[MoP] Marksmanship Guide - Page 2

Whitefyst · 10/07/12, 4:31 PM

Originally Posted by Genzen

Is there any info on the priority of pet buffs for personal dps? Obviously it's usually better to go with the one that benefits the raid the most, but it would be nice to know which buffs should be brought if they're missing, and in what order.

You can determine this yourself easily enough in tools like FD and SimC by using the MM Max DPS set up and with all other buffs and debuffs present, removing one at a time to see the impact. Also this information has been previously provided in the MoP all spec threads for earlier set ups.

However, so that the information is available for all MMs with the current MM Max DPS case in FD at the time of this thread, I am providing the information below. I am also including the exoctic pets. Although MMs cannot provide exotic pets, if you have another hunter in the raid that is BM, they are applicable to MMs still.

As reference, the MM Max DPS case in FD provides 104660 DPS.

Buff/Debuff	DPS Loss	% DPS Loss	Pets That Provide It
10% Attack Speed	4805	4.59%	Hyena, Serpent
5% Crit	4139	3.95%	Hydra, Wolf, Devilsaur, Quillen, Waterstrider*
5% Stat	3729	3.56%	Shale Spider*
12% Armor Reduction	3342	3.19%	Raptor, Tallstrider
4% Physical Vulnerability	3067	2.93%	Boar, Ravager, Rhino, Worm
5 Mastery	3052	2.92%	Cat, Spirit Beast*
Bloodlust	2055	1.96%	Corehound
5% Spell Vulnerability	1187	1.13%	Dragonhawk, Wind Serpent
10% Stamina	0	0%	Silithid*
Spell Power	0	0%	Waterstrider*
Spell Haste	0	0%	Sporebat
Weakened Blows	0	0%	Bear, Carrion Bird
Slow Casting	0	0%	Corehound*, Fox, Goat, Sporebat
Mortal Wounds	0	0%	Devilsaur* - also hunters Widow Venom
10% Attack Power	N/A	N/A	All hunters provide and pets do not

* Exotic pet provided by BM hunters only.

As you can see, by far the most important buff for MM hunters in this case is the 10% attack speed buff. The reasons for this include the fact that the ideal haste amounts depend on having this buff to reduce SS and AI cast times, and not having it costs shots in the CS cycle and/or delays the CS cycle. It also affects autoshot rate. Furthermore, it affects pet melee frequency including the number of attacks done by Dire Beast. Finally, less specials performed include less chances to proc other abilities like Wild Quiver. Piercing Shots, MMM AIs, etc.

5% crit is a distant second. Crit is important not only due to the slightly over double damage with crits (and the meta gem) but also due to the increased chance to proc PS.

wilegenuis · 10/08/12, 6:52 AM

There are many MOP places that require long and steady period of AOE. For the MM hunter I've a rotation of MS that usually trigger Bombardment for 5 sec. that is followed by additional MS until the focus is around 30-40. Then I hit Fervor that provide additional focus for additional 4-5 MS shots. My problem begins at this point, there are still a lot of adds around, Fervor buff is gone, my focus is under 20.
What I'm doing to maintain the Bombardment at this point is single SS and a single MS. I wonder if this is the best option to maintain long term AOE or I should change anything?
I also see that some recommend start the entire rotation with creating the Steady Focus buff. Does it worth the time for the 2 SS when I can do 2 MS at that time?

Whitefyst · 10/08/12, 1:05 PM

Originally Posted by wilegenuis

There are many MOP places that require long and steady period of AOE. For the MM hunter I've a rotation of MS that usually trigger Bombardment for 5 sec. that is followed by additional MS until the focus is around 30-40. Then I hit Fervor that provide additional focus for additional 4-5 MS shots. My problem begins at this point, there are still a lot of adds around, Fervor buff is gone, my focus is under 20.
What I'm doing to maintain the Bombardment at this point is single SS and a single MS. I wonder if this is the best option to maintain long term AOE or I should change anything?
I also see that some recommend start the entire rotation with creating the Steady Focus buff. Does it worth the time for the 2 SS when I can do 2 MS at that time?

I do similar set up to you except that I use Dire Beast in my spec instead of Fervor, but I agree that if you are speccing for Max AoE damage that Fervor or TotH is better than DB.

