I don't think the Aimed Shot debate is quite that cut and dry. A lot of it depends on the fight. High Movement fights (such as Sarth + Drakes) benefit a lot from having another insant (e.g. Aimed Shot and Arcane Shot). On 'stand and deliver' fights such as patchwerk I don't spec into aimed shot because I find the increased ISS procs make a huge DPS difference since I can be constantly casting and don't have to worry about moving (arcane is obviously still in the rotation). The goal for me really is to try and get an ISS proc on as many Chimera Shots as possible.
The fluidity of your rotation based on procs is something that I don't think the spreadsheet can accurately measure so it really boils down to what you experience in actual practice.
I was doing some testing on using aimed shot vs just using arcane shot in my rotations, and I found out something interesting. I had never even tried to use aimed shot in my rotations before because I didn't want to spec into the barrage talents, so I had been assuming that aimed shot makes your rotation more complex. The exact opposite is actually true. With aimed shot in the rotation, it goes:
Chimera Shot > Aimed shot > Arcane Shot > Steady X times
and it recycles indefinitely. This is a "true" rotation. Without aimed shot the arcane and chimera cooldowns cycle around each other, leading to different sequences at different times. The result of this is that if you're using aimed shot in your rotation, you must always delay firing arcane shot by at least 3 seconds after it comes off cooldown.
Adding the aimed between starting the chimera and arcane shot cooldowns makes it so that they come up at almost exactly the same time. So when you start your rotation over again, arcane shot is already ready to fire! You have wait for two GCDs to fire chimera and aimed before using it again. You cannot both hold to a Chimera > Aimed > Arcane priority and fire arcane shot every 6 seconds. In a rotation not using aimed, it becomes a bit more complicated, but both shots can be fired almost exactly as they come up. This means that by adding aimed shot to your rotation, all you're really doing is trading arcane shot dps for aimed shot dps, and spending more mana. The barrage talents may make this tradeoff slightly more profitable, but there are also other places that one can spend those points. It's too late to crunch numbers on this tonight, but I'll find out what the exact tradeoff is.
You can squeeze in another Arcane Shot before Chimera's Cooldown is up I believe. This makes a 20 second rotation look like this:
Chimera Aimed Arcane Steady Steady Steady Arcane
Chimera Aimed Steady Arcane Steady Steady Steady
Instead of what you are proposing, this:
Chimera Aimed Arcane Steady Steady Steady Steady
Chimera Aimed Arcane Steady Steady Steady Steady
As you can see, the first rotation gives you one Arcane Shot more - replacing a Steady Shot. At least this is what I get on paper when quickly doing the math in Excel - I am currently specced Survival for PvP so cannot test this. But I do remember having such a rotation constantly as MM.
This is in response to several posts having to do with MM hunter shot rotations.
First, since 3.0.8, all MM hunters should be using Arcane Shot in their rotations. If you are not, you are losing DPS, plain and simple. In addition, it is highly advised that since you are using Arcane Shot to have 3/3 in IAS. There really is not much to debate here.
The next set of questions concerns the use and talenting of Aimed Shot. Things are not necessarily cut and dry here since there are a lot of variables, but generally you should be spending at least the 1 point to get Aimed Shot and using it in your standard rotation.
A. Is the one point spent in Aimed Shot worth it or should I spend the point somewhere else and do an extra steady? From my WWSs since 3.0.8, my Aimed Shot consistently do roughly 50% more damage than my Steady Shots. As an example, here is data from my most recent WWS of the boss fights from a full Naxx clear:
Hence, everytime I replaced a Steady Shot with an Aimed Shot, I did on average about 1164 more damage.
Now considering that averaged out that each Steady Shot did about 0.02033% of my total damage and each Aimed Shot did about 0.02955% of my total damage, the use of Aimed Shot increased my damage by about 1.38%. Of course, this does not account for additional ISS procs from the additional Steady Shots or the mana savings of Steady Shot over Aimed Shot, but it does clearly show that a point in Aimed Shot and its use in your rotation can boost your DPS with overall benefit greater than the 1% damage boost per talent point.
B. In the ideal situation where mana is not a concern, Aimed Shot should be used in your rotation (even the stand still rotation) for an increase in DPS. I personally use Aimed Shot on both 25-man and 10-man raids and have no primary mana talents (0/5 Eff and 0/2 RR). On 25-mans with normal buffs and replenishment, I am hardly in Viper on boss fights and rarely use it. On 10-mans, I have to use Viper a lot more since I am missing buffs and replenishment, but it is still not a significant amount where I feel that I either need to drop Aimed Shot from my rotation or replace DPS boosting talents with mana talents. If you are having more mana problems than I am on certain fights, you can temporarily drop Aimed Shot; however, it is my belief that with proper Viper use management, that always using Aimed Shot should not be a problem.
