Schanaha

I don't think Blizz will make raid bosses be unaffected by traps. I could rather imagine that they will change the LnL-proc of traps be only triggered on targets that can grant honor (and player-pets maybe). That would be the only chance to make hunters use traps in raids and prevent them from trap dancing.

 

Esoth

Auto is RAP/14*RangedWeaponSpeed. So with 6k RAP and a 2.9 gun that's about 1243 (just over 20%) for the "RAP" scaling component, whereas steady is only getting 600. There's obviously other factors, such as steady having a base damage amount, various talents, etc - but yeah, the RAP scaling is in favor of auto.

 

germanboy3383

Could anyone please check whether or not the aspect of the beast glyph + aspect of the beast is still bugged on the PTR, inflating our current BM hunter DPS? Or did they finally fix that?

 

tkmag

With the Serpent Sting Glyph buff of 6secs duration, will it be better dps as a MM hunter then Rapid Fire Glyph of 8% extra haste to rapid fire? I ask because Chimera shot does 40% of the dmg you Serpent Sting would do and by adding 6 more secs to Serpent it would do more dmg... no idea how to do the math of testing those 2 glyphs.

TY

 

• Garby

It destroys the Rapid Fire glyph, and Shandara's Spreadsheet is the best way to crunch numbers for yourself.

This is the wrong thread to ask those sorts of questions in, in any event.

 

dssurge

From the Chim shot tooltip:

"Serpent Sting - Instantly deals 40% of the damage done by your Serpent Sting."

This, much like the Viper description, would indicate it is not based off of the total damage but how often you refresh it in relation to how many ticks actually go off, meaning the Serpent glyph is entirely pointless if you use Chimera on CD. I'm looking at this as more of a cushion on fights where non-primary target DPS may be needed and currently use it with results reflecting the "of the damage done" wording, not "of the total damage of your Serpent Sting".

I'll go confirm this on PTR tomorrow (that said, Serpent glyph is pretty broken on PTR right now) but I'm almost sure this glyph is more intended for BM and SV to take more advantage of the Steady glyph.

Napkin Math, using Envoy for reference:

Envoy + Mammoth Cutters = 867 damage per shot, non-modified by AP.

Why do I see this nerf not going through? The simple fact that Auto outpaces Steady Shot at virtually every reasonable level of AP is not only retarded but makes you wonder why the ability even exists besides to proc Imp. SS.

Even Mortal Shots can't save Steady Shot. Hell, even the Glyph makes it barely passable.

 

• Garby

Negative. It's been said over and over on these boards that the SS glyph increases the damage from the bloom of CS.

And I have no idea how you read the tooltip like that. When SS lasts 6 extra seconds, it does 2 more ticks of damage for the same mana cost. 40% of 7 ticks is more than 40% of 5 ticks, and that's why the SS glyph is so good.

 

Whitemane

The description of Chimera - Serpent Sting is very misleading. It actually says that you should wait as long as you can in the run of Serpent Sting to fire off Chimera Shot, because by then Serpent Sting will have done more damage and thus Chimera - Serpent Sting will also do more damage.

It should say "Serpent Sting - Instantly deals 40% of the damage from the full duration of your Serpent Sting" to properly explain how it actually works. I think that's what he was confused about.

 

KraxisSingular

Ahh... I thought auto was normalized too. I just calculated the difference between Arrowsong and the Nerubian Conqueror (oh man that's a real beauty), and the slower weapon appears to gain more damage than it should per Auto. What a revelation. Basically it gains the value of a better damagerange (which should offset the faster shots from Arrowsong) but it scales better with AP as well (20.71% to 20% flat).

So with the advantage to Aspect of the Viper with slower weapons, we should in general pick the slower weapon if they are anywhere near eachother in DPS. Even more so for MM, for while the special shots are normalized they still use the damagerange to determine the hit.
So much for the "whatever speed" idea, though at this time there is not enough weapons to really give anyone a problem as to determine which weapon is better. But who knows in Ulduar? Thanks for opening my eyes here.

 

tachycardia

When blizzard says that speed should not matter as much, they mean that if you have a gun with more dps, that gun should genereally do more damage regardless of the speed. However, guns which are very fast (of which there are none at competitive dps levels except for the crafted tank gun) actually do less damage overall because even after normalization, there is about a 100-150 dmg difference from just the dmg of the weapon which figures into steady shot dmg. This represents about a 66 dps dmg loss. On the other hand, this gun does proc stuff like Imp Hawk more often so it may even out depending on spec.

As far as Viper, it is generally better to use a slower weapon. This is because you get more mana from each shot; if you get more mana from a given shot, your steady shots give a higher net mana. On the other hand, as long as your ammo is in order you can just switch to a slower weapon when you go into viper.

 

Esoth

Keep in mind that you will probably be firing a lot more steady shots than autos, unless you have enough haste to get auto close to 1.5 seconds. It's likely that you will end up doing more damage from steady than auto, even though individually they don't hit as hard.

