Pintofbrew

Purely from a grind/leveling perspective, I'm wondering if there's a point for the LnL ES-SS-ES-SS-ES combo. Seeing as things seem to die so quick, perhaps it'll be more efficient to open up with a sting and if LnL procs make it ES-AS-AS. That is assuming a one-tic ES does less damage than an AS, of course.

"Do not offend the chair leg of truth. It is wise and terrible. Continue."
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Ravenfire

Some additional Beta information.

Aspect of the Viper; It only grants effective damage as mana. Thats right, that hugh 2k aimed shot crit on a rat did indeed just give you 1 mana back =) From a MM persepective; Wild quiver damage is halved but no mana is gained from Wild Quiver procs. The same applies to Chimera Shot - Serpent, damage halved but no mana gained from the secondary damage (The primary 125% weapon base does grant mana back).

Glyph of Serpent Sting looks to be underwhelming with Chimera Shot especially since Chimera Shot only ever refreshes Serpent sting back up to 15 seconds instead of the glyph's 18 seconds and doesn't seem to affect the amount Chimera Shot's secondary damage hits for. This glyph would be much better off if it was a straight 20% damage bonus to Serpent.

Glyph of Immolation Trap; The glyph's tooltip is accurate, the trap's tooltip get fubard when the glyph is applied. Each tick is doubled but you loose 2 ticks. Instead of 1x1x1x1x1 you get 2x2x2. Net result is 20% more damage over 6 less seconds on a 30 second cooldown ability.

 

Shandara

This is probably a bug, although I'm not too sure about the Chimera Sting extra damage proc, since Glyphs aren't supposed to be a big damage increase, even though the steady shot is a straight up 10% increase.

WotLK Hunter DPS Spreadsheet

 

Bikiniwax

I was wondering about this too as I had heard that the Improved Tracking damage bonus had no effect on targets that were marked with Hunter's Mark.

Can anyone confirm/deny this?

 

Killua

I can confirm that improved tracking only applys to targets you track with the "track xx" skills. It has no effect on targets only tracked by hunter's mark.

 

Sean

I'm guessing it just gives a +5% damage modifier to the "track xxx" buff that you get when you use a tracking ability. So yeah, +5% to marked targets wouldn't make sense.

Glyph of Serpent Sting is something I'd definitely use as BM, I think it's a good Glyph.

I'm thinking that the Serpent Sting, Bestial Wrath, and Steady Shot Glyphs as BM would be a good combination.

 

Alaina

Quick question from a shaman for somebody that can test this...

Any idea if the Chimera pet's Froststorm Breath ability consumes Stormstrike charges? If so, what are hunters thinking about this pet vs other options at this point?

 

Arcazua

Haven't read all the pages since the last time I checked in (around page 65) so I apologize if someone brought up this point already. Sadly I don't have the time to read all the great work everyone else is doing. But I was responding to someone on TKAsomething about something else that snowballed me into wondering about the uptime on Hunting Party.

What I gradually came to realize is that, prior to the change to Replenishment, Blizzard had succeeded in making Hunting Party 100% linearly scaling and weapon speed-independent...and with Hunting Party now adding a 15 sec refreshable buff, the linear scaling is out the window.

In fact, it's pretty bad. We get such good theoretical uptime from just 25% crit that for anything above that there's really no reason to go 5/5 in HP. For anything above a 39% crit rate, you receive 3/4 of the effect from the first 2 points. You can get half the effect from ONE point if you can manage a 50% crit rate. However that last point very rarely gets you any mileage at all, much like Frenzy is usually only ever 4/5, and there's a safe bet that you may not value the third point.



Equation was found based on an estimated 8 triggerable shots within the preceding 15 seconds. (I was replying to questions about Serpent Sting, so we lost 1 GCD to that and 1 to latency.) The "effectiveness" columns represent the percent effect you are getting out of partial points...i.e., at 20% crit, dropping a point gets 90.4% of what 5/5 would have.

I got onto this line of reasoning trying to figure out what I would drop from a non-sting build to pick up Noxious Stings, and reasoned that 2 points from marks and 2 from Hunting Party might be the best. This would appear to be correct.


Of course, it depends on what you want Hunting Party for, and I have no idea what happens with more than 10 elgible mana-users in the group -- if it automatically goes to the 10 lowest (that already have the buff,) or passes over them for the 10 lowest that don't have it. I assume the former, but I could be wrong.

 

Catalept

I'm aware of what the talent is supposed to do, but AFAIK HP didn't used to proc off ES crits. Now that Blizzard have fixed that particular bug, I'd be interested to know whether or not ES crits proc any of the other 'on crit' talents (or, indeed, crit-proccing trinkets).

 

McInaction

It deals frost and nature damage so it's probably safe to assume it does. At this point in time Devilsaur's are the reigning kings for straight dps and other exotics just provide some nifty utility. It depends on what they do with stormstrike really, will it remain raid-wide or go to self only like EW?

 

Grogzor

They could make replenishment better if subsequent procs would prioritize people who don't have the replenishment buff. Thus multi procs are not a waste.

But when it comes time for me to remove your wings, and you, you must try to fly...

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KraxisSingular

The thing about Improved Tracking is the wording: "Increases all damage done to targets that are being tracked n%".

'All' being the key word here. Obviously not raidwide, or I think that would have been mentioned at some point. But it is not unreasonable to expect it to mean Hunter + pet. If it was Hunter damage alone then it should be worded differently. Well, it should in any case since it would still be slightly misleading.

