The latest PTR notes indicates that the T12 4-set bonus can be applied to KC.

This makes KC a viable option for MM to use during shot phases where we are using AS as our focus dump. Replacing an AS with a KC to consume the proc is a DPS gain over the normal rotation as well as saving 22 focus. With my current gear, KC does about 1.45x damage - about 6K more.

The only penalty that I can see with using KC instead of AS to consume a T12 4-set proc is the loss of Sic'Em procs affecting pet WH uptime and DPS. However, I believe using it on KC instead of AS will be a DPS benefit. Here are some considerations:
- You are going to only be using AS as your focus dump during about 60-70% of the fight. The rest of the time, which is during the CA phase or when hasted, you are using AI as your focus dump. Even outside the CA phase. you do not want to replace AI with a KC since AI does much more damage (especially with the PS effect) and still provides Sic'Em procs.
- A rough estimate when unhasted is that you will get T12 4-set proc roughly every other cycle. Hence, only about 30-35% of your CS cycles will possibly be effected by this replacement.
- While you are using AS as your focus dump, some T12 4-set proc timings will occur such that it will have to be consumed by CS. Using a simple Standard phase rotation, there is about a 40% chance it will be normally consumed by CS since that is the 4s period from when the last AS was cast to when CS is cast including the 2 SSs in between for ISS uptime. This reduces the possibly effected rotations to 12-14% of the CS cycles.
- Assumming a 40% crit rate, only about 4.8 to 5.6% of your Sic'Em procs would be lost while getting the extra KC damage 12-14% of the time.
- Since both AS and KC are instant cast abilities, using one over the other does not impact the rotation.
- Of course, the timing of some of the procs may be such that you are already in the thought/mechanics process of performing the AS when the proc occurs such that it is consumed by the AS since you did not have time to process that the proc occurred and change your shot selection to KC without causing delays in your CS cycle.

Another consideration is that this change may help the CS glyph case. A problem with the CS glyph case was not having enough GCDs to perform more shots to do extra damage to utilize the extra focus. With using the T12 4-set procs to do KCs instead of AS, you can utilize the the proc to perform more damage without having to change your rotation besides replacing the AS with a KC. You can even restructure the normal rotation of
CS-AS-SS-SS-AS-SS-SS to
CS-SS-SS-AS-SS-SS-AS
Such that you will have more opportunities to use the the T12 proc on KC instead of both AS and CS. The reason for this possibility with the CS glyph is that the rotation is already focus positive with the proc being consumed on AS such that it being consumed by CS instead just results in more wasted focus. Hence, if you want to best use focus and do more damage, it would seem wiser to try to use the proc on KC replacements of AS as much as possible.

Even in the above case where ideally we could be doing the KC to AS replacement on about 30-35% of the cycles, there is still no benefit to the KC glyph since it is not consuming focus. Although IKC would provide some benefits with 5/10% greater crit chance, OwN is still much better, and I assume that BD is still better as well.

Yes, I looked specifically at 10 man heroic MM logs from the WoL top ranks and checked for ones with Rapid Killing procs. I figured in 10 man the chances of a killing blow would be much higher.

For the record I switched from SV to MM for heroic Maloriak because it seemed better suited (since we did have windfury available). Having 2 rapid fire with rapid recup + 2 MDs for every black phase seemed to help a lot due to threat improvements and much higher focus flow. Explosive trap wasn't getting the full value anyhow since we were kiting the vile sludges out of the area too quickly and our tank didn't see a need for entrapment, so with an AoE friendly MM spec (and the recent buffs to MM AoE) I was seeing as much if not more damage on the sludges and also helping allow the rest of the dps to worry less about threat.

While some Hunters do Multis until OOF and then do 2 Steadys, I tend to weave a single Steady Shot in between my Multis when I drop below 40 focus to ensure I keep the 50% Multi cost buff up throughout an AOE phase. With a less than 1.5sec Steady and the 1sec (+Latency) GCD of Multi, doing 2 back to back Steady's has a very high chance of dropping the 50% Multi cost buff.

The buff's uptime gives you more than amble time to regain your focus.

What's more important however, is if you can time the +50 focus proc.

With early support for the new set bonuses, Zeherah's spreadsheet shows that dumping focus with KC is superior to using Arcane shot with 4pc 12.

This is probably due to a few factors:

a) No wasting of 4pc proc on lower damage Arcane shots.
b) More Steady shots fired to maximize 2pc procs and Aimed! shots.
c) KC is higher damage-per-GCD than Arcane shot.

