Warning: This is an outdated Wrath guide. For current information, see the level 85 Cataclysm version of the guide Here.
Patch 4.0.1 as gone live, bringing the massive 4.0.1 hunter changes from focus to the new talent trees to mastery and specializations. We’re going to go over the key MM hunter 4.0.1 changes here, including the best MM hunter talent spec, rotations, and best MM hunter glyphs for patch 4.0.1.
Patch 4.0.1 is still relatively new, and these guides are being updated as fast as we can discover new hunter data.
Marksman MM Patch 4.0.1 Talent Spec
As always, we’re focusing on boss fight dps with our talents. Marked for Death is particularly useful for boss fights that spawn adds, which is a lot of them. We grabbed Silencing Shot only because there was no dps talent to take, and the utility of Silencing Shot is often useful in raids — just under-utilized.
I only tossed one point in Careful Aim because our crit chances are going to be so insanely high that we won’t actually be able to make use of both ranks. Once we start leveling we’ll want both ranks there.
Marksman MM Patch 4.0.1 Rotation
All hunter rotations are priority-based in patch 4.0.1. You never want to be sitting at 100 focus — when you are that means that any focus you gain is lost, rather than converted into better dps.
- Start fight with Hunter’s Mark, and by applying Serpent Sting
- Always hit Chimera Shot when it’s available — you always want to have enough focus saved up to hit Chimera as soon as it’s available.
- Hit your free Aimed Shot proc (“Fire!”) whenever it’s available.
- Use Arcane Shot to bleed off excess focus.
- Use Steady Shot to regen focus. Note that you want to fire Steady Shots in pairs to maintain the Improved Steady Shot buff as much as possible.
The hardest part of the MM 4.0.1 rotation is managing the improved steady shot buff. The 15% haste this provides is a significant deal, but it’s tricky to optimize. In general you want to try to hit steady shots in pairs — so it’s much better to fire 2 steadies, arcane, 2 steadies than it is to fire 4 steadies in a row.
This means that sometimes you’ll actually hold off on your free aimed shot proc if it hits after just one steady shot — it’s better to wait a bit on the aimed shot than to fire it at once and then have to fire two more steady shots to get your haste buff back up (waiting 1.5 sec or so on aimed vs. letting the buff drop for 3 or more seconds).
Marksman Patch 4.0.1 Glyphs
MM Prime Glyphs
The prime glyphs are our heavy-hitters. These are the ones that are actually going to impact our dps. Currently it’s looking like the following are going to be the best choices; however, it’ll be interesting to do some testing on the Chimera Shot glyph once we see what the final Chimera Shot coefficients are.
MM Major Glyphs
Most of the major glyphs are not going to have a direct impact on your dps. They are oriented around pvp, quality of life, or leveling (Glyph of Misdirection is phenomenal for soloing). Personally I’m a huge proponent of using Disengage to minimize time wasted on movement, thus I think that the Disengage glyph is potentially a dps-increasing glyph. Everything else is really up to you.
- Glyph of Disengage
- …whatever else you’d like
MM Minor Glyphs
Similar to major glyphs, the minor glyphs aren’t going to increase our dps. However there are few enough choices that I do think the following three are the best choices.
lol, you put points in Careful Aim.
Think about it. What boss in ICC is tough in the first 20%? NONE.
Of course I put a talent point there — that’s a HUGE dps gain. +30% crit chance to steady and aimed for the first 20% of the fight, plus the bonus Piercing Shots damage that’ll give us?
That’s a no-brainer.
I see what you did there. Before it had 2 points. Anyway, I don’t like the new talents. They feel more contrived and don’t appear to affect dps as much as they used to.
what about venoms? or are they not in rotation now?
i tried the rotation it is ok on training dunnies but when in dungeons my dps stinks what am i doing wrong should i be using multi shot?
Frost check this vid out http://www.youtube.com/user/kripparrian?blend=1&ob=4
Well survival is by far better from MM on catalcym.I do better dps than MM so choose survival
.
Yeah but this is 4.0.1. This is cata stuff. And when we start doing cata stuff it will be difficult and we’ll want this to push phases
Putricide heroic 10 men. If you get to phase 3 it’s an auto kill. The hard part is phase 1 and 2 if you don’t have enough shaman, druids and locks to let the plague die.
Saurfang heroic. Beginning of the fight before the beasts is where you get to dps the boss the most as a ranged. Useful on beasts too.
Lord marrowgar heroics help you down the spike faster. The boss itself is faceroll the spikes is what kills you.
Lady heroic. Let you down the adds faster.
Blood prince heroic. Doesn’t matter where you dps the most. Boss is not harder at the end. In fact it’s better at the beginning because it’s the easiest prince.
Blood queen heroic. Not harder the the end. it’s a dps race. More dps at the beginning is still good.
Festergot heroic. Dps race. More dps at the beginning is still good.
Rotface heroic. Faceroll boss doesn’t matter.
Sindy heroic. Wont help you much i agree.
LK heroic. Not really usefull too.
think about wot you just said ermmmmmmmmmm i belive the new hunter tallet tree and rotation is 4.1 so thats cata NOT icc come up with big boys in raids of cata and say boss are not tough lol
Do you think we’ll be putting concussive barrage back in when we get more talent points? Seems pretty good Frost, can’t wait for Survival!
There are many better ways to slow, root or stun an add than CB. CB is really only useful in pvp. You can already spec it in pvp builds without waiting for more talent points. So I guess the answer to your question is: no.
If you pvp, and don’t want to dual spec specifically for pvp, I think the answer is yes.
Get that point out for concussive barrage out of Resistance of futile, and another out perhaps out of Rapid Recuparation (interested in suggestions here), and you’ll be all set for pvp and raids, and have a second spec for whatever you want to do, like BM soloing.
Why the point in silencing shot? Just for utility, since it will no longer deal damage? And why Rapid Killing for that matter, if we are focusing solely on a boss fight it will rarely come into play, unless you get the killing blow on an add which seems unlikely.
Good point on Rapid Killing — I blame the black plague. Corrected it. Silencing Shot is super, super useful — just far too few hunters are willing to step up to interrupt duty. Also there are no other dps alternatives for that talent point.
But dumping rapid killing lets us take bombardment. No increase to our boss dps either way, but a big difference in our trash dps (though we’ll still be slaughtered on every trash meter by classes that have actually spammable aoes).
I suppose it really becomes a choice between Bombardment and Rapid Killing for those two points. Both don’t factor into boss fights, at least I’m thinking so because its still better dps to single-target adds in a boss fight, right?
I went with silencing shot even though it no longer does damage because the major glyph for silencing shot gives you an additional 10 focus when you successfully interupt your target. So not only is it a useful raid utility (or back up utility), it has the potential to regen focus for you too.
I’ve got to be honest here in my vote against the Silencing Shot point for pve builds. First, when it comes to being a reliable interrupter for a boss ability, you need a short cool down and a reasonable lock out time when compared that that cool-down. Boss abilities don’t general have self lock out periods unless they are normal mode and a specific difficult part of the hard mode is that the interrupting is more important (or for 10 mans where make ups do not always allow for good interrupter set ups (ie: General fro Ulduar)).
Even in cases where there is a self lock out it is usually 4-6 seconds, but you would need it to be roughly 10 to allow a 2 team interrupter where 1 is a Marks hunter. Without that we have a 3 second lock out on a 20 second cool-down, anyone who sits down and looks at the logistics of trying to work a interrupt with that short of a lock out and that long of a cool-down into as small a number of players responsible for the interrupts as possible will see that you were generally need 3-4 total interrupters (with 2-3 of those being the same players) just so that the hunter could be relied on for just 1 of those interrupts. Logically it makes no sense at all to go to these extra lengths and complications for interrupt rotations just to try and make a hunter work as a reliable interrupter.
