So, basically this means we need arround 250 haste?

yeah I think so, I calculate 251 haste to bring it down to exactly 1.5s.

My question is, since at the moment, most of us won't have the haste to hit 1.5s, and adding to the fact that barrage/imp barrage now affect Aimed shot, AND, the change to the trueshot aura glyph, has anyone done tests (or number crunching) to determine if it is more effective for MM to run a priority rotation with chimera>aimed shot>steady shot?

Edit: I guess the glyph isn't obtainable till the expansion, but I'd still be interested in finding out, since we'll be having wasted GCD time from our steadies, whether slotting Aimed shot into the rotation will be beneficial. Obviously this would involve a rearranging of spec into barrage/imp barrage. I have a feeling it will be easier to test this rather than calculate it, so we'll probably have to wait for the servers to come back up.

Im wondering the same Rutnut, as i asked a few posts ago, will Aimed shot be a part of our rotation as marks?

I've been weaving Aimed into my rotations for this past week just to get the hang of the timing, I figured that once this patch goes live we will be putting it in there and spec into barrage/imp barrage.

I've been doing...

Serpent > Chim > Aimed > Steady (until Chim avail) > Chim > Aimed > Steady (until Chim avail)...

I've been doing about the same dps as without the aimed shot in there and didn't notice any real mana issues so I figure with the changes in 3.0.3 this will end up being a dps increase. <shrug>

1- Roll drums of battle while you still can!
2-If you're raiding without the 3% haste buff from a ret pally... get one.

80 drums + 78 gear haste = 158 haste rating = 10 percent rating haste.
15 percent quiver
3 percent pally

2.0/(1.1)(1.15)(1.03) = 1.534. Close enough to 1.5 for government work, IMO.

The multiplicative combination of percentage-based haste effects makes it more effective to add an additional percentage-based haste effect than to brute-force it with haste rating.

As an aside, I've also started taking focused aim for a point or two- the hit rating gear I've been able to drop and replace with haste gear has resulted in a net dps increase as an MM w/o wind fury. (In this case, Halbred of Desolation for Blade of Harbingers. WTB felspine, been in SWP for months and we have *none*)

I guess the question now is, if JoW is fixed, will MM hunters be able to sustain mana? If not, what effect is AotV in its new and terrible form (for the love of god we need to convince blizz to fix it and stop being stubborn) having on MM dps, and dps for all specs.

Though depending on the length of the fight it can be quite beneficial to re-apply serpent sting when you have a few AP procs up, will up the damage of both the tick and the chimera proc by a good amount.

Are you saying that the chimera shot auto-refresh doesn't recalculate AP for serpent sting (it will keep the with trinkets amount indefinitely) or just that you like to take advantage of the trinkets/procs when they are there?

Yes, from what I've seen Chimera Shot will refresh the current sting and keep the same AP calculations as it already had, it will not update based on your current AP. So if you refresh your sting itself when your ap is maxed out through trinkets/procs then Chimera will keep that value of ap when it refreshes the sting.

So with the new changes to viper, I've been thinking of making a macro that equips 2 fast weapons with a lot of int on them and running in to mele during viper. Given that the mana regen is still solely based on the ranged weapon's speed, the two fast weapons in mele would regen your mana back much faster. Travel time to mele range would only realy be a factor going in since disengage lets us jump back to range instantly.

Never mind I forgot the mana return gets lower with faster bow speed.

While I'm certain it might net you a nice fast manaregeneration I'm quite convinced that the lower damage you do in melee along with the runtime to the target will end up being quite a bit lower than just shooting in Viper. While Viper damage is low, it isn't so bad that our crappy melee will make up for it. Especially not with Aspect Mastery, and in time the Viper Glyph.

With the Aimed changes and the back and forth on whether to include it in an MM rotation I think that it is. Get the Viper, the TSA and Steady glyphs and MM should be rocking. Aimed should be a rather considerable upgrade to Steady (which with the longer cast is effectively lower DPS). If mana becomes an issue then possibly the Aimed glyph instead of TSA... But they are hard to define which is best outright. But until we know better I will lean towards the direct DPS upgrade as it will always provide it's bonus, if we have enough mana the other one won't.

My math is showing (although yes, it'd be easier to test) that there isn't a massive difference between a non-barrage and a barrage MM build in terms of DPS. That is, (and the talent thing is arguable so I won't go into the low level details) a barrage build uses aimed and does better AoE damage but the non-barrage build is slightly higher damage, simplier to use since it only fires (serpent) chimera / steady.