I completely agree on the glyphs for BM. Serpent Sting glyph is going to be rather important in conjunction with the Steady Shot glyph. Each rotation prolonged by two casts is nothing to scoff at.
I don't know about Survs though... I suppose it is better for them too somehow, if it wasn't then spamming Serpent Sting until LnL proc would be better, and I can't possibly imagine that being the case.

 

Gleithan

Unfortunately I can't get a stopcasting macro to work, so it makes testing this a bit tricky. But by doing a jump shot with ES on a blasted lands mob, I have found that Explosive Shot can trigger TotH, but not Expose Weakness. In fact, it can trigger TotH on each tick of ES, so conceivably you could get 120% of the mana back from an ES that crits all three times. In practice I only saw it triggering at most twice. It can also proc Master Tactician. I didn't see it proc my Hourglass of the Unraveller, but I probably only fired about 50 shots. (It gets annoying spinning and jumping around - if anyone can direct me to a proper stopcasting macro for WotLK this would be way easier to check).

 

Ele

I have a question: are there any plans to revise the cat special ability "prowl" now that camouflage makes it even more useless than it already was (especially for non-night elves)?

I'd just love to have cats still viable as my ferocity choice, without having to nerf my damage too much.

 

Sean

They said they were looking into cats a while ago, haven't heard anything besides that though.

 

Pintofbrew

Not really, the goal is not to avoid wasting replenish procs on re-applications, it's to funnel mana where it's most needed. Assume you're down a few healers and the rest are going mad healing everyone, resulting in a much bigger deficit, say 20%, than your DPSers, who are wallowing away nicely at 80%. You may be avoiding wasting procs by spreading out the replenishes but you may short-change yourself.

Ultimately it all depends on how the replenish target selection alogrhythm is. Whether it's a one-line "who'se got the most deficit" or "who has the least percentage of total" or a relative "provided everyone is >50%, of those who blah blah" with conditionals.

Guess we'll wait and see, but it definitely seems feasible to spec at the very least 4/5 barring the chance you're in a 25-man and the only replenisher, which is unlikely.

"Do not offend the chair leg of truth. It is wise and terrible. Continue."
-Spider Jerusalem

 

Kaejin

What are opinions on the Disarm Traps buff for rogues? Has anyone grabbed a rogue and tested things out with them yet?

I'm really hoping this is heralding some changes to trap arming time and detection by other classes, since they're now easier to deal with than ever for rogues. Kind of seems to me like they're being slanted as anti-hunter these days, as opposed to how we started out as more anti-rogue at release. If anything it would be nice if traps set in Camo didn't spawn unstealthed.

Trap arming/detection and LoS issues are pretty much the only things I have a problem with that Blizzard has yet to address.

 

drole

Buff? It requires them to either enter stealth or blow shadowdance to disarm them witch is a pretty big deal as all it take currently is a gouge. I wouldn't worry about it, just stop laying traps when you think there are stealthed rogues around witch is usually quite obvious. I can't really see the buff in the changes to be honest and quite frankly i think they favored us.

 

mako

20 yards is pretty far away.

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drole

Yes, rightfully so as all it would take was a flare to completely stop any disarming of traps whatsoever, neither a very fun nor balanced mechanic.

 

TrevvyTrev

Being able to deter hunters from dropping traps because they *think* a rogue might be around somewhere is a significant advantage. It basically eliminates the preparation value of traps, and forces them to be used reactively. This helps out rogues (or anyone else, grouped with a rogue, or other stealthers mistaken for rogues) because it takes away hunters' most common way of working around the trap cooldown. Instead of dropping a trap to start so that the cooldown is up when someone walks into it (and watching the trap so that you can see the rogue trying to disarm it, because they have to get within track hidden range to do it), hunters won't bother to drop them because they are afraid it will get disarmed by some out-of-sight rogue. Essentially, they'll go from "usable in combat" to "only usable in combat" in situations where there might be a stealthed rogue somewhere.

It's a pretty big shift in trapping philosophy. Maybe it's paving the way for elimination of the cooldown.

EDIT: I touched on it earlier, but wanted to elaborate that this actually affects hunters even when there aren't rogues around. All you have to do is think that a rogue *might* be around and it will be enough to keep you from dropping a trap, because the cooldown is too long for you to waste one. When you start an arena match, for example, you might not know whether you are facing rogues or cat druids or even shadowmelded night elves, and you'll still save your traps until you know for sure. This gives the other team the security of knowing that they won't have to contend with a trap to start the match.

 

Senicus

Are all the cd's for Arcane shot, Chimera and ES, shared, and what cd's ARE shared including multi

 

Keldin

ES and Arcane share the 6 second cooldown. Multi Shot is on a totally independent cooldown. I don't know about Chimera as I haven't looked at it.

 

Gokey

Arcane shot does not currently share cooldown with Chimera Shot. I do believe seeing a blue post somewhere back that it is supposed to share cooldown, however.

 

Kaejin

Chimera was 10 seconds last I knew.


Well, now I'd be hard pressed to say flare is even a useful mechanic against rogues at all. It represents virtually no danger to them anymore, and Flare + Trap camping was more or less our only defence and deterrence against a stealthed rogue ambush. Now it's boiled down to a way to check if that stealth noise we heard for a moment is a rogue or druid. If the trap we set gets disarmed, guess who we can't use traps on for a another 30 seconds.

It's not like I want rogues to be completely helpless when presented with a hunter, but it's hard for me not to be a little incensed about the current state of traps. Even worse is the state of flare in a reactive roll.