As an aside, the key to being able to use Aimed Shot and staying out of Viper too much is proper MM gear (mail with many pieces having a good amount of int) and proper use of elixers. Mighty Thoughts is an awesome guardian elixer for MMs since not only does it increase your mana pool and your mana regen, it also increases your DPS due to the AP you get due to the Careful Aim talent. I look at Obellix's gear (which is similar to mine), and I fail to see the need to take 5 talent points out of DPS talents and into mana talents. But then again, I do not play his character in his raids to know his exact situation and can only extrapolate from mine.
C. To Barrage or not Barrage, that is the question. I currently only have 1 point in Barrage (my left over point). This is not because I do not think that Barrage is a good talent, I just currently have different priorities for those points. These are ISS and FA (yes FA).
-- For my spec with no UF, I find that for my current gear choices that my DPS is maximized by choosing a gear/gem/enchant set that ends up requiring me to take 3/3 FA despite the loss in pet hit and DPS. I have explained why this is many times in the past and why although its ideal to have 0/3 FA it is not always the best practical choice and that people shouldn't blindly avoid FA (but that is a different topic). But as I reduce points in FA, I plan to move those into Barrage.
-- Concerning ISS, I have gone back and forth on which I prefer between ISS and Barrage and have decided on ISS since I think it is a better DPS boost on bosses while Barrage is a better DPS boost on trash. Many prople argue against ISS since 3.0.8 because we now have less steady shots in our rotations, but I am still doing 2-3 Steady Shots per Chimera cycle even with using Arcane and Aimed Shots. Consistently in full Naxx clears since 3.0.8, ISS is always one of my top proccing abilities. It has been conistently proccing about every 31-34 seconds, so being used every 3rd Chimera. Averaged out this is about a 5% boost to Chimera Shot damage and about 7% mana savings on Chimera Shots. Considering that Chimera Shot accounts for about 19% of my damage and that Aimed Shot only accounts for 7%, the 5% extra Chimera Shot damage is slightly better than the 12% extra Aimed Shot damage. Add in the mana savings, and ISS gets the nod for me over Barrage.
D. Finally, is the rotation discussion between the two options that Vitaro provided. Note though that he has one too many steady shots listed, especially if you are factoring in some latency and reaction time. I believe in the second option that you can only get in 3 Steady Shots in the cycle. In the first option, the first line does correctly show when the next Arcane is ready and can be used, but Chimera Shot is ready then too and should be used instead since it does more damage. I have tried both rotations and am really on the fence as per which is better.
The second option is much simpler to implement since it is the same shot order every cycle. It has the additional benefit of improved ISS use (if you have the talent) since 1) you are consistently doing 3 Steady Shots per cycle instead of 2 some cycles for a higher possibility of an ISS proc those cycles and 2) you are ensuring that an ISS procs are being used up by Chimera Shot and never by Arcane Shot.
I originally tried implementing a rotation similar to the first option since I figured that if I took advantage of the shorter CD for Arcane Shot and fired more of them in palce of steady shots that it would result in greater DPS due to the greater damage of Arcane Shot over Steady Shot, but I come to realize several problems with this:
1) This is not a consistent rotation making it much more difficult to manage and making it prone to errors
2) If I implemented the rotation just as Vitaro suggested, I would be moving out my Chimera Shots sometimes by an extra GCD, which would be bad. Since Chimera Shot is by far the hardest hitting shot in my rotation, the goal should be to reduce the Chimera Shot cycle time to as close to the 10s CD as possible without losing any GCDs. Hence, if both Chimera Shot and Arcane Shot were coming off CD at the same time, Chimera Shot should have priority to get its next cycle started (and for other reasons too).
3) I found that with Chimera Shot being the priority over Arcane Shot that I was often delaying Arcane Shot until after my Chimera Shot/Aimed Shot combination as Avellyr discussed and found myself naturally flowing into his suggested rotation.
4) Arcane Shots end up eating a decent portion of your ISS procs. With Chimera Shots doing about 2.4x more damage than my Arcane Shots and also costing a lot more mana, wasting the ISS procs on Arcane Shots was a loss in damage and mana savings.
