Not going to argue science, but you're missing half of it.

So, if I take a 2% damage buff away from both specs, does one somehow change by 5%? No.

We're all using the same trinkets, so procs are irrelevant.

Using streaky crit rate as your argument? Be reasonable. The spreadsheet simulates the rotation with 5k shots to eliminate abnormally low and high crit rate streaks.

PS. Raptor's are within 5 dps of cats. Wasps are within 50 and are a net raid upgrade if you should somehow have no druid for FF.

Also, I'd love haste to death if it reduced the GCD. But it doesn't.

I actually just came back to edit my post... apparently they're normalizing Chim Sting to 5 ticks and SrS to current AP values when you re-apply SrS by use of Chim Shot. This makes the spread sheet a lot more accurate in a round-about way, but probably still less accurate than a straight forward simulation would.

That said, I will concede the streaky crits arguement, seeing as it's one I find indefensible.

edit:

No, but what it does is make hit rating more important. 1 point in FA will lose your pet roughly 15 DPS, but it is worth 32 points of itemization you can spend elsewhere. If you were to spend them all on AP, for example, you would get inflated physical damage but deflated non-physical damage (due to more partial resists, which I don't believe the spread sheet calculates.)

If all we're trying to do is land within 5% of any other gearset theres probably a lot of combinations that can fill the "optimal" requirement seeing as the DPS variance would be roughly 150 DPS.

My comment wasn't aimed at you (or anyone in particular). My observation was that assumptions about the raid/party buffs, boss debuffs, player/pet food/elixirs/flasks, racials, professions, etc. all have a big impact on what the "best in slot" setup is for a given spec - and even more so across specs.

Personally I'd love to see the WotLK version of the TBC thread, if only because it helped us uncover gear configuration that didn't stand out immediately as best-in-slot (e.g. using a fist weapon with a blunt sharpening stone, or using the Naxx40 shoulder enchants). If we're gonna recreate that thread, lets learn from the last one & pick good defaults.

Sebudai points out that the spreadsheet isn't a 100% model of reality, and I agree. However it is a definitive control system, so I'd favor using it as the impartial arbiter of what "best" means, and rely on people to not be idiots when applying what they learn from it.

I just checked the spreasheet, and it doesn't have the 2% buffs available. Not implemented, I guess.

As for total min-maxing; I enjoy playing with numbers, even if I never manage to see all that gear. We're playing around with a theoretical limit, assuming all drops are available. Most players will never get there. There are also a few setups that are within 1% of the top (like Ketsuri's).

I have to pass the time to Uldar somehow.

You are correct, but the magnitude is tiny. There is some wiggle room as per draenai aura (useless to horde), and weapon racials (weapons are virtually always a no brainer, anyways).

Well I guess the first thing to do if you wanted to find BiS would be to agree on ONE spec + shot rotation for each tree, a default set of raid buffs and character race. That would indeed be interesting. So far I haven't given much credit to peoples list of BiS gear, admittedly they are probably mostly right but for the sake of finding the absolutely best stuff/combination there needs to be a certain standard.

Spec can't really be standard because different gearsets use different stat allocation, I.E., the BiS set I proposed uses 2/3 FA and has significantly more haste on the set but still turns up very similar numbers.

The only things that need to be standard are Race and Buffs (except food) Debuffs (oh, and the 2% damage thing is a debuff, Blood Frenzy). Everything else should be fair game.

I was posting a BiS list because I wanted to find out what the best gear set up was. I don't think it matters what race, faction, or professions you pick because most people aren't going to reroll a char to get slightly more dps. If the person reading this is a troll or hunter, they can always use the spread sheet to find out which ranged weapon is best for them. My list was just suppose to show what gear you should be shooting for.

When I posted my BiS list, I said what buffs, pet , race, rotation, and the spec I used. The only way the spec should change is that if you added points to FA. Neruse has the perfect idea. If you change anything about the spec, buffs, pet, you should say so and/or post the results of other peoples already posted gear sets with your changes. As you can see many people have gotten higher dps than me on the spreadsheet, but when all buffs, specs, etc are equal mine come in very close or even ahead.

The purpose of my post is not a "let's see who can get the highest dps on the spreadsheet". It was meant as a guideline to all hunters on what gear is important to save from sharding.

