Improved Steady Shot is a terrible talent now. It was mediocre before... but with Aimed Shot being a mainstay in our rotation it becomes as bad as (if not worse than) Wild Quiver.

Efficiency I also feel is a lackluster talent. I've had few mana problems in WotLK. I'm thinking of this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Edit: Fixed typo. I put Readiness instead of Efficiency.

I don't know where you're getting this. According to Shandara's spreadsheet, even with Barrage and Improved Barrage, Aimed Shot in your rotation is NOT a dps upgrade. Example.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Using a RF/Readiness/Serpent/Chimera/Aimed/Steady rotation: 4767 DPS
Using RF/Readiness/Serpent/Chimera/Steady: 4772 DPS

Changing to this spec (as I am not hit capped, I did not put Focused Aim into the spreadsheet to avoid skewing numbers): Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Using RF/Readiness/Serpent/Chimera/Steady: 4893 DPS

Also, I'm assuming you're talking about Efficiency, not Readiness?

I am assuming you are using the old Steady Shot numbers and not the nerfed version. With the new Steady Shot, Aimed Shot should be doing nearly 2x as much as a Steady Shot without Barrage talents.

Ah, okay, nevermind. Your post made it sound like you were talking about a live setting.

Sorry if that was unclear. I mean with the changes. I'm still not sure how much of our damage is going to come from Aimed Shot, but if its 15%+ I see the Barrage talents being better than the deep tree crappy talents I previously mentioned.

Maybe, but I'm not sure it's fair to compare barrage with wild quiver/imp steady talents. They're not mutually exclusive, and this is an example of something that can take both marks build.

I don't have the spread sheet with me so I can't double check, but I'd be surprised if Imp Hunters Mark was better than Imp Arcane Shot.

I think you mean the [Glyph of Trueshot Aura], not Glyph of Aimed Shot. As far as I know there are no issues with the TSA glyph.

As far as Imp Steady goes, the talent seems to become a fairly attractive choice 40 points deep. Are Marksmanship rotations really foregoing Steady for instants now to the point that Imp Steady becomes useless? So perhaps we should spec this way now.

Edit: Strange that the item tag doesn't like "Glyph of Aimed Shot" despite the item clearly existing.

Improved Steady was mediocre when we were only using Chimera/Steady... it's bad with Aimed Shot mixed in.

Think before, we got 5 Steadies in between Chimera's. So... with 3/3 thats an 85% chance to not proc it per shot. 85%^5 = 44.37% chance to not proc = 55.63% chance to be up when Chimera is shot. It increases Chimera by 15% so 15%*55.63% = 8.3%. So 3/3 increases overall Chimera damage by 8.3%. How much of our damage comes from Chimera? I'm usually around 23%. 23%*8.3% = 1.9%.
1.9% overall increase for 3 talent points.

Now, we're down to 4 Steadies per Chimera; .85^4 = 0.52; 1-.52 = .48; .48*.15 = .072; .072*.23 = 0.01656.
1.66% increase for 3 talent points.

Wow.... I just now noticed that Arcane no longer shares a CD with Chimera... so yeah... Improved Steady is REALLY garbage.

My build concidering those changes: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I like Rapid Killing but as of now, there are no fights that I benefit from it as every boss is under 3 minutes it seems. Plus, I end up trying to maximize Rapid Fire uptime and don't stack it with Bloodlust or lose out on an extra Kill Shot because of it.

I think you may have been thinking of arcane and explosive shot - as far as I know, chimera never shared a cooldown with arcane. Explosive has and still does (which is why in another post I suggested that survival would get hurt hardest by the steady nerf, before we saw just how much they buffed the crap out of explosive).

As for Imp Steady, I don't know, Shandara's spreadsheet is still putting both that and Wild Quiver above Imp Barrage, Imp Hunter's Mark, and even regular Barrage with my gear. Interestingly enough, Unleashed Fury, despite the nerf is giving me better numbers than any of those talents, or Savage Strikes, or even a fifth point in Improved Tracking (!). Also with rapid recup now worked in there, this is the highest dps build I've managed to put in it (6 min fight). Note that I ended up taking Barrage anyway - I had to, just to get lower in the tree, and it's still better than Efficiency.

Imp Hunter's Mark just looks like crap though. Unless you had a ton of hunters in your raid and one token buffer with this talent, I don't understand where it would be better than alternatives.

Honestly, I've always found that spreadsheet to be garbage. It does not use real numbers... just perfect situation hypothetical. Look at your own WWS... does Aimed Shot account for 15% or more of your damage? If so, then Barrage is more dps Improved Steady. I agree that even if its nerfed state, Unleashed Fury has potential to be better than any of the debated talents. However, Barrage has added bonus of effecting Volley and Multi-shot and Unleashed Fury has the negative of being worth zero when your pet is dead.

Unleashed Fury is absolutely NOT better than Improved Tracking. Pet is about 15% of my damage... 4%*15% = .6%; 85%*1% = .85%; .85 > .6

So you're skipping Improved Hunters Mark because this spreadsheet tells your its bad for YOUR single target dps? Despite the fact that its one of the best talents in the tree with 3 Hunters in a raid? I guess if you find yourself the only Hunter I understand... but I think most of us have 3 in a raid most of the time. With 3 Hunters, 1 point is worth 90 attack power. With a straight combat rating conversion that would be equal to 1% crit though I think its very well accepted that attack power right far outweighs crit. Even at 2 Hunters in the raid Improved Hunters Mark is better than Barrage or Unleashed Fury.

If that's the case for you, yeah, max out Improved Tracking. That 15% is a number that just applies to you - there's no rule that says a pet is going to do 15% of your total damage. It depends on the fight, your pet, your skill at pet management, etc.