It wasn't quite as obvious this tier, but Arcane shot is seriously underpowered for MM.

Just to know, How does using KC increase the number of SS? At least on live, KC is on the GCD, so is AS. That would not make any difference in the number of shots. Or maybe I´m missing something?

Would that be due to the cost of Kill Command vs Arcane Shot?
Kill Command uses more focus, so using the 4 piece T12 proc on it would leave more focus for other shots.

Just a thought.

Someone brought up a good point in that the free shot will have a chance to proc while we are already preparing for the next shot. If the next focus using shot is Chimera then it is fine.

BUT if we end up wasting the proc on an arcane shot i have a question about what would be better.

Would we still use a KC following the arcane shot but using full focus? This would keep the focus to about the same as a normal rotation but the KC instead of an arcane shot will bump up the damage.
OR
Would we fire off two more arcane shots and risk pushing back our next chimera? Especially seeing as how once we drop the 4pc T11 we will probably be running a tighter rotation then we are now.
OR
Would we fire off just one more arcane as the normal rotation and just burn off the extra focus when we get a chance? If this were the case there would be little reason to ever pay attention for the proc unless you intend to try to fire off a free casted aimed shot.

All in all the proc obviously will be used on Chimera or KC when we get the chance. But when something goes a little off and we get put in this situation which I feel is probably bound to happen quite often, maybe not on every single fight but probably a good handful of times per raid. What do people think will be the best way to handle it?

I agree KC is the best procc use when CS is on CD; my question was about the number of SS used. With more focus available for other shots and less shots per cycle due to the 4pc t11 loss, inevitably we will end using less SS per cycle(not every cycle), and more focus costs shots.

About using KC as the procc dump whenever Chimera is on CD, it might be optimal in paper, and of course in FD or any spreadsheet. But to avoid the waste of the procc, we would need to cast every SS in a row without weaving any AS between SSs. That would mean a big hit to our mobility.



Edit: Now I´ve rereaded Neruse´s post from what I was quoting, And realised that he was talking about using KC as focus dump the whole fight, not only as the "procc dump". Then the extra SSs makes sense

I think that people are maybe worrying about how to most effectively use the T12 4-set proc too much.

Although it is possible for the fact that the proc is used up on an AS instead of a CS/KS to not be ideal and have adverse impacts where it possibly costs you an extra shot, to be honest, it often does not have any impact beyond the extra damage that could have been performed by using the KC instead of an AS if you could have reacted quick enough to change shots to use the proc more effectively. Thus, in many cases it really does not matter what shot uses the proc since no matter whether a AS, KC, or a CS uses the proc, you may have no extra GCDs to use and either way waste some focus.

On the other hand, there are indeed cases where it does matter, but it does not always matter, so keep that in mind.

For instance, anytime we are using AI as our focus dump (during the CA phase and when under dynamic haste), the focus savings difference between between using the proc on CS or an unglyphed AI is only 6 focus. With having a T12 4-set proc approximately every other cycle, the difference is only about a 3 focus savings per 10s on average. That 3 focus will rarely be the difference on whether your cycle is focus positive or negative. In addition, it would take about 2.75 mins for you to have saved enough focus from the difference to cast an additional AI, assuming that none of the focus savings from the proc has been wasted. If any of the focus savings from the proc is wasted, then it is highly likely that using the proc on CS instead of the higher costing AI will never have an impact. Thus, when I am casting AI as my focus dump, I am really not going to worry about which shot consumes the proc.

Even in cases when we are using AS as our focus dump, whether we end up using the proc on an AS we are already in the process of casting instead of the ideal KC has no downstream impacts. Either way the shot taken to use the proc costs no focus, so we still have the same amount of focus after the shot either way. The only cost in this situation is the immediate extra damage we could have gotten from the KC if we could have reacted soon enough to have it used the proc on KC instead of the AS.

In regards to whether the proc is used on an AS instead of a CS, that may or may not make a difference depending on your situation (shot selection, glyphs, and haste). Furthermore, it may not make a difference depending on whether you had a MMM AI proc that cycle too which saves additional focus and makes it more likely that focus may be wasted that cycle. See example at the end.

Not usually. We never usually want to use KC when it costs focus. Although KC does do about 40-50% more damage than glyphed AS, it costs 18 more focus, almost twice as much. Hence, AS is about 25% more efficient of a shot when comparing damage per focus. Furthermore, we get no additional effects from KC, but we get the additional benefits of Sic'Em procs to improve pet DPS and MfD markings with AS.