From experience on 1 of my 2 geared alts, and enhancement shaman, I can almost interrupt all the frost bolts from lady deathwhisper on my own due to the obscenely short cool-down on their windshear which makes it’s 3 second lock out a non issue. I am literally about 1 second off from being able to interrupt the frost bolt after the one I just sheared. Add in a prot warrior or a rogue that’s good with his kick and you have a 2 man interrupting team that can lock down one of the most annoying abilities in that fight. Most fights that require a interrupt team can be done with 2-3 players with superior interrupts, meaning that trying to work in a hunter is literally just adding unnecessary complexity to a communication critical rotation where if you step on the toes of one of your fellow interrupters, you could well fuck the whole thing up for everyone. KISS, the less interrupters you have to rely on to not mess up the better. It’s much less shunting our interrupting duty and more not trying to over complicate a simpler system to make ourselves more important. I will admit to having somewhat of and ego for being good at what I play, but in this instance I can control it not only for my own good, but for the greater good of the raiding machine and take pride in one of our most important and unique tech roles as de-enrages with tranq shot as the only other classes that can do so (rogue) needs to use infinitely more effort and time to do so.
The only time where a hunter having this ability available in pve is on random fights where that are so many trash targets that need interrupting that a interrupting assigning is loosely binding to unneeded, first come first serve, the faster the better. the only times in all of icc I can think of this being the case are the adepts in LDW and the archmages in Dreamwalker. Any other time our participation in interrupting short cd important abilities is generally a hindrance (ie: many hunters were/are asked to unbind Silencing shot from their other shots and never fire it during Vezax as accidentally clipping one of the specifically chosen interrupters not only throws their cycle off, but replaces a long lock out with a short one and often causes them to waste their interrupt, possibly leading to a free casted fiery explosion into the raid shortly thereafter.)
I can tell you that the other situational talent that you dismisses, (rapid killing) was a amazing longevity and extra burst tool on phases or bosses with adds to help proc mana returns and extra damage for the next add (this was particularly useful for killing multiple small health pool mobs in short succession, allowing you to kill them with basically one instance gcd and an auto shot, like ice spheres in LK. Being able to kill them each with extreme rapidity allowed more time on Raging Spirits as well as some sick mana returns on a fight that is quite long. Now it will allow for quick recovery of focus to keeping a steady flow of burst on short lived large groups of adds, allowing use to mow down adds that are either keeping us from dpsing the boss or are quite dangerous (see vile spirits) if let to live for too long.
Purely on the fact that asking a hunter to be part of an interrupt cycle making the whole procedure more complex should make you shy away from this talent now that that is its only use. But the fact that the situations where it is good are far out numbered by the number of situations the Rapid Killing talent could be beneficial should be another damning point for spending the point in the interrupt.
If blizzard decides that we should be a viable interrupter and either increases the lock out or decreases the cd or both so that they are somewhat reasonable in proportion to each other then I would gladly pick up the talent and preform the task that I know I am capable of doing from doing so on other classes with viable interrupts. Until then I will take the situational talent that will more often be of import and Silencing Shot will be a pvp talent. Who knows though, they finally decided to make Freezing Trap a indefinite cc in pve so we can be relied on to do something we are going to be expected to do. If they change our interrupt, awesome, if they don’t, whatever.
I always use Silencing shot in HC and raids add a misdirect with it sends the mob right to the tank helps bunch the trash together for a bit of Aoe which we lack at the moment I have found that if you hunters mark a mob multishot then steady shot then multishot you can get some good dps on trash not like the volley shot but we will learn i add the steady shot in to regen some focus find if you do 2 multis on trot you struggling for focus
IMO silencing shot is worth it just for the ability to MD casters to Feral tanks. MD + Silencing shot and the casters run right up to the tanks who normally have a difficult time grabbing them.
As we move way from the “Let’s-AOE-Everything-To-The-Ground” style off Wrath play and back towards a CC based “please-bring-some-sort-o-brain” trash of Cata, silencing shot will give us a tool that we can use to assist the raid.
I know it doesn’t push the meters up but it’s still the sort of thing a raid appreciates.
If you are still working on LK, I think you will need silencing shot if you get sucked into his sword.
Not really unless your dps is really that lacking in the sword room, which if you are getting to p3 you should have the personal dps to kill the ghost. You should be able to just race the spirit for the kill and come out a long ways ahead.
I don’t really agree with the rapid killing, and for silenceing shot I see how the utility is nice but really, lets let the rogues do it so we dont have to.
This is the spec I have come up with, instead it has used 2 points in bombardment and 2 points in one with nature, at level 80 its a 2/31/3, heres the link
http://wowtal.com/#k=SsrJmF2.a5o.hunter.
It’s probably a good idea to practice using silencing shot, even if there are other classes that can interrupt. I have a feeling that we’ll find use for it more frequently in the future, not only on boss fights, but also in as part of the more careful pulls and CC that will be necessary in Cataclysm 5-mans.
Any advice on Mastery? or is it too early to speculate on it?
All of these changes (for all classes) makes me religiously glad I leveled my inscriptionist. Anyway…
I noticed a lot of folks not bothering to put points in “Resistance is Futile” just reading the info (since I’m not on PTR or Beta) it seems like it would be valuable in PvP (and perhaps solo PVE). I planned on spec’ing it but now I’m not sure. Does in not proc often enough to be worth it?
8% chance that high focus cost ability that you dont use (because you dont have focus for it and its damage isnt boosted by anything in your tree) will give you back focus? Not “will be free od focus” but will refund focus” meaning you NEED to have those 40 focus… Seriously, this is not even a PvP utility spec. Get Rapid Killing and Concussive Barrage for PvP but not this. There are not many “bad talents” per se in hunter trees but RiF if THE most useless one. (with GftT and Sic´Em not being in BM tree being another talents that should be fixed – but will not)
I completely misread/misunderstood the “will refund focus”not “be free of focus” aspect of this talent. O.o. [From tooltip: "within 8 sec to refund the focus cost."] Ugh.
Thanks a lot for the reply! This saved me from performing an idiot move.
Frost! wheres the gemming guides at!
Gemming is just going to be Agi gems. So not much difference there.
So… will we be gemming everything with agi? i mean, now with the +5% agi of mail specialization, every socket will have a +20agi gem, except 2 of them, that will have a 10agi/10crit and the other a blue +hit gem to get the meta gem effect. Am i right? or should we just follow the socket color to get the socket bonuses?
I dont see us gemming much more than straight Agi, getting our meta activated, and gemming hit if needed. I can see us reforging possibly some of our Agi from gear into mastery unless we actually get +mastery gems. I dont have a JC toon so Im not sure whats all coming out for it. Just my best guess though, I’m sure Frost is already preparing something for gemming.
You can’t reforge Agi. Only secondary stats can be reforged.
No way you’d want to reforge ANY of your AGI into anything even if you could. AGI will be your all around best stat again by the looks of it unless I missed something along the way. Why would you reforge to lose your best stat?
Yes you are correct, I blame Frosts Black Plague and lack of sleep on my part for my nubness.
Do you think it’s worth having a single point in Rapid Killing for Rapid Recuperation? For a single target encounter it seems pretty useless, but for fights like Saurfang it seems like it might be worth it.
What i’ve been wondering for a while and haven’t seen answered anywhere is if the new “Improved Serpent Sting” talent in the Surv tree deals instant damage when Chimera shot refreshes serpent sting. If this were the case, you would definitely want to put two points into that. Anyone know if this is the case or not?
I read that talent to mean that you’ll be doing 30% of serpent sting’s total damage when serpent sting is fired, which is different from Chimera’s refresh effect.
No, Chimera and Cobra shot do not trigger the imp serpent sting effect.
One change I would make would be to forgo one with nature (which only nets you 30 AP at 80 with two points in it) and dump those last two points into Bestial Discipline. Between GftT (with the high crit rates at 80), sic em, and that you can keep your pet above 50 focus most of the time so his basic attacks will be doing an extra 60% damage with Wild Hunt.
Any thoughts on Gemming? Being ArP capped in Wrath, it now goes all to crit. Are there default gems that should be used for specific slots? (red=agi, yellow=crit, blue=hit) Or should all the old ArP gems be replaced with Agi gems? Would be great if Frost could do a gemming article with all the changes in mind.
From what I’ve read we’ll be using Agi again for marks, seeing as it gives us 2 AP per point instead of 1, and we also get some crit.
