well, proper testing would have to be done. You guys would have to hang close to each other to make sure all buffs are being shared, and compile a sizable amount of data.

Quick question, why is he the one that does the mark? Is his improved?

Almost forgot, both with wolves?

Tested with a 11-12 dmg XBow.
SS spam with AotV active, no procs, trinkets, other randombuffs
Mortal Shots and Marked for Death both 5/5 and 3% critmeta
Results of 11 SS:
MaxHit: 399
MaxCrit: 990

From working on SimulationCraft I know WoW's weird way of putting all multipliers together
BaseDamage: 1.0
DefaultCritBonus: 1.0 (all casters have 0.5)
CritBonusMultiplier: 1.4 (30% MS, 10% MfD)
CritMultiplier: 1.03 (metagem)

And the multiplier is derived the following way:
BaseDamage + ( ( BaseDamage + DefaultCritBonus ) * CritMultiplier - BaseDamage ) * CritBonusMultiplier
1 + ( ( 1 + 1 ) * 1.03 - 1 ) * 1.4 = 2.484
399 * 2.484 = 991


W/o MfD
1 + ( ( 1 + 1 ) * 1.03 - 1 ) * 1.4 = 2.378
399 * 2.378 = 948


The "critical strike damage bonus"-part of MfD is a passive and always active.
Test was done without Hunter's Mark on Target Dummies.

With Hunter's Mark
SS MaxHit: 435
SS MaxCrit: 1080
435 * 2.484 = 1080

Ankah : I was using a wolf, he was using a dragonhawk. No reason with regards to the who did the mark. It's just I am normally survival and so I am in the habit of letting him keep hunter's mark up.

Starfox: Hmm, interesting. Any ideas on why someone with more AP, and more crit, should average out at less damage on critical strikes, but do average out on more damage on non crits?

Edit a copy of the log file.

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish

Without knowing all the details it's not really practical to compare yourself with your anonymous guildmate.

That said, differences are probably related to RNG and proc timings.

Trinkets (Greatness procs, use trinket timings, FotFF uptime/buildup), Wolf AP boost, Sanctity Aura uptime, etc. are the most likely causes for differences.

Your buddy may also have been luckier with crits during shattering throw uptime.

Also, if either of you has ISS it might skew numbers a bit on the shots effected.

So why are some of you choosing Serpent sting glyph...Doesn't it only increase the sting by 6 sec.? Chimera shot refreshes stings so seems like a wasted glyph. Unless it does more damage overall for being 21 seconds, and that in-turn affects the chimera DoT.

Buy two [Light Crossbow], unequip every procc trinkets etc., that makes you shots have like an 5-12 wide ranged in damage, easy to compare crits to hits this way

I'm running Chimera, Steady, and Serpent right now. I haven't seen Kill Shot glyph up yet on my AH. My plan is to replace Steady with Kill Shot and run with it. I do have Aimed sitting in the bank, though, so I'm curious whether it's worth it to use it in the meantime over Steady.

What are the rest of you using?

Like Anindor was wondering, i also have the question of is the 4pc going to be a bigger boost to MM dps than SV.
If anybody has the info on the proc rate than it would be much appriciated.

Yes sorry, this is what i meant ><

In other words: first part of Chimera will trigger a bleed effect, the second part of Chimera doesnt; as such the 2t8 bonus has no effect on Piercing Shots bleeds.

And in reply to Cryptochrono: serpent sting glyph is a must, the most obvious reason being 2 extra ticks which means +40% damage done by the sting and as a result +40% more damage on the second part of Chimera. Is this 40% extra damage on a secondary shot alot? An average breakdown of my single target dps looks something like this:

Auto Shot 25%
Steady Shot 15%
Chimera Shot 10%
Chimera Shot - Serpent Sting 8-10% (so this is 140% of the damage you would have done without the glyph)
Aimed Shot, Serpent Sting ticks, Piercing Shot ticks, Arcane Shot, Kill Shot and Wild Quiver shots cover the rest, but all lower %.

