Weered

Hey guys, quick question for you.

I do a Chimera, aimed, arcane 3xsteadies rotation.
When I get low on mana, I switch to AotV for the 3 steadies, then back to Dragonhawk for the 3 biggies. My regain mana rotation is then Chimera, aimed, arcane, AotV, 3 x steadies switch back to dragon hawk.

My logic is to get them most bang for your buck on the 3 big shots and use the 3 steadies to regen. It seems to work fairly well but I want to know a) Is this dumb?!! b) anyone else do this

 

bomzix

My technique is to make sure 1 pally has JoW on the Skull. Don't really believe MM can work without external mana sources.

 

DonTe

yes, i do that as well, though i dont have a set in stone rotation so its more dynamic than your rotation.
it looks something like arcane, viper steady, hawk chimera, viper steady, steady, hawk aimed, etc.

aspects are on their own GCD so this is possible to not screw up your rotation. for convenience, i have my mouse keys binded to viper/hawk (with shift mouse button oh shit aspect of the wilds. helps IMMENSELY with chain lightnings. and FALCON PUNCHHHHH).

 

zápdos

On fights where it is possible, you can go from 2k - 12k mana in a matter of 5 seconds but switching to aspect of the viper, then shoot a viper sting and a chimera shot straight after. On council hard mode, i found this the quickest way to get to full mana on the 2nd add. Of course this all depends on the mobs maximum mana, but the option is there

 

Whitemane

I don't use aimed and chimera shot in my aotv rotation, when they're up I switch out and fire them then back in. And yes, JoW is extremely important for MM hunters.

 

Shadowzuka

If there is a mana bar on the boss, or if I can use it on the adds, I'll use viper sting and let chimera refresh it once. Generally that can keep me going for some time, especially now that I run with a dragonhawk for that extra mana regen.

 

Argg0

Chimera, Aimed, Arcane is a bad rotation, as you'll always be delaying your arcane by 3s on every rotation. Prioritize Arcane over Aimed and you'll see a DPS boost.

Anyway, constantly changing Aspects is the way to go, as it's better to lose 50% of a SS damage than of a CS damage.

 

Anindor

I believe it's better to just stay in Viper and build up mana as fast as possible. The more you switch in and out, the longer you will be spending in mana regen phase overall. If the boss has a mana bar, it's probably even better to put up a Viper Sting as well as losing 8 secs of SrS isn't going to make or break your DPS in a 6min fight but it will add a lot of mana to your pool.

Best case for viper is just to get in, get out, get on with the fight. The longer that you can stay at max DPS the better. Switching out will just hinder your DPS for a longer period of time.

 

• CureFC

Both parts of Chimera (the 125% weapon damage and the serpent "bloom") are nature. Double checked it tonight just in case I was crazy. Spell pen will still not mitigate the level based partial resists that bosses get, and is a worthless stat for PvE.

 

DonTe

I dont understand your logic here. You say we will be spending more time overall in the mana regen phase if we switch Aspects quickly. Thats true, but its only by a small margin (a couple GCDs at most). But you do realize that by switching aspects, we spend more time in DPS phase? Full damage chimera shots > Half damage chimera shots. Or, if you opt to just steady spam during viper, then "steady spam til shots are off CD, hawk and shoot Shots, viper" > steady spams in terms of damage per mana per second.



And for the record, using your Chimera to refresh one Viper Sting > Viper Stinging twice.
Why? Cuz you dont have to waste mana on unnecessarily casting Viper or Serpent Sting.

Check this rotation: Chimera Serpent, Viper 8 sec, Serpent, Chimera Serpent, Viper

I underlined the mana waste in that rotation. Sure, this will do more damage, but at the cost of way too much mana (2 stings = quite a bit of mana). Besides, you are Viper Stinging because you are mana-starved. Why waste more mana?
You achieve better results if you:

Chimera Serpent, shoot 1 GCD to stall (2 if unglyphed for Chimera Shot), Viper Sting, shoot 5 GCDs, Chimera Viper.

The reason you stall 1GCD is so that Chimera Shot is perfectly cooled down at the same time you should get refresh Viper Sting for maximum uptime.

You only lose 2-5k dmg when you Chim Viper instead of Chim Serpent. Also, after you Chim Viper to refresh Viper sting, you will find that the cooldown of Viper Sting will be back up as soon as the sting wears off! This could yield you a 100% uptime on Viper Sting if done correctly! Also a reason why I like the Chimera Shot glyph =]

 

Anindor

I never meant to imply that I would be casting Viper Sting twice. If you need the mana, by all means refresh the sting with Chimera (which will also grant you extra mana from the shot). In this case, I still say that you should stay in viper when casting that Chimera shot used to refresh Viper Sting. Even though it is 50% damage, the damage of that shot contributes to your mana regen in AotV. More mana=ending mana regen phase faster and getting back to full time pew pew.

 

Whitemane

Actually, most people should prioritize Aimed over Arcane now. With 3/3 Barrage it's a definite win for Aimed, on average it hits at least as hard and it triggers piercing shots on crits.

 

Anindor

The problem is that going Chimera>Aimed>Arcane delays Arcane shot by at least 2 GCDs every rotation. If you shoot Chimera>Arcane>Aimed your rotation takes more concentration and the shots don't hit in the same order every time but you maximize the amount of specials you are shooting vs Steady Shots.

