up. Let's see if there's any differences in DPS output. I'll be getting back to you in a while...
sunnuntai 25. tammikuuta 2009
First raids after patch
Our recent raidforce cleared heroic Naxxramas yesterday with pretty smooth run - except that my face hit the floor more often than not (down during Gluth, Grobbulus, Kel'thuzad and probably more ;P), that was a bit unusual for me as I've been able to survive quite well on our earlier runs. This was a first good cauge for me since the 3.0.8 came out and well, Explosive Shot is just awesome nowadays and my over-all DPS on boss encounters were pretty satisfying; 3.9k on Patchwerk and almost 5k on Thaddius (where I had these nice 10-12k Explosive Shot crits due to that stacking damage buff from the polarity shifts). Of course, I could've done even more but I'm still trying to adapt myself to the new rotation with Aimed Shot plus my pet managing skills are a bit rusty, so I definitely need to start improving in that aspect. Often I notice that my pet is just sitting besides me and not pounding on trash mobs... well, that's because the trash is pretty much AoE-spam and I don't have my pet on Defensive, unless the situations are well controlled.
Got pretty neat trinket from the heroic Naxx run; Grim Toll actually dropped twice during the run and on the second time I won the roll, woot! :) That trinket is awesome in the sense that I could start giving up some of my hit-gear and that armor pen proc is pretty powerful too, although the value pretty much diminishes if there's warrior or some other sort of sunder armor effect in play. For PVP and situational PVE (especially 25-man encounters, Military Wing in Naxxramas leaps to mind instantly) that trinket is just awesome, awesome... in PVP it pretty much makes everyone a clothie. X-D Oh well, hit trinket with a very nice proc (15% chance on every hit, with 45sec internal cooldown), that's not too shabby to have in bank/bag waiting for the day when all hit gear has been replaced!
Anyways, things have been pretty busy and raiding the WotLK content continues on very active basis... weekly 10-man guild Naxx and 25-man raidforce Naxx, hopefully more Malygos and Sartharion with a drake or two up in the near future, too. We haven't tried Malygos since our first kill, hope to down that blue worm soon again! :)
Oh well, that's all folks, from now. I'll be getting in more detailed analysis of Survival raiding dps next week when our guild is attempting 10-man Naxxramas with the Undying-achievement (the one where no raid member can die during any boss encounter!) in mind. That's the occasion for me to hone up my 10-man DPS and hopefully start improving on 25-men too, because I'm sure I could be doing more than 4k DPS on Patchwerk if everything would go optimally rotation-wise. Also, I'm thinking of FRAPSing some boss encounters away, might as well post them here when the time is right!
Meanwhile, happy hunting!
Got pretty neat trinket from the heroic Naxx run; Grim Toll actually dropped twice during the run and on the second time I won the roll, woot! :) That trinket is awesome in the sense that I could start giving up some of my hit-gear and that armor pen proc is pretty powerful too, although the value pretty much diminishes if there's warrior or some other sort of sunder armor effect in play. For PVP and situational PVE (especially 25-man encounters, Military Wing in Naxxramas leaps to mind instantly) that trinket is just awesome, awesome... in PVP it pretty much makes everyone a clothie. X-D Oh well, hit trinket with a very nice proc (15% chance on every hit, with 45sec internal cooldown), that's not too shabby to have in bank/bag waiting for the day when all hit gear has been replaced!
Anyways, things have been pretty busy and raiding the WotLK content continues on very active basis... weekly 10-man guild Naxx and 25-man raidforce Naxx, hopefully more Malygos and Sartharion with a drake or two up in the near future, too. We haven't tried Malygos since our first kill, hope to down that blue worm soon again! :)
Oh well, that's all folks, from now. I'll be getting in more detailed analysis of Survival raiding dps next week when our guild is attempting 10-man Naxxramas with the Undying-achievement (the one where no raid member can die during any boss encounter!) in mind. That's the occasion for me to hone up my 10-man DPS and hopefully start improving on 25-men too, because I'm sure I could be doing more than 4k DPS on Patchwerk if everything would go optimally rotation-wise. Also, I'm thinking of FRAPSing some boss encounters away, might as well post them here when the time is right!
