Dummy parses, U26

[Gabli]

So hunters recently got a buff, and are quite probably worth a spot in raids now. Since there's been quite a few changes to some specific skills, I think it might be interesting to try different rotations and setups and compare the results. So I went ahead and tried a few ones and would like to share the outcomes here, hoping people those who will try similar things will do the same.

Concerning test setup :
I'm not trying to get boasting rights by cherry picking a lucky parse with all consumables : as such every rotation was tested by doing 21 3-min parses versus the curator's dummy, for a total fight time of 63min. Regarding screenshots further in the post, the dummy keeps you in combat for close to 11s every 3-min session, which explains both lower DPS shown in Combat Analysis than actual DPS and higher combat time.
The only consumable I used was the bow chant which is probably worthless anyway since the value has barely scaled. So no attack scroll, scholar's scroll or any store buff. I have not used focus pot either, but did start the fight out of Camouflage. The idea is that anyone can compare their output with those presented here without having to "waste" resources useful for raiding.

I would also start by saying that I've heard claims of 170k parses. I have no idea whether these are average or outliers, nor what consumables were involved. In the event that it's an average without using all buffs available (attack token, special scrolls and food, ...) then I'm pretty far from what is achievable. So while what's shown below might contain useful information and data, it would be sub-standard and should not be taken as a "meta" rotation.

Gear was the same for every test :

• 818 448 Physical Mastery
• 618 871 Critical Rating. Including the bonus from traits, Penetrating Shot's debuff and essence proc this yields a total critical/devastating chance of 41.5% and 6.6%.
• 198 350 Finesse : 23.9%
• Proc essences : Critical chance (fury) and Fellowship Aggressor.
• 4-set for Heart Seeker 15s cooldown reduction is equipped, but I am still missing the shoulders to get the additional 5k agility.
• I do swap bows and actually have been doing it for quite a while. This means that every bow skill is fired with all relevant legacies (unless the server decides to lag/freeze/whatever you want to call it), the only exception being Quick Shot's slow legacy for Strength Stance, which would improve the chance for a bonus focus point.

On every screenshot, the overall critical chance seems higher than expected. That is because of Quick Shot's +22.5% critical chance in Precision Stance, the actual critical rate checked for every skill was a close fit to expected values (never more than 2% deviation if I remember correctly)

Note concerning Strength Stance :
The stance simply is not worth using right now. At best, (with trait points and non imbued melee LI), the bonus sits at +20% ranged damage while Precision gives +44% critical magnitude. At critical cap chance (630k rating), a quick spreadsheet shows that Precision yields higher overall damage output for any skill damage bonus higher than 35% (from traits and legacies). At 500k CR the threshold is close to +50% bonus.
Since Induction Bow damage + specific induction skill legacies, DoT and Upshot damage legacies are already giving more than 35%, Precision gives better output per skill than Strength for these skills (which means only Penetrating Shot and Blood Arrow hit harder in Strength than Precision on average), and it happens to also help Focus generation and improve Quick Shot's critical change and critical damage (does not apply to devastating shots by the way).

Note concerning Shot Through the Heart : the update did not change the fact that the bonus damage is lower than a single tick of the Barbed Arrow DOT, making this trait actually detrimental to use.


For every rotation, I tried to compile average damage per skill and the average time between two uses of a skill.


First rotation :

I wanted to test a fairly simple rotation :

• Quick Shot spam to refresh Heart Seeker and Upshot as much as possible.
• Penetrating Shot only to refresh the debuff on target.
• Swift Bow only when instant cast.
• Blood Arrow only when Exsanguinate is about to be off cooldown.
• Bard's Arrow when available.

At some point, 3 times actually, I did use Barbed Arrow as a reflex. Drowned in a 63min breakdown, I'll assume it had close to zero impact.


