Firstly, all conceptual ideas, rotation projections, relationships between abilities, and so forth are based off of this talent spec. That said, let us begin.
Raiding in Wrath of the Lich King as a Marksmanship Hunter is something that is far less looked down upon than it was in The Burning Crusade or the latter part of World of Warcraft. Finally, we have been given the tools and talents necessary to present ourselves as a competitive DPS force once properly geared. There are many MM Hunters like myself who are theorizing and preaching their version of the art, and I will be doing the same with this write-up. Sadly, my experience with the proposed talent spec is not vast - two runs of Obsidian Sanctum (one 10-man and one 25-man) and one partial run of Naxx 25 (Raz, Patch, Anub). That said, I believe the experience I have has given me enough of an insight into the build I have crafted and how it works to be able to dissertate how it should function and why it is good to you.
One of the primary elements of the Hunter class is the concept of a "shot rotation". Normally, this meant that you were attempting to keep your special shots from delaying your Auto Shots from firing. This was done by rotating your specials around your Autos, and creating a pattern that either timed three specials in sequence, or spammed one special rapidly due to an abundance of Haste. However, the changes in Wrath of the Lich King - primarily, the change that Auto Shot will fire uninhibited, so long as you are stationary - has caused a paradigm shift from "can I shoot something now?" to "what should I shoot right now?". To say that timing is unimportant would be a lie - optimal DPS still demands that exactly one shot is fired every 1.5 seconds. However, the brief windows of quiet in the pre-Wrath rotations are no longer present. Something should always be being fired. Using the talent build above, I have found that the following rotation is the most ideal:
Serpent Sting (only one at the beginning), Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Steady Shot, Steady Shot, Chimera Shot
An unusual and unanticipated upside to using Aimed Shot in a natural rotation is that the Mortal Strike debuff is placed upon raid mobs. Some mobs, like those in Obsidian Sanctum, have the ability to heal if raid members are not paying attention. Our near-constant uptime of the healing debuff adds another level of usefulness and covering for our lesser raid members.
The topic of Mana is one that has plagued most Marksmanship Hunters, and with good reason. Our new signature ability, Chimera Shot, is prohibitively expensive. However, Blizzard has given us two tools that, used together, help to solve this issue - Rapid Fire and Aspect of the Viper. Now, I know, most Hunters consider Rapid Fire to be a DPS tool, and its use under the DPS-slashing Aspect of the Viper is folly. This is wrong, however. Rapid Fire greatly accelerates your mana gain under Viper, and the less time you spend outside of Viper, the more time you spend in Hawk. In practical testing, I can pull myself from less than 1000 mana to my full mana raid-buffed (11,000-ish on my premade) in under 9 seconds. By simply continuing my rotation aside from Aimed Shot, I can regenerate my mana very rapidly, and still have a few seconds of Rapid Fire to play with post-Viper. Plus, with Readiness, I can use Rapid Fire and Viper in tandem more often, letting me get huge surges of mana right when I need it.
In summary, I feel that there is a lot for us to be thankful for - we've reclaimed, if not our absolute dominance we had pre-1.7, at least an equal footing with all three talent specs. And really, that is all I have wanted since I came back in The Burning Crusade.
~Rilgon Arcsinh, Grand Master Goblin Engineer, Marksmanship Hunter, Champion of the Naaru
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8 comments:
Good explanation. After some theorycrafting, already started preaching this rota to our would-be wrath MM hunters in our guild. I guess my only question would be how does Aimedshot stack up against a fully talented arcane? I recognize that aimed shot is considerably more talent-point efficient than improved arcane, but I was curious how the damage was comparing.
Edit: previous comment removed because it implied I came up with the rota on my own. Theory work only ensued after Rilgon suggested it in a previous post.
Great post! Have you tested on Dummies at all? And if so, is there a way to "track" them so you can see the effect of the 5% increase?
Without playing with the Beta, it's hard to say what's effective and what's not, so at this point, I can only speculate. But I was thinking along these lines, and I'm glad someone has written up on it. I'm absolutely psyched, I can hardly wait another month.
You cannot track dummies as they are Mechanicals, but yes, everything I've tested in a raid environment, I've also tested on dummies - Steady/Aimed/Chimera yields about 150 more DPS on a DUMMY than Steady/Arcane/Chimera. And that's without raid buffs, Tracking, or anything of the sort.
I'm very, very enamored with the new Aimed Shot, and initially I dismissed it (albeit not publicly).
Has there been it been determined a specific meaning to the rather ambiguous wording to the Serpent Sting effect on Chimera Shot? Is it 40% of the damage that has already ticked, or is it 40% of the total theoretical damage of the Sting itself? Since you are using it last in the rotation, I am assuming it is the former.
Post deletion: I'm sick and don't know the order of my words...
Yes, it is the damage that the Serpent Sting has done. The "best" way to improve the end effect of Chimera-Serpent is to only use it every 15 seconds, but you lose a TON of the Chimera damage trying to optimize the Chimera-Serpent damage.
Here's to me for bringing a post back up from the dead. The last comment was in October so prior to Xpac and info was hazey back then. Since you have this in SES required reading I thought I would comment on the Serpent Sting portion of the comment. It is now common knowledge (and I know that you know this as well), that Chimera should be used immediately as it bases it's damage on the value of the sting opposed to what has ticked. It won't hit any harder by delaying it, and since it is our heaviest hitter we want to use it as often as possible.
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