Survival’s Silent Comeback

It probably says something when six of the top ten Alliance hunters on my realm is raiding as Survival over Marksmanship. Here is how the rankings look as of this morning.

WoW Heroes is a quick way to check realm rankings because it can quickly parse guild rosters according to specific classes, so all I needed to do was update the hunter rosters of the Alliance guilds that have entered Dragon Soul on Eredar by cross-checking with WoW Progress.

Incidentally, I am ranked 22nd as of this posting as Survival. The first Beast Mastery hunter appears in 26th place. This is a marked difference compared to just a few months ago when as many as nine out of ten were Marksmanship.

RaidBots is reporting as of this morning that in the top 100 normal 25-man combat log parses, Survival median DPS is dead even with Marksmanship at just over 35,000. Although 25-man raiding is where groundbreaking progression is usually made, one should not ignore 10-man raiding data. RaidBots reports that in the top 100 normal 10-man combat log parses, Survival median DPS exceeds Marksmanship by over 1,000 — at 30,000 to 28,800. Beast Mastery median DPS rounds out the normal 25-man data at 30,600 and 27,300 at normal 10-man.

But reading numbers don’t really mean anything. What conclusion can we draw from this?

The most important factor for a certain class/specialization combination to appear on these DPS aggregators is raid representation. If there are more people playing these specific combinations in the top 100 parses, the more accurate the sample will be and the higher that combination will place on the DPS rankings. RaidBots tells us just how accurate the sample representation is for these combinations.

At normal 25-man, Marksmanship appears in 1,068 samples; Survival appears in 986 samples; and Beast Mastery in 854 samples.

At normal 10-man, Marksmanship appears in 1,095 samples; Survival appears in 1,064 samples; and Beast Mastery in 881 samples.

Upon brief inspection of the ratio of samples for the respective raid compositions, one can estimate that Survival hunters are more likely to raid in 10-man rather than 25-man, even if only slightly. The increased representation of Survival hunters in 10-man raiding means they are also receiving more upgrades, pushing Survival median DPS higher and allowing it to exceed over Marksmanship.

Of course, there are still more people raiding as Marksmanship as can be seen from the sample sizes I previously mentioned. Why is Marksmanship median DPS not higher then?

The answer is because more top hunters are raiding as Survival over Marksmanship. For example, the Eredar realm ranking I initially posted in the beginning of this entry may not represent the entirety of the situation, and Marksmanship could still represent 60 percent of the population. But if the cream of the crop and those on the groundbreaking edge of progression are using Survival, its median DPS will skew toward a higher value.

Marksmanship may still exceed Survival DPS in theory according to ideal simulations, but live data show otherwise because of players’ behavior.

Speaking of Rage

On the first night that the second half of Dragon Soul opened up on Raid Finder, I was lucky enough to have the [Vishanka, Jaws of the Earth] drop for me. This meant I had access to the best-in-slot ranged weapon pre-progression raiding.

Of course, the purpose of this entry is not to brag. It is to investigate the proc damage that is done by this bow.

Your ranged attacks have a chance to deal 7040/7950/8970 damage over 2 sec.

The tooltip may lead you to believe that this is a static damage caused by the bow. This is, however, not the case because the damage is not physical damage, but magical damage. More specifically, it is fire damage.

It will appear in your combat logs as a buff called [Speaking of Rage].

Yesterday, <Dark Days> overcame the big stumbling block that was Ultraxion, with three healers even. As I’ve been logging (almost) all of our progression fights since the new patch dropped, I was able to get a sense of just how strong this weapon is. According to my combat log from the Ultraxion encounter, which is very static and has no movement involved, Speaking of Rage procced 16 times, accumulating to 160 ticks of fire damage.

This means every proc of Speaking of Rage produces 10 ticks of fire damage in just two seconds. Compare this to three ticks of fire damage per Explosive Shot in two seconds. Of course, the damage is less than than of Explosive Shot, but those are some very fast ticks.

Another detail you may observe is that ticks of Speaking of Rage can make critical hits. During this fight, 33 out of 160 ticks (20 percent) did critical damage to Ultraxion. While this may not be too surprising given previous behavior of the [Flaming Arrow] proc from the two-piece bonus of tier 12 armor, it is information that cannot be derived from the tooltip alone.

The final detail you may observe is that Speaking of Rage is hitting harder than it should in my case. With an average of 891.1 damage per tick, Speaking of Rage does 8911 damage per proc of the bow. Because I have been running Dragon Soul primarily as a Survival hunter, this is leading me to believe that mastery buffs the damage of Speaking of Rage.

So let’s do some mathematics.

With my mastery at 14.38 according to the Armory, it would have increased magical damage by 14.38 percent. Dividing the average damage value by the damage gain will provide me with the average base damage.

8911 ÷ 1.1438 ≈ 7791

This calculated base damage is still above the 7040 advertised by the tooltip, which leads to the conclusion that Speaking of Rage must have a damage range. As I did not have Recount running at the same time of the log, I was not able to determine this range at the time of writing.

