Currently on live a MM hunter can effectively use viper sting followed by an immediate chimera followed by a serpent sting and gain over 2.5k man while only spending 4.5 seconds of GCD. This considers the mana costs of viper and chimera since the gain from chimera's return on a raid boss with the current 32% viper drain is around 3.3k mana returned.

I use this method frequently to try to stay outa viper.

The current implementation of viper allows MM to get back to its normal rotation in 4.5 seconds while based on the sound of the new viper chimera can't be used because the max 8% mana drain most likely wont cover the cost of chimera and I'm sure the mana returned from viper sting is a tick. This will ruin the method of draining the boss to keep MM's head above water.

Well Viper Sting will return 24% over it's entire duration, Chimera will sadly only return 480 mana if you have 15k mana.

So, yeah, MM might not have an advantage here. Though you can maintain Viper Sting for longer if you decide it is worth it. And staying out of Aspect of the Viper is worth the loss of Serpent Sting and Chimera Serpent in my mind.

If timed correctly a single Viper Sting with MM could return more than 40% of max mana. And this is something that is repeatable. This doesn't even change the rotation that much, only keeping an eye on Viper Sting.

Good news, GC just answered about piercing shots:

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> [MM Hunters] Bugs with Piercing Shots on PTR

Ok that is what has been confusing me, the wording is all over the place in GC's post. So the base damage has been lowered on test at the moment, but the nerf to the scaling has not been implemented on test yet.

Thats what Im waiting on being implemented so I can do some dps tests. Hopefully the scaling goes in the same update as the piercing shots fix so I can test MM and SV side by side.

WOOT! That's good news, no longer any complicated "ok Chimera critted, so now I have to figure out a way to get Arcane Shot in, or get a non-crit Steady Shot".

I'm not sure that you should assume that. GC's original post referred to the last "official" scaling of 16% but there was an unannounced nerf to ES on live awhile back. He then later commented that the PTR was a little lower than that nerf, which fits the latest change. I don't think the ES mechanics are likely to change again - but that's no guarantee of course.

Sold as 200 (this includes stacks "created" by engineered ammo machines), stack up to 1000. Quivers no longer have haste, but still only hold ammo. Auto shot tooltip says, "all ranged attacks made by a hunter benefit from 15% haste." (or something very close to that)

I know you didn't ask all of those questions, but it made sense to just answer them all at once.

Yeah the new stacking method is pretty nice, when you get the ammo from a vendor or ammo maker, it comes as a stack of 200 that will then stack up to 1000. Basically just stack all your ammo put it in your bag, and get rid of your quiver its useless now. Hopefully now that they have this stuff working we'll see some of the cool ammo changes that have been rumored ever since we saw them cool looking new ammo icons.

Also as an update, wild hunt has been SIGNIFICANTLY nerfed. Its down to a 20% buff now so it SHOULD be giving a total of 26.4% scaling for pets now but appears to only be giving 25%. Hopefully blizzard will buff this talent again because a 4.4% scaling increase is pretty lackluster for a talent that requires a 51 point talent to fill out.

You sure about that? Because I just looked on the PTR to verify, and my testing shows that I grant 950 AP to my pet, and 2/2 Wild Hunt increases the pet's AP by about 400, which is the expected (looking at the tooltip which still says 20%/40%) extra 40%.

it seems to be working as its supposed to now, but before it was giving much more ap, they just fixed it which disappointed many ppl including me coz the previous pet damage was pretty cool (and high). If i m not wrong, my pet lost around 2k ap when fully buffed with the fix.

Last night I watched it give my pet 90AP as I turned on AoDH which specced is 390 ap. So I dunno if something isn't working right, but its just a very poor amount of AP scaling for requiring a 51 point talent.

Yeah was able to get on tonight and it seems the talent is working correctly at 40% for a total of 30.8% pet ap scaling. Also it seems like flash freeze can no longer be immuned by TBW and neither can the debuff that you get from standing still, so the spec seems to suffer a bit more from the fight than it did the other night. Basically the more instants you have, the better off you are. I wasn't able to get a WWS of the fight as SV because we killed the boss but I'll leave this stuff here for you guys to pick at and see what you think about BM. My pet was spending alot of time getting knocked back by melee ice blocks, but I think it still did a pretty decent amount of damage.

