Never, no way, no how. Well, maybe if Arcane shot starts critting for 15k or they move Explosive Shot to 1st Tier in the SV tree.

For PVE it has been, and will continue to be a bad idea to try hybrid specs with MM and SV. Both trees are fully dependant on their 51 point. LnL is viable because of the large hits/crits that Explosive Shot deals but not worth it for Arcane. Even losing the CD to drop a trap to trigger LnL for arcane is not worth it. And keep in mind that the only way you will now be able to trigger it is through a RNG'd Immolation Trap.

Also LnL is NOT just 3 points like you stated. You have to pick up 5 points in the 3rd tier just to reach LnL so it is actually costing you 8 talent points.

* edit, I missed that you said for PVP. I get PVE tunnel vision at times, my bad.

As it was refered to as a MM PvP option, I see it as quite viable, since the 10% stamina boost in t3 and the 3 points in Trap mastery in t2. All those 8 talents are all good spent pvp wise, since traps is a viable part of pvp, and 3 arcanes is a good burst, so pvp wise I say yes.

But for those obvious reasons, which you, Perzyx, allready stated, Hybrid spec between MM and SV is a no go.

Edit: Typos

A new glyph that looks like it might have a profound effect on our rotation is the glyph of Chimera Shot. Reducing Chimera shot to a 9 second cooldown has two significant effects, first it brings the number of shots you fire between chimeras from 6 down to 5 (assuming haste cap). Second, it staggers aimed shot off of Chimera for the purposes of a long term rotation. The purpose of the post is to determine the best Marks rotation while using the glyph of Chimera Shot. So, let's look at some sample rotations.

With the new glyph, you end up with a 9 second cooldown on Chimera, a 10 second cooldown on Aimed, and a 6 second cool down on Arcane:
0 Chimera > 1.5 aimed > 3 arcane > 4.5 steady > 6 steady > 7.5 steady
9 Chimera > 10.5 arcane > 12 aimed > 13.5 steady > 15 steady > 16.5 arcane
18 Chimera > 19.5 steady > 21 steady > 22.5 aimed > 24 arcane > 25.5 steady
27 Chimera > 28.5 steady > 30 arcane > 31.5 steady > 33 aimed > 34.5 steady
36 Chimera > 37.5 arcane > 39 steady > 40.5 steady > 42 steady > 43.5 *

*At this point, arcane and aimed are both cooled down. This is the crunch, you have to delay one shot by 3 seconds. So let's project:

0 Chimera > 1.5 aimed > 3 arcane > 4.5 steady > 6 steady > 7.5 steady
9 Chimera > 10.5 arcane > 12 aimed > 13.5 steady > 15 steady > 16.5 arcane
18 Chimera > 19.5 steady > 21 steady > 22.5 aimed > 24 arcane > 25.5 steady
27 Chimera > 28.5 steady > 30 arcane > 31.5 steady > 33 aimed > 34.5 steady
36 Chimera > 37.5 arcane > 39 steady > 40.5 steady > 42 steady > 43.5 arcane
45 Chimera > 46.5 aimed > 48 steady > 49.5 arcane > 51 steady > 52.5 steady
54 Chimera > 55.5 arcane > 57 aimed >58.5 steady

At second 58.5 we are in the exact place as we were at second 13.5 and can expect that loop to continue.
Within our loop from second 13.5 to 58.5 we have 5 Chimeras + 7 arcanes + 4 aimeds = 16 non-steady specials out of 30 shots (45 seconds) or 16.666% + 23.333% + 13.333% = 53.333%.

or

0 Chimera > 1.5 aimed > 3 arcane > 4.5 steady > 6 steady > 7.5 steady
9 Chimera > 10.5 arcane > 12 aimed > 13.5 steady > 15 steady > 16.5 arcane
18 Chimera > 19.5 steady > 21 steady > 22.5 aimed > 24 arcane > 25.5 steady
27 Chimera > 28.5 steady > 30 arcane > 31.5 steady > 33 aimed > 34.5 steady
36 Chimera > 37.5 arcane > 39 steady > 40.5 steady > 42 steady > 43.5 aimed
45 Chimera > 46.5 arcane > 47 steady > 49.5 steady > 51 steady > 52.5 arcane
54 Chimera > 55.5 aimed > 57 steady > 58.5 arcane > 60 steady > 61.5 steady
63 Chimera > 64.5 arcane > 66 aimed > 67.5 steady

