Parses: 

http://wowwebstats.com/nowxtuosalpac

Grats guys.  Great first and second pull.  Had a couple rough pulls after, but then we had a solid, clean kill on that last attempt.  Good job everyone.

if yall need me ill be home as soon as i get off work which is 10 central time!

The only fights I even come close to oom on as a Hunter are Tidewalker (unless I have Wisdom), where I DPS nonstop for the entire fight, when I use my pot cool downs for healing pots to keep me from dying to the Watery Grave, and During the Fathomlord fight when I get double Leeching Throws on me.

In either of those cases, I'm okay with that because I'm doing my job, switching to AotV for some extra mana, and keeping the healers from getting Mana drains on them.

I will not be there at this raid. I am going home to celebrate my engagement with family.

I always find it slightly humurous when I hear some people say they NEED a spriest for a fight, or they will go oom. Could I get higher dps running with hawk instead of viper? Yes. Would I go oom? Yes.

Before this week's Teron, some of my highest dps has been with a spriest. Put me and Lumi in a group with a spriest and a feral, let us turn on our AotH, and you'll see what BM hunters can do. =)

And Dufe, you're partially right about autoshot vs wanding. On Wednesday, on 746 hits over the entire night I averaged 910 damage with a 2.8spd bow (325 dps). Disrupter, who I assumed only wanded during phase 2 of RoS when nobody had any mana left, hit 30 times for an average of 353 damage (235 dps).

/flings poop at Garreth

The way I see it, there are two parts to the equation when determining which group needs the spriest the most:

1) Who will go oom the fastest without it?  This reflects potting as well - if you can make it through the fight without going oom just by using mana pots and class abilities, then an spriest is just a luxury to save you some gold.  Some classes/specs will go oom rather fast even when blowing all of these options, such players will obviously be considered first when there is an spriest.

2)  What happens if that player goes oom?  In the case of a healer, people start dying and we wipe.  Not good.  A hunter going oom has to auto-shot, a mage/warlock has to wand.  Generally speaking a hunter auto-shotting should have higher dps than my wand, if not . . . well, not sure what to say there.  Of course, this has to be considered in conjunction with the first question - a caster wanding for 30 sec is probably better than a hunter auto-shotting for 2 minutes.

That being said, LF1M simply doesn't have shadow priests and rarely has access to shammies.  In the mean time,study your parses for longer fights where you go oom.  Although it may drop your "theory-crafted" dps to switch to a more mana effecient spec/rotation, it might also increase your total damage for the fight.  To me, its like computer benchmarking, there's the theoretical benchmarks that try to predict how fast a computer is, and then theres the "real world" usage benchmarks that demonstrate how fast the computer actually runs as used by real people.  Parses effectively form the "real world" usage benchmark of WoW.  Both approaches have their value, but in the end downing bosses is what matters and the most effective way to down bosses may not always fit the theoretical models.

I dig the concept of stacking a group for a hunter, Fro.  If I had my "dream team" I'd have:

- Shadow Priest
- Feral Druid
- Enhancement Shaman w/GoA
- BM hunter

However, stacking groups for a hunter isn't typically very efficient, particularly if you are MM.  Trueshot Aura is ... well, to be blunt it's terrible.  I mean, it's nice - 125 AP is better than none - but it's a range-limited talent that doesn't scale, thus its effect diminishes in comparison over time.

The buffs that Surv and BM hunters bring are not range-limited and they scale.  Ferocious Inspiration is a flat +3% to ALL damage for everyone in the group, with like a 200yd range.  Likewise, Survival's "buff" comes in the form of debuffs on a mob, so everyone benefits from it regardless of what group they are in.  TSA is +125 AP flat, in a 30yd radius around the hunter.  Since, as a MM hunter you're like to have 3/3 hawkeye, you'll be standing 41yd away from the target - meaning the melee in your group that will directly benefit from it will likely NOT get the buff most of the time.

The other problem here is staffing the raids.  Atar has one feral druid most nights, and at best he's looking at 2-3 shamans, mostly from Hamfist.  If he has one shaman, that one usually goes to melee for Windfury as it's too big a buff to pass up.  If there's more than one it's typically better to stack casters with them, since they will all directly benefit each other in a nice group (e.g. shadow priest, resto/elemental shaman, and other casters).

In short ... I'd love to see hunters stacked more positively for groups too.  However, MM doesn't bring much to the groups they are in, surv's buff isn't group-limited, and BM hunters get a great buff that helps CASTERS by quite a bit.  It's kind of a shitty spot for us :x

I won't be able to be here Saturday guys RL wins again. GL!

Zifter