Basically this means:
Red: Agi
Yellow: 10 Agi/10 Crit or 10 Agi/10 Haste – more testing required to see which one nets more DPS, and it’ll depend on how much crit you gain from gear already.
Blue: 10 Agi/10 Hit or 20 Hit
If you’re already hit capped you can forgo the socket bonus and just stick in 20 Agi, like we did before.
Yellow will be agi/haste because of our mastery (more autoshots – means utilizing more +15% damage on autoshots- and it also means more steadies which translates into more Wild Quiver.
On the other hand, crit increases PS damage, but PS damage has been decreased even with increased crit chance. Why? Because it doesnt proc from Arcane shots AND we no longer crit for 243% so crits are dealing lower damage than before.
So far I’ve had more luck with agi/haste than agi/crit. I went from the crit gemming I was left with after the patch and gemmed agility/haste to the point that my haste rating got my steady shot down to 1.5s cast which resulted in a 450-500 dps increase on the boss dummy.
What about reforging? Everything as Mastery since we don’t have any anywhere else on gear atm?
What about secondary stat priority? I’m guessing Mastery > Haste > Crit, but is there any maths on the matter at the moment?
For Crit rating what would be the cap? And for hast what amount of rating is most optimal?
Are we going to be macroing Silencing Shot into our other shots like we currently do?
No – Silencing shot no longer does damage so you’ll only use it for interrupts.
Erm I just clicked on the link for the Survival guide for 4.0.1 and it sent me to Marksman….and same the other way too. FROST! Help! =)
Ah, exciting times friends! Weeeeee!
correct me if i am wrong but wouldnt the point spent in Silencing Shot be better spent in Careful Aim or One With Nature as that would be a dps boost?
Careful Aim: no, the secon point would be wasted
One with nature: it is not in the same tree and you need 31 point in MM tree anyway
Im looking forward to testing this out, Hopefully I can get in the swing of it fast enough, we are gonna try and raid tonight.
May our Mana rest in peace
Ok, honest question time
I looked at the new glyphs and I am wondering, how hard will it be to keep serpent sting up with chimera shot without the glyph of serpent sting. Before I glyphed it to increase chimera damage I would lose the sting about 25% of the time due to things like changing target to remove web wraps and other multi hit cc, or if I was punted out of range before I could get the chimera off.
not hard at all with SpS 15 second duration (15, not 12). Actually I never “managed” SpS to fall off. And there is no glyph to increase Chimera damage, just to decrease CD by 1 second
the old glyph extended SpS durration by 6 seconds, increasing how long SpS ticked for upped the Chimera Shot damage
Frost, I have 2 objections on your priority list:
1) There is no need to put SpS on target before Chimera. So you probably want to start with
either: Chimera, RF, serpent, arcane, 2 steadies…. Chimera/Readiness/Chimera….
or: Chimera, 2 steadies, serpent,…
2) Chimera has priority over Aimed proc. Aimed proc triggers GCD so you would be delaying Chimera if you fired Aimed before Chimera (and you theoretically could get focus capped
. However, if you fire Chimera and then Aimed, you dont delay anything.
As for glyphs, there will be interesting choice between Chimera and Arcane. Arcane seems to be a bit better but dont forget to factor in Piercing Armor effect of Chimera Shot and then Chimera Shot is probably the better one.
One of Major glyphs should definitely be Silencing shot. For me, who hadnt SilS macroed and was using it as an interrupt ability when possible, I am pretty used to use “new” Silencing shot. Having 10 focus instantly back when interrupt lands? Sweet!
After doing some testing on the PTR, it appears that 2/2 Termination is not needed with the KS glyph. Under 20% your rotation should look like:
KS, KS, CS, SS, SS, ArS, ArS, SS, SS
(you will be able to cast the instant aimed every other cycle)
This rotation will provide roughly 33 focus per cycle, thus allowing you to move the points from termination into something like RiF.
So how about leaving out one Steady and do Arcane instead? That leaves you with 37 more focus spent compared to what you wrote (meaning -4 overall) and you will do more damage.
need to do the 2 ss to get the free proc
Does anyone how much haste will would need since the GCD is 1 sec and will already got the haste from pathing and improved steady shot to cap?
A massive thank you for this. Would be lost without it! It’s the only site I have seen that actually has the guts to put up a spec. Once again thanks very much!!!
No points in imp Serpent Sting?
Hey Frost,
I noticed you linked the old version of Glyph of Serpent Sting. A couple days ago on the PTR it was changed to increase crit rates on Serpent Sting instead increasing the duration. So I was wondering if this made a difference.
Will we never be using Kill Command as Marks? Seems like a poor design choice on Resistance is Futile.
In light of reforging being implemented in the game, while on PTR i experimented with around 20% chance of mastery, it seems to balance well other stats with that % atm, offcourse am pretty sure come cata, mastery will play a major role. Has anyone else tried out reforging mastery into their gear, am curious.
nvm just read in a different article to convert as much haste as possible to mastery which makes sense considering mm having enuff haste buffs via talents.
I followed this line of thinking too and put as much haste in mastery as I could. My haste went from 23.3% to 13.6%. Now my steady shot is at 1.71 sec, which is gimping my focus regen badly, especially during short encounters. I’m certain this is costing me a ton of dps on trash clears, but I haven’t run any numbers on it for lack of time. If Frost or anyone else has a solution to this problem, I’d love to know what it is.
BTW, I forgot to mention I got 236 mastery rating out of the deal. This equaled 5.18 mastery points, which when added to the 8 I started with, came out to 23% chance to proc the extra shot. I’m thinking this may not be worth it when compared to the dps loss from all the godawful slow steady shots.
Thanks very much for all this information Frost. My brain hurts and I expect I will be doing about the same dps as the tank for a while….but with the help of this site I’ll eventually get it figured out
Ditto. I’m extremely grateful for the help. Half the fun is figuring it out for yourself, but with ALL the changes to ALL the classes having a little help doesn’t hurt.
Major glyphs make it look to me like we can carry pvp and pve spec all in 1 talent speccing.
Any news ’bout tanko/solo specs?
Is it still in the game?
And btw, can you help me to figure out the best way to reforge 5pc t10,5?
Thanks a bunch!
Hey
,thanks for this Frost,you are a star.Putting all this up for us to read when you’re feeling really unwell is incredibly appreciated .
Hope youre feeling much better soon !
Oh he is sick?
Duh! He was my hero, and now he is a super hero :O))
Feel well Frost!!
what gems should MM hunters use? agy/ crit or haste?
Agility.
I have read all the gem stuff etc but I am still confused. All my previous ArP gems(and nearly all my gems were ArP) turned to yellow crit and yet my crit chance still seems “very low” (compared with Frost’s quoted cap of 104.8% unbuffed) at 61.98%) and most are now sitting in red sockets so I no longer get the bonus. I really don’t know if I should leave things as they are, change some or all of them to Agil gems or what. Is there a minimum crit chance I should aim for, should I just be trying to get crit as high as possible ignoring socket bonus’s, or what?
I’m gemmed for all agi and agi haste and I’m sitting at 60%. Keep in mind when you’re raid buffed you’ll have much higher crit anyway.
As for stat prioritization, the consensus (for MM) seems to be Hit > Agi > Mastery > Crit > Haste so you’ll want to place 20 Agi (and 34 Agi JC gems) in red sockets and 10 Agi/10 Crit gems in any yellow sockets. With Imp. Steady Shot, 3/3 Pathing, and all the extra haste on our gear we probably don’t need to gem for haste.
10 Agi/10 Hit gems should go into blue sockets if the bonus is worth taking and you’re under the hit cap. You’ll probably even want to socket 20 hit gems if you’re considerably under the cap. Keep in mind you only need 246 hit rating now.
the new Marked For Death talent says..
Your Arcane Shot and Chimera Shot have a 100% chance to automatically apply the Marked for Death effect.
doesnt this means MM dont have to apply hunter’s mark?
Rapid Killing and Rapid Recup are a waste of talent points IMO.
As I’m sure we’re all to see in Cata, CC will be much more important, and yes hunters STOP COMPLAINING about having to CC. Concussive Barrage, just like Silencing Shot, will have much more utility in Cata, I’m betting on it.
