Tag Archives: dps

The Proven. Gorram. Assailant.

CElkPDoUgAAyEs1.jpg largeThis is a title that you get by successfully doing 30 rounds of Proving Grounds on Endless.  I.e., the health of the mobs goes up a little on each round.  Forever.

And I’ve been wanting that title bad, so bad.  Mostly because I saw it as a personal challenge to see if I can still hunter all these years later.  So I practiced and memorized the mobs and figured out when to pop my cooldowns and today it happened.  30 rounds of Endless (I actually went on to get to 37) and I snagged my title.

I AM A HAPPY, HAPPY PIKE.

Once you figure out the pattern it’s not terribly difficult, to be honest – well, no, let me rephrase that.  It is difficult.  But I feel like with practice YOU can do it too! Anyone want tips?  I can always write up a Beast Master’s Guide to Proving Grounds if anyone’s interested.  Heck maybe I’ll do it anyway cause why not.

Beast Masters, have I got a WeakAuras script for you

Focus Fire is a very finicky and situational buff that Beast Master hunters have to be juggling a lot in order to maintain our top DPS.

WeakAuras is an addon that lets you import scripts that can tell you when and where to push buttons and things.

You can see where this is going.

Yes, there is a WeakAuras script that will display little bouncing icons telling you when to use Focus Fire and when to wait.  I put off installing this script for a while, because as I’m sure all three of you long-time readers that are still here recall, I was always proud of eschewing macros and scripts and things for, well, doing things the hard way.

Obligatory old-school raiding screenshot to break up the text.
Obligatory old-school raiding screenshot to break up the text.

But this script is great and, honestly, probably necessary because of just how much micromanagement you’ve gotta do with Focus Fire in order to get the most out of it.

Basically, install WeakAuras and then copy paste this entire script in.  Next, head to the nearest training dummy or proving grounds and watch in amazement as you’re suddenly doing more DPS because you’re timing Focus Fire correctly thanks to the WeakAuras alerts and warnings.  (With thanks to Summonstone for the tip-off).

Alrighty, that’s your guide for today.  Next time on How To BM Hunter: Ten Trillion Cooldowns, Juggling, and YOU!

From Plate to Cloth: Changing Classes (Guest Post by Mr. Pike!)

Hello there everyone, today’s Aspect of the Hare is brought to you by Weyland-Yutani, Proud Sponsors of Going Fast! Also it’s guest written by Mr. Pike, aka Mister Adequate, who gracefully, benificently, most magnanimously stepped in to provide content when Pike was busy having a long day at work.

Today I’d like to tell a story. When I was a young Master Adequate, naive and filled with dreams of being useful in instances, I mained a warrior. I did this for a long, long time. I liked being a warrior in WoW, just charge up to things and smack them in the face with a huge warhammer. It was simple, it worked, and I could hide behind my armor and shield if needed. Oh, I occasionally dabbled in other classes, of course, but aside from a long-lived hunter none of them ever pulled me away from being a warrior for long. I was a warrior the way Pike is a hunter – dedicated and single-minded.

Then, just to mess around and do Super Serious RP, I rolled a Blood Elf. A Belf Mage at that. Two years later, I’m still playing her every day and she is absolutely my main. It just feels so good to get mad deeps and be able to blame the tank if I get hurt. At heart, the great thing about being a mage is that you feel powerful. I’m a squishy clothy, sure, but I have all kinds of magical armor and Blink and invisibility and other things to get me out of trouble. Best of all I’ve made a macro that pops every support skill and item I’ve got, so I grow two feet taller, get about four different glows around me, and double my DPS for a short while. It feels great!

He thinks he can arcane magic. How adorable. I'll show him arcane magic!
He thinks he can arcane magic. How adorable. I’ll show him arcane magic!

But a few years ago, if you’d have told me I’d be maining a mage and loving it, I’d have scoffed heartily at your presumption.

Has anyone else ever had a dramatic and unexpected class change? Did you actually try to change, or was it just something that happened? Or are you one of those weirdos who plays multiple classes as a matter of course?

Proving Grounds: How High Can You Get?

how_high_can_you_getRecently I’ve been spending some time in Proving Grounds, desperately trying for that 30 waves on Endless Damage achievement.  So far the highest I’ve gotten is 17, which I guess isn’t terrible, but I MUST have this achievement!  I want to prove to myself that after all these years, Auntie Pike has still got it.