And we are in the exact place we were at second 13.5 and continue on. Within this rotation's infinite loop from second 13.5 to 67.5 we have 6 Chimeras + 8 arcanes + 5 aimeds = 19 non-steady specials out of 36 shots (54 seconds) or 16.666% + 22.222% + 13.888% = 52.777%.

The difference between the two rotations is the first has a few (1.111% of all shots) more steadys that are converted to arcanes while the second gets half as many (0.666% of all shots) steadys converted into aimed shots. In order for the second to be superior, the difference between a steady and an aimed shot would have to be more than double the difference between a steady and an arcane shot. This simply isn't the case. Therefor, In practice that means when given a choice between an aimed and an arcane, use arcane.

There are clear inefficiencies in either of these rotations. Losing a second here, half second there on priority abilities. In addition, ISS procs are thrown all over the place. Now suppose you remove aimed shot from your rotation all together. Not only do you gain a talent point back, but you also clean up your rotation significantly:

0 Chimera > 1.5 arcane > 3 steady > 4.5 steady > 6 steady > 7.5 arcane >
9 Chimera > 10.5 steady > 12 steady > 13.5 arcane > 15 steady > 16.5 steady > and it loops around again

Perfectly efficient. Simpler to execute, but you only get 2 chimeras + 3 arcanes out of 12 shots (18 seconds) or 16.666% + 25% = 41.666%. The difference between this rotation and the first one, is all of your aimed shots (13.333% of all shots) become steadys, and a few (1.333% of all shots) of your steadys become arcanes. For this to be a superior rotation, the difference between a steady and an arcane has to be more than 10 times greater than the difference between an aimed and a steady. This is simply not the case, meaning despite how pleasantly simplistic this rotation would be, it is an inferior one.

In conclusion, if you plan on using the glyph of Chimera Shot. You will want to maintain a priority queue of your shots Chimera > Arcane > Aimed > Steady

But with the new Aimed Shot Glyph (8sec CD) wouldn't be the rotation more like:

CS>Arcane>Aimed>Steady>Steady>Arcane>
CS>Steady>Aimed>Arcane>Steady>Steady> loop

Out of 12 Shots 7shots are specials: 58,33%.
Out of 12 Shots 9 would trigger Piercing Shots (if specced) with an uptime of nearly 96% (I hope they will change PS more to a Deep Wound Mechanic).

So the best glyphs would be: SerpentSting, CS and Aimed.

Over 40% of your shots are going to be Steady Shot no matter how you modify the shot rotation so it really seems silly to lose 10% damage on it.

With Aimed glyph vs. unglyphed you gain 1 aimed shot every 6 rotations? Hardly seems worth it even if it does make the rotation nicer.

Keep in mind that Steady is getting nerfed with the removal of the haste affect from the quiver removal. The 15% haste is autoshot only. Haste cap has gone up, way up for SS to be 1.5

How ever, I do not think the new aimed glyph is the way to go, I would still stick to Hawk.

I'm with Gonkish on this one...

It seems completely impossible to get even remotely near the haste cap for SS assuming this change is true. With a 3% Haste aura the Haste cap is ~400 Haste Rating as is, removing the 15% quiver haste puts this well over 1000 haste rating to cap.

(That is, unless they drastically improve melee haste as they have suggested in the past.)

" Ammunition: All types of gun and bow ammunition now stack to 1000. All quivers and ammo pouches no longer provide haste. 15% ranged haste is now built in to Hunter Autoshot. "

here is the link

Now, you can say what you want about it's vailidity, or how it's worded, but it does say Autoshot. This and the addition of wild hunt will make the whole community change back to BM, imo.