This is how I specc’d:
http://www.wowarmory.com/talent-calc.xml?cid=3&tal=0200000000000000000230231123212003122103000000000000000000
@ Deepfriedegg – If you cast RF and immediately after serpent sting and arcane you are wasting 2 GCD (2 secs) of RF for instant casts when you’d better use that for steadies as much as possible. Also you would not have enough focus to put through Chimera, Serpent Sting and Arcane before casting steadies. What i did was cast Serpent > Chimera > RF > 2x Steady > 3 Arcane (can do this under RF only, else 1-2) > 2x Steady > Chimera > 1-2 Arcane. Note that on Aimed procs i hit that over 1 Aracne as not to waste the GCD time so my timing of Chimera didnt go outta whack. So far no hunter i know has beatin my dps but i am still practicing and so are others for more details i have posted a reply with stats/gear etc in the Patch Day thread. Hope this helps.
Hi Frostheim, big fan of ur podcasts…..
So i checked over ur talent points and specing for MM, I have a few ideas for u
So first off is i see you put 2/2 in Sick ‘Em. I do not necessary agree with this. I tested uing wolf pet on dummies. Now with auto giving u focus back to ur pet and the tendancy for only one pet ability to use focus 2 points in this talent is excessive. 1/2 from my trials shows that my pet is not focus staved in anyway and as such does not result in dps loss. I wondering if this is an 85 talent point spent for pets with different ability (i dont have beta key), but cetrainly at level 80 there is no requirement for 2/2 points
Next Careful Aim – contratory to wots someone above has posted this is an awesome talent point. So OP!!! Now putting 1/2 point is not wrong as such, but having read ur text i dont think u clarified as to why u used 1/2. Now i got 2 hunters main on eu (full 277HC) and one on US server (toc geared). Now as far as i can see ur choice is based around crit cap (amusing its not changed forhunters – whih from recount on dummeis it appears not to have). Putting 1/2 points in this spec is fine assuming u have roughly 70% crit wth 25man raid buffs, which with icc 25man HC to completely do able, and that as such puts u above crit cap for that talent point. Maybe u should clarify that for those without this ability might benefit from 2/2 – for example my us hunter has 40% crit and assuch with 1/2 in CA in crit only at 70% and as such would benefit from 2/2.
Trueshot aura – now this is gonna be contraversial – this has been a dead talent point for pretty much whole of WotLK. Now i guess this is dependant on how u raid. I turn up to 25man un-speced and spec around the raids grps buffs and replenisment ( Pets FTW btw) rarely have i eva found a need to spec trushot aura, maybe in 10mans?? however, now with introducton new BoM i can neva see a need for it, or rarely…… Now u might argue that u need to use it to get next talent tree…… but here wot i am doing with it. Rapid Killing 1/2 – now again this might be contraversial. However these r my reasons i see above somewhere u argue the benefit of bombarment as a talent, and i completely agree this is an excellent talent to spec into, however i would argue that rapid killing one point can be very beneficial if u can afford to use it, which in most 25man u can. This is because of trash kills etc… the chance to regain 50 focus from a potential killing blow while doing trash/?? LDW mobs (untested) so u can continue to spamm multi-shot is more beneficial than specing a 1/1 in TA which is being unused.
God this post is long already and i still got a more to chuck out, but ill stop here and see wot feedback i get
Look foward to ur thoughts
DrMike, Am I not right in saying that Careful Aim looks so good because target dummies are always over 80% health and CA only applies above that amount. In the real world most targets drop below that amount quite quickely and then CA is doing nothing. That being the case, there’s nowhere else that I can see to put that Sic-Em point, everything else is quite pointless.
drmike, no offense because I think you may have some worthwhile thoughts and a sincere desire to share them, but I found your post to be nearly unreadable, which canceled out most of whatever you’re trying to say. Can you slow down a little, clean up the spelling and grammar a bit so we don’t have to trip over them as much? Please take this as constructive criticism, I think you have something to contribute and I don’t want you to end up wasting your time or mine. Thanks.
wow
I used to do between 10 and 14k in 25 men. My record was 14.5k on Festergut. I used to do between 8 and 11k in 10 men. My record was 11.5k on Lady Deathwhisper.
And i did not have DBW. I had the Craptastic War Token.
I did try the new MM spec yesterday and was not able to reach 10k. On average i did between 2 and 3k less than before.
I must be doing something wrong.
I use agy gem in almost every slot. I use one +10agy +10hit gem for the meta gem bonus. I use one +10agy and +10crit where the bonus is +6agy and more.
I reforged 2 piece to get hit cap. Removed some haste from Saurfang 10 men ring and Sindy 10 men ring (normal mode) to get hit cause those pieces of gear suck anyway now that there’s no armor pen. I’ll try to get the Lucky Necklace which is now good to get hit cap.
I use arcane, steady and kill shot glyphs.
I start the fight with serpent sting, chimera shot then i use RF if avalaible and then do steady twice and arcane as much as my focus let me do it then rince and repeat. I always have enough focus to do Chimera. I replace arcane by aimed when it procs. I keep the steady buff up. I dump focus as much as i can using arcane.
I really don’t see what i’m doing wrong.
Shit i was not even able to beat a badly geared (ilevel 251) lock yesterday. It’s so depressing.
Anyone tried to replace arcane shot glyph by chimera shot one. Honestly arcane still sucks. It’s only good cause blizzard nerfed our physical damage so much by removing armor pen. My Steady (and auto shot single shot) was doing more before the patch than arcane does right now (i was at 1310 armor pen with food buff). I really thought Blizzard would seriously buff arcane so it would be good again and not only some focus dump shit skill. Sadly it’s still bad. Even terrible i would say.
Anyone tried to replace some haste for mastery ?
Should i replace some haste from my War Token to get more crit ?
Haste was bad before. Is it really better now ? Should we replace part of our haste using reforing ?
God so far i son’t really like the change. I might make my druid my main next xpac.
I have tried replacing haste for mastery. There appears to be a diminishing return on this but I haven’t yet figured out exactly when it’s time to stop reforging. The problem is the effect of lower haste on steady shot’s cast time and how that impairs focus regen. See my post above.
Frost –
Thanks so much for doing this! It’s a huge help.
Just wanted to ask how you figure to use the Arcane Shot; I noticed you put in the Glyph for its increased damage, but didn’t include it in your shot rotation. Is it purely a focus dump, or do you see it working into the rotation another way?
I guess I partially get this, but if MM was mostly going around arm pen whats the primary stat now? I’m mostly assuming that its agility but I could be wrong!
Should my attention shift to another spec? I’m not a hard-core player so I don’t have a guild and have been pugging ICC now for ages and still actually need it.
Stat priority now is agility – mastery/crit – haste. Remains to be seen which is better, crit or mastery but for now they appear to be roughly equal.
So after some testing, I’ve realized that at this point mastery seems to be a fairly average stat for MM. I reforged all haste to mastery and saw a noticeable decrease in DPS as well as some instances where I would get focus starved. After restoring all my gear my rotation went a lot more smoothly and my DPS went up as well, even with Wild Quiver proccing less often.
We’ll have to re-evaluate mastery when Cata comes out.
Thanks, nice to know I’m not the only one. I’m restoring mastery to haste in increments until I see enough improvement in my steady shot cast time to keep my focus up.
I see alot of folks getting discouraged, but let me give you my perspective so far. Slight increase in DPS has been gained. PVE, Less than 1000 is what I’ve seen from a day of testing. PVP = 5 shots, your out of focus, kite around a trap and use your enviornment. . No Logs for you, sorry.
General Info -
Dummy – Self Buffed MM with a Cat and Haste reforged to Mastery = 6700 DPS (no food, flask, rapidfire, Berserk or Culling).
