Okay, with the PTR up, we now know what our molten armor set bonuses are going to look like — mostly. Special thanks to Kenneth who actually dug this info up before it was even on MMO-Champ!
- Hunter 2 Pieces – Your Steady Shot and Cobra Shot have a 10% chance to trigger a Flaming Arrow, dealing X% instant weapon damage as Fire.
- Hunter 4 Pieces – You have a 10% chance from your autoshots to make your next shot cost no focus.
So this is really interesting. Obviously the balance of the 2-piece bonus depends on the amount of damage it does, but a 10% proc rate is pretty darned good. We’ll be seeing that flaming arrow pretty often. Interestingly, this set bonus reward you for using your steady/cobra more often… but to get it you’re ditching your t11 4-piece which really let you fire more often.
The 4 piece set bonus looks fricking sweet! I just have to mentally cross my fingers and hope they do it right: whatever buff you get when that procs (and again — 10% proc rate is nice and high!) needs to not go away if your next shot is a steasy/cobra. But this set bonus is pretty ridiculously huge — bitter than the t11 4-piece. And in a way somewhat similar, in that it lets us fire more shots. With a 10% proc, we’ll be able to fire a lot more Arcane Shots off during a fight — sure we’ll hope to get to use the proc on our expensive signature shot, but more often than not we’ll be burning it on an Arcane Shot, which is fine too.
Man, 10% proc rates? I kinda think they might be reducing that, and I really hope that they don’t. That is one sweet set bonus.
Oh, final thought: if it’s not normalized (and I’m guessing it’s not) then the 2-piece bonus favors a slower weapon, and the 4-piece bonus favors a faster weapon. Interesting.
This looks really interesting. I would think that survival would see a slight buff because of it’s mastery? It would depend on the X% of instant weapon damage it deals though. Any thoughts?
That’s a good point. Crap, am I actually going to have to worry about mastery now?
BTW, none of the Hunter pieces in the loot list so far have haste on them. Hmmmm …
will be 80% as fire dmg if the ptr doesnt change it
Did you notice no gun in the loot table so far? BLECH
Too early to tell, obviously, but I’d be really curious to see if the t12 2-piece (+better stats) ends up being better than the t11 4-piece.
“Hunter 4 Pieces – You have a 10% chance from your autoshots to make your next shot cost no focus.”
Kill Command isn’t a shot. Sadface. D:
yeah that came to my mind too. i really hope they add kc to the list (for BM at least). otherwise, this set is going to be much worse for BM than the other two. but then again, bm has a lot of focus reg anyways.
The bonuses aren’t bad but they are messing with an already fickle and extremely tight resource pool. The “rotations” that are used with the t11-4pc are tightly tuned to a haste cap and once you’re fully heroic geared you can swap all your haste for mastery and see the same if not better numbers, yet putting us in an awkward almost future-sight position for the t12 bonus.
Without the .2 sec reduction in SS cast the rotation for high end MM hunters gets even tighter and resource management becomes much more of a priority. When you tack on a “free shot” to the rotation you aren’t just looking at dumping a CS/AS/ArC for free, you are also looking at lost focus regen. So while this does make for an interesting set bonus, it already feels kind of wonky.
Food for further though:
With this set bonus setup properly (ie: the proc isn’t wasted on our focus regen shots) does it make the Aimed Shot glyph any better than it is or does it make the Arcane Shot glyph one of our top glyphs?
Food for less though:
Do you really think the X% in the 2-piece bonus will be over 100% and bring it into range of the coefficient on MS or CS? Even Zod’s bow from ICC only shot an extra arrow for 50% weapon damage, though the proc was 5%. You’re looking at fights now on heroic that go for about 5-10 minutes where you fire anywhere from 70-120 SS so you’ll see on average about 7-12 of these arrows. That doesn’t seem too thrilling, rather like a boring and more erratic Wild Quiver.
I highly doubt it will be over 100% — I expect it to be significantly under. However, I’m honestly less concerned about how cool it is (though firing a flaming arrow is pretty cool — especially if it doesn’t add to the complexity of my rotation) but more with the dps gain.