Average DPS : 141.3 k (screenshot)

Skill	Average Hit	Hits per skill usage	Average damage per skill	Time between uses (s)
Heart Seeker	57 328	11	630 308	18.58
Exsanguinate	26 922	11	296 139	23.75
Upshot	228 298	1	228 298	8.81
Swift Bow	69 722	3	209 167	15.00
Bard's Arrow	150 840	1	150 840	31.76
Blood Arrow	111 858	1	111 858	20.66
Penetrating Shot	67 596	1	67 596	8.49
Quick Shot	49 911	1	49 911	1.69

Given the extremely low damage from Penetrating Shot, it seems quite clear in my opinion that it's indeed a decent idea not to use it for anything else than the debuff. While Bard's arrow gives decent damage its cooldown is fairly high compared to the rotation pace, making it probably more useful in a specific burst window than used on cooldown.



Second rotation :

Next test was basically the same but with Swift Bow used closer to "as often as possible" even without Swift and True proc, and without Bard's Arrow.

Overall output is extremely similar to the previous one : 142 k (screenshot).

It would have probably been slightly higher if I realised the trait tree I used only had 4/5 on Natural Extracts because I had actually put 2 points in Strength Stance for a different test. It would mean that there is a definitive incentive to use Swift Bow as often as possible even if you don't proc the instant cast buff. Another reason for this is that even though only the first of the three arrows generates focus on critical hit, all three can decrease HS & Up cooldowns on critical and devastating hits.

Skill	Average Hit	Hits per skill usage	Average damage per skill	Time between uses (s)
Heart Seeker	57 099	11	628 086	18.33
Exsanguinate	26 060	11	286 665	23.27
Upshot	238 426	1	238 426	8.75
Swift Bow	69 208	3	207 624	12.48
Blood Arrow	113 812	1	113 812	20.88
Penetrating Shot	65 186	1	65 186	8.79
Quick Shot	50 686	1	50 686	1.62

Third rotation :

I tried to keep Barbed Arrow ticking as much as possible on top of what I was doing previously. There is a noticeable decrease in Quick Shot frequency, and as result a slight decrease in Heart Seeker & Upshot frequencies.

Overall output seems slightly higher than previously (about +2.5% DPS) : 145.5 k (screenshot).

Skill	Average Hit	Hits per skill usage	Average damage per skill	Time between uses (s)
Heart Seeker	57 980	11	637 782	18.75
Exsanguinate	26 466	11	291 125	23.4
Upshot	230 377	1	230 377	8.92
Swift Bow	69 727	3	209 181	13.45
Barbed Arrow	23 755	7	166 286	15.57
Blood Arrow	108 53	1	108 533	20.54
Penetrating Shot	67 254	1	67 254	8.65
Quick Shot	50 485	1	50 485	1.91

This happens to be the rotation for which I've seen the highest crit-lucky parse : 192 k for the first minute, 161.3 k for the full 3-min parse. On the other hand, the worst parses were close to 130 k if I remember correctly.


Fourth rotation :

Last one is adding Split Shot the mix (taking one tier away from Quick Shot bonus focus generation as far as trait tree is concerned)

Overall DPS : 146k (screenshot).

Skill	Average Hit	Hits per skill usage	Average damage per skill	Time between uses (s)
Heart Seeker	57 008	11	627 083	19.69
Exsanguinate	26 270	11	288 965	23.26
Upshot	232 088	1	232 088	9.29
Swift Bow	70 451	3	211 352	13.45
Split Shot	184 734	1	184 734	20.11
Barbed Arrow	24 001	7	168 734	16.78
Blood Arrow	115 440	1	115 440	20.77
Penetrating Shot	64 005	1	64 005	8.85
Quick Shot	50 751	1	50 751	2.37

While Split Shot's damage is pretty nice, the attack animation following the induction is not that quick which means Quick Shot is used much less often and this coupled with focus cost probably explains its low impact on single target damage. No-brainer as soon as there is more than one target to hit.




I have not tried to incorporate Rain of Arrows as the focus cost seems pretty high for a single target rotation. Neither have I tried to actively use melee skills for offensive purpose as I do not have the melee critical damage on my LI.


Any contribution or tips on how to improve traiting, gearing or gameplay is obviously welcome.

