Warning: this is an outdated Wrath guide. In Cataclysm MM hunters no longer have any special Chimera Shot tricks to pay attention to.
I’ve learned that Chimera shot is a somewhat misunderstood hunter shot (up there with Aimed Shot), specifically with regard to exactly what it does when it refreshes serpent sting. And since this directly relates to our awesome new tier 10 2-piece set bonus, now seems like a good time to detail exactly how this works, starting with some basics.
Serpent Sting Portion of Chimera Damage
The serpent sting portion of Chimera Shot damage calculates completely separately as a separate line on recount or your raid parse. Chimera Shot does 40% of the total potential serpent sting damage. It doesn’t matter if you cast it immediately after using serpent sting or when there’s only 1 tick left – the damage is the same. The serpent sting glyph increases the Chimera Shot damage since it increases the total potential damage of serpent sting. Additionally the T9 2-piece set bonus does not affect Chimera Shot damage.
Attack Power Effect of Serpent Refresh
Chimera shot recalculates attack power for serpent sting.
This means that if you have a trinket proc for 1,000 attack power and you hit Chimera Shot, it will refresh your serpent sting with the new, modified extra 1k attack power damage. Likewise when the trinket buff goes away, the next time you cast Chimera Shot your serpent sting will recalculate its damage to the lower attack power.
On other words, there’s no real benefit to recasting serpent sting during AP buffs.
Damage Modifier Effect on Serpent Refresh
Chimera shot remembers and refreshes any percentage damage modifier from when Serpent Sting was first cast.
That means if you get the 15% damage boost from a rogue’s Tricks of the Trade and you hit Chimera Shot, it will remember and refresh the damage without the 15% boost. However, if you recast serpent sting you’ll get the 15% boost, and every Chimera Shot thereafter will remember and refresh serpent sting with the 15% damage boost, potentially for the entire fight.
This has a big impact on us with our 2-piece T10 set bonus, which gives us a chance to proc a 15% damage boost. We’ll want to recast serpent sting the first time that procs (assuming it’s on a target that will be alive for a while) and we can then keep that boost the entire fight. And of course this stacks beautifully with our T9 2-piece bonus.
Aspect of the Viper Effect on Serpent Refresh
If you cast serpent sting and then go into aspect of the viper, then cast chimera shot, it will remember and refresh the damage modifier when serpent sting was cast. In other words, you will not have a -50% damage! Your serpent damage will go down a touch because you lost your dragonhawk attack power, and the AP recalculates, but this is a very nice advantage to Chimera.
Likewise, if you actually cast serpent sting while in aspect of the viper, it will then have the -50% damage. Then if you return to dragonhawk, and hit chimera shot, it will remember and refresh the damage modfier from when serpent sting was cast (-50%).
In other words, if you cast serpent sting while in viper, you must recast it when you get out!
Testing
This is all very, very easy to test on the target dummy, so feel free to check it out for yourself. Just remove any proc gear (since they’ll make things more confusing) and remove your T9 2-piece set bonus (get rid of the crits, which also complicate things).
Put up serpent sting, and you’ll see it ticks for darn near the same damage every time. Go into aspect of the monkey and remove trueshot aura and then refresh it with chimera shot. You see it ticks for less damage. Now go into viper and refresh with chimera – the damage stays the same! Now recast serpent sting, and the damage drops in half. Then go to dragonhawk and turn trueshot aura back on and hit chimera – it creeps up a bit from your added attack power, but it’s not double like it should be. But recast serpent sting and now you’re back to your original damage!
You’ve just blown my mind…
so much to remember….and not stand in the fire..or the black stuff…or the purple stuff…or the green stuff !!
Seriously though…. excellent information. Thanks
that means that it would be good to recast serpent sting when you pet procs [Culling the Herd] for the 3% extra dmg? or have i misread something?
I’m guessing that CtH counts as a Damage Modifier so yes… but only if you still have the T10 boost up, or haven;t had that yet as you’d be better of keeping the 15% from that than replacing it with 3% from CtH
I read the first part of the article and though well Duh! (SS potion of Chimera Damage) but then it went and got all interesting right after that – Cheers Frost, keep up the great work
yea but at the moment when i don’t have the T10 bonus yet. it would still be a nice boost to do it first time CtH pops up on my buffbar
Casting serpent while in Viper, it never occurred to me that the tic would stay at 50%. That is some incredibly valuable information.
So, how logical would it be to ask my guild rogue to Tricks of the Trade me? We generally have 3 hunters in the 25 man raids do MD’s to the tank to start the fight and after putting up serpents sting I could FD to clear my aggro and have the +damage buff on serpent for the duration of some fights.
