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| Reviewed 11/8/10 Patch 4.0.3 |
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Serpent Sting was a tricksy little shot in Wrath, interacting in all kinds of delightfully unexpected ways with Chimera Shot. We were able to get percentage damage bonuses or crit bonuses once, then reapply a Serpent Sting and Chimera Shot would refresh those bonuses indefinitely for our stings. It was fantastic.
This has also led to a lot of questions about how Serpent Sting functions now in 4.0.1 and in Cataclysm, particularly with Cobra Shot extending the duration.
Serpent Sting Buffs are not Refreshed in Cataclysm
The short version is that buffs (or debuffs) to your Serpent Sting are not refreshed at all in Cataclysm or patch 4.0.1. They have fixed the bugs that let these guys though.
Every time your fire your Chimera Shot or Cobra Shot it completely recalculates the Serpent Sting damage. It recalculates everything from attack power to %damage buffs and debuffs. For some examples:
- If you get the t10 Exploit Weakness 15% damage proc and fire Serpent Sting, Chimera Shot (refresh) or Cobra Shot (extend) it will recalculate your sting damage to take the 15% bonus into account. As soon as the bonus goes away your next Chimera or Cobra will recalculate it without the bonus.
- If you fire Serpent Sting while in Aspect of the Fox, then Switch to Aspect of the Hawk, your next Chimera Shot or Cobra Shot will completely recalculate the sting damage, taking the new higher attack power into account.
- If you fire Serpent Sting (or Chimera, or Cobra) with some kind of damage or AP buff, the new sting will keep ticking with that buff until the duration wears off, or you refresh it. Thus you could fire Cobra and get the Exploit weakness 15% damage buff, and then when the buff goes away and you fire Cobra, you lose the buff. But if you don’t fire Cobra you get to keep the buff until the sting wears off.
- Note that the above is not worth doing, just an example of how the mechanics work.
Haste and Serpent Sting
At one point we were told that haste would affect our Serpent Sting in Cataclysm, and briefly in the beta it did. However now haste does not affect our Serpent Sting (or Black Arrow) ticks, not in the Cataclysm beta, not on live in 4.0.1. It does not look like it’s going to either.
Generally classes whose resource generation increases with haste (like us with focus) are not getting DoTs affected by haste — classes whose resource generation is not improved with haste (like mana users) are getting haste affecting their DoTs.
How to Manage Serpent Sting in Cataclysm.
There is nothing special you need to do. Seriously.
Just put up Serpent Sting, and keep it refreshed with Chimera Shot (MM) or Cobra Shot (BM/SV). There is no special circumstances that make you have to manually reapply the sting, or change your behavior. It’s just a nice simple DoT again.
Improved Serpent Sting
The Improved Serpent Sting talent only applies its effect when you cast Serpent Sting, or when Serpent Sting is applied via the Serpent Spread talent.
You do not get the Improved Serpent Sting effect when you refresh a Serpent Sting with Chimera Shot, or extend the duration with Cobra Shot.
Well that’s good to know! I’ve always had “keep your stings up!” going through the back of my head at any given time. Whatever else happens, just keep those DoTs going (including Black Arrow, when available).
The whole Cobra Shot / Chimera Shot is something I’ll have to work out when Cata hits and Cobra becomes available. Until then, I’ll just keep up the DoTs and fire whatever else I can.
Side note: I’ve been working on the Jump-Disengage and I LOVE it! It’s highly efficient and once in a while, someone notices me jumping into the air and flying across the entire battle, only to land softly and fire a bunch of fast shots into the boss. Their comments are… flattering, to say the least! Works really well when bosses summon up adds that chase people around (like Devourer of Souls). Kite them around and into a nice, large lump. Run to one side of the fight, run towards boss and Jump-Disengage and whammo, you’re faaaaaaaaaaar out of harm’s way! Even gets you time to do a Steady or two before running off again =)
Ok, just so I’m clear (it’s probably just too early in the morning for full reading comprehension), there is no longer any need to manually refresh Serpent Sting? For example, through Wrath we’d re-apply Sting when we got a T10 proc (or wait until a T10 proc combined with Culling the Herd). This is no longer something we should/need to do?
