blah, go away a day and miss 5 pages. Some responses:
Originally Posted by Gonktarget, page 25,
(1)Counterattack should either be an active (rather than reactive) ability with a 30 sec. or more cooldown. Hunters basically only parry when they have Deterrence popped, and that effectively means that Counterattack shares its cooldown with Deterrence. That's strange.
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(2) Explosive Shot is only mildly useful. It hardly justifies its place as a 51 point talent, especially in the Survival tree. It's very oddly placed, the mana cost is relatively high (100 more than Rank 10 Arcane), and the damage is only so-so. Make Scatter Shot trainable, and move Explosive to the 21 point Marksmanship position, and you'd be much better off.
That'd do three things: A.) Provide all Hunters with Scatter, consequently giving them more survivability/utility/PvP control. B.) Move Explosive to a much more logical position given its relatively small niche, in the talent tree that would allow it to benefit much more from AP than it does as the 51 Survival talent. C.) It'd free up the 51 point Survival slot for something that is actually worthwhile for a Survival Hunter. Possibly a Cold Blood style timer (useful for both PvE and PvP, and further justification of Readiness as the 51 point pre-requisite)?
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(3) Moving on, to reduce some talent bloat, why not combine Trap Mastery and Clever Traps into one talent? That always seemed logical to me.
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(4) Deflection is just straight up awful and I don't think I've ever seen anyone take it, at all, even if they were taking Counterattack. It's a waste of 5 talent points. (But then again, I suppose talent trees need some garbage here and there.)
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(5) Master Tactician is still really strange. It scales inversely to your gear, which is odd. As you get better gear, MT becomes worse and worse. The best change to MT was unlinking it from Readiness, since the latter is actually useful at times.
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(6) The first three tiers of Marksmanship are INCREDIBLY bloated. You can spend 55+ points in MM while skipping an ENTIRE TIER OF TALENTS and not even notice it. To me that means that MM needs some bloat reduction. You absolutely need to have at least 17 points in Marksmanship regardless of your spec anyway (Max Lethal Shots/Mortal Shots/Steady Aim/Careful Aim/Aimed Shot, to say nothing of Go For the Throat, Rapid Killing, or Imp. Hunter's Mark, the latter of which is pretty much required if you're a raiding Survival Hunter.)
The problem with MM's early tiers is that there's just TOO MUCH good stuff in it. It's got the exact opposite problem of almost every other talent tree I can think of: Instead of crap crap and maybe one decent 5 point talent that you take just to move deeper into the tree, early MM has a load of really good talents (with the possible exception of Imp. Concussive, though that is more of a PvP talent, again modified to provide consistency rather than the RNG stun, which is nice), some of which are absolutely essential unless you feel like being a huge ranged DPS gimp. The non-essentials are generally good enough that I hate playing without them (especially GftT when soloing, as it is just about the only way a Survival Hunter's pet ever has any Focus at all, without gimping its damage (and thus threat) output by turning off auto-cast Claw/Bite). Something needs to be done to better design the first three tiers of Marksmanship, they're just too FULL.
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(7) Wild Quiver needs to have a higher proc chance to justify the reduced damage, the three talent points, and the extra ammo spent on it
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(8) BM, on the other hand, has the same problem as MM, but inversely. Deep BM is crawling with a lot of great talents, but if you want both them and the requisite 17 in MM, you're basically out of luck. I'd suggest thinning out the crowd a bit. Either reduce the talent point investment, or combine one or two of them. The real problem lies behind the fact that Invigoration, Longetivity, and Beast Mastery are all generally essential in a raiding environment (or at least, the latter would seem to be, I reserve judgment until its implementation on the beta servers). There's not really any room for Cobra Strikes unless you skip Aspect Mastery in its entirety (which is thankfully possible as it is not the pre-req for Beast Mastery, which is a nice option), while still taking things from MM like Lethal/Mortal Shots, Steady/Careful Aim, Go for the Throat, and possibly Aimed Shot.
