Clipping autos is a good thing? When did that happen?Follow

I've been away from the hunter forums for a while. Mainly because I've been trying to gear up my resto druid for raiding, but I've also been bouncing around the general forum.

I've been Spring Cleaning my addon folder. When I went to check if Little Trouble had an update, I saw a note that Patch 2.3 made clipping autoshots preferable. Is this one of those fiddly min/max things where you can do a smidge more dps with the perfect weapon/quiver/haste combination, or is shot timing really a thing of the past?

This is where the ratios have come into play. It's dependant on your gear and your spec obviously.

1:1 - For every 1 Steady Shot, you fire off an Auto Shot
2:1 - For every 2 Steady Shots, you fire off one Auto shot
3:2 - For every 3 Steady Shots, you fire off two Auto Shots

1:1 is ideal and is best used by BM hunters with a 2.0 or lower speed. This allows them to maximize their DPS by constantly firing off shots.

2:1 is the clipping you spoke of. By the time your first steady shot goes off you have to time it to get the 2nd one off before your Auto Shot can go off. The biggest problem with this rotation is the fact that sometimes the Auto Shot can hang, and you in fact get a 3rd Steady Shot before your initial Auto Shot has cast. Auto Shot itself has a .5 delay to it, finding the "sweet" spot so to speak so your 2nd Steady Shot barely clips your Auto Shot is what you're really aiming for.

3:2 just means that your first or 2nd rotation was in fact a 1:1 followed or preceeded by a 2:1 and the cycle continues from there. This is typical of 1:1 hunters with 2.0 or higher speeds. When Imp. AotH procs though typically it's just reduced to a 1:1

The extra damage really comes into play with the addition of our T5 and T6 4 piece bonus'. I believe that the T5 4 Piece Bonus adds 10% more crit chance with Steady Shots (correct me if I'm wrong never had the actual T5 4 piece bonus). Where as T6 4 piece bonus will add 10% more damage to your Steady Shots.

With these set bonus' it becomes obvious that your Steady Shots will in fact do more then your Auto Shots, which is why people prefer to clip the Auto Shots, allowing for more DPS. Although going back to my initial point, it becomes more work on the hunters part to find the "sweet" spot in their shot rotation in order to maximize their DPS. Expirement and find out what works best for you.

Edited, Aug 13th 2008 4:52pm by Joobishwun

It seemed to me that Dustmane found my name while browsing the Allakhazam forums here, and just posted up my name as a hunter who made it into Beta. The initial thread where he mentioned my name was from a person from the AoS forums who was looking for a Beta Buddy, and Dustmane just tossed my name into the mix. I think that's the only reason though.

I'm not a big poster on these forums as you can obviously tell from my 600+ posts. For the most part the norms around these forums keeps thing civilized (to a point), and most of the threads are answered with relative ease. I'll add my 2 copper where I feel makes the most sense and where I have the most expertise on (being mostly survival threads). However I do browse these forums daily, I just don't always make posts in the most obvious of threads that really shouldn't have been made in the first place.

Yea I thought I was off, mostly why I asked for a correction in my post =)


No prob, I can add that, main reason why I didn't was for the clipping purposes. A typical 1:1.5 has a less chance to clip Auto Shots over the 3:2 and 2:1 (which are meant to clip auto shots).

Little different description then the previous ones, easier to explain it this way.

1:1.5 For every 1 Auto Shot, you fire off one Steady Shot + One Arcane/Multi-Shot

Typically speaking this shot rotation is meant more for MM or SV hunters who will have more of a delay in their auto shots. You'll want to time it so that your Steady Shot goes off, along with either an Arcane or Multi-Shot (not both), before your next Auto-Shot goes off. Granted there will be times when both are on cooldown, and this is also more dependent on your spec as well as much haste you have. You'll hardly ever see a BM use this kind of rotation.

Oh ok, I misunderstood the question I guess. The reason I was browsing the forums was because some one on beta contacted me wondering why I was posted on the AoS forums. I had no idea myself, so I went to go check and saw that you posted my name, so I responded =P

I forget the guys name who contacted me in the beta.. but yea that's how it all started.