[Aeviternus]

Good post. I found the same set of skills to use to be the optimal one, however I don't have the proper gear to be able to test the DPS numbers. I hope other Hunters will report their findings too, so that we can finally get a proper view of what the class's potential actually looks like.

PS. You made a typo ("previousmy"), which irked me because the rest of your post is impeccable. Please fix, to help my OCD.

[Strider5548]

Thank you so much for posting this. It's really great to see the amount of effort you put into this and your willingness to share with the community.

You didn't note this in your post so I will mention in case it helps improve your #'s. When I open any fight I hit strength stance while I'm in camo, wait 3 seconds, then hit burn hot, jump to precision, hit gen focus/cancel gen focus, then open with HS. The reason I swap to strength and back is because you get a 10 second crit rating buff of around 128k, the reality is by the time you are done with the stance swap and everything else the buff will only apply to heartseeker and maybe upshot. It's still something though, and I think is worth doing.

Your results are very much in line with what I have found but I did not do as much comprehensive testing as you. If they get rid of the split shot animation it will be a really solid part of the rotation, as it is now it seems to help marginally. I have not tried using bard's arrow, but your post inspired me to do some tests with it.

[Omen_Kaizer]

This is awesome, and I'll lean on this heavily when getting started on my new hunter.

Noob question coming from a ward/capt: since tooltips sometimes lie and there are sometimes unexpected holes in legacy coverage (like captain's blade of elendil not benefitting from the light damage legacy before this update), are there any skills that would benefit from a crafted bow swap @~3.5k dps instead of an LI? If all works as expected, I wouldnt think so.

[RicoFTW]

Amazing work there Gabli, thank you very much.

I have recently started bow swapping for SB and HS and just wondered if it's just me or even with 2 maxed out bows you still can't have all the legacies you would like (focus bow damage one) in my case. Wondered what's other hunter's legacies setup.

Here are my bows. Left one is my main bow, right one is SB/HS swap.

https://imgur.com/GbrswrZ

[Kander]

This is awesome, and I'll lean on this heavily when getting started on my new hunter.

Noob question coming from a ward/capt: since tooltips sometimes lie and there are sometimes unexpected holes in legacy coverage (like captain's blade of elendil not benefitting from the light damage legacy before this update), are there any skills that would benefit from a crafted bow swap @~3.5k dps instead of an LI? If all works as expected, I wouldnt think so.

No, because at min all your skills benefit from massive crit multiplier legacy in bow and also from specific skill legacies. I don't think any single skill benefits from the bow dps increase compared to LI, maybe with the changes now there's some skills that are worth it but wouldn't really do it as the gain would be minimum.

[Omen_Kaizer]

No, because at min all your skills benefit from massive crit multiplier legacy in bow and also from specific skill legacies. I don't think any single skill benefits from the bow dps increase compared to LI, maybe with the changes now there's some skills that are worth it but wouldn't really do it as the gain would be minimum.

So all the induction/focus crit/damage legacies work the way they're supposed to then--awesome. I just wouldnt have been surprised if some skill had been historically mis-coded so that it didnt take advantage of any legacies and would therefore do better with crafted. The kind of quirk I can't pick up from the wiki. Thanks!

[Gabli]

You didn't note this in your post so I will mention in case it helps improve your #'s. When I open any fight I hit strength stance while I'm in camo, wait 3 seconds, then hit burn hot, jump to precision, hit gen focus/cancel gen focus, then open with HS. The reason I swap to strength and back is because you get a 10 second crit rating buff of around 128k, the reality is by the time you are done with the stance swap and everything else the buff will only apply to heartseeker and maybe upshot. It's still something though, and I think is worth doing.

I did not mention stance swap because I do not think it makes a difference. The time swaping back to Precision is "wasted" Burn Hot bonus, so I would definitely not swap stance after using BH. And if you stance dance before you have to go through all of BH animation as you can't cut it while camouflaged. Then the bonus probably will only apply to the first hit, and if you are at critical chance cap it only translates to +1% devastating chance and 4% critical magnitude. But I've actually not tried that since literally a few years and could be wrong.