For short AoE periods, I do not worry about SF and just generate enough focus to cast a new MS. The reasons are:
- As you stated, you can be doing much more damage with using those GCD+s on 2 to 3 MSs instead
- SF provides very little benefit in short AoE situations.
-- The haste only affects your single target damage in autoshots and the SSs to regen focus. With the T14 4P, it does save you about 0.33s per SS cast and about 0.21s per SS cast without it at the minimum recommended 9.09% haste level. You only need to cast 3 SSs in the first 20s of AoE, so SF only saves you a GCD but has not made up for the 2 to 3 spent to get SF to start. It is not until about 35 to 40s that you have done enough SSs to make up for the GCDs spent to get SF to begin with and maintain it.
-- The focus gained from SS at the start is purely wasted.
-- The haste does not affect focus regen, although the SF buff does regen an extra 3 focus per cast. With having to do 7 SF SSs to get enough extra focus to be able to cast an extra Bombardment affected MS, you are looking at needing about a 30s of AoE time.
- The haste does not affect pet attacks

Obviously though, situations do occur where you may need to cast 2 SSs just to be able to cast the next MS, in which case getting the SF bonus for free is a nice benefit.

With that said, SF is beneficial for AoE situations lasting longer than about 30 to 40s. The reasons for this is that you are now doing enough SSs to regen focus that:
- The shorter SS cast times have crossed the threshold where you are actually gaining GCDs instead of losing them.
- You have also crossed the threshold where the the extra focus regened from the SF affected SSs provide enough for extra MSs

Even for long AoE situations in which maintaing SF is beneficial, I still do not suggest starting the AoE with two SSs since all of that focus generated is lost and you are recieving enough focus from DB anyway. I would not bother getting the SF focus buff until you have depleted all of your focus and must cast SSs to gain focus. At that point is where I would cast the first 2 SSs to get SF and then start maintaining it. The only benefit of the getting the SF buff to start is the slightly increased autoshot rate on one target, which is not worth it.

To check this out and provide evidence, I did a single target analysis with AoE priority in FD. In both cases, the priortity was the same with DB, GT, ET, Readiness, MS, SS. To focus more on the AoE aspect, I did not include MoC or Stampede, although you would still want to them on long AoE situations. I also did not include RF or Bloodlust. Note that having either of these during the AoE situation does reduce the benefit of having SF some since you are saving less time per SS cast and since you need to cast less SSs for focus. I also set up the run for 3 mins.

The only difference between the two cases is that in one I had the setting to maintain SF and in the other I did not force for SF to be maintained.

The result is that the SF AoE case did over 2600 more DPS on a single target. So even on the single target it does more DPS. This is because the SS case did +4 SSs and +8 autoshots with +6 WQ procs.

However, we are really concerned about the AoE situation. DB, GT, and ET had the same number of casts between the cases. The SF case had +3 MS. So it is definitely better AoE DPS. However, the AoE benefit is not huge since that is on average only an extra MS every minute.

One major item to note in favor of SF case more is that the non-forced SF case still naturally achieved the SF buff on several occassions since it did do 9 SS pairs for an estimated 45% SF uptime since a few of the periods overlapped.

Summary:

- Do not bother with SF on short AoE situations (less than 30 to 40s), although cases that force you to cast 2 SSs to gain focus and get the buff is a bonus.
- Maintaining SF on long AoE situations (longer than 30 to 40s) can be a DPS boost, but I do not recommend casting the first SS pair until you have fully depleted your focus from the intial MS onslaught.

Whitefyst · 10/16/12, 10:00 AM

I have finally had the chance to address the recent 10/12/12 hot fix to how AI damage is calculated.

Aimed Shot now deals 320% weapon damage (up from 280%), but the base damage component has been reduced by 65%. The damage that this ability does at level 90 should remain relatively unchanged.

The effect in the T14 gear range is not that big. With the Max MM DPS case, AI damage when including PS effect went up by about 4500 on average outside the CA phase and by about 7900 during the CA phase for a net increase in DPS by about 589. This is about a 4.2% increase in damage from what AI was doing previously in T14H gear.

With less than T14H ranged weapons, the DPS gain will be smaller and can possibly be negative if you have a poor enough ranged weapon, although no one should be raiding with that low of an ilevel ranged weapon.