I think that is all you need to make this comment more than just a little confusing. Ranged Haste isn't neccesary if it is specifically tied into Autoshot alone. Haste would be enough and correct. Ranged Haste implies all ranged abilities.
Why is it like this? Well free 15% Haste for other users of ranged weapons was clearly not what Blizzard wanted, even if the value they get is very limited. So by tying the Haste to a Hunter specific ability they avoid that issue entirely. Instead they confuse Hunters until they explain this further.

Yeah, it sounds to me like they're simply transferring quiver haste to Auto. They specifically state "ranged haste", not "auto-shot haste". I understand that Blizzard is incredibly bad at wording their patch notes updates, but I'm pretty sure removing the quiver haste from everything but Auto would be something even they realize would be problematic.

If, however, you end up being right... well, I'll probably weep. That'd be a terrible design decision.

Already posted in the 3.1 changes thread, but relevant to our current talk:


Will Steady Shot not be affected by the ranged haste?

Ghostcrawler: No. We just wanted to remove the quiver without losing its haste bonus. Except for inventory changes, you should not notice a difference. (Source)

Didn't see this anywhere after a search, if it has been talked about I will gladly edit this post.

Assumptions:
Mana Pool: 12000
Melee Weapons: 1.4 AS MH/1.4 AS OH
Ranged Weapon: 2.8 AS
Haste: 10% ish along with Quiver

With this setup, the average tick of AotV from weapon damage will be 336.

Eventually we get the following two equations

12000 mana = 336 Mana/tick*1 tick/.7 seconds*X + 480 mana/3 seconds*X

12000 mana = 336 Mana/tick*1 tick/2.2 seconds*X + 84 Mana/tick*1 tick/1.5 Seconds + 480 mana/3 seconds*X

(The 84 comes from the theoretical max mana you could gain back from special shots if you fired one every GCD)

So with DWing, it would take you about 18.75 seconds to fully fill up your mana bar vs 32.5 seconds shooting your bow.

Now, I am not exactly sure on what exactly fully geared hunters at 80 have for melee and ranged DPS so my question is, comparing the two, is 13 seconds of 40% extra ranged damage worth going into melee for 18.75 seconds? Just a theoretical, I am sure it's not, just curious.

You didn't consider the dual wield hit penality, did you? With 5-8% hit from gear and zero expertise, about a third of your attacks would be dodges and misses.

And a can't see that the run time towards the target and backwards out of the deadzon is incluced as well.

OK, compensating for the DW hit penalty and dodge%, but also including in Mongoose Bite, it should take about 21.5 seconds. Lets say that it would take 1 second for you to switch from melee to ranged. So is 10 seconds of that every 40% damage on ranged worth 21.5 seconds of melee? Once again, I am sure its not but, you never know until the numbers get crunched.

You might be able to get a little more regen out of melee, but it would be a great hassle and very situational. As far as I'm concerned, melee and ranged regen are fairly balanced next to one another and if you're stuck in melee for some reason while on a "regen cycle," it will not hurt you. Actually, if you get stuck in melee for some time, it might be a good idea to use that time to regen any mana you've used.

On another note, the discussion about rotations and shot priorities with ISS; if you were to change your rotation to fit most ISS procs on Chimera, you would sacrificing Arcane or Aimed shots quite a bit, which, by my intuitive calculations, would mean an overall DPS loss. This is, of course, unless that extra 15% on Chimera and the subsequent Steady Shots that replace the Arcane(s) and Aimed(s) do more damage than either the Aimed(s) or Arcane(s) you'd lose in the long run.

You'll also do A LOT less dps on melee next to ranged. Probably will lose more than staying 10 extra secs on Viper.

Even though I'm currently survival, I use aimed shot as it becomes available, and on an average PW, my total steady damage is more than 2.5 times the total aimed shot damage looking at my webstats. I'll still be using the steady glyph.

I've been lurking around this forum for a while now and in each build someone posts/glyphs mentioned, no-one specs into hunters mark.

Is improved hunters mark (and it's glyph) a waste of talent points?