 

Diamedes

What about glyphing Aimed Shot for -2 sec on the cooldown? Ive been thinking a lot about this lately but with the price of killshot(what I would probably replace) I don't want to be wrong.

 

Kisai

I Had the same doubt a while ago, and doing some math, kill shot glyph is still better than aimed glyph, you should take into account all the factors that changing this glyphs have, after all, its not only the add of some aimed at the cost of steadys (which is an improvement), this glyph will cause you to use more mana per sec, will reduce the number of improved steady shot effects, and also reduce the number off kill shots per fight, (this last one is the real loss, but the other two factors must also be considered).

 

Anindor

Aimed Shot Glyph isn't really a bad Glyph it's just not nearly as good as the other alternatives. Namely, Serpent, Kill Shot, and Chimera.

 

Whitemane

Where do you get this from? In either case, I can fairly safely say that it's wrong. I just ran the shot rotation in the spreadsheet and over 5.000 shots putting Aimed in front of Arcane gives around 50 extra specials. Also, it equals more damage according to the spreadsheet.

In general though, I don't get your reasoning and much of what you said went totally over my head. Aimed does more damage than Arcane, thus you shoot it first.

 

Bainik

Basically your rotation can be one of two things. If you prioritize aimed shot it looks like this:
CS>AiS>ArS>SS>SS>SS repeat.
Or if you prioritize arcane shot it looks like this:
CS>ArS>AiS>SS>SS>ArS>CS>SS>AiS>ArS>SS>SS repeat.
the second is obviously longer but yields more specials as you don't delay your shots as much as you would prioritizing aimed shot. Of course if you glyph for chimera shot neither of these works out and it is correct to prioritize aimed shot.

 

Chopshot

Glyphing Chimera, Aimed, and Serpent Sting, the best rotation is:

Chi, Arc, Aim, Ste, Ste, Arc, Chi, Ste, Aim, Arc, Ste, Ste

You MUST keep Chimera, X, Aimed, X, X, X throughout the entire encounter and even into the Kill Shot zone.
KS and Arcane will float around in the X spots along with steady shot and never run into chimera or aimed...obviously KS>Arcane>steady in the "offbeats"

People assume KS glyph will allow you 2 "extra" kill shots in place of steady shots every 45s, but that's not the case.

Using chimera, SrS, KS glyphs, during the KS zone you fall into
KS, Chim, Aim, Arc, Ste, Ste
KS, Chim, Arc, Aim, Ste, Ste
KS, Chim, Arc, Ste, Aim, Ste
KS, Chim, Arc, Ste, Ste, Aim
Repeat
KS actually pushes an arcane and aimed out of the rotation not the steadies.

People also forget that the second readiness SHOULD be saved for KS, Chim, READINESS, KS, Chim, Rapid fire, etc which pushes the time needed for KS glyph to gain on aimed back even farther

Using chimXaimXXX and proper readiness, my numbers come up better with the Aimed shot glyph

I've also found ISS to be complete garbage and I'm going to play around in 11/53/7 (nice to not get 2shot by mim's head) or 7/57/7 with silencing and FA when needed...there's no way points are going in ISS ever.

If each steady shot's proc gave it's full estimated 2.25% to some following special and you could count on spamming steadies in all the rotation holes where they belong, it still works out to 0.7% increase to arcane, chimera(first part only) and aimed per point in ISS.

Even if the talent simply read "0.7% increase to arcane, aimed and chimera shot damage per point" it would be a tough sell. Specing out of TSA is not in the best interest of the raid/group and anywhere ArP can be put in place of hit in your gear justifies points in FA over ISS.

My advice is 7/57/7 with no ISS and keep chimXaimXXX up the whole fight with chim, srs, aim glyphs.

 

Anindor

Would you mind linking the spec you're referring to? If you're trying to give speccing advice it helps to see what the spec you suggest is.

 

Chopshot

i suppose 11/57/7

maybe some kinda 7/57/7

you can obviously move points from RR or Sil to FA if you can justify it gearwise...i'm just saying i don't see ISS winning out over FA, Sil, RR or the 4 points it takes to get Aspect Mastery. It's really that bad imo.

 

DonTe

@Anindor: The second half of my previous post (following "For the record") was not directed at you. Sorry if I made it sound that way. =]

@Chopshot: Personally, pushing an Aimed or an Arcane out of the rotation is fine by me, because it is replaced with an even stronger shot - Kill Shot.
I agree that ISS is a POS talent. Parsing my WWS, I get a maximum of 15 procs in a 5 minute fight. Some many fights, I get <3 procs. Terrible talent which is better placed into anything else.

 

Anindor

Even though ISS sucks, I'm still not convinced that the points are better spent in Imp. Barrage.

 

Chopshot

unless your rotation blows, you aren't firing more then 3 steady shots per aimed shot

Now *IF* you could get that maximum expected value from ISS from each steady shot, that would work out to 6.75% increase to some special shot for every aimed shot you get off. If i told you there was a way to make that 6.75% ALWAYS apply to your aimed shot...and that you could double it some miraculous way....you'd be all over it....

there is my friend...it's Imp. Barrage.

 

Esoth

It depends on gear. With little to no ArP, the spreadsheet is going to put arcane ahead of aimed. Later into Ulduar aimed will most likely take over, at least as far as I can see.