Because MM has a total of 117% basedamage if Imp Tracking is effective. Survival has 105%. See the difference now? By losing Imp Tracking MM overall loses 4.27% and survival loses 4.76%. Survival base damage is higher due to better AP and crit etc. MM makes up for it by having way more % scaling talents. So when you remove the little % scaling that Survival has the impact is greater. In this case 0.5%. Doesn't sound like a lot, but it really is around 200-250 DPS. So if MM is already clocking a couple hundred DPS ahead, this certainly doesn't help.

WWS #1
WWS #2

Here are 2 logs, made during this week and last week. Both on Ignis, both have similar kill time ( its a bit crap since we had some offspec dps due to people not showing up and a bit higher amount of healers just to be safe ).
What really pisses me off is that the first log is without 4 pieces bonus and without the increased weapon dps. Although, the first log I had 5 LnL procs vs 1 during the second log. Precision Shots had a nice uptime of 26% and so far I usually see uptime of around 20% on the majority of fights. But it still could not make the difference between the number of LnL procs on both fights.

What I would really like to see is not an increase of our dps, but a fix of the RNG factor. I do think our dps is in line with other classes but RNG can make or break Survival performance. Or well...I don't know. Maybe that's just the situation in my guild and we need some boost. But it feels to me like the RNG should be taken care of first.

Also, I would like to ask you guys about your opinion on the following question.
At the start of Ulduar, I was struggling a bit with the Survival rotation, as were a lot of other people. Black arrow made things a bit harder, but we eventually got the hang of it and now we can execute the "rotation" without a problem.
So the question is - do more and more people leave the RNG survival and go to the more stable performing MM? I see that there are MM hunter performing really well, and according to the spreadsheet, both specs pretty close together. But what stops me from switching for good is the mana consumption of MM and the lack of decent regen. I guess I am just used to not having to pay attention to my mana bar being survival for so long.
Ofc, I might be wrong because I have switched specs only for a few fights since 3.1 and I certainly don't play MM as well as survival but that's only due to the lack of practice. I would really like to hear what other people think on that one.

It might not be the best post ever. Not sure if I could make my point clearly. I have been reading a lot, and I do think I understand most of what I read, but not that used to writing.

A few guild members and myself were having this exact conversation last night. As we've been farming Ulduar for quite a while now, we tried to compare the 2set and 4set bonuses of the so-called 'pure' dps classes. Some of them are harder to accurately calculate then others, but regardless, the massive disparity of the hunter T8 compared to others is obvious.

Our hunter T8 4set came out similar to yours, at just over a 90dps increase. The Rogue 4set ([Conqueror's Terrorblade Breastplate]) was easy to calculate and came out at a whopping 298dps increase.

We were still working on the Mage 4set ([Conqueror's Kirin Tor Tunic]), however the increase has a potential to be huge, even bigger than the Rogue set, as the proc has no internal cooldown (one Mage observed 3 procs in a row).

With some simple napkin maths you really start to wonder what exactly is Blizzard's process when designing gear and set bonuses. You take a class like the Hunter which is notorious for scaling poorly, and rather than try to address that with a set bonus similar to the Rogue, we get a proc which is the equivalent to a low level trinket. Very odd imo.

In an ideal world, yes, the combination of weapon dps upgrade and the acquisition of your 4set should equate to more dps. However two things of note, first the weapon buff effects survival the least of all three specs (someone checked it on the spreadsheet earlier in the thread, it was just over 100dps iirc) and the Hunter 4set is poor. Very poor. If you check my post above, it's about 80-90dps increase (the internal CD makes it fairly predictable).

So back the this ideal world. This week you should of seen about a 200dps increase but it looks like that 200dps got lost in the noise of RNG. However, it's not just as simple as "Oh, I didn't get any Lock'n'Load procs"....

RNG does get mentioned a lot when discussing Survival dps, and for very good reason. Aside from the obvious Lock'n'Load procs (which I rarely see any more, maybe once a fight if I'm lucky), there are several other talents that contribute - IAotH, Expose Weakness, Master Tactician. Now individually, all of those talents have much better proc rates compared to Lock'n'Load, however the 'real' dps of survival is when they proc simultaneously.

