Honestly 4pc tier 10 is pretty terrible for single target dps. I show that 2pc 258 tier 9 is competitive with 4pc tier 10 264. If you take the 2pc tier 10 bonus into account with sting it remains competitive with 277 4pc.

[quote] so you do 15% more dmg all the time with srs, if rogue give u only first tricks of the trade?

Yep, I don't see 4pc tier 10 pull ahead for me until all 4 pieces are ilvl 264... and this is even with 245 t9 gear. If you have 258 tier 9 forget about it.

I just put together a "dream" set of gear in the spreadsheet consisting of mostly 277 gear including 4 piece tier 10. When I swapped out two of the 277 tier 10 pieces for two of the 258 tier 9 pieces there was a drop of only 65 dps...

I've been considering this for some time, and it is great for our personal DPS that tricks can buff our Serpent Sting damage and continue to roll with chimera, but anyone with a focus on raid performance and optimal raid potential would share this information with the warlocks and shadow-priests, who get exponentially more benefit from rolling buffed dots.

Edit: Hysteria does not work the same as tricks. (sorry)

Hysteria is a +20% buff to Physical Damage, not Nature, so I would have thought that it would have no effect on Serpent Sting.

Just a quick question... I'm playing in the dps spreadsheet and noticed that the sample MM spec has 3/3 in improved mark and 1/2 in improved barrage.

I'm currently raiding 10-man (2 hunters, pally is our only melee dps) with 0/3 in imp mark and 2/2 imp barrage and 2/3 improved steady. Is there a general concensus on which is preferable? I'd think that imp mark has fairly limited return in 10-man since there are so few raid members, but it also seems like imp steady doesn't proc a whole lot.

I'm trying to look at the numbers under both specs with the spreadsheet, but my office computer isn't playing too nice with the spreadsheet's size and complexity.

Thanks for the clearance for the difference between % damage modifiers and %AP modifiers for this certain issue, but the question is. Is this intended or it's considered as bug? Does rest of the classes that have refreshing spells (or similar mechanic) work in same rule in terms of their AP/SP/%dmg modifiers?

With my current gear (See armory to left, but half 264 half 258) 3/3 IHM is a 200 personal dps gain, Hunter's Mark glyph is 87 personal dps gain and Aimed Shot Glyph is 110 personal dps gain. Given that both IHM talents and HM glyph are also gains for your other hunters, simply doing the math shows that taking Hunter's Mark glyph is only optimal when there are two or more hunters.

I carry a stack of aimed, kill shot and hunter's mark glyphs and alternate them between fights regularly. Usually burning 2-3 of each a week. Think of them as a raiding consumable.

Checking these numbers are simple for yourself. Just alternate the Hunter's Mark buff settings to "Yes", "3/3" and "3/3 /w glyph" while you have no third glyph active. I suggest taking turns with your hunters as to who gets to be the debuffing bot.

It is either intended, or a design oversight that is simply left out because it is not deemed overpowered for the class. Otherwise, Blizzard would have fixed it otherwise.

A couple other classes also utilize similar kind of mechanic, for example :
- Warlocks' talent Everlasting Affliction - Spell - World of Warcraft will preserve whatever crit stacking is done on their Corruption - Spell - World of Warcraft original cast (an ingame fix added shadowbolt, tooltip probably not updated yet). As such, they have to recast Corruption - Spell - World of Warcraft during a crit trinket proc before refreshing it with Shadow Bolt - Spell - World of Warcraft for the rest of the fight. In fact, from what I heard, they are now experiencing the bug that doesn't allow them to recast lower-powered Corruption on top of the higher-powered one. Similar to what we had once with Serpent Sting and Mirror of Truth proc stacking.

- Shadowpriests' skill Pain and Suffering - Spell - World of Warcraft will preserve whatever damage bonus done on their Shadow Word: Pain - Spell - World of Warcraft original cast. As such, for example, they have to recast their Shadow Word: Pain - Spell - World of Warcraft when their talent Shadow Weaving - Spell - World of Warcraft reaches full 5 stacks before keeping it refreshed with Pain and Suffering - Spell - World of Warcraft for the rest of the fight.

So does the crit rating work the same way with hunter dots we assume? If so, aside from the % dmg modifiers we'd apply on, I'd assume the DBW iron dwarf crit proc would be something else to look for if you're still running 2pcT9 since that's a good 13%~ crit.

Interestingly personal anecdotal evidence says it just might. I have several times looked at Recount after a fight and wondered slightly why Serpent Sting has been critting consistently lower. Not enough for me to consider this possibility, and certainly not enough for it to be given.

Now, I have both Greatness and Death's Choice, which combined do provide a hefty critbonus. I'll log back on to run a few tests to see if this might be so.

[EDIT]
Ran two short tests.

The first was 303 Serpent Sting ticks and initial cast. The second was only 216 ticks and cast upon doubleproc of my trinkets.

Baseline, with no buffs I have 54.44% crit and with both trinkets up I have 63.80% crit.

The first ended up at 50.2% crit and the second at 58.3%. Both tests were relatively short, and both crits were lower than expected. However it was only towards the end of both tests the crit dipped. Otherwise they seemed pretty consistent with the initial crit. There was very little fluctuation with many crits or hits in a row. That's partially why I didn't sit up all night.

