Survival Hunter DPS

[Tranquility]

Hey guys

I'm interested to know what performance you're getting/seeing from these at all gear levels. I've been playing one for two weeks at 80 - It's ridiculous. I'm geared in mostly heroics/badge gear, and I managed to get just over 4k dps last night in an OS 25 guild run.

I just find this retarded as I've been raiding with my warlock (My main) for 3 months, and she's just busy scratching at 5k in mostly lvl213+ gear. Affliction warlocks require alot of concentration and perfection. My hunter on the other hand is facerolling all the way.

Hunter's armory:
http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lightbringer&n=Thorkam
Note that the Mirror of Truth trinket and one of the rings has hardly any contribution at all...

We have two other hunters (Both whom are on thin ice at the moment) who are really struggling beating 2.5k on all fights as survival spec. Are they just special or what?

 

[werries2]

What I have seen sofar is that survival hunters can do around 4k dps in blue gear and after upgrading gear a lot they still do around 4k dps This is mostly due to the high damage contribution from explosive shot. And very poor scaling of other stats and raid buffs.
During fights like Patchwork my survival hunter does exceed the 5k dps mark, but so does our raid warlocks, rogues, mages, warriors, DKs, shadowpriests, moonkin and feral druids. The only class that stands out above the rest is elemental shaman that seems to easily do 200-300 dps more than anyone else.

So no Hunters is not a face roll class anymore, to do good dps as a hunter it now takes a lot more than just gear.

One thing that is frustrating me though is the nerf hunters got for AOE, we are now the weakest aoe class. Even rogues does way more aoe than we do... Hunters are now just an average dps class, if you want to do dps play warlock or elemental shaman.

 

[werries2]

As for the two hunters that struggle to break 2.5k dps, they are just slacking... In a raid setup, even green geared people should be able to break 2.5k dps

 

[Pitbull]

I would love to know how you guys get to these amounts ?

I mean I'm ok geared and I push out the higest DPS in NAXX in our raid group. I do 2.0 -2.2k DPS for the total raid. I can't see for the life of me where you get this 5k numbers from

 

[werries2]

Our raid stats could be find here.
http://wowwebstats.com/5jqbvfslqwzf1?p=rep

It takes some work to push up to the 5k levels, but once you are used to your rotations it becomes quite easy.

 

[Pitbull]

I'm sorry, I just don't believe it tbh

Is this the average for the full raid run ?

 

[Pornolio]

Staalbal my bra: Doing 4k dps nowdays is not that hard on a hunter. In my guild the hunters are still pretty much ruling the dps meters, but yes, we have a shammy thats hounding us on the dps meters.
Before the massive BM nerf, BM's were doing 6k + dps. (Granted we cheated a bit with Call of the wild stacking hehe).

Allthough one thing I will say, to get the optimum out of your hunter is very very very tricky at most. Remember when you hear about hunters doing 4k+ dps, its got certain criteria. Its not a facerolling class where you just dish out massive numbers. From day to day I speak to loads of hunters asking me how da hell do we produce 4k + dps, its really down to 4 things :

1 - Yes the gear is important, BUT its even more important to balance the RIGHT stats. So many hunters fail here... "ohhh look its mail, its good for me !" And every build requires different stats ! BM likes stat X, Survival prefers Stat Y, MM likes combonation of X + Y.
2 - Talent spec, the hunter talent tree setup is probably less forgiving than any other class I have encountered. One talent point the wrong area and BAMM, 400 dps loss... and that one talent point affects 2 other talents again. The top dog hunter DPS kings all pretty much have the exact talent setup. Its incredibly important to spec correctly. Hence when BM got nerfed, everyone flocked to the survival cookie cutter build.
3 - Shot rotations. And this is the main point most hunters fail on the dps meters. Every single hunter build wheter its MM, BM, SV all require a different shot rotation. The boys doing 4k+ dps are the SV guys ensuring they keep the right shots ready at the right time. This is where most people fail to understand why the hunter class is so damn hard to play. Yes anyone can play a hunter and mash a steady button, but there is a hell of a lot more to it... you have to keep things like internal 30sec's cooldowns in mind before Lock and Load is ready. You time events ahead in your mind. You know, I need to have my Lock and Load proc'ing now in the next 10 sec's for massive burst since my racial / trinket etc is ready. Eg. Thaddius is gonna do a polarity shift I need my trap's cooldown ready to get my Lock and Load to proc. I need to be 30 yards away for my sniper training to kick in. A good hunter can control when he wants his abilities to proc like Lock and Load. Its not about the luck factor.
4 - Dont forget your pet... keep your pet on mobs / bosses... they do pretty good dps when 25 man raid buffed to the max, even if its not a BM spec.
Micro manage your pet and ensure he stays alive. So you have to think for you and your pet and at the same time plan ahead on what your cooldowns are doing.

A lot of the hunters I have been speaking to in the past, done things 95 % correct, and after changing tiny tiny tiny things in their playstyle, BAM massive dps boosts. Its a very tightly tuned class.

Give it a go and staalbal, once you get that sweet taste of massive dps numbers, I promise you that you will fall in love with the class

 

[Pitbull]

hehe Hi Pornolio

Yea I can understand that, What I want to know is how is this measured. Is it per boss fight ? Or the full DPS average for the full duration of the raid ? I also push 3k+ on certain fights in Naxx, I however end on a 2 - 2.2k average for the full run.

 

[Pornolio]

The WWS stats takes information from your combat log and parses it out.
The WWS can be broken up into per boss... or total dps for the whole evening.

