The best answer I can come up with is to carry a stack of Kill Shot glyphs and a stack of SS glyphs and change for bossfights. Its not expensive to do if you go to an inscriptor with the mats.

Indeed, too many people treat glyphs like enchants (only more permanent). Glyphs are cheap and often situational. Switch, change, experiment with them. Glyph of Hunter's Mark if you are the only MM (and you are at least 3 Hunters), Kill Shot, Steady Shot, Hawk... heck even Volley if you love to AoE for free on trash (provided you actually kill something). I could even imagine the crappy glyph of Aspect of the Viper could be good for Vezax. Hmm, I might just bring a few of those for our next kill to test out.
It all boils down to knowing which boss requires which glyph.

Ignis obviously favours Steady Shot, one could argue the same is true for Razorscale since you hardly need Kill Shot for the adds.

If you run with everybody stacking on melee on Kologarn then Aimed Shot could be interesting since you will spend a lot of time running from beams (5-6 people handling them all). Kill Shot definately doesn't provide all that much bang for the buck since you generally only get to fire one off on the arms anyway.

Iron Council seems to favour Kill Shot since the time they spend sub-20% is just enough to give 1 extra Kill Shots per target. Making the overall benefit more than most other encounters. Yogg is in a similar boat, if you can get to phase 3.

I'm not saying that my observations are neccesarily true, only that to me people don't change between glyphs enough, trying to get that 'perfect glyph setup' that works always. That's not how it works though.

Has anybody tried glyphing towards a solid rotation?
I've tried this lately and it's working pretty well, with no deadtime at all on shots.
And it has given me the highest dps output sofar from all the other rotations i've tried(havent tested it in a raid enviroment yet though)

First of all i glyph chimera shot and aimed shot to get the cooldowns lowered to match into the rotation.

Always start with serpent sting ofc. then:
CS > AS > ArS(+SS) > 2x SS

with glyphs this matches all shots in a perfect order on the cooldowns, over and over again, only difference is on heroisms etc. when haste can push 3x SS at the end before CS is off cooldown again.

I tried this out using a /castsequence macro last weekend after I noticed that the rotation was consistent in the spreadsheet's rotation test. Spamming the macro on the target dummy over several iterations to OOM was roughly a 60 dps improvement over what I could achieve by manually weaving the shots. Its not really workable in a raid setting though, since MD, FD, and KS all throw the rotation out of sequence. Plus I found the macro spamming approach to be really boring. I'm happy to stick with a manual priority scheme

I tried your suggestion now. I've usually run with Kill Shot glyph and Steady Shot glyph.

From what I can see I am wasting about 1 second on aimed shot each rotation.

I am running an ArP build, and my shot priority is like this (after Serpent): CS, AiS, SS, SS, SS, SS -> repeat. My latency is about 80.

Highest dps I could do was at the lvl 80 dummy, doing 464k damage with a dps of 4527, this is a new record for me. But I am still unsure about the "wasted" 1 second of Aimed Shot. With my previous rotation, Chimera & Aimed both on a 10 sec CD I did not waste anything (as far as I could tell).

I am really having a hard time deciding on which glyphs to use. Anyone have any suggestions by looking at my gear/build?

Well i use keybinds instead of a macro, and try and just leave out a AiS or SS when i need to weave in some thing else like FD/KS/MD etc. that way i wont interupt the rotation

Reasons why I gave up on CS (and consequently AS) glyphs:

Okay, 9s CS cooldown gives you a nice "divisible by GCD" rotation. Problem is you need that ~420 haste (raidbuffed) in order to get 1.5 sec Steady Shots, and that still leaves lag as a factor. That's reason #1: In order to fully benefit from CS glyph, you need to stack otherwise undesirable stat (haste).

Reason #2: If you take CS glyph, you take AS glyph (or you soldier on with a really messed up rotation where AS lags an additional 1 second behind CS every rotation). Taking AS glyph however is, in a sense, inefficient since it gives 2 second cooldown reduction where you only need 1 (so half of the value of the glyph is basically wasted).

Compare then to non-CS-glyphed 10-sec rotation, where you can stretch your rotation to 10 seconds by trading haste with ArP (thus the rotation stays efficient with no wasted time, although IAotH is somewhat at odds with that) while managing your lag and leaving you free to pick up more desirable glyphs than AS (such as KS).

This leaves you with Glyph of Serpent Sting as the only "mandatory" glyph, the remaining two you can pick from Steady, Hawk and KS (and maybe TSA if testing proves it is not as dysfunctional as currently would seem). Steady and KS are currently my choices (KS mostly because you _really_ notice the lack of it on fights with a lot of opportunities to use it and that's hugely annoying).