The only situation where replacing the next focus costing AS with a KC may be beneficial is the case where we would be wasting all or most of that additional 18 focus cost that cycle, which may occur on cycles with both the T12 4-set and MMM AI procs.

Bad idea. With how important CS is for both our DPS and our survivability (on many fights its the #1 heal on me saving healer mana), we would never want to use a GCD to take an extra AS that pushes back our CS just to use extra focus that may be wasted. In any phase of fight where we are using AS, we desire to use CS as soon as possible off CD.

To put things in perspective:
- CS does approximately 3.5s the damage of AS and heals you
- AS only does about 50% more damage than SS although it takes less time
- It takes about 7.5 AS for SS substitutions to make up the damage for one lost CS

Taking the extra AS to use otherwise wasted focus and pushing back your CS, essentially gains ASs at the cost of CSs and SSs. Sure you may get more Sic'Em procs and waste less focus, but you are going to lose DPS and loss chances for MMM AI and T12 2-set procs, hurting DPS more.


The idea is to maintain our normal rotation as much as possible. For example, using the minimum 5.4% haste from gear and Pathing case (not certain yet whether this is ideal but its as far as I have gotten so far in my analysis - the 9.74% haste vase may be better) with the SS/AS/RF glyphs, here is how the Standard phase unhasted rotation works out in the case without the T11 4-set and without the T12 4-set.

Shot	Time	Focus	Focus2	Focus3
CS	1.00	60.22	60.22	60.22
AS	2.00	42.43	42.43	42.43
SS	3.50	57.76	57.76	57.76
SS	5.00	73.08	73.08	73.08
AS/MMM2	6.00	55.30	77.30	55.30
SS/MMM3	7.50	70.62	92.62	59.51
SS	9.00	85.94	107.94	74.84
SS	10.50	101.27	123.27	90.16
Net Focus		1.27	23.27	-9.84
Cycle Delay		0.50	0.50	0.00
Ratio	-1.17	4	1	3

Focus2 is a cycle where MMM AI procs replace an AS
Focus3 is a cycle where MMM AI procs replace a SS
Shot order is flexible within focus and ISS maintenance constraints

As can be seen, the above uses a CS-ASx2-SSx5 rotation since it provides a focus balanced rotation on cycles without an MMM AI proc (the CS-ASx3-SSx4 rotation average -21 focus per cycle with including MMM AI procs and is not sustainable and would require a large mix in with the SSx5 rotation). With MMM AI procs occurring every other cycle, using those procs about 3/4ths of the time to replace the extra SS and 1/4th of the time on an AS comes up with a rotation that is almost focus balanced. Hence, you only have an extra SS on about 5/8 cycles, but on those cycle you have a 0.5s CS delay (which indicates that a little more haste would probably be better).

Now look at the same scenario but with adding in the T12 4-set procs, the table below shows the impacts to the focus consumption depending on whether the proc was consumed by AS or CS. Note that for this data I assumed a 2.9 speed weapon (since mid-rate) and that the T12 4-set proc occurs approximately every 8 autoshots.

	Focus	Focus2	Focus3
Number Autoshots per cycle	4.83	4.83	4.60
Net Focus with proc used by AS	14.54	36.54	3.44
Net Focus with proc used by CS	27.82	49.82	16.71

As can be seen from above, whether you consume the proc on AS or CS does not matter with this rotation since you are wasting focus in all cases. What this means is that when we get the T12 4-set bonus, we can transition to a CS-ASx3-SSx4 rotation, which is a tight CS cycle, as shown below.

Shot	Time	Focus	Focus2
CS	1.00	60.22	60.22
AS	2.00	42.43	42.43
SS	3.50	57.76	57.76
SS	5.00	73.08	73.08
AS/MMM2	6.00	55.30	77.30
AS	7.00	37.51	59.51
SS	8.50	52.84	74.84
SS	10.00	68.16	90.16
Net Focus		-31.84	-9.84
Cycle Delay		0.00	0.00
#Autos		4.60	4.60
Net-T12AS	-8.20	-19.20	2.80
Net-T12CS	4.45	-6.55	15.45

Focus2 is a cycle where MMM AI procs replace an AS
Shot order is flexible within focus and ISS maintenance constraints

As can be seen, in this case it does make the difference on whether the T12 4-set proc is used by CS or AS. If it is always used by CS, then on average, we have a slightly focus positive cycle wasting about 4.5 focus per cycle. If it is used on AS, then we have a slightly focus negative cycle losing on average about 8.2 focus per cycle.