The good news is that AI should do a lot more damage and DPS in future tiers as weapon damage increases with each tier of gear. However, concerning the T14 tier of raiding, the change is a nice DPS boost but does not really change how AI is used in the MM rotations. AI DPS is still too low to use AI in most cases.

At the current recommended haste amount of just over 9.09% haste from gear with the T14 4P, an AI rotation when unhasted still underperforms an AS rotation by about 28K damage per AI cast (down from about 32.5K), and the deficit is much worse without the T14 4P. The amount of overall haste from gear to make AI worthwhile to cast when not under dynamic haste effects outside the CA phase did decrease from 62.05% to 51.75%. From my calculations, this means that AI should be beneficial to cast outside the CA phase when hasted to be below a 1.39 cast time, which occurs at about 8.4% haste from gear with RF. So potentially, with the recommended 9.09% haste from gear, AI can possibly be a small DPS gain to cast during RF outside the CA phase. However, I am not recommending this since it will not be much of a benefit unless you have significantly more haste from gear and any pushback or interruption will be a large loss in DPS. Plus, FD shows casting it as a 235 DPS loss even at a 1.378 cast time. This is due to taking into account the increased focus cost of using AI over ASs.

During the CA phase when unhasted, it is still worthwhile to use SrS and CS. My calculations show using a CS instead of AI being about a 42K damage benefit per cast. Even during RF, it is still about a 22K DPS gain to cast CS. FD confirms this by it being about a 390 DPS loss when disabling SrS and CS during the CA phase.

The only change to the MM priority I see as a resultant of the AI change is that now it is no longer beneficial to cast GT during the CA phase, unless there are other targets to hit besides the main target. GT does similar damage as CS (within about 1K) but does not have the additional SrS damage to help buff it. My calculations show using GT during the CA phase when under the affects of RF being a 18K damage loss. FD confirms this with disabling GT during the CA phase being a 602 DPS gain. I will update the guide to reflect this change.

Summary:

The change to how AI damage is calculated increases AI damage in T14 normal and heroic gear. Thus, it increases MM DPS. The only change to the MM priority that I recommend is no longer casting GT during the CA phase, unless there are multiple targets to be hit by GT.

Whitefyst · 10/24/12, 6:18 PM

A new MM glyph seems planned for 5.1. Its is:

Glyph of Aimed Shot: This glyph allows Aimed Shot to be used while moving.

This glyph is potentially a nice quality of life glyph for MMs; however, it is not too useful in T14 content. This is because most MMs should only be using AI during the CA phase. Getting a glyph that applies to only 10% of the fight and only if on the move during that period is probably not worth replacing the current survivability glyphs. Although there may be some fights where it is worth taking. In future raid tiers, I hope that the improved AI scaling and the additional haste on gear will make AI more viable outside the CA phase when in high dynamic haste situations, which will increase the benefit of this glyph.

However, being able to cast AI on the run still does not prevent pushbacks, interruptions, target going out of LOS, or possible being turned the wrong way resulting in cast delays or incompletions. It also removes the ability to cancel a cast (if desired to do so) by moving or jumping.

Hence, for now, I would not recommend generally using the glyph for PvE.

However, if we ever get back to the general AI focus dump case like MMs had at the later part of Cataclysm, this glyph would be a must have.

Whitefyst · 10/28/12, 6:41 AM

Steady Focus Duration Change from 10s to 20s on PTR

Concerning the change to SF proposed for 5.1, I will not complain about having the buff duration extended since it does provide MMs a little more flexibility in shot choices since we are not required to do as many SS pairs as previously; however, to be honest, I really do not see this change as much of a benefit, at least not currently.

