It looks like 4.3.2 will hold a nice change for SV according to MMO-Champion: Lock and Load will no longer consume Arcane Shots. Kaivax embellished on this change and Blizzard’s thoughts on hunters in general in an informative post:
Posts Tagged ‘lock and load’
A Blue Post on the State of Hunters in PVE
Posted in Hunter, Survival, World of Warcraft, tagged arcane shot, LnL, lock and load, Vial of Shadows on January 4, 2012 | 8 Comments »
Survival Rotation Changes
Posted in Hunter, Survival, World of Warcraft, tagged 4.3, LnL, lock and load, Survival, sv on November 21, 2011 | 28 Comments »
Survival is changing for the better in 4.3. Its DPS is going up both in relative and absolute terms, leaving it more appealing than it has been since its nerf after Cataclysm launched. What is there to know about SV gameplay that might be different for returning hunters?
edit: The post now includes updates resulting from conversations held in the comment section.
Ability Spotlight: Explosive Shot
Posted in Hunter, Survival, World of Warcraft, tagged ability spotlight, ES, explosive shot, LnL, lock and load on March 24, 2011 | 2 Comments »
I started the Ability Spotlight series to shed light on commonly misunderstood hunter tools. I imagined writing about abilities that are underused but useful, abilities that improve huntering at the margins. However, as the hunter recruits to my guild and the hunter forums have shown me, even signature abilities can be persistently misunderstood. That is why we turn to Explosive Shot (ES) this week, an ability at the core of the SV rotation but also at the center of a lot of misinformation and uncertainty. (more…)
Patch 3.3.3 Bug Fixes!
Posted in Hunter, World of Warcraft, tagged bug fixes, explosive shot, explosive trap, lock and load, patch 3.3.3, rapid fire on March 23, 2010 | 11 Comments »
Well, there goes my favorite bug: Phyllixia posted that explosive traps no longer provide a 100% lock and load on the first tick. The explosive trap bug was more of a trash hack- the only actual encounter it will really affect us on is the gunship, and that’s fairly roflstompable anyways. Also, rapid fire now consumes a global cooldown. It used to not be usable while you were on cooldown, but you could cast another shot immediately.
If you have rapid fire macroed with any other GCD ability, you should go and separate them now. Of course, since we’re all timing our cooldowns manually, I’m sure nobody has it macroed into their shots, right? :P
edit: Thanks to Cryptaas for pointing out in the comments that evidently, what they meant to say is that rapid fire apparently will now be firable even when you’re on a global cooldown. I am nowhere near a WoW client to test this, but it’s a change for the positive, if slight :)
Lastly- I promised a post yesterday that’s still in my drafts. It’s taking longer than I thought it would, but it’ll be a good one!
Lock and Load- We’ve Been Doing it Wrong!
Posted in Hunter, Survival, World of Warcraft, tagged aimed shot, black arrow, dps, explosive shot, lock and load, pve, serpent sting, simulationcraft, steady shot, weaving on March 4, 2010 | 27 Comments »
edit: I can’t believe I missed this post on the same subject. Lyraat used raid parses, which are more subject to RNG than simulationcraft’s batches of thousands of simulated fights, however it uses the actual game engine.
Well, apparently I’ve been doing it wrong since patch 3.1 or something. The common knowledge of how to handle explosive shots during a lock and load is outdated.
Always wrong method: fire explosive shots so fast that the last tick is overwritten.
Old, and now wrong method: fire three explosives in a row, taking care to wait exactly 2 seconds between them so you don’t clip the DoT.
Right method: weave anything but a steady shot between your explosive shots.
In conclusion, we found that the long accepted best-practice of delaying shots under Lock and Load no longer maximizes DPS. Instead, the common simplification of only delaying for Steady Shots is closer to optimal. The difference between both tactics is small in practice.
This was tested by Pherra (same dude who’s writing the hunter DPS addon) in response to a question I asked over at epicadvice.
Explosive Trap- Hunter Consecrate!
Posted in Hunter, Marksmanship, Survival, World of Warcraft, tagged adds, aoe, dps, explosive trap, heroics, hunter consecrate, lock and load, misdirect, mm, sv, trash on January 19, 2010 | 23 Comments »
Explosive trap is awesome. It has been buffed quite a bit lately and now scales quite nicely with our attack power, so I figured I’d write up a guide about how and when to use it. (more…)
Alternative Addon For Proc Tracking!
Posted in Spotlight, World of Warcraft, tagged addon, improved steady shot, lock and load, matticus, nostockui, proc, proc watcher, surgetrack on October 2, 2009 | 5 Comments »
[edit: site is back up and running!]
Take a look at this post over at Matticus’s NoStockui. It goes over an addon called SurgeTrack, which can be configured to track those nifty procs that we have to watch for that can change our next action. Like lock and load or improved steady shot. Right now, I use power auras, but that took a fair bit of work to get going, and this comes out of the box with hunter presets.
Even More 3.3 Hunter Changes!
Posted in Beast Mastery, Hunter, Marksmanship, Survival, World of Warcraft, tagged 3.3, aoe, avoidance, explosive trap, lock and load, patch 3.3, point of no escape, pve, pvp, resilience, silencing shot, volley on October 2, 2009 | 4 Comments »
MMO-Champion posted additional notes on patch 3.3. Of interest, here are the hunter changes: (more…)
Survival vs. Marksmanship in 3.2!