Meanwhile, happy hunting!
torstai 22. tammikuuta 2009
Date with a training dummy
I'll be doing some testing with the heroic training dummy with at least two different specs (not _THAT_ different to each other, just few points shifted here and there). To begin with, first I'm not going to use cooldowns like Rapid Fire or trinkets here - just firing out the basic rotation and draining my mana three times. So let's see how the results look, shall we!
SESSION ONE (Rotation: Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Aimed Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot)
Test #1 - Spec used 2/18/51 - initial parse.
Duration: 301.03 seconds (mana drain, viper up, mana drain, viper up, mana drain)
Me: 2119.05
Wahlu: 338.9
Total: 2458.4 DPS
Test #2 - same spec, control parse
Duration: 288.30 seconds (mana drain, viper up, mana drain, viper up, mana drain)
Me: 2061.1DPS
Wahlu: 360.8DPS
Total: 2423.9DPS
Conclusions:
In this rotation I'll be introducing Aimed Shot every time it's up _after_ Explosive Shot and I'm _NOT_ trap-dancing. The result is encouraging... unbuffed DPS 2.5k, that ain't bad. That ain't bad at all! And that doesn't even have the 5% DPS increase from Imp. Tracking, as the training dummies are untrackable.
SESSION TWO (Rotation: Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Aimed Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot)
Test #1 - initial parse.
Spec used 2/17/52 - initial parse.
Duration: 317.32 seconds (mana drain, viper up, mana drain, viper up, mana drain)
Me: 2079.6
Wahlu: 350.5
Total: 2430.1
Test #2 - control parse.
Duration: 306.04 seconds (mana drain, viper up, mana drain, viper up, mana drain)
Me: 2171.7
Wahlu: 315.9
Total: 2487.6
So, two specs are pretty much the same - ~2.4-2.5k DPS being the standard here. Also, pet seems to be doing pretty much same DPS with one or two points in GftT, so I'm going to respec _AGAIN_, removing one point from GftT and putting it somewhere else. I'm not sure yet what's the exact build is going to be, most likely 2/17/52, where one point from Go for the Throat is moved to 2/2 Rapid Fire or the original build I used, where there is 1/2 in GftT and RK, 2/3 in ST and 2/3 in Imp. Stings. I'm not sure yet which I'm going to choose.
SESSION ONE (Rotation: Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Aimed Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot)
Test #1 - Spec used 2/18/51 - initial parse.
Duration: 301.03 seconds (mana drain, viper up, mana drain, viper up, mana drain)
Me: 2119.05
Wahlu: 338.9
Total: 2458.4 DPS
Test #2 - same spec, control parse
Duration: 288.30 seconds (mana drain, viper up, mana drain, viper up, mana drain)
Me: 2061.1DPS
Wahlu: 360.8DPS
Total: 2423.9DPS
Conclusions:
In this rotation I'll be introducing Aimed Shot every time it's up _after_ Explosive Shot and I'm _NOT_ trap-dancing. The result is encouraging... unbuffed DPS 2.5k, that ain't bad. That ain't bad at all! And that doesn't even have the 5% DPS increase from Imp. Tracking, as the training dummies are untrackable.
SESSION TWO (Rotation: Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot, Aimed Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Explosive Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot)
Test #1 - initial parse.
Spec used 2/17/52 - initial parse.
Duration: 317.32 seconds (mana drain, viper up, mana drain, viper up, mana drain)
Me: 2079.6
Wahlu: 350.5
Total: 2430.1
Test #2 - control parse.
