Tweaking Macros and rotation (8 replies to this topic)

Hi All,

I'm an iLvl 488 BM Hunter, just 1/6 Normal atm on the reserve 10-man team, and want to move up to the varsity team, but not pulling the numbers. I don't have a WoL log atm, but will get one and post later. Here is my Armory Profile:  http://us.battle.net...s/Zazi/simple�� (BTW, this shows me not downing Garalon on LFR which is wrong, I've done him plenty. Weird)

I have all the gear max enchanted, have Leatherwork and Blacksmithing enchants as well, and gem and reforge strictly in accordance with the most current Icy-Veins, Noxxic, and MaxDPS recommendations. My talents are Posthaste, Silencing, Iron Hawk, Dire Beast, Lynx, and Glave. I always use 300 Agi Food and 1000 Agi Flask.

I ran Sims on my char and set it for raid buffs/debuffs, average player, and a boss like Feng, pretty much single target fight and not much movement needed. I have everything hotkeyed on my left hand of the keyboard, and my num-pad is hotkeyed for all my movement, including strafes, so I rarely touch a mouse. I am pretty good at constant attack while moving in any way due to a lot of PvP. My SiMs result shows this char should be pulling an average of 82K.   78-80K is what our varsity Hunters are pulling with similar gear and stats. My results are stuck at about 68-73K.

I believe there is something wrong with my macros and rotation, some place where I am not maximizing stacking potential, and possibly some erroneous macro construction where I am nullifying or not getting proper benefits. Here are my macros and general rotation (I realize there is no actual rotation for Hunters, and that it is situational. I constantly try to keep high awareness and make proper selections:

This is my primary combat macro for Kill Command and Beastile Wrath:
#showtooltip
#showkillcommand
/cast beastile wrath
/cast dash
/cast petassist
/cast petattack
/cast rabid
/cast kill command
/cast arcane shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

I am concerned I am trying to stuff too many things into one macro, but I have tested it and everything seems to work, and anything off cooldown in the list does fire in sequence. There is no GCD doubling up, so it all fires at once. I keep in 25 yards when using this. I have some doubts about the stacking order here, but cannot verify.

Anyway, my only other attack macro is for my opening serpent sting, just to consolidate hunters mark for the opening, since I have it glyphed as well:

Serpent Sting macro:
#showtooltip

/cast hunter's mark
/cast serpent sting
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

and

Rapid Fire Macro, to pop my pots before rapid fire sequences and tag on an arcane shot at the end:

#showtooltip
/cast Rapid Fire
/use Virmen's Bite
/cast Arcane Shot


As far as rotation, on something like Feng, I wait till the initial pull is within 25 yards, then open. Opening sequence:

- serpent sting macro (puts on hunters mark first)
- stampede (I use 5 ferocity pets, chosen for raid support buffs, and mainly use a spirit cat and a spirit heal macro for self or whoever may need).
- rapid fire macro (including Virmen's Bite pot)
- dire beast
- lynx rush
- Kill Command macro shown above (wrath, dash, rabid, kill command)
- glave toss
- arcane shot
- readiness
- rapid fire
- dire beast
- lynx rush
- Kill Command macro
- glave toss, arcane shots to 40%
- cobra shot
END OPENING sequence

After that, I rotate the kill command macro, glave toss, arcane shots and cobra shots, hitting anything else that comes off cooldown as needed. I am back and forth about using Focus Fire, and dont notice a significant difference either way, considering the need to keep the stacks on the pet, however, I've been using it more lately, trying to see a difference. I think I tend to use too many cobra shots in a row when i have rapid fire or focus fire on, just because the temptation to get full focus is so great, so i will fire off 3 or 4 cobra shots then back into regular rotation--I realize this is probably bad and a source of dps loss, but it does not account for missing 5-10K of dps. Something much bigger is wrong.

All the above said, we have 2 hunters on the reserve raid team, and I am usually just a little above the other one, and we are specc'd same, have similar gear (mine better), etc. He says he never uses any macros and just mashes buttons as fast as he can.

As I said, I will post a WoL log as soon as possible, but appreciate any help I can get with this above. I welcome all criticism and comments. Thanks mucho!