Personally I'm rather convinced. I only wish I had payed more notice earlier. From now on I won't start with Serp, rather let it wait those 5 secodns for the doubleproc. But then again, T9 is running toward it's end so for many this isn't going to be that important.

If you still need convincing, this should do it...

I put SrS on the heroic target dummy in my raiding gear with DBW (600 crit rating) and DV/DC (450 agi) procs active. I then feigned and shed all my gear except my gun. Despite wearing nothing, not even 2pc T9, SrS rolled for 305 ticks at a 78% crit rate.

As for the longevity of 2pc T9, I'll probably be using 2x2 with 258 legs/gloves until I get my third piece of ilvl 277 T10 or 277 Northern Lights.

Ah yes, didn't think about the FD equip/unequip solution. Well then, good news, yet late news. For all those with T10 atm it doesn't look to be much benefit, they will be more served by waiting for the 15% proc. Or rather just put up Serp at once and reapply. If you are lucky and get that with a nice critbooster like trinkets, jolly days.

However, even for T10 people it would be worth taking notice if there is an overlap of a critproducing proc and the T10 proc. It might not come on the first proc, but perhaps down the line it will be.

So for T9 2pc users could be an option to wait for some crit proccing like Iron Dwarf from DBW, Death's Veredict and/or DM: G and drink up a [Potion of Wild Magic] and keep SrS rolling with a high %.
Or, in my case, just drink the crit pot before the pull and wait 2~3 seconds untill DBW proc to apply SrS. I always start the fight with misdirection, so could use CS, Aimed and then the procs would be already running. If an Iron Dwarf comes out, cheers.

If the stars aligned, you could get the crit proccing from trinkets + wild magic pot + T10 2 pc proc. I'm not even counting rogues TotT because it would get out of control to hope for all this and also call for another player to use TotT on you.

Yes, popping Wild Magic just before combat would be an excellent booster (and you get to save your Speed potion for when it is needed), 9% extra crit is never bad. Basically copy the Warlocks, save for their trinket.

For accuracy, that's at lvl 70. At lvl 80, it would be 4.36% extra crit. The sentiment is still correct, of course.

Your positioning and purpose in the raid may be very different form mine, but I can't think of a single fight where I move out of range of my target. I'll list a few fights where I could see it happening, but have found easy personal solutions so that I'm never out of range.

Lord Marrowgar - Bonestorm sends him sometimes out of range, I try and keep myself centrally located using disengage and rocketboots as needed to put myself in range of the idiots who scatter in all directions.

Professor Putricide - Always keep myself centrally located. I recently hit top 20 world on this fight (all classes). When an ooze spawns, I'm the first to start dpsing it. Disengage to positions where you know you will be in range of the ooze but as far as possible from it, giving you max dps time in case you are targeted. Make sure you put yourself slightly away from most of the group so when a range gets targeted, you don't have to move to dps.
Side note: If the green ooze targets you, drop an explosive trap at the last second. We drag the boss along with the ooze so melee cleave hits both, your trap hits both too.

Blood Prince - We went with the pet method of dealing with Kinetic Bombs, so you never have to be in range of those. I position myself on the stage in range of all 3 princes, and frantically call out when a new kinetic bomb spawns, directing a player to put their pet on it. Should I accidently get "blown" out of range, rocket boots or disengage has always brought me back.

I can't think of any other fight where it is even possible to be out of range, but I guess I'll have to see what tomorrow brings in the new wing. In essence I don't really see the need for Hawk Eye, when it's unnecessary 99% of the time. That 1% where it is useful doesn't outweigh the dps talent you lose to take it, especially when at most we are weighing the lost points vs a 1gcd disengage.

I've done all the fights so far as MM without Hawk Eye and Survival with Hawk Eye. While the extra range for the latter has been convenient for BPQ and Putricide P3, I wouldn't say it's ever been a massive gain - as usual a little extra planning removes the need for it.

Depending on how the hardmodes are, it might be a better trade off for them - when there are too many things to deal with, it definitely does gain you a few extra shots every fight when your planning failed you. That cut-off point is very easily reached as survival since you trade very little (~60dps off blackarrow) to get it, but as MM the trade is larger, so the potential gain would need to be larger too.

I just moved a handful of "we use strat X for ICC fight Y". This isn't the thread for that. Carry on.

No really I mean it. This is not the place for ICC fight strats. It is for Marksman specific discussion. I hate to be the guy who says "if you are too dumb and shit up this thread with ICC fight strats I will give you three days off" but it looks like I have to be that guy. Stop shitting up the thread.

I personally can't see any fight in ICC where Hawk Eye would actually help me, if you need those points
you're probably out-ranging buffs anyway. If it allows you to reach the battle mage from across the ship
on the gunship battle I could see some usefulness there, I also recall there being some penalty
associated with moving on the Blood Prince encounter on heroic so it could come in handy there as well.
Aside from those things I would consider it a big waste of talent points so far.

The issue with Hawk Eye is you can slip out of range of melee buffs a lot easier than you would normally. Consider melee are on one side of the boss and you at max range on the other, thats totems and 10% AP you might need to spec a hunter for.

I am really interested about your Power Auras effect for 2t10 proc. Can you link the string for set up it?
Ty for tips.