WotLK Talents & Abilities Discussion - Page 51

Arcazua · 07/27/08, 12:41 PM

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.)

Trogdor · 07/27/08, 1:17 PM

Originally Posted by Snipehunter

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.

Snipehunter · 07/27/08, 2:52 PM

Originally Posted by KraxisSingular

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...

Shenzhe · 07/27/08, 4:51 PM

I was looking a potent venom being that it seems to be the bane of everyone's existence and did some math.
Using this build WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Hunter -> Talent Calculator
because it seems decent if you're trying for potent venom.

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)

Serpents Sting
Damage = RAP*.1+1210 = 1710 damage 15s
mana = 680 *.7 = 476
damage/mana = 3.592

Steady Shot
Damage = (RAP *.2 +280 + 462) *.7 = 1219
mana = 280
damage/mana = 4.353

Kill shot
Damage = (Weapon Damage + (RAP *.15 + 325)) *.7 = 948
Mana = 475
Damage/mana = 1.996

Auto shot
Damage = (100+65+375)*2.7 = 1020

2.7 weapon speed = 22
Special shots 60/1.5 = 40
1.5s steady = 26 or 30
6s kill = 10
serpents sting = 4

So:
Weapon damage = 1020 damage/shot
Steady shot = 1219 damage/shot (280 mana)
Kill shot = 948 damage/shot (475 mana)
Serpents sting = 1710 damage/shot (476 mana)

With Serpents sting:
damage/min = (1020*22+1219*26+948*10)*1.3+1710*4 = 89538
mana/min = 0*22+280*26+475*10+476*4 = 13934
DPS = 89538/60 = 1492.3
damage/mana = 6.426

Without Serpents sting
Damage/min = 1020*22+1219*30+948*10 = 68490
Mana/min = 0*22+280*30+475*10 = 13150
DPS = 68490/60 = 1141.5
Damage/mana = 5.208

damage gain with serpents sting 1.307

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)

Scio · 07/27/08, 5:52 PM

Originally Posted by Shenzhe

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?

Catalept · 07/27/08, 6:00 PM

Originally Posted by Shenzhe

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.

Trogdor · 07/27/08, 6:11 PM

Originally Posted by Shenzhe

With Serpents sting:
damage/min = (1020*22+1219*26+948*10)*1.3+1710*4 = 89538
mana/min = 0*22+280*26+475*10+476*4 = 13934
DPS = 89538/60 = 1492.3
damage/mana = 6.426

Without Serpents sting
Damage/min = 1020*22+1219*30+948*10 = 68490
Mana/min = 0*22+280*30+475*10 = 13150
DPS = 68490/60 = 1141.5
Damage/mana = 5.208

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.

Arcazua · 07/27/08, 7:20 PM

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.

Gonkish · 07/27/08, 7:42 PM

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?

Chul · 07/27/08, 8:24 PM

Has anyone got an updated formula for Steady Shot?

We talked about this a while back, but noone seemed to have confirmed that exact formula.

Shenzhe · 07/27/08, 8:46 PM

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%)

With Serpents sting:
damage/min = ((1020*22+1219*26+948*10)*1.03)*1.165+1710*4 = 83173
mana/min = (0*22+280*26+475*10)*.8+476*4 = 11528
DPS = 89538/60 = 1386.2
damage/mana = 7.215

Without Serpents sting
Damange/min = 1020*22+1219*30+948*10*1.165 = 70054
Mana/min = (0*22+280*30+475*10)*.8 = 10520
DPS = 68490/60 = 1167.6
Damage/mana = 6.659

damage gain with serpents sting 1.187

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.

Catalept · 07/27/08, 10:22 PM

Originally Posted by Shenzhe

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.

• Intermission · 07/27/08, 10:28 PM

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)

Catalept · 07/27/08, 10:43 PM

Originally Posted by Intermission

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.

• Intermission · 07/27/08, 10:53 PM

Originally Posted by Catalept

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.