Here are my thoughts on this change:

1) First, on average to balance focus, MMs still need to do at least 2 SSs per CS cycle. In the best case scenario during the Standard phase of an AS focus-dump cycle during a RF with doing only 2 SSs at 12.93% haste from gear without the T14 4P and 9.09% haste from gear with the T14 4P (which very few hunters if any can achieve currently), here is the focus cost in different scenarios:

Scenario	Focus Cost w/o T14 4P	Focus Cost w/ T14 4P
CS-SSx2-ASx6	-38	-40
CS-SSx2-ASx5-GT	-33	-35
CS-SSx2-ASx5-MMM AI	-18	-20
CS-SSx2-ASx5-DB*	-8	-10
CS-SSx2-ASx4-MMM AI-GT	-13	-15
CS-SSx2-ASx4-GT-DB	-3	-5
CS-SSx2-ASx4-MMM AI-DB*	+12	+10
CS-SSx2-ASx3-MMM AI-GT-DB*	+17	+15

*Note that at this haste level that DB should perform 10 attacks. Hence, it provides 50 focus over 15s. You can expect for about 6 of the DB attacks at most on a CS cycle if the DB was cast during the cycle. This is a benefit of 30 focus.

So even in this best case scenario (with not assuming that other haste effects are stacked on RF), most of the cases are still focus negative and require 2 SSs. The rare cases that do generate a positive amount of focus do not generate enough focus where an SS could be replaced with another AS, which requires 23.32 (amount of focus gained over a SS cast) + 20 (AS focus cost) - 43.32 focus. The best case of 17 focus gained when a MMM AI proc occurs and both GT and DB are available is less than 40% of the focus needed to do that substitition.

Furthermore, the focus gained on these cycles are needed to help balance the focus loss of other cycles, which it does not fully do requiring an extra SS about every third cycle.

Even with considering the case with additional haste on top of RF, 2 SSs are still required. Since the SS casts are already at the 1s GCD with RF, all BL does on top of RF is increase focus regen by 1.9 FPS. Thus, over a 9s CS cycle, another 17.1 focus is generated making the best case generate 34.1 focus, which is still too small to allow an AS for SS replacement since it is only 79% of the cost. Furthermore, this situation is moot anyway, since if you are stacking haste buffs on top of RF, you will want to be using AI as the focus dump instead of AS anyway, which requires a lot more than 2 SSs per CS cycle ( 4 to 5 actually) to counteract the larger AI focus cost.

So from the average CS cycle focus balancing point of view, the change has little impact for most of the fight. This applies to the CA phase too in which we use AI and need extra SSs to balance focus.

2) The is one on average situation though where these extended duration can possibly help currently - during the KS phase. Below is an updated version of the table with including cycles with 2 KSs (since you would normally shoot a pair). Note that at beast 2 KSs every 11s that some CS cycles would have no KSs and revert to those in 1).

Scenario	Focus Cost w/o T14 4P	Focus Cost w/ T14 4P
CS-SSx2-ASx4-KSx2	+2	0
CS-SSx2-ASx3-GT-KSx2	+7	+5
CS-SSx2-ASx3-MMM AI-KSx2	+22	+20
CS-SSx2-ASx3-DB*-KSx2	+32	+30
CS-SSx2-ASx2-MMM AI-GT-KSx2	+27	+25
CS-SSx2-ASx2-GT-DB-KSx2	+37	+35
CS-SSx2-ASx2-MMM AI-DB*-KSx2	+52	+50
CS-SSx2-AS-MMM AI-GT-DB*-KSx2	+57	+55

As can be seen, every one of these CS cycles is at least focus neutral, with most being way focus positive. In fact, the last 2 cycles are sufficiently focus positive where an SS can be replaced by another AS. Thus, the extension of the SF buff could possible allow for one to perform only 1 SS on some CS cycles during the KS phase when under the effects of RF and make up the focus loss on the cycles with the 2 SSs to maintain SF. In fact, it is even possible to perform no SSs on 1 of the cycles during a RF pair and make up for the focus loss on other cycles.

There are a few rubs to this though:
- You do not always have RF available during the KS phase.
- If RF is available during the KS phase, it only covers about 1.5 to 3 CS cycle depending on whether you have a single or RF pair available.
- As gear scales, AI should become increasingly better as a focus dump choice during RF (as opposed to the option choice with the T14 4P), making this situation moot.

3) The next consideration is whether this flexibility has any real benefits to shot order in the CS cycle.

For an AS focus dump cycle, where ASs are instant and only cost 20 focus each, it is not difficult at all to cast an SS pair and avoid focus capping in most situations. An SS pair gains about 46.64 focus over the cast for most cycles. Even with starting at 100 focus, casting a CS and an AS clears enough focus for an SS pair without overcapping in most situations. During a RF, an SS pair could cause a little overcapping if starting at 100 focus, but its not a concern if you are not near 100 focus and can be avoided by casting CS and 2 ASs before the SS pair.

