Serpent Sting is it Time?

April Fool's posts usually come in a couple of varieties. There's funny/clever, and then there's cruel. I opted for funny/clever yesterday, but I was very tempted to go with this,

"In the next minor patch Serpent Sting tics will automatically be able to crit. The T9 2-set bonus will be modified to increase the damage of Serpent Sting critical tics by 5%"

See? Not real and certainly not funny. So my question is this. Is it time for Blizzard to make Serpent Sting crit without the need of a set bonus? I think so.

Right now the two-piece T9 set bonus is just awesome. This is due to the two-piece T10 bonus and the way Chimera Shot refreshes Serpent Sting. Remember it refreshes the sting with any percentage damage modifiers that were in place when the sting was cast. It also got buffed in patch 3.3.3 and the crit. damage is even higher now.

Very high-end hunters are able to reach the ArP hard cap and retain two pieces of item level 258 T9. And us mere mortals are seeing huge dividends in our item level 245 pieces. Here's a look at my Serpent Sting numbers from this week's Festergut (25). The crit damage was averaging close to 3K, well more than double the average non-crit damage.

Furthermore, I didn't even have the best possible Serpent Sting applied. As you can see my stings were only critting 60% of the the time. I've gotten that well over 80% before, and I've seen others get the crit chance as high as 90%.

When a new tier of gear is added to the game I think the intention is for players to fully upgrade to that tier. Okay, trinkets may be an exception, but certainly not the other armor pieces. Now that doesn't mean that everyone should opt for four pieces of their tier set. Depending on the spec two-pieces and off-set pieces should be a viable option. But having to dip down to a lower tier because it gains you more dps just doesn't make a lot of sense.

I doubt will see any changes for Wrath, but I'm hopeful that it will become standard fare in Cataclysm. What do you guys think, is it time for Serpent Stings tics to have the natural ability to critically strike, or should we just enjoy it while it lasts and be prepared to remember it fondly come Cataclysm?

Multi-Shot - Ruh Roh!

In episode 21 of the Hunting Party Podcast we interviewed Kruf who was one of the hunters who got the world's first Lich King (25), and heroic Lich King (25) kills. In the interview he said the most important thing for hunters is to constantly be firing something and not sitting idle. I agreed with him whole heartedly - until today.

Before I start I'm going to give some benefit of doubt here and chalk this one up to transitioning from Survival to Marksman. Even with that there are some things here that are just plain ugly.

What you're looking at is a World of Logs timeline view from a recent Festergut (25) normal encounter. For more information on using World of Logs you can check out this post at OutDPS.com.

So where to begin? See the spell labeled speed? That's a haste potion. The hunter is pre-potting so he can use another one later in the fight. Good stuff, and something I don't do enough of.

Next we see an adjustment to his tracker. This is for the 5% damage boost from the Improved Tracking talent. The problem here is that this was entirely unnecessary since he was previously tracking undead. Tracking should already be in place when you enter the instance.

We also have Misdirection and Hunter's Mark. Both fine. When the fight starts he leads off with Serpent Sting, having macro'd Silencing Shot and Kill Command. Nothing bad about that.

Next we see Chimera Shot followed by Multi-Shot. Ruh Roh! Next we get Rapid Fire and Readiness, followed by Chimera and Multi-Shot. Ruh Roh! With Rapid Fire cooking the poor bastard gets hit by Vile Gas. Things move along and then we start to see some Serpent Sting casts - lots of them. Ruh Roh!

The second image is from end of the fight. Note, the two images do not comprise the entire timeline. What's notable in this second image is that only one Kill Shot was fired once the boss was in execute range, and there were no additional Rapid Fire/Readiness combinations. All at once, Ruh-Roh!

Let's talk a little bit about what's wrong here. First, Multi-Shot is not Aimed Shot; at least not for Marksman, and to some degree Survival. The following talents all affect Aimed Shot and not Multi-Shot,

• Marked for Death - Increases your damage done by your shots and the damage done by your pet's special abilities by 5% on marked targets, and increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, Kill Shot and Chimera Shot by 10%.
• Piercing Shots - Your critical Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 30% of the damage dealt over 8 sec.
• Improves Steady Shot - Your Steady Shot hits have a 15% chance to increase the damage done by your next Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot or Chimera Shot by 15%, and reduce the mana cost of your next Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot or Chimera Shot by 20%.
• Master Marksman - Increases your critical strike chance by 5%, and reduces the Mana cost of your Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, and Chimera Shot by 25%.
• Sniper Training (SV only) - Increases the critical strike chance of your Kill Shot ability by 15%, and while standing still for 6 sec, you gain Sniper Training increasing the damage done by your Steady Shot, Aimed Shot, Black Arrow and Explosive Shot by 6% for 15 sec..

This is huge, especially Piercing Shots which is a big part of Marksman damage. Aimed Shot is second only to Chimera Shot in the MM rotation. It does more damage and costs less mana than Multi-Shot. That's not to say that Multi-Shot does not have it's place, it does. Single target boss fights are not one of them though.

I'm not going to go into the whole nuance of Readiness/Rapid Fire other than to say you need to monitor these closely and use them appropriately as the length of the fight dictates. In this fight you probably should have had at least three rapid fires if not four.

As for Serpent Sting, Marksman hunters should only have to recast this if it's fallen off (which shouldn't be an issue with Festergut), or you get a buff such as Exploit Weakness and want maintain a buffed Serpent Sting on the target. If you look at the end of the fight we see Serpent Sting followed by Serpent Sting, followed by Misdirection, followed by Serpent Sting. Doesn't make much sense to me.

Finally, Kill Shot is our biggest shot. It's priority should be greater than anything else we've got. This is true for Marksman, Survival and Beast Master. Once you get into execute range there's no reason not to be watching this and getting off as many as you can. Most fights I've seen, there is usually time to get off more than one.

So at the end of the day where does all of this shoddy huntering get you? Right smack dab in the middle of the pack. Almost 8K dps. Not the worst, but not nearly as good as it could've been. If you're on a progression fight and bumping up against an enrage timer, "not the worst" probably won't be good enough.

PS: Ruh Roh - Astro or Scooby-Doo? Debate!