OutDPS!

Edit: the macros in this post are no longer valid- here‘s the post 3.1 version.

As a hunter, your job is to pump out as much hurt to your raid’s target as possible. You have a multitude of shots you can use to do this, but it’s not easy to watch so many damn cooldowns!

You think to yourself (quite reasonably) “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I could write a shot macro like I used in burning crusade to make sure I don’t screw up my rotation by manually shooting whatever happens to be closest to my mouse pointer?” Probably followed up by “Oh snap, I’m standing in a void zone- I’d better turn with my arrow keys and get the heck outta here!”, which then gives way to “Damn, I wonder if my class leader noticed I died in a void zone. If he says anything, I’ll ask for a battle res and use lag as an excuse”.

There’s a reason they call us huntards.

There is no way to make a shot macro that will do your work for you. Let’s go over the list of stuff a survival and BM hunter has to do, shall we? We’ll see how much of this can be done by the clever usage of the /m command.

Survival hunters need to:

• open with an explosive shot and fire an explosive shot whenever it’s off cooldown
• watch for your lock and load procs and when they occur, fire off three explosive shots ensuring that you wait long enough between them to not clip the last tick of the damage over time
• cast kill command either whenever it’s off cooldown or when you get heroism/bloodlust
• drop a frost trap somewhere it will get hit (under the boss if necessary)
• ensure that as often as possible, serpent sting is up on the target while not allowing the reapplication of the sting to take a global cooldown that could have been used for an explosive shot or frost trap
• use aimed shot or multi shot whenever it’s off cooldown and would not interfere with a explosive, frost trap, or serpent cooldown
• use steady shot to fill the spaces where everything else is on cooldown
• cast kill shot as soon as the boss hits 20% health, and as often as you can thereafter

Beast mastery hunters need to:

• send the pet in
• use beastial wrath, kill command, and any on use trinkets as soon as the pet’s on the boss if it’s a long fight, or wait until heroism/bloodlust if it’s a short fight
• cast arcane shot whenever it’s off cooldown
• cast multi shot whenever it’s off cooldown and wouldn’t interfere with a cooldown meant for arcane shot
• ensure that serpent sting is up on the target while not allowing the reapplication of the sting to take a global cooldown that could have been used for an arcane shot
• use steady shot to fill the spaces where everything else is on cooldown
• cast kill shot as soon as the boss hits 20% health, and as often as you can thereafter

Of all of this, there are a few functions that can be macroed to great effect. Kill shot is an instant shot. It does not cause a global cooldown, however it can’t be fired if you’re on a global cooldown. Kill command is also instant. Because of this, I have created a macro for each of my shots attempts to fire both off before firing off whatever shot I need:

#showtooltip <whatever shot I actually need to shoot>
/cast kill command
/cast kill shot
/cast <whatever shot I actually need to shoot>

If I refresh serpent sting, if either of those two are usable, they’ll get used first.

Also, you can macro your beast within to trigger kill command and your on-use trinkets:

#showtooltip Bestial Wrath
/cast Kill Command
/use 13
/use 14
/cast Bestial Wrath

The above are the only type of macros that will increase your dps. You can not create a /castsequence that will choose the best shot to fire for you. If, for example, you created one to fire explosive shot, serpent sting, aimed shot, and then a few steady shots, you would find that as you occasionally get interrupted (by having to move out of a fire or by a lock and load proc), your macro would desynchronize from your cooldowns. The castsequence would be wanting to refresh a sting that hadn’t fallen off, or wanting to cast a steady shot when explosive is off cooldown.

What you can do is configure power auras (as mentioned in a recent post) to track your sting debuffs, your explosive shot cooldowns, and your lock and load procs.

The days of button spamming while achieving best in game dps are over. Being able to dish out damage requires actual skill, and the only way a survival hunter can be as good as they can be is if they practice and get good at this.