Numbers are mine for reference purposes.
1. I don't know why so many people have issues for proccing Counterattack. It comes up for me all the time. (See #5 tho.)
2. (already answered and responded) I haven't used it, so I may be off, but I kinda like Explosive Shot. It scales massively well with AP, it does much more damage than arcane would appear to even with the quirky crit mechanics, and it gives access to some AE potential. While I agree it fits better with marks, and that Scatter Shot should probably be a trainable ability, I don't know I'd move it to that position...I suppose it would still be borderline accessible to various specs, though. You want to replace it with a talent that does what our level 50 class trinket does, though? /veto
3. Before Trap Mastery was allegedly removed, I wanted to see it merged with Resourcefulness. Resourcefulness is a wonderful talent that suffers from there being too many more important things to pick up late in the tree. I frequently will spec 2 points into it anyway, using a 0/21/40 with points in utility rather than MT, but I think I'm about the only one who ever uses it. Which is unfortunate.
4. I take deflection. 4 points of it! It's my filler for advancing past tier 2, and I think it's a fine talent at that. I'd much rather have that than Improved WC, Savage Strikes, or Entrapment since those are all exclusively PvP talents. Deflection, otoh, is a 5% chance to not die when you get attacked...granted, from the front, and you can say you probably shouldn't be getting hit anyway, but poop happens.
5. (already answered and responded) MT scales inversely to your gear? Only if you've got over 90% crit. True, it does a smaller percentage of your damage as your gear (and crit rate) improves, but I don't see you complaining about Lethal Shots or Killer Instinct.
6. (already discussed) I agree with the assessment that MM is too bloated. I don't necessarily perceive this as a bad thing. I would rather have a tree be bloated at the early end with B-listers, and then have a few quality talents later on, than have to waste a ton of points early on and have no options late in the tree as you are forced into picking only the cream of the crop. This is how I view survival presently. "Bloated" early trees gives all specs some quality options. I prefer that to one single cookie-cutter spec, as long as it doesn't encourage a 20-21-20 sort of spec.
7. Seems alright to me. If you consider autoshot equal damage to your specials, it works out to 1% damage per point. Now, I'll grant you that autoshot is NOT equal to your specials, but it's not a poor talent.
8. Unless they buff is, Aspect Mastery doesn't seem worth the investment to me. I'd rather have 46 (or maybe 49 points with Longevity) in BM and reinvest the rest elsewhere.
Originally Posted by wvbean
Apparently Hunting Party is being nerfed to 20/30/40/50/60 from 20/40/60/80/100 per MMO-Champion.
Internal cooldown still?
Trevvy, ++ on the reactive ability comments.
Originally Posted by KraxisSingular
With the critrates of Survs a 60% chance to proc HT is not going to be heavy a nerf when it has 8 sec CD. It would be nasty if it was without CD.
Let's say you crit 40% of the time (at 80) and fire a shot of some kind every 1 second, on average. It will take 2.5 shots to trigger, on average, at 100%, meaning you'll have a proc rate of about once per 10.5 seconds, or ~5.5 ppm. Make it a 60% chance to happen, and that's like cutting your crit rate to 24%. Now it will take about 4 shots to trigger, meaning you'll have a proc rate of about once per 12 seconds, or 5.0 ppm.
I dunno if one proc per 2 minutes is a big deal, but that's how much of a nerf that would be.
Originally Posted by Gonkish
(regarding Explosive) Keep it viable, keep it desirable, keep it unique, but don't make it the "best" (and that term is relative in and of itself), or else you'll run into major issues with it causing spec shoehorning across the class.
You mean like Serpent's Swiftness? Some of you may disagree, but I believe Serpent's Swiftness has single-handedly defined our class. At least we'd be defined in two ways if such a skill existed in another tree.