Thus, although I started originally trying to implementing the first option, I have transitioned naturally into the second option due to the shot priority rules and find the rotation much easier to manage. I feel that the DPS boost I get from doing more Chimera Shots, having slightly better possibilities for ISS procs on come cycles, and using ISS procs up always on Chimera Shots that I get an overall DPS boost and mana savings boost over replacing a Steady Shot some cycle with an extra Arcane Shot.
Note though that if you do not have ISS that this decision may be different since ISS procs do not factor into the equation. The trade off then is whether pushing back your Chimera Shot a GCD every other cycle to get in an extra Arcane Shot provides more damage. I have not analyzed that situation, so I do not feel comfortable responding to it.
Thank you for your well-thought out response, but I still am not convinced of aimed shot's value in a dps rotation. I think that anyone can agree on part A. Aimed shot undeniably does more damage than steady shot. The issue is GCD lock. Is it worth it to introduce another ability into the rotation when you only have a limited number of shots per second that you can fire?
Even with full points in the barrage talents, my calculations still show arcane shot as providing higher DPS than aimed shot when spammed on every cooldown. Assuming that your conclusion in part D is correct, that a rotation including an extra arcane shot is not practical and eats into chimera shot's damage, then my assessment that using aimed delays arcane shot by two GCDs is correct.
This means that you are choosing to reduce the DPS of arcane shot in order to introduce a lower DPS shot into your rotation. You're effectively trading arcane shot dps for aimed shot dps.
Assuming that in a rotation not including aimed shot, you can fire both arcane and chimera exactly on every cooldown (which has been my experience for the most part, with some practice), and given the numbers from Shandara's spreadsheet with my gear and full points in both barrage/imp barrage and IAS:
Aimed shot damage = 6616.7
Steady shot damage = 3911.3
Aimed shot damage gain over steady shot = 2705.4 Aimed shot DPS gain over steady shot = 270.54
DPS gained by adding aimed shot to rotation = 18.83
This is with 6 points spend in barrage talents. That means that each talent in barrage and imp barrage (collectively) is worth about 3 dps after overcoming the loss of arcane shot dps. Using aimed shot untalented results in a loss of over 100 DPS given the cyclical rotation in Vitaro's second option. This does not take into account improved steady shot however, so I'm not sure what the results would be if you take into account the increased usage of the procs by arcane shot in a dynamic cycle.
On a side note for 3.1, if piercing shots is changed as has been announced I believe aimed shot will become an undeniable asset to the MM rotation as it would be subject to the added bleed effect (even though I don't find it a worthwhile shot right now).
Even a litter further, if armor pen is changed to affect total BASE armor not after debuffs and it becomes a usable stat for us, aimed shot will take even more priority because Armor Pen will only affect our Steadies, Aimed, and Auto shots.
First off, a short aside. My main is a rogue, so I apologize if I have missed something simple. A friend of mine is an MM hunter and asked me to help him figure out how to increase his overall DPS. While perusing these forums, I came across this discussion regarding aimed shot in a rotation.
Anyway, I don't see how you must trade away an arcane shot in order to get an aimed shot in. Let's start off presuming a priority queue for shots: Chimera>Arcane>Aimed>Steady. Assuming a 1.5 second GCD on every cast, a 10 second cooldown on aimed/chimera, a 6 second cooldown on arcane, steady shot below GCD and a fight longer than 21 seconds, this priority queue can be represented by a 31.5 second cycle of:
This cycle is essentially the exact same cycle you would be running if you had not picked up aimed shot. You would simply replace the aimed shot in the cycle with an additional steady shot. You are trading 3 steady shots for 3 aimed shots. The LCD of the cooldowns of chimera shot and arcane shot is 30, so the cooldowns will collide after 30 seconds regardless of whether or not you pick up aimed.
Last edited by Shoujahitsumetsu : 02/23/09 at 8:39 AM.
The problem with the rotation above is that the placement of the Steady Shots will result in 7 out of 10 potential procs of Improved Steady Shot (+15% damage to Chimera, Arcane or Aimed plus 20% mana reduction) to be 'wasted' on the lesser damaging shots of Arcane or Aimed rather than boosting the by far highest damage of Chimera Shot.
This has only just occurred to me while posting this response, so the following question may be subsequently removed after I have had a chance to thoroughly search replies.
With regards to Chimera Shot and Improved Steady Shot, has anyone proved that the +15% boost in damage applies to both the physical and the nature part of a shot? I am wondering this simply because the shot is treated as two separate attacks within the combat log and is separated by a tick when being applied to a target with physical damage application, then following a tick the nature damage application. If the +15% does only apply to the physical portion of the shot then it would make more sense to switch Chimera Shot and Aimed Shot around in a rotation so that Aimed Shot benefits from the proc.
