Gearknight

No, it doesn't seem right. BM gets 20% more autoshot DPS, regardless of what your weapon speed is. But a faster weapon gives them more Imp Hawk procs and more GFTT procs.

If MM is using multi-shot (presumable a Barrage+Imp Barrage spec) as a core of their rotation, then they want as slow a weapon as possible, to pump up multi-shot damage. The normalization to 2.8 of the AP contribution to multi-shot damage has nothing to do with your weapon speed. I think this is explained a few posts up.

However, MM specs probably have Imp Hawk and GFTT too, and want a fast weapon for that, so they have to make a decision.

Survival specs may or may not have Imp Hawk, probably don't use multi in rotations, and have lots of other procs that favor fast weapons, so they want as fast as possible.

 

Zerlu

I know this is kind of off topic, but has anyone started training pets yet to see if all our new tricks will actually allow us to tank 5 mans (or, dare I say it....a Heroic?)

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

^General idea for tank build. Not sure about Mend pet, the idea behind skipping that is that the healer will be taking care of things.

EDIT: Sorry, left out a word.

 

Sean

Okay, I went and played around with Boom a little using this spec: http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...10253105030350

I also equipped my Bristleblitz instead of my Xbow, and I took off my Ashtongue.

I had Hawk/TSA up and I threw up the new Hunter's Mark on it and maxed it out.

My Steady Shots were doing between 1108-1229 normal hits - My Arcane Shots were all 1021-1022.

The +Ammo addition to Steady Shot and the Piercing Shots talents are apparently pretty nice. Add in the +10% Crit Damage with Marked for death and I don't really see a reason to use Arcane over Steady Shot unless the target has super high AC and your armor pen is really low.

Now, when Imp Steady Shot procs then it is a good boost in damage to Arcane Shot + a very nice mana reduction on it - 1328 damage, only 149 mana.

 

Sean

Meh, oh, I guess I did have my 10% steady shot bonus from my 4 piece. That skews it a bit.

Anyways, that's just the level 70 stuff. Even looking at the new Max Rank formulas:

A steady shot that causes unmodified weapon damage, plus ammo, plus [RAP * 0.2 + 280]. Causes an additional 175 against Dazed targets. (280 Mana)

An instant shot that causes [RAP * 0.15 + 492] (540 Mmana)

I think Arcane is simply not going to be fired in a shot rotation unless you have Imp Steady from Marks spec proc'd, the mob has some +Arcane Damage modifier, or the mob has absurd AC.

The new max Rank Multi isn't exactly spectacular over the new Steady Shot either at Normalized Weapon Damage + + 408 for 700 Mana.

Plus, Multishot does not benefit from Piercing Shots or the +Crit on Marked for Death if you're Marks.

You can probably get away with a pure Steady Shot rotation. I'd honestly rather not take Barrage or Imp Barrage at all.

If I was going to do a pure Marks build for raiding at 80 I'd probably do this: http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?...10253105031351

 

Redzin

Surv Raiding build with Imp Stings and Potent Venom:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Tbh I think it's too early to dismiss it, especially for the end-game.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

 

Lestii

Well, looking at some posible builds I found one which might be interesting.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

It basically joins the most powerful talents in MM and SV. Maeaning: Trueshot Aura + Master Marksman and Lightning Reflexes + Expose Weakness. Doing this wasnt possible in TBC, but now I think this build has potential to win with deep MM or deep SV. You get +14% RAP +17% AGI, +6% INT and 3% crit and both TSA and EW ( even at only 1 point with fast attack speed and high crit rate it should keep it up most of the times ). The only weakness I see here is low mana efficiency (no ToTH or Invigoration) and that it has to relay on fast ranged weapon to keep EW up.

 

Æthien

Why? I think the new MT gives more than 1% dps increase per point, and PV gives 0.75% and requires you to keep up serpent sting.

 

• Crowbite

Anyone know what mana consumption looks like near 80? My biggest fear right now is where or not Hunting party is going to be required for a survival spec which means I would be unable to try a 7:31:33 build.