Originally Posted by Catalept
Regardless of the damage it puts out, Explosive Shot is a very odd choice... its crits don't proc SV's 'on crit' procs, and at the moment at least, it's just a straight up nuke spell. I understand the need for a 'catch up' talent to boost SV's raid DPS to something respectable enough to make the whole SV package work, but ES is a pretty unimaginative option.
The only thing that bothers me about ES is that it isn't very thematic. It feels like it should be a marks talent. Mechanically, however, I'm not requesting it to be moved.
Originally Posted by Trevvytrevv
Now to answer your second question, yes it *would* be bad if MM became "the" raiding tree again. For dps classes (as opposed to hybrids, tanking/dps, or healing/dps classes) having one tree be "the" anything tree is bad design. MM absolutely should be "a" raiding tree again, though.
I think there's a difference between "the raiding tree" and " 'the' raiding tree." The emphasis being that the first one is accepted as being the best, while the second is unquestionably superior in all ways. Yes, it's bad design to have "the" raiding tree, however it isn't necessarily bad to have the raiding tree.
That said, I'd still rather not have the raiding tree, quotation marks or not. I'd like to see marks be viable on raids and not relegated as the pvp tree...meaning the other trees should be respectable there as well. I realize that we agree on this point. But there will always be a best, even if other options are perfectly good.
All I really want to know, and some of you have already posted some thoughts on this, like Takel's comments on this page, is what it would take to make marksmanship competitive for raiding, or otherwise useful. (Survival isn't competitive, directly, but it's useful in such a way to justify itself.)
I'm drawn to Potent Venom for the following reason. I was comparing damage/mana for arcane shot, and serpent sting.
I was in part of the discussion covering PV on pages back. I thought it was justifiable until I was reminded that SS triggers the GCD (because I hadn't used it in months.. like MONTHS). Basically, if you set up the numbers (RAP, crit%, weapon and ammo DPS) to calculate the damage of 1 min worth of auto+steady versus 1 min of auto+steady(-4)+serpent at 3% more damage.. it ends up virtually a wash. Except that you spend more net mana the second way, and you sank 3 talent points to do it (4 if you don't like Wyvern). If you go and calculate the average damage of noncrits+crits and use that value, then the data set with 3/3 PV may show around a 2.2% damage increase, but if you don't average the damage and apply the crit percentage to the data.. that's how it ends up as a wash. And it's a little more realistic that way.
So sure, maybe 3/3PV with 5/5 Imp. Stings could be a little nasty for PVP or something.. but spending more mana, more talent points, and a debuff slot to do the same damage as if you didn't have 3/3 PV is kind of silly in a raid environment. It does make me sad, I had hopes for it too.
BUT.. if they make it so Serpent doesn't trigger the GCD, then it completely changes everything since it wouldn't swap out a steady. It would throw in 4 more sources of damage a minute while boosting everything by 3%. This is one way to make it work better. The only other way to make it more appealing (if it's still to trigger the GCD) is to let the DoTs have a crit chance based on our crit rate. But then we'd have to share that same thing with all other classes that have DoTs.
That requires Imp Stings where the points could have been spent elsewhere. And to get PV you have to drop points in Master Tactician or Hunting Party, or ultimately also Explosive Shot (which looks to be the least effective choice to drop).
The losses in talents are going to hurt it though.
So, the way i had it set up, 0/20/51, I sank 0 points into master tactician, but looking at the tree, it's 5/5 MT vs 3/3 Potent venom + wyvern sting + counterattack. I don't think point of no escape is worth it. Where it hurts the most is the MM tree, where i could take rapid killing and imp HM instead of imp stings. But on the bright side, imp stings + potent venom makes casual PvP a lot more fun. It includes less-dispellable stings, counterattack, and wyvern sting. So if the PvE comes out virtually identical, I wouldn't mind gaining a few tricks up my sleeve in PvP...