Duration: 306.04 seconds (mana drain, viper up, mana drain, viper up, mana drain)
Me: 2171.7
Wahlu: 315.9
Total: 2487.6
So, two specs are pretty much the same - ~2.4-2.5k DPS being the standard here. Also, pet seems to be doing pretty much same DPS with one or two points in GftT, so I'm going to respec _AGAIN_, removing one point from GftT and putting it somewhere else. I'm not sure yet what's the exact build is going to be, most likely 2/17/52, where one point from Go for the Throat is moved to 2/2 Rapid Fire or the original build I used, where there is 1/2 in GftT and RK, 2/3 in ST and 2/3 in Imp. Stings. I'm not sure yet which I'm going to choose.
3.0.8 is upon us!
So, the new patch - version 3.0.8 - was released on wednesday to european servers. I'll include the list of changes. I've already done some preliminary testing on Survival-tree after the patch; Explosive Shot is nicely buffed indeed, critting for over 3k on regular basis. I'm going to do a bit more extensive training dummy sessions in a while and will be posting the results here, so stay tuned!
perjantai 16. tammikuuta 2009
New gun and helmet!
My wednesday began with my participation in 25-man Obsidian Sanctum (with no drakes up). Well, Sartharion fell on second try and guess what it dropped? Hyaline Helm of the Sniper of course! And guess what? Only one other hunter in the raid and no encha shammys! When time comes to roll, I roll 86 and smile spreads to my face... only to see the only other hunter roll 95 after me. Ohhhh wellll.
Fortunately, the day got a very happy ending: for the first time during WotLK, Frozen Dawn (our guild) was able to dispatch two separate raids to 10-man Naxxramas. Our run was a huge success: full clear took only a bit over 3 hours, which was our record by two hours!! And all the way up to Kel'Thuzad we were THIS close of getting the Undying achievement... no wipes, no deaths at all. Then, unfortunately, four people died during Kel'Thuzad. :/ Anyways, full Naxxramas clear with ONLY four deaths and even them on the last boss, well, that's pretty great accomplishment.
And guess what? I don't feel that sore about the lost helmet from OS anymore! Thaddius dropped Arc-Scorched Helmet, woot! And the biggest thing of all - Kel'Thuzad finally dropped Nerubian Conquerer, I'm soooo happy. :-D
WOOZZAAAHH!!
Fortunately, the day got a very happy ending: for the first time during WotLK, Frozen Dawn (our guild) was able to dispatch two separate raids to 10-man Naxxramas. Our run was a huge success: full clear took only a bit over 3 hours, which was our record by two hours!! And all the way up to Kel'Thuzad we were THIS close of getting the Undying achievement... no wipes, no deaths at all. Then, unfortunately, four people died during Kel'Thuzad. :/ Anyways, full Naxxramas clear with ONLY four deaths and even them on the last boss, well, that's pretty great accomplishment.
And guess what? I don't feel that sore about the lost helmet from OS anymore! Thaddius dropped Arc-Scorched Helmet, woot! And the biggest thing of all - Kel'Thuzad finally dropped Nerubian Conquerer, I'm soooo happy. :-D
WOOZZAAAHH!!
keskiviikko 14. tammikuuta 2009
Raiding continues
Last saturday our guild was able to pull off our first 25-man Naxxramas, although we had to combine our forces with a fellow guild. The run went pretty smoothly, even though we never got to down Sapphiron and Kel'thuzad - everything else up to that point was cleared, though.
I got some pretty dang good IL-216 gear and in slots where I really needed upgrades, so I'm verry happy about this. The upgrades I got were Shoulderpads of Secret Arts (which I gemmed with Delicate Scarlet Ruby) and probably best-in-slot bracers, Slime Stream Bands (gemmed with purple +7 agi/+11 stamina gem). Both have +hit in it, which is great.
Then, yesterday our guild decided to continue Malygos(10) rehearsal... from the first try on, it was obvious that Maly will go down as long as we avoid stupid deaths in phase 2 and 3. And finally, on our fourth or fifth try of the night, Malygos finally fell! Oh what an euphoria! I am now Champion of the Frozen Wastes and despite Maly not dropping Black Ice, the only other upgrade from Maly-10 dropped. Surge Needle Ring is definitely best-in-slot ring - woozzah!!