This cycle is essentially the exact same cycle you would be running if you had not picked up aimed shot. You would simply replace the aimed shot in the cycle with an additional steady shot. You are trading 3 steady shots for 3 aimed shots. The LCD of the cooldowns of chimera shot and aimed shot is 30, so the cooldowns will collide after 30 seconds regardless of whether or not you pick up aimed.
Aimed shot and Chimera shot have the exactly some cd, you probably meant Chim/Arcane?
Originally Posted by Tolmandary
With regards to Chimera Shot and Improved Steady Shot, has anyone proved that the +15% boost in damage applies to both the physical and the nature part of a shot?
First of all, Chimera Shot itself is also nature damage. Tried it with my Hunter on a dummy in TB, for me the Chimera Shot - Serpent damage was always the same, with and without Imp.SS up
Last edited by Starfox : 02/23/09 at 7:17 AM.
Reason: Post above
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Yes, sorry, I meant chimera shot and arcane shot, edited post to reflect that. As for the cycle, I wasn't sure if I should count the end of the last shot, or the end of the last GCD. The end of the last GCD does make more sense however. I negleted to notice I ended the cycle with a steady rather than an instant cast, so 31.5 should be the correct value either way though. Thanks for pointing that out.
The problem with the rotation above is that the placement of the Steady Shots will result in 7 out of 10 potential procs of Improved Steady Shot (+15% damage to Chimera, Arcane or Aimed plus 20% mana reduction) to be 'wasted' on the lesser damaging shots of Arcane or Aimed rather than boosting the by far highest damage of Chimera Shot.
I assume you're talking about a solid cycle of Chimera-Aimed-Arcane-Steady-Steady-Steady-Steady?
[Edit: This math is slightly wrong; I did not calculate probabilities correctly. I do not have the time to fix it at this moment, and I will try to do so later. The results should be very close to accurate regardless, but the error is there.]
I guess, not taking into account mana saved, the values to work out would be:
X = 2*(Damage of Arcane - Damage of Steady) +.60*.15(Damage of Arcane)+.45*.15(Damage of Aimed)+.45*.15(Damage of Chimera modified by Improved SS)
Y = .15*1.5(Damage of Chimera modfied by Improved SS)
As far as mana goes, the talent is a 15% chance per steady to proc a 20% reduction in cost of aimed/arcane/chimera. The numbers below assume 0/5 Efficiency.
.60*.20*.05+.45*.20*.08+.45*.20*.16 = .0276 or 2.76% base mana saved
1.5*.20*.16+.05*.05*2=.053 or 5.3% base mana saved.
So, if X is greater than Y, you're trading (X-Y) damage for 2.54% base mana, 50.8% the cost of an arcane shot, once every 31.5 seconds by weaving in a second arcane when possible. If X is less than or equal to Y, you're clearly better off doing less arcane shots to optimize Imp SS's effect on chimera.
Last edited by Shoujahitsumetsu : 02/24/09 at 11:07 AM.
15/51/5 build is a general raiding spec for MM. Efficiency and Rapid Recuperation are not really worth putting points into for raids. I raid 25 mans with no mana issues at all save for a few bosses, and Viper for a couple secs fixes that. Imp Stings is essential for MM since Serpent will never fall if you pop Chimera every CD. Rapid recuperation is not as good as 4/5 Unleashed Fury. Even as MM your pet is still a good part of your dps. Generally your pet will be at least 20% of your dmg if not more. I have seen him remain around 25-28% of my dmg.
Hope this helps with your point allocation in a MM raiding build.
I was wondering why in all the MM specs I see that there is always 3 for 3 in FA and nothing in Imp AS. Also does Imp. Tracking really boost dps that much?
So my questions are: do we get nothing from Imp. AS, and is Imp. Tracking really worth the 5 points?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Last edited by Dhorne : 02/23/09 at 1:40 PM.
Reason: correct question to questions
I was wondering why in all the MM specs I see that there is always 3 for 3 in FA and nothing in Imp AS. Also does Imp. Tracking really boost dps that much?
So my questions are: do we get nothing from Imp. AS, and is Imp. Tracking really worth the 5 points?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
I'm assuming most specs with FA are doing that since they aren't hit-capped naturally - but not having to spec FA and being hit-capped normally via gear is better both due to the +hit translation for the pet as well as not having 3 talent points used up for +hit purposes.
I've been having better luck with this spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - though some prefer dumping SI and putting the last 2 points into UF.
And yes, currently Imp Tracking is worth the point investment since it affects both periodic and non-periodic damage and doesn't require as much swapping now with it's current incarnation.