Assumptions
5000ap
30% armor mitigation
2.7 weapon attack speed (what I found on wow head when I looked for a ranged weapon from Wrath)
100dps weapon
65dps ammo
462 normalized dps (for steady)
0% crit rate (because i live in an imaginary world that makes things easy on me)
So to me the real question is: is there a better way for me the survival hunter to gain 3% DPS with three talent points (I like Wyvern sting for it's OH NOES! goodness in five mans)
Last edited by Shenzhe : 07/27/08 at 5:53 PM.
Reason: More things inside parentheses (there wasn't enough alread ;p )
Assumptions
5000ap
30% armor mitigation
2.7 weapon attack speed (what I found on wow head when I looked for a ranged weapon from Wrath)
100dps weapon
65dps ammo
462 normalized dps (for steady) 0% crit rate (because i live in an imaginary world that makes things easy on me)
Well, don't know what imaginary world you live in but last time I checked all mine it's the critt and agi that makes survival worthy as a raid specc
Throw in 10% critt in your calculations (something you have from just the base stats and 5/5 leathal shots) and you got yourself a whole new table, not to mention the on critt/hit proccs that occur, haven't seen serpent procc DST a single time in 1year (someone please verify?).
Also, as you gain ArP or even more ignore debuffs that one Steady comes close enough to serpent that it won't even be worth that extra mana.
EDIT: Doh, should really not jump the gun as I did.
To the question, well maybe 2/5 imp hawk? Efficiency 2/5 is also pretty sweet to have, also didnt they just nerf PV to 1% dmg gain?
With Serpents sting:
damage/min = (1020*22+1219*26+948*10)* 1.3 +1710*4 = 89538
Should be 1.03.
Still, it seems to me that the primary problem with PV is that even if it is viable for a newly-80 character, Serpent Sting's low scaling, and the fact that it can't crit, will ensure that it will become useless fairly quickly.
The fact is, for PV to remain viable, Serpent Sting either needs to be taken off GCD, or have its scaling changed. The latter proposition is tricky, because Imp.Stings already changes the scaling to 1.3... but is a very poor allocation of talent points for a 51-point SV build.
TBH, although I like the idea of a non-trivial rotation, unless they change Serpent Sting, or change PV to either a higher damage boost or a raid-wide buff to (physical? nature?) damage, I just can't see it being a keeper.
Your math shows a 30% increase in damage from 3/3 PV and the use of serpent sting. Doesn't that seem a little.. off?
Armor penetration doesn't have to get factored in, even though it can be taken into consideration from the end results. You do have to factor in crit rate, because a 0% crit only happens when you're dead, and of course you're not even doing damage.
Actually, while we're arguably about Potent Venom, there is one thing that occured to me...what if we have more stop-and-go battles where we're on the run? Serpent Sting can do it's thing while we move, whereas the only other truly instant shot we have is Arcane. I don't know of anyone who uses Serpent Sting for this purpose unless they were expecting to do some kiting (PvE or PvP,) but it might make it justifiable to keep the skill on the bar. As it is, I have nearly every ability showing and I'm not sure I could point to where serpent is.
Just a random idea that came to me while thinking about MM tree bloat:
What if they combined Focused Aim and Careful Aim into one talent, possibly keeping it as a three-pointer? I don't know if it should stay in tier 2 or move down to tier 3 (which would mean some other talents would have to get shifted around).
The idea being that what I'm hearing for a lot of people regarding FA is "pushback is/will be/should be marginal in wrath raiding", so why not merge what currently seems to be a "minor" talent (although I don't really want to agree with that assessment before seeing raid content) with another 3 pointer one tier lower in the tree, and thus reducing the bloat in early MM accordingly?
Thoughts?
Last edited by Gonkish : 07/27/08 at 8:58 PM.
How can you help?
I can shoot things and then make my pet move toward them.
