Krez, you are my new hero

[Krezfan]

Dear Krez, after looking at hunters across many guilds I have determined that you might very well be the very best hunter in the game. You have consistency and top performances every week, and outperform myself by about 15% despite the fact that I consistently outperform all other hunters (from what I could tell, across my entire server based on WWS). As someone who prides herself on being the top DPS hunter wherever she goes, I have seen a significant difference between myself and you in various fights. I know its sometimes difficult to differentiate sarcasm between actual praise, but this is in fact actual praise.

What makes you 15% more awesome them me? I was convinced I was doing every single thing right when no other hunters would rarely come close to me in the meters. I know obviously that since your guild is probably the best in the US, fights are shorter, and thus advantageous to you DPS-wise. Still, I wouldn't think this would account for the entire 15% gap. I thought I knew everything about the shot rotation, mods, macros, etc. What is the priority on your shot rotation? How often is that rotation messed up? For example, I make about 0-3 errors on easy bosses, firing a shot out of rotation, and maybe 4-9 on more difficult bosses (usually the mobile fights). What would you say is the most important thing to keeping your DPS so consistently high? I noticed your low hit rating, does that work out for you?

Krez, help out this ambitious hunter. I want to be the 'Krez' of my realm.

[Nidaba]

Krez, have my babies.

[Krez]

Link me a wws (you can make them anonymous if you want), and I can take a look. Also, yes I do alright, but I give a lot of credit to my guild and Kontested and Gazelle. I rarely, if ever, spec marks, so comparatively I might look a little better. My hit rating is low because I like to equip my Dreambinder when I stand around in Dalaran. I use my Twisted Visage during raid, but only until I get another solid piece of hit gear so I can go back to the DB.

Shot priority: kill shot > explosive > black arrow > serpent > aimed/multi > steady. Sometimes I break it depending on the situation. If there are multiple mobs, I'll multi-shot before I serpent. A lot of times I'll target switch to do a kill shot if something is low. Never serpent and BA if a target is low and you won't get the full effect. Refresh serpent if you're on the move and all instants are on cooldown. Volley if there's 4+ mobs. Pre-volley if you know that there's going to be a lot of mobs coming very soon (but make sure your finger is hovering over the FD button). Keep stings up consistently on multiple mobs. If dps is split, fire your magical shots on targets with magic debuffs and physical shots on targets with physical debuffs. During lock and load procs, target switch every gcd so you don't have to wait that half a second like you do on a single target. Hmm, that's all I can really think of for now. I can post a few more tips if I come up with anything.

Are there any specific bosses you'd like to know about? I always look for ways to maximize performance on every encounter.

Thanks for the appreciation btw. I'm more than happy to help.

[Krezfan]

I am Sybianne on Eonar. Here are links to our guilds most recent fights, all of which in the past two weeks I have participated in:

http://wmo.178.com/browse/guild/13074/0/nil/begintime/desc/3/0/25#common25
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Eonar&n=Sybianne (Raiding spec is SV, other is a PVP spec)

Regarding my current armory, I'm currently over hit as of a couple days ago when I acquired new gear (T8.5 tunic and T8 Shoulders). When these logs were taken I was just about right at the hit cap. Although since I'm now receiving the full tier 8 bonus, I've found the difference to be worth sticking with the high hit for now rather than swapping out and losing the bonus. My intention is to get another weapon when one becomes available that has significantly less hit. For now, there isn't any gear I can switch out without losing my tier 8 bonus. My BiS list for long term growth has everything balanced, so it isn't an immediate concern.

I will try your shot priority and see how significant an improvement it is. I have in fact done the LnL-target-switches and KS-target-switches at times, though there are not a lot of non-trash opportunities for that. Although I haven't previously done so on the level you probably do. I'll work that into my flow as well. In regards to the magical shots for magic debuffs and physical shots for physical debuffs - the furthest I have gone in that regard is just on Vezax, using physical shots outside of shadow crash, and then firing magical shots once inside the buff. Can you clarify on that a bit, are you speaking of specific fights, or are you easily able to quickly assess which targets might have magical/physical debuffs?

I've always done smaller things, like saving Call of the Wild for heroism, stinging multiple targets during mobile moments (Yogg comes to mind), disengaging instead of moving (shaves a full second at times), although I can see that the difference might be the level you take it to. I'll certainly work on that. Thank you Krez. Right now my guild is working on Yogg minus Mimiron primarily, so I'm trying to eek out a few more percentage points out of my performance. Your advice gets me thinking outside the box a little, which is precisely what I was hoping to find. Thank you.

[Gazelle]

Dear Krez, after looking at hunters across many guilds I have determined that you might very well be the very best hunter in the game.

