Mar 24, 2009

How to raise the DPS for a Hunter

I was actually looking all over the place for this simple question that I had on the Hunter in World of Warcraft - and I got no straight answer. Finally through a lot of hit and trial and reading a lot of mumbo jumbo, I got some results. From a dps ( Damage Per Second) of 1300 I was able to go upto 1700 ! Woot ! So, this is a short writeup for those people who are in the same boat as me. 

Since I am at present staying at my in-laws house, I am playing on a rather low end machine - I get around 30fps at minimum settings ( /sigh ) . It also has a wierd keyboard ( HCL Office 8500 ) and for some reason I am not able to get screenshots to help in this guide. Anyways here goes. 

Once you hit level 80 - the max level in WoW, the options open up to you for Heroic Dungeons and Raids . These enable you to vanquish tougher bosses and get some nice loot , apart from the Badges of Heroism. However, as a DPS unit ( Hunter, Warlock, Mage , cat/moonkin druid, rogue, Enh/Ele shaman, Fury Warrior etc), your role in the group is to burn down the Boss fast. That means that you need to do massive amounts of damage. Therein lies the problem. Up till now, you have been working hard at levelling your character , and things like increasing dps was not something that you have worked on really. So, suddenly you are doing a Dungeon run, and while others show a 2000+ dps, you are stuck at around 1000dps. How embarrasing. And you have no idea what to do. 

I am in the same boat. And I hope my experiments help you to. Keep in mind, I am a n00b raider - and it will show :)

The first thing was that after multiple wipes at EoE , and having dps lower than even the Tank, I started to look at how to do up my DPS. Off I went to IronForge ( if you are Horde, go to Orig or any city) and started to work on the target dummies to check how much is my dps. As the mana bar depleted , the values shown in Recount was approx 1300 ( which reads - just below 1300). Not bad, but not good either. 

The first thing I did after this was to change my spec from a BeastMaster hunter to a Survival Hunter. I used the spec which BigRedKitty uses. 

2nd round at the dummies. Woah ! Crossed the 1500 barrier - just about . 

Next I headed over to Elitist Jerks. These guys do a lot of number crunching on almost each class and spec and try to figure out whats the best way to go forward. Also I did an audit on my character using  Be Imba , a website which checks your gear and tells you the most common things missing. In my case it is the jewels missing from a few sockets , and enchants. Looked up EJ for what gems I needed. Spent a small fortune at the Auction House and got all the sockets gemmed , including the socket created using an Eternal Belt Buckle ( which adds a socket to the belt item - I did not even knew this happened !) . Also a quick trip to Dalaran and I exchanged the badges I had got by running UK and Nexus for a Hand slot item ( I had 61 badges! ) . 

Back to IF. change in shot rotation. Started killing the target dummy. 

Woah ! Spiked to 1900 before averaging out at 1700 dps ! 

A 400 dps jump in a Day ! Wonderful. 

Decided to jump in and test it with a heroic. Today's daily was HoL and pugged it with other guys. Sure we had a couple of wipes, but in the end, got Loken with 2 achievements under the belt : 
Ooh. That is a big confidence booster. However, I somehow did not get the 1700dps I got while testing :( 

Next on the agenda, farm some money to enchant all the items that are enchantable ! 

3 comments:

  1. When you say, you spent a fortune, is that in game money, or do you actually pay for that?

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  2. Ingame.

    One can though argue that it is also the real world money one has spent as the game is a monthly subscription based one. :(

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  3. im am hunter and i have been doing raids and heroics and i started in pvp gear, (not know what the diff was) i was at around 1.4k dps not knowing my cycle, i did 10 man naxx and they we shocked so the inv me to their guild and showed me pve and how it works.... in less then a week im at 3dps but the biggest part to being a surv hunter is your pet and your cycle. the best pet u could have has surv is a wolf for their attack power buff and make sure with the pets spec that u get the other thing that puts your ap up...and i am still try to get a good cycle going but most of the time i just get a nice buff from pet and my dps just gose up and i think the best part to being a hunter is once u get all your dps nice and high u can have it so your pet can help u dps (with pet dps can go up mabey with 1-5 hundred) so im working on try to find gear with out the big week raids because it can be super hard with school to do ulduar and stuff but i think if u play a hunter the best thing to do is try to get a pet and learn the cycle if u do those 2 things u can do great dps. so good luck to all hunters and i hope i helped :)

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