Good catch on my 1.3 vs 1.03 error. I didn't use crit rates because they only change 4 of the steady shots out of the total
Changed a few numbers and re calculated:
Crit rate is now 50%
I multiplied by 1.165 to get crit damage in there (2.33*.5) double damage crit (but i once heard it was 1.5x so i may be wrong there) + lethal shots + Relentless diamond
assumed thrill of the hunt every other shot so i multipled by .8 (half of all non sting shots reduced by 40%)
In the end it's no longer just 3% better like I was thinking it's now 18% better. I'm sure I made a mistake and, having failed to find it, I expect you all to tell me. This makes it look much better (assuming you pretend i really wrote .03 not .3 last time.
Edit:
I factored in armor mitigation due to the fact that serpents sting doesn't get affected by it but almost all other shots do (explosive shot doesn't and should probably be listed in the shot rotation if kill shot is on a separate timer. Adding armor pen to someones stats would help lean in favor of a non PV spec.
PS.
I did some math earlier for what RAP would allow steady shot to = serpents sting with 520 normalized weapon damage (stronger weapon that what i used for my calculations) and it ended up being 16520 based on the current wowhead modifiers for serpents sting and steady shot, and assuming 30% damage mitigation from armor.
Last edited by Shenzhe : 07/27/08 at 9:56 PM.
Reason: Added information on my logic
Without Serpents sting
Damange/min = 1020*22+1219*30+948*10*1.165 = 70054
Should be:
(1020*22+1219*30+948*10)*1.165
PV increases all damage done, so sting damage also gets the 1.03 multiplier.
Also, the 1.165 value is wrong. It should be 1.665 (i.e. (crit_chance * crit_damage) + (nocrit_chance * nocrit_damage) = (0.5 * 2.33) + (0.5 * 1.0) = 1.665)
As you can see, the fact that Serpent Sting doesn't crit, and scales weakly, means that its low damage becomes a dominating term in the relevant equations. If you run them again, assuming 6000 AP, it'll look even worse for PV.
They could just make it raid-wide damage done to target is increased, and people will actually get the talent. Even if it's just physical/magical/+hit chance/+arm pen/+crit chance/etc. It would tie in with the SV concept of "make a personal sacrifice (miss out on Serpents Swiftness / cast Serpent Sting) to increase raid damage (get Expose Weakness / get Potent Venom debuff)".
Having said that, if Potent Venom was decent, it would make getting the important Marks talents even harder. I think it's funny how they moved Mortal Shots to remove the "you need 20 points in Marks no matter what" aspect... then added Careful Aim and Focused Aim and re-arranged the rest, meaning you still want/need 20+ points. (5 Lethal, 3 Focused Aim, 3 Careful Aim, 3 Imp HM, 5 Mortal Shots, 2 GftT, 2 Rapid Killing, 1 Aimed Shot, totalling 23 points)
They could just make it raid-wide damage done to target is increased, and people will actually get the talent. Even if it's just physical/magical/+hit chance/+arm pen/+crit chance/etc. It would tie in with the SV concept of "make a personal sacrifice (miss out on Serpents Swiftness / cast Serpent Sting) to increase raid damage (get Expose Weakness / get Potent Venom debuff)".
TBH, I'd be extremely suprised if PV wasn't supposed to be a raid-wide DPS buff. We're being pushed more in the "Doesn't matter which group you're in" direction anyway... having said that, a global +3% damage boost would be OP, and +3% to physical only would overlap too heavily with EW.
Originally Posted by Intermission
Having said that, if Potent Venom was decent, it would make getting the important Marks talents even harder. I think it's funny how they moved Mortal Shots to remove the "you need 20 points in Marks no matter what" aspect... then added Careful Aim and Focused Aim and re-arranged the rest, meaning you still want/need 20+ points. (5 Lethal, 3 Focused Aim, 3 Careful Aim, 3 Imp HM, 5 Mortal Shots, 2 GftT, 2 Rapid Killing, 1 Aimed Shot, totalling 23 points)
From a raiding perspective, Rapid Killing isn't worth getting as SV, given that Readiness reduces RF's effective cooldown to 2.5 minutes anyway. For SV, with a base spec of 0/15/51, all of the options for that last 5 points look pretty underwhelming.
