DarkRein wrote:
In 25 mans, you ideally want kickers (rogues) - Enhance shamans (Blust) and one MM and at least one BM hunter. In most raids I setup we have 1.5 to 2.5 full groups of physical damage dealers
Zeromatter wrote:
To be honest, I was thinking about my raid-group setup, which doesn't rely on heavily stacked melee/physical DPS groups. Granted, every situation is different, so thus I will concede this point to you. In T4 content, if you bring many melee/physical DPS, then SV may be more viable than BM.
Let's consolidate shall we? BM is purely for single target DPS. There's no question that yes the BM will do more personal DPS over an SV hunter. Having said that, the SV hunter is by far (assuming a heavier physical DPS output) the best Raid DPS you will ever find, hands down.
So you were both right in your own raids depending on group setups.
Firstly let's take a small look at some numbers. In a typical raid setting, let's say a normal BM hunter can do roughly 1500 DPS. A survival hunter "should" be around 1300 with the same amount of gear and stacked agility. Let's just assume we have the following physical DPS:
2 Rogues
2 BM Hunters (w/ pets)
1 SV Hunter (w/ pet)
1 Enhancement Shaman
1 DPS Warrior
1 Feral Druid
1 Ret Paladin
1 Prot Warrior
That's roughly 10 Physical Damage Classes (13 including pets). With the basic formula of 14 AP = 1 DPS across the board (even for pets), let's do some more quick math.
Survival Hunter
900 Agility
225 AP Gained from Expose Weakness
209 Raid DPS Gained
Since every class takes in AP differently depending on spec, you can even up this amount by quite a bit (about 2.5-3x). However just looking it over, the SV hunter just gained an additional 209 DPS (Raid DPS mind you). And it continues to stack as the SV hunter gains more agility. The more physical damagers you have, the more viable having an SV hunter in the raid will be. Let's take another look, same scenario this time add in one more physical DPS Class (just 1).
So 14 Physical Damage Classes (w/ pets included). Same Stats for the Survival Hunter.
900 Agility
225 AP Gained from EW
225 Raid DPS Gained
Do you see now how much more of a benefit the SV hunter can be given the right raid setup? 11 Physical DPS (w/ 3 Hunters) is the magic number where your AP gained from EW = exactly your DPS gained (EW / 14 = DPS x 14 Physical DPS).
DarkRein wrote:
and one MM and at least one BM hunter.
In all honesty there's no viable reason to bring an MM hunter along when they could be doing more damage using a BM spec. EW counts for the whole raid, and you're hindering your group by giving them a flat rate of 125 AP over the 3% increased damage buff (not to mention the increased damage from the pet) that a BM can offer. 2 BM's & 1 SV is optimal in a heavier physical DPS raid, never MM.
If you're going for group synergy, your "Hunter" group should have 1 Resto Shaman + 1 Feral Druid, stacked with the 3 hunters. Now the reason I say Resto Shaman over Enhancement is due to specs. Our personal Resto Shaman's spec into the Enhancement side for the imp. totems as well as a few other things. In fact there's no reason not to, given the raid setups we have and current talent choices available to the shaman class.
An Enhancement Shaman is better for the melee groups, adding additional AP to melee upon every crit, as well as keeping the totems closer to each of the melee class. Where as in a hunter group, an enhancement shaman has to constantly readjust their totems, or the hunters have to move even closer to the mobs, either way you're going to lose DPS with so much moving around. Now if the AP from Enhancement shamans was added to our RAP, then by all means, bring them over, but it's not, and is wasted in a hunter's group.
Our raids are all about group synergy and how to maximize the use of every option available in order to max DPS. We used to have a Shadow Priest in our "Hunter" group for the added Mana, then soon realized that in the higher end raiding, our healers really needed that mana over us, and that with Judgement of Wisdom + A resto shaman constantly giving out mana totems (not to mention Mana Tide) we were fine.
Quote:
Edit: What's the NBC emblem?
NBC.com - Top left corner, little peacock symbol with multiple colored feathers. Fits the description of the bow perfectly.
*Edit*
Added some junk for group synergy.
Edited, Aug 14th 2008 11:41am by Joobishwun