What is with people talking about nerfing things based off their experiences in lvl 70 raids/world when everything is being balanced for lvl 80 play/gear? Unless something is blatantly broken I wouldn't go around saying nerf this nerf that. There is going to be a pretty massive hit point hike as well as a massive AP/spell dmg hike @ 80.

Given my recent experience with the new improved volley I'd very seriously consider barrage over some of the poorer talents. I'm not as convinced about improved barrage unless it too will affect aimed shot's crit rate. On a single target boss fight it is as useless as you suspected but in a raid zone like the Sunwell Plateau where multiple bosses have "add" phases it becomes rather tasty. For example the Kil'Jaeden reflection phases consisted of tanking the mobs at the boss and multi, volley, volley, multi, volley, volley dead.

Sounds like each volley hit is counting as an arrow shot. Sounds "bugged" to me. It really shouldn't work like that.

It was indeed several patches ago. They also nerfed it to 9% crit instead of... what was it? 15?

I don't think T.N.T. is a good place to try to buff ES, though, unless you mean something like adding a damage boost into the talent as well. The chance to stun each time ES did damage was kind of ridiculous and not in line with the Mace Stun nerf, which is probably why they changed it. I'd rather they either up the AP scaling on ES or up the static added damage of the shot.

Every time I see the damage my Explosive Shot is doing, I'm reminded of how much more awesome it used to be, and it makes me sad.

I don't suppose you have FRAPS of that? Be great to watch

Levidian - Not to mention the issue with JoW's currently massive and bugged mana return...

And well, the target switching issue is allready becoming a major annoyance for me, I've managed to wipe two pug heroic groups with it allready. I dread to think of the havoc potential on some trash.

Hmmm....what am I missing here?

Non-Exotic pets get 13 Pet Talent points? Exotic pets get 16 talent points (at least that is the maximum on Wowhead's Pet Calculator?

I thought Exotic Pets received 4 more talent points, not 3? Is the calculator wrong?

Not just that, but more abilities and talents will be available also. Ours are 'front loaded' -- we don't get very many new damage abilities from 70 to 80 (Kill Shot is the only one that comes to mind) while some other classes may get new ones. GC posted that things may look unusual at 70 but should smooth out at 80.

We also have to keep in mind that a large portion of what we're seeing is the "sticker shock" of Volley not completely sucking. We have been light-years behind the other ranged dps in terms of AOE damage, and it seems that at least part of the idea behind the changes to Volley is to make it so that groups can use hunters as ranged dps without sacrificing AOE capability (as part of their new "bring the player, not the class" raid-stacking philosophy). We would need to do some serious comparisons between our AOE and similar ones from other classes (rain of Fire, Blizzard, Hurricane) while taking into account any secondary effects they may have (like slowing effects), any talent optimizations available (which they might not have at 70 -- not everyone has jumped on the 51-point bandwagon at level 70), and any AoE abilities that we don't have (we don't have a point-blank instant AoE, or a Seed-style AoE, for example). I haven't played a caster class in an AoE situation (my druid is feral) so I couldn't really say whether what we're doing with Volley is way out of line. I don't have a baseline comparison yet.

At level 80 pets get 16 talent points base, 20 with the talent.

At 70 it is only 13 base and 17 talented. I'm not sure where you get 16 from, the calculator works fine for me. Perhaps you tamed a low-level pet and it's not 68 yet, and are thinking of in-game where you've yet to earn the next talent point?

I see now. I wasn't paying attention to the level. Thanks.

About Mortal Shots: It really starts to feel like a lackluster talent compared to what it available out there. As long as it does not affect auto shot, would it not be reasonable to increase it's bonus to 50%? Or to rephrase it so that it affects the critical strike damage (instead of just the damage bonus) by 30%?


@Mako: yeah, comparing with the rogue and warrior talents it does seem in line with those, even though it does not do anything for our pet damage either.

Just for some anecdotal evidence from a balance druid: last night in most aoe situations the survival hunter and I were neck and neck, he would definitively beat me on aoe pulls (Most trash pulls now) where my Starfall was on cooldown. Explosive Shot can tick passively while volley is being channeled which can give a huge edge. Hurricane and Volley seem to do very similar DPS at the same gear levels, I think volley might be doing a bit more but hurricane is currently a net mana gain for the moonkin. We did not have a mage in the raid to compare with. Haste also has a huge impact on the amount of damage you can get in with the long channeled spells because of how it compresses the damage ticks together.