Toralon (10 and 25) – 10100 DPS, fully raid buffed without food, flask or haste pot. No significant variance between my dps in 10 or 25 like it used to be. I only Serpent Stung adds, and single target dps’d the boss. I did not stack Rapidfire with Heroism and did not have the T10 4 set bonus (I swapped out 277 Gloves and Shoulders if they aren’t showing on Armory)
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Alexstrasza&cn=Dorianenigma
Hope it helps, don’t be discouraged =)
(posted elsewhere, but seems more appropriate in this section)
5 shots for pvp ? as MM and surv this is far from the truth
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Cenarius&cn=Crixus
I reforged crit on almost all of my pieces to mastery, so I’ve got wild quiver up to 34%. I’m not sure if this was a good decision or not, but 34% chance to do +115% damage each shot sounds good on paper.
With my 616 haste rating (18.79%) my steady shot takes 1.6 secs before imp StS reduces it to 1.4.
After spending some time on the dummies, I find myself getting about 8.5-9k dps with self buffs only, keeping in mind that the dummy’s over 80% hp the whole time so I have a +30% crit with careful aim 1/2.
Prior to patch 4.0.1 I was hitting around 11-12k dps on Koralon and about 11k dps on heroic Festergut with 10-man buffs (+30% icc buff). I know that comparing these numbers to the target dummy is kind of apples and oranges since I didn’t have raid buffs on the dummy, but it’s all I’ve got to go by for now.
So tonight I ran ICC 10, and pulled 10.5k dps on heroic festergut, 11.2k dps on heroic rotface (using the stats from my previous post and frost’s previous spec with 1/2 careful aim), so a little bit less dps than I normally do. However I was very fortunate and didn’t get vile gas nor mutated infection more than once each.
I’m still not very used to my rotation yet and am definitely getting capped at 100 focus (and wasting focus generated by steady shots) when I have to pay attention to other mechanics. I am also not used to burning off all my excess focus when using rapid fire at the beginning. I definitely did very subpar damage on marrowgar and lady deathwhisper, but those numbers fell out of my recount history.
Hunter-related thoughts:
1) I miss having ridiculously strong aimed shots every 10 secs.
2) I miss serpent sting lasting 21 seconds, giving leeway to use chimera shot on something else and still be able to refresh it.
3) I don’t like having to use 2 gcds to do a freezing arrow.
4) I actually preferred the 1.5 second gcd. I feel a little too frantic right now trying to make sure I’m always firing shots.
5) Posthaste speed buff after disengage is awesome.
6) Readiness surprisingly does not restore focus to 100?
7) I need more time to adjust.
Non-hunter related thoughts:
1) I have some problem where my name plates don’t show up on all mobs a lot of the time after the patch, and this is generally what I look for to tell if there any adds alive and also what I click on to target them. I have not yet learned to tab target effectively.
2) Haven’t figured out how to make blizzard raid frames to show up while using pitbull, which I used to target friendly targets with (e.g. for BQL biting). Also useful for telling who’s closeby.
3) That’s all I can think of right now.
well I am sadly one of the Hunter’s noticing a significant dps loss since the changes. The highest dps I have yet to achieve on any test run on a dummy was just pushing over 7k, where this was well above 8k pre patch. And that was a run of much luck with aimed shot procs, the “normal” dps I am seeing on the dummy is about 6.5k. I am managing to keep my SS buff up pretty much constantly without overflowing on focus and using Chimera as soon as available. I think the big question we are all waiting for an answer on (and yes, this may change from 80+ but the people still raiding now need an 80 cap answer) is the priority for Haste, Mastery & Crit. Anyway, I am also sadly just lvling alts until this is resolved as I cant bare to see my dps take such a massive hit while other classes are experiencing the same dps change as a gain.
Im at hit cap about 54% crit so any advice on wether to reforge into haste or mastery yet?
To be honest, i used your spec and my dps was very low – 4,5k – 5k on dummy.
Then i respec with some changes: take those 3 points from Pathing and put 2 in Improved Serpent Sting and 1 add it to One With Nature. As well, i extracted one point from Sic ‘Em! and added to Careful Aim.
My dps was going up considerably – from 4,5k -5k (with a very nasty focus management) to 7k at first try (on dummy, ofc).
Can you try this spec and say what is your opinion ? You can check my gear and spec on EU Aggramar.
You make a big mistake. The reason you get that extra dps is because dummies are usually above 80% HP for your tests. So that 1 extra point in Careful Aim probably gave you 100% crit rate on most attacks.
Imp SrS does nothing after the initial application, because Chimera refresh doesn’t trigger it. Also One with Nature is a really bad talent it gives 18 AP per point invested; its really really bad. (Until cata when it’ll be really good
)
I hit 12.5k dps on Saurfang 25H on Tuesday night. Not that bad, but I was normally 13.5-14k. (I was also not even in the top 10 dps on that fight in my guild, other classes got buffs)
I’m staying around 7.5-7.7k on the dummy. I had a little extra hit so I reforged it to mastery but other than that left my haste alone, and it’s at around 22.5%.
But I must be doing something right since people here with better gear than me (as I recently made this my main) have reported lower.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stonemaul&cn=Wendla
I was able to do better yesterday on Rotface 10 men heroic. Was close to 12k and 2nd dps. But this was the best numbers i was able to get for the night. I was lucky on that fight i did not have any little ooze on me and rarely had to move because of pool of poison. On festergut heroic 10 men i was last dps at 8k and the tank was not that far from me at 6k and 7k. Really frustrating to be 1k ahead of the tanks …
I think with some practice i’ll be able to do better but i don’t think i’ll be able to get the numbers i was before in 25 men.
Locks have been boosted so much it’s frustrating. A lock in my guild i was always beating by 1-2k dps did beat me on all boss fights yesterday by 1 to 3k dps. He was able to faceroll 14-15k dps in 10 men heroic easily.
I’m thinking about reforing part of my crit to mastery. I have around 10% more crit now that i had before. 65+% crit (with a wolf) seems too much to mee specially since Piercing Shot has been nerfed.
I think blizz will have to change some talents. Takes way too much time to proc that talent giving us an instant cast aimed shot. Right now it procs dunno maybe 2-3 times on a boss fight.
I’m thinking about the chimera shot glyph too. Less arcane shots looks like a good idea to me …
In your rotation, you state to start with Hunters Mark, but you put 2 points in the talent: Marked for Death, which puts Hunters Mark straight on when you fire Arcane or Chimera Shot. Wouldn’t it be better then to open straight away with an Arcane Shot, followed by Serpent Sting, Chimera, and then double steady?
I have noticed you can put Hunters Mark on a 2nd target, btw
So, after much reforging/respeccing I have come up with a few ideas of my own. 2/31/3 seems to be the best specc for me while having 2/2 in bombardment, Though I do not see any use for the talents, we must have 31 so I slapped them in there. Rapid Killing even though it would give us a nice focus boost, doesn’t appear to be usefull either because with haste having such an effect on regen focus should not be a problem. Reforging was quite costly for me, but from what i could see Keeping all your haste and reforging all your crit was the way to go,Crit is being reforged into Mastery for me because 115% bonus damage for every shot (yes every) is op and im at 38% mastery now. Haste also affects steady shots damage modifier not just its cast time so that is deffinately a big improvement. My rotation was pretty much as follows. Hm (you cast before fight starts anyways) Serpent Sting, Chimera shot, Arcane shot (focus dump), Steady Shotx2,(continue steady shot until 1of3 things happen, Aimed Shot Proc, 90+ Focus in which case u arcane shot focus dump, Chimera Shot comes off cd). steady shot seemed to be the best choice for me with arcane shot being your focus dump. It didnt seem beneficial to comepletely pull out arcane shot but as a focus dump it was giving me 9.5-10k on dummies (havent had much other opertunities). Pets dont matter anymore as long as its ferocity ur good for Call of the Wild, I have a giant wasp from Sholazar Basin now just to piss people off. Buffs that pets give are all covered by raiders But if u are missing a raid buff ur pet can obviously cover it. Other then that the only thing i really noticed was that it appeared when i stood in the front of the training dummies i was getting blocked attacks, and was doing about 1k-500 less dps idk wtf happened but once i stood in back it seemed to go away. Any feedback would be well appreciated if u have tips or if i helped u then sweet.
