WarCry Choice Posts: 215 Joined: 10 May 2007 | Huntards No More
 The difference between a good player and a bad one can be startlingly apparent when dealing with certain classes. If you've ever had warrior tank who never learned defensive stance, you know what I mean. Same goes for the paladin that uses holy light before the tank even takes damage. Of the three core roles sub-par tanks and healers make for the most headaches and broken keyboards. The difference between a bad and good player in these classes usually boils down to simply being able to do your job.
DPS classes are different. Outside of raid encounters and as long as you avoid breaking CC, it's hard for you to wipe the party. You may pull aggro and die yourself, but odds are you won't in turn kill the healer. Even if your damage isn't maximized, you're still killing things. As a feral druid, you may benefit more from using shred as opposed to mangle, but you'll still be doing damage. As such, defining yourself as a DPS class can be difficult. Any mage can spam frostbolt and do sizable damage, how can you build on that?
Hunters, once arguably the easiest class in the game to play, have suddenly shot ahead in terms of technical DPS skills. Prior to BC, the raiding hunter didn't really have to do much more than spam aimed shot, multi-shot, and arcane shot on cooldown while their auto-shot continued to plow forward. A change shortly before BC altered aimed shot to reset the auto-shot timer on cast, adding a whole new level of timing to the once famously AFK class. These changes aren't entirely evident to the new and old though, leading to a sudden and drop in overall DPS.
For those hunters who are either new to the game or unaware of the pages of theorycraft dedicated to their class, Lythrdskynrd, a hunter on EU server Anachranos, has done a fabulous job showing hunters how they can maximize their DPS using shot rotations. His post on the Elitist Jerks forums outlines the various rotations that can be used to ensure that shots are being used in between auto-shot cooldowns.
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Huntards No More
DPS classes are different. Outside of raid encounters and as long as you avoid breaking CC, it's hard for you to wipe the party. You may pull aggro and die yourself, but odds are you won't in turn kill the healer. Even if your damage isn't maximized, you're still killing things. As a feral druid, you may benefit more from using shred as opposed to mangle, but you'll still be doing damage. As such, defining yourself as a DPS class can be difficult. Any mage can spam frostbolt and do sizable damage, how can you build on that?
Hunters, once arguably the easiest class in the game to play, have suddenly shot ahead in terms of technical DPS skills. Prior to BC, the raiding hunter didn't really have to do much more than spam aimed shot, multi-shot, and arcane shot on cooldown while their auto-shot continued to plow forward. A change shortly before BC altered aimed shot to reset the auto-shot timer on cast, adding a whole new level of timing to the once famously AFK class. These changes aren't entirely evident to the new and old though, leading to a sudden and drop in overall DPS.
For those hunters who are either new to the game or unaware of the pages of theorycraft dedicated to their class, Lythrdskynrd, a hunter on EU server Anachranos, has done a fabulous job showing hunters how they can maximize their DPS using shot rotations. His post on the Elitist Jerks forums outlines the various rotations that can be used to ensure that shots are being used in between auto-shot cooldowns.
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