To make matters worse, you also have to factor in other variables, importantly, Black Arrow and Sniper Training. While they're not procs in the technical sense, both can seriously effect your overall dps. For example, if you get the above 3 talents procs (or even 2) as Black Arrow falls off the mob, the increase in dps you should see can sometimes be lost in the overall 6% dps loss while you wait for the BA cd. It's a similar problem with Sniper Training, allow the buff to drop at the wrong time, and what should of been a dps boost from a nice string of procs, falls flat instead.

Back to your final question, yes - while Marksman is not without it's own set of RNG, it should cut down the amount of times you feel you got screwed after a boss fight when you think you played well, but the numbers say otherwise.

Hope this helps.

In a percentage difference sense this is true, but not in terms of affect on a fight. Took me a minute to follow you because I wasn't looking at it like this but:

Imaginary Shot for 1000 base damage. On a trackable fight MM hits for 1170, SV for 1050. Untrackable fight, MM for 1120, SV for 1000. Difference between the two for MM is 4.27%, for SV 4.76%, *but* total damage loss for either is 50 damage.

Unless I'm missing something big, which I admit is a definite possibility, the actual realized damage loss during an untrackable fight is exactly the same for both, and you can scale that example up without changing results. MM certainly enjoys better scaling and I agree that this could easily mean it leaves SV in the dust very soon, but Imp Tracking isn't the issue, it's all the other % talents that MM can get ahold of while SV is stuck with the AP coefficient on Explosive.

4pc bonus topic: after getting even a vague sense of what the other classes are getting out of their 4pc, I'm officially changing my position on ours from "meh" to "yuck." It seems like something ripe for change after 4pc's spread out to more people and more numbers start to show up.

You are going at it from the wrong side of the fence.

The 1000, or base damage isn't 100%. The endresult is 100% (we have to go from an equal setting, which it is more or less atm). If it was like you lay it out then MM would already be a massive 11.5% ahead in damage, which it certainly isn't. So Survival loses more damage than MM, both pure and relative.

So lets assume both specs hit for 1170 with tracking. MM goes down to 1120 and loses 50 damage. Survival on the other hand goes down to 1114. These numbers are obviously not very good at telling it since we have much higher numbers in general and we have a lot of them. The difference is there and it is going to be felt.

To tell it most simply, if you remove an equal number from a smaller pool then the impact will be greater than from a bigger pool. And MM has a bigger percentage pool.

I doubt ES will get a boost, that will just bring back all the PvP woes. People are still complaining if you get a lucky triple crit, which is not really fair to be honest. Anyway that's pvp talk. If Survival gets boost I think it will more likely be a more baseline talent, or a change to Sniper Training. I could easily imagine some sort of AP boosting talent, like boosting EW to 30%. A direct or indirect ES boost just appears to be a path to trouble that Blizzard does not want to do.

At least we won't see the exodus style transformation to MM like we did in 3.0.8 to Survival. It will slowly become more and more pressing on the individual Hunter. And each one of us will have to weigh it up when or even if we will switch over. I could imagine that if Icecrown itself is filled with mana management fight like General Vezax, then Survival will retain a high population. And given how mana remains a limited issue for all but Shamans, this isn't entirely impossible.

As it is, we are 'fine' internally.

I run both a 6/14/51 build and a 7/57/7 MM build. There's no doubt the scaling on MM is better... Especially when you start to factor in bigger AiS / CS crits for more bleed damage on top of Mangle etc. The trick becomes mana management, but you can get creative with that (AotV + Viper Sting + Chimera when needed (if possible))...

I think as more players start going MM, we'll see some of the WMO leaderboards shift. FotM inc

EDIT: I agree with the above poster, though... I don't see the same kind of exodus as we had from BM to SV. But. Some of the higher-end guilds and top performing players are going to switch (or at least run both specs and alternate via dual spec, as we already see from some Ensidia hunters). This will, in turn, eventually trickle down. I can definitely see keeping SV around as a clutch mana spec.

I'm just not seeing this increase from MM in any sort of real world WWS, or in any simulation. I ran a ton of simcrafts the other day using my current gear, which is high end, and Survival still came out ahead even in short fights, by at least 100 DPS.

It's also worth noting that survival has 10% more health, which is very relevant to a lot of Ulduar hard mode encounters, and better mana efficiency. Considerng the DPS is the same or better as marks plus these advantages, what's the reason to raid as MM?

No Sniper training or RNG LNL procs
I don't really agree that 10% health makes a difference, 20k health I get an extra 2k? Clutch situations could save me, but not often enough. Close to 23k is enough health for me or at least that is what is said in my raid environment. Running 25 or 26k now, not sure exactly.

Small correction for the both of you; Surv tree gives 10% stamina, not 10% more health...quite a big difference. And yeah, the 10% extra stamina does give some survivability, but one should not depend on it or base their entire talent spec choice on, even when doing hardmode encounters.

My point about the extra stam from Survivalist, is that in BiS Ulduar gear Survival STILL does the same damage as Marks. The spreadsheet shows it as maybe 30-40 dps behind, my simcraft testing showed it 30-40 DPS ahead. So if the two specs do the same damage, but one of them gives you an extra 2k HP and less mana problems, it seems like a very obvious choice.

For MM to be the better choice it has to do significantly MORE damage to make up for those two things, being "equal" to SV damage isn't good enough.

Is the argument that MM will scale better with hypothetical Icecrown gear? That seems irrelevant, given that they've said major mechanic reworks are coming by then.

I think the argument has a couple of fronts.

One very small difference is pet damage. If the two were perfectly equal, SV's pet still does more of a % of overall damage due to higher AP contribution from the hunter, so the hunter's contribution to overall dps is slightly lower than MM's. This only comes into play on fights where encounter-specific buffs do not affect the pet, and is why BM typically scales horribly on those kinds of fights (Thaddius, Loatheb, etc).

Then there's the Volley factor on fights like XT etc. MM has a slight edge.

Then there's burst. MM does not need to 'pre-load' to the extent that SV needs to. Sting + CS is more bursty than Sting + BA + 3 ES ticks + hopefully a sniper training buff. Also, Rapid Fire + Sting + CS + Arcane ---> Readiness ---> CS + Arcane + Aimed is pretty nice.

Then there's the new weapon changes. ES is not affected by weapon damage. It scales purely with AP. CS, Aimed, Silencing Shot, etc scale with weapon damage. Now, CS and Aimed will crit harder, and Piercing Shots will tick harder... which then also gets amplified by Mangle.

More instant shots in general, which means more kiting DPS when you need it.

Mana can be a bit problematic at first, but you can work around it. Mana pots. AotV --> Viper Sting --> CS. Depends on the fight. (I also run an SV offspec if I think JoW uptime is going to be a problem)

It's still situational. I'm just listing some reasons why MM can seem attractive.

With the new buff to our ranged weapons would Glyph of Aimed shot be worth considering? Several of the hunters I know have made the switch and profess have tried to convince me to do the same. At the moment I'm rather skeptical as in my brief testing I frequently was unable to take advantage of the reduced CD due to a higher priority shot such as coming off their CD at the same time

Yeah sorry there. So 1165 health? Armory showing 1165 Stamina. 1 pt stamina = 10 health?

If MM was equal to SV I would switch and I know someday sooner than later, I will. It's not because I prefer one tree over another, it because it is my preferred play style. I love the instants. I love being able to move and jump at free will. That is my play style and not dogging SV. Damage = greater than my comfort though.

What I don't like about SV:
Sniper Training, RNG LNL, pt in Wyvern, pts in survivalist (rarely die now and you are talking about a 5pt talent, pretty sure we all take it now for the AP bonus (8pt talent!!) since it is tied with hunter vs wild, otherwise, talking survival in raids, I would find more use for Hawkeye and Survival Tactics than the added stamina-just me personally), 5 minute rapid fires, I would love to put pts in BM but my play style finds it really hard not to have Aimed Shot (lack of instants messes with me, I do miss arcane shot) and I can't justify 5 pts in BM without the sixth or even better seventh. Just me, not wanting to step on toes or anything, just my play style/preference. Just what I find unattractive. 7/57/7 MM spec seems so much more aligned for pure dps than some of the talents I mentioned in Survival.

Add to that what CrowneVict stated. Well said.

Honestly, all three specs should be equal in damage, those that play better and play the spec that suites them better (better gear etc), should be the ones doing more damage. In a perfect wow.
I really miss being able to kite, lay traps etc without feeling like I am losing quite a bit of damage Sorry if I keep going back to that but it's my main problem right now and the biggest thing leading me to MM. (been surv mainly since BM nerf)

I also have to agree that MM mana doesn't seem out of control (limited testing in Uldar and Naxx pugs), situational yes, as almost everything thing is in Uldar lol, but like Crownevict said, takes a little bit of getting use to. I can run 2/3 ToTH with minimal mana issues and use similar things to keep my mana in order as MM would, might have even ran 1/3 ToTH, can't remember. Or hell, no JoW or like my raid last night, I felt mana issues without Blessing of Wisdom. 3/3 ToTH, it didn't stop me though. Mana pot, AotV, etc, just gotta pay attention and react.

We can't count on mechanical changes, we don't know if those will come into play or not and if we can count that then you should also count the blue remarks on MM mana efficiency as well. It's been mentioned at least once.

I would miss Kill Shot glyph though.

I'm reading a lot of MM > Survival but I'm not convinced. Even with all the wasted talents in Survival to increase Stam, Wasted point in Wyvern, LnL RNG, Sniper Training downtime in high mobile fights, Survival is still doing the same damage or even beating MM during raids. Why? Because the few instant dmg spells it has are so OP and the stat bonus increase to the hunter and pet are so huge it still stays competitive with MM. And what happens when RNG allows for the use of Sniper Training and LnL? It easily exceeds MM.

CrowneVict:

I have to disagree. "Then there's the Volley factor on fights like XT etc. MM has a slight edge."

Clearly you have not done hard mode. The only time you could argue that volley has the edge is Freya IMO, and both cases are countered by explosive trap dmg that Survival brings, again topping MM during the AOE phase, especially with the guaranteed LnL proc.

"Then there's burst. MM does not need to 'pre-load' to the extent that SV needs to. Sting + CS is more bursty than Sting + BA + 3 ES ticks + hopefully a sniper training buff. Also, Rapid Fire + Sting + CS + Arcane ---> Readiness ---> CS + Arcane + Aimed is pretty nice."

I'd hardly call that burst. Sting, BA, ES is a rotation, and that's not even the order. ES is cast first, then BA, SrS, Aimed, then back to ES and Steadys. That's just a rotation, and if something dies that fast, I would never waste BA on it, nor should that even be considered when comparing MM to Surv.

Apathy:

While you feel 7/57/7 is a better use of points, as more points are spent on dmg increasing talents then Survival builds, please keep in mind that the few points spent on dps survival talents are for a higher dps increase per point. That concept alone should speak volumes.

What Sebudai posted is accurate. Right now it makes sense to flip back and forth depending on fight if you want to min/max. If you like one much better than the other you're fine to just stay with it as well - they're very very close for now.

Sebudai: What's your reasoning for SV over MM on hard mode Hodir? With the superior crit scaling of marks and Piercing Shots, I feel like Hodir lends itself to marks more than many of the other Ulduar encounters (assuming you catch some Storm Power).

It's kinda a toss-up on Hodir, but I think I prefer SV. Storm Power does have some nice synergy with Piercing Shots, however SV makes up for a bit of that by just having a higher crit chance to begin with(my base chance to crit is about 7% higher as SV.) However, the main benefit to SV on Hodir(and Vezax) is that it deals a larger % of its total dps via magic damage and thus benefits quite a bit more from Toasty Fire: Singed - Spell - World of Warcraft

I think in theory if you had really good Storm Power uptime MM could outperform SV on Hodir. Sniper Training is certainly terrible for that encounter. SV seems more consistent to me though and I think that on average it does better on that particular boss. Maybe I'm missing some other factor though.

No, I think you're probably about right in that both specs have arguments for being solid on Hodir. It's really going to depend on whether you are getting decent Storm Power or not I guess. Looking over my last kill where I was marks and two other hunters were SV, they had about 52% magic damage and I was at about 46%, so that's an advantage although not an overwhelming one. Singed is less RNG than Storm Power, and probably anything you can do to minimize randomness in Hodir is worthwhile. Explosive (and Black Arrow) + Singed is certainly solid, and if you're coming in on the close side of the hard mode mark, getting more kill shot crits by being SV doesn't hurt either, especially if you can get a Storm Power < 20%. They're pretty close, I just wasn't sure if there was some really big thing I wasn't considering.

I find that any fight where i can standstill for the majority of the fight, my pet can stay in combat with the boss the whole time, and/or there is a boost from a magical source of damage, survive is my greater damage spec.
If there is no magical damage boost or there is constant movement i will switch to MM. By doing this i find that both are amazing specs along as there strengths are played to.

What is your reasoning for SV on hard mode XT? are you using traps on adds?

I actually made it a point to give MM a shot during our Vezax hardmode progression, and it actually did extremely comparable damage to SV because of how frequently I was moving to dodge Shadow Crash. The majority of the shots I was dropping were Steady Shots, so the DPS impact wasn't nearly as high as I had anticipated.

Piercing Shots dips on the inflated Chimera Shots and were rolling for 1600+ at some points. Wind Quiver damage was modified and critting for 5000+. MM actually felt a lot more fluid than I would have assumed and did consistently higher DPS until Lock and Load RNG happens. My DPS was always a solid 5500+ on every pull with fairly decent mana management, but where MM makes up a lot of it's damage is actually out of shadow crash it was possible to maintain a non-impactful Steady Shot rotation due to the reduced mana costs which was proving to be a costly damage investment as SV. It also seemed to drastically improve my AotV time because Imp Hawk and lower SS cost.


The only fights I swap to SV on 100% of the time are XT-002 and Yogg, both because of mana issues or the need for quick burst DPS (and the fact that my SV spec actually has KS glyph.) If Chimera Shot applied Serpent Sting on non-stung targets, I'm pretty sure I could get away with playing as MM on every encounter.

Played with the spreadsheet to compare point for point dps gained between SV and MM and I did not reach your conclusion, Beachwanderer. Took forever!

My ideal specs in my spreadsheets, not so much what I have currently. It sucks but in my raid environment I seem to have a hard time giving up TSA or Hunting Party. I will gladly post my findings if you wish me to, otherwise, it makes this post quite large. I just (have two spreadsheets, one MM, one SV) compared dps when I removed the talents, then added those numbers up to get a total from talents. So, not so much a total in what damage I would do on a fight, but just what these talents give me. I am 7514 dps total MM spec, and 7541 SV, spreadsheets.

SV: spec'd 3/15/53 my gear 71pts 7233.67 spec here:Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
MM: spec'd 7/57/7 my gear 71pts 6600.14 spec here:Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Difference: 633.53
NOTE: I did not include TSA, nor did I include myself being buffed with 10%ap to be fair, I did include replenishment for SV, so I guess it isn't really fair for MM LOL. I don't know, my findings including TSA (no MM hunter would be MM without 10%ap)
add 480.86 to MM =7081
152.67 difference between MM and SV, in favor for SV but not a lot by any means.
Keep in mind I am using version 88d of the spreadsheet. I do not believe this adds in the 2pc bonus to stings, affecting CS yet? Keep in mind what you lose when you move a lot and go too long without a LNL proc. No idea what, I be done with math today.

I have done hardmodes (working on Freya Knock3), I can agree MM's volley will do more damage than SV's Volley, comparing volley's alone, this is indeed true. Add traps, yeah SV's will be a bit higher, MM can lay traps too without an issue, it might work out about the same or little more but MM's Volley is stronger, none the less. Keep in mind MM can trap with no regret to not being able to use BLK arrow. BLK Arrow would not affect volley, nor do I think it would have any impact on Freya little retarded blow you up adds, but that is a bonus still to MM, freedom to trap. SV also usually have a shorter CD on the traps, very nice too. All this math is not something I want to get into but please feel free to correct me with numbers. None of it matters when just comparing volley.

SV does need to pre-load. We do the most damage when we have blk arrow up, plain and simple. SV also counts on random procs of LNL for burst. Where as MM can time their burst whenever it will give the most benefit. Do not tell me that 2 rapid fires are not burst. The simple fact that a MM hunter can do their 'rotation twice', is burst. Survival hunters do indeed need a little build up time.

With, and imo only with, the latest changes to PS, 2 pc etc, Survival and MM have their ups and downs but both are the same in power played right. I also have a funny feeling MM will see more buffs, than SV in the future, always have. Just as I have a funny feeling they will be very careful buffing BM, if they ever do. Mana on MM is the most common complaint, LNL is the most common complaint to Surv, which has been nerfed I could see them changing sniper training anytime though and I don't know what that will do compared to mana as MM. Feels like for now those things are in place to keep us in place lol. Either way, I am greatly hopeful and expect some good changes YAY (for the first time in a while), hopefully to all three specs but doubtful about BM, sorry.