I'm in the same boat as you. I've wanted to go back to MM ever since TBC's release.

I think the problem with MM is Rapid Recuperation. That's supposed to be that tree's active mana regen. However, the mechanics are just wrong. It only activates if we get a killing blow and then it only regens 9% mana total for every kb. So eleven killing blows to go from empty to full more or less. How often are you going to get that in a raid? Never.

No, I never said you don't autoshot, I meant you stop using specials, which you suggested to keep up during viper.

If it's a choice of 30% for 15, versus 50% for 20 (Completely made up, probably wrong) then you have to decide which is more efficient. I would hazard a guess that in a situation where you need to regen mana (i.e. you're using viper), you don't want to use anything with twice as bad dpm as normal (which is using specials during viper time).

I was responding to your post saying that you do dps rotations under viper, since I can't see how that would be efficient.

Don't forget the 60% mana reduction when Rapid Fire is active. Assuming you have 2/2 Rapid Killing, that plus Efficiency is roughly equal to invigoration. The obvious change is to reduce Chimera Shot's mana cost to probably around 12% base mana. Explosive is 7% base mana every 6s so 16% base mana every 10s is a bit harsh.

16% base mana every 10 seconds is actually less than 10% every 6 seconds (arcane and explosive).

Since MM doesn't need to refresh Serpent due to Chimera and the MM spec will have Master Marks for 25% less mana on Steady Shot and has access to Efficiency and Improved Steady Shot, I'd hazard a guess and say that MM is actually more mana efficient than Survival. The obvious upside with Survival is that it has TotH to cover up the increased mana costs by having a scaling reduction in mana cost via refunds.

I think this is the crux of the matter. Our DPS is too high so they can't give us the fast and 'fun' mana regeneration we want.

The solution should be obvious to them: reduce our DPS so we're back in line without resorting to damage reducing time spent in Viper. And then give us proper mana regeneration.

Are we too close to WotLK for them to consider something like that?

Arcane and Explosive Shot are 7% not 10%.

Now remember the base per GCD is 5% mana since Steady Shot is the default filler shot. So Arcane/Explosive is an extra 2% mana on top of what you would normally spend every 6s, or 0.33% base mana a second extra (or 0.55% if you also consider serpent). Chimera is using an extra 11% over 10.5s, or an extra 1.04% base mana a second. So Chimera should come down in cost slightly.

But why? If the end result=similar dps.

At least to me, from a pve perspective, it sounds interesting - because it means weighing your shot rotations in terms of mana use vs dps, at the same time as timing encounters for use of AotViper to where it will hurt the dps the least (any small breaks where you stop dps etc).

As long as the regen from AotViper is such that we get a considerable amount of mana back - 60-70% from a top tiered hunter (top tiered for wotlk ofc) within 20 seconds, I don't see the problem.

I find it exciting to be "king of dps" and then some when we have mana, to be mitigated by the need to mana regen. As long as we're still top dps (on the line of rogues) over the average of the fight.


[I'm sorry for posting consecutively, I would go back and edit this in in my previous post but can't see that it is possible to delete this post and will therefore leave it as it is.]

Wouldn't just about any mana regeneration method short of near instant 0 to 100% still be subject to the danger of drains in arena? I'm no PvP expert, but I know that once I hit 0 mana in PvP my burst potential is miserable at best, and if an attentive healer is around I'm not going to be able to kill anything.

Edit: On PTR, Growl costs 15 focus. I seem to recall the focus cost on growl being removed completely when they revamped the focus cost of abilities. Was I just imagining things? I know it's gone on cower.

I would like to see us go on top, in terms of dmg done. For a simple reason of having to take care of our pets while none of other have that issue.

The change is that now we can do the pillar humping trick and not feel like we are doing something wrong. We can go and hide for mana too. Every little lul in the fighting and Viper goes up. I agree that the GCD is still killing in regards to aspects. It makes no sense to have it since we can't do the damage in Hawk and gain the benefits in Viper trick anymore (since the regen isn't based on attacking or damage).

But it appears that it won't be an issue. From what I have seen and read Hunters don't last long enough to actually use Viper. I guess that is one way to fix PvP regeneration.

Thank goodness I only PvP extremely casually.

There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding going on both to what Koraa was trying to say about "mana regen" and to how good the current beta version of AotV is at regenerating mana. Koraa obviously made a gaffe about the mp5 on gear, but what he was getting at is that the designers want hunters to care about mana management in one way or another. They want being oom to be a problem that hunters try to avoid, and they want hunters to appreciate having a mana battery in the group and other various non-hunter ways of regenning mana. They want, hypothetically, a hunter to look at a choice between an item that is a loss of 5 AP total but an increase of 200 mana and think of that item as an upgrade.

It actually is not the case that the designers are somehow unaware that simply switching from Hawk to Viper is a loss in dps. They know that. If anyone is missing the boat, it's hunters, many of whom are having difficulty seeing the designers' point, which is that a mere loss of up to 300 AP (no, I haven't forgotten Aspect Mastery. I'm leaving it out for reasons I'll explain later) is not enough to make up for AotV regen. One reason people may be having difficulty is because they are focused on the time it takes to go to full mana once you have run out. That's a fair comparison to use when looking at the current version, which highly discourages being in the aspect until you are low on mana.

But if we are looking at a hypothetical version with no damage penalty aside from that built into aspect switch, we have to change our approach. This is what Koraa was getting at somewhat with the references to hunters being in Viper all the time (side note: let's not forget that when developers talk about "what we were seeing" they aren't always referring to Live realms or even semi-public PTRs and betas. Sometimes they mean things that they saw in internal builds and testing, and with versions that never saw the light of day outside Blizzard HQ. It could very well be that they tested a non-penalty version of Viper internally and saw the madness.)

In order to illustrate the issue, all that is required is a simple experiment that anyone with PTR or beta access can do, which is: 1) go find a training dummy, 2) switch to aspect of the viper while you have a full mana bar, and 3) shoot at the dummy using your normal rotation until you run out of mana. For added fun, use an non-ideal rotation that is designed to make you run out of mana as fast as possible (while still mimicking something that someone might actually do in game, instead of something insane like using serpent sting every GCD). If you do this, you'll notice something pretty unusual and significant:

You can't run out of mana when you do this. You won't even come remotely close -- as in, it would be a shock if you go below 90% for more than a second or two. You will be able to keep this up until you run out of ammo.

This isn't theorycraft. I actually went and tried it myself, although it is not hard to figure out why this is the case without testing it. With AotV, auto shots (for me) were returning ~6% total mana every 2 seconds. Moreover (and this is what a lot of people overlook) using Steady Shots during that rotation is still a mana gain -- even though they cost mana to use, they return even more mana than they cost so there is no reason to stop using them. Serpent sting returns mana on each tick, so that is a net gain ability also. The only abilities that have a net cost are the instant specials and multi-shot, which all have cooldowns. By the time you can use them again, you've gotten back all the mana that they cost. This also shows that one of the assumptions that people float around -- that using steady shot during AotV currently extends the time you spend in AotV -- is incorrect. Using Steady speeds up your mana regen during that time, and it means you have less of a dps penalty, because doing 50% of Steady + Auto damage is better than 50% auto damage alone.

So then, if there isn't a damage penalty to AotV then the only tradeoff we have is giving up 300 RAP in exchange for near infinite mana. Now, any hunter that is being intellectually honest should admit that this is a no-brainer of a tradeoff. I know we're used to thinking poorly of mana regen and mana pools as compared to dps stats but this is a game-changer we're talking about. First, you can take any talent points that you spent on efficiency talents or personal (as opposed to group) mana regen and spend them elsewhere on dps talents, so long as they aren't a prerequisite for something or your only option to move to the next tier. This helps compensate for the loss of 300 AP from never using Hawk (which is why I didn't include Aspect Mastery earlier. It's a waste of a talent in this hypothetical). Additionally, you can pretty much trade in any mail gear with INT and replace it with physical dps leather. Chances are you'll end up with more than enough additional AP to cover the 300 you're missing from removing Hawk from your repertoire, particularly as we get deeper into the expansion and gear scales up.

Finally, you can choose only dps-enhancing glyphs instead of efficiency glyphs like the glyph of arcane shot. All of these things combined mean you will do considerably more damage than a hunter using Aspect of the Hawk and wearing mail gear, notwithstanding the fact that you'd have no mana aside from your base mana pool. But who cares? As long as you can cover a single rotation with your base mana pool (and you can -- do the training dummy test above when you're naked), then you have no need for any more mana if you have Viper up, and you can gear for max damage without any regard for sustainability.

That's why there is a damage penalty in every version of AotV they are considering. The mana regen is too fast with it to be justifiable without one.