Even with full points in the barrage talents, my calculations still show arcane shot as providing higher DPS than aimed shot when spammed on every cooldown. Assuming that your conclusion in part D is correct, that a rotation including an extra arcane shot is not practical and eats into chimera shot's damage, then my assessment that using aimed delays arcane shot by two GCDs is correct.
This means that you are choosing to reduce the DPS of arcane shot in order to introduce a lower DPS shot into your rotation. You're effectively trading arcane shot dps for aimed shot dps.
Assuming that in a rotation not including aimed shot, you can fire both arcane and chimera exactly on every cooldown (which has been my experience for the most part, with some practice), and given the numbers from Shandara's spreadsheet with my gear and full points in both barrage/imp barrage and IAS:
Aimed shot damage = 6616.7
Steady shot damage = 3911.3
Aimed shot damage gain over steady shot = 2705.4 Aimed shot DPS gain over steady shot = 270.54
DPS gained by adding aimed shot to rotation = 18.83
This is with 6 points spend in barrage talents. That means that each talent in barrage and imp barrage (collectively) is worth about 3 dps after overcoming the loss of arcane shot dps. Using aimed shot untalented results in a loss of over 100 DPS given the cyclical rotation in Vitaro's second option. This does not take into account improved steady shot however, so I'm not sure what the results would be if you take into account the increased usage of the procs by arcane shot in a dynamic cycle.
There is a possibly fallacy with this analysis. It assumes that giving up 6 points in other abilities to fully pimp out Aimed Shot provides you with better overall DPS than a spec with just the standard Aimed Shot. As I have tried to state, I do not feel that going into the Barrage talents are generally worth what you have to give up to get them for single target DPS. What talents did you give up to get Barrage and Imp. Barrage?
Let's look at Barrage first. It provides a 12% damage increase. Let's say with latency that you are doing an Aimed Shot every 11 s. That means that 3/3 Barrage is only increasing your Aimed Shot damage by 1.09% per second. Considering in my latest WWS that I did 4060 DPS across all Naxx bosses and that Aimed Shot was only 6.53% of my total damage, then Barrage would only increased my total DPS by about 3. Depending on what you had to give up to get full Barrage, I am pretty sure that it would probably have cost more than 3 DPS.
Imp. Barrage increases the critical strike chance by 12%. Roughly approximating using my non-crit and crit damage from that run, this means that I would have gained about 3200 damage on 12% of my Aimed Shots, which is about an average of about 384 damage per Aimed Shot (which averaged 3648) for a 1.05% increase in my Aimed Shot damage. This equates to about another 3 DPS gain with not including what I gave up to get this talent.
Thus I am pretty certain that your analysis does not accurately show the benefit of the standard Aimed Shot with no Barrage talents.
Using the spreadsheet with my gear and shot priority (which the spreadsheet does not correctly implement), if I drop the point I have in Aimed Shot and the 1 point in Barrage and insert them in the place that provides the best DPS option, which is into UF by far over the other options, I lose 17 DPS. Thus, having Aimed Shot is a benefit for me (it may not be for others). There is no place else I can spend that point and increase both my single target and multitarget DPS.
But talenting into Barrage is not a benefit for single target DPS. If I keep Aimed Shot and keep it in my rotation but move the point in Barrage into UF, I would gain 16 DPS on a single target. I am well aware of this, but decided to take that slop point in Barrage to help my AoE damage instead of slightly buffing my pet damage. This was purely preferrential.
Now the only remaining question is which rotation using Steady, Arcane, Aimed, and Chimera shots is ideal theoretically and which is ideal for practical implementation. That analysis is very complicated since it depends on which talents you have and the interactions of those talents with the various rotation choices. Obviously, a spec without ISS would gain more benefit from an unrestricted rotation that fires shots as they come off of CD and fires steady shot when everything else is on CD. However, this type of unprioritized rotation suffers from the fact that it can result in your best shot, Chimera, being pushed back and not being fired as frequently as is ideal.
This cycle is essentially the exact same cycle you would be running if you had not picked up aimed shot. You would simply replace the aimed shot in the cycle with an additional steady shot. You are trading 3 steady shots for 3 aimed shots. The LCD of the cooldowns of chimera shot and arcane shot is 30, so the cooldowns will collide after 30 seconds regardless of whether or not you pick up aimed.
