Frostheim Beta Report #2

You know what I really, really need to do? I really need to make a list of every bug or maybe bug that I find and save it in a file somewhere. I report them all, of course, but I no longer remember what they all are, and when a new beta build is deployed I have difficulty remember what all I should be rechecking.

Here is my second info dump of random stuff, as well as all sorts of things I realized I forgot to mention in the first beta report.

Haste

I did a ton of poking around to see how haste affects stuff, both while naked and with gear. There were reports on the beta forums that haste wasn’t affecting steady shot cast times, so I got a bunch of video to go through frame by frame and it seems pretty clear that haste does indeed reduce the steady shot cast time.

Let’s see, also our global cooldown does indeed appear to be 1 second now, which is nice. Haste does indeed increase the number of ticks of serpent sting without reducing it’s duration. It looks like 20% haste will give you an extra tick to your base serpent sting. I haven’t messed around to see how Cobra Shot extensions affect that yet. If you’re refreshing serpent sting with Chimera, you’ll probably need more haste to gain that extra tick, since you’re usually refreshing a second or two before the expiration and the final tick. In theory if we still have a serpent sting glyph that extends the duration, that will mean you’d need less haste to get that extra tick.

Oh, right, and glyphs haven’t really been done in beta yet either. They’re there, but we’ve been told to ignore them, basically.

MM Stuff

Trueshot Aura is a talent you can take, but it doesn’t show up in your spellbook or as a buff you have. However, if you’re in a group, everyone other than you gets the benefit of TSA. I really hope this is a bug and is not the intent.

Improved Steady Shot now gives you a 15% haste buff when you cast 2 steady shots in a row. This rocks. However, this effect will only proc if you do not already have the buff. That means you have to wait for the buff to wear off, and then cast 2 steady shots in a row to get it back. If you cast 2 steadies in a row while the buff is up and counting down it won’t do anything, won’t refresh it. I have a hunch this is on purpose, so that it doesn’t have 100% uptime. However this means that it’s worth paying attention to the buff. Sometimes you’ll want to adjust your rotation to get that buff back up asap… other times you won’t. It’s not worth skipping a Chimera, but it may be worth shoving in an extra steady and risk slightly overcapping your focus.

Oh, and the Imp Steady buff does not seem to affect the cast time of your steady shot, and that I assume is a bug.

SV Stuff

SV’s rotation is frickin’ insane. It’s like the currently SV rotation — all spastic and reactionary — but on methamphetamines. You don’t have enough focus to get everything up — you’re desperate for focus and then all of the sudden you have too much focus and you can’t find a way to get rid of it.

I’m still not sure what the best start of the rotation is. I *feel* like you want to put up serpent sting and black arrow first, at the expense of explosive shot for a while. I was chatting with Zeherah and she also thinks that feels right, but neither of us have crunched any numbers on it (not really worth weighting the shots too scientifically until we can get to level 85).

SV uses Cobra Shot to extend the Serpent Sting rotation a lot. Arcane shot is no longer tied to explosive — they no longer share a cooldown and you can use them both. Generally during most of your rotation you’ll alternate between explosive shot whenever available and using arcane shot as a focus dump while explosive is on cooldown.

Lock & Load is more exciting than ever, because now in addition to those free explosive (or arcane) shots you’re also very, very likely to get capped out on focus. With the new 1 sec cooldown, weaving shots during L&L is easier than ever, and I like to use this time to refresh serpent sting. Keep in mind that you cannot use arcane as a focus dump weave, since it’s also a shot option during L&L. Instead, you’ll actually end up using Kill Command weaved into your L&L when you’re focus capped.

Leveling Stuff

Pets seem to be worse than ever at holding aggro, but part of that may be because they haven’t done the pet design pass, which I suspect is more than just sticking new abilities on pets. Part of it is because pets are totally focused starved and our growl costs focus. With a MD the pets do fine, but without pulling off them is crazy easy.

Currently I’ve found MM best for leveling. The combination of aimed shot and rapid killing is fantastic for soloing stuff. When I need to kill something I just Aimed Shot and it dies and I’m instantly back to full focus. Once I started getting to level 81+ mobs this no longer one-shot them. So now I Aimed Shot > Chimera Shot (both land nearly at the same time). Against something super tough I may even Aimed > Chimera > Arcane. By then just about anything is dead.

Hunter’s Mark is a tricksy thing. I’m so accustomed to ignoring this ability when soloing — things die fast and the mark doens’t really help that much. But now that HM is granting well over 1,000 attack power… well that’s a lot more appealing, even if it’s just for a shot or two.