An extra 7-12 shots, even at half damage, is a significant gain! This sounds much better than the t11 2-piece, though we’ll have to see what that actual % is before we can run the numbers.
Yes, the T12 2-piece is most likely better than the T11 2-piece but you have to break the T11 4-piece which is mostly certainly worth more DPS than the T12 2-piece because it allows you to output more AS/CS.
If we look at the Heroic Dragonheart Piercer (BiS until you are working on Sinestra) if the coefficient for the T12 2-piece is 50% weapon damage, you are looking at 1267 damage per proc (if you hit on the high end every time) and let’s say it procs 10 times in 100 SS (for easy math), that’s 12670 extra damage in a single set of 100 SS. That’s not even a non-crit AS worth of damage.
This next part assumes 0 haste rating! Can’t stress this enough!!!!
When you look at that number (12670) and then consider that without the T11 4-piece bonus, it took you 150 seconds to shoot those 100 SS to proc the extra (12670) damage you’ll start to see the drop off. With the T11 4-piece it takes you 130 seconds to shoot those 100 SS. That’s a whole 20 seconds less that you could be using to fire any other shots that will all most likely hit for more than the T12 2-piece proc. From here you can see that even weaving 1-2 AS into the 100 SS is going to output more DAMAGE.
But historically, any time we have a good 4-piece, the next tier’s 2-piece is inferior. As long as the 2-piece is better than the t11 2-piece, and the 4-piece is better (or equivalent) to the t11 4-piece, then we have a nice set progression.
i hope they get loads and loads of haste on our gear, so you could get the softcap without the t11 4piece..
but the t12 4 piece looks really nice, especially for survival, being the most focus starved :D
I think of SV as more “focus lean” than the other specs. More importantly, the way the typical shot rotation works fundamentally meshes with the 4p bonus. Thrill of the Hunt already gives us a random shot of focus, so SV Hunters are already conditioned to dump focus on the fly. For BM Hunters, Killing Streak and Invigoration work in a similar way, but more evenly spread out.
MM is a little different. Above 80%, this may be worthless. Below, it still might be too difficult to dump excess focus.
Kill Command isn’t a shot, so what about BeastMasters? I play BM since i have WoW, and the developers always forget us beastlovers :S /sad /bad
Well my first thought is that this would be particularly good as survival (assuming cobra shots don’t proc it). The 2piece, if it is elemental damage as fire, may well be affected by SV mastery, and the 4piece I think it would be particularly easy in SV to blow that proc on explosive shot every time without capping out on focus since arcane shots are rare anyway, which would buy you a free couple of arcane shots right after. Very interesting. :) I am a bit worried about BM though, and MM is probably about to get more complicated.
For the focus free shots, I think MM would proc the most, while being unable to dump the focus, BM would proc the least and largely not care about this, while SV remains in the happy median of both skill required and DPS potential.
I agree, this next tier does not look good for BM. If it continues to perform well on movement fights, it will remain viable, of course, but the way it interacts with these bonuses is largely uninteresting. It won’t by itself make the spec “bad”. If it scales alright, then BM Hunters just loose out on the “fun and interesting” aspect of set bonuses.
MM on the other hand is a little too interesting already. I agree that these bonuses may complicate that. My impression is that the 2p bonus will irrevocably finalize SS spam above 80%, and the 4p bonus will have MM Hunters looking to dump focus much more frequently, but unable to reliably do so because of SS pairs.
On a not-entirely-but-sort-of-unrelated note, I think one of the root issues with spec balance is the haste buffs. BM’s haste buff has a very short ramp-up time, but with the occasional button press, has near 100% uptime. It even has a cool interaction with leaving the pet at 5 frenzies for the duration of BW, then putting up the haste buff afterward. I find that fun and interesting. SV’s haste buff is straight up passive (Read: easymode), but it has LnL to take care of the fun and interesting. MM’s haste buff is straight-up broken. I was thinking an extra 4 seconds on the buff time was needed, but others more experienced than I said they’d be happy with two. This is an easy fix that would make the leading DPS spec more practical to play. Also, fun and interesting.