 

Trogdor

Personally, I like Wyvern Sting. When I'm not raiding, I'll use it in casual PVP or when I'm running dailies or whatever. Once in awhile I'll use it in raids (usually when I hear, "I got killed, the sheep target is going to be up in 3 seconds", so I'll sleep it for 12 seconds and it's going to be the next kill target since the mage called his/her death), and I do use it with impunity against any guildies that get caught in Felmyst's dust.


Potent Venom is exactly like RWS, except that you have to maintain a Serpent Sting the entire time. Casting 4 SS a minute increases your damage output by 3%. So lets say that with 3/3 PV only, 4 Serpent Stings cost 1904 mana a minute. Since I can't remember the last time I actually cast SS (lol), I'm going to assume that it doesn't trigger the GCD of Steady Shot. So if we're pushing Steadies out but taking the opportunity to fire off instants immediately after, we're still turning mana into damage. If we use 3000RAP to determine the damage of [non-resisted] Serpent Sting, it comes to 1555 damage per (does include the 3% damage bonus from PV), which is 6221 damage a minute for four applications.

So lets throw out a static value for Steady Shot (R3); 3000RAP, 1000 weapon damage, no ammo bonus, not factoring in armor or penetration. A Steady Shot R3 would do 1880 damage. If we're spamming that every 2 seconds for 1 minute (under perfect conditions) we get 30 shots for a total of 56400 damage. A 3% damage increase on that total is 1692 damage.

So we figure in the autoshot damage. 3.0 weapon speed with only a quiver for a 2.61 result, at 1000 damage per hit. That's 22 shots (truncating the decimal) a minute, for 22000 damage. 3% of that is 660. Adding up all the extra damage from 3/3 PV and the use of stings (6221 + 1692 + 660) we get 8572 more damage a minute. I can cast Kill Command R3 12 times a minute max, which spends 2200 mana. If my pet hits for 250 (I think it's something like that), then KC is 12 hits of 500 for 6000 damage.

8572 damage for 1904 mana vs. 6000 damage for 2200 mana. Based on this, I would rather opt for 3/3 PV and sting than use KC. And assuming mana isn't an issue, both can be used *shrug*. Steady Shot and Kill Shot are based off of weapon damage, so as we hit 80 we're most certainly going to have higher values for the paperdoll weapon damage. Steady Shot is going to scale higher.. and I didn't even get into the potential damage results from critting shots with a 3% damage increase. Either way, as SV, my pet does meager damage so having that option to burn mana on a sting (only with 3/3 PV) instead of KC makes more sense. If 5/5 Imp. Stings is taken, then it also boosts the effective use of mana for Serpent Sting (hell, even more with Efficiency too *shrug*)

With a raid-buffed crit rate close (or over) 50%, I'm not too concerned about gaining another 5-7% average crit bonus from Master Tactician. I crit enough to keep EW up constantly and to make the tanks squirm as I catch back up to their threat before dumping it (only to the ones that feel losing aggro insults their man/womanhood).

 

Catalept

If I'm doing my maths correctly, that means that the total damage done by Explosive Shot is [RAP * 0.6 + 1035] to [RAP*0.6 + 1245] per GCD... this suggests that ES could be an endgame monster, given its extremely strongly scaling with AP (in its current form, of course, but I have to assume that Blizzard has already done their own theorycrafting).

 

Æthien

I just tested it, and it does.

 

Gearknight

Serpent sting definitely costs a GCD, therefore it replaces a steady shot. We'll all eventually find enough haste in wotlk to get steady shot down to 1.5s, so we're basically doing 2 things: Spamming the GCD with specials, and letting autoshot fire. So your choices are:

40 steady shots plus 1 minute of autoshots
36 steady shots, 4 serpent stings, 1 minute of autoshots, all multiplied by 1.03

Your numbers look a little fishy to me, so I'm going to come up with my own:
5000 AP (3000? come on, I often top 4000 in TBC), 40% crit, 120 weapon DPS, 70 ammo DPS
3.0 weapon speed with 33% haste (including quiver), which is the haste that caps steady shot at 1.5s
Serpent Sting = 5000*0.1 + 1210 = 1710 base nature damage
Auto Shot = (120 + 70 + 5000/14)*3.0 = 1641 base damage, 3775 crit (2.3 modifier), 2495 average
Steady Shot = (120+70)*3.0 + 5000*0.2 + 280 = 1850 base damage, 4255 crit (2.3 modifier), 2812 average
Let's assume boss armor reduces physical damage done by about 30%,

So the average Auto is 1746 and the average Steady is 1968

40 steadies + 26 autos = 124116 DPM
(36 steadies + 4 serpents + 26 autos)*1.03 = 126776 DPM

It's 4 talent points for only a net increase of 2% damage. As your AP, crit, and armor penetration go up, Potent Venom is worth even less because you're trading physical shots with 0.2*RAP scaling for nature damage with 0.1*RAP scaling.

