Hey guys,
From what I hear, your all mostly BM hunters, a most excellent choice. Good for PvP and Raid DPS, BM hunters can do an awful lot of damage, wipe aggro every 30 secs and your pet can do some nice DPS too.
First off, allow me to introduce someone.
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Aerie+Peak&n=IsalanThats my hunter, too date my best geared character. She was even known to top the DPS tables at times.
First things first, copy my talent build. Its designed for maximum DPS from both hunter and pet.
Next, get yourself a DPS pet. A cat is a solid choice, Ravagers have their plus points, and Boars are also quite popular. Windserpents are good when you know the monster your fighting is not melee friendly, so having a windeserpent stabled can be useful.
Thridly, work out a shot rotation. All BM hunters use a 1:1 shot rotation, due to Serpents Swiftness, the 2nd to last talent in the BM tree.
To start your shot rotation you need an addon to help. Try this one, always been a favourite of mine.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/4803/download/49663/Put it somewhere you can see it on your playing surface, you'll be refering to it a lot.
As you can probably tell, the bars represent cooldowns and time remaining on your various abilities. The one you want to pay attention to most is the autoshot bar. Thats where the shot rotation comes in.
As I said earlier, you'll be using a 1:1 shot rotation. What this means is you'll be using 1 special shot for every 1 autoshot. Marksmanship hunters will generally use a 2:1 rotation (if they have a really slow gun/bow) or a 3:2 rotation if its a little faster.
Now, the important bit. The main skill you'll be using is Steady Shot. The whole idea of a shot rotation is to fit a steady shot in betweem the cooldowns for your autoshot. In other words, you fire an autoshot, do a quick steady shot, and have it come off before the next auto shot. Steady Shot has a cast time of 1.5 seconds, so its not too hard. However, the talent Serpents Swiftness will make it a little tighter.
Here's some Maths, stay with me.
Lets say you have a bow/gun with a 2.8 speed.
2.8(actual bow speed)x0.75 = 2.1(adjusted bow speed)
Chances are you'll have imp aspect of the hawk too, and that increases your shot speed by another 15% when it procs, and it procs a lot.
2.1(new bow speed)x0.85 = 1.785(adjusted bow speed)
Right, so despite having a reasonably slow gun to start with, your bow speed is now down to 1.8 (rounded up). That gives you 0.3 seconds from firing your auto shot to start on your steady shot, otherwise your steady shot will go on too long and prevent your auto shot form firing on time. This will lose you DPS, which we don't want.
So, long story short. The idea of the BM shot rotation is to fire a Steady Shot IN BETWEEN your autoshots, this will up your DPS loads. Obv, you can swap out Steady Shot for Arcane Shot when it coolsdown, or if your really careful, you can fit it in at the end of a Steady Shot and max your DSP even further.
In any case, the autoshot bar on the add on above will give you a timer and visual representation of your auto shot cooldown and this makes it much easier to get your rotation right. If you need practice, theres some mobs in the Blasted Lands (right through the portal) who get to low health and don't die. Try out your rotations on them, though you'll need to give your pet time to get aggro.
Good Luck Huntery types!
Blade/Runes
Wed Apr 30, 2008 2:23 pm