Note: this is because, currently, the initial tick on the primary target is the only tick that causes any threat. The second two ticks on the primary target and all three ticks on targets within 5 yards cause no threat. Easy to test - send your pet into a group of mobs (with no AOE abilities on autocast, if it has any), let it growl on one target, cast Explosive Arrow. None of the creatures in the group will come at you, even though your pet only has proximity aggro on all but the initial target.

That just made Explosive shot a lot more fun.

There's such a huge diversity of pet abilities, it's almost as if Blizzard is making us into a 'Swiss army knife' class... I just hope I won't find myself ditching and re-training new pets for progression, just because certain pet abilities counter certain boss abilities.

I'm absolutely certain it's a bug that'll be fixed.

It IS a lot of fun, though Especially with 2 piece t5; explosive shot counts for the healing proc, so if you get a group packed densely enough, you can heal your pet for like 2k health in 2 seconds.

I looked through this thread and didn't see any comments about Aimed Shot, from what I can see, it got it's casting time reduced to 2.5 seconds, that got me thinking:

A BM-hunter with 15% quiver, 20% haste from SS, 15% from IHM proc, will have a casting speed of 1.57 for Aimed shot, this is close to GCD.
Even thou it delays auto-shot, it should maybe be possible to squeeze it in between 2 auto-shots when using a slow weapon (3.0 or higher) so maybe Aimed Shot will make a entry in raid-hunters shot-rotation again? It does do rather heavy damage so if the auto-shots arn't delayed to much it might be a good investment for 1 talent point for BM-hunters, but only if talented haste affects it's casting speed.

Does that include AP gained from Expose Weakness, and a fully-loaded Hunter's Mark?

I suppose the real question is, aside from the huge boost that the new rank of Mark gives, is AP scaling going to be as aggressive in WLK than it was in BC?

Aimed Shot doesn't delay auto-shot, it resets it... Blizzard wants to make sure that we never use Aimed in a rotation again

They made retraning pets a hell of a lot easier. Maximum 5 levels lower than you and pet loyalty removed. Meaning it takes about 2 minutes to replace a pet at your level, half an hour - an hour for lower leveled ones.

Just wondering (assuming) Stormstrike charges, with the advent of the improved Stormstrike adding additional charges, its more plausible that a hunter could steal one; my thought is that 20% of ~2000 serpent and the additional 3% from PV and 6% from Earth and Moon outweighs missing the Steady. Also dont forget 1/4 will be Wyvern in place of Serpent, which is 2460@80

Granted, E&M is synergistic based on the Moonkin (though we're in the same boat, as SV) , though they seem VERY powerful compared to before and raiding without one seems less likely (paralells between SV buffs yes?)

Maybe I'm wrong, smite me if so.

Serpent Sting is a DoT and not direct damage, so it doesn't consume stormstrike charges, just like deadly poison.

You may consider yourself smote (smitten? both seem to be past participles of smite).

"It's also buffed by stormstrike-buff but only in the case that the sting lands while one of the stormstrike-buff charges is still up (the dot won't consume stormstrike-buff charges if the serpent sting was already there"
Serpent Sting - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

no?

I dont entirely trust wowwiki but just making sure

[offtopic]I don't know enough about grammar or etymology to really help with this, but I'll observe that the contexts the two are used in seem to be quite different, with the former being negative ("and lo, Kaubel smote him a mighty blow...") and the latter being positive ("I am hopelessly smitten with Arcazua").[/offtopic]

edit to avoid being smote:

AFAIK Windfury attacks and other extra attacks can currently proc other effects, they just can't proc themselves? So hopefully Wild Quiver would work like that as well - it just may not proc Quick Shots since quickshots is special in only proccing on autoshots.

Assuming the damage of the extra attack isn't perfectly normalized like steadyshot, I wonder how it plays out with weapon speed - slower weapons mean larger extra attacks, but fewer chances to proc extra attacks.

If it registers as an autoshot, then I'd really see no reason for it not being able to proc quick shots on an attack. There's no real way to test this unfortunately due to it being bugged Even though it's a 10% proc to proc another 10% proc, that'd still make it quite low, but with all the autoshots being thrown about, the chance to get a quick shots proccing in a long duration fight would be quite significant, no?