My base glyph set uses Hawk instead of KS since it seems to provide better theoretical DPS and since I rarely use Kill Shot optimally now that it cannot be macroed. With that said, as others have suggested, I will reglyph to KS on certain fights where it provides a boost. The biggest is for P3 Yogg where he is under 20% health for a long duration where the KS glyph will amount to many addition KSs while with all of the turning away from Yogg every 15s, the Hawk glyph is not as beneficial. Here are my Ulduar choices for my roles in the battles:

Ignis: Hawk since pretty much sustained rotation except when in the pot.
Razorscale: Hawk for sustained rotation during Razorscale burns.
XT: Hawk for sustained rotation on XT, unless I am assigned to killing sparks, then I will use KS.
IC: Hawk for sustained rotation since limited moving
Kolo: Hawk for sustained rotation since only move if eyes are focused on me
Auriya: Hawk for sustained rotation (adds die too fast for 2nd KS)
Hodir: Hawk for sustained rotation between flash freeze phases
Thorim: Hawk for sustained rotation in p2 and since limited moving
Freya: KS - on gift killing duty so lots of moving and lots of single target add killing
Mimiron: KS for adds and p4 - mostly phase 4 since I float between the parts to keep them even and since there is a decent amount of movement
Vezax: Hawk since more autoshots is a plus for damage and mana and you do not really have to move much for crashes
Yogg: KS - I help finish off adds by Sara in p1, I go into the brain on p2, and burn Yogg in p3
Alg: Have not done yet to say

for some reason with my current gear 89g is telling me that I get more dps by using CS/AiS glyphs. When I swap to the PTR spreadsheet with my same gear I get the most dps out of Hawk/Steady combo. Any ideas on why?

Yet again, I have another noob question, and I apologize... With Grim Toll, do I want 619 Armor Penetration AFTER, or BEFORE Armor Penetration Food/Elixirs... (Hearty Rhino+Elixir of Armor Piercing)
Thanks for the help.

you want 619 after so that when grim toll procs and adds the 612 you hit the hard cap of 1231.
just like if you have mjolnir runestone you want 566 so that with the 665 you hit the cap.

Use the spreadsheet. I'm personally at ~375 Arp at the moment and the spreadsheet tells me I do more dps without Arcane shot (this was true with grim toll and now with mjollnir's aswell).

Using Grim Toll and around 610 ArP, the latest Faceshooter is telling me that Arcane Shot would still be prioritized over Steady Shot without a trinket proc(When GT does proc, it will prioritize Steady Shot higher). This was in a 25 man raid, and the only buff I was really missing was Improved Hunter's Mark.

I can't really model this in the spreadsheet, but can anyone help illuminate why this might be?

I don't use Faceshooter, but my guess is that it is not taking the Piercing Shots damage into account for Steady Shot. The spreadsheet takes the bleed damage into account, thus why you can't recreate it.

This doesn't make sense to me either, so I looked at your character on the armory. With the gear you currently had on it (with subbing in Grim Toll in the second trinket), and your crit rate was about 5% lower than mine so my initial guess was maybe your crit rate was low enough where the piercing shots benefit on Steady Shot was too low to pass up Arcane Shot when accounting for the lower ArP when the trinket is not procced.

However, when I loaded your gear and spec into the spreadsheet, your Steady Shot outperforms the Arcane Shot in both cases where the trinket is procced or not procced (simulated by removing the trinket and hand adding the passive benefit). Hence, I do not see why on an average fight that Arcane Shot would be prioritized higher, unless it is a fight buffing magic damage.

Hello Hunters

Long time reader, first time poster. I have a question about the Aspect of the Hawk glyph.

Considering the haste cap for hunters is 523 or 15.9%, and the boost that spec'ing into IAotH gives withouth the glyph, isn't the added haste from the glyph a bit of a waste....especially when you factor in all the haste buffs inherent in the raid and in Ulduar itself?

Current speed/haste: 6.34%
When IAoTH procs: 21.34%
When IAoTH procs w glyph: 27.34%

I realize that once over the cap (523 or 15.9%) this still helps my autoshot, but not any other shots. I'm sort of wondering how badly the returns diminish as that stat goes up...and where I might want to draw the line. I keep stacks of glyphs in my bag for situational preparedness, but since beginning to stack some ArP I'm back at the top of our meters again (most of the time) and I think that the word haste starts turning me off as soon as I hear it....hence my reluctance concerning the glyph.

Any feedback on this issue (or on my build/gearing in general) is very appreciated.

Hunter stats and scaling

You're not going to want to gear for haste, but having IAotH and the glyph to get your steady shot to 1.5 is always a DPS increase.