 

Zerlu

Your last couple sentences correctly outline that problems PV is facing. Even with a Moonkin to permanently keep Earth and Moon up on the boss (+6% nature and arcane damage), the lack of scaling with ArP or Crit makes this talent suspect. If only it scaled at 30-40% RAP

EDITED: A point was clarified for me.

 

Trogdor

Where are you getting the 2.3 modifier from for the physical-damage crits? It should be weapon damage * 1.5 (1.8 with 5/5 Mortal Shots). Isn't it * 2.3 for spell-damage crits (like arcane) ?


@Æthien: Boo on that. Trading out 4 Steadies for 4 Serpents. I might have to do serious math with lvl80 taken into consideration instead of simple number mechanics.

 

Trident

No, it's the other way round. Untalented spell crits are 1.5x damage and untalented physical crits are 2x damage.

 

Catalept

Is PV the new MT? At least it's not a prereq for Readiness :p

If Blizzard wants us to use Serpent Sting in raids, it'd be more in keeping with the rest of the SV tree if PV increased all damage done to the target by 3%... until then, as always, it's scaling that'll determine endgame usage, and on that front, Serpent Sting loses out.

 

Arcazua

I was fairly excited about Potent Venom at first, until I started doing the math on it myself. What I've worked out pretty well agrees with what is being said here.

While we're talking about late survival talents, let's consider the nature of a surv spec. You spend 20 points of whatever, and then you pick up:
21-25) Survival Instincts, Killer Instinct
26-30) Lightning Reflexes
31-35) Expose Weakness, 2 Thrill of the Hunt
36-40) 3rd Thrill, 4 Master Tactician (or MAYBE Wyvern/Potent Venom)
41-45) 1 Master Tactician, Readiness, Sniper Training (or MAYBE Point of No Escape)
46-50) Hunting Party
51) Explosive Shot

Perhaps you might move the points around, but I think we're agreeing at this point that Explosive Shot is good enough to go 51-deep. Thing is, after that point, you've got enough to work with in the other two trees that you probably aren't going to do MORE than 51. With 20 points, you have the following options...ok, with 10 points + Lethal/Mortal, you have the following options:
(5) Improved Aspect of the Hawk
(2) Focused Fire
(3) Careful Aim
(3) Improved Hunter's Mark
(2) Go For the Throat
(2) Rapid Killing
(3) Focused Aim
(up to 5) Efficiency

I don't think the last three are very serious options, however the rest of the list takes 15 points, of which you only have 10. So the question becomes: Are these really flex points to do with as you please, or are a few of these talents so much better than the pack that you have to take them? The argument pretty well centers around if Improved Aspect of the Hawk is worth taking. Work I've done elsewhere that I can repeat if we care suggests that Improved Hawk is roughly a 6.2% damage increase. (Weapon speed dependent, of course. That's with 2.8 delay and only quiver for haste.) Problem is, if it doesn't decrease the GCD as we're being told, then it's really only a 6.2% increase to autoshot, which pales in comparison. If Imp Hawk is not worth the points, nobody will take up Focused Fire, and we end up with this build (0/18/51) and 2 points to spare that will go into either Rapid Killing or Efficiency.

This is both exciting and disappointing to me at once. There's a lot of cool talents that there is simply little-to-no room to pick up. My current build is 0/21/40 and foregoes 4 points in MT to grab Wyvern, CA, and 2/3 Resourcefulness. (Yes, I do actually get good mileage out of those talents, albeit they don't help my raid DPS.) It seems like survival is going to be completely cookie cutter unless some hybrid version like the 7/31/33 people are playing with turns out to be better...I'm going to bet 0/31/40 is better so long as hawk doesn't affect the GCD, btw.

