As others have stated, most MM builds post-3.1.3 have both.

However, to specifically address your question, the answer is it depends.

It depends on your gearing, buffs, play style, etc. IHM is a fixed 150 AP buff to all shots on your marked target but provides no benefit to shots on unmarked targets. IAS is a damage boost to all of your Arcane Shots and scales with increases in your AP and crit rate.

One good way to determine which is better is to use the spreadsheet with keeping in mind that not every target you attack is marked, but that most boss fight targets should be since you are usually focus attacking (although exceptions exist). Also keep in mind other real-play factors that are not modeled in the spreadsheet.

For may character and raid buffs, here is the DPS gain of each of those abilities as well as some other abilities that compete with it for talent points:

IHM: 79
IAS: 90
Barrage: 53 (also provides large boost to AoE DPS)
IB: 52 (also boosts AoE DPS some)
ISS: 61 (lessened whenever you miss casting a Steady Shot in your rotation)

As you can see, IAS is the better personal talent over IHM as long as I am consistently using the shot (6.6 s frequency per spreadsheet). However, IHM is better for raid DPS if there are other hunters in the raid.

I am being told by my raid leader that Fury of the Five Flights and Darkmoon Card: Greatness are better for me than Mirror of Truth and Loatheb's Shadow. He is a survival hunter, but I am Marksmanship, so I'm not sure if that's true or not. If I dropped MoT and Loatheb's Shadow, I would lose nearly 4% crit. Obviously I am looking to get the Wrathstone from Ulduar, but what are *really* the best trinkets for a Marksmanship hunter.

Does the spreadsheet take into account of TSA being overwritten by shammies/DK AP buff, we almost always raid with 1 or the other.

As to trinkets DMC-G is awsome and i wont be replacing it any time soon, FFF is also very good but it depends on the fight, where there is a lot of movement that increases the chance oif it dropping off then i normally do replace it with MoT (I'm kinda lazy and perf on-proc trinkets)

The Greatness deck is one of the best trinkets we can get, regardless of spec. For me, the spreadsheet shows Mirror is a bit better than the other trinkets you listed, but you'll want to run the numbers yourself. After all, we don't know your raid makeup, among other things.

Two questions:

Which glyphs are the best choice right now?
Currently I'm rolling with Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot and Serpent Sting. They allow me to have a clean 9 second rotation with all Improved Steady Shot procs being consumed by Chimera Shot. When running the spreadsheet with the glyphs used in the "Best possible DPS"-thread my DPS goes down by 200, which confuses me. Perhaps this is because I don't possess the Mjolnir Runestone (it doesn't like to drop...) and only have 375 ArP-rating?


Which leads me to my second question:

Is speccing for Hunter's Mark a personal DPS boost when being the only Hunter in the raid or having no other Hunter applying improved Hunter's Mark?
This is done by taking the 3 points out of Improved Steady Shot. Doing this would also allow me to remove the Glyph of Aimed Shot, which I'm currently using, and put in Glyph of Steady Shot instead.



Edit: Oh and, I'm using the "Use Rotation Test results" setting, as I believe the calculation of ISS procs doesn't really work well with the shot frequency calculations.

The Darkmoon card is one of the two best trinkets all the way through Ulduar.

Fury and Mirror are about equivalent, and which is better depends on the fight. If its a fight where you are on a single target constantly with not too much movement, I prefer fury.

So for Marksman, I have three ranged weapons.
[Siren's Cry]
[Giant's Bane]
[Magnetized Projectile Emitter]

I'm just not sure the spreadsheet has these right and wanted to hear your thoughts.

The three weapons are 2.8. 2.9 and 3.0 speeds.

The faster the weapon the more autoshots we get which leads to more procs of Wild Quiver and Improved Hawk.
The slower weapons will give more damage on piercing shots and more damage on Wild Quiver with less occurrences.

There is so much hit on Ulduar gear, The Emitter has arguably the worst stats of the three. Giants Bane having the best.

If you had all 3 weapons, which would you use and why?

Please do not count racials as part of your answer.

You bring up and interesting point with weapon speed, but with the stats (assuming you need no hit) the gun has Armor Pen which becomes more and more valuable the more you stack it, the bow has crit if you are lacking crit. Another thing to consider is ammo, saronite arrows are easier to have made then bullets for non engineers.

If I was choosing one I would pick the gun from kologarn Giant's Bane.