In PvE, unless you expect to use heavy AoE or there's a use for the debuff, non-barrage is simpler and marginally higher damage and thus probably better. It's a matter of a few percent, though, and depends on precise specs.

I think it's fair to say that it's not a "wrong" choice either way, though.

You think it would be that much of a difference in damage? It seems to me that dps would not be that far apart between the two when you reduce it by 40%, and on top of that Steady Shot now costs more than it returns even with a 3.0 speed ranged weapon thus eliminating its use during viper. So you end up with white swings from either one, haste, crit, hit, and AP all apply to both mele and ranged now barring a few buffs. Also using mele to get the fast regen would alow more Rapid Fires to be used to directly increase dps since at range you get more out of it by using it to hugely reduce your viper time. Please correct me if i am underestimating a factor or just plain overlooking something.

Hmmm... With a 3.0 weapon it is 3% per shot. Steady costs 5% base mana, which is 253 (at 80) or 170 at 70. So for you to break even with a 3.0 weapon you need a mere 8410 mana at 80 and 5638 mana at 70. Given that at 80 our base mana is 5046, you need 225 Intellect to reach that. I think the base stats cover most of that, don't they? At 70 you need 151 Intellect.
I think that you can reach 151 Intellect with Arcane Intellect and Blessing of Kings with no Int on gear for most races.

So Steady will always pay off unless you plan on gearing with no Int whatsoever. Add to that the 4% mana per 3 seconds and it pays. 60% damage is still better than our paltry autoattacks in melee.
That said, going with two fast weapons in case you need to melee (with aspects on a seperate GCD changing should be easy enough), like on various encounters, then it is a decidedly good idea. Dualwielding does seem to provide certain advantages for us that Blizzard might not have noticed. Like Int enchants being as good if perhaps not better than Agi enchants for us. And Agi enchants on onehanders already beat them on twohanders... Slippery slope.

O wow, I completely missunderstood the meaning of the mana cost, i was asuming the cost being based on total mana not base mana. Thank you for clarifying that and in light of that you're definetly right.

Even without the Glyph, Aimed shot does significant dmg now, more than Steady shot. So as MM, it will be in the rotation, even more so once you can get 10% more crit on it from the Glyph. So to answer the question, if you spec Barrage/Imp Barrage, Aimed shot is in your single target DPS rotation (seeing your mana can hold up, talking out of pure dps increase here).

The arguement of not speccing that 6 talent points into Bar/Imp B and using them elsewhere is another story, and with myself not having raided at lvl 80 yet, I dont know the mana issues we have to put up with as MM and seeing Aimee shot works out more mana than Steady, it might be a diffrent story at 80 where just to use steady all the time instead of an Aimed aswell and then to save up 6 talent points to use else where. But this noone can really reliably answer for you as of yet till their is mass data available from lvl 80 raids and you can evaluate it and then work out your best dps rotation considering mana aswell.

I always had barrage and imp barrage as MM spec in TBC. But with the new talents the points are gonna be quite limited since MM tree has a lot of nice talents. Many of us still want some things from survival and Bm tree which makes it even more difficult.

I kinda wished they would have changed at least RWS to 3 point talent.

*

And the boring auto-switching, also know as Sheeps' Armageddon?

You're talking about 70, I suppose? At 80, 1% haste costs 32.79ish haste rating. WIth 15% quiver and 3% from ret/boomkin, you need about 400 haste rating. Of course, if you subspec BM and pick up Imp AotH, it gets more complex.

Would it be possible to have the original post in this thread updated with the known/suspected attriubute coefficients at level 80?

This thread is now almost 200 pages and it's getting very difficult to find the information that I'm looking for.

These are the values I have so far, and they have been deduced from screenshots of gear:

1% Crit = 62.6 Agility = 45.88 Crit Rating
1% Hit = 32.8 Hit Rating
1% Haste = 32.77 Haste Rating

I'm fairly certain that someone out there probably has more accurate numbers, I just haven't been able to find them with the search feature.

Forgive me if I've already missed this information. The thread is rather large and information gets lost easily but since 3.0.3 with the exotic pet dmg increases, the nerf to cat rake, and the inclusion of aimed shot into barrage talents, what is at level 70 and 80 the highest dps rotation for MM and BM respectively? and what pets should we be keeping an eye on when the expansion hits and or using right now?

I realize that at level 70 marks seems to be out damaging BM but will aimed shot now be included in the rotation given the changes? ie. Serpent sting> Chimera shot> steady spam> Aimed shot> rinse and repeat?

or

Is Exotic pet dmg high enough now that even at level 70, BM is the higher dps spec to use.

I know it's a lot to answer. Any informative response is appreciated.