TBH, I'd be extremely suprised if PV wasn't supposed to be a raid-wide DPS buff. We're being pushed more in the "Doesn't matter which group you're in" direction anyway... having said that, a global +3% damage boost would be OP, and +3% to physical only would overlap too heavily with EW.
From a raiding perspective, Rapid Killing isn't worth getting as SV, given that Readiness reduces RF's effective cooldown to 2.5 minutes anyway. For SV, with a base spec of 0/15/51, all of the options for that last 5 points look pretty underwhelming.
Yeah I thought it was 3% raid wide when I first saw the talent too.
And it's hard to break the habit of wanting all those Marks points. So many respecs from spec to spec yet entering in those same 20 points. But I agree, at least now the deeper talents in SV can compete with early Marks talents such as Rapid/GftT.
Crit rate is now 50%
I multiplied by 1.165 to get crit damage in there (2.33*.5) double damage crit (but i once heard it was 1.5x so i may be wrong there) + lethal shots + Relentless diamond
assumed thrill of the hunt every other shot so i multipled by .8 (half of all non sting shots reduced by 40%)
I think you might have the crit modifier wrong there.
Every percent of crit is equivalent to a 1.33% increase in overall damage from a shot that can crit (200% damage bonus = 1% more + Lethal + RED = 1.33%). With 50% crit, you will expect a 50*1.33 = 66.5% increase in overall DPS from an ability that can crit. So you should be multiplying the damage by 1.665.
Working back on this formulation:
Assume your crit bonus is 200% normal damage.
You have 50% crit.
Therefore, half your attacks will deal 200% damage.
Assume you deal 10 damage per shot. Out of 100 shots, 50 will deal normal damage (500) while the other 50 will deal 20 damage (1000). In total you have 1500 damage instead of 1000 damage or an increase of 50% damage (x1.5).
Algebraically, this is:
Let the chance to crit be C
Let the critical damage bonus be B
Let the damage multiplier be A
A = 1*(1-C)+B*(C)
In this situation you have 50% of your attacks dealing 2.33x damage.
1*0.5 + 2.33*0.5 = 0.5 + 1.165 = 1.665
As for 1.5x vs 2.0x damage multipliers on crits, spell crits are an additional 50% (1.5 multiplier base) while physical crits are an additional 100%
DPS increase = 1932.23/1900.58 = 1.01665 = 1.665% damage increase under these conditions.
Please note that 30% DR via armour in a raid situation is being highly optimistic on SS's part. In WotLK we typically had sub 10% DR so 20% would probably be a better bet.
PV increases all damage done, so sting damage also gets the 1.03 multiplier.
PV.
Thanks, I finally fixed that stuff and the whole things give right about the 3% that i would expect to be getting.
With my earlier build does anyone have any suggestion for an easier gain of 3% DPS. Does IAotH give a 1%/point or do any other talents seem like they would for a survival hunter. I suppose the argument of "there's nothing better we have access to" isn't any reason for us to roll over and accept that talent.
I think potent venom had a pain and suffering (Shadow priest) like effect where it refreshes the sting in addition to it's %damage increase it might be more interesting. Then the initial cast would be the only time we have to worry about it unless we can't cast a kill shot or something to refresh it for 15 sec.
Actually, let's work on a better model for this sort of damage calculation.
We have 2 major portions for the damage output and of those portions, 1 of them can be sub-divided into an active and passive damage source.
Two major portions are: Crittable, non-crittable.
Of the crittable, we have the auto-shot damage which is of static value on both calculations and the active varies on the non-crittable damage as they share a common resource (GCD).
Assuming a 1.5 sec cast time on Steady and perfect latency (networking and human) we have 60/1.5 = 40 GCDs
Algebraically, we can evaluate the total damage by:
D = V(C(Au + Ac)+N)
where D = Total Damage.