Now if we perform the rotation exactly as shown above and do not pay attention to what shot consumes the T12 4-set proc, then the proc will on average be consumed by CS 40% of the time and on AS 60% of the time since there is a 4s duration between when the last AS is cast and CS is cast. Hence, on average our rotation will be slightly focus negative at about -3.1 focus per cycle. This can be slightly reduced by having more haste over the 5.4% minimum number. Hence, it matters a little which shot consumes the t12 4-set proc in this case, but it really does not.

However, if we want to increase the liklihood that the proc is consumed by CS, we can change the cycle to be CS-AS-AS-AS-SS-SS-SS-SS. If starting at 100 focus on a cycle, this rotation is possible with dipping to about 2 focus minimum on cycles without an MMM AI proc and about 24 focus on cycles with an MMM AI proc. This increases the chance for the proc to be consumed on CS from 40% to a maximum of 70% and results in a rotation that is barely focus positive by 0.7 focus per cycle. This is a beautiful thing since its a focus balanced cycle and you do not have to worry about what shot consumes the T12 4-set proc unless you care to try to replace an AS with a KC on the 30% of the cycles where the proc would be consumed by an AS instead of CS. However, I believe that this replacement would be difficult to effectively perform unless you have super quick human reaction time since you are going to be poised to cast 3 ASs in a row with anywhere between 0 and 1s depending on when in the GCD the proc occurs to recognize that the proc has occurred and to instead cast KC instead.

The complicating factor with the above is that you are never going to have the average cycle. Instead, there are essentially 5 cycles with different focus profiles as shown below.

Shot	Time	Focus	Focus2	Focus3	Focus4	Focus5
CS	1.00	60.22	60.22	104.22	104.22	60.22
AS/MMM	2.00	42.43	64.43	86.43	108.43	64.43
AS	3.00	24.65	46.65	68.65	90.65	68.65
AS	4.00	6.86	28.86	50.86	72.86	50.86
SS	5.50	22.19	44.19	66.19	88.19	66.19
SS	7.00	37.51	59.51	81.51	103.51	81.51
SS	8.50	52.84	74.84	96.84	118.84	96.84
SS	10.00	68.16	90.16	112.16	134.16	112.16
Net Focus		-31.84	-9.84	12.16	34.16	12.16

Focus2 is a cycle where MMM AI procs replace an AS or a T12 4-set proc is consumed by an AS
Focus3 is a cycle where T12 4-set proc is consumed by CS
Focus4 is a cycle where MMM AI procs replace an AS and T12 4-set proc is consumed by CS
Focus5 is a cycle where MMM AI procs replace an AS and T12 4-set proc is consumed by another AS

These cycles range from losing about 32 focus on cycles without either the MMM AI or the T12 4-set procs to gaining 34 focus on cycles with both with the T12 proc consumed by CS. Hence, there will be some cycles that you do not start focus capped and cannot do all 3 ASs right after your CS and will have to take a reduced chance to use the T12 4-set proc on CS. There will also be other cycles on which you start high in focus and get procs resulting in focus being wasted those cycles and impacting the long term focus balance that may require replacing an AS with an extra SS once in a while to get back on balance.

Another complicating factor with this rotation is that it results in more SSs performed after the MMM AI proc before it is used resulting in slightly less MMM AI procs.

A third complicating factor is the higher liklihood of back to back Sic'Ems procs that are wasted since not pet attack occurs between them.

Hence, to maximize MMM AI procs, I will probably do the original rotation with the reduced chance for T12 4-set procs to be used on CS. Sure on average it loses 3 focus per cycle, but that can be made up by replacing an AS with an extra SS about 1 in every 11 cycles. I believe that the extra benefit to MMM AI procs and Sic'Ems will more than make up for the loss in the infrequent SS for AS replacements.

Another option is if the previous cycle had an MMM AI proc, then the chances are that the current cycle will not have an MMM AI proc and that it will start with a high amount of focus making it possible to choose to perform the CS-ASx3 cycle on these cycles without jeopardizing MMM AI procs.

If you refer to t12 4pc + AimS as focus dump, there is a problem in femaledwarf (LINK). The 4pc use on AimS didn't have a cast time (works like MMM). Also the datamined gear on ptr have fewer pieces with haste and frequently more spreaded mastery. In this way you hardly reach a high amount of haste. Plus the number of mastery you could not get rid off, would be wasted in a AimS rotation.