Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix or Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle

[Olgas]

Originally Posted by Cheeky

In order for the Wolfslayer to clip you need to get the autoshot time below 1.5s, and to do that requires 80% haste effects. But, anything over 93% haste also causes the Sunfury to have the same problem. For that narrow 13% range the Sunfury will do more DPS, but for everything else you are better off with a Wolfslayer.

This whole thread has really had me thinking a lot about Haste, and how Haste effects, especially Rapid Fire, will affect your shot rotation.

If you are BM-specced (i.e., with Serpent Swiftness) and have a 15% quiver or pouch, you have a baseline haste improvement of 38%. Therefore your baseline attack speed with these two weapons will be as follows:

Wolfslayer: 1.96.
Sunfury: 2.10.

With either such Attack Speed, you should be able to maintain a good Auto Shot/Steady Shot rotation.

OK, so let's see what happens if IAotH procs. IAotH improves Attack Speed by 15%. When IAotH procs, your Attack Speeds with these two weapons become:

Wolfslayer: 1.70
Sunfury: 1.83

At these speeds you should still be OK -- you should still be able to maintain a good Auto/Steady rotation with each weapon.

But now let's see what happens if you pop Rapid Fire. Rapid Fire increases your Attack Speed by an additional 40%. So, while Rapid Fire is active, your Attack Speeds are:

Wolfslayer: 1.40.
Sunfury: 1.50

Wow, this is a very interesting dynamic -- and it leads me to some questions:

1. First, at a 1.40 speed with Wolfslayer, there is no way not to clip your Auto Shots. In fact, essentially every time you cast Steady Shot you will definitely be clipping an Auto Shot. So, my question is, what do you guys do when you pop Rapid Fire? Do you stop trying to shoot Steady Shot at all?? What is the best way to handle it, when your Attack Speed drops below 1.50?

2. Second, at a speed of exactly 1.50, is it humanly possible to continue to rotate Auto/Steady? If it is, does this give a DPS advantage to Sunfury over Wolfslayer? (i.e., because you can still theoretically weave in Steadys, which you couldn't do with Wolfslayer)? Or is an Attack Speed of 1.50, just too fast to humanly handle, so it's effectively no better than 1.40 for purposes of trying to maintain a shot rotation?

3. Third, if it is not really possible to fire Steadys without clipping while Rapid Fire is active, is Rapid Killing even a good Talent to spec into? I mean, if every time I use Rapid Fire I start clipping my Autos, does it make sense for me to have spent two talent points in Rapid Kiliing?

OK, let's continue further. When both IAotH and Rapid Fire are active, your Attack Speeds gets really fast with either weapon:

Wolfslayer: 1.22
Sunfury: 1.31

At those speeds, both weapons will be clipping significantly if you fire Steady Shot. So, again, what do you guys do, just sit back and wait for the frenzied Auto attacks to end? Or do you try to weave in any Specials during that time?

I'll be honest, this whole time I've been trying to maintain my shot rotation whenever Rapid Fire was up -- heck even when both IAotH and Rapid Fire were up. And, now I'm wondering if I've been a moron and have been actually hurting my DPS during those periods.

And this then leads me to one last conclusion. There have been lots of posts on this forum about how great fast weapons are and how great +haste gear is. Recently there were great discussions about how the Haste enchant is probably the best enchant for gloves, and how the Crystalweave Cape may be the best cape in the game for hunters. And, of course, on the horizon, there are these great craftable epics from TK with haste on them. And some epic drops with Haste, too. And of course, everyone is raving about the Dragonspine Trophy. But, isn't there kind of a limit to the value of all this Haste? I mean, because of the clipping on any Attack Speeds below 1.50, it seems to me like you might want to keep piling on Haste, but only to the point where your Attack Speed can be maintained at just above 1.50, so you can still maintain a rotation.

Would love to hear feedback and comments on this train of thought.

[Olgas]

Originally Posted by Olgas

And of course, everyone is raving about the Dragonspine Trophy.

(You know you're in trouble when you start quoting yourself...)

Was thinking about Dragonspine further. It boosts your Attack Speed by 30.95% for 10 seconds. When it procs your baseline speed for Wolfslayer and Sunfury (as a BM hunter) are as follows:

Wolfslayer: 1.49
Sunfury: 1.60

So, you'd still be able to maintain a Steady Shot rotation with Sunfury, but not with Wolfslayer. Again, is this a reason to prefer Sunfury?

[Machael]

All that haste is exactly why I have my rapid fire and abacus tied to one macro. On really long fights, I can fire this macro and regen a fair amount of mana due to not casting steady. Sometimes it's just enough to finish up the fight with mana. The only times I use my abacus macro is on these very long fights.

I may lose a tad bit of DPS for 10-15 seconds, but being able to finish a fight going all out is worth it to me. Especially if my pot cooldowns aren't up.

I am also interested in this entire haste debate, but I'm a noob when it comes to theorycrafting.