Have you tried Endless?  How high can YOU get?

P.S. Who else loves the original Donkey Kong?  Sometimes I’m actually okay at it.

The Relationship Between Diet, Exercise, and Sleep

Diet, exercise, and sleep are three pillars of a healthy life. While improving just one of these lifestyle factors can help people lead longer lives, several recent studies have suggested that improving all three may be a better way to improve both physical and mental health1.

Diet, exercise, and sleep influence one another in complex and innumerable ways. Learning about how these activities affect one another is an important part of understanding why research has shown that the more of these lifestyle behaviors you improve, the better your well-being2.

Diet

Diet and nutrition affect virtually all aspects of our health. Eating a healthy, balanced diet has been shown to reduce the risk of a myriad of health conditions3, from heart disease and stroke, to diabetes and obesity. Diet can also affect our mental health4, with several studies suggesting that certain diets may reduce the risk of developing depression and anxiety, try out carbofix.

Food can either fuel or foil a workout, and research shows that combining a healthy diet with adequate exercise offers more benefits than improving diet alone5. The right combination of fluids, carbohydrates and protein, eaten at the right time, can improve athletic performance and decrease fatigue6. Poor dietary choices, like eating right before a high-intensity cardio workout, can lead to increased nausea 7 and make exercise more challenging.

What we eat also also impacts sleep quality and duration. Caffeine is notorious for making it more difficult to fall asleep and eating too close to bedtime can lead to sleep disruptions8. Most health experts recommend avoiding caffeine prior to sleeping. Having too much calories or fat in your diet may make it harder to get enough sleep9, as do diets lacking key nutrients10, like calcium, magnesium, and vitamins A, C, D, and E.

Exercise

Exercise is a cornerstone of health and benefits nearly every system in the body. Many of the benefits are seen immediately, like reduced anxiety, lowered blood pressure, and better sleep. Consistent exercise offers even more long term benefits11, including better weight management, stronger bones, and a reduced risk of more than 35 diseases12. This is how Gluconite works as a healthy natural supplement.

High intensity exercise decreases appetite13, often for at least 30 to 60 minutes after finishing a workout. Physical activity can also help you feel more satisfied and full after a meal14. Unfortunately, sedentary activities appear to have the opposite effect. Research has shown that people who spend more time watching television consume more calories and are more likely to be overweight15.

A substantial amount of research has shown that getting regular exercise, particularly with the guidance of a personal trainer (CPT), can improve sleep. Both aerobic exercise, such as cardio and running, and resistance exercise, like weightlifting, can enhance sleep quality. Any amount of movement may improve sleep, although younger people usually require more exercise than older people to see the same benefits. Generally, engaging in exercise in the afternoon or early evening is conducive to better sleep. It’s important to note that exercise done just before sleep can increase stress hormones, potentially worsening sleep problems.

Working out can also reduce the risk of sleep problems, like insomnia, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and restless leg syndrome (RLS). Multiple studies have shown that exercise can reduce pre-sleep anxiety and improve sleep quality in people with insomnia18. One study found that a 12-week regimen of aerobic and resistance training led to a 25% reduction in the severity of OSA19, while also improving sleep quality and reducing daytime fatigue. A similar study in people diagnosed with RLS found that a 12-week exercise regimen reduced the severity of this condition by 39%20

Beast Mastery in 3.2.2: Less QQ, More PewPew

I’d hit a point last week where I was feeling pretty doubtful about my own potential as a raider and about the glass ceiling on Beast Mastery. I think it spawned mostly from an Ulduar 10 run with a bunch of people who I didn’t know. See, the first day of that run, there were people there that I knew and liked from earlier raids, but most of them didn’t show up on the second day, and they were replaced by people who were SuperBig raiders who had been doing Hard Modes since forever and who were reminiscing about the good ol’ days of Black Temple and Sunwell. I started to feel extremely self-conscious knowing that I was the Oddball, the Beast Master Hunter who had never done these fights before and kept dying to things that everyone else seemed to be dodging effortlessly. I didn’t feel very good about myself at that point; I was afraid I was nothing but a hindrance to my raid group.