I know there's also a lot of talk about 3.1 but that's still some months off - what are the best glyphs to use now? I think there's been quite a bit of discussion around which talents to spec but not about glyphs? I'm guessing it's serpent sting, steadyshot and possibly trueshot aura?

And also, haste or crit? There's a lot of discussion around the haste soft-cap but does it really make that much of a difference? over 500 haste seems like quite a lot. I tested ou enchanting my cloak with +22 agility and +23 haste and after 3 tests with each (firing all out for 1 min) on the raid boss dummy in Ironforge, I had higher DPS with the agility than the haste.

Does this mean the priority for MM should be: Int > Agility > AP > haste > crit > other

I have the [Tunic of the Lost Pack] and the [Heroes' Cryptstalker Tunic] - both are very similar, the first has more crit and the second has more haste, and after my same 3x1 min tests the haste had higher DPS.

Sorry for the lack of numbers, I'll get some next time I test anything.

I'm going to test my new [Wraith Spear] against my old [Runeblade of Demonstrable Power] tonight probably and I bet the results will favor the blue! Want to make a bet?

You cannot really compare SV builds/rotations with MM builds/rotations since we use more specials and less steadies.

For me (with only a point in Barrage), my steady shot/aimed shot damage ratio across all Naxx boss fights is 1.77.

Using very rough, back on napkin estimates to trade off the Steady Shot glyph and the Aimed Shot Glyph:

- Losing the 10% steady shot glyph is a cost in about 95K damage for me.

- For my Aimed Shot to make up for that it would need to gain about 16% damage. Not accounting for priorities, the glyph should increase Aimed Shot DPS by 20%.

This makes the Aimed Shot for Steady Shot glyph trade off a viable option; however, there are several items for which this quick analysis did not account:

1) Straight damage cost/benefit of replacing more steady shots with aimed shots. My aimed shots currently do about 900 more damage on average, which is about 43% more damage, than steady shots. This difference is even larger without the Steady Shot glyph. Advantage Aimed Glyph

2) Less steady shots mean less ISS procs and less damage and mana savings from it. Advantage Steady Glyph

3) Free rotation with 3 specials with seprate CDs mean that Aimed Shot will eat some of the ISS procs instead of Chimera or Arcane. Considering that Aimed is currently the least damaging shot of the 3 that is a loss in DPS. Advantage Steady Glyph

4) Didn't account for the benefits in DPS due to the bleed effect. I currently do not know enough about how this mechanic works to say whether is is a positive or negative for Aimed glyph. However, I would think that it is a positive since it is replacing a steady shot and if a crit happened there, you get more bleed damage if an Aimed Shot was used instead of the Steady Shot. One the other hand, you are still shooting 3 steady shots as compared to 1 chimera and 1 aimed shot per rotation, making bleed effects from steady shot being more likely than from the other specials. So until I know more about the bleed mechanic, calling it a draw.

EDIT: Saw some PTR testing results, and it was verified that the current mechanism for Piercing Shots is that each time a shot crits that it refreshes the bleed effect for the current shot that critted regardless of whether it results in less damage. Thus, replacing more steady shots with Aimed Shots is good for higher bleeds, but the bleed benefit is reduced if the next shot is a steady shot that crits and refreshes the bleed effect after only 2 ticks to a lesser amount. Since on average more bleed effects will be off steady shot than chimera or aimed shot, I think the benefit for bleed effects currently goes to Steady glyph. If the mechanism is changed so that when bleed effects from crits overlap for them to stack or the greater one be used, then the advantage would go to the Aimed glyph.

5) For most hunters who do not have enough passive haste to be soft capped, your steady shot is not always at the 1.5 s GCD. Assuming that haste effects get you to the softcap 70% of the time, that is still 30% of your steady shots that take longer than 1.5 s (how much depends on the passive haste) and which pushes out your rotation some if you have the Chimera glyph. Considering what other stats you have to give up to reach the haste softcap and that replacing one of these > GCD casted steady shots with an aimed shot decreases your time between chimera shots, using more aimed shots is a benefit. Advantage Aimed Glyph.