After many months of raiding with Krez I'm inclined to agree with you at least to the point I haven't personally met anyone better. It's actually somewhat infuriating knowing that the only time I beat him is when he screws up.

Also, yes I do alright, but I give a lot of credit to my guild and Kontested and Gazelle.

The humility is fascinating to me. I don't know if Nidaba ever told you but the very first conversation we ever had prior to your applying here I thought you were extremely arrogant or condescending. I apparently misjudged or misinterpreted the conversation. I'm glad my initial assumption was wrong but after actually playing with you I think you're entitled to a bit of ego anyway.

[Kyth]

Krez smells. a lot.

[GreenMidget]

Krez smells. a lot.
smells of sex and awesome I hear

[Nidaba]

Naw, Old Spice and prunes.

[Nadina]

Krez's face when he saw this thread.

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/6923/krez.jpg

[Krez]

Back in the day, I was very much guilty of having an ego, but since then I have tried extremely hard to get rid of it. I think I've succeeded for the most part, but sometimes it shows through. Suffice to say, I've grown up a lot, and I understand the value of not being so arrogant and being more of a team player.

Back on topic, I'll try and be a little more clear and give some examples:

Concerning gear, the gear in Ulduar is weird. There are pieces with ridiculous amounts of hit on them, and pieces with zero. I, too, found it hard to difficult to lose some hit when I got my Twisted Visage. 70 hit on one piece is crazy. It's also very hard to make up for a drop in hit like that with gems. Increments of 8, 16, and 27 hit (in gems) make it hard to get your hit close to 263.

As for buffs, I'll give a few examples. On Mimiron, our casters are on the head in p4, and our melee are on the base. In that particular case, I fire explosive shots at the head, physical shots on the base, and try to serpent sting two (ideally all three) sections. It's hard to keep stings up 100% on them since other higher priority shots come up in the process, but any full serpent sting that gets off is better than using that gcd on steady shot.

Another good example is XT hardmode. Caster debuffs are up on XT the entire time. Thus I shoot my explosive shots, black arrows, and serpents at XT and use aimed and steady for the life sparks. If the life sparks get behind, I'll ES the sparks to keep up. I also hate losing explosive shot ticks on the life sparks since they tend to die pretty quickly. And again, the raid > you, so use good judgment if you start to fall behind on sparks.

On Yogg, I try to help out on the Immortal Guardians in p3 as much as possible while keeping black arrow and serpent up on Yogg himself. His hp is also under 20% for a large portion of the fight, so you're going to want to KS him every nine seconds (assuming it's glyphed).

Vezax is actually a good example of where I don't change much even with the shadow crash buff. First and foremost, the shadow crash buff reduces the amount of mana it takes to use your shots. Even if your magic damage is buffed, you're still going to want to use all shots when the magic ones are on cooldown. Outside of the shadow crash, you're still going to want to deeps since we can get our mana back pretty easily. The only thing I do differently on this fight is hold off on an ES if I'm running to get into a shadow crash. I'd rather wait a second until I get the buff instead of firing it on the run and having it on cooldown when the buff goes up.

Another thing I might not have mentioned is the new viper sting. Look for targets that have mana, and viper sting them right as your serpent falls off, and then reapply serpent when viper falls off. You lose a few ticks of serpent, but the mana returns are huge. A great example of this is Freya. Focus Freya, and use a /cast [target=focus] Viper sting macro to viper her on cooldown when mana gets tight (this also works on the Assembly of Iron).

You also mentioned disengage. This is HUGE. Even when running in straight lines or short distances, I try to use disengage because it always saves time. Jump forward -> spin camera -> disengage -> profit. I pvp'd a ton last season, so using disengage is like second-nature to me.

All this said, sometimes I feel like I dps selfishly. Example: XT. We were told that hunters were on the life sparks, but when that wasn't enough (probably because all gcd's weren't used to kill them), we had to add a few more people. It's hard to say what is more raid dps, but I could stick to my job much cleaner. I also aoe *whenever* I can. Volley is a simple way to do a lot of damage. The faster the aoe adds die, the faster people can get back to the single target (usually the boss), so who makes the call as to what is the highest raid dps?

The great thing about being a dps is that there's very little "overkill" meaning that as long as you're doing damage, you're helping to kill something (different than healing where there's a ton of overhealing). In the case of dps, take whatever action will result in the highest, most efficient way of doing damage.

[nadyne]

one of my best fights in ulduar is ignis , i can easily pull 6000 dps in this
fight with my mm spec , if you want to take a look at my armory its
nadyne on winterhoof ,

one of the things as mm is i dont know wether to wait til theres 3 sec on
serpent to do chim or to just shoot chim every chance i get ,

i do find however that surv is a much easyer spec compared to mm to
keep dps on most fights .

