Aimed Shot replacement for BM hunters?

[Sarayana]

Blizz is infamous for badly worded tooltips though... Just look at the way Noxious Stings is worded:

If Wyvern Sting is dispelled, the dispeller is also afflicted by Wyvern Sting lasting 50% of the duration remaining, and increases all damage done by you on targets afflicted by your Serpent Sting by 3%.

Is that extra damage after wyvern sting is dispelled or is it a flat increase? Well, it's the latter, but it sure sounds like it's after dispelling. Many hunters (who don't look up specs or theorycraft) don't spec into Noxious Stings for that reason.

I am not certain about the details for Aimed Shot, I just wanted to point out that it wouldn't be the first time a spell tooltip was unclear.

[Saturo]

It does say "for 10 seconds"... how can that only apply to aimed shot?
It says "An aimed shot that increases ranged damage by 205 and reduces healing done to that target by 50%. Lasts 10 seconds." It does not say "shot that causes x-amount of damage" (look at how Arcane Shot is described in the tooltip).

That means that Aimed Shot does your autoshot damage plus 205. Then that is multiplied with an AP coefficient and your ranged attack power. Aimed Shot will always beat Multi-Shot on single targets. If there's two or more targets, and no need for the Mortal Strike effect, and no CC up, you should always use Multi-Shot.

I think with multi-shot if you're hitting one target, all that damage goes to that one target.

This is simply incorrect. It does a certain damage to each enemy. If you only have one enemy, it doesn't do all the possible damage, just the standard.

[Sarayana]

Trust Saturo to bring the facts.

[Acherontia]

While it will do a bit more, the talent spent to get it can be used elsewhere to good effect. I've never used Aimed for raiding, nor have I seen a raiding spec that does. In answer to the question--I'm not sure what the differences in rotation will be, but even now, multi-shot is a perfectly acceptable replacement

[Aylfric]

Aylfric, that's an interesting point about MS. I really thought it was an increase. What do you do, fill the space with another steady?

Yeah, that's all. So I keep up serpent sting, fire arcane on cooldown, and otherwise steady steady steady...

Of course once we get the new talents the WHU spec will be obsolete as will be mine. And BM won't be able to have Aimed Shot at all.

[Palladiamorsdeus]

I tend to prefer Aimed shot at the moment because it's instant, and I can use it on the run. And you're on the run quite a bit. It's also situational though, for the moment. Anyway, it's replacement come Cata will be Kill Command, but not until they buff it to the point where you want to use it instead of Arcane shot. It's still not QUITE there, but it's a lot closer.

[Nakari]

I tend to prefer Aimed shot at the moment because it's instant, and I can use it on the run. And you're on the run quite a bit. It's also situational though, for the moment. Anyway, it's replacement come Cata will be Kill Command, but not until they buff it to the point where you want to use it instead of Arcane shot. It's still not QUITE there, but it's a lot closer.

As of the latest PTR patch KC is certainly better than Arcane Shot. On my Level 80 hunter in mostly 264/277 ICC gear Arcane Shot crits for around 5.7k to 6k, while KC hits for 4.6k - 5k and crits for ~13k (not entirely sure why the critical damage modifier is so high, there's probably some double dipping going one somwhere with all the percentage modifiers). With Arcane Shot at 22 Focus with Efficiency and Kill Command at 37 Focus with the Glyph of Kill Command, the latter is clearly the winner in the Damage per Focus department, and thats not even factoring in that a) KC has a 10% higher crit chance, b) has the potential of reduced focus cost and increased damage with Killing Streak and c) that KC scales better than ArS and is affected by more debuffs which weren't present in my short test (-12% armor reduction, 4% increased physical damage taken for KC vs. 8% spell damage taken for ArS).

Note however that I had reforged a lot of my crit or haste to mastery rating, which obviously benfits KC but not ArS.

[Nakari]

I just stumbled upon a pretty serious bug with Kill Command while doing my proof testing for the numbers in the above post: KC crits double dip from mastery, i.e. they get affected twice. With 19 mastery (= 32% increased pet damage), KC crits were doing 2 * 1.32 = 2.64 times the damage of a non-crit, instead of the expected double damage. After reducing the mastery to 8 (= 13% increased pet damage), KC crits were doing 2 * 1.13 = 2.26 times the damage of a non-crit instead of the intended double damage. I'm a bit shocked nobody noticed this up until now, especially Blizzard who did a rollercoaster ride with KC's coefficient and probably nerfed it based upon this bug (as it can result in some impressive KC crits if you stack mastery). Could somebody with access to the US PTR / Beta-Forum report this bug?

[Sarayana]

Could somebody with access to the US PTR / Beta-Forum report this bug?

You can report on it from in-game. I'd think that's the most certain way to get the information to them.