Ah, that is probably right. I wasn't sure that it was a bug. But even so, if you stipulate that this increases your "ticks" per min by 100% (doubles the amount of ticks), which I doubt is correct (50% sounds more like it), the amount spendt in viper increases to 30-40 seconds.

Depending on how long your mana lasts you, Anything under 30 seconds to full mana bar is not that bad. But it ofc depends on how much dps you do, when you're not using viper and how long it takes to deplete your mana bar.

In a pve setting - if it f.ex. takes 2 mins to deplete bar and 30 seconds to fill it up, that means you have 50% of your dps for 20% of the time. Averaging a 10% dps loss over 2min 30 seconds (compared to if you never used Viper). And unless I jumble my math's a lot here, that means that our dps should be 10% over the next comparable class on average.

BTW, anyone tried to test Lactose's theory that if you switch to AotV after you've fired a shot and before it hits, it will give mana back without reducing damage? (should be possible using aimed shot and spamming AotV with some luck).

I tested it myself, with the old version of Aspect of the Viper (100% of damage dealt --> mana, 50% decreased damage).

For reference, here's the post:

Yes, Marksmanship has tons of talents which REDUCE the mana cost of its shots, which is fine and all, but it needs active regeneration to match BM and Survival. And Rapid Recuperation's "active regeneration" is more or less a joke.

Searching for unique ways for each tree to regenerate mana is somewhat annoying.

Perhaps adding a component to Serpent Sting (or stings in general) where each tick restores (or has a chance to restore) an amount of mana would be the way to go with Marks. The tree is already a lot more focused on Stings because of Chimera, so I think it would fit. Similar to how Survival is very crit focus and the way it regenerates mana is based on crits, and how BM's mana regen is (while lacking) related to pets.

As to where to place it, I think the obvious one is to replace Rapid Recuperation's Rapid Killing component.

There's nothing really wrong with rapid recuperation's rapid killing component. I'm sure it's great when you 3-4 shot mobs while grinding/leveling and I'm sure it's awesome when killing clueless people in bg's. It just has zero effect on the PvE Mana Regen/control game that the devs seem to so want us all to play. I think that the component is fine and that an additional way to regenerate mana in a PvE setting could be just added on, or in place of reduced costs during rapid fire.

Just off the top of my head:
-Makes rapid fire regenerate mana equal to X% of damage while under the effect (Drawback being you'll likely to hold off on using it at the start of the fight to get a better mana return).
-Make chimera shot crits give a self replenishment like buff, possible long lasting and stacking (the long you fire at something the more mana you get back)
-Have chimera shot refresh the the sting and refund the cost of casting the sting every time you use it. Have imp stings increase this effect by 30%

Just things like that are relatively 'unique' way of regenerating mana specifically for marks

What does it matter if its savings in efficiency or active mana regen? - its just 2 sides of the same coin, the end result is that each type simply extends the time until you have to switch to viper.
Also, I think you underestimate the new Master Marksman.
25% reduction in steady shot costs is huge, its the equivalent of over 100 mana/5 which unless i've missed something, will be superior or on a par with Toth and also on a par with or better than Invigoration.

The problem is not the regen(or efficiency) - its the mana cost of Chimera shot, which I still think is way too high.

Steady shot went from 4% mana to 5% That's a 25% increase. The new mastermarksmen simply trades 5% crit for 10% ap and our old steady shot cost.

The mana reduction could be greater, it could effect more abilities and it could be made a more worthwhile talent to address MM's mana guzzling tendencies.

Edit: Thx for the correction lactose.

Your math is wrong.
100% mana cost reduction = free spell, not half cost. Thus you can't do (x*y)/y = x
Steady Shot, 5% base mana per cast.
Master Marksman, 5% reduction per point, 25% if maxed.

5%*0.75 = 3.75%

But of course, a talent can always be better, but it still results in the fact that BM and Survival can only maintain pure steady spam for 3/4 of the time that Marksman can, and its a good question as to whether the other active regeneration can match that.

From what they're saying about other classes and damage? No. But I bet we can't get it. We're only Hunters after all.

For Survival, Steady Shot crits trigger both Thrill of the Hunt and Hunting Party.

For Beast Mastery, Steady Shot crits can trigger Cobra Strikes, which can cause two Invigoration procs.

Both of these become better as you crit rate improves (and to a lesser degree they also become better as your mana pool increases).

So I find it unlikely that Marksmanship can actually keep steady spam going that much longer than Survival and Beast Mastery.