[Drizztii]

IT seems that when I pop rapid fire my cast time on steady shot seems to speed up. Maybe it is just an optical illusion or something.

[Vansivandr]

Originally Posted by Drizztii

IT seems that when I pop rapid fire my cast time on steady shot seems to speed up. Maybe it is just an optical illusion or something.

It is. However, the global cooldown is not, so unless you're awesome and can managed to pull off an Auto->Steady->Auto->Auto->Steady->Auto rotation consistently, you're going to have problems as a result.

[Olgas]

I guess I should have done some more thorough reading on this topic before posting, as some very relevant information on the issues I was raising was already discussed in this forum here:

http://forums.tkasomething.com/viewt...+speed&start=0

and here:

http://forums.tkasomething.com/viewt...ady+shot+haste

After reading the above threads I now understand that Rapid Fire, IAotH, and Dragonspine will, in addition to accelerating your Auto Shots, also reduce the casting time for Steady Shot. So, some of the questions I pose above, don't really make sense, at least not the way I stated them.

However, I also understand now that, regardless of your Attack Speed and how it is affected by haste effects, the GCD remains a constant 1.5 seconds.

So, what does this mean? I think it means the following:

1. Haste effects, even haste effects that cause your Attack Speed to drop below 1.50 are a good thing. You can't really have too much haste... (And talent points spent in Rapid Killing are not wasted!)

2. However, haste has a diminishing benefit below a certain speed. It will always improve your Auto Shot rate (and therefore your Auto Shot DPS). But, past a certain point, it won't benefit your Steady Shot DPS anymore, because you can't fire a Steady Shot more often than once every 1.5 seconds, no matter how much haste you pile on.

3. When your Attack Speed drops below 1.50, you can still theoretically weave Steady Shots into your rotation, without clipping Auto Shots. However, because of the GCD, you will simply not be able to cast a Steady every other Auto Shot. Instead, you'll end up having to adjust your rotation to something like:

Steady>Auto>Auto>Steady>Auto>Auto>Steady

4. In actual practice, when things get going really fast though, you'll probably end up clippping an Auto Shot here and there no matter what. We're only human after all.

Okay, please let me know if any of the above conclusions are off base.

Also, theory aside, I'd still love to hear from you BM hunters what you actually do when Rapid Fire, Quick Shots or the Dragonspine Trophy are active. Do you just stop firing Steady Shots until the frenetic pace slows down again, or do you keep trying to weave in your Steadys?

[bifur]

With the Sunfury I try to maintiain my rotation when with Rapid fire, if Imp.AotH procs during that time i stop my rotation to just regen mana.

No idea if its the most efficient method, just feels right, like so many other things (ie the earth is flat and the centre of the universe and so on :P )

[jinserai]

Okay, so I'm using the Wolfslayer, not the sunfury, but:

Even when I pop rapid fire (when one of Malugar's cronies ABSOLUTELY has to go down) and my weapon speed goes to 1.49, I just hammer my macro with that much more rapidity. I mean, yes, I'm not getting the full effect of the haste from rapid fire, but I'm not losing anything either. I just look at rapid fire as a minor damage booster that eliminates any delay between Auto->steady sets not caused by latency. It's a shot group tightener, nothing more.

[Celox]

Originally Posted by Kaelvanas

I did some analysis of other weapons using Cheeky's math that he so graciously provided (of a steady/auto only cycle's DPS):

(3.0 88.2 2000) / 2000 RAP: 457.5 ;; Merciless Gladiator's Bow
(2.9 83.3 2000) / 2000 RAP: 459.4 ;; Sunfury
(2.9 84.5 2000) / 2000 RAP: 461.7 ;; Arcanite Steam-Pistol
(2.7 79.1 2000) / 2000 RAP: 475.9 ;; Wolfslayer
(2.7 73.7 2200) / 2200 RAP: 487.1 ;; Don Santos' (w/ 200 avg extra AP)
(2.6 81.2 2000) / 2000 RAP: 494.1 ;; Barrel-Blade longrifle

All weapons used 37 DPS ammo, because I am too broke to use 43 DPS shells. This also doesn't take into account the possibility of mixing in multishot (which can hit better than Steady for some weapons, it seems).

eh,
(2.7 79.1 2000) / 2000 RAP: 475.9 ;; Wolfslayer
(2.7 73.7 2200) / 2200 RAP: 487.1 ;; Don Santos' (w/ 200 avg extra AP)

Does it proc that much to out dps wolfslayer by 12.8 dps?:o

[Cheeky]

Originally Posted by Celox

eh,
(2.7 79.1 2000) / 2000 RAP: 475.9 ;; Wolfslayer
(2.7 73.7 2200) / 2200 RAP: 487.1 ;; Don Santos' (w/ 200 avg extra AP)

Does it proc that much to out dps wolfslayer by 12.8 dps?:o

My last bout of exhaustive testing put it at a minimum of a 7.6% proc rate (1.7 ppm). For a BM Hunter in a auto/special rotation that's an uptime of about 58%. It blows the doors off the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle.