That's interesting - thank you very much Selmarix for that info. I'll grab a few people tonight to test and confirm all of that. If there's an interest from other MM hunters I'll post the addon on Curse later; although I cannot make promises to keeping it updated.

Does anyone know an addon that keeps track of your DoT ticks? I think by refreshing serps with CS in the wrong moment you miss 1 tick and thats a dps penalty of nearly 100 dps with a maxed serp. can someone confirm that?

it seams that only the duration ist refreshed an the sting ist not reapplyed... no tick ist kicked...

my fault...

Most of the 10-man Hunters will be running around with [Mirror of Truth] and [Darkmoon Card: Greatness].

The former is a HUGE deal for that first application of SS. 1000AP. The second is good as well. In a perfect world, you'd have both procs up at the same time (+1300AP) and apply your SS then. Given that both have a ~35% proc rate the chances are high that you will have some overlap of procs during the first few seconds of the fight.

As the fight goes on it is likely that the two trinkets will diverge into different CD cycles. Meaning your best opportunity to get an overlap will be right at the beginning. A big "bwwooong" or something in your addon would be great to make sure you hit that opportunity...

What is everyone looking at for builds in the coming patch? I'm currently spec'd 11/53/7 for Aimed Shot/Barrage and I'm thinking dropping 3 points into iAS would be worth it with AS's dropped mana cost. What talents will you be dropping to spec into iAS?

I favor reliability over random procs, which is why I havn't picked up fury of the five flights yet despite having it drop nearly every week. I use lotheb's shadow and bandits insignia, the +700ish ap on demand from lothebs shadow is just too good for me to give up as MM. I always open up the fight with hunters mark, lothebs shadow call of the wild and then serpent sting, this gets me ticks of 870ish fully raid buffed; without the ap from the trinket and call of the wild my ticks are usually in the low 700's-high 600's.

And I get those high ticks all fight long; reliably every time without having to worry about procs.

When you're shooting 1 shot a second (on average) and the proc is 35%, I'd say you can predict somewhat reliably that you're going to get a proc in the first 10 seconds of combat (only a 1.3% chance you won't).

Plus, just the equip component of the Darkmoon Card (+90 AGI) blows away most other trinkets including their on-use component.

At the end of the day I'll take a +1300AP boost (more with Call of the Wild, etc) with 95% reliability in the first ten seconds versus +750 with 100% reliability. But that's just me.

Just to clarify DoT mechanics, the AP value used by the spell is determined at the time it is cast and damage modifiers (Bestial Wrath, Ferocious Inspiration, Curse of Elements, etc) are factored in at each DoT tick. So in other words, only buffs/debuffs which increase the hunter's RAP should be factored when calculating optimal SS cast times.

It certainly sounds like a useful mod and I would be interested in testing it myself if you were to make it available. Keeping up with the bewildering amount of procs in 25 mans is challenging at the best of times.


Edit: removed Unleashed Rage, my error

Thanks for replying as well Dalakroth. I just quickly want to post to debunk something that I found out after intensive testing:

Ferocious Inspiration does not automatically get factored in into the Serpent Sting tick. SS has to be re-cast whilst FF is active on the hunter to get the bonus damage (and as MM that bonus dmg can stay with Chimera rolling). For Curse of Elements you are correct: The 10/11/12/13% damage bonus gets factored in with each tick and cannot be 'kept' by Chimera rolling.

I have nearly the perfect SS tick formula written down now but I am struggling with one crucial component: The influence of Hunter's Mark on the mob. Somehow the figures do not add up so if anyone has any formula or knowledge then please do post.

I will test more now and keep you informed of my proceedings but please understand that a) I work 14hrs a day and have hence very little time so please bear with me and b) this is my first addon development so - bear with me even more

Interesting Vitaro, thanks for the correction re: FI. My knowledge of the DoT mechanics comes from playing a Warlock so I wasn't aware of that!

I don't have an opinion on the build, but the new version of Imp. Tracking on the PTR actually removes the dot restriction, and applies to stings as well. I tested it. I did not test pets or traps, as I have no reason to think that those things would have changed, but I mention it in the interest of completeness. So if things stand, you're evaluating 3% pet damage against all targets versus 1% shot damage versus trackable targets.

EDIT: Note that the comparison is 3% pet damage, because unleashed fury is nerfed on the PTR to cap at 15% instead of 20%.

The patch is not today. It's not even off PTR. Just because patch notes are announced and then a Tuesday comes some time after that does not mean the patch is that Tuesday.