[KURS]

Concerning gear, the gear in Ulduar is weird. Their are pieces with ridiculous amounts of hit on them, and pieces with zero.


HIS GEAR IS ALIVE!!!

[Grayson Carlyle]

I am Sybianne on Eonar.I want to meet the woman who would name her character "Sybianne".

[Kyth]

All this said, sometimes I feel like I dps selfishly. Example: XT. We were told that hunters were on the life sparks, but when that wasn't enough (probably because all gcd's weren't used to kill them), we had to add a few more people. It's hard to say what is more raid dps, but I could stick to my job much cleaner. I also aoe *whenever* I can. Volley is a simple way to do a lot of damage. The faster the aoe adds die, the faster people can get back to the single target (usually the boss), so who makes the call as to what is the highest raid dps?

Not that you asked my opinion but:

The problem when you say "well I know I'm supposed to do X but doing Y will give me more personal DPS so I'll do that instead" is that it makes it extremely hard to be a raidleader without playing nursemaid.

I can either on a new boss:

(a) assume you guys are all doing what you're asked to do and, when what we're trying doesn't work, redesign the strategy, or

(b) check up on everyone all the time


I tend to assume (a) -- but what that means is, when hunter dps "isn't enough" on the sparks and we pull more people off the boss onto them, we're assuming you were actually doing your job.

(in this case I don't think your off dotting was an issue, hunters alone couldn't have held them down. just picking on the general point.)


Volley and other AE's is actually a great example too:

Now that every class has AE, I have to say that probably my biggest frustration in the world is handling the fact that people would rather AE than burn down a single target.

This *has* caused us to learn particular fights a bit slower in the past, and certainly provides extra aggravation when you keep asking someone not to AE and they keep doing it. Not to mention, tanks sometimes will barely keep threat on a mob that no one is supposed to be DPS'ing, and forcing them to hold a higher threat on something can cause problems.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't ever AE or innovate -- part of being a good raider is knowing the cases when you can cut corners and squeeze some more DPS out.

But I would say that when a boss is new, the worst thing anyone can do is go off target to increase their own DPS because it just muddies the waters of "why aren't we having enough dps to get this done?"

Once things settle in you can learn the times when that burn really is important and the times when it'll happen anyways so you might as well AE, or dot the off-target, or whatever.

[Krezfan]

Thank you Krez. I'll implement your suggestions on my next run through. I actually haven't practiced the entire jump+spin+disengage thing, so I'll practice that to get ready for Mondays Yogg run, should help a bit since they keep me upstairs. I love playing bold like that (a move like that could potentially put you in the wrong place if you mess it up) so it kind of fits my style! While I put my pet on Yogg in phase 3 and a few dots, they were mostly sparse. I'll be more diligent and attempt to make it a true rotation.

Some things for me to work on that you've noted:
- Applying unnecessary DoTs at the end of a fight, since they won't last their full duration, needs to be corrected.
- Mimiron P3 physical/magic DPS. Definitely something I'd like to get down before we start the hard mode on it.
- Jump Disengage
- Keeping up DoTs on everything
- Switching targets to kill shot
- Switching targets to explosive shot if the shot won't get all 3 ticks.

All of course while keeping in mind that raid > dps. Thank you Krez, I'll work on these and implement your boss suggestions.


I want to meet the woman who would name her character "Sybianne".

I started WoW while at a friends house, we both laughed when I picked the name. I thought it was funny!

[Krez]

Kyth,

I understand your argument completely. It is tough mentally to sacrifice personal dps at times. I know quite well that there are times when you have to prioritize your job, especially since hunters get that job more than any other class.

There's something I've been thinking about for a while though. Fights like XT are a great example of "whose gcd does the most damage." In the case of hunters, our dots (black arrow) proc extra shots of our main nuke (explosive shot). It would be extremely hard to calculate on the fly considering all the variables, but it's something that I think about sometimes.

The same thing goes for aoe. Some class's aoe is more efficient that others vs. their single target dps. It makes more sense to have the single target beasts single targeting and have the more efficient aoe classes focus on that.

In reality though, it's hard to give up personal dps, and many people do not think about the efficiency of their damage versus the other classes in the raid based on the situation at hand.

And for Sybianne, I agree with everyone else. Your name owns. :D

Edit: Back to XT. The other reason I was black arrowing XT was because it was a particularly tight enrage timer that we were very close to missing. BA being a high damage shot + proccing explosive shots was basically extra "free" dps. So yes, sometimes it makes sense to stick to your job very strictly, and sometimes, due to class mechanics, it makes sense to be a little fuzzy on tasks to help out a little more.

[Vykromond]

i luxe
krez

[Trouble]

i luxe
u


Never forget.