Hunter Kindergarten: Intro to Shot Rotations - The Motion Picture

As promised, here is Pike's Official Intro to Shot Rotations Movie!

Couple things before I begin:

1.) Kill Command is a move that you can use anytime you crit. You learn it at level 66, not level 68 like I said in the movie... sorry about the oral typo there. /blush

2.) I apologize that my voice sounds somewhat congested, my allergies are pretty terrible this time of year.

3.) My Kill Command is keybound to alt-tilde, hence the sound of a frantic jamming of keys anytime I use it.

4.) I was originally going to have a quiet background music track as well (because honestly you just can't go wrong with The Safety Dance) but I decided it was too distracting. So hopefully just my voice by its lonesome can hold your interest. =P

Enjoy and hopefully you can learn something from this, I worry that maybe it's not the clearest video:

Hunter Kindergarten: Gettin' Ready to Rock Steady

So, pre-Level-62 hunter. You've heard about this mystical thing called "Steady Shot" and the mysterious term "shot rotation". You want to get into this shot rotation thing too. Right?

Sadly, there's not a whole lot you can do pre-Steady Shot to practice this. Most of your pre-Level-62 hunter career will consist of tossing a Serpent Sting on something and Auto-Shotting it down, with a couple Arcane Shots maybe thrown in for good measure. However, there is one little exception that, while it won't make you an expert on Shot Rotations, will at least give you an idea of what to expect:



Multi-Shot has a hidden cast timer to it; sort of like a mini-Steady Shot except with a cooldown, and with no casting bar. But because it does have a small cast time-- 0.5 seconds-- you can use it to sort of learn the principle behind a shot rotation.

A quick refresher on shot rotations and why they are important: Your Auto Shot is constantly going and you want to weave your special shots on top of your Auto Shot in such a way that they don't interfere. Auto Shot has a short space of time right before it fires where you shouldn't do anything or it will clip your Auto Shot. Learning to get your special shots off so they don't interfere with that Auto Shot cast time is called learning to use a correct shot rotation.

Many hunter shots, such as Arcane Shot, are instant cast, and as such it really doesn't matter when you toss them into your rotation. But Multi-Shot has a cast time (like Steady Shot does) and that's why we're going to practice with it.

Head out to some place full of mobs that are relatively easy for you to kill but that you aren't going to one-shot. Myself, I think I was in my 50s and went to Scarlet Monastery Cathedral. Now nab a pull of two or three and get your pull down to just one that you can focus on, perhaps by trapping one and taking out another. (Don't forget: Multi-Shot will break CC, so if you're gonna trap, trap him out of the way.)

Now hit Multi-Shot. Try and do it when your character is getting ready to fire off an Auto Shot. Did you notice something "weird" there? Did you see your character sort of do something odd with their weapon? Perhaps your Auto Shot was just delayed?

If so, congrats, you have just observed some of the byproducts of hunter shot weaving.

If not, that's okay, you still just wove a shot-- but Multi-Shot's cast time is so short that it's not that easy to really "observe".

Now the trick here, is to make it so it doesn't delay your Auto Shot. So go practice on some other mobs and try using it at different times. Be alert. Watch your character very closely. Listen to the sounds that your weapon is making. Try to learn when, visually and aurally, is your best time to use your Multi-Shot.

Now, Multi-Shot can be a little tweaky, and weaving your Multi-Shot has a rather different feel to it than weaving a Steady Shot, thanks to the different cast times. And honestly, Mulit-Shot's cast time is so short that you do have a lot of room for error so you won't really get that fast-paced feel of Steady Shot, where your timing has to be much more precise. But the point of this exercise is to learn what it means to weave your shots and get a basic idea of what it takes to do so. Multi-Shot is a great way to sort of introduce yourself to that concept.

