The Glade 4.0

Hey guys,

So, I have a guildy who is a fairly new 80. WoW is her first MMO, and she's the classic 'huntard' at this point, but she wants to get better. We're a fairly small guild with no other hunters to turn to. So I figured I'd see about turning to you guys for any tips to help improve a survival hunter. I'm not looking to overwhelm her with a ton of min/maxing type of info, but I've gotta do something to try & increase the DPS. LOL

Here is the Armory link.

I can only assume her spec/pet spec are likely not so hot. And I did some looking on EJ for rotation info and mostly found posts that said they were up to date with 3.1 or 3.2 only. I wasn't certain if much changed for survival hunters since 3.3.

I, and my fellow guildies, would appreciate any help you guys can give.

Thanks!

Her spec could use some tweaking, as could her glyphs.

Here's my hunter's spec, which is pretty vanilla survival.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-tale ... s+of+Truth

Since we're talking about a true newbie, I'm going to start with the basics and assume nothing.

A couple key concepts for DPS of any type:

- Make sure you're engaged in the combat as soon as possible. You want as close to 100% active time in the fight as you can manage.
- You should be always hitting an attack or cooldown. Never just sit back and let auto-attack go.
- Manage your aggro (super easy with hunters) - you do 0 dps when you're dead.
- Use your cooldowns (trinkets, special abilities, etc.) often. Don't save them, but do try and make sure they are available for boss fights where appropriate.
- Typically your weapons are the single biggest contributor to your dps, make sure you have good weapons and do the research to find out where they drop and actively seek them out.
- Armor/Gear is next, so same drill here as well
- Practice, practice, practice
- Monitor your performance - Recount, while very imperfect, will help you get a feel for if your rotation and skill is improving

Some Survival Hunter basics:

- Make sure Serpent Sting is up all the time
- Make sure you hit Black Arrow, Explosive Shot and Aimed Shot/Multi Shot every time they are up, in that priority order
- Use Steady Shot when everything else is on cooldown (ALWAYS be hitting a button, always)
- Make sure you're managing your mana with Aspect of the Viper, but don't forget to go back to Aspect of the Dragonhawk. There are addons to help with that if you're bad about remembering.
- Don't excessively move around. Stay in one spot if you can so you take advantage of Sniper Training.
- Misdirect is your friend. There are good macro's out there that make it easy to use and your tanks will love you for it.
- Feign Death is your friend. If you get aggro on a mob, drop immediately unless it's almost dead.

I'm sure folks like Khross and Talya will have more to say, as they are much more active on their Hunters than I am, but that should get you pointed in the right direction.

A well-played SV hunter wont need to worry about min/maxing to be competitive, especially outside of a raid environment.

Shot Priority:
Explosive > Black Arrow > Serpent > Aimed > Steady

Make sure she understands that serpent and black arrow only need to be applied every 20 seconds or so, not every round. Her actual rotation will probably end up something like this: Explosive > Black > Serpent > Aimed > Explosive > Steady... Repeat steady until a shot with higher priority comes back.

Racials and Trinkets: When to use these depends on the length of the fight. In general, though, I like to blow my big cooldowns at the start of the fight (including misdirect!), drop some bombs, FD, then continue with a normal rotation. If the fight goes on for a while, I use my racial/trinket whenever they're off CD.

Don't forget kill shot in that rotation. As soon as kill shot is available, use it before anything else.

Honestly, I had always heard to use BA before ES at the start, and once you get 2t9 to use BA -> SS -> Explosive shot to start.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Good point on kill shot, but I always prioritize it under Explosive because Explosive is more potential damage.

Thanks guys! I think this'll help.

Explosive is more potential than Kill Shot?

For me, 3 explosive crits is around 10k, whereas 1 kill shot crit is around 15k.

This is what I usually use as a fast hunter reference- it's like EJ, but condensed.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

You know, I can't recall when I started doing that, but it was true at one point haha. You're right.

I found an add-on that at first look, is sort of like addons I've seen for ret paly's. It helps you figure out what to use and when, based on cooldowns. Do you guys think something like this, with help configuring it based on priority you guys have stated, would help a new hunter learn a rotation?

SpellFlash

I'd recommend Power Auras Classic. Visual cues centered around your character are much better for not getting tunnel vision.

Guide:
http://www.qqpewpew.com/2009/07/10/crea ... a-configs/

IMHO, you should start without much in the way of addons.

It's like teaching someone how to shoot.

You don't hand them a automatic scoped rifle as the first gun to learn on. You hand them a single shot, open sight gun.

Similarly, I would have her try the suggestions listed here first without any addons other than recount so that she can see where's she's at and monitor improvement. After about maybe 20-30 hours of play and doing things manually, then potentially introduce macros and addons that help.

But YMMV.

Good call. I was likely getting ahead of myself. Will perhaps see about introducing some of the addon's later.

I'm thinking of perhaps just having her line up, 1-6 or what not, the spells you guys have listed, and in the order recommended, and telling her to look from left to right, and click which one furthest to the left is available at any given time, minus serpent sting & such.

Thanks again guys, I really appreciate it.

That's exactly how I have my hotbar setup.

Researching this kinda makes me want to level my old hunter up to 80 and figure out a way to steal that kick *** UI Khross was showing off a few months back. LOL

Thank you guys SO much for all of the help. This'll definitely help her. I just needed to figure out what it is I was supposed to tell her to do.

Are you talking about this UI?

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I am. That thing looks beautiful.

Not particularly practical though.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Why not? I assumed it had other hidden elements that could be brought up as needed, similar to the functionality of the addon Opie and the like?

There's not enough buttons

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Holy shitsnacks!

I figured it had hidden buttons for the less vital things that need to be pushed.

Hunters with buttons all over the place are the hunters you hate grouping with.

Little out of date, but here's how I run:

I would rank some sort of addon to track Lock and Load as a necessity to play Survival. Same is true for many specs, for that matter -- important procs that immediately require you to address them need some help. I use Power Auras as suggested here and I loves it much.

Speaking of which, LNL procs are what... Explosive -> Auto Shot -> Explosive -> Auto Shot -> Explosive?

Just ran my Hunter geared mostly in S4 gear (yes, PVP gear from Burning Crusade era) through daily heroic for past 2 weeks or so. It was embarrassing, but I need me my primordial saronite for my main!

Shots don't clip autos anymore, so it's 3x explosives, 2 seconds apart. That means let the GCD go and wait another .5 sec before you blast again.

Thats what she said.

Ah. That works out to about roughly what I was doing anyway! :p Handy LNL actually made me look halfway respectable every now and then on boss fights.

Great looking UIs Khross and Lenas. I really need to clean mine up...

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe