What other classes have similar abilities that are not on GCD? Blade Flurry, Adrenaline Rush, Death Wish, Recklessness, Avenging Wrath are all on GCD. While it's true that hunters usually have higher penalty for losing a GCD than other classes, putting Rapid Fire on the GCD actually makes it _more_ like other classes' abilities.

teiglin - Cold Snap, Combustion, Arcane Power. Wait, hm, Mages do have an advantage there! Also Divine Favour, Sweeping Strikes, Beserking, Blood Fury... (And I'm sure a few I missed)

Frankly though all those abilities are far more poweful than rapid fire...

Wait, Avenging Wrath triggers a GCD? Thought it was off but couldn't be triggered during one...

Edit: updated list

Self-buffs that affects abilities tend not to be on the global cooldown, especially if it only affects abilities and not white damage. Things that affect white damage, in addition to or instead of abilities, have a tendancy to be on the global cooldown (AR is a bit of an outlier; Recklessness is probably just a holdover from its previous incarnation). Realistically, this means that all cooldowns a caster uses are off the GCD. There is some rationale for this: a GCD would *guarantee* that 1.5 seconds of the buff is wasted. If you're gaining some or all of the benefit from white damage during the 1.5s GCD, there's nothing to complain about, especially if you are not a GCD-limited class. The rationale is a little less clear for things like combustion and inner focus which work on a set number of abilities rather than a strict duration, but there isn't much of a reason to apply different reasoning to them. Most activated DPS racials are off the GCD because they have to be for casters, and the consistency is a good thing.

Rapid Fire increases white damage, pretty much exclusively, which means that it normally falls under the GCD. If you want it taken off, you basically have to show that the DPS improvement is greatly impacted by the lost steady shot.

Well, it takes anything from 1/3 to 1/2 the effect, yea. White shots simply don't do that much of our damage.

Why has it been added to our GCD at the same time as haste has been seriously nerfed for us?

Some observations on the latest PTR build:

1. Survival will probably end up with a ES/SS/FROST TRAP rotation. The frost trap gives you a guaranteed L&L every 24 seconds if talented, and as long as you are within about 8-10 yards of the immobile mob, you can drop the trap and it will trigger without you having to move.

2. Call of the Wild might become the new Heroism. Bring 5 hunters, have them either stack it all at once, or trigger it one by one if Blizzard disallows the stacking later. CotW stacks at the moment (you have to be in the same party, though it seems to stack sometimes across the raid [i.e., 1 hunter got the stacked buff, the other hunter in a different party only got his].)

3. 3/5 Hunting Party is enough. At 4/5 replenishment was never off. (I had a weird bug with replenishment that I couldn't duplicate -- it'd continue to proc, even with my pet and me not doing anything (but still in combat.) There was another hunter in the raid, but he was BM.)

4. As survival, I just didn't run out of mana with the rotation in #1. At all. Note my mana did drop, but then it'd just stay at that amount indefinitely. I'll continue to test to see exactly how I did that. That might more than compensate for the possibly slightly less dps of the L&L versus a steady application of SSting.

Quick sanity check: was there any other class capable of procing replenishment? Shadow Priests and Retadinds give the same buff.

I'm not sure, when I tested on beta, steady shot arguably did better damage than explosive already (base hits were slightly lower, but the critical damage modifier was a LOT higher). That was without the +10% steady shot damage glyph, too.

In addition to the obligatory Recount stats I logged yesterdays Naxx(25) Raid so you guys get some more stats to assess and compare the hunter performance in WotLK. Unfortunatly Mikari seemed to have some connectivity problems which largely invalidate his numbers. Marrnos was Marksman and I specced Survival to see if it really performs as bad as we assumed.

First the recount stats for patchwerk:


For a more throughout comparison I also parsed and uploaded the stats with stasicl (wws still doesn´t work with 3.0 Logs ). For a lack of a better host I could only upload the patchwerk stats. If someone has got a better hoster I can upload the rest of the raid there too.
click me!

Last not least you can download the whole combatlog for your own parses here.

Unless I misread something, looking at the log I just posted I got an average hit of 2886 and crit of 6216 for explosive shot whereas I only had an average hit of 1898 and crit of 4341 for steady shot (don´t forget ES ticks 3 times for the damage) so that´s not really true. Also with 24% scaling with AP the diffrence between steady and explosive shot will only grow while we advance through WotLK. That beeing said chimera shot still seems to be superior with 2781 hits and 6490 crits plus serpent sting damage of 1022-2192 plus refreshing serpent sting and thus saving one GCD.

What kind of buffs were you getting? And was it hard to stay in range/keep the buffs on?