As a long-time Sv hunter, I'm attempting to switch over to MM - My question is more about play style and the mechanics of Chimera Shot (CS). I understand that CS does damage based on the amount of damage Serpent Sting (SpS)has already done. So my first impression of CS is that you'd wait until the last tick to refresh, but then looking at Shandara's spreadsheet, I see she fires CS every 10 seconds, which is clearly not waiting until the last tick. Do you refresh the SpS with CS as soon as CS comes off of cooldown or wait until the last tick of SpS before firing Chimera? My attempts at the practice dummy last night were inconclusive using the 7/57/7 spec and all agil gems. Also, I see a couple of the best geared hunters on my server using *both* SpS and CS glyphs (most are SS, SpS, KS), which doesn't make much sense to me unless you're SpS more than one target. What piece of this puzzle am I missing?

Thanks for the help!

The mechanics are quite simple:

Chimera Shot - Serpent Sting (as the secondary effect of Chimera Shot is called) will always do 40% of the damage done by a full Serpent Sting application (5 ticks without glyph, 7 with glyph). Since it doesn't matter damage-wise when you fire the Chimera (it will always refresh the SrS, and will always do 40% of its damage), you have to fire it as often as possible (10 seconds with glyph, 9 seconds with glyph).`

In addition to that, there is another reason why the Chimera/Serpent Sting glyph combo is very nice:

Having a 9 sec Chimera cooldown and a 21 sec duration on Serpent Sting gives alot more leeway than having a 10 sec Chimera cooldown and a 15 sec duration on Serpent Sting would have. In Ulduar there are times where you get stunned/incapacitated (Ignis hot pocket, Kologarn grabbed, Vezax mark of faceless, Yogg Saron grabbed by constrictor out of range of Crusher), or where you have to switch adds for a moment (Freya tree of life, Volley on Kologarn adds, bomb bots on Mimiron, list goes on). In these situations it can be really nice to have such a large difference in cooldowns/durations.
Of course one could say 'so what? it's just one extra global cd spent on SrS if it falls off', but for max dps that one extra gcd really matters, especially if it happens alot. Plus on Iron Council it is bad if your buffed Serpent Sting (through the blue rune circle) falls off with no new blue circle in sight...

Ahh! So the 40% damage of CS is based on the theoretical tick damage (5 or 7 as you so kindly pointed out), not the actual live damage of the SpS currently in progress? That makes sense then! So with glyphs, having a SpS glyph would(in addition to helping keep SpS going when incapacitated) also help your CS damage, correct (40%x2 extra ticks)? It was a pain to try to time CS to land at the last possible instant during my session at the practice dummy, so I'm very happy that's not the style of play required.

An additional question that comes to mind, which I saw was somewhat debated back on pages 67 or so: should a MM typically play a priority-style like Sv or do you try to keep to a more standard rotation? I see CS-ArS-AS-SS-SS-ArS was one of the popular rotations. I personally am very used to the priority system and have my interface pretty well set up to inform when I need to do things. Although I find shot-weaving to be more difficult on MM thus far, which is why I ask.

Thanks so much for helping me get off on the right foot!

The answer to your rotation question is: "It depends".

The best rotation to use for MM depends on your gear (amount of ArP and crit), talents, and buffs/debuffs.

With lower gear ilevel with less crit and ArP, the "whack-a-mole" rotations are best with a priority scheme of CS>AiS>ArS>SS or CS>ArS>AiS>SS depending on which amounts to better DPS with your gear/talents. AT this point, glyphs that reduce your CDs may have good benefit.

With higher gear ilevel and the natural crit and ArP (even if you are not gemming ArP or do not have an ArP trinket), you eventually get to the point where the damage your SS does due to the ArP and the higher crit causing more PS damage outweighs the damage and extra mana cost of ArS (it costs more mana due to talents). In these situations, it is best to talent out of IAS and remove ArS from your standard rotation. It is also good to replace CD reduction glyphs with other glyphs (SS and Hawk). The rotation for this setup is the repeatable CS->AiS->SSx4, which if you have ISS makes sure it is consumed by CS. This rotation includes only shots that have PS procs and is much physical damage heavy maximizing ArP benefits.

Note though that in fights that buff magic damage (Hodir and Vezax) that you will want to include ArS back into your rotation. You can either do a repeatable CS->AiS->ArS->SSx3 rotation or if you want to do more ArS a priority rotation of CS>ArS>AiS>SS.

Also note that this discussion does not include other shots in the rotation. You should be specced for SilS and have it macroed into other shots to be shot off of CD since its off the GCD and free damage (except for the mana cost). When the target is less than 20% health, prioritize KS either before or after CS depending on which does more damage. If you have the KS glyph, then you can fit KS right into your rotation and do something like CS->KS->AiS->SSx3 for instance. Note though as I mentioned in a post a few back, I only use the KS glyph situationally, like on Yogg where it is killer in p3 if you are DPSing Yogg. If you do not have the KS glyph, then you can do 2 KSs every 3 rotations with replacing the first SS in the first cycle with KS and the last SS in the second cycle with KS and then repeating after every 3 cycles.

You ensured cower is off, but did you go to your pets spell book and turn growl on? Just a thought ^^