I would agree with your evaluation that it's more of a shock at being viable AOE than any real unbalance.

Well I went Marksmanship last night and we did a fun run of about 18 of us in BWL and I was keeping up neck and neck with Mages/Locks in terms of AE with Volley. Not a great example as it was a level 60ish zone, but I was doing about 2500-4000 dps on some bigger pulls. I'd heard they'd buffed Volley, but I didn't know it was to that extent.

I did some testing a bit earlier on my stopmacro idea, and thought I'd post the results:
The switch to a new mob only appears to happens RIGHT after the first mob dies... If you want a second when the first mob dies, auto will turn off and pressing the macro any more will not start you attacking.

My guess is that it only happens if you cast a shot

• after the first mob dies, and
• before autoattack turns off from that death

None of my theories for why this was happening panned out on testing, but I'll list them just in case it gives someone an idea. All of them assume you have auto/melee switch enabled, and "stop attacking on target switch" enabled.

If auto attack is on, your target will switch automatically.
I turned on autoattack and waited for my target to die. I did not automatically switch to the closest mob as my target.

If you try to cast a shot, the game returns the closest mob as your target (and switches you to that target).
Since we're checking before the call to cast a shot, this can't be the reason.

If you ask the game what your target it, it returns the nearest mob (and switches you to that target).
I tested my macro with no shot cast in it (just the /stopmacro bits and a say) and a /say. It stopped /saying as soon as my current target died.

If you ask the game what your target it, it returns the nearest mob (but does not switch you to that target). When you cast your shot after that, it will automatically switch to that target.
Same as the previous example, but I wanted to test it for completeness.

At this point, I'm at a loss as to what to try next.

Had a great experience as MM doing a quick BT run last night (volley is fun with Barrage talented)

My spec was something like: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
(though I didn't have aimed shot, I am going to pick it up next time)

Even though I completely forgot about tracking (whoops 5% dps loss?) I still seemed to do well, partly because scorpid poison is a little too high, and partly because of bugged JoW. I only had the glyph of serpent sting.

Here is the wws for those interested:
Wow Web Stats

Can you share how you had your pet set up with regard to the pet-bar and autocast on/off? It seems your scorpid did very well, and I haven't been able to achieve that yet.

Btw, Volley isn't affected by Imp Tracking, so you didn't lose anything there at least.

Checking a pure DPS race (Gorefiend) on your posted WWS I noticed your Scorpid out performed your own Serpent Sting DoT.

EDIT: Disregard that dumb question (deleted). I did notice that the Scorpid DoT had an average tick of 646 vs. an avg tick from Serpent Sting of 420. Do you remember what your raid buffed AP was last night?

EDIT: I am still trying to wrap my head around this, since Tukela took Imp Stings in his spec. Something has to be causing the Scorpid poison to scale much better than Serpent. What debuffs/buffs would enhance poison DoTs (or nature dmg overall)? I will research, but if anyone has anything to add to this please do so.

I think scorpid poison is just that good (buffed, and if it keeps the stack up). He certainly shouldn't have had SS fall off using Chimera Shot.

I finished a LOLWP and as Surv pulled about 3100DPS. Brut fight WWS.
I was using a ExS, steadyx3 rotation manually using this spec.

I was wondering what kind of dps I can expect if I go MM. Should I use Chimera/steady spam? What kinda of talent tree setup should I use?

A.) Personal DPS is subject to your gear, raid make-up and skill. As a reference though, BM & MM are pretty close. Use your other BM hunter in your raid as an idea, but I still recommend specing MM and testing for yourself.
B.) Use the Search Tool at the top of the forum to find all the information you need about MM spec and shot rotations. It has all been mentioned before.

EDIT: You opted to take 3/3 TNT vs. 3/3 Lock-n-Load. I didn't see any trap damage reported on your WWS report. Would you not gain more DPS taking 3/3 LnL and adding Serpent into your rotation?

I believe I had scorpid poison, claw, cower, and growl on the pet bar. Poison and claw set to auto-cast

Cower on the pet bar so i could be sure that it was not set to auto-cast, same with growl.


To the poster who asked about my raid-buffed AP: I believe it was around 3600-3700

I am not so much concerned with the total damage done for the fight duration. It is the difference in the DoT ticks that I am referring to.