Fingers of Fury

Lots of people ask me what they can do to improve their dps. Okay it’s mostly my invisible friend Louie, but it’s something I’d like to try to answer none the less.

There are three key factors to improving hunter dps and they are, rotation, rotation, rotation. If you we’re hoping to see the words Envoy and Mortality in there, I’m sorry to disappoint you.

The truth is the abilities you use, the order in which you use them, and the frequency with which you are able to use them will have a greater influence on your dps than any gear you can get.

Now I’m no math genius. Just ask the nice lady in the coffee shop who short-changes me each morning. Curse you Miss Woo! But I think it’s safe to say that if you have two hunters with identical gear and talents, and hunter one is able to fire more Explosive Shots and Black Arrow’s than hunter two, hunter one will do more dps.

Every time you delay firing a shot that’s off cool down, or fire a lower damage shot instead of a higher damage shot, you lower your dps.

Gear, gems and enchants can help throw a harder punch, but they can’t make you throw more punches.

I’ve seen hunters with the Envoy finish below me on the dps charts, and I’ve seen hunters with sling-shot and a bag of marbles finish higher than me. All of this due to how we manage and execute our abilities.

So what can you do to improve your rotation?

• Break free from the Blizzard UI. Experiment with addOns and bar mods.
• Use keybinds instead of mouse clicks.
• Macro your shots. Abilities like Rapid Fire, Kill Command, and on-use trinkets don’t trigger the GCD. If you macro them into your shots, you will automatically use them whenever they are available.
• Use addOns such as PowerAuras and TellMeWhen to alert you when key abilities are ready.
• Practice your rotation on a Training Dummy. Get some cheap ammo and fire away.
• Make sure you’re using the highest rank of each shot. I’ve seen more Black Arrow Rank 1 in raids than I care to remember.

If none of those things help, then you can see if one of the neighbors has a teenage kid that you can pay to play your toon on raid nights. A large pizza and 20 bucks ought to do it.

Oh and as for actual rotations (really they are priorities), I’ll do a post on those tomorrow. But for right now Louie wants me to take him to see Star Trek, so I’m outta here.