So then yesterday it was guild raid time; I was back on familiar ground and dealing with fight mechanics that I knew (for the most part). We started out in 25man ToC, which was going nicely until Faction Champions decided to glitch out like you would not believe– The Amazing Disappearing, Reappearing Faction Champions, Only On Pay-Per-View!– so because it was unplayable, we headed off to get a head start on tonight’s Ulduar. I was checking Recount after each fight, largely for numbers to report back here regarding things like the Bestial Wrath change.

4999 DPS on Northrend Beasts.
4553 on Jaraxxus (this is a fight I am still shaky on because I haven’t done it very much).
5082 on Ignis.
5297 on XT.

And these are all long, sustained fights– not just a few seconds of burst. I had to dip into Viper at least once on every single one of these. Now I have no idea if this is good or not compared to other hunters, but, I can now safely say that I am certainly NOT being a hindrance to my own raid group by spec’ing Beast Mastery, and that my issues from that last raid were simply my own unfamiliarity with the fights. Class/spec viability does not exist in a vacuum in most cases. So, I felt a lot better about that.

So let’s talk about numbers!

Stuff I’ve observed while “in the field”:

  • Wash is still doing a good chunk of my damage. 45%ish or so. The fact that this means he’s doing close to 2500 DPS by himself makes me giddy.
  • I actually am starting to really like the reduced time on Bestial Wrath.  The reason is that it can now be safely used in places where I might not have used it before.  Before, it was like “Okay, if I am going to have 18 seconds of uninterrupted DPS time, let’s use it.”  But in fights where, say, there’s a lot of running around going on, or target-switching, or the boss burrows, etc., you may not always have 18 seconds of uninterrupted DPS time.  10 seconds, however, is considerably more feasible.

Stuff I’ve observed by doing “math” and messing around with spreadsheets (note: these calculations were all performed with my own gear/spec.  Your mileage may vary!):

  • Wolves have surpassed Devilsaurs in the Beast Mastery DPS department, presumably due to how Beast Mastery DPS has skewed more in favor of the hunter in this latest patch.  The DPS difference is very pronounced in fights where you have less buffs (a la Heroics), and considerably softened in larger fights with more buffs (a la 25mans).  For me specifically, performing several tests, I was actually getting Raptors as being ahead of Devilsaurs as well, but I know not everyone who was retesting my results got that answer.  The Wolves > Devilsaurs thing, however, appears to be legit as far as I know and has been confirmed on the training dummies by the lovely Tchann of Crowd Control.
  • For me personally, with my gear, 53/11/7 is still pretty much the best spec.  I know Elitist Jerks has this whole 54/12/5 thing going on, but honestly that was a relatively large decrease for me with no buffs, and only a very slight increase (like, 10 DPS) with all the best buffs.  I also tried a few spec variations that involved putting more points in Mortal Shots, my assumption being that more hunter damage would favor that talent, but again, any DPS increase was incredibly slight and didn’t scale well to heroics and 10mans.
  • I then went through and enabled all the best raid buffs and tested pretty much every Ferocity pet I could.  The DPS differences between pets are, in fact, much smaller than I was expecting; the majority of Ferocity pets, when fully raid-buffed and attached to a Beast Mastery hunter, fall somewhere within a spectrum of about 100 DPS.  That may seem like a large number “in theory”, but honestly, if you’re talking about 5400 DPS vs. 5500 DPS, unless you’re in one of The Bestest Most Hardcore Guilds Ever, it’s not a huge deal. It’d be like if you got a 95% on your math test and your friend got a 97%. You’re both still getting an A. It made me happy to see this because I have this tendency to be drawn to the unconventional pets on my hunters; Lunapike is really starting to favor her Wasp, and I have a hard time doing anything with Althalor without his Moth. (Hmm, I appear to have a thing for flying pets as well, it would seem.)

As for Tawyn, well, she’s not going anywhere without Wash. First of all, I have a really hard time getting into wolves as hunter pets. Like… I’ve been trying since before wolves were cool. I’ve been trying since Burning freakin’ Crusade. I’ve lost count of the number of wolves I’ve tamed, tried out, and then released. I dunno, it just feels too much like I’m sending in a cute little puppy to attack, instead of a big ferocious killing machine.

Secondly, I just really like my raptor, and isn’t that one of the reasons to play a hunter– to use a pet you are fond of and attached to and that you adventured with?