That said, I think the spreadsheet is to be treated as a tool and not a final answer. It's a tool to help understand and flesh out our class mechanics, not an excuse for not knowing them. I certainly wouldn't call it garbage though - it has the potential to highlight several interesting areas of our mechanics. My main point in bringing up what I found through tinkering with the spreadsheet was to highlight some areas of interest. I'm not trying to say X talent is outright better than Y talent.

That's a hard question to answer. The pet can do quite significant damage for MM Hunters, obviously not BM quantities, but still not something to ignore (800-1000 DPS isn't that uncommon).

So you really need to link what it is that you have to replace as it is an individual consideration. Is the loss of Agi/AP and other stats worth the gain of Hit. For while Hit is a great stat to cap, even it is not better always, and decidedly not so for MM or Survival.

So looking to 3.08 for MM, since aimed shot will be worked into the rotation from the sound of it will taking imp barrage and using Glyph of Trueshot Aura now be worth it?

The serpent sting glyph is an obvious choice, but what are people thinking of using in the other two major slots?

Sting glyph, steady glyph and I'm probably going to go with Hunters mark due to the number of hunters in our raid.

Hi

Tapout, my advice to you is to get a scorpion, their poison dot scales better for MMs, in my opinion than any other pet, and it all indicates that it still will past the next patch. As far as to hit is concerned, Take the Focused Aim. Most of the better gear, the stuff that has a lot of haste in it (what you really want as a MM) does not have a lot of to hit in it.

Since the news that we need closer to 8% to be hit capped, I have been only adding 4.5% to 5% of to hit via gear, and even at 4.72% I will not miss. The pet in the other hand will miss claw more often, but his big damage is from the poison, that he will miss a lot less (it does get resisted more, in particular partial resists).

Biggest thing for MMs, is the balance of our own dps and our pet's dps. I found that scorpion works best for me, providing a solid 900 to 1k in heroic Naxx. By the way, Grim Toll is a very good trinket, since the more armor reduction you have the more effective it becomes against higher armored mobs due to diminishing mitigation, just like it "looks" like a warrior gets less benefit after a certain amount of armor, but in reality he gets more.

The worse thing about a nerf is breaking habits, so since the news came out, I have played with the nerf in mind, dropping improved SS and making other changes. Am I under performing? Yes, a little bit, but I still will post top 3 in boss fights, sometimes even over BM hunters; I have decided to be a rapid fire - readiness type of hunter (start rapid fire, set off readiness, use my rotation of chimera-Arcane-steady-steady until arcane is up, then chimera, etc) and set off rapid fire once it wears off). By taking 2 points into rapid recuperation as oppose to improved SS, I have taken out a whole Viper session, sometimes 2 out of a boss encounter, which made my total DPS increase.

As far as glyphs are concerned, for now I would recommend Sting, Hawk and arcane (or aimed if you use it), and after the patch, with the mana cost of arcane going down, either steady or rapid fire.

As far as aimed shot, it will do more damage than arcane, even more so with barrage vs improved arcane, but the mana cost is high in any rotation. It is not useless by any means, if you have encounters that require a lot of movement, it is just great, but since I exchanged aimed for arcane, I saw an increase in total damage just by staying out of viper.

@Whitemane (below). Your right, I must have misread his post.

This has been what I've found too. By spending 3 points in Improved Arcane shot, you'll see a greater return than you would putting 6 points into Barrage/Imp Barrage. That said, I still think that it's worth taking aimed shot for the extra burst and situational utility (especially given the scarcity of raiding MS warriors these days). It's also a good tool to turn extra mana into DPS if it looks like you're going to end a fight with mana left over, but I wouldn't put it in a standard rotation.

I would have to agree, spending three points in Imp AS over six point for Barrage & Imp. Barrage yields much better results on live ATM. Arcane Shot will regularly crit from 4.5k - 5.5k when raid buffed which is pretty exceptional. I am looking foward to the reduce mana cost to Arcane Shot, however I really wish we could get a reduction to the mana cost of Chimera Shot, ATM, it has a mana cost never double of Explosive Shot, live and PTR.

Personally, I wouldn't bother putting Viper on bosses, I think you're better off using Serpent and keeping it up with Chimera.

Originally Posted by Whitemane
To me it's dependent on how hard the sting is to refresh on that fight. If you find your sting constantly falling off, using viper->chem problably isn't that bad of an idea. But if you can keep the sting refreshed the whole time it's better to do that even when having mana issues, as it allows you to apply a max dmg sting and keep it there.

PS. this actually reminds me, is there any new news with that addon that announces when a certain number of buffs are up for the best sting possible? haven't heard anything about it for a while.

Hi there!

Sorry for not reporting in earlier - end of year work got the better of me.

After intensive testing I have finalized my personal version of a Serpent Sting refresh-warner addon. It does not work perfectly accurate however; sometimes still the projected 'new' value of Serpent Sting is lower than the actual value - and I am having a hard time determining why that is.

In other words; with it being inaccurate there is little point to making it public. Instead I will just give the community the formula that I have gathered so far that will determine the Serpent Sting tick value upon reapplying. Hope this can be of use to someone with more time to invest than lil' old me.

Here goes:

VALUE DEFINITIONS
FORMULA
FORMULA BROKEN DOWN

Main Serpent Sting formula:
Modifiers:
Generic Damage modifier (Ferocious Inspiration et al)
Curse of Elements on target:
Tracking type matches

But are you accounting for the fact that Improved Steady Shot also represents close to 171 mana/5, or close to 2k mana per minute.

That helps ensure less Viper time and hopefully no Viper time ideally.

The talent's effects will be diminished once the patch goes live and Steady Shot isn't used every single GCD other than Chimera, but still I think you see what I'm saying.