There are two problems with your analysis here beyond the ISS issue, which may or may not be a factor. First, you're assuming that we can accurately predict when we need to fire aimed shot. It's not just "after two steady shots" because everybody's steady shots have a different cast time. You're also not firing your shots in order from most to least damaging, although if it makes them synch up correctly it might be worth it. The second thing is that chimera and arcane should never collide because they were fired one GCD apart. After 30 seconds, they will both come up right in time to be fired, which is consistent with what I experience using a cycle without aimed shot.
I guess I'm not ready to dismiss your idea out of hand, but I would have to see how practical it is in-game.
There is a possibly fallacy with this analysis. It assumes that giving up 6 points in other abilities to fully pimp out Aimed Shot provides you with better overall DPS than a spec with just the standard Aimed Shot. As I have tried to state, I do not feel that going into the Barrage talents are generally worth what you have to give up to get them for single target DPS. What talents did you give up to get Barrage and Imp. Barrage?........
So what you're saying is that both barrage talents only result in a 6 dps increase according to your calculations, which leaves untalented aimed shot as a 12 dps upgrade in a rotation? In any case, I don't think that the spreadsheet accurately models the complexities involved here. I think there's a way to use the rotation simulation page instead of the automatically calculated values for your rotation numbers. I have a patched-together OO version of the spreadsheet otherwise I would try it myself.
For my earlier calculations, i simply used a 77 point talent spec, since any other talents you can take shouldn't affect the relationship between aimed damage and other shot damage. For the record, here are my calculations for non-talented aimed shot, they're exactly the same, except aimed shot does less damage:
I'm glad my post spawned alot of talk about the matter. It helped me understand a few things about MM mechanics and rotations. It is true that in a rotation without Aimed, Arcane shot gets used at different times during a chimera rotation and it can become a bit hard to keep track of it. Getting Aimed Shot in there simplifies the rotation alot.
After reading and re-reading what everyone had to say on this, I think i'm gonna move a point from GftT to Aimed since my pet's focus bar is always full. I'm also gonna move those 3 points in Efficency to barrage and see how this works for me. Having 4 piece of T7 also helps a great deal to minimize time in viper. The reason i had mana talents is that when i first started raiding, i had heavy mana problems. It's true that those talent points could've been spent elsewhere but for me it meant that i could spend more time in Dragonhawk and less in viper. Also, being in what i call a casual guild ( meaning no attendance requirement ), i am not guaranteed a mana battery in my raid. Our core group of raiders consist only of about 10-15 players, the rest of the spots are filled up by more casual players that might not be as geared or as skilled as others.
On the subject of Rapid recuperation, i believe its a nice talent to keep. 60% less mana for 15 seconds twice with Readiness is worth the 2 points in my opinion. Not counting the mana you get back when getting a killing blow or two on trash when using Volley. And i see no other place really to put them except Efficency or Imp. barrage.
I just checked the new possible talent builds and noticed a unmentioned change of Glyph of Aimed Shot. 20% mana cost reduction changed to -2s cooldown in their current talent builder -> link (first major glyph).
During three minutes you can squeeze in
30 arcane shot
22 aimed
18 chimera
2 hunter's mark
2 rapid fire
1 serpent sting
1 readiness
Leaving you with 44 steady shot in between (assuming haste capped and virtually no lag). That result in only 6-7 ISS proccs.
Wild quiver dps rises by allmost 1/3 if my math is correct (+2% chance, +30% damage), about 40 dps per point for me.
There are two problems with your analysis here beyond the ISS issue, which may or may not be a factor. First, you're assuming that we can accurately predict when we need to fire aimed shot. It's not just "after two steady shots" because everybody's steady shots have a different cast time. You're also not firing your shots in order from most to least damaging, although if it makes them sync up correctly it might be worth it. The second thing is that chimera and arcane should never collide because they were fired one GCD apart. After 30 seconds, they will both come up right in time to be fired, which is consistent with what I experience using a cycle without aimed shot.
Yes, that priority queue, represented by a cycle, would probably only work if your steady shot was at or below the GCD, which I overlooked. The reason I did not fire them "from most damaging to least damaging" is covered by the note "a fight longer than 21 seconds". If you start out always giving aimed priority over steady you get the following chain of shots.
Chimera-Arcane-Aimed-Steady-Steady-Arcane-Steady
Chimera-Steady-Arcane-Aimed-Steady-Steady-Arcane Chimera-Steady-Steady-Arcane-Aimed-Steady-Steady <- Degenerates into the cycle I originally posted.
