That’s not to say that it will always happen like that. In my specific circumstances, I believe it’s a combination of lag, and the tightness of my shot rotation. Quite bluntly, I can compensate for lag better than a macro can (even with a few mistakes here and there,) and it shows in the damage meters. Blanket statements like “macros are always better” will cause problems when they end up not being true.

Vonya - my dps was supbar to me, not raid wise … give or take during each try at the big drooling ugly I was 5/6 most of the time. You are right about a good shot rotation beating a better geared poor rotation since thats what I was doing.

I can’t stress enough how important it is that when your doing boss fights that a hunter is properly geared and enchanted. Your ammo should always be the best you can get and the enchants should be the ones that make the most sense for your situation. (Unless your rich, putting putting a pricey enchant on gear your replacing or outgrowing soon doesn’t make sense).

Once you are geared up as best as you can (no empty gem sockets please) you then have to look at a shot rotation. I have the gladiator crossbow which is nice 3 sec speed, makes doing shot rotation macro’s easier. Just about the most mana efficient and high dps rotation is the simple kill command/steady/auto shot rotation. That little macro does several things, it flattens out your agro gain rate so you can better predict when your going to pull agro. Being mana efficient means you can go much longer before being OOM, and the longer you can go the more damage you can dish out. The steady shot I believe scales a bit better than the arcane shot (when your ranged AP is 1000 they both produce the same damage and people doing end game content have 2k RAP) and its on a faster timer. As much as many people hate playing a 1 button hunter, it’s pretty much a given that you will out dps someone who is using the same shot rotation but is doing everything manually. So if your given the chance to settle down in a fight use that button

So in the end I failed myself by not blowing every cooldown when it was up, by not having a devil may care shot rotation macro, by not being enchanted properly (though im close) and probably worst of all I didn’t stack the mortal shot talent (30% more damage on a crit). Feel free to look up Wetah on the US Trollbane server, she is a work in progress.

It’s always good to evaluate your performance after a fight, win or loose to see what you did or didn’t do and how to fix it. I’ve been working my mage and druid for so long that I hadn’t re-evaluated wetah in a long time, suffice to say it was a bit painfull

1. “PEW PEW”

I have caused so many deaths in my career as a Hunter due to WoW’s insipid “you hit attack, but your target died a split second ago, I’ll just target that mob over there that your group’s been avoiding, kk?” behaviour, that I ended up creating this monster:

#show [mod:alt]Dual Wield;[mod:shift]Command;Auto Shot
/stopcasting [mod:alt]
/stopattack
/stopmacro [mod:alt]
/startattack [nomod:shift]
/stopmacro [nomod:shift]
/stopmacro [target=focustarget,noexists]
/target focustarget
/petattack
/startattack

Here’s how it works (assuming you’ve put it on a button bound to the 1 key.) Pressing 1 will turn on auto-shot. Note that I did NOT say “toggle.” You can spam 1 as much as you like, and it will only ever turn auto-shot on. Hitting Alt+1 will turn auto-shot off, and cancel any casts in progress. This is also known as the “crap, it’s trapped, don’t shoot; DON’T SHOOT!” button. Pressing Shift+1 will cause you to acquire your focus’ target, send your pet in to attack, and turn on auto-shot. The way I typically roll in instances is to have the tank set as my focus, and this allows me to quickly move over to a new target.

I believe that macro is one character short of the limit…

2. “Goodbye, cruel world!”

The obligatory Feign Death Right Now macro. Stops any attacks in progress, and makes me play dead.

#showtooltip
/stopcasting
/stopattack
/cast Feign Death

3. “Kill it! KILL IT!”

This is for use instead of normal Kill Command: causes it to target your pet’s target (this is useful if your pet isn’t actually attacking the same thing you are.)

#showtooltip
/cast [target=pettarget] Kill Command

4. “You’re next, buddy.”

This one combines Hunter’s Mark and Misdirection in a semi-intelligent fashion. If your target is hostile, it casts Hunter’s Mark. If your target is friendly, it will cast Misdirection. If you have a friendly focus target and nothing directly targeted OR you have Alt held down, it will cast Misdirection on your focus.

