If I could only choose one addon, Quartz would be the one I would pick. On the surface, it’s a timer addon. But once you set it up, I can give you a wealth of information. For a hunter, it’s possibly the best performance enhancer you can find.
You get it at WowAce.
First off, it’s a cast bar. In addition to the normal cast bar, it also includes a Auto Shot/Auto Attack (for the lesser classes) cast bar. For a hunter and their shot rotation, these two combined can be a great asset in developing and maintaining a shot rotation. I’ve spent quite a bit of time visiting Dr. Boom and literally staring at the combined cast bars timing my shots and ensuring that I’m not clipping, maximizing my DPS, etc. When I first switched to a Survival spec, this addon is what led me find out that using Arcane and Multi as soon as they were up was actually hurting my DPS, because I was able to watch both my Steady and Auto Shot timers and compare them. Basically the global cooldown was pushing the third Steady in my Auto-Steady-Multi-Auto-Steady-Arcane-Auto-Steady rotation back far enough that it was clipping the next Auto. Without Quartz, I probably would have never known. But enough about that, even though it is a big deal to hunters, the lesser classes are probably getting bored so we can talk shop later. :D
The next thing that Quartz does is what sets it into my list of MUST HAVE addons, is the debuff timers. Not only will they track your debuffs (and only yours, so you don’t have to look through a huge list to find yours) on your target, but it also does the same for your focus target (am I the only one thinking about chain trapping?) With Quartz, and a single glance, I can tell how long my hunters mark, scorpid sting have left on my main target, but also how long my focus is going to remain an ice cube. As a BM hunter this info is a great help in determining what your next move is while chain trapping. And for any class that can be called upon to do CC, or for that matter any class that will be responsible for keeping a debuff up, this can help out.
And just so you know, type “/quartz” to get to the configure menu.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Group Buffs
Each of the three talent trees for hunters have a group buff. For Beast Mastery, it’s Ferocious Inspiration. For Marksman, it’s Trueshot Aura. And for Survival, it’s Expose Weakness.
Ferocious Inspiration: Requires 30 points in Beast Mastery Talents
Tooltip at 3/3: When you pet scores a critical hit, all party members have all damage increased by 3% for 10 sec.
OK, lets look at that, first, your pet has to crit, which means that you want your pet to attack as often as possible. This can be achieved with the pet talent Cobra Reflexes, the BM Serpents Swiftness, having a pet with a focus dump attack (claw, gore, lightning breath) and feeding it focus through the BM talent Bestial Discipline and the MM talent Go for the Throat. You can also increase you pet’s crit rate with the BM talent Ferocity. Next, what does you and your group get? A 3% increase to all party members’ damage for 10 seconds after each of your pet crits. This is the only group buff that helps caster types, as it buffs ALL damage. And so to get the most benefit from FI, you could be in a group of casters.
5-mans: Since FI affects all damage, it is very effective in a 5-man, about the only person it won’t help is the healer.
Raids: For this buff to be effective, the BM hunter needs to be grouped with the heavy hitters, basically the top 5 people on the damage meter (one of which is the BM hunter :p)
Expose Weakness: Requires 5 points in Lightning Reflexes, Requires 30 points in Survival Talents
Tooltip at 3/3: Your ranged criticals have a 100% chance to apply an expose weakness effect to the target. Expose Weakness increases the attack power of all attackers against that target by 25% of your Agility for 7 sec.
OK, so what do you need? One crit every 7 seconds, so if you are using a decent shot rotation, you should be pumping out 5-7 shots every 7 seconds, so you really don’t need that high of a crit % to keep it up. But just to be on the safe side, and hitting those crit-strings is so much fun, let’s get all the crit we can. The Survival talent Killer Instincts can give you 3%, the Marksman talent Lethal Shots can give you 5%. The rest has to come from agility and crit rating. Agility converts at approximately 40 Agi=1% crit, and crit rating at approximately 22 crit rating=1% crit. So now that we’re making sure that we crit as often as we can, what do we do to maximize our buff? Agility, Agility, Agility. This is the one group buff that the hunter’s stats affect the buff, 25% of your agility is turned into attack power for everyone in the RAID. Yup, as well as being the only one that the hunter can increase the buff on, it’s also the only one that affects an entire raid. How? It’s actually a debuff on the mob, it will affect anyone attacking a mob with the debuff. Whether you’re grouped or not.
5-mans: because it only grants attack power, this one is heavily dependant on the group makeup. In a melee heavy group (feral druid, rogue, enh. shammy, warrior, ret pally, other hunters) it is great, but mages, warlocks, elem shammys, shadow priests, and boomkins gain nothing for their spells.
Raids: Potentially the biggest raid buff, plus grouping is relatively unimportant because this is actually a debuff on the mob rather than a buff on players. And the more physical damage dealers there are, the bigger the buff the raid gets.
Trueshot Aura: Requires 1 point in Scatter Shot, Requires 30 points in Marksmanship Talents
Tooltip at 1/1: Increases the Ranged and Melee Attack Power of party members within 45 yards by 125. Lasts 30 min.
I’m sorry, I mean no offence to any MM hunters, but you guys got shafted in the buff area. 125 AP. No help to the casters like BM, and it doesn’t scale off stats like Surv. 125 AP is approximately 9 “white” dps. For FI to beat the buff, the person needs to maintain only 300 dps, not very difficult at the raiding level. And a Surv hunter only needs 500 Agility to provide a 125 AP EW.
5-mans: about the same as a 500 Agi Surv hunter.
Raids: I’m not sure whether this one will affect all raid members or just the MM hunter’s party members. Whichever it is, don’t invite a MM hunter for the buff, invite them for the heavy hitting DPS that they can do, the buff is just icing on the cake.
Ferocious Inspiration: Requires 30 points in Beast Mastery Talents
Tooltip at 3/3: When you pet scores a critical hit, all party members have all damage increased by 3% for 10 sec.
OK, lets look at that, first, your pet has to crit, which means that you want your pet to attack as often as possible. This can be achieved with the pet talent Cobra Reflexes, the BM Serpents Swiftness, having a pet with a focus dump attack (claw, gore, lightning breath) and feeding it focus through the BM talent Bestial Discipline and the MM talent Go for the Throat. You can also increase you pet’s crit rate with the BM talent Ferocity. Next, what does you and your group get? A 3% increase to all party members’ damage for 10 seconds after each of your pet crits. This is the only group buff that helps caster types, as it buffs ALL damage. And so to get the most benefit from FI, you could be in a group of casters.
5-mans: Since FI affects all damage, it is very effective in a 5-man, about the only person it won’t help is the healer.
Raids: For this buff to be effective, the BM hunter needs to be grouped with the heavy hitters, basically the top 5 people on the damage meter (one of which is the BM hunter :p)
Expose Weakness: Requires 5 points in Lightning Reflexes, Requires 30 points in Survival Talents
Tooltip at 3/3: Your ranged criticals have a 100% chance to apply an expose weakness effect to the target. Expose Weakness increases the attack power of all attackers against that target by 25% of your Agility for 7 sec.
OK, so what do you need? One crit every 7 seconds, so if you are using a decent shot rotation, you should be pumping out 5-7 shots every 7 seconds, so you really don’t need that high of a crit % to keep it up. But just to be on the safe side, and hitting those crit-strings is so much fun, let’s get all the crit we can. The Survival talent Killer Instincts can give you 3%, the Marksman talent Lethal Shots can give you 5%. The rest has to come from agility and crit rating. Agility converts at approximately 40 Agi=1% crit, and crit rating at approximately 22 crit rating=1% crit. So now that we’re making sure that we crit as often as we can, what do we do to maximize our buff? Agility, Agility, Agility. This is the one group buff that the hunter’s stats affect the buff, 25% of your agility is turned into attack power for everyone in the RAID. Yup, as well as being the only one that the hunter can increase the buff on, it’s also the only one that affects an entire raid. How? It’s actually a debuff on the mob, it will affect anyone attacking a mob with the debuff. Whether you’re grouped or not.
5-mans: because it only grants attack power, this one is heavily dependant on the group makeup. In a melee heavy group (feral druid, rogue, enh. shammy, warrior, ret pally, other hunters) it is great, but mages, warlocks, elem shammys, shadow priests, and boomkins gain nothing for their spells.
Raids: Potentially the biggest raid buff, plus grouping is relatively unimportant because this is actually a debuff on the mob rather than a buff on players. And the more physical damage dealers there are, the bigger the buff the raid gets.
Trueshot Aura: Requires 1 point in Scatter Shot, Requires 30 points in Marksmanship Talents
Tooltip at 1/1: Increases the Ranged and Melee Attack Power of party members within 45 yards by 125. Lasts 30 min.
I’m sorry, I mean no offence to any MM hunters, but you guys got shafted in the buff area. 125 AP. No help to the casters like BM, and it doesn’t scale off stats like Surv. 125 AP is approximately 9 “white” dps. For FI to beat the buff, the person needs to maintain only 300 dps, not very difficult at the raiding level. And a Surv hunter only needs 500 Agility to provide a 125 AP EW.
5-mans: about the same as a 500 Agi Surv hunter.
Raids: I’m not sure whether this one will affect all raid members or just the MM hunter’s party members. Whichever it is, don’t invite a MM hunter for the buff, invite them for the heavy hitting DPS that they can do, the buff is just icing on the cake.
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