Now that I think about it, that bit about BM not being “bad” was they only part meant as a reply to you. The rest is just me rambling. Sorry.
My thoughts exactly.
Bah! 4-piece bonuses are so hard to grind out. Most times I only look at the 2-piece, because I rarely manage the 4-piece before the next tier of content is out (with notable exceptions like in ICC). Still, this might be a good one to make a priority…the bonuses look pretty awesome.
If Flaming Arrow is elemental, then yes it will be boosted by SV’s mastery, but consider that MM may proc more Flaming Arrows, especially >80%. The 2p bonus can be compared to DMC: Hurricane.
I’m not certain of this, but I believe the order of the amount of autoshots fired is MM>BM>SV. I’m sure, but not certain of course, that Kill Command will work with 4p bonus. If so, then there will be a slight favoring in that spec order. I want to find out if 4p bonus will proc from Wild Quiver.
Well the 2 piece is definitely weaker for BM because it has those periods of time during BW when no cobra shots are being fired. The 4 piece will be pathetic for BM if it does proc a free Kill Command (I’d hope it would, but the wording makes me worry), but even if not, I think it would be a bit weaker since focus availability isn’t as much of an issue for that spec.
Any idea on how these are aquired? valor? Raid drops only? New currency higher than valor?
@Neil,
When 4.2 comes they will do a point conversion with all unused Valor becoming Justice. The new tier will cost Valor points (which you’ll have 0 of at the launch of 4.2) and the old tier will cost Justice points.
I cannot recall if unused Justice points become gold or if they remain as Justice points to help people who are truly far behind in gear to catch up to the previous (re: 4.0) raid patch.
Addendum: I assume they will keep the same system of having the shoulder/head be from end raid badge drops. I am thinking Ragnaros and Staghelm, but I haven’t really looked into the Firelands raid much.
My understanding is that unused JP will stay JP. If JP + Converted VP > 4000 you’ll either be no longer able to get JP until you’re below the cap, or the excess will be converted to gold.
I appreciate the response. It’ll help me begin planning my long tern strat.
The 4pc bonus is nice for MM: Forget about arcane, not you’ll be firing a free aimed shot!
On teh other hand it makes the already chaotic rotation even more chaotic.
From Aspectz-Greymane
MM mastery : Naked stats = Wild Quiver 16% *** procs on all shots aim arcane explosive cobra chimera everything
T12 2pc : (which is a rip off from MM mastery but worst) Steady/Cobra Shot 10% assuming fire arrow has the same scaling as steady/cobra and does the same dmg so 1 extra free steady shot
lets assume in a regular mm rotation which consist of around 20% of your dmg coming from steady shot which is actually much less because i am testing roughly on a test dummy and its in CA range, so anyways since its 10% of steady shot that means its a 2% increase in dmg
Basically T12 2pc is pretty garbage if it is between 1-2% dmg increase (on a non test dummy)
—-
T12 4pc : only spec that can make use of the 4pc bonus is MM/Surv
the problem is most likely it wont work for Chimera cuz MM will be doing chimera on CD, so if this proc the only shot worth using it is AIM SHOT, which stops your 2pc from proc-ing
making it non synergy with MM
on surv it will be ES, but again SURV will be using ES on CD so you are left with Arcane
arcane already only cost 22 focus which is not very taxing on focus, so the T12 bonus is pretty much not worth anything
—-
in your WHU post
you seem to be quite happy with the bonus but after some analysis it is not very good
when you compare the hunter set bonus to the mage set bonus
either way its quiet horrible considering you will lose the 4pc bonus
now you might ague about the the agi gain / haste or other stats gain makes it worth it
lets take a look at a T12 equal loot shoulders from Normal Nerf
Spaulders of the Scarred Lady (N) | Spaulders of the Scarred Lady (N) | Seared Chitin Shoulders | % increase
233 agi | 266 agi | 282 agi | (N)+21% – (H)+6%
1 red sock | 1 red sock | 1 red sock |
169 crit | 191 crit | 202 crit | (N)+19% – (H)+6%
149 mast | 171 mast | 182 mast | (N)+22% – (H)+6%
so if you are in BIS normal gear definately it is worth it
but if you are like me in BIS hm gear (almost missing shoulders, just killed nerf hm)