I'm putting together a simplified hunter guide for my guild including shot rotations. Marks isn't exactly my specialty, and I've been trying to figure out if its best to use Chimera every cooldown or only to refresh Serpent Sting? Players in this thread seem to be using it both ways.

There's one thing that plagues me:
Why is everybody on the 0/3 Focused Aim route? Isn't it better to put 3 points into Focused Aim and use the freed up gem/enchant slots for AP? The difference between 0/3 FA and 3/3 is around 100 Hit Rating equalling 200 AP.

i dont gem or enchant for hit and im currently overcapped...we go the 0/3 focused aim route because their is too much hit on gear

It's not always that easy. Let's assume you would have items with Haste instead of Hit and would be far under the cap.

Because as of now FA hit doesn´t transfer to the pet. Furthermore it´s been established that only full percentages will be transfered - that is 262 hit rating = 7,99% Hunter hit = 7% pet hit and 263 hit rating = 8,02% hunter hit = 8% pet hit. This combined with the fact that there´s an abundance of Hunter items with hit rating and especially BM specs can make good use of freed up talent points from FA.

On another note, Vitaro - I also want to encourage you to publish your addon on Curse (or somewhere else for that matter) because it sounds really interesting. I´m currently using Satrina Buff Frames to put all the short term procs/buffs into their own frame so I can easily spot whenever I´ve got certain buffs running but an addon that´d show my current AP in red if casting serpent sting will make it tick higher and green if I should just keep it rolling would still make it siginficant easier and help me staying aware of my surroundings.

Its not. I have asked GM about this and he said that talent working as intented. So there is no reason to take it at all.

With regard to specs being posted, i'm curious as to why people are still throwing points into improved steady shot?
If the mana reduction on arcane sticks, we should definitely always be using it on CD instead of steady, which hits improved steady twice with the reduced frequency of steady and arcanes gobbling up the charges instead of chimera.
Personally post-patch i'd probably spec something like this instead:
>LINKY<

I always take what GMs say with a gargantuan grain of salt, they're not developers and are quite often wrong when it comes to the details. Whether it's intended or not it's plain dumb since they wanted hunter hit to transfer to pet and then removed the +pet hit from Animal Handler. Besides, wasn't it mentioned in some other thread that if you have no hit rating on your gear, the pet *does* seem to get +hit from the talent? I would guess that the pet is getting the +hit but it's not stacking with the +hit from gear.

sjogren

Yes - GMs says many funny things
But, it was confirmed (by GMs of course) in Rus, EU and even US Realms. So may be it really true.
Anyway - its not working now for pets (or not stacking with +hit from gear), so putting point in there is a waste IMO.

The greatest DPS gains a hunter can have are by placing points into damage yielding talents (well, next to upgraded ranks of a spell.) Far greater than an AP gem or a crit gem, which gives you a fraction of a percent of crit or DPS gain. That is why you take 0/3 in Focused Aim. My raiding guild is small in overall number (we keep a tight knit group) but with the new raid-wide buffs, I always am allowed a draenie for 1% hit. On top of that, I know that you only need that much hit for when you are against a raid boss, not trash. This means that you can use the hit rating buff food for bosses to bridge that final 1%+ gap and focus on other areas the rest of the time. This brings the functional hit rating % needed to about 6.75% or so. This, is frankly really easy to get through gear. Hell, I'm starting to gem out of hit as it is already...there really is just a mess of hit on gear.

Finally, what should be really noted is the key places where hit rating generally is best stacked is your cape, your neck, and your rings, which overall generally have the smallest stat gains in comparison to weapons and/or armor which generally reward with much more varied and greater stats. In those above mentioned categories, I've found that the gear is severely lacking overall but I'm sure will be dealt with shortly and you'll need to worry about hit rating even less.

I would say post-patch, is 4/5 UF better than 2/5 UF + 2/2 SI? Seems rather dependant on many factors for UF to beat that. Firstly the crit is good for MM, and it meshes with Arcane too. SI also gives 4% less damage, and with Dragonhawk up you get an overall 9% less damage. That's almost like a Warrior in Defensive stance. Should make the life of raidhealers a bit easier... And make you the last DPS standing. It is also way better in solo and 5-mans with much less buffs going around. And it works regardless of pet-unfriendly encounters (Heigan when your healers cba to cleanse pets for instance).
This is, as I said, post-nerf. Pre-nerf UF does enough to beat both Imp Tracking and SI.