And, well, that pretty much does it for today's lesson. To be honest Shot Rotations really don't start mattering all that much until level 62. You can experiment with weaving your Multi-Shot but it's not going to cause any particularly impressive DPS increases, and for solo play, having maximum-possible DPS is certainly not a top priority. Your best Shot Rotation for pre-level-62 is any that allows you to do decent damage while not burning yourself out of too much mana or pulling aggro too quickly. For most people I imagine this would involve a Serpent Sting opener followed by mostly Auto Shots, with an Arcane Shot or two. Once you do hit level 62, and you are a Beast Mastery Hunter, you will find that you pretty much stop using Arcane and Serpent Sting all together... but that is a subject for another post!

A Teacher's Work Never Ends

I think that sometimes we may take what we know about a subject for granted and assume everyone knows it. That's one of the reasons why I've been somewhat reluctant to post "hunter kindergarten" guides in the past... because I often fear it's stuff everybody already knows.

But just now, while playing a lowbie hordie, I heard the following two things said by two different level 70 hunters:

"BM hunters don't need agility, they need attack power."

And

"The best shot rotation for 41/20/0 Beast Mastery uses Aimed Shots and Arcane Shots, and Steady Shot but only against dazed targets because it does more damage against dazed targets."

...

/blink

Sorry Barrens hunters, but it's back to school for you guys. Let's go over some stuff real quick here: and I know I don't have the math to back it up, but I do have some personal experiences.

Attack Power vs. Agility:

Attack power isn't bad per se, but here's the thing, if you are gearing for Attack Power over agility, then you are basically giving up crit in favor of a little extra damage per shot.

Whether or not AP helps your "pure DPS" more than crit does is somewhat debatable and is largely dependent on gear, according to Cheeky, a hunter that I have a lot of respect for.

But let's go beyond "pure DPS" and think about what happens when you crit as a typical Beast Mastery hunter. You get to use Kill Command. More DPS. Your pet has a very good chance of crit'ing with Kill Command. More DPS. This procs Ferocious Inspiration. More DPS. Also when you crit, your pet gets a bunch of focus via Go for the Throat. This lets your pet use his focus dump moves (more DPS), which also have a good shot at crit'ing (more DPS) and procing Frenzy (more DPS) and Ferocious Inspiration (more DPS). Now I haven't done any math or anything but I'm having a hard time believing that some extra attack power is going to overcome all the benefits of crits. I myself would much rather see a big crit number on my Armory page than a big AP number.

Now the key is balance, you don't want to stack crit chance and let your AP suffer or vice versa. That's why agility is so good, because it contributes to both. Not to mention when a paladin gives you Blessing of Kings, it is going to scale based on your agility and not on flat AP or crit increases.

And that is why, in Pike's opinion, Agility > Attack Power.

Shot Rotations:

My fellow hunters, do not underestimate the importance of using a good shot rotation if you want to do lots of DPS. If you are a Beast Master hunter you do not need to be using Arcane Shots (unless you have a slower weapon and can thread one in there) and you should never be using Aimed Shots. I have done heroics with hunters who have a nice solid spec, are very well-geared, and yet do very little DPS compared to me, and the reason is because they are simply spamming whatever shots they can when the cooldown is up. You need to learn how to time your shots. I know it seems kind of counterintuitive at first to simply not use certain shots when they're sitting right there in front of you, ready to be fired. But ya gotta trust me on this one. Grab a nice weapon like Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle, start weaving in Steady Shots between your Auto Shots, and hang on and enjoy the ride. The results will amaze you.

My damage meter told me I was hitting over 1100 DPS during my last Kara run; I don't want to quote that just yet because it seems a little high to me and my damage meter has been sorta glitchy lately anyway. But I know I am doing close to 1000 under optimal circumstances and the reason is because of my shot rotation.

As for Steady Shot: apparently it really does do more damage against dazed targets (I... feel kinda silly for not knowing this before >.> I guess you can learn stuff in Barrens Chat.) but that doesn't mean you should be saving it and only using it against dazed targets. It is the most mana-efficient special shot that you have and you should make the most of it.

Well, that wraps up today's little review. In closing, I just want to mention how much I dislike lag. Because it throws off my groove.

This little guide was hastily written up before running to work, so as always, lemme know if I made a mistake or left somethin' out.