While I can’t really test much in the way of shot rotation stuff in the beta atm with arcane shot all messed up (and other costs not adjusted) I did strip down and start re-measuring other stuff for the new build.
The good news is that the base focus regen rate now appears to be around 5.25 focus/second.
This is a huge increase from the 3.15 that it was before — massively larger. Before this build the MM rotation (and SV) got a ever so slightly better special to steady shot ratio than they get now in Wrath. With arcane shot cost cut in half (and damaged slightly lowered) and focus regen up, that’s going to mean some very interesting things for our standard rotations. I can’t wait for them to fix the cost bugs so I can test it out.
On a different note, I finally just ground out my last few bars of xp to get to 83. Naturally the training is bugged now and I can’t learn fox. However it’s interesting to note that the exact same amount of haste that got me a bit over 18% haste at level 80 is now giving me a bit under 7% haste at 83. Yikes! My crit chance has also plummeted down to 24% (from 60-something at level 80). The crit I predicted long ago (my prediction was a “good” crit rating at level 85 in raid gear would be around 30%) but I hadn’t considered haste being so low. That implies poor things for adding on those extra DoT ticks.
If you drop a profession, the trainer will start working again. Shame you can’t clone characters already leveled in the beta.
Frost, when you state that MM got a slightly better special to steady shot ratio, you are refering to the ArP rotation, so without Arcane right? So from now 2 per 10 secs to slight more than 2 per 10 secs?
If so, I think it is better to take the non-ArP as reference, since we’re currently only removing Arcane, since that special is so weak compared to Steady at high gear levels. Or as you will, doesn’t scale well with the stats Blizzard provided on the gear. Something I don’t expect to happen with Cata now ArP and crit are going to be lower on our gear.
So that would mean, that this fix would actualy ‘only’ be make our rotation back on par on the long run, with steady falling behind our specials again when leveling (even though at 80 it will be a boost).
But please correct me, if I miss the point.
Yes, I’m referring to the MM rotation that has dropped arcane — so the ratio there is 4 steadies to 2 other specials. In cata it was better than that before the change. I don’t count arcane as part of the current rotation since any hunter can spend 2 weeks doing heroics at level 80 and ditch arcane shot from the rotation
We do not yet know what the rotation is going to be like *now* with these latest changes, since everything is bugged atm.
I was perusing the alchemy items on mmo-champ yesterday and was looking at the elixir numbers…. 225 hit, 225 haste, all where it currently is 40. I certainly think that there is some huge exponential growth happening to the coefficients moving from 80-85.
Good to hear Focus regen is up. My only worry about Focus is that it will feel too slow and make us kinda lose the “always doing something” feel.
Slightly unrelated, but why is it that you link to your website whenever you post a comment, Frostheim? Seems kinda like one of those M.C. Escher things.
Is that Crit drop a bug, due to NYI abilities or is that actually intentional?
@Doublethink — It just does that link thing automatically as long as I’m logged in.
@Anasi — I’m sure it’s intentional. No doubt it will continue to go down until level 85, then we’ll start collecting better and better gear and it will go up again; however, I suspect they’ll want to keep high crit rates around 30% or a touch above. The crazy crit rates we have now in Wrath are an abberation in WoW history and don’t really make a lot of sense.
Following that argument, most things in Wrath right now are an abberation in WoW history. WoW was never about big numbers, things were kept pretty reigned in, gear was a pain in the arse to get, very very few people could be seen in full epic-level gear and so forth. And looking at some of the gear in Cataclysm, those numbers aren’t dropping and I can’t see a reversal in gear acquisition structures.
So why pick on Crit? Seems odd to me to single that out for scaling back when everything else is going over the top. Blizzard themselves made a comment in addressing some of the new gear stats to the effect of “We want the gear to feel huge given there’s only 5 levels to cap”.
I knew Crit rates were getting dropped a bit, my Resto Shaman will lose 5% or so, but not more than the third my Hunter is looking at losing.
I know you don’t make the design choices, I’m just debating the sentiment that Crit is abnormal in comparison to everything else.
Gear inflation, or “welfare epics” isn’t an aberration, it’s a trend that started with BC (or arguably with patch 2.0) and has steadily grown. If by big numbers you’re referring to the damage output, then that is also a steady trend. Crit rating is an aberration — a single point (in Wrath) that’s different from the trend. You could argue that it’s the first point of a trend, or a reset and the new base percentage for crit, but I think that is unlikely.
We even had a blue poster commenting on how crit got out of control because they added extra gear levels for heroic modes that weren’t initially planned for. I think we’ll see it go back down to something more like historical levels. Getting a critical strike more than half the time is just not right
about arcane shot ….. it is just insane for bm
(cost work proper for me) with bestial wrath you can just spam it for over 15 sec 
exept those overpower prot pallies criting for 50k with buffs (sic) duels looks just silly 
The reason crit seems to be being “picked on” is because crit is usually thought of as a percentage, and not a number. If you look at your actual crit rating, that IS steadily increasing – just as all other numbers are. If you look at block chances, parry chances, dodge chances, damage as a percent of the bosses total health, healing as a percentage of tanks health, mana regen as a percentage of total mana, etc. you wont see those percentages increasing either (and, in some cases, actually decreasing just as crit is).
Should crit rating continue to scale up toward the 100% mark? No, of course not! Critical Hits should be just that – rare hits that happen to hit “better” than your normal hits. The closer and closer you get to critting more often than you hit, the more warped the idea of the stat becomes. At near 100% crit, you can almost think of it as NEVER critting.
I think the special/steady shot just got bigger again with the mastery.
“Grants a 16% chance for your ranged attacks to also instantly fire an additional ranged shot for 80% normal damage. Chance increased further by mastery rating.”
Sounds to me anyway like: fire shot -proc- instant 2nd shot giving you 2 numbers on the screen. This should mean, since its the same shot, that you sometimes get 2×9 focus on a steady making you do more special hits.
As far as crit.. im going to wait till cata on that. This talent thingie that adds 60% crit to steady/aimed could easily make things go out of control again. Especially with the option to switch stats arround a bit things can easily get to a point of to-much.
Yeah, Careful Aim granting now 40% boss time instead of 10% looks very good for Steady Shot. Maybe now we will start having multiple rotation/priority list based on bosses remaining health. Like 100%-60%, our phase 1. And then maybe 60%-25%, termination arrive, 25%-20% (gap too narrow to be considered perhaps), and finally 20%-0%, kill shot time.
I wouldn’t sweat the rating hemmorage yet. Haste has been a dump stat for us for so long, i really doubt any main-vein hunter really has a perspective on the slope you lose as you leveled up. Just like crit, we’ll likely plummet like whoa all the way to 85, and then regain it in some porportional value once we start gearing out again.
“I did strip down and start re-measuring other stuff…massively larger.”
You can’t say that on TV
It is good to see that focus regen is being brought up in line with initial promises, but there are still tons of bugs that need to be ironed out anyway. Go For The Throat(Rank 1) causes your pet to regenerate 3 focus, Rank 2 causes your pet to…