Windarrow

Thanks for the good response guys. I've been trying out MM myself, and I have to say it's looking really promising. My spec is as follows,

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Blackrock&n=Windarrow

with 3/3 imp arcane, 3/3 barrage, 3/3 wild quiver. The results look really promising, my dps hits 2.6-2.7k at times without the t6 bonus, are we allowed to upload screenshots as proof?

My rotation is a very mana consuming mark+serpentsting, steadyaimed/multiauto > steadyarcaneauto > steadychimeraauto > steadyarcaneauto, repeat.
I still use Manito's to cast Kill Command.

Also, in the recent 3.0.3 patch notes, I noticed that cats and scorpids have been nerfed in damage, has that had an impact on your choice of pet?

 

Zeuxis

So far as I can tell, Aimed is looking like an "either/or" proposition. If you take barrage talents, aimed will out-hit 4pc steady, at the cost of twice as much mana. However, its use also decreases improved steady uptime, which in turn decreases your average chimera hit. Also of note is that if you do not have to spend points on barrage talents, dropping a point or two into focused aim allows you to drop hit gear for haste gear, which is significant in the no-windfury era for MM. Overall, I've found single target dps between steady->chimera and aimed->steady->chimera with barrage to be remarkably similar, to the point of statistical insignificance. The major trade-offs appear to be that aimed burns mana a lot faster, but the barrage talents make the many occasions you have to use volley more satisfying. Admittedly, my data size is extremely small at this point (one night!), so consider this initial reporting only.

Pre 3.0.3, I was finding MM and BM to be quite balanced. 3 Brutallus fights as BM, Surv, and MM resulted in 3300 dps, 2000 (!) dps, and 3500 dps respectively. Throw out the SV results, as they were tainted by some poor raid positioning and buffing... then consider that I had to move for Burn in the BM fight, and did not on the MM fight, and that there was a slight gear upgrade between the BM and MM fights. Given those factors, the BM and MM numbers (each with a scorpid pet) appear very similar. The major question post 3.0.3 is whether the relatively harder hit MM takes from the WF nerf outweighs the relatively harder hit BM takes from the scorpid/cat specials reduction. If one spec is MUCH more heavily impacted than the other, then the relative strengths of the specs will skew. As of monday, however, the difference in output between MM and BM appeared to be a statistical dead-heat... much to my delight, since I spec back and forth depending on whether or enhancement shammy or another MM hunter is available that particular day.

 

Jaffi

So now that Aimed Shot is affected by barrage (assuming you specc barrage), do you think the use of Arcane Shot is not worth it anymore? Aimed Shot provides from Marked for Death and Barrage, Arcane Shot has the lower cooldown. So speccing and using Arcane Shot should be a bad thing to decide?

 

KraxisSingular

Arcane hasn't been worth it for a long time... and that hasn't changed. The three TPs will just bring it in line with Steady, but then you have wasted three points on something you could just have ignored.

 

pdpi

And it, of course, helps out even more if you don't have Enhancement shamans and your physical dps is, therefore, short a 10% AP buff.

 

beathoven

I'm currently going with a 7/54/0 spec with Barrage and Improved Barrage. As we have a raid free day tonight i'll be performing a few tests with the following rotations:

Serpent -> [Chimera -> Steady*5]*x

and

Serpent -> [Chimera -> Steady*2 -> Aimed -> Steady*2]*x

As soon as i have some results i'll post them here. I'm personally leaning towards the later rotation to provide more DPS, but i'll definitely go OOM quite a bit faster. For shorter fights i suspect the later to pull ahead, but for longer fights when we have to switch to Viper a lot earlier it could trip the difference between better or worse DPS overall.

 

Jaffi

What we also have to keep in mind is the fact that an Aimed Shot within the rotation would consume a procc of Improved Steady Shot, which means an overall decrease of Chimera Shot's damage. So we have to confront this vs. using Aimed Shot.

 

dssurge

After using Aimed Shot in my rotation since 3.0.3 came out, I would advise against it. Barrage does make it more appealing and ultimately points in Barrage are probably a better DPS choice than dumping them in Efficiency, but the reason I would take Barrage is for Volley damage, not Aimed Shot.