@Kraxis: I'm really just stealing the calculations from the spreadsheet and then verifying them on the PTR with a Fine Light Crossbow - rather not reinvent the wheel if I don't have to. But it looks like the weapon/ammo damage component of steady shot is normalized to 2.8, not the AP component (it wouldn't make sense for AP to do that if you think about it. It would say it gets X% of base weapon damage instead of X% of RAP if they wanted to do it that way).

 

TrevvyTrev

It exists because the other specs don't have as many shots to use, and need to fill GCDs. If it turns out that MM specs gain so many talented shots such that they fill all their GCDs with those instead of steady, then more power to them. It's not unheard of (nor is it necessarily bad) that specs will rely less on trained abilities in favor of talented ones.

Post-nerf steady is still an efficient filler shot, and it still will be the main source of procs like Cobra Strikes. The fact that MM can use other shots in lieu of steady when it gets nerfed just illustrates how the nerfs were targeted more at BM than MM (or even SV) -- that spec will recoup some of the lost damage by changing rotations, which will be difficult for BM to do (many BM specs only have serpent and steady available, as they skip Aimed Shot. This may change post-nerf, but there are still plenty of GCDs in-between Aimed and Arcane CDs).

 

Bere

This is the way I'm seeing things now.

Top DPS Specs in order from top to bottom:
Survival
MM
BM

Survival spec will be the obvious spec for max DPS. Something along the lines of...
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Glyphs:
Glyph of Steady shot
Glyph of Serpent Sting
Glyph of Immolation Trap

Trap dancing every trap CD with Immolation trap

Shot Rotation:
Explosive Shot (0s)
Arcane Shot (1.5s)
Aimed Shot (3s)
Serpent Sting (4.5s)
Steady Shot (6s)
Explosive Shot (7.5s)
Arcane Shot (9s)
Aimed Shot (10.5s)

This is with 0 haste, I haven't read anything about it yet, but it seems you need ~31% haste to shoot one steady shot to make the ES CD on time.

Need feedback!

 

sihyunie

Explosive shot and Arcane shot share cooldown.
Immolation trap glyph is really bad, I'd suggest using Imp AotH glyph (and get at least one pt in that talent).
2/5 Hunting Party is sufficient enough with crit rate of SV, along with Ret and SP in the group.
1/2 GftT is plenty for virtually any spec in raid crit rate. You may hit rare crit drought (high unlikely as SV with its crit rate), but that one extra point to avoid those rare events gains you minimal dps and can be spent on other talents.
Serpent sting does the most damage after Explosive shot, and have added bonus of noxious stings, so put it up asap.
If you are going to trap dance, you should ditch sniper training, and hawk eye isn't very useful, so just get savage strikes and use some melee abilities when you go up to trap. Also Resourcefulness is pretty good (or even essential) for trap dancing (it gains you about 1 explosive shot every 2 minutes, on top of mana gained from extra LnL proc and cheaper traps).
I'd suggest spec like this without Aimed Shot, or this with Aimed Shot.
I'd probably go with the latter, as you minimize point in Imp AotH and utilize the glyph to the fullest in making steady cast time down to 1.5, thus using Explosive shot as close to CD as possible (Focused Fire is a great talent, but required points to get there can be spent better on other talents i think).

Your priority should be Explosive Shot > Serpent Sting > Aimed Shot > Steady Shot, with trap somewhere in there.
You can go to this SV thread to find out more about it.

 

flimflam

Has anyone heard some talk about the Spirit Beast now being able to do 3.2k DPS? I don't think 3.2k by itself, it must be total pet + hunter.

But has anyone found any data on the PTR Spirit Beast?

 

Chul

I tamed one on the PTR and the scaling was the normal magic damage scaling (~4.3%). It does two lots of damage (initial, then the DoT) but neither can crit. Also, there is something wrong with Spirit Beasts not getting the Ferocity damage increase so all up, I highly dount it would beat most other pet types.

 

Evio

I'm curious about the note that SV is highest dps. By how much is it outdpsing MM and BM? Second of all When you say SV is top dps does it reach top dps because of trap dancing or is trap dancing necessary to overtake BM and MM.

When i plug my gear into the dps spreadsheet, I'm getting back that MM and BM are virtualy on the same lvl and that SV is lagging behind. It tells me I shoul dbe doing 5.6k as BM, 5.8k as MM and 5.2k as SV. Granted these numbers seem a bit bloated to me but i get the impression I'm missing something when everyone says SV is going to be the highest dps spec (the changes are to es are nice but i still ahvent seen any proper logs from ptr to see what's going on exactly) Any insight would be more then welcome

 

Frisemort

Hello,

SV: 6/14/51 338 haste, 4330 AP, hit capped, 30.70% crit, Nerubian conqueror with hyjal's bullets. Steady shot, serpent sting and BW glyphs. Cat pet used.

Wow Web Stats 2306 DPS messin' with the stings and traps.



BM: 52/14/5 same gear, same glyphs, same pet.