Thanks, this was helpful. I’ll try putting haste back and reforging crit instead to see what happens. But something else you said caught my eye, because you’re the second person to say it. Maybe I’m reading the mastery tooltip all wrong, but I don’t think it’s giving a 115% damage buff to every shot, as you say. I read it as a chance to fire a single extra shot (Wild Quiver I presume) with 115% extra damage. Can someone clear this up for me?
I read it again and I suppose if you got mastery up high enough to give a 100% chance to proc, then it would be true to say it works on every shot. But I can’t see that happening, as it would seem to take somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,227 mastery rating to achieve 100% proc chance. Seems well beyond the range of achievable at the moment.
Ok, I did some target dummy work with both haste and mastery and there’s no question mastery is better than haste. I don’t have numbers to post but the difference was obviously outside the margin of error. I’ll try to come back with some specific data later but right now I’m off to watch the NLCS Game 1.
Just thinking out loud, does the improved steady shot buff stack with Rapid Fire for 55% haste ?
They stack, but they stack multiplicatively so you get 1.4*1.15 = 1.61 or 61% haste.
Also I would really remove One with Nature from your build Frostheim. 36 AP for 2 talent points is REALLY not worth it. Either spend 2 extra points in the MM tree somewhere, or put them in Bestial Discipline. Keeping your pet at 50+ focus is quite the dps increase now with Wild Hunt.
36 AP on the other hand is for most players roughly 0.25% AP increase per point, quite bad.
Idk about taking the points out or not, but I wouldn’t put them in Bestial Discipline. Both GftT and Sic’Em all but keep your pet at full or close to full focus.
I’d actually rather keep the points in One with Nature OR maybe put them into Imp Serp. I know the first part of the talent is wasted in MM, but the 10% Crit increase might be nice. Especially if we’re reforging Crit into Mastery.
i made some rough priorities kits:
http://wyrax.ho.ua/images/MMdps401.PNG
its still in progress so check this ^^
Can you please give us the macro you are using at the start for rapid fire, readiness and call of the wild?
#showtooltip Rapid Fire
/cast Call of the Wild
/cast Rapid Fire
/cast Readiness
Rotation I use:
SrS > Chim > Arc x2 (Opener)
SS x2 >Arc x2 > SS x3 > Chim > Arc (Standard)
To note my Haste is at 25% atm.
Also, when you are doing the SS x3 part, if you have enough focus for an Arcane Shot after the first Steady then you can do the Chim > Arc. Otherwise skip the Arc and go to SS x2 > Arc x2.
If however you don’t have the focus at the time for an Arc after your first Steady in the x3 part but you proc Aim Shot before the Chim then go Chim > Aim > Arc (Global used on Aim Shot is enough time to passively generate enough focus for the Arcane Shot). This usually happens every 2-3 rotations, otherwise the Aim Shot proc is usually triggered during the Arc x2 part.
Tested and raided with this rotation. I can pull 10.5-11k stable with Careful Aim on Dummies. 9.5-10k without Careful Aim. Every boss fight I varied from 16k-16.8k. My dps in raid was lower than I liked, tbh, cause I wasn’t really used to raiding with the new mechanics. I casted several Aim Shots out of shear panic. But advice I can give is for hunters to not panic and feel like because they have focus they have to use it right away. I’m sure I will be above 17k next week, since the raid I have up’d my dps by about 600-1000. With Cooldowns on a 5min test I was able to maintain 11.4k with Careful Aim. (If screenshots are required I will post them upon request.)
Gave this rotation to a guild hunter who was struggling and only pulling 12k in raids. They were testing on dummies at 8.8k with no Careful Aim. They did this new rotation and were up at 9.5k with almost 140k more damage done. *Update* This hunter is now stable at 10.4k dps 5min tests, after practicing for a long while.
Some adjustments I made to the rotation teaching this to another new hunter to encounter errors during the rotation were pretty simple to self-correct.
If you happen to say get 3 steady shots in a row when you are doing the x2 string simply do 2 arcanes > Steadyx3 > Chim > **Arcane x2** to correct for the excess focus. This is just like fitting in an Aim Shot proc. After the error is corrected then fall back into the normal rotation.
If you happen to get 4 steady shots in a row on the x3 string simply do Chim > Arc > Steady x2 > **Arcane x3.**
** = where the change in the standard rotation is made to dump the extra focus.
The largest problem I face when teaching the new hunters the rotation is they watch their focus bar way to much and start to panic when they get to 40 focus and feel the need to dump it right away. If you just practice the rotation and do not stray away from it, I guarantee the focus will be there.
DPS increases:
A big one is for hunters to either stand to the side or behind a boss/test dummy when checking rotations. We can have our arrows blocked for less dmg than our lowest normal wide hit. For me my lowest Auto was 1980ish a Blocked Hit was 1260ish.
Another is Slow Weapons > Fast Weapons. I did a naked run and fully geared run between LK normal 25m bow and Heroic Zod’s the dmg difference per auto shot was about 200, on arcane my difference was around 400.
All this rotation takes is practice and discipline to stick to it like glue.
My Stats are:
Haste : 828 (25.13%)
Crit: 52.74%
Atk Power: 6128
Mastery : 682 (22.86%)
Ty all for ur posts; Nestery what is ur suggestion: better to reforge crit or haste into Mastery? Seeing ur stats I think U had reforged Crit, but Im a little confused cause others hunters consider crit better than haste and so they revforged haste into mastery…..
Is there an average cap for crit? Or the more i have the better is?
And for haste? We have to get the cap to shot SS in 1,5 sec? Impossible I think…
Ty for ur help and sorry for my english…
For me the difference is hard to tell, cuz it’s within Frost’s margin of error. I did some tests with as much haste converted to mastery as I could, then repeated the tests with haste restored and crit reforged to mastery. The effect on stats was, my crit chance went down to 50% from 62% and my haste went up to 20% from 12%. Mastery went up from 13% to 21.5%. The overall effect seemed to be slightly more dps in the second set of tests, with crit reforged instead of haste. In both sets of tests, I was happy to see I got 100% crit rate on Steady Shots and Aimed Shots. Crit rates on Auto Shot, Wild Quiver, Arcane Shot, Chimera Shot, and Serpent Sting ticks all went down from the mid-60s % range to the 50-55% range, but I got off many more Steady Shots, Auto Shots, and Wild Quivers, as you would expect. In fact, Wild Quiver passed Arcane Shot as the third most damage done in the second set of tests, which reflects the much higher Mastery rating. I didn’t see any noticeable increase in Aimed Shot procs. Again, the overall difference in dps was within the 5% margin of error, and a lot more testing will need to be done before anything can be considered conclusive.
One note about the 100% Steady and Aimed crits: I did the tests at 2/2 Careful Aim on a dummy. This percentage will not hold in real raiding situations, but I haven’t had a chance to use the crit-to-mastery setup in a raid yet. I expect when I see that, I will want to switch back to haste-for-mastery.
Can you post your spec or armory link? Thanks!
My Spec is like Frostheim’s except I went 2/2 Rapid Killing instead of 1/2 Bombardment and 1/1 Silencing Shot. My stats are listed in the original post though.
Here is my armory link ignore the gemming because it’s wrong but the gear is the same except I am using my LK crossbow instead of Stakethrower. Also I have 277 Helm now.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Moon+Guard&cn=Nestey
is there a haste cap if so what is it
I was wondering if anyone has worked out a really good AoE rotation for MM. If someone has posted something and I missed it, please point me to it. For now, I use this method:
1) MD the tank and launch an Explosive Trap at the spot where he’ll be building aggro.
2) When he’s got the mobs gathered, I pop Rapid Fire and spam Multishot until RF runs out and I start having to wait for focus to recharge.
3) Pop Readiness and Rapid Fire, then spam Multishot again until all mobs are down. In most cases that’s before I start having to wait for focus again, but if not I’ll mix in a few Steady Shots to regen enough focus to finish.
This is giving me the best results of all the variations I’ve tried. If there’s a better way, I’d love to hear it, because on small groups of 3 or 4, single targeting is still doing better dps than this method.
For my I reforge all crit to mastery and I made it my goal for 25% haste while keeping my crit above 50%. This setup is very gear dependent just like the ArPen set from ICC.
