Who said you could bring logic into this thread, Trev?

On another note entirely, based on things AS THEY STAND NOW, is a single point into Beast Mastery (the talent) a significant increase to hunter DPS through a Devilsaur vs. Raptor? I understand we have no testing at 80, but maybe just from tests grinding or something. Can't make up my damn mind about big dino or tiny dino.

Someone correct me if the math is wrong somewhere, but this is only supposed to be paper math (slightly more involved than napkin math, yet not quite grid-paper math). I didn't take in account T&T, Armor Penetration, other raid buffs, etc etc. It simply is what it is; a reference point. Some people want to sting, some don't. I also didn't take into consideration the difference in mana drain, fight longevity (due to mana), or mana regeneration from the difference in potential Hunting Party procs. Though, if mana isn't too much of an issue in a raid environment, it shouldn't be too huge a factor, depending on the differences of mana versus the differences in damage dealt (speculation w/o math to back it, mind you readers).

Oh, and I don't count Wyvern as a "wasted" point, because I actually use it for PvE (soloing, farming, etc) and [casual] PvP.

5000AP
50% crit rate
3.00 base attack speed (2.61 attack speed, quiver modified)
100 DPS ranged
60 DPS ammo
5/5 Mortal Shots
1.5s Steady Shot spam


Serpent Sting (0/3 Imp. Stings) = (5000*0.2) + 1210 = 2210
Serpent Sting (3/3 Imp. Stings) = ((5000*0.2) + 1210)*1.3 = 2873
Auto Shot (Base Weapon Damage) = (100 + 60 + (5000/14))*3.0 = 1551 hit, 3567 crit
Steady Shot R3 (normalized 2.8) = ((100+60)*2.8) + (5000*0.2) + 280 = 1728 hit, 3974 crit
Explosive Shot R1 (full damage + 2x quarter-damage ticks) = ((5000*0.2) + 450)*1.5 = 2175 hit, 2610 (impact only) to 3915 crit (3262 ave crit)

Base, non-sting rotation
11 auto hit + 11 auto crit + 20 steady hit + 20 steady crit + 5 explosive hit + 5 explosive crit
17061 + 39237 + 34560 + 79480 + 10875 + 16310 = 197523 (146421 with 30% armor reduction)

w/o Noxious Stings
11 auto hit + 11 auto crit + 18 steady hit + 18 steady crit + 5 explosive hit + 5 explosive crit + 4 serpent[0/3]
17061 + 39237 + 31104 + 71532 + 10875 + 16310 + 8840 = 194959 (147278 with 30% armor reduction)

11 auto hit + 11 auto crit + 18 steady hit + 18 steady crit + 5 explosive hit + 5 explosive crit + 4 serpent[3/3]
17061 + 39237 + 31104 + 71532 + 10875 + 16310 + 11492 = 197611 (149930 with 30% armor reduction)

w/ Noxious Stings
11 auto hit + 11 auto crit + 18 steady hit + 18 steady crit + 5 explosive hit + 5 explosive crit + 4 serpent[0/3]
(17061 + 39237 + 31104 + 71532 + 10875 + 16310+ 8840)*1.03 = 200807 (151697 with 30% armor reduction)

11 auto hit + 11 auto crit + 18 steady hit + 18 steady crit + 5 explosive hit + 5 explosive crit + 4 serpent[3/3]
(17061 + 39237 + 31104 + 71532 + 10875 + 16310 + 11492)*1.03 = 203539 (154428 with 30% armor reduction)


w/o Armor Reduction (comparing rotations w/stings versus no sting)
0/3 Imp Stings is a loss of 1.29% damage.
3/3 Imp Stings is a wash in terms of damage.
3/3 NS w/o Imp Stings is a 1.66% damage increase.
3/3 NS with 3/3 Imp Stings is a 3.04% damage increase.

w/30% Armor Reduction (comparing rotations w/stings versus no sting)
0/3 Imp Stings is a 0.58% damage increase.
3/3 Imp Stings is a 2.39% damage increase.
3/3 NS w/o Imp Stings is a 3.60% damage increase.
3/3 NS with 3/3 Imp Stings is a 5.46% damage increase.