A second reason to have the SrS glyph as a MM hunter (though be it a minor reason); if you are not hit capped, you can 'afford' to miss one Chimera Shot since your second Chimera Shot will refresh the Serpent Sting in time. Without the SrS glyph, missing a Chimera would result in Serpent Sting dropping so you would need to refresh it.
Or in fights with a lot of movement or where you are obstructed in any way to hit the boss/target (Kologarn grapped in right arm, Ignis slag pot, Yogg Saron constrictor tentacles, etc), having a 21 second SrS gives more freedom and time in reaching the boss compared to a 15 second SrS.
But like i said, it's a minor reason for taking the glyph.

I have no numbers to back this up but I'm at the moment i've got steady shot, TSA and SrS. I'm going to swap out SS for Chimera and I'm keeping TSA for the time being as 1) I do mainly 10 man raids with no other +10% buffs and 2) I reckon Blizzard will TSA being overwritten and therefore making it desirable again.

What should I be gemming as MM, the most logical would be ap since we always have our aura to boost the gem with 10% but in 25man raid is agil gems equal or better ?

I just finished an ulduar raid and had to play with my second specc which is MM. I am normally playing SV and my DMG seemed rather low. As i am not very experienced with that specc as of yet i would like to here from one of you what i could to improve my DMG. I doubt this is the last time i've to play that specc due to absence of our other 10% ap buff classes.

Parse: http://wowwebstats.com/iy66io2lwsua5

Any suggestions of what to do better is more than welcome, thanks in advance and sorry for my english, it's not my mother tongue.

This will be a bit tricky since it's german, but I will give it a go.

First off, your dps looks pretty good for the encounters as a whole, although the numbers are being buffed up by volley, which makes most analysis difficult. As a MM hunter you have more instants to chose from, and it takes time to get used to it. Give it another try or two, and you will be in the habit of shooting on the run at all times, and so forth. Did you have major mana issues? I would have, I think. So that could be 1 issue.

What jumped at me was your pet dps. Seems low for a wolf.

It doesn't look like you fired off enough kill shots, those would help quite a bit.

All in all it looks ok to me in general, and even better when taking in consideration you are new at it. Once you get used to being active on the run (maybe you already are, making an assumption that happens when players change over), it will go up.

By the way, that fire lock is no joke.

I've seen a lot of people going with 7/x/7 specs...


I haven't seen many using something like mine (11/53/7) - here it is:


Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'm not saying its the optimal dps spec or anything but it seems to be doing pretty well for me - I hit 6k on iron counsel the other night.

In general though I haven't seen a lot of people putting MM specs out there. I honestly feel like its a great dps spec right now, and am surprised there is not more discussion around optimizing it.

Maybe there are more threads I haven't seen or something. Anyway - Open for discussion or tips on my spec, and would love to hear some other peoples thoughts on different ones.

At Naxx gear levels, the bonus from Aspect Mastery was still a decent (if not epic) buff. Many specs used those figures at the time. I think the idea is that as we progress into Ulduar, Aspect Mastery does not scale with our new gear. It is a static buff so people are speccing into other talents that scale as we get better gear. If you are going to add more points into UF in the BM tree, it is still a viable possibility. Barring that, you're wasting to many points just to get down that far in the tree.

I'm currently using the same spec, I found it to be higher damage at the moment than a 7/57/7 spec and I've picked up 4-5 upgrades from Ulduar :s especially on fights were pets die.

Nice DPS.

I see you spec FA and then gem for Agility rather than gemming for hit and using talents in more Imp. barrage or GftT. Is this ideal? I gem for hit at the moment but if it's better the other way around I could change that quite easily.

Is this the highest anyone has seen for an MM using WWS? I'd be quite eager to check out the top one and see if they are using FA or Gearing for hit as well as which Glyphs to use.

