The reason to get hit rating is that nothing else increases DPS as much until your hit capped. So those are very valuable talents if you lack the +hit on gear. If you choose to get them, then yes you can spend your itemization allotment on ArP or haste. And for the most part that's what were talking about here. Filling in the last of the hit cap with an enchant or a couple gems you can trade agi/AP for hit, but for the most part that last 3% will be hard stats on gear and you can only really interchange that with ArP and haste.

Here's the thing; agi, int and AP will very somewhat from piece to piece, but overall there will not be a massive difference for gear of the same item level. What will be different, are the additional stats hit, crit, ArP, and haste. There are always 2 of them(at least this expac). Now, if you always choose crit for one of them, once your hit capped the only others to choose from are haste and ArP, neither of which are extremely potent.

Basically, when you go into FA you gain haste and ArP in exchange for loosing 3 talent points. So you have to decide, what's a bigger DPS increase? the haste and ArP you will be able to pick up or the other available talents? If you only ever doing single target DPS, then probably FA with more haste and ArP. However as many have said, Ulduar has a lot of adds, and the barrage talents seemed designed for dealing with multiple targets.

From my experience the points in barrage are better than extra haste or ArP. Keep in mind that between IAotH procs, heroism, and rapid fire, we are hasted well below a 1.5 second steady shot, and ArP doesn't help any of our shots that use magic, and neither transfer to our pets.

Hello,
since i try to refresh my serpent sting when my ap is the highest, i was wondering if the serpent sting refreshed by the chimera shot was scaling with your current ap (when you cast CS) or if it was the same SS i applied before ?

It refreshes the sting using the RAP you have when you shoot Chimera Shot, so fully trinketing, SS-ing and keeping its initial damage doesn't work anymore. This was answered a couple of pages ago.

It may not be enough to counter the volley damage increase from Barrage, but also keep in mind that Haste does scale Volley too.

Personally it comes down to the gear you have. If you can naturally get hit cap without gemming for it or speccing Focused Aim, then by all means pick up Barrage. But when the best pieces of gear you have put you under hit cap, I think its a better idea to take points in focused aim and gem for AP instead of gemming for hit and getting barrage. Id rather get the AP boost and increase the damage of all my abilities rather then talent to increase just aimed/multi/volley.

Quoting myself here to go back to the Improved Hunter's Mark issue now that Shandara has updated the spreadsheet to allow "none" as a pet option. This should give us a better idea of how much AP is worth to the hunter alone, since the AP from hunter's mark does not apply to our pet. I used my current gear, except that for my SV build I have 2% less hit so I went with the Circlet of True Sight.

SV value of AP+90 = .484*90 = 43.56
MM value of AP+90 = .492 = 44.28
BM value of AP+90 = .312 = 28.08

Just a real quick check, simply moving my 3/5 Unleashed Fury to IHM was a personal DPS loss of 54. There's probably a better option, but more or less it looks like you'd need at least two SV hunters on the same target to get any benefit out of this. One other hunter is close to a wash.

Question: How solid is the 0.02 latency setting on the spread sheet?

Can latency be properly tested by a test dummy, and no haste gear/effects?

I just ask because latency seems to affect a glyph such as chimera (it downgrades it) when compared to something like the steady shot (not sure why, shouldn't latency affect it the same way?) and hawk (this on I get it, since its an automatic upgrade to auto).

Any hunters that have changed their boot enchants to Tuskarr vitality or something similar? Would it be worth it for a MM and all of our instants?

I don't know of any fights that require *that* much movement that you'd need to swap your enchant. Also, why would you need the extra Stam over Agi?

I just checked your 7/57/7 spec on Armory. I'm curious why you're not taking Silencing Shot. It's off the GCD in 3.1, so even though it's 50% damage, it's free DPS.

You are right about the cat's swiftness, vitality was just the first thing that came to mind, and just an example.

I have yet to get past Mimiron, but I felt that was some movement on Razor depending on spawns, and quite a bit on XT (depends on luck), Council, Kolorgan (same as XT, depends on your luck) and Auriya. There is quite a bit of movement when dealing with some of the adds as well.

Not saying people should have it or not, just asking if anyone has it, and if they have seen benefit from it, or not.

Honestly, I've been playing around with my spec some and kind of forget to spec into it again...oops. Probably move the point from ISS over to there.

On another note, I'm dual speccing into two different MM specs. What do you think is worth more-

Option A) Dual Spec into a 16/55/0 spec to drop Imp. Tracking for bosses that are untrackable

Option B) Dual Spec 7/54/10 and pick up Hawk Eye for those bosses that it would help on (particularly Yogg P1)

Am I right in saying that there are only 2 possible reasons for speccing MM - "I don't care about max DPS and I like this spec better" and "our raid has no blood DKs or enh shamans but it does have a lot of melee"?
In the first case, if you just said you don't care about DPS then why would you try to min/max?

In the second case, wouldn't going for dualspec survival/marks be better than trying to have 2 marks specs?

Am I right in saying that there are only 2 possible reasons for you posting that comment - "I'm a SV hunter who wants to talk down to other players" and "I don't understand this class well enough to see the value of MM in many of the Ulduar fights"?

On many fights in Ulduar, MM simply does better. We have more instant casts and can therefore do more DPS when moving to runes in Iron Council, dodging clouds on Yogg, etc. We also are not required to spec into IT to move down our tree so we don't automatically waste 5 talent points on half the fights in Ulduar.