Wow Web Stats 1989 DPS again missing some AS cooldowns and messin with some sting refresh.



MM: 13/51/7 again same gear/pet/glyphs.

2083 DPS, forgot WWS -_- sorry.




Nothing really scientific but peoples asked for feedback and numbers, here are mine





So actually i think i'm going to give SV a try after patch goes live, but i'm wondering if once raid buffed the top specs will remain the same... BM gain major benefit from raid buffing their pets since others spec don't have that much profit, and also BM demands less attention/skill to achieve high DPS where other specs leads you into monitoring fast CD that you don't want to miss.

 

ankah

Interesting results, and you may be right about BM and their pets.

You left some dps on the table, in my opinion, by having 3 points in improved hunters mark and none rapid killing for rapid fire every 3 minutes (in your case it would be 4 rapid fires in 3:17).

Efficiency is nice, but wild quiver would be best, I think, 2% to 3% extra dps, no ammo, no mana, no thinking.

I am not saying SV would not be tops, just pointing out some MM details.

Question for everyone, do you guys think that survival instincts is still a desirable talent to get since steady is doing less than auto? I can not decide on it .

 

Neruse

Shandara's spreadsheet has virtually all the PTR changes implemented and as such is a solid tool for comparing specs.

I get top dps builds for each spec as:

BM (53/15/3) is ~5900 dps with a scorpid (still top pet by about 250 dps). Funny enough, Imp Arcane doesn't seem to be more dps than the 3/5 in Imp Tracking.

MM (16/51/4) is ~6200 dps. Imp Arcane works properly; it's just that the tooltip was incorrect which led people who didn't do conclusive testing to assume it was broken. And Ferocity is still worth maxing out even post-nerf. Wild Quiver also becomes better than ISS when one starts using arcane and aimed shot on cooldown.

SV (1/15/55) is ~6900 dps. If one adds the roughly 450 dps given for theoretical trap dancing, it's ~7350. The spec also has ST for the fights where trap dancing is not viable.

 

Sebudai

I've been doing the same thing with the spreadsheet. Here's my numbers using best-in-slot gear for each spec:

BM 55/12/4 with a Cat pet: 5435.45 dps
BM 55/12/4 with a Scorpid pet: 5897.78 dps
BM 55/12/4 with a Spirit Beast pet: 5175.59 dps
MM 15/51/5 with a Cat pet: 5681.43 dps
MM 15/51/5 with a Scorpid pet: 6063.89 dps
SV 0/19/52 with a Cat pet: 6514.36 dps
SV 0/19/52 with a Scorpid pet: 6861.31 dps

Cats and Scorpids remain the top dps pets by far. Scorpids just plain need to be nerfed more. If they allow Spirit Strike to crit and fix the Ferocity damage bonus for Spirit Beasts I think they will end up viable(one or the other might be enough.)

 

Evio

So what does your rotation look like as SV with aimed shot?
SS ES AS Steady steady ES and so on? Or is the aimed shot only used when running to lay a trap so as to loose minimal dps?

 

Zwaineroth

Have you tried 5/15/51 for SV? I see some variant of that (perhaps Focused Fire instead of Aimed if mana is a problem; 3 points in Hawk Eye could go wherever) as beating your spec in the spreadsheet with my gear. As discussed in the SV thread, there is a major debate between trap dancing and Sniper Training, but Sniper Training seems to be the least optimal way to go due to buff range, so I never take it.

I would agree that Scorpids need to be "fixed" if they didn't demolish BM's base scaling so much, but BM now needs a Scorpid to remain "competitive" with other primary DPS classes (your definition of competitive may vary, of course). This is aside from the PvP impact of nerfing specific pets when Cats and Scorpids seem to be mainstays of arenas. Especially when/if drain teams become big again, nerfing the Scorpid might have a disproportional impact on PvP.

 

KraxisSingular

1k DPS difference is pretty heavy. I wonder which end is the 'wrong' one. I assume the gear isn't the same when you say best-in-slot?

It is going to be hard to justify being BM any more. For while this is a pure setup, the raidnumbers can't be that much different. Had it been a couple hundred DPS difference I think we could safely call the class balanced (within).
I guess I will have a go at MM, then slowly regear and regem to Surv. It is funny how MM is a sort of steppingstone. It scales well with BM gear, but it scales pretty well with Surv gear too, while BM and Surv scales less well with each other's gear.

 

Zwaineroth

I don't think I agree with this. Surv relies heavily on AGI and crit, both of which the "BM" gear I've collected are loaded with. I think the MM-oriented pieces are a little haste heavy for Surv, as you end up sacrificing AGI and crit, and thus weaken Expose Weakness/Master Tactician/Thrill of the Hunt. For me in the spreadsheet, the pieces that are best-in-slot for BM are that or close to it for Surv, aside from the Greatness card, which is disproportionately good for Surv because of Lightning Reflexes/Expose Weakness.

The main difference is changing enchants and gems from AP to AGI, which is a tremendous expense with the way the gem and enchanting mat markets are on my server.