What you need to keep in mind is that the best possible dps spreadsheet is just that: best possible dps. that means hunters operating under ideal situations could attain those levels of DPS. In other words, stationary hunters. Ulduar is primarily mobile fights, which would not favor the steady shot heavy rotation in that ArP build. ArP is a lot sexier than most hunters have given it credit for, but it's highly reliant on steady shot.

I just joined a new guild and want to have the best possible dps. I have to change my boot enchants but im looking for some constructive well found critiquing of my character. Most importantly i have to keep trushot aura in my talent build and dont have the mana regain for silent shot macros. Also im curious as to whether i can improve my glyph selection. I have read this forum from front to back several times. Please feel free to hack and bash my hunter and whip him into shape. All your responses are appreciated.

A few quick suggestions.

As both MM and surv, you're going to get better returns from agility, so you're better off gemming your helm with the 27agility as opposed to the 54 AP. A few of your enchants are off-- gloves, theres a hit or agi echant that would be better for you, and your shoulder inscription will be better replaced with the Sons of Hodir one. Also, you're 1% below hit cap. I don't see focused aim in either of your specs, so you need to fix that either with talents or with gems.

Hey guys, first time poster. I had a question regarding piercing shots, is it ok to let if fall off because sometime I find myself having unlucky crit streaks, or lack there of, and piercing shots falls off. If that was normal, or should you mostly try and weave in arcane at the point where piercing refreshes itself. Maybe it doesn't even matter either way, just wondering what your guy's thoughts on that is.

Interesting I haven't tought of this myself, though, due to RNG, I don't think this is possible in any way.

You would have to rely on crits too much. Generally I consider piercing shots to be a nice "extra" so to speak.

You get no extra damage by keeping Piercing Shots "rolling", it just resets the timer using the remaining damage from the previous application added in to the new one. If you do keep it rolling for a long time, the tics will continually get higher as the damage keeps getting added in; but it's not giving you a damage bonus if it doesn't fall off.

Your argument is just plain wrong. The Piercing Shots Debuff doesn't stack higher this way. When you land another crit the remaining damage is evenly distributed over the next 8s and added to the Piercing Shots damage of the new crit.
Just to take your example:

at 0s: CS hits for 8k: 8000*0.3=2400 => 2400/8s = 300DPS
PS tick: 300DPS
at 2s: AiS hits for 6k: 6000*0.3=1800 => 1800/8s = 225DPS
PS tick: 225DPS + ((2400-2*300)/8s) = 450DPS
at 9s: SS hits for 4k; 4000*0.3=1200 => 1200/8s = 150DPS
Ps tick: 150DPS + ((1800+1800-7*450)/8s) = 206.25DPS

For comparison:
PS ticks: 300-300-450-450-450-450-450-450-450-206.25-206.25-206.25-206.25-206.25-206.25-206.25-206.25
It will add up to: 2400+1800+1200=5400 damage.

You don't gain any additional damage by overlapping PS.

May be the way I present the thing is wrong, and i didn't meant that you gain additionnal damage overlapping PS.

at 9 sec the way I present the thing, you'll have 375 DPS ticking on PS, but whatever if it is not so at the end of the fight, the 30% of Crit damage will be done by PS, on every crit. I don't really care the distribution. What I was saying is that it is waste to have PS, and not being able to keep it up the whole fight on the boss. That Means Damage loss (30% of a missing crit).
PS is an important Part of MM Hunter Scaling.

The way piercing shots work is that every crit is independent. It's not needed to 'keep' it up. The talent just boosts the damage of crits by 30%, irrespective of whether the previous crit was 1 second ago or 1 minute ago.

No damage is lost when you crit again, no damage is lost when you don't crit and the bleed effect finishes.

@Fenrisette: Plus, with the movement involved in many ulduar fights limiting steady shots at times and RNG resulting in a non-crit sting, it is possible to have PS fall off the target, but as others have stated, there is no penalty for that.

For instance, if you have a 50% crit rate over a fight, it makes little difference whether the crits were evenly distributed during the fight and kept PS rolling or whether they were bunched and PS dropped off during non-crit periods. The only difference is how much PS is still rolling on the target and is lost when it dies, but then the target is dead and it really doesn't matter.

A gross simplification of Piercing Shots is that it's bonus crit damage for Chimera, Aimed, and Steady. The difference is that it's a bonus on top of a bonus, and it's a bleed effect over 8sec.

