Survival or Marksmenship

[Anansi]

Ah, I thought Steady Shot glyph didn't stack with one of the marksmen talents.

There used to be a bug with Marked For Death but that's been fixed for a while now.

[Danielfboone]

You're right that a Castsequence macro is not optimal, but they are functional. And I think (macro experts can confirm or deny this) that you can put a reset quantifier in your macro that resets the sequence after so many seconds. That may help.

It only resets after that amount of seconds pass without using the macro at all. If you press it before the set time, it picks up from where it left off. Seeing that the cooldown of both Chimera and Aimed shot is 10 seconds, the lowest feasible idle reset time is probably 8 seconds. You very rarely are running and avoiding things for that long .

I use Steady Shot, Chimera Shot and Kill Shot. In a raid environment, having Kill Shot available more frequently helps a lot with bosses, particularly if you're running close to an Enrage timer and TSA can be canceled out by a Blood DK's Abomination's Might talent or Enhancement Shaman's Unleashed Rage talent so if that happens your glyph is useless.

Nope, the glyph is never useless. even if the attack power bonus of TSA is overwritten by something else, the effect of the Glyph (10% increased crit for Aimed Shot) is still active. I have yet to ever see the buff icon for TSA disappear. I have run the numbers for all the glyph combinations through the spreadsheet and the combination I use provides the highest dps. The Serpent sting Glyph is absolutely essential since it greatly increases the amount of damage the Chimera-serpent proc does.

[Anansi]

Nope, the glyph is never useless. even if the attack power bonus of TSA is overwritten by something else, the effect of the Glyph (10% increased crit for Aimed Shot) is still active. I have yet to ever see the buff icon for TSA disappear. I have run the numbers for all the glyph combinations through the spreadsheet and the combination I use provides the highest dps. The Serpent sting Glyph is absolutely essential since it greatly increases the amount of damage the Chimera-serpent proc does.

Ahh, right you are, it looks like this was fixed in 3.3.
Good to know. Had I room for a 4th glyph I'd definitely pick it up!

[Danielfboone]

Well what happens is that you're spending time and talent points on a low-performing shot. Yes, Arcane ignores armour but if you have a good amount of ArPen, things balance out and even tip to the favour of not using Arcane Shot. And as Chrizesu pointed out, Arcane has low critical damage so you can crit higher with something else.

Did a raid in ICC tonight--on the Blood Princes. I have no points in Improved Arcane, 3 points in Improved Steady, the Glyph of Steady Shot, 461 passive ArP with a 678 proc from my trinket. These were the best numbers for Auto,Steady,and Arcane shot, The first number is the highest normal hit, the second one the highest crit. All the numbers were on the same mob as well.

Auto----- 3404, 6987
Steady----2721, 6633
Arcane----3087, 7685

I don't see where Arcane is a low critical damage shot. I do signicantly more damage with it in my rotation than without it.

[Anansi]

Did a raid in ICC tonight--on the Blood Princes. I have no points in Improved Arcane, 3 points in Improved Steady, the Glyph of Steady Shot, 461 passive ArP with a 678 proc from my trinket. These were the best numbers for Auto,Steady,and Arcane shot, The first number is the highest normal hit, the second one the highest crit. All the numbers were on the same mob as well.

Auto----- 3404, 6987
Steady----2721, 6633
Arcane----3087, 7685

I don't see where Arcane is a low critical damage shot. I do signicantly more damage with it in my rotation than without it.

Ok, those are your best numbers, but what's the average? And outside of crits, what was your overall shot damage ranking? Generally you ought to look at overall, not best numbers, as overall is a better gauge of the norm, where bests are outliers. WWS reports can help a lot here.

Improved Steady Shot doesn't actually help your Steady Shot damage, but it does boost the damage of your next Arcane, Aimed or Chimera by 15%. I found that when I used Arcane in my rotation, ISS procs tended to end up affecting Arcane more than Chimera (which is what you really want) or Aimed. Given what you've said about using a castsequence macro and your findings on how it works, this may be the case for you as well, where your ICC procs aren't being used for the best shot.

That said, the very bottom line is that whatever works best for you, is the best option! Ultimately that's what it all boils down to, as theory and optimal mechanics do not apply equally to all players, so each player must assess their situation individually, take what info is useful to them and apply it and discard the rest if it doesn't work.
You're on the Blood Princes fight, so obviously you are doing significantly more than well so I encourage you to stick with what works best for you. But it's always nice to try new methods as you never know, you may find something that works better, or you may confirm that what you are doing is indeed the best and you can be confident in that.

[Danielfboone]

Did a raid in ICC tonight--on the Blood Princes. I have no points in Improved Arcane, 3 points in Improved Steady, the Glyph of Steady Shot, 461 passive ArP with a 678 proc from my trinket. These were the best numbers for Auto,Steady,and Arcane shot, The first number is the highest normal hit, the second one the highest crit. All the numbers were on the same mob as well.

Auto----- 3404, 6987
Steady----2721, 6633
Arcane----3087, 7685

I don't see where Arcane is a low critical damage shot. I do signicantly more damage with it in my rotation than without it.

Ok, those are your best numbers, but what's the average? And outside of crits, what was your overall shot damage ranking? Generally you ought to look at overall, not best numbers, as overall is a better gauge of the norm, where bests are outliers. WWS reports can help a lot here.

Improved Steady Shot doesn't actually help your Steady Shot damage, but it does boost the damage of your next Arcane, Aimed or Chimera by 15%. I found that when I used Arcane in my rotation, ISS procs tended to end up affecting Arcane more than Chimera (which is what you really want) or Aimed. Given what you've said about using a castsequence macro and your findings on how it works, this may be the case for you as well, where your ICC procs aren't being used for the best shot.

That said, the very bottom line is that whatever works best for you, is the best option! Ultimately that's what it all boils down to, as theory and optimal mechanics do not apply equally to all players, so each player must assess their situation individually, take what info is useful to them and apply it and discard the rest if it doesn't work.
You're on the Blood Princes fight, so obviously you are doing significantly more than well so I encourage you to stick with what works best for you. But it's always nice to try new methods as you never know, you may find something that works better, or you may confirm that what you are doing is indeed the best and you can be confident in that.

I didn't bother posting the averages because the result was the same. The average arcane crit was 1k higher than the average steady shot crit and it was the same spread for auto as well. The ISS proc will always affect Chimera first since that is the first shot in my sequence. It goes-- Chimera,Aimed,Arcane,Steady x 3 and then repeats. I also throw in a silencing when I can just for a little extra and of course, the first shot at a target is always serpent sting.

[Chrizesu]

I didn't bother posting the averages because the result was the same. The average arcane crit was 1k higher than the average steady shot crit and it was the same spread for auto as well. The ISS proc will always affect Chimera first since that is the first shot in my sequence. It goes-- Chimera,Aimed,Arcane,Steady x 3 and then repeats. I also throw in a silencing when I can just for a little extra and of course, the first shot at a target is always serpent sting.

It just depends at where your hunter is at. Mine still isn't ready to go from survival to marks (I still do more damage in surv).