I'm going to ask a question that may just be so stupid as to get me laughed off the boards, but my friend wanted me to ask for him.

Has anyone tried the new % based Viper Sting on a raid boss, followed by a Chimera Shot? Unless we're getting "Immune" messages, Viper Sting could suddenly become a very valuable asset in raids.

Of course I could be wrong.

Only the gazillionth time this has been asked, I seem to remember someone saying the returns are capped.

Viper Sting - Spell - World of Warcraft
Read the comments - but I don't know whether it's correct.

I seem to be getting a higher DPS ( with my gear ) with this talent build :

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The 10%'s do not cancel.

The formula for Steady Shot has changed from 20% RAP + 225 to 10% RAP + 225. Not including any of the numerous talent modifiers to SS and assuming a raid buffed RAP of 5500, the different in base SS is from 1325 to 775. This is a reduction in about 42% of the SS damage (note the % reduction increases as RAP increases). The 10% gain from the glyph working does not fully counteract the 42% loss, although its less of a loss than it could have been.

I have not fully done the math, but the additional bonus to steady shot from Marked For Death should still not be enough to make up for the loss from the SS RAP nerf; however, it does make the RAP nerf a little less painful for deep MMs.

Brought up earlier in the thread, but I can confirm that serpent sting is now calculated based on your current AP values n live servers; you cannot keep 'rolling' a buffed up sting.

Attempting to test whether the chimera - serpent 'bug' made it live. I've gotten odd results so far, mostly 1650 procs but also several 2150's (with a total sting dmg of 2587). I'm not sure if it has to do the dummy's having 1 hp and overkill dmg or what, but i don't think i can reliably confirm it.

The other one being 'CS Serpent counts Serpent Sting as 15 second regardless of glyph'? Should be easy to test... equip and unequip glyph for two tests. Equal damage = glyph not affecting it like on the PTR. Considerably different damage = the change was reversed.

delete post.

Glyph of Serpent Sting provides a 40% increase in Chimera Shot - Serpent Sting damage. Mine went from ~1115 to ~1551. Also serpent sting gets refreshed with current AP values, so no more rolling either.

I was doing some math and testing a few things out last night in the one raid we could do (stupid WG kept crashing the server), and I noticed that the Mend Pet Glyph does not work with Imp mend pet (shouldn't be an issue but for some people it may be). I know that it is done with every tick not with initial application, but was referring to no happiness at all.

I was also concerned that the SS Glyph was still broken. My initial tests are still showing this as a broken Glyph...Can anyone confirm?

I was also trying to work on a rotation and testing Arcane shot in it, and saw that my DPS went up with the use of Arcane Shot when ever if wasn't on cool down. Has anyone else tried working Arcane Shot (talented) into a rotation?

1) 2) Yes, multiple times in both this and the BM thread. Especially with Imp Talent, this shows a marked increase in dps since SS has been nerfed.

I am a bit confused because numerous people have stated that Chimera damage is not affected by the glyph making the glyph worthless for MM hunters.

I have not tested this myself but I assumed others have. Unfortunately I am at work now and have no way to confirm this.

Anyone else test this?

Thanks

Lots of stuff flying around on this one. On the 3.0.8 ptr changes thread, there is a link to an official wow forum (European I think) stating it as a bug, and a blue response as it being investigated. So one would think there is something to it.

At the same time, there are others reporting how it is working as intended. It makes me wonder if there is a triggering mechanism that makes it not work, or work, depending on what their intentions are (Maybe blizz does not want to add the extended damage after all, we must look at it from all angles).

Upon logging in last night, I was MM for about 5 minutes, and I can confirm with 100% certainty, that you can not carry over the attack power values thru CS, although you can not replace the sting by itself. I would think, depending on how much atk pwr you have stacked on it, you are better off sitting on 1 additional tick (delaying the CS itself by 3 seconds), then firing off CS (while still under the atk pwr "stack") to maximize it. I do not have any hard numbers to back this up, just a guess (I could stack close to 2k extra atk pwr with all my cooldowns and the 1k trinket).

Since I decided to give SV a try (somewhat of a smooth transition for a MM hunter, although I am still getting used to having 2 different shot rotations due to LnL), I can not look further into it at the moment.