V = Venomous Poison bonus (if applicable)
C = Critical damage bonus == [A = 1*(1-C)+B*(C) where A = bonus multiplier; C = Chance and B = critical multiplier]
Au = Auto Shot damage
Ac = Active crit possible GCD damage
N = non-crit GCD damage
Let us assume the following conditions:
5000 RAP
Crit chance of 50% thus a crit damage multiplier of 1.665
Target has 20% DR via armour with a conservative raid debuff level.
Weapon damage is 100 DPS with 53 ammo DPS. and is 2.8 speed reduced to 2.44 with passive haste (Quiver)
I will be lazy and use Steady Shot only as the active GCD user.
Auto Shot damage in 1 minute = (((WPN+AMMO)*WPN_SPD + RAP/14*WPN_SPD)*60/WPN_SPD_M)*(1-DR)
Au = ((153*2.8+1000)*(60/2.44))*0.8
Au = (1428.4*24.59)*0.8
Au = 28099.48
Steady Shot damage = N(((WPN+AMMO)*2.8 + RAP*0.2 + 280)*(1-DR) where N = number of shots.
Steady Shot = N((153*2.8+1000+280)*0.8)
Steady Shot = N(1366.72)
Serpent Sting damage = N(RAP*0.1 + 1210) where N = number of shots.
As we are using 1 minute, N = 60/15 = 4
Serpent Sting = 4(5000*0.1 + 1210)
Serpent Sting = 4(1710)
Serpent Sting = 6840
Now that we have our left over GCDs, we can evaluate Steady Shot:
N(1366.72) where N = 40-4
Steady Shot = 36(1366.72)
Steady Shot = 49201.92
Now to plug it all in:
D = V(C(Au + Ac)+N)
D = 1.03(1.665(28099.48 + 49201.92)+6840)
D = 1.03(1.665(77301.4)+6840)
D = 1.03(128706.831+6840)
D = 139,613.24
Let's change a few numbers and use all steady shot, thus no V
Steady Shot = N(1366.72) where N = 40
Steady Shot = 54668.8
D = V(C(Au + Ac)+N)
D = 1(1.665(28099.48 + 54668.8)+0)
D = 1.665(82768.28)
D = 137,809.19
Damage difference as a percentage = 1.3%
----
Personally, I'm a bit surprised here. I didn't expect the damage bonus to be worth it at these numbers. But oh well, it's a matter of whether or not a 1.3-1.7% bonus can be worth 3 talent points.
I think potent venom had a pain and suffering (Shadow priest) like effect where it refreshes the sting in addition to it's %damage increase it might be more interesting. Then the initial cast would be the only time we have to worry about it unless we can't cast a kill shot or something to refresh it for 15 sec.
Without crunching the numbers, making PV able to keep Serpent ticking indefinitely as a part of our normal rotation (i.e. refreshed by Kill/Explosive/Arcane) would afford about an 6% boost to DPS even without the 3% DPS boost, which would indeed make it a lot more attractive
Still, I'm personally a little puzzled about the idea behind PV... SV isn't the 'personal DPS' tree, and it's not the 'stings' tree (Wyvern notwithstanding, and although Imp.Strings is within reason of a 51-point SV build, it's a pretty dubious investment of points), so why do we get a small buff to personal DPS via a sting?. Mind you, Explosive Shot is a little odd, too. I suspect we may have to wait a patch or two to figure out what Blizzard is trying to do with SV or, looking at Chimera Shot and Imp.Aspects, the whole class.