The thing that complicates the situation and where the flexibility helps is the impacts to the rotation due to MMM AI procs and when abilties like DB, GT, and Readiness (which allows an extra DB and GT) come off CD. In the rare situation where many of these are available during a CS cycle, its nice to have the flexibility to shift where the SS pair occurs in the CS cycle or to even skip the SS pair one cycle every so often if trying to burn down a low health target (like the energy cores on Elegon).

For an AI focus dump cycle, the situation is a little different since AI costs 50 focus. With factoring in the regens over the cast time, an SS pair regens a little more than the focus cost of an AI. However, during a RF, which is when we usually cast AIs, the extra focus from RR results in AIs cost being less than 8 focus more than the focus regened from a single SS. If a single DB is active too, then an SS cast actually regens more focus than the cost of the AI cast where casting a single SS for each AI is sustainable during the DB.

4) The next consideration is how the increased flexibility can potentially help us reduce or prevent focus overcapping in real game play and let us use that focus instead to cast more ASs instead of SSs. There is definitely a possible DPS gain here; however, it is not much if at all. First, if doing things properly, you should ideally be wasting little to no focus. But then again, no one is perfect.

But with considering that an AS for SS substitution requires 43.32 focus, it requres a significant amount of overcapping having to previously been done to see any DPS improvements. With assuming that the increased flexibility does allow enough focus overcapping prevention to power an extra AS, the damage difference gained using the Max MM T14H DPS case is about 27K. Over a 5 min fight, this is only an 89 DPS improvement, which is only about a 0.08% DPS improvement.

5) The final consideration is how this change affects your ability to maintain the SF buff. For most players in most situations, maintaing the SF buff should not have been a problem. I know it usually was not for me since once I found the "rhythm" of the MM CS cycles, it was not hard to maintain usually.

However, if you are not paying enough attention, moving a lot, stunned/CCed at the wrong time, or trying to burn a target, it is easy to have the buff fall off, resulting in a DPS loss.

This change makes it a little easier to maintain the SF buff in game play situations.

However, it is a two-edged sword. This flexibility also reduces the "consistency" and rhythm in the MM CS cycles (since you are not required to perform a SS pair every CS cycle) where it is possible to actually end up losing the buff more often now if one is not careful.

6) Small possiblity for more MMM AI procs. The extended SF duration allows us to more often insert a MMM AI proc between SSs instead of waiting until after the SS pair. This results in additional SSs that can apply to a new MMM AI proc instead of being cast when MMM AI is already fully stacked.

Similarly, abilities coming off of short CDs, like KS, GT, and DB, no longer have to wait for an SS pair to complete every cycle. If there is still plenty of time on SF, we can insert one of these shots between SSs if they have come off CD. In rare cases, this lack of delay could possibly result in an extra one of these shots, but it is doubtful.

Summary:

The extension of SF duration from 10s to 20s is a quality of life change and not an overall DPS change. Over the course of the fight, we still have to cast the same number of SSs to provide the focus gains to power our focus costing abilities. The main benefit of the extended duration is a little more flexibility in our shot selection. We can better adjust our shot order to accomodate boss strategies, such as having a short burn stage with limited SSs. Another quality of life benefit is that it makes maintaining the SF buff in real game play easier to do. The only potential DPS benefit of the change is the shifting of shots may prevent a little focus overcapping for potentially a very minor DPS improvement.

FD Analysis:

Since the FD "Enable Public Test Realm Changes" Setting incorporates the extended duration of the SF buff, we are able to simulate the effect to the MM rotation. I did a before and after simulation using the MM Max DPS case for the T14H gear.

FD actually simulated the extended SF buff case as a 171 DPS loss. This DPS loss is due to shot shifting in the case.

Looking more closely at the shot numbers, here are the differences:
- CS -1
- AS +3
- SS -3
- Auto -3
- WQ -1

The loss of the CS is due to shot shifting due to focus levels at the time of the CS cast requiring an SS to get enough focus. This resulted in more focus later for more ASs instead of SSs. If the CS was not lost due to shot shifting, 2 of the 3 AS for SS replacements would not have occurred, leaving only the one AS for SS substitution.