Assuming it does play with weapon speed, as autoshot is affected by it, so will the "extra" autoshot. And I'd take a wild stab and say it's not normalized like steady shot >.>

Really does suck this can't be verified, seems like a very fun talent when you've spammed haste buffs

I'm going to have to say that, although this currently cannot be verified, I strongly believe that the Wild Quiver special bonus shot will not be able to proc IAotH. Wild Quiver appears to not shoot another autoshot, but simply a ''Wild Quiver Shot''. In other words, it shoots a shot with a formula such as ''Autoshot Dmg x 0.6'' and so could not be considered an another Auto Shot. Also, I'm pretty sure the combat log will show something along the lines of ''Wild Quiver hits for XXXX''.

Again, this is purely unconfirmed and speculation, but that's how I see it.

cough I wish it only took that long to grind out 5 levels. Besides, Blizzard said that they don't want pets to be disposable. Certainly, I wouldn't expect Stun, Snare or Daze effects to work against bosses. That leaves only a handful of pets with potentially raid-useful abilities. I can certainly see Nether Rays being used as backup interrupters, and a Tallstrider would be mandatory if that effect worked... although I really can't see how it could go live in its current form. I'd expect it to be 5%, or possibly even 10%... -30% to hit for 8 seconds on a 20-second cooldown is empirically unbalanced.

Still, given that we don't have to train temporary pets just to learn new skills, 3 slots may just be enough (although I wouldn't say no to 4 )

Currently Drums of Battle doesn't effect our pets (yes, you can test it for yourself). I assume this is because it grants Haste rating rather than a flat percent like Bloodlust/Heroism.

In WotLK, there are similar rating-based drums which will also probably not work on our pets:

• Drums of Great Battle - Increases movement speed by 15% and haste rating by 95 on nearby party members. Lasts 30 sec. Drums can be used while shapeshifted.
• Drums of Precision - Increases hit rating by 95 on nearby party members. Lasts 30 sec. Drums can be used while shapeshifted.

Blizzard needs to change the way pets work so that +rating effects work with pets.

On the subject of Pet Talents, does anyone else wish that the Ferocity tree had a way to cap our pets +hit (still needs another +5% hit to cap it for bosses), or increase its expertise to reduce the 'misses' they get during raids? This would give BM hunters with an extra 5 points to further increase the pets damage, as opposed to spending it on survivability.

I'm pretty sure you're saying what I think you are, but just to be certain...

Currently weapon dps is the only thing that effects steadyshot damage (as far as the weapon itself goes, stats aside), correct? A 100dps 1.0 speed weapon would Steadyshot as hard as a 100dps 3.0 speed weapon, I thought.

When people see the words "weapon range" and then "normalized" I feel people may think that it's like Multishot: weapon damage (the actual weapon damage listed on the weapon, so speed * dps, hence slow making a difference), THEN the attack power contribution is normalized to 2.8.

If the new Steadyshot is going towards this Multishot model as Sean suggests, I cant see procs from fast weapons anywhere near making up the damage gained from the slowest weapons.

Or do I have this arse-about, and the current model for Steadyshot is like the current model for Multishot, and in beta the new Steadyshot is like the very very old Multishot (and Mortal Strike, Sinister Strike, etc, of 3 years ago), which would be terribly broken.

"Weapon damage normalized to 2.8 speed" is that not the exact same thing as DPS? Normalization is taking "attack power * weapon speed" and turning it into "attack power * 2.8" for the calculation of how attack power effects shots such as mulitshot and sinister strike. This was because having a 3.0 speed weapon would effectively double your attack power compared to having a 1.5 speed weapon, as far as instants are concerned.