And as others have said, there's no benefit/disadvantage to letting it fall off. Each proc of the effect is independent of other procs, it's just calculated the way it is so that we don't lose damage by overwriting it. The DoT doesn't just stack indefinitely so long as you keep the DoT refreshed. The damage caps rather quickly (within 6 crits, i believe)

Perhaps I'm not understanding you correctly, but are you asking if there is a point when your crit rate drops so low that Piercing Shots is no longer worth the points? I'm sure there is, even without doing the math. However, that point would be so low that it would never, ever be an issue unless you were literally naked and unbuffed.

I think Fen's original point in response to...

...is that the OP needs to increase his/her crit.

If you look at the OP's armory, you will see that the hunter has over 37% crit unbuffed. Although it can be improved a little, that is more than sufficient at this point and is actually more than Fen's 36.65%.

Our points are:

- That there are actual reasons for PS to fall off other than not having enough crit rate. It is the nature of RNG and movement heavy fights. For example, assuming a buffed 50% crit rate, even during a perfect standstill ideal DPS case, you can only do 5 specials during the 8s before PS expires. If all 5 are Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, or Steady Shot, you still have a 3.125% chance that you will not get another crit over that time. What is more likely is that one of those 5 shots is an Arcane Shot, meaning that with only 4 PS proc attempts, there is a 6.25% chance that PS will drop off. Now add in the movement/stun/interrupt element with missed special opportunities, and there is even a greater chance that PS drops off.

- If it falls off, there really is no penalty. There is no reason to go out of your way to try to keep it on the target.

Telling someone who already has over 37% crit that they need to add more crit because their PS is falling off once in a while is just bad advice. Crit is worth less than Agi and AP. As such, he would be better served to add more AP than crit so that everytime he crits at his current crit rate he does more damage from the crit (including the PS effect). And even better than that would be to add agi for more of both crit and AP.

I do not see why there is a discussion about this talent, as there is no point in discussing it. PS is more of an "icing on the cake" rather than the cake itself. It is "bonus" damage, which you need more change your playstyle/itemization in order to maximize.

That 30% damage as a DoT is no different than the talent Mortal Shots, which also increases Crit damage by 30% (except if you have both of them, they stack, multiplicatively). The only difference is that instead of that damage being added to the shot directly, it is indirectly added as a DoT.

Having low crit will not make PS bad.
Having high crit will not make PS better.

After all, whats the point of having high crit chance at the sacrifice of AP and ArPen? Youd crit a lot, at small numbers.
Having a lot of ArPen and AP with low crit means you will crit at a lesser chance, but you will see bigger numbers.

I understand the points raised and agree with your two bullet points (very nice analysis on the first bullet point). I am not sure I agree with your comment that its bad advice to recommend that someone with 37% crit add more. According to the spreadsheet (using my gear profile as an example) one addtional point of Crit equals a gain of 1.134 dps while adding one point of AP only nets a gain of 0.627 dps. Agility is still king with one point adding 1.427 dps.

Edit: Adding caveat that stacking one stat to the exclusion of all others is typically not recommended and I am not recommending crit stacking.
Edit2: Thanks to Galushi for pointing out the flaw in my reasoning.

I checked out the spreadsheet again, and noticed that if I had Glyph of Trueshot aura (with serpent sting and kill shot) actually provided 6972.67 dps while the Glyph of Chimera shot only gave 6895.96 dps. Can anyone confirm that Trueshot aura glyph is better than chimera shot glyph?

The value of the Glyph of Chimera Shot compared to Glyph of Aimed Shot is wholly dependant on your personal variables such as latency and your current gear stats. For example, if you have a lot of Armor Penetration the value of Aimed Shot increases and if you're lacking enough Haste to get 1.5second Steady Shots, the value of the Glyph of Chimera Shot decreases. That said, while the spreadsheet is ultimately the best tool we can use for theorycrafting, I'ld suggest actually trying out both glyphs in game. Not to determine whether you did more dps using one over another since it would be RNG dependant, but rather to determine your shot frequency of each and to see whether or not you end up delaying either of the shots and actually "wasting" your glyph.

One thing worth considering about Glyph of Trueshot Aura compared to Glyph of Chimera Shot and Glyph of Aimed Shot is the mana gain: you cast less amount of special shots in the same time frame as opposed to using one of the other two glyphs.

You're not gaining anything, you're simply using mana at a comparatively lower rate.

I may have missed this while reading, but what is a better personal dps increase while 25m raid buffed? Unglyphed Imp. hunters mark or Imp. arcane shot?

You should have both.