Looking at the extended SF case, of the 45 CSs, 27 (60%) of the CSs had an SS pair to refresh SF before it and 18 (40%) of the CSs did not. The situations in which the SS pair was skipped include:
- Inserting an instant that has come off CD.
- Performng the MMM AI proc immediately after proc on the first SS instead of waiting until after the pair.
- Better focus balancing
- Use of Readiness resulted in a lot of instant cast abilities to be available.
- A RF supporting a lot of ASs

These results basically verify my analysis that the change is a quality of life improvement but not really a DPS improvement.

wilegenuis · 10/29/12, 7:00 PM

I agree that the change of doubling the SF duration is quality of life improvement from the theoretically POV, but the hunters that still plays MM (we are so few based on raidbots) wonder if this change will make MM a valid spec once again, the reason why MM is so lame is that with all the extra focus changes, MM biggest issue is over-focus. The duration it takes to generate SF every 10 sec cause us to waste signature shots/new toys for 2 X SS is various non-optimal situations (and more when we will have T14 4pcs).
With this change the cases where you have 80% focus and SF is down will be less frequent and raidbot will show after 5.1 the MM as a valid spec once again

Whitefyst · 10/30/12, 1:21 PM

I had not thought of that perspective.

My analysis was with assuming that you were choosing to keep 100% SF uptime currently. If you were, then the SF duration change would not affect you too much but would provide more flexibility.

However, if you are currently choosing to (or being forced to) have the SF buff drop off in certain situations, then I can see how the extended duration would be a DPS gain since you will now have greater SF uptime while still making the same choices.

Having the longer SF duration will indeed help make it easier for MMs to better perform closer to their maximum DPS potential. However, it will not increase their maximum DPS potential by much, which means that MMs will still be well behind BMs.

Whitefyst · 11/03/12, 4:23 PM

On the PTR, it looks like they are looking to return Careful Aim back to is applicability to boss health > 80%, which basically doubles the duration of this huge beneficial period.

Although this is a buff for MM hunters, it is not that big of a buff. Using the Max MM DPS case in FD and increasing the duration of the CA period from 10% to 20%, it is only a 1134 DPS increase or about a 1.07% increase for a 7.5 min fight. Part of the problem is that a lot of the CA period was unhasted. For a shorter fight where more of the CA period is unhasted the benefit would be larger. For a 5 min fight, the increase was 1511 DPS or 1.4%.

My initial reaction was to state that MMs would get further benefit to make sure that the whole CA is under dynamic haste effects if possible. For instance for the 5 min fight, with starting BL at 20s so that it will cover the last 40s of the 1 min CA period (with RF covering the first 30s with some overlap), I thought there would be further benefits. But I was wrong. FD showed that doing this is a 928 DPS decrease due to the still relative weakness of AI and with it still requiring too low of a cast time to make it most benefical.

wilegenuis · 11/03/12, 5:09 PM

I'm toying with the option that 5.1 will make the Glyph of Aimed Shot a valid selection for a major Glyph. We will be using the AI for a longer period in 5.1 with the extended CA phase, Bloodlust, Rapid Fire, trinket haste buff and raid specific haste scenarios. Our of the 7 minutes of a raid, we use the AI as the main focus dump for (CA ~ 84 sec , Bloodlust - 30 sec, , Rapid Fire 2 X 15 sec) 2:40 mins. There is no way to theoretically say how many AI will we miss due to movement and therocrafters would claim that with proper movement planning no AI should be interrupted.
The current alternatives for Major Glyph are not very attractive and focus of survivability over damage, MfD is a must for multi target fights, Animal Bond is life saver, but I think that the AI Glyph can replace in 5.1 the Deterrence Glyph unless until you are a Zen master hunter that can plan his moves and avoid any AI interrupt

Neruse · 11/03/12, 5:19 PM

Originally Posted by wilegenuis

I'm toying with the option that 5.1 will make the Glyph of Aimed Shot a valid selection for a major Glyph. We will be using the AI for a longer period in 5.1 with the extended CA phase, Bloodlust, Rapid Fire and raid specific haste scenarios. Our of the 7 minutes of a raid, we use the AI as the main focus dump for (CA ~ 84 sec , Bloodlust - 30 sec, , Rapid Fire 2 X 15 sec) 2:40 mins. There is no way to theoretically say how many AI will we miss due to movement and therocrafters would claim that with proper movement planning no AI should be interrupted.
The current alternatives for Major Glyph are not very attractive and focus of survivability over damage, MfD is a must for multi target fights, Animal Bond is life saver, but I think that the AI Glyph can replace in 5.1 the Deterrence Glyph unless until you are a Zen master hunter that can plan his moves and avoid any AI interrupt

