Spec: http://rift.magelo.com/en/soultree#z...B4/yr8/ws|TLT0
Selfbuffs: Virulent Poison, Leeching Poison, Feral Instincts, Ravenous Instincts, Spirit of the Wilderness, Blood Raptor
Gear: Max out crit power first, then stack AP. If you are tier 3 geared then crit items are good too.
There are a couple of spec variations which you may find worth it especially for progression. They sacrifice dps for mobility and are made by replacing the 3 NB with either RS or MM.
For maximum dps the rotation must follow a few rules:
Feral Aggression and Animalism.
These are your dps cooldown abilities and they need to be used in sync since they improve each other and they have the same timers. The right time to use them is just before Twin Shot. I find it's fastest to use the abilities in a row if they are in one macro.
It is important that Feral Aggression and Animalism are in this order in the macro so you won't lose the fraction of a second of Animalism uptime on casting Feral Aggression. Do not regularly delay using the cooldowns and wait for raid dps cooldowns to align with them. If you have chloros or tacticians who put up their Wild Growth/Power Core without delays whenever they are available then you can do so now that the cooldown is 30 seconds and can be synced.Code:#show animalism suppressmacrofailures cast feral aggression cast animalism cast twin shot
Ace Shot
A debuff ability which must be maintained on the target at all times, refresh it before it runs out. Sometimes this means refreshing it quite a few seconds before it runs out since you don't want it to drop right when you'd need to use Twin Shot, Shadow Fire or Splinter Shot. It's better to be safe than sorry with Ace Shot.
Splinter Shot
Splinter Shot ticks for a total of 6 times; at 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 seconds. 2 ticks is slightly less damage than one Quick Shot but 3 ticks is substantially more. This is valuable information when you decide whether you should do Splinter Shot right before the dps cooldowns. All the ticks get the damage bonuses you had when you used the ability so you always want to fit in 2 Splinter Shots during the cooldowns.
You are operating on a 30 second cycle so you use 3 Splinter Shots per cycle.
Shadow Fire
Shadow Fire is your second hardest hitting ability after Twin Shot. After the recent change to Shadow Fire it's best to use it on cooldown but I still wouldn't waste combo points to do that and delaying it a couple of seconds to use it with Animalism should still be a good idea.
Head Shot
Use Head Shot once per minute to get Bestial Fury buff. Since Animalism and Feral Aggression are on 30 second cooldowns this easy to sync and you never have to make decisions whether to redo Head Shot during Animalism or not as long as the first one was done outside of them.
Twin Shot
Twin Shot is the main finisher of ranger and the bulk of your dps. All the timing of Shadow Fires and using the cooldowns right before Twin Shot has one aim. It is to fit in 4 of them during each Animalism.
Energy Manipulation
This is the level 65 mastery ability. It is not affected by personal or raid cooldowns so the only thing that matters is using it as often as possible. I find it best to add this line to my macro and forget about it.
cast @self energy manipulation
Rotation
All in all the rotation is easy. Just spam builders with the simple priorities in mind until you get to 5 combo points and then use a finisher.
Other Abilities
For utility you have Piercing Shot which is the normal single target armor debuff. The personal dps loss of using it rather small but current armor debuffs are also very weak, it's still a dps gain to use it if no one else is already doing armor debuff. Do not macro Piercing Shot into a spam macro since it will then fire during Animalism and mess with your rotation, it lasts long enough that you should only do it when your cooldowns are not active.
You also have an aoe interrupt in Concussive Blast. It no longer does damage or uses your combo points so it can now be used to interrupt whenever you need to.
For AoE you have Rain of Arrows and Trick Shot. Both of them are low damage and just about not worth using for actual AoE. However you can use Trick Shot to gain extra combo points which lets you do more Twin Shots. Trick Shot itself is very low damage so you need an average of about 0.75 combo points per Trick Shot to break even on the main target. So you need 5 other targets around your main target so you can cleave without single target dps loss. The combo points come with a delay so you are best off using Trick Shot only when you have 1 combo point and also do not let using it mess up your Splinter Shot/Shadow Fire/Ace Shot timing since those are still more important. If you find yourself aoeing often as ranger then you are playing the wrong spec for the situation.
Also remember to turn all the pet's abilities to autocast by right-clicking them on the pet control bar. The new charge ability autocast is by default off so it must be turned on.
Opening Rotation
Start with 5 combo points, use sab, MM or physician to get combo points if necessary.
Head Shot, Ace Shot, Splinter Shot, Piercing Shot, Quick Shot, Feral Aggression/Animalism+Twin Shot
Shadow Fire, Splinter Shot, Quick Shot, Twin Shot
Then continue normally.
Soloing with Ranger
A typical way to solo with ranger would be to use the boar pet but its tanking capabilities and dps are very lacking. Better option is to use the blood raptor. Ranger is not an aoe grinding spec and this section of the guide is mostly for soloing stuff like chronicle bosses especially if you don't have the tactician soul for self healing.
Use 2*Vampiric Essence on your weapons and remember to use Spirit of the Wilderness. This will give you a respectable amount of self healing.
Start with Divert Rage so your raptor gets the agro. Don't worry about healing it, it heals itself a lot with Bloodied Blow. If the incoming damage is very heavy and the pet dies then just resummon it. After you get the threat from your pet use Diffuse to transfer incoming damage to your pet when needed.
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