As you can see, even if you give aimed priority over steady, it degenerates into that cycle that looks as if aimed does not have priority over steady. Now, if aimed happens to do more than arcane, with the current cooldowns, you would still want to shoot off arcane fist. If you don't, you do not gain a single aimed, while only getting in 9 arcanes every 63 seconds rather than 10. However, all of this probably only applies if your steady shot is GCD capped, and many, possibly all, MM probably are still above this point.
As for collision, there is an overlap in the GCD capped steady example. Even if there is no overlap, however, this does not have to affect aimed shot. Even if arcane and chimera never overlap, you can still switch out steady for aimed without ever clipping an arcane. Timing aimed shot to never be a DPS loss, assuming the increased mana is not an issue, is as simple as never firing aimed if you wouldn't have fired a steady in the same situation. With your gear and a quiver, I'm showing 1.61 speed steady shots. I assume your shots end up looking something like this the following.
Now, let us assume that it is never prudent to delay arcane shot for an aimed shot due to losing arcane casts over time. You could still replace the 3s, 15.55s and 28.10s steady shots with aimed shots without touching anything else in that chain of shots. If you argue that aimed triggers a 1.5s GCD while steady is 1.61s cast, that just works out in the favor of aimed as chimera spends a few fractions of a second less waiting on the GCD. As for ISS procs, it looks like you're blowing most of them on arcane shot regardless. The exception would be if you left in dead time waiting for chimera to come off cooldown, but then you would be cutting arcanes out of your rotation anyway.
Reading the last post however, the discussion of the cycle I presented seems mostly moot if the new Glyph of Aimed Shot is worth using. Glyphed or not though, assuming you are already talented into it, aimed will always be a dps increase if only used in the place of steady, albeit, at a mana cost. Basically, not counting ISS procs, you can introduce aimed shot into your list of shots without losing any damage from arcane shot. Arcane shot on cooldown without a single aimed could very well be more damage than aimed shot on cooldown while weaving in arcanes. If this is true, simply continue to arcane on cooldown, and weave in aimed in place of a steady when possible. I believe all of the math in this post is in order, however I will concede that I am posting this while extremely drowsy. If there are any errors, I do apologize.
Maybe this is better for the 3.1 one thread, but I really do not want to get it lost in the MM of non-MM discussions.
The proposed change that I am really interested in discussing whether it is beneficial or not is the new Glyph of Chimera Shot, which reduces its CD to 9s.
I can see both positive and negative impacts to this glyph, but before that, let me mention the timing aspect. The 9 second duration does put Chimera Shot CD on a GCD cycle; however, due to latency and not always having 1.5 second Steady Shot casts, we are off the GCD cycle anyway. But that does mean that Chimera Shot will be ready to fire a cast sooner in the rotation allowing me to reduce its average cast time from around 11s to under 10s.
The positives include:
- More Chimera Shots - so more Chimera Shot base damage, especially if you have the new Piercing Shots
The negatives:
- Putting Chimera Shot CD and Aimed Shot CD out of sync making the rotation a little more difficult to manage, although its something that can be figured out
- Less Steady Shots in the rotation, making ISS less worthwhile since it will have less chance to proc. This will reduce Chimera Shot damage and increase its mana consumption. It may make ISS no longer a worthwhile talent with maybe Barrage now being more worthwhile due to the additional 30% damage bonus from the bleed effect from the new Piercing Shots.
- More Chimera Shots and less Steady Shots is higher mana consumption
Until I and others can evaluate this glyph more, my current glyph change is to replace the Hawk glyph, since it only impacts my autoshot with the Kill Shot glyph since only having a 9s CD on Kill Shot along with no minimum range for Kill Shot will be quite deadly, not only in boss fights but on trash too.
Maybe this is better for the 3.1 one thread, but I really do not want to get it lost in the MM of non-MM discussions.
The proposed change that I am really interested in discussing whether it is beneficial or not is the new Glyph of Chimera Shot, which reduces its CD to 9s.
I can see both positive and negative impacts to this glyph, but before that, let me mention the timing aspect. The 9 second duration does put Chimera Shot CD on a GCD cycle; however, due to latency and not always having 1.5 second Steady Shot casts, we are off the GCD cycle anyway. But that does mean that Chimera Shot will be ready to fire a cast sooner in the rotation allowing me to reduce its average cast time from around 11s to under 10s.
The positives include:
- More Chimera Shots - so more Chimera Shot base damage, especially if you have the new Piercing Shots
The negatives:
- Putting Chimera Shot CD and Aimed Shot CD out of sync making the rotation a little more difficult to manage, although its something that can be figured out
- Less Steady Shots in the rotation, making ISS less worthwhile since it will have less chance to proc. This will reduce Chimera Shot damage and increase its mana consumption. It may make ISS no longer a worthwhile talent with maybe Barrage now being more worthwhile due to the additional 30% damage bonus from the bleed effect from the new Piercing Shots.