[Slickrock2]

I just stumbled upon a pretty serious bug with Kill Command while doing my proof testing for the numbers in the above post: KC crits double dip from mastery, i.e. they get affected twice. With 19 mastery (= 32% increased pet damage), KC crits were doing 2 * 1.32 = 2.64 times the damage of a non-crit, instead of the expected double damage. After reducing the mastery to 8 (= 13% increased pet damage), KC crits were doing 2 * 1.13 = 2.26 times the damage of a non-crit instead of the intended double damage. I'm a bit shocked nobody noticed this up until now, especially Blizzard who did a rollercoaster ride with KC's coefficient and probably nerfed it based upon this bug (as it can result in some impressive KC crits if you stack mastery). Could somebody with access to the US PTR / Beta-Forum report this bug?

Was you on EJ? Saw the report there as well...

It will be good to get this reported and fixed, but it will likely mean a serious serious BM nerf while this is corrected, watched, and then hopefully rebalanced...

Be ready for BM damage to drop again.

[SpacemaNxSPIFF]

I tested BM on the PTR today to double check the recent adjustment to KC. I tested rotations with KC and without. Arc spamming actually gave me higher dps by about ~7-800dps.

I wasn't testing very long though (bout 5min each) and KC still hits hard, but regardless I was getting steady, higher dps with just Arc. PLUS, I did reforge for all the mastery I could get (about 20 mastery = 33% pet dmg). No glyphs for either.

So, either the nerf was a little too much and needs to be brought up a bit, or somethings funky, not sure. Will test again...

[Nakari]

Could somebody with access to the US PTR / Beta-Forum report this bug?

You can report on it from in-game. I'd think that's the most certain way to get the information to them.

Nope, the feedback tool is disabled on the PTR client, as it is tagged as a "release"-version build (I don't have a beta key). But some people were already nice enough to report this, so it will hopefully get fixed and Kill Command readjusted accordingly (=buffed) before Cataclysm.

@slickrock2: Yes, that was me.

[SpacemaNxSPIFF]

OK, round 2.

Seems I'm doing more with KC now....

[Sarayana]

Could somebody with access to the US PTR / Beta-Forum report this bug?

You can report on it from in-game. I'd think that's the most certain way to get the information to them.

Nope, the feedback tool is disabled on the PTR client, as it is tagged as a "release"-version build (I don't have a beta key). But some people were already nice enough to report this, so it will hopefully get fixed and Kill Command readjusted accordingly (=buffed) before Cataclysm.

Ah, my bad.

[The Insect Man]

No no no, the 10 secs applies to the healing debuff. It does not grant you +damage to all shots for 10 seconds, and never has.

Calculators aside, aimed shot specced currently as BM gives you an additional on-the-run shot which is extremely useful for most group content. In Beta, as noted, not only will it be MM only, it also has a huge wonking cast time unless that MM talent procs.

[Sukurachi]

No no no, the 10 secs applies to the healing debuff. It does not grant you +damage to all shots for 10 seconds, and never has.

Do not respond as though it is an "obvious" deduction.

It clearly does NOT state "and reduces healing for 10 seconds".

It says "applies X and X", then "period", and after the period "Lasts 10 seconds".

By any rule of grammar and syntax, this means that everything that precedes the period "lasts 10 seconds".

There is obviously a serious flaw in the way the tooltip is written.


If I write a cake recipe and in it I say "take mixture and add raisins and nuts." "cook for 1 hour." I certainly don't mean that I am only cooking the raisins and nuts for one hour! or worse yet, by your "no no no" response, cooking only "nuts" for one hour.

The syntax clearly states that everything before the phrase "lasts 10 seconds" is affected by that temporal definition.


I'm not going to argue whether it does or does not. Everyone here has stated that it does not do as I expected, so I will believe everyone. But it is far from "obvious" that this is the case.
The tooltip is very poorly written.

[The Insect Man]

Ah well, I apologise if that came out more forceful. I was going more for absent-minded professor than dictator.

[Sarayana]

The tooltip is very poorly written.

Yes. It's a general problem for Blizz and sometimes they're waaaaay too slow in fixing them.

[Sukurachi]

By the way, another change I didn't see announced, though I may simply ahve missed it:

Misdirection = level 76 now... my level 74 hunter is really REALLY ticked-off right now.

[Nimizar]

The thing is, from where I sit, WHU is slightly wrong.

Not hugely wrong, but if I use that BM spec, according to the calculator, with 25-player raid buffs (not that I ever do 25-player raids), I lose 10 DPS.

And the spec I use doesn't include aimed shot in it. Same other points outside of the BM tree, slightly different BM points, and I take a point in Invigoration instead, which helps with mana longevity, which leads to less time in Aspect of the Viper, which means more DPS - at least, on the long fights where that applies.

And I don't use Multi-shot either, unless there are multiple targets. Again, the online calculator says I get 47 more DPS from that, again from not needing to use Viper as much.

If I had to guess, I'd suggest the amount of Int on your gear is less than the cookie cutter spec expects based on best-in-slot gear, so Replenishment and Viper aren't as effective as is normally assumed.

However, even in Wrath, the cookie cutter specs aren't absolute. For given configurations of gear, other specs might actually give more DPS. However, once we're talking small percentage DPS changes in the spreadsheet, then that should actually be read as "doesn't really matter which you choose" (your own execution on any given fight is going to matter more than the precise talent allocation at that point).