I have recently started bow swapping for SB and HS and just wondered if it's just me or even with 2 maxed out bows you still can't have all the legacies you would like (focus bow damage one) in my case. Wondered what's other hunter's legacies setup.

I actually use one bow for inductions and one for focus skills. See below :

I have the DoT legacy on the focus bow because of Exsanguinate as the skill's initial hit benefits from the Focus Critical Multiplier legacy.

[RicoFTW]

I did not mention stance swap because I do not think it makes a difference. The time swaping back to Precision is "wasted" Burn Hot bonus, so I would definitely not swap stance after using BH. And if you stance dance before you have to go through all of BH animation as you can't cut it while camouflaged. Then the bonus probably will only apply to the first hit, and if you are at critical chance cap it only translates to +1% devastating chance and 4% critical magnitude. But I've actually not tried that since literally a few years and could be wrong.



I actually use one bow for inductions and one for focus skills. See below :

I have the DoT legacy on the focus bow because of Exsanguinate as the skill's initial hit benefits from the Focus Critical Multiplier legacy.

Thanks Gabli. Looks like a lot of swapping for me to deal with. Might try in the future

Thoughts on Split Shot ? I am using it since they buffed hunters as the base damage looks really good. Induction is short but I have the post induction animation and and even when I use it almost every time it's off cooldown, in the end it ends up doing about same damage as auto attacks. Not tried Bard's Arrow myself yet, will look into it.

[Neere_CH]

Thanks a lot for the post, it's incredibly helpful.
Could you elaborate a bit about PM/crit/finesse ratings? Or point me where to read more. Cos I was surprised to see such low numbers for finesse actually. What's the point behind that? Raid debuffing?

[Pashtick]

Nice post Gabli.
Here is a parse from my Hunter. Maybe it helps someone.

It was not a 100% try, I played one heartseeker with the wrong bow (thanks for the nice server performance...) and left the heartseeker standing a little too long on hold on the second Hotburn. So there is definitely still potential upwards.

[Strider5548]

Nice post Gabli.
Here is a parse from my Hunter. Maybe it helps someone.

It was not a 100% try, I played one heartseeker with the wrong bow (thanks for the nice server performance...) and left the heartseeker standing a little too long on hold on the second Hotburn. So there is definitely still potential upwards.

Thanks for the video, we definitely don't have enough hunter videos out there since people stopped playing them for so long (until now).

Can you explain how you are bow swapping? I can't tell when you swap and for what skills. Your rotation is just like mine but your DPS is much higher, I suspect that I am too actively swapping and either causing delays in skills or swapping too quickly in some cases so missing the benefit. It's weird because u can swap during some skills and not during others, and it's hard to tell exactly when a skill has completed sometimes when doing swaps.

[GriffX]

How bad would my DPS be lacking by just using ONE bow? What legacies would you put on it if just using one bow?
With the LI grind as is, I am too lazy/unwilling to farm up an extra bow. I miss my hunter, but if the weapon swapping is a necessity, I'll keep playing my RK for now.


Thanks in advance!

[Gabli]

Thanks a lot for the post, it's incredibly helpful.
Could you elaborate a bit about PM/crit/finesse ratings? Or point me where to read more. Cos I was surprised to see such low numbers for finesse actually. What's the point behind that? Raid debuffing?

You actually neeed 25% finesse to ensure Exsanguinate and Heart Seeker's DoTs dont get resisted. I am currently 1% lower than target.

Nice post Gabli.
Here is a parse from my Hunter. Maybe it helps someone.

It was not a 100% try, I played one heartseeker with the wrong bow (thanks for the nice server performance...) and left the heartseeker standing a little too long on hold on the second Hotburn. So there is definitely still potential upwards.

Thanks a lot for this. Would you mind clarifying whether you are wearing the -10% attack duration or -10% induction from Winterstith ? Sadly we can't see critical hit chance on the video but could you confirm this is what you get on average with Veteran Strength and Hope token ?