On the one hand this is nice since it saves us Focus, but on the other it’s kind of boring. All the coinciding procs/ability usages that were fun in Wrath seem to be falling by the wayside. No more needing to use a pet ability (ie Furious Howl) in conjunction with Trinket procs, no more powering Serpent Sting via T10 procs etc.
Since this is true, Improves serpent sting talent is pretty much useless
I don’t think I agree with that. Imp SS means that every sting starts out with whopping 30% of the total sting dmg as instant dmg, after which the DoT simply ticks away, adding the regular dmg.
If the total dmg for a serpent sting can still be empowered by procs, but every time the sting is re-applied through Chimera or Cobra, only the CURRENT buffs are taken into account.
That means that if your originial serpent sting was empowered by a +2000000% dmg of the Psycho Freak Storm-buff, that empowerment will only last as long as the sting itself, or until it is refreshed (and thus recalculated) through Chimera or Cobra sting.
In short: procs can’t affect a sting for longer than the maximum duration of the sting.
Stridur, yes currently Improved Serpent Sting is useless for MM hunters. For BM/SV it is not as they have to reapply it all teh time. As soon as they get cobra they will lose this value as well. (Exept for SV where it works together with multishot.)
However … !!! … in beta this same talent therefore has already been boosted to also give 5/10% extra crit chance. This will likely make it worthwile for MM hunters to pick up. SV will do anyway. BM depends on preference.
In terms of the refresh behaviour there is only one thing you need to remember: fire and forget
The way I read it, is that we can still “empower” our serpent stings when something nifty procs and applies to the sting dmg, but we can’t keep the initial procs going through re-applications of serpent sting anymore.
When Serpent Sting is refreshed or re-applied, it is completely recalculated to take into account any and all immediate buffs that have an effect. If something’s run out while the first sting ticked away, it won’t be included in the calculations for the new sting.
And of course, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong =)
I think the implication is that Chimera and Cobra will automatically apply the proc buff to the refresh, we don’t need to manually re-cast the Sting. But when the proc is done, the next Chimera or Cobra will reset the value, we can’t keep that boosted damage rolling.
So if I’m reading Frost’s post correctly, the only time we need to manually re-cast Serpent Sting is if it drops off. Which of course makes the current Imp Serpent Sting worthless, which would be why it’s being changed.
Hehe, then it seems to me that we agree: only current buffs/procs are applied to the serpent sting (and the refresher-Chimera/Cobra), but any serpent sting or refresher after the buff/proc wears off, will reflect the loss of that buff/proc.
A buff/proc that runs over 15 secs would invite to refreshing the serpent sting via chimera/cobra before the 15 secs run out, but that would only be worth the focus, if the increased dmg from the buff/proc is higher than the last serpent sting tick(s).
In other words, if serpent sting hits for 1500dmg per tick unbuffed, then spending the focus to include the buff/proc before it runs out, will only be smart if the bonus damage of 5 more ticks of empowered serpent sting is more than 1500dmg.
If the empowerment does not surpass, or at the least equal, the ticks lost, then it would be smarter to simply wait out the sting and reapply when convenient.
The one concession to this, is that Chimera/Cobra can have other effects that are worth more than the final tick of serpent sting, thus making them viable for refreshing the sting instead of just firing another serpent when ready.
I have to say, I’m finding it really difficult with the new focus mechanic to keep serpent sting up with Chimera on many fights in ICC – So many times it seems I’m focus starved at that crucial moment when Chim is off cooldown and sting about to expire – so I end up hitting arcane or steady (sometimes three times) to get enough focus to sting then Chimera agan.
Am I just a retard or are other people having this problem too?
Sounds like you’re just needing to streamline your shot priority a bit to better conserve Focus.
If you are Focus starved when Chimera is off CD, that means you’ve likely fired too many Arcane Shots. It takes a bit to get into the mind set that just because you *can* fire Arcane that doesn’t mean you *should*. My general rule is that if Chimera has more than 7 seconds to being off CD, fire Arcane, if less than 7 seconds, fire Steady until Chimera is ready. But this will vary depending on your Haste and Focus regen, but that’s what works for me. Essentially, you want to ensure you’ve got the Focus available to fire Chimera when it’s ready.