lets take a look at how much you will lose in just haste/STEADY cast time according FD spread sheet
at my gear i have approx 1475 haste
with T11 4pc + 3/3 iss + windfury + 3/3 pathing
1475 haste = 1.2388 sec cobra/steady cast
now lets add the 6% stats increase this becomes 1564 haste
1564 haste = 1.3679 sec
1.3679 – 1.2388 = 0.1291 sec
so losing the T11 bonus but with the haste gain from Heroic gear to Regular mode T12 gear
you will add 0.1x sec of casting by losing the bonus
—-
TL DR Conclusion
T12-2pc = 1-2% dmg increase
T12-4pc = bad for BM (since kill command is not a shot), has no synergy with MM-aimshot, not good for surv
Upgrading from (N) T11 -> (N) T12 = 20% stats upgrade pretty good
Upgrading from (H) T11 -> (N) T12 = 6% stats upgrade … meh
gained 0.1x sec of steady cast time (ie 6% stats increase = 0.8sec cast time)
Frosthime please clear the misconception of T12 being awesome on this week’s podcast or on the WHU blog
If you go up and read my second post you’ll see even more basic math supporting exactly what you’re saying so it’s nice to see some one else who thinks that the T12 2-piece is fairly terrible when considering you have to break the T11 4-piece.
the problem is a lot of Fan-Boys just see the sparkles and colors, when in reality it is not awesome and in fact quiet horrible. If this goes live we will have to wait till 4.2.1 when fan-boys sees how bad the set bonus really is until it gets fixed just like the hunter T11-4pc old bonus. Knowing how bad it is NOW give us time to give feedback on the PTR so bliz can adjust it, instead of waying 1 patch after it goes live. Lets not be fan-boys huntards and be smart players that can see pass the sparkles.
Once again, we can’t say how good or bad the set bonus is until we know how much damage it actually does (what percent of base damage). However, I would absolutely expect that breaking your 4-piece for the new 2-piece would be a downgrade most of the time. This is usually the case, even with the stat increase of the new gear, always has been. And let’s remember the t11 2-piece bonus is pretty miniscule as well. Incredibly miniscule actually.
What really matters is that the combination of the new 2-piece and 4-piece is better DPS than the old 2/4 piece (or about the same, since stat boosts will compensate).
This is going to be something that there will be no definitive answer on, since the 4-piece t11 was very variable on a character by character basis. Some people are getting *zero* benefit from the 4-piece (they have a 4-piece bonus that does nothing at all, effectively), while others are getting a relatively large benefit.
Likewise, the math on the 4-piece t12 is going to be funky, because you won’t always be using the proc for the same shot.
I like the design of the new set bonuses. Whether it’s balanced is a different question, and is often separate from the design question… and often easier to tweak
(Hammy voice) but I like the sparkles…
@faingz
The T12 2-piece is not most likely better than the T11 2-piece, it is most definitely better for MM hunters, which seems to be what you are per your comments. The T11 2-piece is only about 20 DPS gain for me at the moment. I do not care what reasonable weapon damage precent that the the T12 2-piece bonus, the benefit at a 10% proc will be much, much better.
Consider that as a low end limiting case, you will always be performing 4 Steady Shots every 10s CS CD, even after the loss of the T11 4-set. That averages out to one every 2.5s. Your rate will be higher if you use the CS glyph or if you cast a 5th SS per cycle or possibly during the CA phase when not using AS. With a straight up 1 in 10 probability, this means that you will get a proc once every 25s, which is not too bad. Assuming a better binomial probability, we should average a proc on every 7th SS, or about every 17.5s.
Assuming the reported 80% weapon damage that is being reported, that is roughly about 80% of a WQ proc. Since a WQ proc averages about 7419 DPS, this attack should be around 5900. Of course, since this is a magical attack, there will be some different buff/debuff modifiers to it, but the 5900 is good enough for a rough estimate. Even at the worst case of 25s per proc, this averages out to 236 DPS at my 361 gear set. This will be even higher at the T12 gear sets and with the better probability modeling and with additional SSs.