Today we are going to Naxxramas(10) again and for the first time since WotLK came out, our guild is possibly running two different raids to Naxx during one reset period, which is just great. Personally, I just love Naxx, even though it gets quite easy once you've learned all the fights and got the feel for it. Only fight where I still struggle is Gluth - kiting the zombie chow is not easy by any means, but it's something I have to do as a hunter.
I got some pretty dang good IL-216 gear and in slots where I really needed upgrades, so I'm verry happy about this. The upgrades I got were Shoulderpads of Secret Arts (which I gemmed with Delicate Scarlet Ruby) and probably best-in-slot bracers, Slime Stream Bands (gemmed with purple +7 agi/+11 stamina gem). Both have +hit in it, which is great.
Then, yesterday our guild decided to continue Malygos(10) rehearsal... from the first try on, it was obvious that Maly will go down as long as we avoid stupid deaths in phase 2 and 3. And finally, on our fourth or fifth try of the night, Malygos finally fell! Oh what an euphoria! I am now Champion of the Frozen Wastes and despite Maly not dropping Black Ice, the only other upgrade from Maly-10 dropped. Surge Needle Ring is definitely best-in-slot ring - woozzah!!
Today we are going to Naxxramas(10) again and for the first time since WotLK came out, our guild is possibly running two different raids to Naxx during one reset period, which is just great. Personally, I just love Naxx, even though it gets quite easy once you've learned all the fights and got the feel for it. Only fight where I still struggle is Gluth - kiting the zombie chow is not easy by any means, but it's something I have to do as a hunter.
tiistai 6. tammikuuta 2009
More raiding
Hey again! The raiding of the new content has continued and our guild is nicely gearing up; from 31st to 6th we did Vault of Archavon 10 and 25, The Obsidian Sanctum 10 and 25 (with no drakes up), Naxxramas 10 and some 25 plus rehearsing Malygos in the Eye of the Eternity. So yeah, lot of the new content has been gone thru and I've got some decent drops.
For example, my T7-gloves are now gathering dust in the bank as I got Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets off of Grand Widow Faerlina. Gemmed and enchanted (+16 agi gem plus +20 agility enchant) they are very, very good gloves - gives me nice chunk of hit, which was one of the major reasons for swapping T7-gloves for these. Anyway, T7 does have haste which is good for Survivalist-hunters but still, getting that hit rating capped without having any talent points in Focused Aim is something to thrive for. I could've got sweet money out of selling those BoE-gloves, but naah, I didn't do it. These gloves are perhaps the best gloves for Beastmaster-hunter, barring 25-man raids and even tho I am Surv at the moment, I still like to stack hit + crit instead of haste + armor pen, which T7 has. My Steady Shot cast is at the moment down to 1.7 seconds, so it's not THAT far. And using Meteorite Whetstone along with Imp. Aspect of the Hawk brings the Steady Shot below it's GCD whenever they proc.
Anyway, here's a list of upgrades I've received lately and the enchants/gems I'm using:
Shoulders: Pauldrons of Havoc - these shoulders dropped TWICE during one reset period; first 4-horsemen dropped them and a enhancement shammy won the roll. But then I got lucky; Gluth, who has a shared loot-table, ALSO dropped these and now I was alone to roll for them. Whee. =) They currently have the lamey +40ap/+15res enchant because I don't have enough reputation for Sons of Hodir shoulder enchant yet.
Hands: Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets - dropped from Grand Widow Faerlina. Pretty much the best hunter gloves barring 25-man raids and ESPECIALLY brilliant for Beastmaster hunters... brilliant for other specs without hit cap as well. With these gloves I'm no finally hit-capped without spending any points in talents to get the hit rating up. This also means, that my pet gets all of my 8% hit (the 3% from Focused Aim doesn't scale to the pet, so my pet was doing a lot of misses earlier) which is great.
Gemmed: Delicate Scarlet Ruby
Enchanted: +20 agility
Finger: Sealing Ring of Grobbulus - very, very nice ring.