This is the addon I’m using to help better manage my focus, I put a big fat focus bar under my feet.
HunterFocusBar
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/hunter-focus-bar.aspx
Guy’s try and test this…
Arcane Shot (while Focus exists) > Steady Shot (build in my Kill Command) > Aimed Shot (if instant)
So what do we do about that?
Ohh forgot to say that its for MM (raids) dont use serpent and chimera even take out the talent readiness and if you put a trap also ofc you will get more damage.
And yes I am a bit sad, this cant be so simple – please prove me wrong.
Ran this for 10million damage with no cooldowns with Careful Aim talented was ~2.000dps lower than my previous rotation. It did however do respectable damage. I was able to maintain between 8.5k and 8.6k at all times. Perhaps a good alternative for those with minimal gear or fresh ICC gear.
so U say just to spam Arcane – Steady – Arcane – Steady and so on? Never shot 2 Steady to get benefit from Improving Steady?This sounds fine to make our rotation more simple…
Ill try it!
I used the MM spec shown here with the following rotation and my DPS whent from 5k to 7.5k on dummies no buffs.
Rotation -
Marks, Serpent Sting, rapid fire, Chimera Shot, Arcane Shot, KillCMD, Aimed Shot, Steady (2x) to keep the buff goin. Then Arcane again then back to steady (x2), Chimera Shot, Aimed shot(FIRE!), steady (2x) repeat as needed. It may be a little different de[ending on the quality/level of your gear.
I’m currently run three PVE rotation:
1. A soloing rotation for working with my pet.
2. A speed rotation for trash on basic random because everything dies so fast its hard to get the hits in.
3. A DPS rotation for bosses, FOS, POS, HOR and raids where I have more time to run a larger rotation before a target dies.
You maybe have notice that hunter’s end game DPS has dropped for the most part and our signature shots are only haft in place. Once cat hits we won’t be using a speed rotation for trash until we get geared at L85. Once they turn on our signature shots all the way (after cat hits I’m guessing) they are going to play a more important roll in our basic shot rotations. So even though you may not see a use for your signature shot right now I suggest that you try using your signature shot in one of your rotation so that your learn before you need it.
To this end does anyone know where I can find a good aimed shot proc script for power auras or can some suggest a good addon?
wildness
I do shoot so I get steady to get benefit from Improving Steady and also to get proc. and I am on 8.5k even after 5 min on dummy.
Now they fixed it
Class Balance & Hotfixes – 10/19
Originally Posted by Zarhym (Source)
We have pushed a hotfix to improve hunter damage.
Specifically, we increased the damage of the signature abilities (Chimera Shot, Explosive Shot and Kill Command) by 15-25%. This will both improve overall damage-dealing and make sure that these abilities are prioritized higher than other shots. We think this will bring hunters to a good enough state until they hit 85. Aspect of the Fox and Cobra Shot solve some specific issues at higher levels. Marksman hunters may still trump Survival and Beastmaster hunters until they’re 85, since their rotations rely a little on Cobra Shot.
Guys, with these increases in damage, what about using Kill command for bleeding off excess focus instead of arcane? You are able to spend 40 focus for kill command around 85 focus and you will still enough focus for possible chimera. Also, you will use only one GCD instead of two, so you can fire additional steady shot. This effectively means 1 kill command + 1 steady shot (31 focus totally) instead of two arcane (44 focus totally, i think) during 2 GCD. The question is, which combination will give more damage, the first one is pure physical, the second one is pure arcane.
I missed two other points. With kill command option, you will stack faster the buff for Fire!, so this effect will occur more frequently. Secondly, it is much easier to keep Improved steady shot.
Argh! Information overflow.
Is it possible to set up a flow chart depicting priorities in the MM rotation?
I used to have a reasonably OP MM hunter, but that certainly changed on October 12th – now my hunter sucks and I’m having a hard time visualizing the necessary changes.
I gotta say I am sorely disappointed with hunters now. I know a lot of people will disagree with me and say their hunter is just as good if not better since the patch but I ask you to look at the larger picture and then go back to blizz and demand that they put us back on track. I pride myself on knowing how hunters work inside and out and being able to out dps/dmg other hunters that out gear me by a considerable amount. My average item lvl is 258 and I could pull 10-11k dps in 25m RS on Halion only. I dont count trash, cause lets face it, trash isn’t where we get the gear we need, only bosses matter. I used a talent spec, stats minimum requirement, rotation and some macros that I came up with myself after i got tired of following other people and not having the dps that I thought I should. Also on a side note I never gemmed any arp as I didn’t believe it was a beneficial as the spreadsheets said. As a result I had people constantly asking how my dps/dmg was so high. I was willing to take my time to go to the target dummy and work with people, but when you tell someone thats in one of the top 3 guilds on the server that their gems, talents, rotation, macros and stats aren’t optimal I usually got a snide remark and then ego rolled in. At that point I would link the dps/dmg meter and that was the end of the training session. On the other hand the people that listened ,the ones that didn’t have an ego, and did what I told them to usually jumped 2-3k in dps in about an hours time. Just further proof I knew what I was talking about. Since the patch though I have spent numerous hours at the dummies, ran several raids and respec’d more times than I care to count and what I came up with is basically 4.0 is nothing but bad for hunters. Period.
1) Prepatch I hit the boss target dummy and could jump to 8.7k dps in under 4 secs and then reach and sustain 9k dps. Post patch I have yet to break 7k dps with the same gear while trying different specs, glyphs, rotations and reforging at the dummies. I was at 56% crit so I reforged crit with some haste and hit rating to mastery and tried again. I lost .03 cast time, went from 11% hit to 7.97% and 56% crit to 45% but got my mastery up to 19.85 (or 35%). The end result was a 500 dps gain and wild quiver (what you get from mastery) became my 3rd highest dps contributor up from almost dead last. Thats nice but still doesnt make up for the 2k dps deficet I’m still seeing. I have had my friends try to help and where as before I smoked them we now have the same dps. They still out gear me but that isn’t very comforting.
2) Freedom of movement and the ability to improvise is now pretty much gone. I do see there is a fairly good rotation out there but it allows for very little movement. I have already run into fights where for one reason or another I had to move immediately – fire, incoming mobs, etc. and I just gotta say its fun running when you have next to no focus and can’t shoot or can only shoot once before you are out of focus (oof). Mana let you do what you needed to on the run but focus has you pinned down. Point in fact was in ToC 10m when Icehowl kicked us to the wall right after I hit chimera shot and was sitting at aproximately 6 focus. Thanks to having focus now it only cost us a wipe when someone didnt move, Icehowl enraged and I was the only one there that could de-enrage him. By the time I regained enough focus we had lost the 2nd tank and it was all downhill from there. Prepatch hunters knew they had to keep from going oom and at the worst, if you did, you could pop a mana pot, fire off a tranq shot and you were back in business. Goodluck now.
3) Comparison to other classes. I have 8 80s with 5 of them geared for ICC HM. The other 3 are just for professions or pvp. I play every role in a raid so I have a very good idea of whats going on around me at all times and when I see something happen I can usually guess the next logical move by just about anyone in the group. Seeing as how hunters are now limited in movement compared to before I have seen that play into dps losses for all hunters that have run with me. Try running from the orbs in VoA when its chasing you and you have next to no focus. You could feign death but if no one else is attacking it you will regain aggro once you shoot it and be running around doing nothing again. Or how about Rotface? I have had to kite the slimes before when a tank went down and the fight ended succesfully. Care to try that with focus instead of mana now? You might keep aggro but you wont contribute to raid dps. As far as other classes go you still have freedom of movement, and the ability to pick whatever attack you want to use as you are running and thus continue your contribution to the raid dps. I you want to see what I mean hit a target dummy until you have 2 million dmg and then look at your dps and attacks in recount. Have a few friends do the same thing on different toons, melee and casters. Next go run a raid together and then compare notes on gains and losses. You’ll find fast hunters aren’t up to par anymore.