I prefer Emitter for two reasons:
1) For my current gear, it's cheaper (in terms of stats) to get hit-capped with Emitter, than equip Bane and regem/reenchant.
2) Most of special shots (Chimera, Aimed, Steady, Kill) scale with weapon damage, and Emitter better here. After all, autoshot is only about 20-30% of our damage.

Though, i've got both of them, so if i get any other piece of gear with hit rating, i'll have to switch back to Bane to prevent hit overcap.

Same for me, and the arguement with wild quiver isnt really all that substatial since it does the same damage no matter your weapon speed. It just hits harder with less procs with a slower weapon. The only advantage to using a slower weapon is more procs of imp aspect of the hawk. Slower weapons get extra damage to chim, aimed, and kill. Steady shot is normalized and doesnt do any extra damage with slower weapons. Also, correct me if im wrong, but i believe the proc chance of Judgement of Wisdom is based on your weapons attack speed, but can still be procced from special attacks. So theoritically you can get more procs out of a slower weapon.

If you shoot Arcane next after Chimera, you can shoot 3 Arcanes within two rotations (two in the first 9/10 seconds, one in the second) effectively replacing one Steady Shot with an Arcane, which with most gear and specs results in significant dps gain. The rotation basically goes:

CH-ArS-AS-Steady-Steady-ArS
CH-Steady-AS-Ars-Steady-Steady

Takes a bit more work than just doing one of each instant and 3 Steady Shots, but at least with my gear (yeah I know, way too much haste for MM, trying to replace it with ArP) Arcane Shot does way, way more damage than a Steady Shot.

It depends on whether or not you're using the Glyph of Chimera Shot.
Aimed priority, no Glyph of Chimera Shot
Arcane priority, no Glyph of Chimera Shot
Either priority, Glyph of Chimera Shot
So if you're glyphed I don't think it matters because you don't get the same level of cooldown collision.

The emitter, more top end is great for aimed/chimera, followed closely by the giants bane.

Most of your shots scale with a weapon's top end damage, making top end damage hugely important to a MM hunter. If you can get your hands on magnetized Projectile Emitter get it. On top of this, the spreadsheet shows it as second BiS just behind the X-Bow (Some builds show it as BiS because the X-Bow has such low top end).

In addition to the other items folks have mentioned already, the Emitter has higher values of the stats that scale (AP and agi). Here's the breakdown:

Emitter:
45 agility (assuming +16 agility gem) => 51.5 agi with BoK and CE => 51.5 AP and 0.62% crit
66 AP + 51.5 AP from agility + 8 AP from socket bonus => 125.5 AP => 138.1 AP with 10% bonus
0.82% hit

Total: 138.1 AP, 0.62% crit, and 0.82% hit

The AP and crit values can be even higher if you use the Stormjewel (+20 agi) or an agi JC gem. The +hit can allow replacing hit gems or other hit items with better DPS versions.

Bane:
38 agility => 43.5 agi with BoK and CE => 43.5 AP and 0.52% crit
54 AP + 43.5 from agility => 97.5 => 107.3 with 10% bonus

Total: 107.3 AP, 0.52% crit, 0.82% haste, and 1.71% ArP

Siren's:
38 agility => 43.5 agi with BoK and CE => 43.5 AP and 0.52% crit
54 AP + 43.5 from agility => 97.5 => 107.3 with 10% bonus

Total: 107.3 AP, 1.06% crit, 0.67% haste

Bane and Siren's have very similar stats with the main difference being +0.54% crit for Siren's at the cost of 0.15% haste and 1.71% ArP. In addition to the speed effects, which of these two is better depends on how much armor penetration you currently have. For my character which has 174 ArP w/o any of the ranged weapons, Bane is about 7.5 DPS better, which is not really significant. However, as you stack more ArP, Bane will be even better than Siren's.

Now comparing the Emitter to Bane, the difference besides speed is +30.8 AP, +0.1% crit, +0.82% hit, -0.82% haste, and -1.71% ArP. This comparison is a little more complicated and which is better depends not only on the speed difference, but also on whether you need the +hit and how much other ArP you have. With my current gear, which requires me to use some hit gems, the Emitter is +4 DPS as a straight replacement, but is +31 after replacing the hit gems. Even with best in slot gear where less +hit is needed and more ArP exists, the Emitter still provides +31 DPS mostly having to do with its slower speed and more AP and crit.