Hence, the T12 2-set is much, much better than the T11 2-set for MMs.
Swing and a miss here dude.
I wasn’t saying we should keep the t11 2-piece. I was saying that the math supports keeping the t11 4-piece over breaking the set for the t12 2-piece.
I don’t care what the math for the t12 4-piece bonus is at the moment because at the point in time where you have access to the full set of regular t12, you should also start having access to pieces of t12 heroic gear which is an obvious upgrade, just from a stat standpoint, over the t11 gear. Granted you may hold out to break the t11 4-piece until you have 2 heroic pieces, but you’ll still be breaking the t11 bonuses the moment you get 2 pieces of heroic t12.
I agree that the T12 4-set can be quite the bear to optimize if you want to maximize DPS with it. It has several factors that affect it, with some of the descrived below.
To illustrate the future situation, to get this 4-set bonus, we have to give up our T11 4-set bonus which increases our base SS cast time and results in us being more GCD limited, resulting in less shots to be able to utilize this extra focus. With assuming only 4 SS per CS cycle, MMs will only need 2.3% haste from gear to get our SS cast to 1.5s to save 2 GCDs per cycle, or MMs will need 22.8% haste from gear (not recommended for many reasons) to get the SS cast down to 1.25s and save 3 GCDs per CS cycle.
In the more resonable case of the 1.5s SS cast time, that only leaves 3 GCDs per cycle besides the CS without the CS glyph and 2 GCDs with the CS glyph. I assume we will not want to use the CS glyph with T12 gear. Hence, that’s 3 GCDs, with assuming all 3 are ASs for maximum DPS.
Looking at the focus balancing of this CS-AS-SSx2-ASx2-SSx2 max DPS rotation, there is about a net 21 focus decay every cycle even with factoring in the focus savings from a MMM AI proc about every other cycle. Without the T12 4-set focus savings, this focus decay requires a focus regen cycle. This cycle fires a 5th SS in place of one of the ASs and pushes back the CS cast by 0.5s. The 5th SS cycle has a net focus of about +12. Hence, on average you need to perform 2 focus regen cycles for every max DPS cycle to balance focus. This results with 1s CS cast delay building up over every 3 rotations.
This defines what I see as being the base rotation for MMs post T11 4-set, just as it was prior to the 4-set.
The next question is how often do we anticipate to get the proc. At 2.33% haste from gear (will actually have a little higher but looking at the limiting case) and not including in dynamic haste effects, the autoshot rate is about 2.25s. The 10% proc rate means once again that it takes 7 to 10 shots for a proc depending on how its modeled. This means that we should get a proc roughly every 16 to 23s. To simplify the discussion, I will 20s since it is in the middle and a multiple of the CS CD. Hence, we can assume to get a proc about every other CS cycle on average.
The next factor is on which focus costing shot is the proc consumed. Let us assume AS to begin with as the worst case and since we perform more of them. This means that every other cycle we will save 22 focus, which is just enough to counteract the focus decay of the max DPS cycle. Hence, if we are doing a max DPS cycle every cycle, the net focus decay would now be around 11 focus average over 2 cycles due to one having the proc. Since the focus regen cycle has a net gain of 12 focus, this means that using the proc on an ASs shifts the ratio of max DPS cycles to focus regen cycles from 1 to 2 to now be 2 to 1. This means that our CS cast should now be delayed only by 0.5s every 30s.
If the proc is consumed by a CS instead, that max DPS cycle actually gains 23 focus counteracting the normal 21 focus decay of the max DPS cycle. Thus, if the proc occurs every other cycle and is used by a CS, we can always perform our max DPS cycle with the minimum 4 SSs and not delay our CS casts due to extra SSs to regain focus.
So ideally, we want to use the procs up on CSs if possible instead of ASs. That seems obvious, but the above illustrates the actual benefits of why this is true. The question is whether the buff will last enough to give us anytime of control to try to maximize its use on CSs instead of ASs.