Posted in Hunter, Marksmanship, Survival, World of Warcraft, tagged 3.2, black arrow, dps, frost trap, L&L, lock and load, marks, Marksmanship, mm, proc, raiding, Survival, sv on August 13, 2009 | 12 Comments »
It’s not showing up yet in the calculators, but survival might just have eclipsed marksmanship this patch. Marks hasn’t changed, but survival seems to have. Lock and load is proccing way more than it used to. According to some data from hunters on the survival thread at elitist jerks, each tick of black arrow has a 20% chance to proc lock and load when it’s not on the new internal 22 second cooldown. Also, frost traps do not cause the 22 second cooldown, however are certainly affected by it. (more…)
S7 and You (Yeah, I Did Just Look That Gift Horse In The Mouth)
Posted in arena, Hunter, pvp, World of Warcraft, tagged arena, aspect of the cheetah, black arrow, catlike reflexes, chaos bolt, cleave, deterrence, entrapment, explosive trap, freezing trap, frost trap, hunters, immolation trap, kill command, lock and load, mind numbing poison, patch 3.2, PMR, pvp, roar of sacrifice, s6, s7, season 6, season 7, snake trap, traps on August 4, 2009 | 2 Comments »
If you spend a lot of time on the popular forums, like the class specific ones at the Blizzard site or the class specific ones on arenajunkies.com, you will notice a lot of doom ‘n’ gloom posts about 3.2 not being too great for hunters, despite many people’s opinion, including Ghostcrawler’s, that season 6 was not good for hunters at all. Well, they’re partly right and partly wrong about 3.2. Most of the time, the patch notes reflect changes that can be construed in one of two ways: “Oh, sweet buff,” or “Shit, why are they nerfing that.” (more…)
Common Mistakes!
Posted in Hunter, Marksmanship, Survival, World of Warcraft, tagged agility, arcane shot, auto-shot, black arrow, chimera shot, common mistakes, dps, dps calculator, enchants, explosive shot, femaledwarf.com, gems, hit, Hunter, kill shot, lock and load, Marksmanship, online dps calculator, pet, pet talents, pre-raiding, pve, pvp, raiding, rapid fire, readiness, resilience, rotation, serpent sting, shot rotation, sons of hodir, spec, steady shot, Survival, traps, wow on July 27, 2009 | 15 Comments »
“I’d like a guide to what the common mistakes are. For instance, I have pretty fair gear and have tried to put most of your lessons to practice, but somehow I still get nowhere near the DPS(about 1600-1800) of my fellow hunters. OK, So I suck, but, WHY? (other than just general suckiness)”
I’m not the kind of guy to tell someone how bad they are- if they ask for help, that puts them ahead of 90% of the hunters who are (currently) surpassing them in DPS. (more…)
New look at lock and load!
Posted in Hunter, Survival, World of Warcraft, tagged black arrow, data, lock and load, procs, the hunter's mark blog, theory crafting, theorycrafting on June 1, 2009 | 9 Comments »
There’s some anecdotal evidence over at The Hunter’s Mark about new lock and load rates. Did they go up or down with 3.1? Well, I am a big believer that the plural of anecdote is not fact, and that in order to measure something that’s supposed to proc 6% of the time from black arrow ticks (according to the tooltip), you need more than a few hunters in a few raids to get accurate numbers.
Specifically, you need to eliminate variables, and not count things that don’t matter.
In terms of counting things that don’t matter, for example, the uptime according to your combat log parser is not a relevant thing to track. If you take too long to get your three free explosive shots off, you’re increasing your uptime. There are very valid reasons to do this. No target, kill shot is up, or not allowed to DPS when it procs, for example.
In terms of eliminating variables, the best way to do that is also the best way to get lots of data. Don’t test this in a raid. To determine the real proc rate (per minute and per tick), we should use a target dummy and count procs.
I’m planning on pumping some rounds down range as soon as I get some time to myself, but we’re going to run Freya through the wood-chipper tonight, so don’t expect anything until after that. I’ll log the work and post my parse.
Lock and load!
Posted in Hunter, Survival, World of Warcraft, tagged 3.2, addon, aimed shot, dps, explosive shot, flight time, global cooldown, lock and load, macro, macros, patch 3.2, pve, quartz, raiding, shot macro, shot rotation, shot rotations, steady shot, timing on April 29, 2009 | 38 Comments »
Everyone has an opinion about lock and load. It used to be the bread and butter of the trapdancing spec, and is now still an incredibly nice talent that’s well worth the points spent in it. What it does is proc from 20% of the ticks of black arrow outside its 22 second cooldown, providing you with a short window of time to fire off two explosive shots without causing a shot cooldown, taking ammo, or taking mana. In effect, you can fire three in a row. This post will go over how to use these procs. (more…)
Syndication!
Things I Thought You Might Like To Read- Why Can’t We Do Math Anymore? October 27, 2011 Cheezburger Network
- It Must Be Stuck Somewhere October 26, 2011 Cheezburger Network
- Mists of Pandaria Expansion Hunter Talents October 21, 2011 Frostheim
- Planning WAY in Advance October 14, 2011 Cheezburger Network
- Straight A Game Masters October 11, 2011 Cheezburger Network
- Pet Tanking Ideas September 30, 2011 Frostheim
- M thru F: The Workplace Subjectivity Chart August 31, 2011 Lady Justice
- WHU vs the Whale Shark September 20, 2011 Frostheim
- Classic: I Wanted a Bite September 2, 2011 Cheezburger Network
- Grats Arust!!! September 2, 2011 Frostheim
Writers
Recent Comments
Categories
Twisted Nether Link Rotation!
Archives
You can’t see this
Sitemeter