Based off the numbers with a target [boss] having effective armor, 3 points in NS alone isn't too bad, gaining 1.20% damage increase per point. Each point in Imp Stings alone gets 0.79% damage increase per point. The two of them combined get 0.91% damage increase per point (6 total points for 3/3 of each), which is more lacking on the side of the Imp Stings. Unless Serpent Sting gets upgraded more where the points in Imp Stings makes a bigger and better difference, said hunter could put the three points into Imp HM instead.


Lock and Load
Rounding up (because if I'm going to sting, I'm going to make it count for 15-second blocks, which is the duration of the full sting. I'm not going to count 6.66 stings when it's really more like 7 stings.. plus the 5 second difference can account for human/server delay over the course of a minute and a half, which is 1-second error every 20 seconds), it would take 7 Serpent Stings to trigger L&L once (average), which is 105 seconds of combat. 4 procs of L&L would take 420 seconds or 7 minutes, which is a reasonable boss kill time. At the maximum, it would convert the damage from 12 Steady Shots to 12 Explosive Shots if the hunter is vigilant to notice the proc and spam 3 consecutive Explosives.

6 steady hit + 6 steady crit = 10368 + 23844 = 34212 (23948 with 30% armor reduction)
6 explode hit + 6 explode crit = 13050 + 19572 = 32622

With effective armor in consideration, the boost is 8674 damage in a 7 minute period. Without L&L, the Steady Shots cost 3360 (12*280) mana. So with L&L, we save 3360 mana over 7 mins, which calcs out to 40MP5. 3/3 Lock and Load is worth around 20 DPS and 40 MP5 (based off this model), assuming that the L&L proc happens when Explosive is on it's normal cooldown, otherwise the DPS will go down and the MP5 will go up if the proc happens when Explosive would be fired anyway. In a raid situation, I would only talent L&L if I were using serpent sting, and from these numbers I would only use Serpent Sting if I had points in either Imp Stings or Noxious Stings (preferred).

From simple eyeballing, I think that the damage difference from using non-improved stings (either Imp Stings or Noxious Stings) is made up by 6% boosted steady and explosive damage, which also gets that little perk from L&L. But this would only be so if we'd be able to dip into totem/aura ranges without having to hassle it.

- Imp. Stings seems better for PvP, but has ok use for PvE
- Noxious Stings seems to work well for both PvP and PvE
- Lock and Load works better for PvP, but seems to have some reasonable use for PvE


If any of this stuff doesn't help anyone else, it sure helped me by getting it down in numbers to compare with less speculation. ^_^

I think we need to bring the 'Kill' back to 'Kill Command':

Kill Command
3% of base mana 45 yd range
Instant cast 6 sec cooldown
Give the command to kill, causing your pet to attack, converting each extra point of focus into 4 additional damage. Only usable on enemies that have less than 20% health. If this ability crits, your pet regains 20 focus.

Or something we have to think about using (reactive in a sence it reacts to boss abilities so it doesn't gimp our pet):

Kill Command
3% of base mana 45 yd range
Instant cast 20 sec cooldown
Give the command to kill, causing your pet to do 20% additional damage, but damage done to the pet is increased by 50% for 5seconds.

Having KC give the pet a short debuff would definitely be a good way to make us think about when we need to use it rather than just putting it into a macro with other things. I don't know about one that makes it take more damage, but maybe something that will decrease how much damage they do after using the ability. It would fit with the idea of using it as a finishing attack, since if you use it carelessly any time other than when you're sure the target is going to die within the next few attacks, you'll be suffering.

On second thought, that would make it fairly useless for PvE, which I guess is why you used increased damage to the pet.

While I like the idea of that pet execute version of Kill Command, the 6 second cooldown would just make it something we spam when the target is 20% or lower, instead of all the time like we do currently. The fact that it uses up all the pet's focus won't mean that much because of GftT.

Why did you not multiply the sting damage in your Noxious Stings calculation? Noxious Stings buffs all of your personal damage... including the sting itself. It just doesn't include your pet, and you have to take Wyvern to get to it, so really it's 4 points for the 3%.

I don't know how you came up with 1.15% per point... 140231/136404 = 1.028 which means it was a 2.8% increase for 3 points according to your numbers (which are wrong because you didn't include the sting in the 1.03 multiplier for noxious stings). 2.8% / 3 talent points = .93% per point... which once you include the sting in it... is 1% per talent point exactly as the tooltip says.