Either way, using the proc on either an AS or a CS is a DPS benefit.
Things to note:
1) As stated, if going with this low haste case, the CS glyph is not a good option from a focus standpoint. Between the savings from replacing one of the 2 ASs with a MMM AI proc and the focus savings from this proc, the CS glyph case will waste a lot of focus. Now the CS glyph may possibly result in higher DPS than without it, but I haven’t studied that yet. In pre-T11 4-set gear, the CS glyph was a bad option, and I am assuming it will be so again, but the gear scaling may alter mu position.
2) This analysis only applies to the Standard phase when unhasted. The impacts are different in phases when you would be using the AI hardcasts, such as the CA phase and when under dynamic haste effects. Furthermore, in the KS phase, using the focus free KSs will result in wasted focus and Termination being useless, unless you are willing to temporarily lose ISS uptime every cycle to use that extra focus.
3) AI hardcasts are going to be slower in this case. This means that autoshot are locked out longer and providing a greater vunerability to having AIs interrupted when using them.
4) When in a rotation using AI though, since CS and AI focus costs are similar, it really does not matter much which of the two shots the proc is used on. The proc does though reduce the benefit of the AI glyph a lot since that 5 focus savings is not really needed anymore. The using up of one proc on a CS or AI saves 44-50 focusm which requires 9-10 AI crits for the AI glyph to equal it.
5) If we want to maximize the use of the proc, we need to be mindful of when we use our utility shots that cost focus, like Tranq Shot, SrS, and Widow Venom. Although saving the focus on these shots is still a DPS benefit similar to that as for using it up on ASs, it is not the ideal.
6) Whether the proc can be used up on other focus costing abilities such as KC, Revive Pet, or Trap Launcher. The only ones of these that is interesting is KC. If the proc can be used on KC but its duration is not long enough that it will last until CS comes off CD, it would be better to use the proc to do a focus-free KC instead of an AS since KC does roughly about 50% more damage for my character.
I forgot to mention how much of a DPS bonus the 4-set seems to be.
If we can consistently use the proc on CS, that means more 2 ASs instead of SSs every 3 CS cycles or 30s. Using my current damage difference between these shots during the Standard phase (which is a lot less than it will be in T12 gear), the damage difference is about 3400 each (this includes the fully buffed PS effect on SS). Thus, the DPS benefit is about 227 DPS. This estimate does not include the benefit of not delaying your CS cast by 1s over this period or the higher difference in T12 gear.
If we consistently use the proc on ASs, the DPS benefit is approximately 113 DPS plus the benefit of reducing CS cast delay over this period by 0.5s.
If not paying attention to the proc and just having it consumed by the very next focus using shot, then in a CS-AS-SSx2-ASx2-SSx2 rotation, there is about a 4s window for the proc to be used on CS instead of an AS. Thus, with random procs, CS will consume it about 40% of the time. Hence, the DPS benefit is about 159 DPS plus the benefit of reducing your CS delay by about 0.7s over 30s.
This is not a huge DPS benefit. It will be larger in T12 gear, but it still will not be overwhelming and appears like it may be a little worse than the T12 2-set bonus.
I wonder how the 4pc bonus would interact with LnL procs… Which one takes precedence?
I dont think BM need to worry to much I remeber blizz refering to KC as our signiture shot so it should proc for us .
The area that does make it slightly concerning is the maths and the possible dps gain for the other specs making BM to low again, but untill we know more and see what if any other class changes buffs etc are comming we cant really go into the maths in more detail. Though I think we might need some sort of BM buff as KC is used on CD anyway and so the proc would only get used on Arcane shots which is where we might lose out on DPS.
But from a basic test dummy run KC for sur ( non glythed and untalened ) hits for about 11k and for BM at around 14k. admitlyed this test run was on a non tier 11 geared hunter but still the maths should hold and scale no matter the gear level.
I forot to say that this same sur hunter had explosive shot hit and tick for about 15k per tick to give aprox 45k overall. so for them to drop a explosive shot for a KC the damage would need to be at least the same or higher to make it worth them using KC over explosive shot.