2-handed weapon: Wraith Spear - drops off Maexxna in 10-man version. Pretty brilliant polearm for a hunter, even though it's a trade-off between dualwielding pretty great 1-handers which both contain +hit rating (which is a bulk of my overall hit) and loads of agility (+22 agi enchant on both of my 1-handers). Anyway, this buffs up my crit very nicely and raidbuffed I'm with over 45% crit! I got this enchanted with +85 attack power, because the +110ap is soooo expensive and there is no +agility enchant in WotLK for two-handers, which is very weird. Anyways, wielding this means that I have to employ my "hit-ring" (Mobius Ring) and "hit-trinket" (Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood), as I usually use Hemorrhaging Circle as another ring and Meteorite Whetstone to boost my haste. But the hit-trinket ain't bad either: I've macroed it to my Steady Shot, so when I'm using that trinket, it comes up every 2 minutes and it's a nice boost to DPS.
Here's the spec I'm currently using. As I have Glyph of Imp. AotH, I only need to put 3/5 in the talent and still get the 15% attack speed increase. From MM-tree I decided to go for Aimed Shot, as there are lot of boss fights where you have to move, and Survivalist only has Explosive Shot and Arcane Shot as instants and they do share the cooldown. So, Aimed Shot is a nice extension to my shot arsenal and I can now shoot two instants in a row, which is pretty nicely whenever a situation requires increased burst damage. When Lock'n'Load procs, I can shoot XShot-Steady-Steady-XShot (thus using both free shots for explo shot - the two steadies in between makes sure that I won't overwrite the 2sec ticking fire damage prematurealy) and toss an Aimed Shot after that or to create even higher burst damage -> XShot-Arcane Shot-Aimed Shot. Also, decided to put 1/2 in Rapid Killing to bring the CD down one minute - it's now very possible to use it twice during a (raid) boss fight either for increased DPS or to get mana back with Viper more quickly, which is the main use I've had for Rapid Fire so far. Popping that and using XShot every 6 seconds, it's like 12 to 15 seconds and I'm from 20% mana to 100% again.
The other talents in MM are no-brainers; Lethal 5/5, Mortal 5/5, Careful Aim 3/3 and GftT 2/2.
For this particular build, I decided from the get-go, that I'm not even thinking of getting Sniper Training, instead I took Trap Mastery and 1/3 in Resourcefulness - that'll help a great deal for example in Gluth-fight. Also, the usual 2/3 in Expose Weakness and Hunting Party are guaranteed to create ~95% uptime.
That's pretty much it. What comes to my "wishlist", there's a helmet, boots and bracers on that list. Preferably T7-helmet, Trespasser's Boots from Noth and Bands of Anxiety from Grobbulus.
Today our guild is doing Naxx10 with an intention for full-clear - last time around it took 6 hours 15 minutes, maybe we can snatch 30min or so from it this time! :-) And please, oh please - let Kelly drop Nerubian Conquerer!
For example, my T7-gloves are now gathering dust in the bank as I got Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets off of Grand Widow Faerlina. Gemmed and enchanted (+16 agi gem plus +20 agility enchant) they are very, very good gloves - gives me nice chunk of hit, which was one of the major reasons for swapping T7-gloves for these. Anyway, T7 does have haste which is good for Survivalist-hunters but still, getting that hit rating capped without having any talent points in Focused Aim is something to thrive for. I could've got sweet money out of selling those BoE-gloves, but naah, I didn't do it. These gloves are perhaps the best gloves for Beastmaster-hunter, barring 25-man raids and even tho I am Surv at the moment, I still like to stack hit + crit instead of haste + armor pen, which T7 has. My Steady Shot cast is at the moment down to 1.7 seconds, so it's not THAT far. And using Meteorite Whetstone along with Imp. Aspect of the Hawk brings the Steady Shot below it's GCD whenever they proc.
