OutDPS!

Hi folks, Pherra here. I just uploaded a new release of the DPSCheck addon to WoWInterface and Curse. This new version has the first pass at priority checks for Beast Mastery and Marksmanship builds, along with a new buff/debuff checking feature. The priority checks are designed to help your shot selection in any fight, while the buff/debuff checks are for maximizing your DPS over longer fights.

Priority Checks

The priority checks for Beast Mastery and Marksmanship are based on analysis from Elitist Jerks and Frostheim at WHU (BM, MM). Both sets of priority checks lack proper focus management – they do not yet distinguish between Arcane Shot and Steady Shot when your harder hitting abilities are on cooldown. Focus management is definitely an important part of our shot priorities, but the details get tricky, especially when trying to optimize for talents like Improved Steady Shot. That disclaimer aside, the new priority checks will point out when you miss signature shots as they come off cooldown or don’t capitalize on procs for Focus Fire or Master Marksman.

The Beast Mastery priorities checked are as follows:

1. Kill Shot
2. Kill Command
3. Focus Fire with 5 stacks of Frenzy
4. Arcane and Steady Shot (Cobra Shot once available)

The Marksmanship priorities checked are as follows:

1. Kill Shot
2. Chimera Shot
3. Aimed Shot with Fire! buff
4. Arcane Shot and Steady Shot

Both priority lists are missing Hunter’s Mark and Serpent Sting. This is because these spells are not as important for shorter fights, especially against trash mobs. For example, Hunter’s Mark would not be applied to most trash mobs, so BM and SV builds would have near 100% mistake rates if it was required. Instead, both Hunter’s Mark and Serpent Sting have been moved to a new set of checks targeting longer fights.

Buff and Debuff Checks

An important part of our job providing massive quantities of sustained, ranged DPS is to maintain various buffs and debuffs on ourselves and our targets, respectively. For example, every time my raid engages a boss, I’d better have Aspect of the Hawk on myself, and the boss had better have a Hunter’s Mark already. Other buffs and debuffs are trickier to manage; proper use of Steady Shots to maintain the Improved Steady Shot buff is still an open question in 4.0 theory crafting, and proper use of Serpent Sting in target-switching fights has always been an art.

DPSCheck now looks for the following buffs and debuffs.

• Hunter’s Mark and Marked for Death: checked for all our shots.
• Serpent Sting: checked for Chimera Shot, and Cobra Shot. Noxious Stings support coming soon.
• Improved Steady Shot: checked for Auto Shot, Steady Shot, and Cobra Shot.
• Fire!: checked for Aimed Shot.

A few more buff/debuff checks will be added (in particular, Aspect of the Hawk), but the list is being restricted to buffs and debuffs we can provide ourselves now.

Miscellaneous Updates

A few other updates -

• DPSCheck was linked by the hunter-dps blog. The original addon name was HunterDPS before Euripides found this blog. You can still see that name in our Google Code project.
• The slash command was changed from /dps to /dpscheck because of conflicts with other addons.
• Non-English clients have slightly better support. DPSCheck is not really localized, but spell names and numbers should be correctly in the reports.

As always, please let us know how DPSCheck is working for you in the comments. Or submit bug reports or enhancements directly to the Google Code project.