EDIT: Forget to add that another benefit of the Emitter is the scaling in pet damage due to the additional AP.

It's not top end, it's average. If the range were changed from 415-708 to 315-808 there would be no theoretical difference. Slower weapons with the same DPS as a faster weapon obviously have a higher average damage which does give them an edge on special shots that normalize the AP contribution to 2.8 speed but not the weapon damage itself. For instance, chimera, aimed, and multi shot.

Wild Quiver's fluctuation by weapon speed is real but rather pathetic, and you have to also consider that weapon damage still plays a role in this calculation. Spreadsheet puts me at 200.2 DPS from Wild Quiver using my gear with a Magnetized Projectile Emitter. Using a custom ranged weapon with the same stats but 2.9 speed and 542.8 min/max (same weapon DPS), it changes to 200.19. IAotH either doesn't change or the change is smaller than .01%. I think weapon speed is somewhat of a red herring here.

If you've got all three of those mentioned weapons, there's an obvious way to figure out which is better: use the spreadsheet. You'll have to try different gear combinations since hit is involved, but c'est la vie. There's no easy answer in this situation.

I stated I was glyphed for both Chimera and Aimed, so when I went Chimera-aimed-arcane all 3 CDs came up within .5 seconds of each other. Im just going to switch aimed and arcane in my shot proirity when I get into situations where all 3 are off CD at once.

EDIT: Did some dummy testing, and anytime that i prioritized aimed over arcane my CDs would start lining up again where they would all come off at the same time, which meant less specials. But then again, when i prioritized arcane, it would still fall into somewhat of a rotation, with every other aimed shot would come off CD at the same time of an arcane shot, so i had to fire the arcane shot first effectively wasting the time I have off the CD of aimed from the glyph every other shot.

2nd EDIT: So the spread sheet shows that with the aimed shot glyph, aimed shot has a frequency of 8.25 seconds. But with dummy testing this is shown to be untrue. I also did shot rotation tests with the spreadsheet. Both ways of proritizing (aimed-arcane or arcane-aimed) aimed shot actually has a ~9.5 frequency. So effectively the DPS increase shown in the spreadsheet by using glyph of aimed shot is double the actual DPS increase. Spreadsheet shows around a ~120 dps increase, when in reality it is close to 60. Which means glyph of kill shot which is a ~90 dps increase is superior from what I can tell. Correct me if im missing something.

I'm really not following this. How exactly do you end up with a frequency of 8.25 seconds for Aimed Shot, given the ubiquity of GCD? Is it the averaged result for some weird glyph combination such as CH but no AS where you'd supposedly move AS down one GCD every rotation (or up if you glyph for AS but not CH)?

The way I see it you either glyph for both or neither. A priority system might look good on a spreadsheet but it's just taking the whack-a-mole mentality a bit too far for me.

Well the spreadsheet shows the frequency of aimed shot in your rotation on the "Shot Rotation" tab. And it states 8.25 if you have the glyph (and glyph of CH).

My point is it's obviously not possible to hit Aimed Shot every 8.25 seconds and expect it to go off (due to GCD among other things). One way to make sense out of it is that the spreadsheet considers you to "gain" 0.75 seconds every 9 second rotation (with CS glyph) which would mean moving AS up one GCD every other rotation, which theoretically makes sense but again it seems to me that in practise GCD prevents doing so. You have 1 extra second cooldown on AS every 9 second rotation but there doesn't seem to be any way of "saving" them up to make a 1.5 second leap. Then again if your rotation is delayed 0.5 seconds or more because of Steady casting longer than 1.5 seconds, it becomes somewhat feasible again.

In any such case it just seems to me to lend to a very awkward style of play, but to each his own I guess.

Hey.

I've just been through part of Ulduar with a blood DK and the DKs Abom. Might did NOT OVERWRITE TSA.

This is good news! I use the TSA Glyph so the 10% extra crit on aimed is a nice buff.

If you want to check, here is the WWS: Wow Web Stats

I guess looking at Kologarn would be the best indicator (as we're close together) and then comparing it to the Iron Council, where the Blood DK was the OT at the otherside of the room...

Potentially a stealth fix? Has anyone else noticed this?

We've known about DK and shaman abilities not overwriting it for awhile. What does happen though is TSA goes away while the shaman and DK buffs are present, then comes back automatically.

What isn't known is while the TSA buff is gone, does the glyph still work.