The other factor I have noticed is that the average dps gains that some people have reported (obviously not me) don’t seem to be equal to the gains I have seen from other classes. My ret pally, s-priest, lock and warrior have all gone up about 1.5 to 2k dps and their rotations have had extremely little change. This isn’t just my opinion but what I have seen, read and been told by other players. Thens theres glyphs. My other classes can make use of the their glyph in the 3 classes but have you noticed that there is no major glyph for a hunter that translates to a direct dps gain?
4) PVP. Forget it.
I know I can be long winded and I do apologize for it but when you have played a hunter as long as I have and then blizz pulls a crap move like this on my favorite toon I get kinda pissed off. I’m asking for any help to increase my dps or dps options. Maybe this is all geared towards level 85 but it isn’t looking very promising. Thx
arach u have said everything that i have in my mind n yes the middle finger to blizz for messing with the hunters from taking my favorite spec SV n f it up now it has the problem mm had last patch STARVATION for focus so i when MM this patch cuz supposedly bm did better dps than the other spec well in my server i have fail to find to prove it to me. but i recommend u to try this rotation to be at top at dps i was able to pull 15k at LK.
Serpen sting>chimera shot>kill command
proc ur rapid fire
SS to full on focus
arcane shot to like 40>Chimera shot
proc readiness
SS till 40 focus> chimera shot
proc rapid fire
SS till full of focus
arcane shot till 40 > chimera shot
then SS till full
arcane till 40 focus n proc kill commad
of aimed shot when proc
i have my SS to 1.6 cast with SS proc to 1.4cast this to generate enough focus
i kept my crit at 25%
I read through most of the comments but I don’t think this was addressed completely.
I was told to stack pure haste as a MM hunter. I’m like 1/2 geared and in bosses I can pull near 4.8k dos. With imp sturdy shot, rapid fire, and bloodlust my steady shot is at a .756 second cast, and I can spam it for a pretty surprising amount of dps. Should I regem? I reforged a bit and used 1 hit gem so that I am hit capped. I have around a 32% crit chance.
Hey. First off, real quick. I love this site. It’s totally changed the way I play. Now to my question. I’ve been a BM Hunter since lvl 1, but I wanna try out MM. I can’t seem to find any decent macro’s for the 4.0.1 patch. I’ve read the shot rotation for MM, but I’m an idiot when it comes to creating my own macro’s. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
I have heard very little mention of Kill Shot in rotations. Any comments on Kill shot now adays?
I’d just like to make a brief point on MM, well brief by my standards
I’ve found I’ve been most effective pretty much following the rotation Frost has posted here, its more or less the same anyway.
Since day one of 4.0.1 I seemed to find it worked best by doing the following:
Opening only:Serpent Sting > Chim > Arcane >
Core Rotation: 2x Steady > 2x Arcane > 2X Steady > at this point Chim is usually of CD and ready to reset Srp Sting so that is fired priority > USUALLY should have enough focus to throw in an Arcane before returning to the start of “Core Rotation”
And then obv when ever Aimed procs that’s fired, but 2x Steady for haste bonus still takes prio as Frost mentioned.
It may need tweeks, and I’m constantly playing around with both that and my actual spec and heading to the dummies, then to an actual boss etc to test in all scenarios possible but so far out of everything that has been giving me best out put (topped a couple of basic 10m raids with it anyway)
Hope this is helpful to anyone out there whos still not 100% confident with their rotation
And I think this is one of those things that doesnt work for all, as does need some improv during certain bosses, ie those which stun/knock back etc which throws a spanner in the works, but a good hunter recovers and prepares with forsight of that happening
I think your wrong on GC and haste being a bad state for MM. I could be wrong, but each change I made by reforging I would test 5 times before moving on. Each fight was tested on a lvl 83 dummy, and each fight I timed to 3min exactlly.
I did 3 differnet changes, reforged to get more > 1. Haste 2. Crit 3. Mastery
For crit and mastery I wasent able to break 6.5k without using rapid fire, but once I switched over to haste I was easily able to maintain 7.5k without even using rapid fire, and once I used rapid fire I would jump up to around 8.8k. So for me at least im liking my haste build, ran some heroics today and was doing around 10k on each boss, and in icc im doing around 14k which is amazing since before the patch I was arp built and was only doing around 10k a boss on average.
On a side note, I almost possitive blizzard has changed the GC to 1sec on steady shot because with my haste build im 15% haste from steady shot, 22% from gear, and a extra 50% if I use rapid fire. I drop to .98sec on steady shot with all of this combinned and my steady shot cast bar ZOOMS, there is no way its still 1.5sec for its CD. Now I could be completely wrong, but from stairing at my action bar it sure does seem to me like it zooms way to fast to be 1.5sec … thoughts? question?
Im 5886gs, 22.35 haste from gear, 5712ap, 9% hit , 55.88% crit (spec is the same as above, execpt I went with rapid fire glyph instead of kill shot)
well i think that getting kill shot glyph its really good for dps you might not be able to use in the dummy but on bosses being glyph you get two shot of kills shot that for me have enough from dropping #1 spot in the recount addon
@ OGganster. I’m sorry that i dont really follow what your saying (it may be because English is your second language, and so some grammatical errors have crept in to your comment).
I think the first bit you’ve said is clear – ‘You think that getting the is good because it will improve your DPS whenever you use Kill Shot (and it doesnt finish off your target)’
Just to recap, Glyph of Kill Shot: “If the damage from your Kill Shot fails to kill a target at or below 20% health, your Kill Shot’s cooldown is instantly reset. This effect has a 6 sec cooldown.”
Your second point indicates that Glyph of Kill Shot won’t work on dummy targets (becuase dummy targets obviously don’t have a ‘% health bar’ so they will never be less than 20% health and so Glyph of Kill Shot will never procure on a dummy target), however it will procure on Bosses because they do have a health bar, and whenever a Bosses health Bar goes below 20% Glyph of Kill Shot will come into effect and have a chance to procure itself if the Boss doesn’t die with the first Kill Shot used on the Boss
whenit is below 20% health.
The above all makes perfect sense, I’m not too sure what you mean by your last bit however – “that for me have enough from dropping #1 spot in the recount addon”.
… “have enough (of what ?) “.
I think you are saying that if you are at Number 1 spot on recount you are happy to give that spot up if it means Glyph of Kill Shot will give you two Kill Shots in a row when the Boss is below 20% health.Is this what you are trying to say?
This has been a very enlightning thread and commentary on the MM spec, ty very much for everyone’s input.
Is it just me or has Glyph of the Dazzled Prey been overlooked. In a standard MM rotation i steady shot 4 times= 8 focus, 10 rotations 80 focus. even in a10 man there is going to be some sort of dazed effect on a mob 90% of the time? whats worth more 80 focus or 1 extra kill shot? show me the error of my ways
Bosses generally cannot be dazed : )
ok… i guess that simple enough…but do they have to be suffiering the effects of the daze bucause when i daze a boss the debuff still shows up even though they dont suffer the effects…just a thought.. i kind of thought the answer would be that simple.. thanks
this makes NO sense! why would you put something in for your pets focus regen. instead of something for steady shot! this tree is foolish.
A common mistake that a lot of hunters make is ignoring their pets. Your pet literally contributes thousands of dps!!! If putting points to boost your pet dps nets you a greater gain than elsewhere, you’d be foolish not to jump on the chance.
Am just getting into learnign the mm spec been doing surv. cause of the aoe dam, but noticed I was gettign out dpsed on boss fights. I’ve followed the advice of the builds and rotaions and pull between 10-22k on the bosses now, tried to make a macro to improve the consistancy of the rotaion, but still seems like I fall short in some cases cause my dps varies so much. current rotaion is, serpent sting, cs, ss x2, ac, ss x2, ac, ss x2 cs and repeat, hitting aim shot, and kill shot when procs, thou I have glyphed into cs cause of the 1sec less cd, anything you would suggest? current I lev is 354. feel free to inspect me on wowhead and give suggestions, am open minded and still willing to make changes if nessisary.
ok i see ppl saying SV is better then MM well i can say no SV is not better then MM in cata im pushing betwean 30-40k in MM but respec to SV and only pushing 15-20k itlev345 .
but there is a good site called http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear found this verry god