(This post is not meant to be a "look at me and how good I did" post since I readily know their are a lot of MM hunters doing better than I am and who are in relatively stronger guilds, although I strenuously believe both myself and my guild are well above average - just not anywhere close to the elite ranks. This post is meant more to illustrate MM capability post-patch.)

Looks like MMs survived the nerf relatively well. My DPS did drop a little from previous raids but not by as much as I expected (of course, I have gotten some upgrades since then that affects the comparison). As can be seen in this WWS from last night which covered all 4 Naxx wings minus the last two bosses in the Military Quarter, I was still able to lead the raid on both damage and DPS overall, on combined trash (didn't expect this with the Volley nerf), and bosses combined. (Note that the numbers could have been higher, but due to getting on just before raid start because of patch application problems and world server crashes and rushing to respec, I forgot to reapply the Steady Shot glyph and was raiding with Rapid Fire glyph instead <sigh>.)

Factors that helped:

1) The analyses of the EJ community (and by myself for what works best for me) on viable MM specs and rotations post-patch. The spec I used last night is 11/53/7. I readily realize that there are other specs that could theoretically provide me better DPS, but with my playing style, I prefer to buff myself over my pet. Hence, I have no points in UF. For my current gear, my maximum DPS is with 3/3 FA with limited hit gems and enchants. As my hit situation changes, points will be moved into the Barrage talents to buff Aimed Shot and AoE.

My rotation was the pre-patch MM rotation with weaving in Arcane Shot when off CD and Aimed Shot as well as long as the mana situation was fine. I didn't have any real mana problems last night. Most fights I didn't need to use Viper at all, and on the boss fights I did need to use it, I was not on it for long. Thus, I used Aimed Shot pretty much all night. Note that I had planned to only use Aimed Shot after Chimera Shot since they have the same CD time and so that any ISS procs would be consumed by Chimera; however, I do not have the rhythm of the new rotation down and got them out of sync. That is something that I need to improve on.

2) Relative to other guild members, I am a little ahead of the curve gear-wise. Prior to the patch, the hunter spreadsheet showed me with 7 BIS items (I realize BIS changes with gearing/talents). After the patch, I only have 5 BIS, but every slot is 5th ranked or better. Thus, I had a gear advantage over the average raider in my guild. In better equipped guilds, my meter positioning would have been lower.

3) Abusing Kill Shot and its 15s CD. This is our most devasting shot, and I attempted to use it whenever I could, and used it 80 times.

If you look through the WWS, a couple items to note are:
- Anub'Rehkan: My DPS is lower relative to other DPS on this fight due to being responsible for providing our tank with Aspect of the Pack during Lotus Swarms to help him run away from it. During this period I lose DPS time (and usually my pet dies since although I pulled it off the boss, I forget to make it stay someplace safe so it doesn't follow me in when I help the tank.)
- Maexxna: Range DPS is typcially lower relative to melee DPS for this fight due to range running around to break people free of webs.
- Gluth: All hunter damage and DPS are lower for this fight relative to other guild members since we break off of DPS whenever our Frost Trap is off CD to run back in drop it in the zombie chow kiting area to help the kiters.

One question, I noticed during the Patchwerk fight (was not paying as much attention during the trash), that my Serpent Sting macro no longer works and that I had to grab the talent from my spell book in order to use it. When I tried to use my macro, it did nothing. The macro was:

#showtooltip Serpent Sting
/cast !Aspect of the Dragonhawk
/cast Serpent Sting

As I am sure most of you now, this macro was designed to make sure that I always have AoD up for more AP when I cast Serpent. After trash fights, I will apply Viper to regen mana while we move to the next pull and will start most attacks with a Serpent Sting to get back into Dragonhawk automatically as well as applying it. It worked like a charm pre-patch, but it didn't work last night.

I messed around with it after the raid. It cast Serpent Sting if I removed the "!", but that also meant it was toggling AoD instead of just making sure it is applied. I tried all my other macros with "!", such as the replacements for casting the aspects and my Steaady Shot macro with the !Auto Shot. All those macros appeared to work fine.

Does anyone have any insight into this?

I could be entirely wrong, but from what I've gathered about macros, it will only cast 1 GCD enabled-shot per press in that format. While Aspects still are not on the GCD, they do have a 1s "Aspect" CD now; maybe that is messing up the macro since they're not spammable anymore?