What you did is compare the talented rotation w/ Serpent Sting to the rotation without using Serpent Sting at all. You can't do that because you already established that using Serpent Sting even without talents is higher damage than not using it (your number 136404 and 135547 respectively).

The math is off in every section of your post.

Your spec... is OK. But Master Tactician is more than a 1% average per point crit chance. There would be no reason to not take that over Surefooted (and I'm pretty sure we can assume Trap Mastery will be a PvP talent). If you felt that you would get more benefit out of Wyvern + 2/3 Noxious Stings than 3/3 Sniper Training, that would be more reasonable than giving up Master Tact for it.

Actually I like it a lot. It brings diversity to the eternal *dings* *slams* and *wooshes*. It is a growl, and it flashes the pet nicely as if it is enraged somehow.
Also it has helped immensely in solo and grinding. We pull aggro when we crit, pet repulls by applying KC. The number of times I have seen my pet call the target back with a KC, buying me enough time to kill the mob before it reaches melee is just astounding.
I also liked the fact that it is to an extent similar to many melee abilities. Swing + damage. Like a Sinister Strike or similar.

What I don't like about it is that it fire and forget. There is no conditionals outside crits. It becomes a normal petattack along the lines of Claw, Gore and Bite, but just use our mana. As noted there isn't much Kill about Kill Command.

They want a reactive ability (though the current wording is rather unclear on the matter)? Then make it so. I wouldn't be adverse to Kill Command actually being something that you can't use until the target it at 20%. In fact I thought that was how it was when I heard about it foirst back when I was a lowbie level 40 Hunter (heard about it mind you). But make it worth the effort, make it require contious effort.

Kill Command
3% of base mana 45 yards
Instant cast 1 min cooldown
Give your pet the command to kill a target, driving it into a bloodfrenzy increasing the next three normal attacks by 40%. Increases the damage of the next Kill Shot by 10%, lasts 5 seconds. Only useable on targets below 20% health.

Respectable damage, worth saving for kills, long enough cooldown that it isn't spammed (but we can talk about it). Unlinked it from any other CD to make it require some thought. Focused Fire once more fits BM Hunters wiithout being godlike. On bosses, well... Execute is also pretty much spammed by untanking Warriors unless they have absolutely insane amounts of AP and are Fury. So I guess it is fair that we do it then. The Kill Shot buff is there to make it worth using before Kill Shot in PvP. I think then it would live up to it's name of Kill Command. Overall it should be quite a bit less damage than the current Kill Command (laying to rest the notion that this is about damage alone).

Reactive, conditional and rather specific. But still easy to manage. Also is great for solo, activated just as mobs tends to run for us and we need the most aggro from our pets. Talent doesn't feel gimped anymore for BM, without nerfing the bonuseffect for the other specs (since now it has been unlinked from Cobra Strikes). Focused Fire can also be changed to buff the damagebonus or even the number of buffed attacks. I guess PvPers want buffed bonus while PvEers want buffed number of attacks.


What I feel they did was take a not spectacular ability, but one that added a little flavour to my screen, and keep the bad parts while adding even worse ones and of course remove the good ones. I can't see any interesting aspects of the new Kill Command, aside from the "next tree *something* attacks". That is nice enough.

Can someone confirm if Steady Shot is a 2.0 or 1.5 cast time in Wrath? I've read that's it 2.0 in several places (this thread included), yet Wowhead has it as being a 1.5 cast time still.

It doesn't matter when you apply the sting. Noxious Stings effects the sting itself. Blizzard would have to be on crack if it didn't.

You can't do that man. If the rotation without stings was more damage than the rotation with stings and it took talents to be better, THEN you could do the comparison like that... but you established that even without talents using stings is more damage. Therefore, you cannot compare the damage with the talents to an already inferior rotation. That's like comparing TNT's DPS increase to a rotation without Explosive Shot in it. You can't compare it to a pre-talent inferior rotation. I think you've tricked yourself into believing that not using Serpent Sting was better damage because that's what your numbers said BEFORE you included armor mitigation. After you included armor mitigation, using a Sting showed to be higher damage even without talents.