Personally, I prefer to fall into a more rotation-type situation so I allow Focus to build up so I can fire Chimera, Arcane, Arcane then Steady spam (always in pairs). Some people prefer a stricter priority system where it’s a constant back and forth between shots. I’m not sure one method is better than another at this point.
Running 850 odd haste, I find that a tad over 3 seconds is all that is needed to build focus from sub 20 back up to enough for your next chimera when it comes of CD with a double steady during that last 3 seconds.
No Rolgorf, that’s the way it is, makes me think that instead of being the former DPS range class that we used to be, we became a more “support” DPS class and other classes has taken the lead. Dunno, but the mechanics with all this buttons and the processing does not reflect the way is talked about it.
Can’t wait for Cata! I’m really enjoying the new changes, and no mana!!
I started playing WoW in May ’09, all on dial-up.!! I have moved into my new home, now have screaming fast fiber optic internet (only had a few minutes to test last night), and will now be able to raid, and enjoy Cata to it’s fullest!! My latency has gone from 400-750 range to now 50-100. Just the few minutes testing I did last night floored me.
Yeah,my comment has kinda gone off topic, but I’m just so fired up, I had to tell someone.
Hunters rule!!
@ Tullwinden – Support DPS class? That doesn’t even make sense. Practice your rotation and manage your focus a little better and you too can be a full fledged dps class.
I am doing “about” the same dps as I was before the patch but I am lower on the charts because right now, it seems casters a lot stronger then before. So while we weren’t nerfed per se, the other classes got a little bit of a buff. And honestly, in about a month, it all changes again anyway.
Bloodbane, I says it like that because when this last patch came, although I kept doing my dps, other classes had the benefit from our buffs or stings, while their boost was incredible. I was in a 5 man heroic and saw a mage pull a 21k dps while everyone else was pulling from 4 to 6 k. Just like you say about casters, they got blessed in this last patch. As far as the rotations, I feel like it takes forever to make the rotation in way that I don’t loose that much focus. Hopefully this will get fix once the next expansion comes and of course I will be tweaking this toon each time for the increase I want.
Are you positive about this?
The reason I ask is that I have a few mods to keep track of my Serpent Sting damage modifier and on certain fights like on the Omnicron Defense System in Blackwing, standing in the puddle will increase the modifier to 160% of normal damage. Upon moving out of it, the modifier doesn’t seem to change. Now, this could very well the fault of the addon author perhaps not updating to a cataclysm model but I was under the impression that refreshes were still an integral part of the game vs recalculating reapplication.
Aye, that’s an addon from the Wrath model which had the refresh bug in it throughout Wrath.
I tested Serpent Sting refreshes with both Chimera and Cobra with AP changes and %damage changes and confirmed what Blizzard told us months back — the bug has indeed been removed
Thanks for the reply. That makes me very sad indeed but I appreciate people like you who take the time and do the math for us. Too bad it will never run through it’s entire duration with Cobra Shot being an integral part for BM and SV
too bad. I loved watching my proc buffs when i had to re-apply the ss and to keep up that. that was so fun in mm for me.
Thanks for the update Frost, I actually just re-did my Power Aura strings for my T10 2 & 4-peice proc’s but I guess now there’s no real point.
Personally, while this does simplify my MM “rotation” a small amount, I’ll kinda miss the buzz I got from getting my T10 Proc alert and then re-applying my SSting in the knowledge that my Chimera was gonna kick just that lil’ bit more A** for the rest of the fight.
Ah well, c’est la vie in WoW Cata it seems.
It seems that Cobra Shot does not increase the duration of Serpent Sting applied by Multi-Shot, so in some situations, you might want to re-apply Serpent Sting by hand, after shooting Multi-Shot.
Yeah, this got changed in the hotfix to keep Cobra from refreshing wyvern sting — we aren’t yet sure whether it’s a bug, or if they intended to nerf the serpent spread multi-shot as well.