Again, this was designed with the tank as my focus in mind. Target the mob, Ctrl+Z to mark it, Ctrl+Alt+Z to misdirect on to the tank, and then fire away!

#showtooltip
/use [target=focus,help,mod:alt] Misdirection; [exists,nohelp] Hunter’s Mark; [exists,help] [target=focus,help] Misdirection; Hunter’s Mark

5. “Here boy, here boy!”

This macro will try to intelligently choose between Call Pet, Revive Pet and Mend Pet. If you hold down a modifier key (Alt, Ctrl or Shift,) or your pet’s corpse is visible, it will cast Revive Pet. If you don’t have a pet out, it will cast Call Pet (it can’t tell that your pet is dead if you can’t see the corpse, sadly.) Otherwise, it casts Mend Pet.

#showtooltip [nopet,modifier] Revive Pet; [nopet] Call Pet; [target=pet,dead] Revive Pet; Mend Pet
/cast [nopet,modifier] Revive Pet; [nopet] Call Pet; [target=pet,dead] Revive Pet; Mend Pet

6. “It’s a trap!”

Here is my all-in-one trap macro. From this, you can cast any trap you like. I keep this bound to one of my extra mouse buttons, which is great for PvP. The traps are:

(none): Freezing Trap (single target frost)
Alt: Frost Trap (aoe frost)

Shift: Immolation Trap (single target fire)
Shift+Alt: Explosive Trap (aoe fire)

Ctrl+Alt: Snake Trap (aoe… um… snakes?)

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:ctrl,mod:alt] Snake Trap; [mod:shift,mod:alt] Explosive Trap; [mod:shift] Immolation Trap; [mod:alt] Frost Trap; Freezing Trap

7. “Not enough buttons!”

I also have a large number of “switch” macros that let me choose between a few different abilities using modifiers. They all basically have the same structure, so here’s the most immediately useful one: normal click fires off max-rank Arcane Shot, holding down Alt will fire Rank 1 Arcane Shot, and then stop attacking (aka: pull shot.)

#showtooltip [mod:alt] Arcane Shot(Rank 1); Arcane Shot
/cast [mod:alt] Arcane Shot(Rank 1); Arcane Shot
/stopcasting [mod:alt]
/stopattack [mod:alt]

I use these sorts of macros for my stings (both serpent and scorpid on a single button,) for Distract+Concussive, Eyes of the Beast+Eagle Eye, Food+Bandages, Steady Shot+Kill Command, etc.

Also, in regards to making your kitty emote stuff when he gets fed, I direct you to Petemote which BRK seems rather enamoured with: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/3538/download/44867/

I’m going to enjoy this more and more as it progresses, as I have been levelling a hunter alt for some time now and are just short of level 55, and will be in outlands soon (yaya)

After playing a holypriest and a resto druid for so long it’s been a refreshing change to play a fun dps class

I do use Rapid Fire on Trash Mobs. Obviously not as much since it has a bit longer of a cooldown.

The hunter can control the pet, and isn’t impatient. (okay, that’s two conditions. Sue me.)

That may sound contradictory - obviously dash was MADE for impatient hunters, right?

But if your raiding team uses raid icons to mark kill orders and your hunters have itchy trigger fingers - the pets dashing in early could be bad. Same for hunters who blindly assist and send their pets into very much the wrong group of mobs.

The patient hunter, who waits for the tank to engage target before sending in the pet, will get a lot more dpS from their pet arriving sooner at the target. In fights where the hunter stands far far away from the target to avoid AOE (for example), it is also super useful (though pets often die in that situation anyway, sometimes regardless of frequent Mend Pet applications).

I have seen and heard of some rather spectacular wipes caused by misapplication of hunter pets in raids.

Also, I always liked it when our hunters announced a misdirect to the tank - another bit of information to file away during the fight, so I don’t panic if I see a multishot fly off. =]

We use this macro in my guild for MDs:
/cast [target=focus] Misdirection
/5 Casting MD on %f

Our hunter channel is, for me, /5, so I’m simply announcing to the other hunters that I’m doing it. Not so much a big deal anymore since MDs can no longer overwrite each other, but still very nice to have.