Furthermore, with assuming I go 3/3 Piercing Shots and keep my BM/SV talents fixed (and 3 currently in FA), I end up with a ISS/Barrage tradeoff for my last 3 talent points. If you are going to use the Aimed Shot glyph, seems like you should use Barrage talents to make the glyph most effective. If you instead decide to keep the Steady Shot glyph, ISS is probably still the better talent option.

First off, there is no way your blue [Runeblade of Demonstrable Power] is better than [Wraith Spear]. Looking at the stats directly, Wraith Spear is +27 agi, +79 sta, +1 crit rating, +12 haste rating, and -42 AP. A lot of the loss of AP is made up by the AP from that extra agi, which with CE and kings is really about +31 agi. Hence, you are really only losing 12 AP with TSA included but gaining 0.36% crit, some haste, and a heck of a lot of stamina for survivability. Using the spreadsheet with my gear/spec/rotation, the Wraith Spear is 17 DPS better and almost 1000 more health. For your character loaded in the spreadhseet, it shows the Wraith Spear as being 11 DPS better in addition to the 1000 more health.

Concerning hunter's mark talent and glyph, for solo hunter, it is vastly inferior DPS over other talent/glyph options. However, since its benefit is provided to every hunter in the raid, it can currently be a net benefit to the raid if your raid has like 3-4 hunters and one of them sacrifices 3 talent points and a glyph to get it. However, as gear scales better in Wrath, the benefit of hunter's mark talents and glyphs will decrease since most other talent/glyph options scale. Plus, if more than 1 hunter in the raid has the talent/glyph, it is generally a waste.

For now, Steady Shot and Serpent Sting glyphs are definites. For the third glyph, it is usually a trade off between Trueshot or the Hawk glyph depending on whether you are specced into Barrage talents or Wild Quiver. Although it only effects my autoshots, I personally prefer the Hawk glyph since it improves my autoshot speed by an average of about 3% (I have an estimated 51.5% uptime with QS). Since autoshots are my most frequent shot and does about 26% of my damage, I figure this is a better boost over buffing a shot I take only every 11 s or so. In addition, since I have WQ, more autoshots means more chances for WQ to proc for additional damage.

Concerning haste, only two shots are affected by it, your autoshot and your steady shot, up to the haste softcap. Without factoring in the future Chimera Shot glyph and with wanting to shot Chimera Shot as soon as possible off its 10s CD, being haste softcapped really is not a big deal. With QS, RF, and Bloodlust, you usually have enough haste effects to have your steady shot softcapped 60-70% of the time without any passive haste. Hence, your passive haste only affects about 30-40% of your Steady Shots. Thus, currently the general rule is not to bother looking for haste, but gladly take it when it comes along. (After 3.1 things will be a little though since every bit over the 1.5s GCD for steady shot will delay your next Chimera Shot.) Naturally on the gear I have, I have 366 haste rating with no haste enchants or haste gems, so you really come upon haste quite naturally.

Finally, concerning haste or crit ratings on items, usually crit will work out better, but use the hunter spreadsheet to verify. For my current gear, the hunter spreadsheet stats per item budget (assuming a 6 min fight fully raid buffed):

agility (1.148) > AP (0.991) > crit (0.921) > int (0.786) > haste (0.500)

Hence, for me agility is more that twice as good as haste. Of course, the relative benefits of each is dependent on gear/talents/rotations for each character, so mine shouldn't be used as fact for you. In fact, for your character, its:

agility (0.911) > AP (0.873) > int (0.783) > crit (0.653) > haste (0.362)

Some of the reasons for lower coefficients for you is that you have more of a PvP spec over a PvE spec (I may have caught you at a bad time). Also, your pet is probably starved for focus without any points in GftT. Your should be using a Relentless meta in your helm, which the spreadsheet says will increase your DPS by 74.