[Strider5548]

How bad would my DPS be lacking by just using ONE bow? What legacies would you put on it if just using one bow?
With the LI grind as is, I am too lazy/unwilling to farm up an extra bow. I miss my hunter, but if the weapon swapping is a necessity, I'll keep playing my RK for now.


Thanks in advance!

If you are going to raid you should weapon swap, it makes a significant difference (>10%).

LI grinds are not a huge issue anymore now that you can use embers/motes for scrolls. You can get all your scrolls up to level 74 pretty easily using embers and crystals to 63 i think? If you have a ton of embers you can take scrolls up to 79, but it's easier to just finish them w/ Throne/MT dailies/FI.

If you insist on sticking with one bow, focus on the legacies that affect your highest contributing damage skills (quick shot, upshot, HS, core induction/focus damage/crit modifiers).

[Chris91]

How bad would my DPS be lacking by just using ONE bow? What legacies would you put on it if just using one bow?
With the LI grind as is, I am too lazy/unwilling to farm up an extra bow. I miss my hunter, but if the weapon swapping is a necessity, I'll keep playing my RK for now.


Thanks in advance!

Even though all dps classes save RK should weaponswap for maximum dps you'd still outdps your RK on a Hunter/Burg/Warden even without weaponswapping assuming you play properly otherwise. Red Champ loses more from not weaponswapping than other dps so it probably is the exception to the rule (don't play Champ without swapping)

[Aeviternus]

Got the set bonus recently and decided to try some dummy parses with that, to see how much of an improvement that makes. Furthermore, I untraited Split Shot.



Other parses in this link.

Just averaging the total damage done over 6*180 seconds, the average DPS is around 150k. Before getting the set bonus, I would say I was averaging around 135k DPS. The set bonus makes a massive difference. I'm not sure if traiting Split Shot is an improvement in DPS, or not. I will trait for it now, and see if the results are better.

Edit: Split Shot indeed (as some people speculated) does not appear to be worth using, just because of the additional focus consumption + animation time, it leaves too little room to spam QS to make HS/US recover faster.

[TheMeneldorian]

....

So at the chance of sounding like a noob with no reading comprehension; would you mind posting what rotation you are currently using is? Is was hard for me to tell which one you are actually using after the edits, mention of split shot or not, etc.

Just came back after about 2 years away and the rotation I'm used to is severely lacking so just trying to wrap my head around which rotation I should be aiming for (not to mention I'm just now learning how to swap, so this should be fun).

[Gabli]

So at the chance of sounding like a noob with no reading comprehension; would you mind posting what rotation you are currently using is? Is was hard for me to tell which one you are actually using after the edits, mention of split shot or not, etc.

Just came back after about 2 years away and the rotation I'm used to is severely lacking so just trying to wrap my head around which rotation I should be aiming for (not to mention I'm just now learning how to swap, so this should be fun).

It's not exactly a rotation, it's more of a priority system.

• Top priorities are Upshot and Heart Seeker, the former must be used with full focus and the latter should always be fired with tier 3 Fast Draw.
• Try to keep both DoTs ticking as much as possible :
  
  • Try to reapply Barbed Arrow every 12 seconds. The "tricky" part is that this timer does not align with anything as no other skill shares a 12sec downtime. If you are the only hunter you can use DebuffVitals to track the dot (but the plugin sometimes fails), and otherwise you can configure something with buffbars but as far as I know there is no perfect solution because the dot ticks have the same name in the combat log as the first hit unless Light Oil is used, which means you can't have a stopwatch reset after every application of the skill.
  • You should also reapply Exsanguinate as soon as possible, so try to "open" the skill beforehand by using Blood Arrow when you have close to 5s remaining on Exsanguinate cooldown. That means 1/4 of the cooldown duration, making it easy to spot. That gives you 3sec to apply it after it becomes available, which should be enough.
  