When guys are saying they are doing 5k Dps... its usually on a boss alone... and in our case, hunters do peak dps with bosses that allows us to nuke like crazy without having to run around to much. Eg. Patchwerk.
The total dps can be very misleading though. Remember not all classes have AOE abilities. And on trashmobs when the tanks round everything up ... and they get AOED'd down you see the peak dps figures shooting through the roof.
Then certain classes pull ahead on damage.

Other fights are just single target nuking... nice thing about WWS you can break it down just as you see fit... even what the guys buff's + shot rotations look like.
There are drop down menu's where you see what the dps performance per boss was. WWS is amazing.

 

[DjStyles]

Hey Pornolio, been a while since i've seen you on the forum m8.

Man my hunter is truly lacking somewhere. Not sure what happened, but I took a bit of a break from the begining of Dec untill last a week or so ago and it's like playing a completely differrent Char. I must mention that I am a BM Hunter.

So from what i've been reading here, is that a respec to Survival may be on the cards.

 

[werries2]

Hey Pornolio, been a while since i've seen you on the forum m8.

Man my hunter is truly lacking somewhere. Not sure what happened, but I took a bit of a break from the begining of Dec untill last a week or so ago and it's like playing a completely differrent Char. I must mention that I am a BM Hunter.

So from what i've been reading here, is that a respec to Survival may be on the cards.

BM hunters have been heavily nerfed, so yes it is time to go either MM or Survival. There were a 15% nerf in pet dps and ~10% in steadyshot.
MM have rather good dps, but they tend to have huge mana problems. Survival at the moment have huge dps advantages over the other two specs! Explosive shot have a huge chance to crit, and it deals a ton of damage. You just need to learn some shot rotations to have explosive shot at optimal dmg.

 

[Pornolio]

Yup... nerf is almost a understatement... its been crushed and destroyed. BM hunter dps is a joke now. Its time to move on and leave the pet love behind you

They actually reversed 2 of the 6 / 7 nerfs in BM to make it a bit more competitive, but imo, they need to boost it a lot more to make it a competitive spec once again.

Survival is the way to go if you wanna do decent DPS, MM is ok, but nothing compared to survival now. And as Werries stated, MM hunters have big mana issues, and the Blizz dev's are looking at mana costs of certain shots.
DJ, there has been a ton of info posted on the forums here with regards to making a transistion to Survival. Just gotta search a bit, also speak to some of the other converted hunters like Werries, cynicster, thiart and huart etc. Your entire BM playing style you gotta forget about... no more macro's... Just relearn the survival playing style + shot rotations.

 

[thiartc]

I'm fully t7.5 geared and setup as SV

We cleared Naxx last night - my total dps for the whole evening was 4.4k, our BM (same gear as me) was second on total damage with a 4.3k dps, my maxx was at patch with a 5.2k. BM best was also on patch doing 4.7k dps

I would say if you cant do 4k dps as a hunter stop watching porn while you are trying ot raid

 

[Cynicster]

Anyone saying that playing a Hunter is about face rolling has obviously no idea what he's talking about.

Timing one's shots perfectly is incredibly important if one wants to maximise one's DPS. For example: Waiting an extra 500ms to be able to cast ES instead of casting an extra Steady while you wait for the ES cooldown will make a huge different in your damage output if you do it every time the situation calls for it.
Understanding which abilities call up the GCD and which don't, when to refresh what, when to pop you uber abilities or your pet's specials and when to switch to Viper and for how long is an integral part of playing a Hunter properly and maximising one's DPS.

I think this and what Pornolio said is what differentiates 5k and 2k Hunters. Gear helps but not nearly as much as people think and this is true for other classes as well.

 

[Cynicster]

Forgot to add:

When looking at WWS reports ignore the overall and trash reports, they are meaningless. Even the "All Bosses" report can be misleading.
Focus on each fights individually and compare to you previous runs to see if you've improved. Comparing to other players of your class with similar gear is also a great idea. If they are doing much better than you are on a particular fight analyse the data and see what they are doing differently and consider adjusting your play style.

 

[diesel]

So no Hunters is not a face roll class anymore, to do good dps as a hunter it now takes a lot more than just gear.

Sorry bud but i disagree here, hunters have never been a face roll class!, perfect shot rotations and timing have always been the main ingredient to any succesful hunter.

 

[werries2]

Sorry bud but i disagree here, hunters have never been a face roll class!, perfect shot rotations and timing have always been the main ingredient to any successful hunter.

Don't try and fool yourself with that statement. Hunters have always had the face roll association. I have been a hunter for quite some time now...
Pre-TBC we were known as AFK-dpsers, and a lot of hunters actually did just that, afk while autoshoot. Admitting that high dps hunters did have some decent aimed shot + multishot + arcane shot rotations. But nothing compared to warlocks during this era.

With TBC, BM hunters were let loose to reign the dps meters with a 1 stroke makro Yea there were some pet management that needed to be done and trinket timing, but even without that BM hunters topped the charts. The difference between a faceroll hunter and a skilled hunter were only a few hundred dps, both were still doing really great though.

The definition of a faceroll class is not that it is easy, but just that it is possible, and that most of your damage is from one or two key strokes. Map the one half of your keyboard to the one ability and the other half to the other ability and do the leeu loop. Hunters and frostmages fitted the faceroll description better than any other class.

With hunters switching to MM and survival now, we have to use 5 and more abilities in a precise order to do decent dps. In my opinion we are now finally a challenging class to play.

 

[Soulreaver]

Where do you guys see how much dps you do?

 

[Huard]

addon

Using the addon Recount is the best way I have found to track DPS and Damage plus so much more.

 

[Stickfigure]

Well I'm still a bm hunter but after reading through this thread I'm thinking of changing :/

But I've always assumed that Survival hunters revolve around traps or rather that what a survival hunter is :/

Also do you need really good gear to make a survival hunter work?