However, if Speaking of Rage does indeed scale with Survival mastery as this preliminary data suggests, it could have an interesting implication where the bow can actually do more damage in the hands of a Survival hunter. Given equal gear and skill among three hunters utilizing the three different trees, Vishanka would have the best added value for the Survival hunter.

Pradzha of Piercing Shots on Twisted Nether Blogcast

If you are into podcasts and getting to know other hunter bloggers, I invite you to tune in to the Twisted Nether Blogcast tomorrow (Saturday) evening at 8 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (UTC−8), or 11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (UTC−5).

Pradzha (US-Thorium Brotherhood) of the hunter blog Piercing Shots will be this week’s guest. In his own words, “Piercing Shots is all about playing a PvE hunter, with no restriction on spec or level, although I do concentrate on end-game raiding.” Pradzha’s writing makes complex topics in the game easy to understand, from outlining the thought process to solve what I call Focus panic to analyzing top guild Paragon’s comments about haste.

I will be in the middle of a guild raid, but I will still be hanging out in chatroom with other members of the Blog Azeroth community. Join me in supporting this exemplary member of the hunters’ union.

The Bombardment Mess

On Tuesday, Blizzard reverted one change that had snuck into patch 4.3 without much notice from the hunter community.

Reverted a bug fix that caused Bombardment to be consumed by the next Multi-Shot. Fixing this bug proved to be a significant dps loss, so Bombardment once again lasts for its full 6 second duration regardless of the number of Multi-Shot casts. The tooltip will be updated in a future patch to reflect that this change is intended.

Why did this happen? Last Thursday, some time after the official patch, Blizzard snuck this addition onto the patch notes.

Bombardment now only affects the next Multi-shot cast.

If you don’t remember, Bombardment is a fourth-tier Marksmanship talent that reduces the focus cost of the next Multi-Shot by 50 percent when you critically hit with Multi-Shot. It sounds pretty straightforward right? Well, not quite.

Judging by the wording on the initial change in the 4.3 patch notes, the developers had not foreseen the current usage of Bombardment, where Marksmanship hunters would blow all their focus with sequential Multi-Shots, regenerate it with Steady Shot, and then repeat the process.

If one were to logically read the tooltip for Bombardment, it would be assumed that every Multi-Shot has a chance to proc the Bombardment effect. This meant that if it were to proc consecutively, one could fit in four Multi-Shots before depleting all 100 focus.

Multi-Shot (original, 40 focus)
Multi-Shot (Bombardment proc, 20 focus)
Multi-Shot (Bombardment proc, 20 focus)
Multi-Shot (Bombardment proc, 20 focus)

Apparently this was not Blizzard’s intention. They did not intend on allowing the reduced-focus Multi-Shot to proc Bombardment, meaning one could only fit in three Multi-Shots at maximum.

Multi-Shot (original, 40 focus)
Multi-Shot (Bombardment proc, 20 focus)
Multi-Shot (original reset, 40 focus)

Upon initial inspection, one would think this reduces DPS. Well, it did, so the change was reverted.

But the confusion doesn’t end there. Why mention a six-second duration? There was no indication whatsoever that Bombardment has such a duration. Although I don’t have a definite answer since I have been unable to test this, I have one speculation.

Under extreme haste conditions, one may be able to fit in as many as five Multi-Shots in a row because by the time you consume 100 focus for the initial four shots, you will have regained another 20 while under haste. Bombardment procs when Multi-Shot hits its targets, which is typically at the end of the first global cooldown. Spamming four more Multi-Shots that are all affected by Bombardment uses four 1.5-second global cooldowns, which total up to six seconds. This is the maximum duration of Bombardment because you would have to regain focus again after it is depleted by using Steady Shot.

Bombardment remains one of the least studied abilities of Marksmanship hunters, and there isn’t much data available on it at the moment. However, I don’t think this will be the last time we see its effect come into discussion because the ability will also feature as a Marksmanship passive ability in Mists of Pandaria as well.

Ultraxion in Numbers

Ultraxion will be a stumbling block for many guilds who don’t raid Heroic Firelands. It was for us on Saturday night. Our best attempt was 10 percent, and while we kept inching closer and pulling every trick up our sleeves, we conceded he was too much, at least for now.

Defeating Ultraxion is all about numbers. Can you put out enough damage in time to kill him? Can you heal enough before he enrages? Let’s take a look at the numbers for 10-man raiding.

56,688,720

Ultraxion’s health

6 minutes

Ultraxion’s hard enrage timer

5 minutes 30 seconds

Ultraxion’s approximate soft enrage timer

157,469

Raid DPS to beat hard enrage timer

171,784

Raid DPS to beat soft enrage timer

13,123

Average tank DPS to beat hard enrage timer

14,316

Average tank DPS to beat soft enrage timer

26,245

Average damage-dealer DPS to beat hard enrage timer

28,631

Average damage-dealer DPS to beat soft enrage timer

The assumption is that the DPS value of a tank is on average one-half of the DPS value of a damage-dealing class, using two tanks, five damage-dealers, and three healers for the standard 10-man raid composition.

Actual 25-man Dragon Soul for <Dark Days> begins this Friday. If you are looking to transfer realms, why not choose Eredar and join us on the Alliance side? We are looking for competent and experienced DPS and a few more healers.