  
• Then you also must use Swift Bow as often as possible, keeping in mind that if possible it's obviously better to use when Swift & True has procced for instant cast. Otherwise it's fine to use with tier 3 FD, especially when you already have refreshed both dots and both HS and Upshot are on cooldown because each of SB's three arrows can decrease those cooldowns.
• Refresh Penetrating Shot's debuff, so use PS every 8-10sec depend on what is about to come off cooldown. Any hunter can refresh it so DebuffVitals is a good plugin to track this one.
• The rest is just spamming Quick Shot.

Concerning Split Shot, I have not found it to have a meaningful impact on ST encounters and have not been using it in such occasions.


On top of the video provided by Pashtick above in this thread, you can also check this one where I've enabled the skill queue display (the hourglass thing) to help track what skill is being fired/queued.


This is overall above average as far luck is involved : the first two minutes are very crit and proc lucky, while the third is rather below average. You are likely to find that that once you get a general hang of the "rotation", standard deviation is higher than the dps loss from small mistakes.

A few mistakes i've made in this video :

• At approx 1'10 (CA timer), I use instant cast SB when I should have refreshed Penetrating Shot's debuff before.
• At approx 2'05 it's the other way around : I should have used SB before as I still had a few seconds left on PS' debuff.

There are likely more to be found, so don't hesitate to ask if you spot one and are not sure whether it's a failure on my part or an "educated choice".

One last thing concerning the trait tree : this is an AoE tree but without Hail of Arrows as the thing is currently bugged. For a full single target tree, you'll probably want to switch points from Split Shot to Quick Shot Focus and from Rain of Arrows to Mercy Kill.

[Stax_Daniel1]

It's not exactly a rotation, it's more of a priority system.

Awesome, thank you so much. Now I just have to start learning how to do bow swapping for the first time.

Do you use hot keys for swapping bows? I never saw the bow swaps in the video.

[Gabli]

Awesome, thank you so much. Now I just have to start learning how to do bow swapping for the first time.

Do you use hot keys for swapping bows? I never saw the bow swaps in the video.

You can't "see" them on the video but you can hear them : a little "click" sound everytime I go from Induction to Focus skill or the other way around. I have a mouse with programmable buttons (Logitech g600), so some of these buttons are used specifically for weapon swapping.

[whitestar87]

On top of the video provided by Pashtick above in this thread, you can also check this one where I've enabled the skill queue display (the hourglass thing) to help track what skill is being fired/queued.

Good afternoon! New hunter here trying to sponge up as much info as possible. Could you please tell me which plugin is displaying the duration of your short-term buffs in the center of your screen?

Thanks!

[MaxHunter]

Good afternoon! New hunter here trying to sponge up as much info as possible. Could you please tell me which plugin is displaying the duration of your short-term buffs in the center of your screen?

Thanks!

Buffbars, here the link:
https://www.lotrointerface.com/downl...-BuffBars.html

[Sk0field]

obsolete post, see post above

[Pashtick]

Sorry at all to answer so late. But i was on vacation and enjoyed the nice weather.

Thanks for the video, we definitely don't have enough hunter videos out there since people stopped playing them for so long (until now).

Can you explain how you are bow swapping? I can't tell when you swap and for what skills. Your rotation is just like mine but your DPS is much higher, I suspect that I am too actively swapping and either causing delays in skills or swapping too quickly in some cases so missing the benefit. It's weird because u can swap during some skills and not during others, and it's hard to tell exactly when a skill has completed sometimes when doing swaps.

I only swap bow for Heartseeker, Swiftbow and Hotburn. Therefore I unfortunately have to do without the legacy for the focus kill damage, but the Serverperformace or "my PC" is to bad to switch so often to use all important Legacys. So i made the compromise to forego this legcy so as not to have too many weapon switches in the rota.
Here is a Link with my LI's.

Thanks a lot for this. Would you mind clarifying whether you are wearing the -10% attack duration or -10% induction from Winterstith ? Sadly we can't see critical hit chance on the video but could you confirm this is what you get on average with Veteran Strength and Hope token ?

I use only the -10% induction from Winterstith, because this is my raid gear and i parse to optimise for myself with the raidgear.
The crit chance overall was normal, but there was a little bit luck with krits on heartseeker and upshot in this try.