When you "normalize weapon damage", what exactly are you doing? Taking the weapon damage from a 3.0 speed weapon, and changing it to a value that it would have if it was 2.8? Thats simply looking at the dps on the weapon and multiplying it by 2.8. Which would be to say, the dps value is all that matters.


edit: to expand on this, I believe this is the formula for Steady Shot:

150 + WeaponDamage/WeaponSpeed*2.8 + 0.2*RAP + [Dazed: 175]

"WeaponDamage/WeaponSpeed" -- this is the DPS of a weapon. It is the very definition of the DPS of a weapon. I dont see how a slower or faster weapon could have any impact.

So back to my original point, if they are making a change in WOTLK which favours slower weapons for steadyshot, it would be a drastic change to the current formula, and I think it would over-compensate for the advantages faster weapons have re: procs.

Normalisation sometimes works something like this (am I thinking old multishot rather):

Weapon damage x Weapon damage coefficient + AP x Normalisation speed + constant.

This means that the hypotetical 100 dps bow firing 1 shot per 100 seconds (10000-10000) per shot does a 10000 damage component from weapon, + normasied AP. A hypothetical machinegun bow of 100 shots per second (1-1) gets almost no weapon damage component, but still the AP normalised speed.

Though I it seems the weapon damage is actually normalised for the current steady shot, my point does at least show just how important normalisation is.

Thanks for that info, but I believe I understand how normalizing shots work. I remember crying when my multishots hit for 1k less than they used to.

However Zurai is saying you can somehow "normalize a weapon damage range". I'm saying all he is doing is taking the weapon damage, dividing it by the speed (which is simply finding its listed DPS), and then multiplying it by 2.8. Hence speed means nothing in that calculation, it's just a means to find the DPS, which is then multiplied by 2.8.

Normalizing a shot like multishot however, as you said, actually makes a difference. The weapon damage (1000-1000, 1-1, etc) is placed into the total shot damage in addition to the normalized attack power coefficient, and not simply used in a "whats the dps of this weapon" calculation.

No. Weapon Damage is a range of numbers. DPS is a single number. You can normalize without applying attack power, too:

Generic 3.0 speed crossbow deals 100-200 damage (50 DPS).
Generic 3.0 speed crossbow normalized to 2.8 speed deals 93.3-186.67 damage (50 DPS)

I'll use that weapon in the Steady Shot formula and see what happens.

150 + WeaponDamage/WeaponSpeed*2.8 + 0.2*RAP

3.0 speed 100-200 weapon A (50 dps)
2.5 speed 100-150 weapon B (50 dps)
The RAP/initial damage/dazed component doesnt matter, so lets ignore those.

Weapon A:
(100 to 200)/3.0*2.8 ---- (aka 50 dps * 2.8)
. = 93.333 to 186.666
. = 140 damage average hit

Weapon B:
(100-150)/2.5*2.8 ---- (aka 50 dps * 2.8)
. = 112 to 168
. = 140 damage average hit


So, I still dont see how this "normalizing weapon range", aka, "multiply the dps by 2.8", makes the speed of weapons relevant in Steadyshot dps on live. It's just something I thought would be well known, if a 3.0 weapon did more Steadyshot damage than a 2.8 weapon of the same dps.


edit: my post did some crazy text-size formatting, dots in front of the calculations seems to fix it.

Even if it could proc on itself, I wouldn't be too fretful. It's a 10% chance of happening. This means you have a 1% chance of a double proc, a 0.1% chance of a triple proc. Altogether, you will have an expected value of 1/9 procs per normal shot. Plus, we don't know that the reprocs wouldn't be 60% of 60%. Somehow, a 1% chance to do an extra 36% damage on a shot doesn't inspire me to want to wield the foam club...

This is what my deleted post was about from the page before. I didn't think there was any way these numbers could be accurate. And I have to admit, I'm still curious, how do we know they're all at least +5% health if there's no baseline that doesn't have that 5%?

Nonetheless, if this is the way things are, cunning pets have gotten the shaft in every single way except for the mana return ultimate. Is this enough by itself to justify a cunning pet?

Perhaps, but this is about the only DPS boon that Tenacity has going for it. An Animal Handler tenacity pet has +8% hit.

Do you want to go get a cup of coffee or something?



...and Intermission, as near as I can tell, you're correct. Normalizing something after averaging it and averaging it after normalizing it should end up being the same.