The mana cost vs. additional damage is a marginal gain at best and depending on talent spec (assuming 0/54/7) it's quite possible that the additional critical strike chance on SS will cause it to out weight the benefits of Barrage in regards to Aimed Shot.

WWS Parse of our last Brut kill: Wow Web Stats
(ignore the low DPS, we bring 8 healers and sell gear to 2-3 people per kill)

Hits avg difference = 128
Max crit damage difference = 85 (which may be skewed because I use 2 chance on hit AP proc pieces)

1328 / 128 = ~10.4 Aimed shots to make up 1 additional steady shot, so in theory any fight over 1:40 you will see the equivalent to one additional non-crit steady shot worth of damage using Aimed > Steady, but that's completely discounting additional steady shot procs. It's also assuming equal crit rates for Aimed and Steady.

On the other hand, it will almost invariably be a better idea to use Aimed > Steady until you reach the 1.5 SS cast time Haste barrier since it causes more damage and only incurs a GCD vs. a ~1.6 second cast time.

So,
pros of Aimed Shot:
- inherantly higher damage
- shorter re-fire delay
cons:
- higher mana cost
- unable to proc Imp. SS
- lower crit rate

There are a few factors, all of which have RNG luck associated, that would tug this discussion in either direction. I only got 6 Imp. SS procs on my Brut kill for example, not sure if any over-lapped, but it's ~48% chance per SS cycle to proc it with Aimed in the rotation, and somewhere in the realm of 56% for a SS/Chim spam rotation. When you haste cap Steady it goes up to 62%. All are probability based calculations, assuming no overlap, so Imp. SS is actually kind of a shitty tool to figure out the difference between the shot rotations.

I personally would rather not use aimed shot in my rotations, but that opinion will probably chance @80 when it's possible to ignore the Survival tree entirely. Will have to re-assess based on itemization and mana consumption.

 

Siawn

I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to hunters, so excuse my ignorance Notix, but could you explain why you didn't pick up Piercing Shots or Wild Quiver? And if it was due to point constraints, is the point in Efficiency more productive than a single point in either talent? My wife is considering using her Hunter for more than a farm bot, so now I actually have to learn how they work.

 

lockelee

Siawn My personal understanding of both talents are that Wild Quiver is not giving the dps percentages that you invest the points in. The points can be spent elsewhere to make up hit rating and or a rapid recouperation double trinket combo.

Also while i feel Piercing Shots is a good talent and it stacks(i think) with your current armor pen. rating, it looses it's kick in a raid setting where it applies itself after all the debuffs that goes on in the raid.


P.S. If i'm wrong please correct me

 

• Scotch

Short answer: those talents are currently garbage compared to other talents, especially at 70.

<Bryne|work>: Scotch is one of the least terrible hunters I have ever had the extreme displeasure to raid with.

 

beathoven

Ok, did quite a few tests and i've misjudged the amount of damage Chimera does with a Serpent Sting on a mob: It roughly does 2x as much damage as Aimed at the moment at 70 on average, even with Barrage and Improved Barrage.

So the conclusion is: I do about 5% more DPS with the first rotation and a proper spec for it as compared to the 2nd rotation at 70. And the 2nd rotation drains your mana a lot quicker than the first one.

I'll retest this when i hit 80, but right now it's really a waste to use Aimed Shot at any point in the rotation.

 

Nexero

Yeah i used a chimera--->SS til chimera before 3.03. Ive now respec'd to get barrage/imp barrage and im rotating aimed in and the dps gain isnt at all worth imo.

Beathoven if you dont mind could you post your spec?

 

KraxisSingular

And then I begin to wonder...

Seeing as Improved Steady Shot procs are not only good damage, they are also important manasavers. So how many extra Steadies would it be worth shooting to hope for a proc?

As far as I remember in my own raids as MM Chimera is about three times the damage of a Steady, so the damage portion of the proc isn't even worth one extra Steady if you don't have it at Chimera cooldown. But with tthe mana reduction it begins to smell very much of delay up to one Steady to get the proc more often.

 

beathoven

Thats the current spec i'm using for now:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I've thought about trying the 7 points in Survival instead, but unfortunately you can't track the Target Dummies so i can't do any proper tests with that. And i don't think the difference would be that big:

5 points in IAotH and 2 points in Focused Fire vs. 5 points in Improve Tracking and 2 points in Survival Instincts will yield roughly the same amount of DPS increase, especially if you mainly use Steady Shot.