11 Auto Hit + 11 Auto Crit + 15 Steady Hit + 15 Steady Crit + 5 Kill Hit + 5 Kill Crit
17061 + 39237 + 25920 + 59610 + 7775 + 17880 = 167483
117238 with 30% reduction
11 Auto Hit + 11 Auto Crit + 13 Steady Hit + 13 Steady Crit + 5 Kill Hit + 5 Kill Crit + 4 Serpent
(17061 + 39237 + 22464 + 51662 + 7775 + 17880 + 6840)*1.03 = 167806
119578 with 30% reduction (melee*0.7 before adding serpent, then 3% multiplier after)
So excluding the damage reduction, 3/3 PV with Serpent ends up as a 1.001% damage increase.
Including damage reduction, 3/3 PV with Serpent ends up as a 1.019% damage increase.
It's a little bit more simplified and easier to read.. but still comes to the same sad conclusion that PV+Serpent isn't the best use of talents and GCDs. Meager damage increase versus the mana cost. I'm sure the math is right.. and even if I am slightly off I doubt it's so far to make the talent that much stronger.
I do like the idea of 3/3 PV increasing all damage done to the target from all sources. THAT would make talenting 3 points into PV a no-brainer.[/size]
Actually, while we're arguably about Potent Venom, there is one thing that occured to me...what if we have more stop-and-go battles where we're on the run? Serpent Sting can do it's thing while we move, whereas the only other truly instant shot we have is Arcane. I don't know of anyone who uses Serpent Sting for this purpose unless they were expecting to do some kiting (PvE or PvP,) but it might make it justifiable to keep the skill on the bar. As it is, I have nearly every ability showing and I'm not sure I could point to where serpent is.
Under extreme movement, I typically use instants and SS since there's no time to thread a SS.
I do, however, pause when there's an opportunity to let an auto fire off (PvP experience kicking in as well as many a long night on C'thun dodging the black eye beam of insta-death) just to keep some resemblance of DPS.
The more I look at them, the more the talents just seem off. I'd say the biggest thing getting to me is that - pvp-wise - the lower tiers make choosing a secondary tree a mess. There's no "right" choice between Deterence/Entrapment and Imp Revive/Master's Call for a Marks build. They don't even change up playstyles that much, like a secondary Prot or Balance does. It's just whether you want to be able to revive your pet or pray for some RNG procs. There's nothing particularly interesting about making that choice.
Got some more questions for our local beta testers
a.) Do we know how much agility gives 1% crit at lvls 75+?
b.) Do HM and EW increase Explosive shot's damage?
c.) Does Piercing shots calculate its %armor reduced from its armor before or after debuffs (SA, FF, CoR, etc..)? This is probably difficult to find out though, so no worries.
b.) Do HM and EW increase Explosive shot's damage?
Tbh, I think we should leave the Explosive Shot theorycrafting untill they get it polished up a bit. Right now, it's counted as a spell so it's rather buggy.
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
In TBC tried to make hunter gameplay revolve around skillfully weaving shots between auto-shots. All of that went out the window with shot rotation macros, leaving the class rolling the mousewheel for long periods of time and popping pots/BW/RF/Trinkets from time to time.
WOTLK seems like a new direction in gameplay for hunters. We'll need to manage our pet's focus bar well in order to maximize our dps. Considering the inconsistent nature of the focus bar due to GFTT, We'll actually need to pay attention to it rather than just sit there and spam macros.
-Some pet abilities have prohibitively high focus costs that won't work well with a focus dump auto-casting. We may be required to to shut it off to ensure other special abilities are cast as soon as their cooldown is up.
-Considering rabid is on a 10sec cooldown (reduced to 7sec with longevity) 30 second effect at the high cost of 60 focus, you can already see the micromanagement implications. This ability is clearly designed to be cast manually.
-The savage rend ability has great synergy with cobra strikes. I can see myself shutting off my focus dump every time the savage rend cooldown is about to end (40sec with longevity) so that I can ensure cobra strikes will affect it, guaranteeing a crit and 10% boost in pet AP for 30 seconds.
I think this new style of gameplay will be allot more interesting than what we've been accustomed to in the past.
07/27/08, 1:41 PM
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