Or is it a bit convoluted and hunters should forget about it as a plausible DPS boost?
**head spinning**
Good post.
Zat, when I was running my rouge in Naxx I used to ToT Darkbrew often if the tank was all set with aggro. He was our highest dps and as long as he knew it was coming it worked out great. With the new MD changes the tank should have plenty of aggro at the pull.
Yes, Culling the Heard should boost the damage and that boost will be refreshed. Yes, it makes perfect sense to ask your rogues to Tricks of the Trade to you at the beginning of combat!
Great information bound to increase my dps on my hunter. Although I somewhat feel like a fool for not testing this out myself when I first went MM.
I’m assuming the tier9 2piece crit % is just determined from your character sheet every time your serpent sting crits, correct? i.e. shooting serpent sting while you have a crit rating proc (and keeping that sting active via chimera shot) will not cause your sting to crit more often.
I meant to say, “every time your serpent sting ticks”
That is amazing! I had no idea about the AP vs. damage modifier stuff… I’ll have to cozy up to our rogue!
ha, this makes me very happy indeed
If anybody, like me, uses Power Aura, you can make an animation to let you know when Culling the herd procs – and there for know when to re-aply serpent sting.
What would be amaaazing of you Frost, will be if you can work out the names of ALL the % increasing procs/auras/buffs commonly occuring in raids, so people like myself can make power aura notifiers for all of them ^^.
..and i know you love to be amazing!
This has honestly already been a game-changer for me. I have our resident rogue Tricks me at the beginning of Marrowgar (which I can *usually* keep up, barring some bad luck), and Phase 2 of Lady D. And I’ve also made a Power Auras proc for Culling the Herd, for more frequent situations.
Thanks a ton for this post. There’s always good tidbits in your blog, but along with stacking cooldowns with procs from the Kripparian interview, this is the biggest piece of dps info for me in a long while.
Great information! Thanks for sharing it with us.
Thanks.
Great expansion to the email you and Euripides sent me that day on this subject.
It sounds like a Power Auras proc for 3% Culling the Herd (like you said above) and 10% Call of the Wild would both be useful to have setup.
Do you leave Call of the Wild on autocast or do you manipulate it using an on/off macro of some kind?
This site is badass thanks for the help good info there.
I cast Call of the Wild manually at appropriate times (stacking with other cooldowns). Note that it’s an attack power increase, not a percentage damage increase, so it will not be refreshed by chimera shot.
just a question, does CtH and ToT and T10 set stack to give you like 33% bonus and then recast serpent?
What did everyone think Chimera shot did? =P It’s basically a melee shot, a direct damage magic shot, and a SS refresh rolled into one convenient button press. As for the melee shot, obviously, all normal melee stats apply. It then adds +125% dmg to the shot. As for the DD magic shot its Non melee/nature dmg that is equal to the total dmg a Serpent’s Sting would do over its course. All the normal magic crit chances apply to this dmg (SS can crit, so can this). Refresh just restarts SS’s timer, saving mana, and allowing continual dmg through out the whole fight. -50% from Aspect of Viper applys to ALL the damage of Chimera shot. I would advise focusing solely on melee and Steady shot to regain mana, as is will go up ALOT faster. Once you’re where you want to be mana-wise switch back to Dragonhawk and back to full out rotation and DPS. (Serpent’s sting/chimera/aimed/arcane). From my experiences Chimera shot has turned out to be my highest damaging individual shot next to kill shot. Ive seen 10-15k dmg shots, and thats anytime during the fight. I would advise getting the glyph for it too, as it is not hard to see the potential dmg. Chimera shot easily makes my recount % everytime…
I wonder if this info will see that there is less ADD survival hunters running around. haha Maybe they’ll slow down on the DPS a lil and see what their Overall DMG looks like when they bring some “heavy” firepower to a raid.
Yea right nice joke m8, (it makes perfect sense to ask your rogues to Tricks of the Trade to you at the beginning of combat)
Rogues only tricks each other in my guild and pumping out 11-12k dps who can blame them 
Hey.. I was wondering if someone had done up a list already of abilities that would or would not affect the serpent sting refresh. I understand that attack power increases do not get refreshed but damage increases do. Using that knowledge I’m sure I could figure it out.. but if there is a list that I could look at it would be good for spurring thought on changing up rotations.
So if Deathchoice or the crit and agi spec of Deathbringer’s Will procs, do i need to recast serpent sting?