It's a dps loss to cast Aimed <80% with BL or RF. It takes <1.4s Aimed cast time just to break even and that requires double stacking haste cooldowns. The glyph will be situational and only be worth taking if movement is possible in the CA phase.

Whitefyst · 11/04/12, 9:01 AM

To provide some more points over what Neruse stated, my default 3rd glyph of choice is still Deterrence since so far there are plenty of progression fights where I have found the need to use Deterrence to either improve survivability, especially when healer CDs are on CD, and/or healer resources.

Also, just because the CA phase got extended does not make the AI glyph that much better. Even if assuming that you are moving the whole CA phase, the glyph is only really useful when you are under large dynamic haste effect since that is where it is really worth casting AI over AS. When you are in the CA phase unhasted, which is more likely now with the extended duration, having to replace an AI with ASs due to moving is not really that big of a deal currently. (It may be in later raid tiers but not in T14, and especially not where we currently are in T14 gearing.)

The AI glyph is an option but only in the correct situations. These are the situations where you do not need the Deterrence glyph or other survivability options like the CS glyph to help the boss fight to be successful and where you think you will need to move a lot while casting AI.

Whitefyst · 11/12/12, 4:03 PM

As a reminder to folks, although I may list a certain spec to be used generally, there are definitely situations where alternative choices may be better.

For instance, for the last couple weeks on Will of the Emperor, I have specced into Narrow Escape and Binding Shot to help with add control. I have been pleasantly surprised on how well both talents help on this fight to control the Rages and reduce the amount of damage that they do.

wilegenuis · 11/13/12, 8:56 AM

I’m far from describing myself as OP hunter (playing MM somehow say it), but I’m trying to understand how 5.1 theoretical minor changes will have impact of real game play of MM hunter. Currently there is no accurate data as most hunter population stopped playing MM due to the raid phrase data that showed that MM are not compatible spec. I know that doing the math only based on my hunter performance is misleading, but I see myself as above average hunter playing in above average guild.
Based on the WOL data of my guild [5/16 norm atm] I’ve uptime of SF is 82% of the raid duration. I assume that the double duration of SF will allow me to increase the SF up time to 95% of the time (there are rare cases when you are frozen or have to kit adds so it will not be always 100%)
That’s bring me to additional 15% attack speed for 13% of the fight duration (+some additional extra focus). With my current gear and based on FD, 15% attack speed for 13% of the fight duration provides me extra 640 DPS. For that we need to add the 1134 DPS that extending CA period provides and the tiny DPS gain for MM from buffing the wild quiver (+360 DPS) I see a real increase of over 2K DPS (3.5% in my case).
3.5% DPS gain is a major gain, but the bigger factor is that playing MM will become damn easier to play than before and keeping SF will become child play, therefore I see the MM spec back on the raidbots charts as 5.1 shines

Whitefyst · 11/13/12, 11:09 AM

Another factor that you left out is that increased SF uptime is also increased focus since SS casts with SF up gain 3 more focus. The focus gains from the improvement will not be large, but it should be enough to be able to cast an additional AS or two instead of SSs.

I definitely agree that playing MM will be easier in 5.1 but I do want to caveat the situation some. For end game players with the T14 4P, I believe that MM will become a viable option since only 9.09% Haste from gear is needed for a tight 3 SS CS cycle (which is the most frequent number of SSs that MMs need to perform to balance focus). However, for those behind the gear curve, I still do not think that MM will be a viable option for them yet since the max MM DPS case is so dependent on both haste and crit and is not a viable option until sufficient gear is acheived. Also, until sufficient gear is achieved, AI is relatively weak.

I am thinking that MM will become even more viable of an option as gear scales since AI should start hitting harder relatively and making the haste plateau on top of the hit and exp caps will be easier and easier to achieve while still being able to load up on crit.