A 20% increase in aimed shot frequency comes with a cost of a reduction of steady shots of the same magnitude. Even if you prioritize aimed shot over every other shot, the glyph gets you an extra aimed shot only every 40 seconds, at the expense of a steady shot every 40 seconds. The rough math for dps gained from the glyph without counting out the rotation (so assuming you can work the faster aimed shots into your rotation perfectly) is (average aimed shot damage - average steady damage) / 40. According to one of my wws's my average aimed hits for about 800 more than my average steady. Granted, I am SV and the difference would be greater both without the Steady glyph and with perhaps some points in barrage (though I wouldn't spec that way) so I'll round up to 1000. Even then that's 25 dps from the glyph. Meanwhile, assuming you use the rotation I listed earlier that is very much a marks rotation, steady still accounts for almost 50% of my special shots. For the aimed glyph to be better, 10% of your steady damage would have to be less than 25. So your total steady dps would have to be less than 250. Mine is 800dps in the random webstasts I've been using. I challenge you to show me the webstats that shows a steady shot dps less than 250 with an aimed shot that hits hard enough to justify the glyph.

I'll grant you we don't know how aimed shot's damage contribution will change with changes in the patch such as piercing shots, but I can't imagine it'll be big enough to change the situation. The glyph exists for pvp reasons. It's no accident that the healing debuff lasts 8 seconds.

Doc, my point still stands. You cannot compare the change in glyphs impacts with your SV spec as you can for my MM spec. It is comparing apples to oranges with different conclusions to be gained. In fact, the answer can even vary between two MM specs. Some of the reason for the apples and oranges.

1) You mentioned that your total steady shot to aimed shot damage ratio was 2.5. I used my WWS to show that it was 1.77 for my build/rotation. There are several reasons for this difference.

2) Over 30s rotation, we can both do 3 aimed shots, but I only do 9 steady shots while you do 11 (with assuming a Serpent Sting in there). Hence, you total steady/aimed shot damage is skewed from mine.

3) You have one talent that explicitly increases your Aimed Shot damage (Sniper Training), but I have several, including a point in Barrage, Marked for Death, and Improved Steady Shot.

4) Our different talents that modify Steady Shot damage, of which there are several.

5) Our different talents that affect our overall crit %, AP, and damage modifiers.

All of these factors makes it not practical to compare the two. While for your spec/gear/rotation, you came to one conclusion using your WWS results, I came to a different one using my WWS results that it is possible that it could be advantageous when looking at the surface but that when looking at other complicating factors that it may not be depending on your spec.

For now, I do not currently plan to use the Aimed Shot glyph since I am not sold on it yet. I will wait until the PTR firms up and more testing on what is going live has been done before making a decision.

True, my attempt to use my own wws are more or less invalid, but the logic still stands, I just didn't want to put out a formula without any numbers because I thought it would be confusing. My main point is that more frequent aimed shots come at the expense of steady shots. A 10% damage increase is a flat damage increase, while firing aimed shot more quickly means you're firing it instead of a steady. My reading of your analysis stated that the glyph would increase your aimed dps by 20% because you're increasing it's frequency by 20%, but in using that number you neglect to consider that in addition to losing the steady glyph, you also don't fire the steady shots you would have otherwise fired if your aimed was still on cooldown. Therefor, it would not be as simple as looking at your aimed damage and multiplying by 1.2.

The dps value (ignoring mana consumption) of an aimed shot glyph is:
(average single aimed shot damage - average single steady shot damage) / 40 seconds

The dps value of the steady glyph using the rotation I posted earlier is:
.1 * (average single steady shot damage) * 14(number of steady shots fired over the course of 45 seconds using a typical marks rotation at haste cap) / 45 seconds. If you are trying to analyze webstats of someone already using the steady glyph, divide the average steady damage by 1.1. And if you want to account for not being at the haste cap, use 13 or 12 instead of 14.

DPS value of the Improved Aspect of the Hawk glyph:
(IAotH uptime) * .06 * autoshot dps. I'm going to assume even without the glyph when IAotH procs your steady shots hit the cap. If you're analyzing webstats that already have the glyph, divide autoshot dps 1 + (IAotH-uptime * .06) first.

DPS value of Serpent Sting:
.4 * average serpent component of single Chimera Shot/ 9 or 10 seconds depending on chimera glyph. If you're analyzing webstats that already have the glyph, divide the avg serpent component of chimera by 1.4 first.