Crit chance is also maintained by chimera based on the original sting the same way that % dmg modifiers are. This is only really important if you have the 2pc T9 bonus, but if you do you can also take that into account when deciding whether to apply a new sting (and using a wild magic before applying your sting during a % modifier is a good idea).
SSSHHHHHHH!!!!!
You KNOW if you say it too load Blizz will take it away from us!
how do you messure the chimera shot total crit since the SS part of it is serperate from the actual shot on recount
Frost, not that I want to argue with you but Call of the Wild IS a % increase:” Your pet roars, increasing your pet’s and you melle and ranged attack power by 10%” So SrS should be boost as long as you keep refreshing it.
On a second not, does Call of the wild an T10 2set bonus stack, if yes should it be wiser to wait for CotW until Exploit Weakness (T10 2set bonus)proc ?
Call of the Wild is a percentage attack power increase, not a percentage damage increase.
Is it fair to be assuming that a best case scenario would see you buffed with Arcane Empowerment (arcane mages), Tricks (rogues), Ferocious Inspiration (beast huntards) / Sanctified Retribution (retardins) *the two latter won’t stack with eachother*, as well as your 2T10 at the same time? An addon such as auramaster could indicate whenever all four buffs are present.
Ahbitrox, this is a bit delayed, however…
Arcane Empowerment, Ferocious Inspiration, and Sanctified Retribution are all mutually exclusive, not just the latter two. Best case scenario would be Tricks of the Trade, AE/FI/SR, Culling the Herd, and 2pcT10.
This is totally awesome. I had no idea buffs when SS was remembered when refreshed with Chimera. That TOTALLY blows my mind …and makes me have to work on a LOT more things to really maximize my DPS now. Awesome, but DANG, more work to figure things out in combat for sure. Maybe I can get Power Auras to notify me when Tricks is in effect.
Thanks for the great info certainly.
is the 4pieces t10 option usefull for MMHutners? do you need serp sting AND wyvern on, or is serp sting only good enough???
Does the “Chimera Shot – Serpent sting” part of chimera shot trigger piercing shots?
hi frost. really hoping you still read the comments section as i’m totally befuddled by serpent sting and glyph of serpent sting…
ok, here’s the issue for me. i’ve tons and tons here and on other sites about how glyph of serpent sting is a must as it has big impact on chimera shot. but i just can’t see how this can be. you have written above:
“The serpent sting glyph increases the Chimera Shot damage since it increases the total potential damage of serpent sting. ”
but nowhere can i find anything that actually says that the amount of damage over time is increased with the glyph. just that the duration of the sting itself lasts longer. So to me, for a MM hunter, this glyph is actually worthless since we dont really care about durations because chimera shot is refreshes the sting.
i understand your theory is that with the increased duration comes increase dmg. but nothing in the tooltip etc says so. In fact, to my mind, the glyph LESSENS the dps of serpent sting; it’s only advantage is that you would be able to get a few more other shots off in the six seconds that the sting is extended.
maybe it’s the wacky tobacky i like to indulge in, but it seems like there’s a huge misunderstanding of the value of the SS glyph. That, or the tooltip is entirely too ambiguous.
help me?
just to clarify (or try to), here’s how i’m looking at SS.
unglyphed: over 15 seconds SS will do 1000 damage*. so that means each second, SS does ~66.7 dmg.
glyphed: over 21 seconds SS will do 1000 damage*. so that means each second SS does 47.6 damage.
(the 1000 dmg is an arbitrary # for example’s sake).
The glyph of serpent sting is definitely one of those poorly worded tooltips in WoW. Here’s how it works:
Let’s say your serpent sting does 5k damage, over 15 seconds. That means it ticks 5 times, once every 3 seconds, for 1,000 damage each tick.
Now, you get the glyph, which extends the duration to 21 seconds. Serpent sting *continues* to do 1,000 damage each tick — but now there are two more ticks. So now your serpent sting is doing a total of 7k damage, instead of 5k. So the glyph isn’t re-calculating the serpent sting equation with the new duration — it’s using the old equation for damage/tick and then just adding a couple more of those ticks at the end.
And that is why the glyph is a good thing, and why it’s so great for MM, since part of Chimera Shot damage is based on the serpent sting damage — and increasing serpent sting damage also increases chimera shot damage.
does this mean if heroism is activated at the beginning of a fight and you cast serpent sting and keep it up then you have a 30% increase on ss for the whole fight :O
once again epic post every one of my friends or guildies who asks about hunters i point them this way great work!