Your math with Lock and Load is off too. It's an average of 100 seconds using Serpent Sting for a proc, not 105. There is no reason to round up there. Assuming it will be best to let the final tick of each Explosive Shot go off, L&L replace 2 Steady Shots with 2 Explosive Shots every 100 seconds. The math is really easy there and you can see my previous posts for further detail as to why it's 2 and not 3. Otherwise, you have to subtract the Explosive Shot final tick from each consecutive Explosive Shot presuming that the DoT itself does not stack. Anyway... with your numbers for Steady and Explosive Shots damage... the average Explosive Shot is 722.8 damage higher than the average Steady Shot.

722.8*2/100=14.456 DPS

The MP saved is 2 Steady Shots and 1 Explosive Shot. Explosive Shot is listed as 504 damage right now, and Steady Shot at 4% base mana. If base mana is 5000 then

(5000*.04*2+504)/100*5=45.2 MP5

Also, I'm pretty sure you intended to not go as in depth as raid buffs... but it's hard to ignore the outrageous scaling that Explosive Shot gets from Misery, Improved Scorch, Winter's Chill, and Curse of Elements, and increased crit chance from T.N.T.

Your rotations are screwed up also. You have 22 auto shots in those rotations... listed at 2.61 speed, that's 57.42 seconds. 57.42 / 1.5 = 38.28 GCD's, yet you have 46 listed. It looks like you were intending on it being a 60 second cycle. A 60 second cycle would be 23 Auto's and 40 GCD's. The GCD's w/o LL would be 4 Serpent Stings, 10 ES's, 26 Steady Shots. That's 129113.1 damage / 60 = 2151.885 DPS. That makes LL a 0.67% increase, or .22% per point. But again, Explosive Shot is much more powerful than you calculated so that number goes up significantly.

Steady shot Rank 2 on my lv 75 BM hunter reads 2 sec cast, 168 mana. Hope that helps.

Can someone confirm how Rabid works please?

Does the buff refresh itself with each application of a stack, or will the buff expire after 30s regardless and you'll need to recast the spell again? If it only lasts for 30s, what happens with no points in Longevity with autocasting Rabid? Does the buff drop off and get recast again, starting off at 1 stack, or does it somehow keep the 5 stacks? Just wondering if every spec can have 100% uptime of Rabid, or if only BM hunters with Longevity can get that.

This is mainly for modelling Rabid in the WotLK DPS spreadsheet.

As has already been pointed out, no TNT factored into ES crit chance. Due to this, also more HP procs.

I think TCing the advantages of LnL in raids really justifies grid-paper maths. Actually, it probably justifies downright testing once possible before being judged, as the frequency of aoe stuffs is also relevant.

You've forgotten that pet tanking is being buffed in wrath to the point that KC is not going to be valuable in that situation. Worst case, we'll see the same threat levels in wrath as on live, minus the hassle of KC.

Posting our wishes for what KC would be changed to may or may not be helpful. Most likely blizzard is going to do whatever they feel like to the ability, since we don't need it anymore as is.

Posting our opinions on talents might not be helpful. Most likely Blizzard is going to do whatever they feel like to the talent. You know that kind of arguing can be applied to pretty much everything. If we don't provide feedback then you can be sure it won't be changed.

Did we particularly need KC before? No. But I found it nice. And it helped me too. However I could just have gone Autoshot AFK while grinding and not risk much.

Opinions on currently implemented talents is logical. Inventing brand new talents and slapping an old name on them seems foolish. Either way, we're not particularly providing blizzard feedback by writing up an ability wishlist in this thread.

You missed the part where KC isn't even necessary as an option. They improved pets ability to hold threat, so it will be at least on the level of current tbc pets with kc, likely higher. Effectively, all that was done was to delete KC and apply corresponding buffs in the areas that were otherwise going to be negatively impacted. I fail to see how there is anything negative about removing a poorly thought out ability and compensating the class in all affected areas.

When I think finishing move my I primarily think of PvP. When I think pvp and pets I think of them being screwed, dying easily and having pitiful damage thanks to resilience.

I just don't see the new kill command finishing someone off at 5% hp as they run behind a pillar.