To be honest, it´s kind of hard to keep track of the buffs with about 40 diffrent ones on you and no addon to sort or filter them in any way. I tried to stay at maximum range because I had dumped points into sniper training though, so if some of the buffs had a lower range and where not centered somewhere between patchwerk and us I might have missed them.

More surprising is that Marrnos only had 12 Serpent Sting ticks. And was pretty much keeping Chimera Shot up 100%, judging by the CS-Serpent procs. Some sort of parsing problem?

EDIT:
Looking at the parsed log you linked, Mikari also has only 10 ticks.

Mikari wasn´t present most of the fight so that´s not really such a big surprise, what is strange is the fact that Marrnos has only 12 ticks listed. I just checked the original logfile and it definatly only lists those 12 ticks so I guess it´s a bug with the combatlog itself rather than with the parser.

If you want to check the log itself I wrote a small script that converts the combatlog text file into an excel readable file. I uploaded the excel file for the patchwerk fight here

Just wondering what the difference between yours and Marnos' pet is? Yours was hitting much harder on average, and nearly out damaged Marnos' cat without using a special ability besides bite. Your bite hit harder, which makes no sense if Marnos is marksman w/ Marked for Death. I assume you guys had the same buffs/etc.

I must be missing something.

Judging by the combat log:

* Marrnos applied Serpent Sting just once (Both cast_success and spell_aura_applied around row #400-500) early in the fight. This is expected if he used Chimera Shot to refresh it 100%.
* His Serpent Sting was removed (SPELL_AURA_REMOVED) near the end, row #45251, presumably when Patchwerk died.
* He stopped getting Serpent Sting ticks at row #7270

But he's still getting Chimera-Shot Serpent damage all through the fight.

The log is filled with SPELL_AURA_REFRESH after Chimera Shot hits, often multiple at the same time. Is it trying to refresh all the serpent stings on the target?

So apparently after a while, Marrnos is not getting serpent sting ticks anymore, but is still refreshing _something_. That or Chimera Shot-Serpent is proc'ing off Midnight's Serpent Sting.

I noticed a good while ago on test that its possible to chimera your serpent sting towards the end of the sting and have the graphic refresh, but your serpent completely stops ticking losing you dps. The graphical debuff is still on the boss though, and you can still chimera and deal the damage and refresh that non ticking serpent however.

I was able to do this with the serpent sting glyph that increases its duration, I didnt test without it, so I don't know if its reproducible without the glyph. But its pretty easy to duplicate with it. Wait until your serpent is just about to tick for its final time then chimera. Once you refresh it stop all attacks. The test dummy retains the debuff but no damage ticks at all. And with chimera you can refresh that phantom sting indefinitely also.

It was driving me nuts because I couldnt get a firm look at MM dps because of the bug. SS isnt a HUGE portion of my damage, but when it ticks for more than 350 or so, I do want it to actually deal damage the entire fight. Especially considering I put at least 3 talent points into improving its damage. Also, it would be hard to notice the missing sting sticks during a raid, just testing on the dummies I wasnt noticing that my Serpent Sting went phantom until I stopped seeing the scrolling combat text damage in the area of 350 or so every few seconds. That prompted me to investigate. But in a raid with your SCT going wild theres likely no way you would notice it.

I wrote a bug report after I was puzzled with the same Phantom-sting-thingy.
Tested it earlier today -> still 8/10 CD-aplications near last tick leading to the phantom-Buff.

No ticks in Combatlog eighter.
Will test again when I'm home so I can use Recount to keep track of time and tick-count.

When was that? Bear in mind that until a few builds ago mortal shots didn't affect explosive shot.

I've got a question about chimera shot; does it deal 40% of the average serpent dmg (~316dmg/tick -> 126dmg), or 40% of the damage serpent dealt on that target since the last refresh of the dot on the target?

Explosive Shot is back to triggering TotH and Hunting Party, for the record. It also does double damage on crits (without mortal shots, obviously) instead of 1.5 like it was doing, but I don't know if that's new to anyone but me.

Hirgux: It's 40% of the total damage done by Serpent Sting. Meaning all of the ticks within the 15 second duration added up.

Random comment: I'm kind of surprised that the Wasp ability Sting is a magic effect and not a poison. Only just noticed yesterday.

Taking a stab at what I see here, as I don't use Recount, but am I seeing both of you Hunters getting out DPSed by two Retadins, a Mage, and a Warrior? And if so, does this bother you in the slightest that two hybrids and a tank-capable class are doing equal to more DPS than a pure DPS class is possible? I know that Blizz's intention was to bring off spec classes up to a level near to that of pure DPS classes but unless you died early on or were involved in doing something that limited your time-to-DPS, I find this rather disconcerting.

Red is Death Knight.