 

Chul

Mana Consumption

I'm a bit worried about how our mana consumption will actually be in WotLK. Steady Shot is 99 mana for most BM hunters in TBC. We shoot one Steady Shot every ~2-2.1s, and we still have to chug Fel Mana pots.

In WotLK, Steady Shot has gone up to 280 mana (since we cannot get efficiency). That is a 280% increase. Also, we'll be shooting every 1.5s now (or faster if the GCD is reduced with haste). So in TBC, we're doing ~5600mana in 2mins (minus BW) and 22400 mana in 2mins (minus BW) in WotLK. That is 4 times as much mana than in TBC!

Now throw in BW, Kill Shot, Mend Pet, MD, FD, Scorpid etc, and you've got a lot of mana usage, and I doubt we'd be running around with 25k mana pools. I'd hate to think how much mana a MM hunter would be using.

In short, mana consumption for hunters needs some tuning as it currently stands in Beta.

But how much help is Invigoration for BM hunters? Let's do some napkin maths:

Steady Shot (Rank 3) is 280 man, and assume a 30% crit rate.

Cobra Strikes:
Steady Shot would be fired every 1.5, with a 30% crit rate, with a 60% chance to proc = ~ 8.33s, lets say 9s to be nice and even.

So every 9s, your pet gets the next three specials (likely to be Claw or Bite) to crit. This will give 6% of your mana, which is 600 mana.

So a rough calculation is every 9s you'll gain 600 mana (10k*6%) from Invigoration for 1680 mana spent (9/1.5 x 280mana) or roughly a 35% mana "reduction".

If we have a 15k mana pool, then we'd get back 900 mana.

Pet Crits:
Now during that 9s time, your pet can of course crit by itself and not just from Cobra Strikes. But since pet specials only have a 15% crit chance, there isn't much chance of another crit during those three extra non-Cobra Strike affected attacks. So let's assume half a crits worth, or 1% mana (100 mana).

So Invigoration/Cobra Strikes will give back ~700 mana every 9s with 10k mana pool and 30% crit. With a 15k mana pool, it would be 1050 mana.

With 10k mana/30% crit rate - 13,000 mana usage in 2 mins from just Steady Shot
With 15k mana/30% crit rate - 8,400 mana usage in 2 mins from just Steady Shot

I also doubt we'd have 30% crit rate in blues (or 15k mana for that matter) going into Naxx.

As it stands, raiding hunters would have to use a Cunning pet to get 40% of their mana back every 5mins (3.5mins for BM hunters) over a Ferocity pet.

 

Zerlu

Yeah, thats kind of what I thought as well.

So right now its fairly obvious that PV (in its current form) is pretty much useless. What I don't understand is why it scales SO horribly. Right now other classes (referring to spell users here) get a bare minimum of 40% of their spell damage on INSTA cast spells. On their DoTs the lowest coefficient I'm seeing here is 60%. Even if our DoT scaled only half as well it would still be twice as good as it is now.

Ok, rant over with. With the assumption that PV will be useless, and Imp. Aspect of the Hawk will lose its primary advantage thanks to new shot mechanics, it looks like the SV/MM build will predominate.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft This seems to get the most bang for my buck so far, would be interested in any critiques.

Also, as far as pet usage I was examining the possibility of getting a Spore Bat for the ArP, as well as the Roar effect they do that returns 40% of the hunters mana pool. With this ability (along with TotH and HuntingParty) survival hunter's can be almost guaranteed to chug w/e pot they desire.

 

Catalept

Given that Careful Aim has been moved to Tier 2, and that Blizzard has said that they want less gear diversity, I'd expect to see more INT and less AP (or even AGI ) on our gear, giving us a much larger increase in mana from 70 to 80 than we got from 60 to 70. Also, given the very small difference in absolute DPS between Steady1 and Steady3, downranking may well be the appropriate response to running low on mana.

Not neccesarily. If Steady Shot's base cast time remains at 2.0, a Steady-spamming BM build may still be the best DPS to be had, given how well SS still scales with AP, and its synergy with Cobra Strikes.

 

Zerlu

Ah, I should have been more clear. I meant that Survival hunter's would be getting away from a required 7pts in BM in order to maintain competitive DPS.

 

Chul