After the Explosive Shot nerf went live on the PTR, I decided to jump on and run some DPS tests and play around with some rotations. I've read the patch notes, and to me it felt like SV is going to be lower DPS again. Especially the somewhat odd way they implemented Black Arrow, followed by the Lock and Load procs on that ability, and disabled the need for Serpent Sting made me feel dubius at the least about the spec. But since the new glyphs are not available yet and Serpent Sting still doing more damage then Steady Shot I decided to run with Serpent Sting as well.

The test is run on the level ?? target dummy which, by popular demand, had 1HP. My Black Arrow and Serpetn Sting DoT's ran for one damage, but did normal damage on overkill. I ran the test with one full mana bar, and stopped once I was out of mana.

My rotation looked like: BA > SrS > ExS > AS > SS > SS > ExS > SS > SS > SS > AS

DPS Screenshot

The odd thing was, target dummy DPS didn't seem much lower than on the live realms. However, for some reason my paperdoll crit chance went down with ± 6%. Explosive shot can still crit for +3K damage. I've ran some tests on the new Sniper Training as well, and it turns out you don't get any buff and it seems to be "just there". However, I couldn't see my damage increase specifically.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> [MM Hunters] Bugs with Piercing Shots on PTR

GC confirms that piercing shots is going to work exactly like deep wounds, which allows me a small glimmer of hope for MM in 3.1.

Can't wait to go MM with a kitty druid in the raid. >


On that note, would it be a valid idea to stack agi/crit and haste? To keep PS rolling as much as possible?

I'm thinking something like

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?hunt...4&version=9637

Since I usually have no mana issues in fights, I didn't take efficiency.
A buddy of mine looked at the tree and even thought that an SV hybrid build, that goes down just far enough for PS, could work. Not sure on the validity of that statement though.

Unless it has changed today (I can't get back on to check), even though the Tooltip uses the wording for the new Sniper Training, in reality it is still using the 30+ yard mechanic, the same as currently on live.

Well Agi is at the moment slightly, and I stress slightly, better than AP for MM. I suppose because of the 10% extra critdamage. With this addition I'm pretty certain that Agi will be clearly the best for MM. Stacking crit I really doubt, and Haste... well it's nice, and will likely become better, but directly going for it I doubt will be the way forward. The only real change appears to be the more pronounced Agi advantage.

Haste will be more beneficial because of the new Wild Quiver. Plus, more haste means more uptime on IAotH (even more haste!).

I'm thinking something very similar like this. The third glyph will be glyph of chimera shot which is >>> than the glyph of aimed shot. Imp hunters mark continue's to be a horrible 3 talents to spend. I'm not sure why blizzard has not improved them somehow.

The new Viper Sting seems almost overpowered in pve, I was doing Ulduar yesterday and some of the trash mobs have a lot of mana, I was getting almost 3k mana per tick.

I noticed the same thing. I did some very quick and rough testing yesterday on the treants below Dalaran and I noticed that one Viper Sting was giving me back around 7k mana. I would expect this to be nerfed down to 200% or even 100% before the end of the PTR. It is essentially a passive evocate right now.

I expect it'll just be nerfed to not scale ridiculously high on high MP targets - "This effect cannot restore more than 30% of the caster's mana."

New build is up.

Chimera shot cost reduction is a welcomed change.
RR rework - good idea, 20% mana returned is pretty good and should help a lot with mana issues Marks is having. [Edited - thanks for pointing out basic mistake Shandara]

I'm trying to make my mind on TNT and Trap Mastery affecting Black Arrow - sure, it's a good thing, but assuming 7k RAP and max rank of BA we have 7000*0.1+2765=3465*1.3=4505 thats ~1040 damage gain, with 24sec CD on BA gives 43dps increase for 3 talent points (assuming Resourcefulness being taken). IAotH comes out more beneficial.