My guild really likes Wash. I do too. <3 tawyn1

This amazing picture was made by Van over at Art of the Hunt. It’s one of the best things ever and makes me happy. <3 Speaking of which, if you have ever done a fan-art of one of my characters, send it my way, I'm going to be putting a fan-art section up on the site shortly! (And I may be contacting you for permission to post yours, if you've sent me fan-art in the past!) =D

TWO JORMUNGARS IN THE MOUNTAINS *cough* (Screenshot Fun)

WoW_DrakesAreNotYourPersonalArmy

“Okay, Dragonbots… roll out.”

TawynRaidBuffedAug09

Raidbuffed. I basically pulled my character screen up and promptly made a O_O face.

WashRaidBuffedAug09

Wash, raidbuffed. 4458 Attack Power.

My jaw. It was on the floor.

5434DPS

Caster? What’s a caster?

This was on trash, so nothing important, but as far as I am aware this is the highest single-target (aka, none o’ that silly Volley spam) DPS I have ever attained. I was very happy to do this well as a Beast Master. ^_^ I giggled like a maniac when I took this screenshot. This also means Wash was doing somewhere in the area of 2500 DPS by himself. You probably won’t want to curse his sudden but inevitable betrayal anytime soon. *sage nod*

Since last week, I have replaced four pieces of gear; since two weeks ago, I have replaced five. They have all been pretty substantial upgrades, and it’s really showing in my DPS. Last week, I was feeling kind of sheepish, putting along somewhere in the middle of Recount– this time, whenever I remembered to check anyway, I was somewhere near the top. I am so glad to be able to contribute to my guild and raid group via Massive Quantities of Sustained Ranged PewPew. *nods*

I had a lot of fun today, I didn’t even see many new bosses (well, I saw a few), but I had so much fun! We did some messing around in the new 25man as well. You know, the one with the infamous Two Jormungars. We had some issues that prevented us from nailing Northrend Beasts but we got pretty close a couple times. I was doing about 4500ish DPS all told on those bosses, from what I saw. It is really weird to think that just a few months ago, 3800 was my high score on Patchwerk. But yes, I am glad to report to you all that Beast Mastery seems to be back in business for the most part ^_^

Just for fun, and because I stink at remembering the names of bosses, I present to you:

Pike Names The Ulduar Bosses She Has Seen So Far:
(Can you figure out who is who? =P)

Vehicle Fight
Dragon Thing
Fire Guy
Elmo Bot
Doctor Octopus/Falcon Punch/That Group of Three Annoying Guys
Giant Popup Book Guy
Cat Chick
Hodir (Oh hey, I remembered someone’s name!)
Fight That Involves Running To Walls and Millions of Adds Because It Is Kel’Thuzad Redux In The Mountains

…hmm. That’s all I’ve seen so far. >.> The list shall be expanded at a later date.

WoW is so fun lately, between raidstuff on Tawyn, gearing up Lunapike, and dinking around on my lowbies, I’m having a blast <3

Seein' Results

An interesting thing I’ve noticed is that Marksmanship has given be a definite DPS boost in heroics but not so much in raids. Why? I have no idea. Maybe it’s all the buffs my pet gets. Or maybe I still just stink at anything that isn’t BM. =P

Either way, I definitely tied my current Beast Master DPS high score in OS25 yesterday. 4900 again, on that one drake that makes everyone’s numbers go crazy.

My Sarth+1 Drake numbers were well below most of the other hunters’ despite the fact that I was the only one with my pet still alive at the end of it all (all the other hunter pets died very early on in the fight. It’s my BM instincts, I guess?) Although I think a lot of that can be attributed to how the other hunters spent the bulk of their time Volleying adds, the simple truth of the matter remains that I have fallen rather viciously behind in terms of gear and I keep winding up in PuG raids with Ulduar-geared hunters who are going EoV-farming to sell the bracers or whatever. This can make it difficult to use other hunters as a yardstick so I have to use myself as a benchmark, and it’s not always easy to remember how I’ve performed in the past. But it was 3600 or so on Sarth as MM which is pretty similar to what I get as BM. (Sarth isn’t exactly a good benchmark fight because of all the stuff you’re doing, but hey.)