Actually i am normally SV so this is why i use AGI gems. I have Grim Batol and with that i don't have to use FA but i liked it better to use mirror so my crit rating isn't 37%ish, that's all to it. Don't know if that really changed but with 1/2 GftT and a Crit rate of 35% or higher 1 point is enough that your pet does not starve on focus. Oh and my DPS are bad. There are probably many people with less gear who do better than i do. I feel so bad when i play MM, don't really know why but it's the case.

I'm fairly new to MM, 2nd week of playing, but I can't find any 7/57/7 that spreadsheets out to more dps with my gear, which is pretty close to BiS pre-Ulduar, than a 14/52/5 build. And its been beat to death, but that 2nd point in GffT always seems to help my overall dps, even at 50% crit, raid buffed, The spreadsheet also shows it as a slight dps upgrade from Imp Barrage.

With the 87c version of the spreadsheet if you go from "Best DPS MM 7/57/7", which shows 6713 dps, to a 14/52/5 build, there is a dps increase to 6840 dps. Moving a point from Imp Barr, to 2/2 GffT increases that to 6850 dps.

Is there something I'm missing here? A 100dps+ increase from the "best" spec seems fairly substantial.

And a 2nd question, is there a typical % of damage that I should be doing from each shot? I know with Surv. Hunter it should be something like 35% Exp Shot, 22% Auto Shot, 12% Steady Shot. Is there something similar for MM?

I know it's just anecdotal, but I really seem to have been noticing my pet focus starved recently. Pre-3.1 it would always be near full. I know that some streaks of non-crits can quickly focus starve it, but I've kept noticing my pet focus starved which makes me believe that there may be some changes in what procs GftT. Has anyone else noticed focus starvation or is it just me being "Onyxia deep breaths more" ?

And you're correct with your spec Aker, I do seem to get 110 DPS more out of a 15/51/5 spec going from a 7/57/7'ish spec

Your spec will rely heavily on how you've chosen to gear your character. If the spreadsheet is saying that a 14/52/5 build does better, by all means, try it out; but be wary. The spreadsheet models patchwerk type situations. ideal circumstances. Ulduar is almost NEVER "ideal circumstances". With lots of switching targets your pet ends up doing a lot of running around (which means less time DPSing). Any talents that buff your instants gains a little more value when you know the fight is going to require you to move. Hunters have tended to theorycraft from within this box of ideal circumstances created by the spreadsheet (which is still an amazing tool btw); but we need to take other things into account.

Right, i made a comment regarding shot ratio for MM earlier on this page, but reading it again i was a bit off i think. In my experience, the average numbers look something like this:

Auto Shot 23-25%
Arcane Shot 12%
Steady Shot 10%
Chimera Shot 10%
Chimera Shot - Serpent Sting 8%
Piercing Shots 7%
Aimed Shot 5%
Wild Quiver 4-5%
Serpent Sting 5%
Kill Shot 4%

I may be a bit off with the numbers, but in general the numbers look like this (I did a VoA earlier today, and Recount showed me these numbers on Archavon. Emalon was a different story, with target switching and not having Hunters Mark on the adds when enraged). I do not have Barrage and Imp Barrage in my spec, so could explain the low damage of Aimed Shot, but even with those talents it would not go above 8% i think. Auto Shot obviously is our number 1 shot, i dont think any MM hunter has different results regarding that.

A way to look at it is to add up Chimera Shot, Chimera Shot-SrS, and SrS (since its only one gcd at the start) so that it adds up to about 23% damage done by Chimera Shot.
Same deal for Auto Shot + Wild Quiver being somewhere between 25 and 30%.
Piercing Shot ticks are caused by Chimera, Steady and Aimed ofcourse, and even though i haven't done the exact math, i believe the largest part of Piercing Shots damage is caused by Chimera, followed by Steady Shot, and finally Aimed (but i could be off here).

One reason why my numbers may differ a bit from other people (and from myself on other fights) is Improved Steady Shot talent. I have 3/3 ISS which adds a bit of RNG into the mix ofcourse.

Ow and current glyphs are Serpent Sting, Chimera Shot, and Hawk.