- More Chimera Shots and less Steady Shots is higher mana consumption
Until I and others can evaluate this glyph more, my current glyph change is to replace the Hawk glyph, since it only impacts my autoshot with the Kill Shot glyph since only having a 9s CD on Kill Shot along with no minimum range for Kill Shot will be quite deadly, not only in boss fights but on trash too.
Until there is further testing that states otherwise I would think that the Chimera Glyph is a good choice over other options. With the new buff to Wild Quiver and Piercing Shots, I don't think going 3/3 in ISS will be the way to go (unless they change it prior to 3.1 live). Yes the new rotation will play into lag and non-haste capped steadies making the 1 second advantage argumentable. But currently I believe a lot of people are holding off a fraction of a second to not delay their Chimera an extra CD (or the latter is putting in an extra Special and thus delaying it).
I'm assuming most specs with FA are doing that since they aren't hit-capped naturally - but not having to spec FA and being hit-capped normally via gear is better both due to the +hit translation for the pet as well as not having 3 talent points used up for +hit purposes.
I've been having better luck with this spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft - though some prefer dumping SI and putting the last 2 points into UF.
And yes, currently Imp Tracking is worth the point investment since it affects both periodic and non-periodic damage and doesn't require as much swapping now with it's current incarnation.
I just noticed that this was posted yesterday so obvisouly without the new changes announced. However just stating that for post 3.1 that this might be the way to go. Piercing Shot and Wild Quiver got a nice boost so it looks like it would be better than ISS and Impr. Barrage.
I just noticed that this was posted yesterday so obvisouly without the new changes announced. However just stating that for post 3.1 that this might be the way to go. Piercing Shot and Wild Quiver got a nice boost so it looks like it would be better than ISS and Impr. Barrage.
That build is pretty much the way I was leaning too, except that instead of the 2 points in UF (I prefer to buff myself over my pet), I would top off Barrage and ISS. Of course, if ISS does not work out too good in the 3.1 rotation, I would probably put them into Improved Barrage.
You guys are forgetting they are changing RWS to 3 pts for the same benefit; which means you can just move the extra RWS points to Piercing Shots. Thus, you can have all of the goodies.
You guys are forgetting they are changing RWS to 3 pts for the same benefit; which means you can just move the extra RWS points to Piercing Shots. Thus, you can have all of the goodies.
If you look at the build that I posted it shows the modified 3/3 of RWS. Whitefyst was stating that instead of taking UF he was going to finish off Barrage and put a point into Impr. Barrage. Either way we have to decide with the new talent choices, do we want to cap Barrage and put any points into Impr Barrage, Cap Imp Steady Shot or leave it empty, and/or the 2 points into UF (although there is still a lot of debate on UF vs SI).
Wild Quiver has gotten a lot of good feedback and although Piercing Shots currently on PTR has a lot of issues with it right now (only working on crits despite tooltip and refreshing a higher damaging shot (i.e. Chimera) with a lower damaging one (i.e. Steady), I still think that it is a no brainer to now pick up 3 points in.
What I wonder is if it is worthwhile to cap 3/3 in Impr Steady Shot, I wonder how much it will interplay with Piercing Shots... 30% bleed effect on a 15% increased Chimera.
I apologize that I missed it. I have to be honest that I personally didn't like ISS when I had it. This was mostly due to the fact it pulled me out of focusing on a fight to make sure I maximized my damage. Considering we're going to be back to progression again (yes!) in the near future, I would initially lean toward ease over DPS.
However, I could see myself learning to work with ISS given the proper help (e.g. Power Auras, etc.) and rotation. I just see Steady as a filler shot for MM to the point I feel that more can be gained by spending those points elsewhere. Are they better in RR and Imp Barrage? Debatable. If they provided some sort of flat increase to Steady damage or offered something other than a proc, I think those points would be no-brainers rather than, "eh, I guess."
Again, this is my personal take. I'm also trying to minimize my points in MM to allow more for UF and/or SI.
If the Lock and Load changes are implemented is it worth keeping points in LnL as part of an MM pvp build?
I currently rely on Serpent Sting to trigger Lock and Load for extra Arcane burst damage in Pvp. With the proposed changes, I would only be able to use traps to trigger LnL. Do you think LnL would be worth the 3 points in this scenario?
The above is based on the assumption that Black Arrow will remain a deep survival tree talent.
02/21/09, 3:40 AM
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