Anyway, here's a list of upgrades I've received lately and the enchants/gems I'm using:
Shoulders: Pauldrons of Havoc - these shoulders dropped TWICE during one reset period; first 4-horsemen dropped them and a enhancement shammy won the roll. But then I got lucky; Gluth, who has a shared loot-table, ALSO dropped these and now I was alone to roll for them. Whee. =) They currently have the lamey +40ap/+15res enchant because I don't have enough reputation for Sons of Hodir shoulder enchant yet.
Hands: Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets - dropped from Grand Widow Faerlina. Pretty much the best hunter gloves barring 25-man raids and ESPECIALLY brilliant for Beastmaster hunters... brilliant for other specs without hit cap as well. With these gloves I'm no finally hit-capped without spending any points in talents to get the hit rating up. This also means, that my pet gets all of my 8% hit (the 3% from Focused Aim doesn't scale to the pet, so my pet was doing a lot of misses earlier) which is great.
Gemmed: Delicate Scarlet Ruby
Enchanted: +20 agility
Finger: Sealing Ring of Grobbulus - very, very nice ring.
2-handed weapon: Wraith Spear - drops off Maexxna in 10-man version. Pretty brilliant polearm for a hunter, even though it's a trade-off between dualwielding pretty great 1-handers which both contain +hit rating (which is a bulk of my overall hit) and loads of agility (+22 agi enchant on both of my 1-handers). Anyway, this buffs up my crit very nicely and raidbuffed I'm with over 45% crit! I got this enchanted with +85 attack power, because the +110ap is soooo expensive and there is no +agility enchant in WotLK for two-handers, which is very weird. Anyways, wielding this means that I have to employ my "hit-ring" (Mobius Ring) and "hit-trinket" (Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood), as I usually use Hemorrhaging Circle as another ring and Meteorite Whetstone to boost my haste. But the hit-trinket ain't bad either: I've macroed it to my Steady Shot, so when I'm using that trinket, it comes up every 2 minutes and it's a nice boost to DPS.
Here's the spec I'm currently using. As I have Glyph of Imp. AotH, I only need to put 3/5 in the talent and still get the 15% attack speed increase. From MM-tree I decided to go for Aimed Shot, as there are lot of boss fights where you have to move, and Survivalist only has Explosive Shot and Arcane Shot as instants and they do share the cooldown. So, Aimed Shot is a nice extension to my shot arsenal and I can now shoot two instants in a row, which is pretty nicely whenever a situation requires increased burst damage. When Lock'n'Load procs, I can shoot XShot-Steady-Steady-XShot (thus using both free shots for explo shot - the two steadies in between makes sure that I won't overwrite the 2sec ticking fire damage prematurealy) and toss an Aimed Shot after that or to create even higher burst damage -> XShot-Arcane Shot-Aimed Shot. Also, decided to put 1/2 in Rapid Killing to bring the CD down one minute - it's now very possible to use it twice during a (raid) boss fight either for increased DPS or to get mana back with Viper more quickly, which is the main use I've had for Rapid Fire so far. Popping that and using XShot every 6 seconds, it's like 12 to 15 seconds and I'm from 20% mana to 100% again.
The other talents in MM are no-brainers; Lethal 5/5, Mortal 5/5, Careful Aim 3/3 and GftT 2/2.
For this particular build, I decided from the get-go, that I'm not even thinking of getting Sniper Training, instead I took Trap Mastery and 1/3 in Resourcefulness - that'll help a great deal for example in Gluth-fight. Also, the usual 2/3 in Expose Weakness and Hunting Party are guaranteed to create ~95% uptime.
That's pretty much it. What comes to my "wishlist", there's a helmet, boots and bracers on that list. Preferably T7-helmet, Trespasser's Boots from Noth and Bands of Anxiety from Grobbulus.
Today our guild is doing Naxx10 with an intention for full-clear - last time around it took 6 hours 15 minutes, maybe we can snatch 30min or so from it this time! :-) And please, oh please - let Kelly drop Nerubian Conquerer!
Tilaa:
Blogitekstit (Atom)