~Zaz

Edited by Zaz, 23 December 2012 - 09:58 AM.

Not an expert with hunters. . . haven't worked them much but part of your macro seems to have a flaw.  petassist and petattack are basically the same thing if you are in combat.  Generally you want the pet to be attacking your target and that is what petattack does unless you add a modifier like [target=targettarget]

Anyway here is a slightly cleaned and modified version.  I changed the clearing of the ui frame errors as it's easier to just not have them show at all than to just clear them.  Also from what I am reading Dash just increases movement speed.  The fight is already in progress and the pet should be already attacking or very nearby the target so by casting it you would be using your pets focus.

The #showtooltip should be followed by the spellname on the same line without another command.  Your other macro should have one selected as the tooltip or forgo the #showtooptip.

#ShowToolTip kill command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast petattack
/cast beastile wrath
/cast rabid
/cast kill command
/cast arcane shot
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()

Try that and see if it makes any dps changes for your pet from yours.  I would run recount with the hunter on autoshot only and your macro for a set amount of time on a target dummy and then try the other one for the same time period with the hunter only using auto shot for a comparison.

Edited by NightShade, 23 December 2012 - 11:39 AM.

Another thought here. . . modify your pull macro and add in the following lines

/cast Dash
/petattack

This will get your pet on target ASAP and attacking the target you marked. So t would look like this


#showtooltip serpent sting
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast hunter's mark
/cast Dash
/petattack
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()
/cast serpent sting

This should get your mark applied your pet in fast mode and attacking.  If there are any errors they will be hidden and then it should cast serpent sting.  If you do not want to see a out of focus error then move it up below /pet attack

Edited by NightShade, 23 December 2012 - 11:52 AM.

OK, here is a quicky log I took from an LFR Feng. I dunno if I am reading this right, but it looks like my kill command is doing NOTHING ??!!  WTF??

I also have a rather large percentage of miss?  I am hit and exp capped at 7.5+, so dunno what that means.

Anyways, thanks Nightshade ^^ for your above posts. Yes, it looks like my macros may well be quite faulty. Back to the drawing board. Please anyone feel free to look at this log and tell me what you can, I just started using it and dont know fully how to interpret it. Thanks:

http://www.worldoflo...s=231&e=632

Edited by Zaz, 24 December 2012 - 06:09 AM.

Your pet is actually on a separate line in that report. . . click the down arrow next to your name and then you can see the pet damage. looks like you are missing about 4.1 % of the time and your pet is about 50% of your total damage done.

How do you figure your reforges and gems?  A simple in game solution in game is reforge lite but you can check out Ask Mr Robot as well though it seems that for your toon it was trying to put your hit at 8.25% so something is not right there.

Anyway like I said not a knowledgeable person with hunter abilities so can't help much beyond what I have.

^^Thanks Nightshade, yeah I had just found how to see the pet activities, phew. OK, so the misses. I use reforge lite as you mention, and occasionally check Robot but it has seemed buggy since MoP. Anyway, my char stats show clearly that I am capped, but maybe something is bugged out. More research. My up time seems decent, though could improve. The big loss is really the missing and probably spell/attack choices and stacking order. At least I'm getting down to the smaller details, and that is what I'd hoped :-)

A few more fights analyzed and found that I had zero misses on other fights, or close to zero. But, when I look at the Feng fight, all the other hunters had similar misses, so this is something about Feng, not me. It leads me to figure my sticking point on dps around 70-73% is about what my gear can do for a low-average skill, and that I probably just need to tighten up my play. Sadly, no quick fix here, but more likely several tiny things. Next up, analyzing the number of times I use what spells and what cooldowns :-)

Zaz, on 24 December 2012 - 09:23 AM, said:

It's his Epicenter ability.  Basically, while he's channeling it, chances are you won't be landing much of anything.

Edited by Stasis, 24 December 2012 - 10:17 AM.

I maybe being real stoopid and forgive if I am, but does your serpent sting macro actual work??

From what I understand, Hunter's Mark takes a GCD which will negate the serpent sting being fired.....well that's what happens when I tried your macro.

Much better to link your hunters mark to the first pet attack, IMHO

Gulfv