I’m still trying to get into Naxx to go play with Patchwerk. I tried to get into a Naxx PuG that was going on yesterday morning but they wanted a shadow priest. So I went and did a bunch of heroics which is when I realized that my heroics results as Marksmanship were quite better than they were as both BM and SV. Verrrrry interesting /strokes chin

Also found out that the second I spec’d MM, suddenly every other hunter I heroics’d with was also MM. It kept making me sad that my Trueshot Aura was going to waste because there were two of us with it. I miss Ferocious Inspiration…

Patchwerk University Says…

PatchwerkExtraCredit

Well, I did it. Got into Naxxramas as Survival. Unfortunately it was a 10man and not a 25man, and furthermore… the raid was kind of a giant failure. Yay PuGs, right?

It had one thing going for it though. The raid decided to do Patchwerk first. So that’s what I did. (And all I did in Naxx, actually.)

I felt really in the zone. I had super rhythmic music playing in the background, I was firing my shots in the correct order, my latency was low, my FPS was high, I was watching Quartz like a hawk and hitting my buttons and hotkeys the split second I was able to. Perezvon was Furious Howl’ing up a storm and I felt like I had finally nailed Survival and that there was absolutely no way in heck I wouldn’t beat my previous 10man Patchwerk high score.

So when it was all said and done and all the dust settled down I whipped out Recount…

I was a thousand DPS higher than second place.*

…I was 400 DPS lower than what I usually do as BM. (3333 as SV compared to 3700ish on most of my BM attempts. My personal high score on 10man Patchwerk is 3980, as Beast Master.)

/tilts head to one side and scratches scalp

And so I leave it at that. See, I am going to be working evenings the rest of the weekend so my chances of getting into another raid before I continue with the project and move on to Marksmanship are slim.

The verdict? Well, to be honest with you guys I am convinced I was using the right glyphs, spec, and rotation. And that screenshot I posted in my last post was a bad example; normally my pet is only doing about 15% of my damage, he was doing an unusually high amount in that last screenshot due to the mechanics of the fight, but I know I was pulling my weight this time.

So why did I not see this big DPS increase? Why did I wind up failing the Patchwerk test?

My guess is that it’s a gear issue. The vast majority of my gems are +hit gems, and I couldn’t exactly afford to lose those so I couldn’t re-gem to Agi. On top of that, I am puttering around in a mixture of Heroics blues, Naxx10 stuff, and a couple of Naxx25 and badge lewts. My guess is that at a lower gear level (like mine), BM simply scales… better.

And honestly I can’t help but think the fact that the Beast Mastery playstyle feels like it’s simply a natural extension of myself helps too… =P

Survival was an interesting experience, to say the least. I have gone from absolutely and utterly disliking the playstyle at the beginning of the week, to a sort of jovial handshakey acquaintanceship. I can appreciate the complexities of the shot rotation (even if staring at Quartz and my action bars made me feel horrifically claustrophobic) and the big Explosive Shot crits were pretty fun to watch– when I could see them out of the corner of my eye while staring at the action bars, anyway.

…but it wasn’t quite “home”. I have heard it said that playing a hunter spec is just pressing buttons in a different order… we will have to agree to disagree on that one. *nods*

* The second-place contestant was a very good Death Knight friend of mine who is normally neck-and-neck with me in the DPS department. He later expressed his befuddlement to me at how very poor his DPS was that round, and I’m starting to wonder if the group makeup was just horrible somehow and if that had something to do with my own performance. Guess I’ll never know, though. Not having a stable raid group sort of made it rather difficult to do a decent analysis of specs, really.

NOW We're Gettin' Somewhere

Survival_OS

So that’s basically about, oh, 50-100 DPS more than I do as BM on 10man Patchwerk. I probably should’ve just snapshotted the Current Fight (I think it was on Overall) but hey, it was a nice number. And much more than I’ve normally been doing as Survival so far this week. (Even if the whole Twilight Torment thing from my pet kinda skewed the numbers. I had decent numbers on the other fights too, so it’s justified. /cough)

Mostly I’m surprised because I don’t feel like I changed my playstyle at all. I did wind up sucking it up and installing Quartz this morning, but I don’t think it had much of an effect, since overall my latency is pretty low and my FPS is pretty high. Very helpful for my moonkin, though. >.> 1900 DPS at level 75? Yes please. Aaaanyways, perhaps I just got the right mix of buffs, finally.

I feel like I am finally starting to get into the Survival groove. Maybe. At least, this was the first time I saw a bunch of mobs and thought “Oh! I should use Frost Trap for Lock and Load!” only to find out it was on cooldown because of Black Arrow. I’ll uh… remember next time. >.>

…Frost Trap is the one, right? <.<