I get out DPSd by SV on some fights. I out DPS SV on others. Both specs provide significant raid buffs. I mean, why not say "Our raid has Ret Pallys and Shadow Priests for replenishment, why should we bring a SV hunter?"

Yes, I prefer MM v SV in their current forms. But both are viable specs and SV does not always do "max DPS" as you put it. Please refer all further insults of the spec to somewhere other than a thread dedicated to it.

Thank you

The first reason, though it would probably piss off your fellow raiders, is still valid. The dropoff from going from SV to Marks is very slight during the chaos of a fight, and I've found both specs to be generally equivalent.

There are definitley more than those two snarky reasons to spec Marks.

On a perfect fight where I can stand still or only move around slightly, SV does more damage. Slightly.

On a fight where I need to move around a lot, having the extra instant shots of a Marks build, Marks does better. Slightly.

On a long fight I've found it easier to maintain Mana as marks. Throwing up Viper Sting and hitting with Chimera shot for a few cycles is better than having to switch back and forth between Dragonhawk and Viper auras between lock and load procs. So for long fights, for me, Marks does more damage. Slightly.

On a fight with a lot of AOE like Freya or Thorim, Marks is definitely better, and in the end does more damage. More than slightly.

There are many many more reasons to spec Marks than those two you listed.

Ideally, you're right, it's best to dual spec Marks and Surv at least as they're currently "balanced" on live servers, and swap between them for max dps in raid. With all the opportunities for pets to die in Ulduar I can't see how BM could compete with either Marks or Survival.

Honestly, I'm performing better as MM than I am as SV across the board in Ulduar at the moment. Especially with the new Piercing Shots and other MM tweaks. Mana's still an issue at times though. I could very well just be a terrible SV hunter, but the fluidity of the MM rotation is currently working best for me.

So back to actual discussion of MM-

Currently I'm using Glyph of Steady Shot, Serpent Sting, and Chimera. I used Killshot for a little while but, with haste effect up time being so high, my SS is at or below the GCD most of the fight, increasing Glyph of Steady Shot's Value. I also find a significant portion of mobs die before I have the chance to get off a second Kill Shot (even with the Glyph). The only change I could see myself making would be to swap out Steady Shot Glyph with Glyph of IAotH. But I would only do that if the current level of haste it provided without the glyph didn't get my Steady Shot to the GCD (which is a legitimate concern as I switch out individual pieces of gear as I get them in Ulduar (My guild has three raiding hunters, it takes a few runs to gear up :P)

Any comments on MM Glyphing now that we've had some real (i.e. non spreadsheet) testing on Live?

well, now that I have 1 alt at 80 and another at 79, I very rarely do much on my hunter outside of Ulduar, so this may not relate to every one.

Since I feel that Ulduar requires fluid movement, and more instants, I have not taken up any steady related talents and glyphs. So in my case I have been raiding with Chimera, Sting and aimed. Kill shot is, in my opinion, a raid encounter boss glyph, which btw I still do not have, but intent to.

I started out with the hawk glyph, and dropped it for the same reason as steady, most encounters require a lot of movement, or timely movement, taking away some of the glyph (and the talent's effectiveness).

@Drash: I was having the same mana issues, and leveled up a wind serpent to 80 for boss encounters where viper sting is not an option, and found my dps to be better than going viper with the wolf. I can not get over how call stable is an awesome skill (also have a wasp for when a druid is not around)

I have a question in relation to chimera and serpent sting. I know how you can not roll over the attack power from when you shoot the sting itself, but will chimera "up" the sting if your atk pwr increases due to procs and buffs?

Only the first part of Chimera Shot is affected by Piercing Shots. As such the 2T8 set bonus 'only' affects the Serpent Sting ticks and the second part of Chimera Shot, which still makes it an excellent set bonus for MM hunters.

So if we're firing less steady shots overall, is the 4p bonus going to be worth it in the long run if better gear is available?

How's Chimera Shot affected by Piercing Shots at all? I thought it was the other way around, well at least in the case when the bleed effect is triggered by CS.

I've tried searching but I haven't had much luck with this question. So I'll ask it here.

If there are two hunters who are spec'd MM, and both have Marked For Death. Will the hunter who has Hunter's Mark on the target be the only one whom benefits from Marked For Death?

I've been looking at some WWS reports between myself and another guild hunter and while I seem to hit harder on non-crit attacks. He seems to be the one on the other hand who hits harder on some shots when he crits. He is also the one who keeps Hunter's Mark up.

For example.

Marked For Death Shots

Arcane Shot
Guild Hunter Hit: 2,985 Crit: 9,237
Me Hit: 3,195 Crit: 9,262

Kill Shot
Guild Hunter Hit: 7,761 Crit: 23,635
Me Hit: 8,429 Crit: 21,979

Steady Shot
Guild Hunter Hit: 1,688 Crit: 5,097
Me Hit: 1,720 Crit: 5,348

Chimera Shot
Guild Hunter Hit: 4,291 Crit: 13,430
Me Hit: 4,318 Crit: 13,623

Non Marked For Death Shots


Auto Shot
Guild Hunter Hit: 2,080 Crit: 7,910
Me Hit: 2,995 Crit: 8,389

Chimera Shot - Serpent
Guild Hunter Hit: 2,971 Crit: 23,635
Me Hit: 8,429 Crit: 21,979


Wild Quiver
Guild Hunter Hit: 2,961 Crit: 7,208
Me Hit: 2,667 Crit: 7,061

are you guys identical in every way? same race, same gear, same gems, same talents?

Same spec, I have better gear.