If the ability allowed the pet to ignore resilience and/or armor while boosting damage for a short duration it'd have the oomph required to finish someone off.

It refreshes with each application of a stack, but it seems to expire on it's own after a while and starts over at 1 stack. That's as a BM hunter with Longevity.

What kind of timeframe?

Please read my other post. Giving feedback on abilities makes sense. Inventing new abilities and slapping an old name on them and then claiming it's feedback, does not. Not that I'd consider posting on EJ forums to be giving blizzard feedback in any significant way. Beta forums in addition to in-game would be the route to go for such.

The general consensus was that "oh we'll macro kc with trinket/tbw" so I'm not really sure you'd have another button in that case. Nobody says it's gotta be added to your UI. Personally, it's a waste of space to put KC on my hotbar in TBC anyway, so it'd be exactly 0 change. =P

Not including the 3% damage increase on the stings was an oversight, but I fixed my post (fixing the ES counts too >.<) as well as updated a couple things. By the same token, it was only two tenths of a percent difference in total. Yes, using stings ends up as more damage, but the numbers reflect how much more damage so one can look and decide how they wish to derive damage, and to see if there are other talent-spec options to achieve the same result. I showed both armor mitigation and not, because no mitigation doesn't provide a real environment (and yes, a "real" environment will have all raid buffs, debuffs, etc etc, but that's beyond the scope of what I wanted to display).

The Lock & Load math isn't off. You say it takes 100 seconds to proc L&L, but that's based off a 6.66 Serpent Stings. You can't count past the decimal, because you either stung the target again (which is 7 stings) or you didn't (which is 6 stings, which doesn't guarantee a proc). The game doesn't count 0.66 Serpent Stings like you might want it to.. unless L&L has a chance to proc off the DoT or something, but that's not how I read the talent mechanics. But your numbers for the DPS and MP5 value of L&L are in line with mine; I didn't do the model that you did, because you did it.. and I was being lazy at that point. But regardless, your numbers show 15DPS and 45 MP5. Mine show 20DPS and 40MP5. That's pretty much the same ballpark to me.. hell we can even average those numbers and come up with a more reasonable average.

23 auto versus 22 *shrug*. With the adjusted 50% crit rate, it looks cleaner to set it at 22 by dropping the decimals (chalk it up to lag or something).

Yes, you can. It's an average. You shouldn't target your math at any single example, it needs to be targetted at the average case. On average, you have to cast 6.66 serpent stings to trigger L&L. Not 7. That means that, out of 6,666 serpent stings cast, you'll trigger L&L, on average, 1000 times. Using your math, we'd only trigger it 952 times. That's bad math. You have to use the average case, even if the average case is impossible (such as 2/3 of a discrete ability). The math will bear out in the end since everything is averaged.

6666 Serpent Stings? You do realize that requires 27.775 hours of playtime (which is 5.5 nights of 5-hour raiding), of nonstop stinging to do that many stings without overlapping, right? While others may care, I know I don't care so much about losing 1.77 L&L procs an hour, because I'm sure there will be times when the proc goes off and the raid wipes (me & proc included). Using exact numbers only works for a fictional, perfect environment. I like being a bit more practical and realistic about things.

I'm not going to go through all the WWS reports and add up every single instance of Serpent Sting and L&L procs as an ongoing project. Trash combat windows are only a couple minutes worth of fighting before it starts a new one. Boss combat windows are 7-15 mins (depending on which boss). Personally, I care more about what happens in the short, realistic windows. Besides, if people want to go off of 6.66 stings instead of 7, they can take a look at the numbers reflecting 7 and figure out that 6.66 would mean things look a little better.

At the same time, when one looks at recount (or some similar damage-recording mod) and compares the actual crit percentages versus what is shown in our toon's paperdoll, it doesn't always sync up. There can be anywhere between 1-3% variations in either direction. The game is never exact, though it does stay close to target numbers.

Feel free to use incorrect numbers in your math if you want. Everyone else will feel free to ignore it.

If you want to use math to make an argument, you need to do the math correctly. Rounding mid-calculation is a no-no. Rounding the final result is fine, but you skew your math by rounding the intermediate numbers. Ever hear the term "rounding error"? That's where it comes from. When you round mid-calculation, you cause errors.