 

lockelee

I tested this out. I found that a rotation of Chimera-SSx3-Aimed-SSx3 would yelled at least one proc making Aimed or Chimera benefiting from the extra SS.

I only used aimed as i was testing out the barrage and Imp barrage talents

 

KraxisSingular

Yes, that would seem about the right amount of Steadies for a proc. And 6 Steadies coincides with that one extra Steady to Chimera.

Now the question just is, if this high uptime is worth it over a more pure 'fast as possible' Chimera rotation. On bosses MM does seem to spend a lot of mana quickly, so 20% off Chimera almost every time should help a lot. I'm not good enough at this kind of calculation to work it out, especially the Imp Steady uptime calculations (have simply forgotten how ).

 

Blunts

So is this the spec most MM hunters are using at present with a chimera--->SS rotation and nothing else to get the best dps @70?

 

Howitzer

It greatly amuses me that after months of being the "special kid" that loved the MM spec, its now become so much more viable, (gotta love it.) I'm going to have to update the original post here soon with the new information since its clearly ood. Bear with me.

 

presidentofmalf

I'm with ya, Howitzer - I was MM through a LOT of BC- I was resisting BM soooooo much. Then I thought about utility, and went Survival (I held my own, I'd say), and then finished the last 8 or so months as BM until 3.0 when I was sooooooo happy to go MM again (yipee!).

The spec I'm using right now is this (armory link), http://www.wowarmory.com/character-t...rion&n=Mandora but I plan on doing this as a level 80 MM spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (of course, things could change 100 times before level 80). During boss fights, I'm putting out around 2.6k dps without consumables (could be better, I'm not hit capped and I haven't *really* raided in months upon months).

I ran BT with a pug last night and checked out Recount afterward - I'm not really impressed with Wild Quiver; the two points would be worth much more elsewhere, IMO - so maybe take my current spec with a grain of salt.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on my 80 MM spec?

 

Gearknight

That's very close to what I have intended for level 80, but here's one obvious (and cool) improvement: You can drop 2 points of efficiency and pick up Aspect Mastery. I think this is an obvious improvement: 90 AP when dragonhawk is active and 20% more damage done when viper is active (60% of normal versus 50%). Plus, 5% less damage taken should keep healers happy in raids, and you get a filler point of Endurance Training for even more free staying power for you and your pet.

11/53/7 is overall very attractive. It gets lots of toys. You get some choices about where to put the 53 points too.

I also have a back-of-envelope calculation regarding Wild Quiver vs Imp Steady Shot:

Wild Quiver 1/2/3 is basically 2/3.5/5% more auto shot damage
Improved Steady Shot 1/2/3 is basically 3.9/7/9.3% more damage to chimera shot (using a 6xSteady, Chimera rotation)

If auto shot does twice as much DPS as chimera (or even more), then it's a better place for 3 points. Also worthy of note is that both talents have diminishing returns, which are written into Wild Quiver and arise due to the proc-based nature of Imp Steady.

 

Dralmoo

Wild Quiver also has the (minor) disadvantage of using misdirection charges, and Imp. SS has the (not so minor) advantage of reducing mana consumption as well, so Wild Quiver DPS would have to be noticeably better to be the preferred talent, I think.

 

◊ Sarutobi

Using the level 80 gearset Shandara has in the spreadsheet, and a 16/51/4 build (highest DPS build I've seen in so far in working with the spreadsheet) going from 3/3 WQ 2/3 Imp SS to 2/3 WQ 3/3 Imp SS was a 12 DPS loss.

 

presidentofmalf

I would think, though, that if you're saving mana, it would be an increase in the long run, no?

 

◊ Sarutobi

For a 15 minute fight (which is 2.5 times the length most fights in BC were designed to last) the hawk uptime for the 2/3 Imp SS 3/3 WQ build is estimated at 95.09%. For the 2/3 WQ 3/3 Imp SS build it's estimated at 95.46%. So the difference is negligible. For a 6 minute fight the DPS numbers shift even more in favor of 3/3 WQ.