Master Tactician vs. Imp Aspect of the HawkFollow

I'm not going to even try doing the math itself. It's just not my kind of thing. All I am going to add to this, is my own personal experiences and fuzzy logic. This is my current raidbuild, and it took IAotH instead of Master Tactician. The logic behind that was simple. Fast attack speed, more autoshots/steadyshots, and thus more shots within a minute, capable of critting. From personal experience, this proccs often. During a bossfight, this pops repeatedly. The problem, is that it is unsteady and unreliable. You never know when it is going to happen.

Sometimes, it proccs and proccs and proccs on every second autoshot in a row, and then leaves you hanging for a minute before you see another procc. Other times, it is quite steady, and stays up somewhat predictably.

MT on the other hand, sounds... iffy. 6% chance on hit? Even given Blizzards hidden Procc system (Crusader anyone?) it sounds somewhat low, given the increase. Consider yourself as a raidhunter. Depending on buffs, gear, groupsetup, you should have a fairly decent crit chance around 35-40% with decentish gear. This buff, gives 45-50%ish crit chance for 8 seconds. How many shots do you get off in eight seconds? Now say you get 10% of those shots as Crits, besides your usual crits. Sounds like a low DPS increase per talent point to me.

If you are worried about keeping EW up, it won't be a problem anyway. Once you got the gear to make EW worth it, you will have more than enough critchance to keep it up 99% of the time. And IAotH gives you that many more shots that can crit, as well.

I'd roll with IAotH myself. If nothing else, it reminds me to put AotH back after running around with AotV between packs.

Skribs, you yourself calculated how effective MT was, as well as how effective AotH was.
You should be able to calculate in the increased chance of proccing TotH and/or EW ;)

Actually, it will instantly destroy any shooting cycle macro because they dont adapt to the new shooting cycle.
(how it exactly works i'm not sure but i know that if i use the BM one and IAotH procs it will clip and ***** up completely)

As i understand it, its because effective shot cycle macros are based on your arcane/multi shot cooldowns in relation to your weapon speed - which dictates your autoshot speed. Any ability that changes your weapon speed causes other cooldowns to overlap the autoshot and fubars the macro execution.

tkasomething.com had a couple good articles regarding castsequence shot rotation macros; that's where i initially read about them.

What ever you are smooking pass it around.
You must have a bow with an attackspeed around 5.0 or slower to steadyshot, arcane, multi, autofire, steadyshot without delaying your autoshot. Imo, you are capping you autofire hard, unless you are the type of hunter who takes arcane/multi > steadyshot = huntard ;) (no offence, but thats just plain stupid).

This is not because I'm grumpy all the time, just stopped smooking today :-|

(I know my spelling/gramma sucks. I'm danish and I can't help it :P)

Whenever did I mention Steady Shot? When you use Arcane and Multi, you skip steady until next Autoshot. But thanks for proving Aethien's point... sheesh.

Multi is ALWAYS situational IMO. Anyone who puts multi in their common rotation will invariably end up wearing the Huntard hat on a regular basis. It's not so bad for solo adventuring but in a group, any Hunter I see firing off a multi in a risky situation I'll bounce on their bananas until they stop.

I LOVE multi-shot, it's my favorite shot, but to be honest, the places it gets safely used are actually uncommon, not common. In solo play, it's really just a mana burner. If I'm 1:1 with a 'regular' or easier target and have a clear field, I'll just let autoshot do it's job (maybe throw in some steady's to keep boredom away), keep the heals on Morris and not burn any mana, waiting for adds or an 'oops' to happen before I start flailing out the dps.

Multi-shot is a tactical shot that pulls many targets to you, or is used in Group vs. 1 (or few) and only if the tank has the target solidly. I'm not sure any other shot in the Hunter talents pulls as much aggro as a Crit-Multi. Being MM, crit is the norm, non-crit is the exception. I'll throw all the mana I have at a boss fight, multi away so long as I can't aggro something else (unless the leader or tactically it makes sense to aggro that something else).

But it's still a tactical shot with far more usefulness in a situation than general rotation shot. It's also a mana-pig (not for the damage it deals, it's very mana efficient there, but for total cost of mana it's pricey!).

I advise to be frugal with Multi-shot, IMHO it's not a desirous, spammable shot in most situations.

Agree, but you're focusing on certain situations, thus you appear to be agreeing with me that it's a situational shot and not necessary in general rotation. Most situations do not require Multi.



Yes really, since I do have barrage and imp. barrage, a multi-shot fires 3 rounds and against 3 targets with a 33% change, you have extremely high odds of a crit in the 3. If you have go for the throat, your pet gets more focus: bonus!
So, really, crit is the rule, not the exception when firing off multi: reasoning follows:

Against single target it's only 33%. Two targets, each with a 33% chance to crit. Three targets each with a 33% chance to crit. Add them up and average and you should get over 50% crit, assuming you meet each situation equally. Since you don't, it will vary over the situation. I tend to use mine in multi target situations more than single, save for boss or need to knock down target quickly fights.

So, as an MM hunter, with proper high volume fire talents, yeah, I crit more than less with my multi-shot in a given volley.

<sigh> Look at the context of the comment, it's really not that hard to see what I'm saying.

Crit = Aggro (crit being ANY crit- right?)

Any crit will increase your hate and possible pull other targets off the tank. Tactically, a bad thing most of the time, desireable only sometimes.

If you have 3 targets on the tank, odds are with ONE multishot, you will crit one of the three (~69% of the time, aka- "more often than not") and increase the odds of pulling a target off the tank. Thus, situationally, multishot should NOT always be used in general rotation, as it is a tactical shot in most sitiations in PvE, group, or solo.

That was my whole point.

More detail since apparently my previous logic or english was hard to follow (not uncommon btw! ;) ).

If you feel that you should always have multi-shot in your normal rotation in an instance or group, go for it, but you can suffer the wrath of your group as you pull targets off the tank.

In RAID it's all about the dps so Multishot should probably be part of your regular rotation. You never know when that "lucky" crit will down a target low on health. It does bring attention to you though.

If you like to snipe from a more hidden position, autoshot is your friend, but again, that's a playstyle choice. I don't do this, but I've noticed some hunters very effectively positioning themselves hidden away from the major melee and sniping down targets low on health, they rarely used spelled (ie: giant tracer rounds) shots. I could never master the skill. Some casters can do this too, like shadow priests.

PvP almost demands multishot being in the rotation. The situations you wouldn't use it are rarer (like aggroing nearby mobs by accident- bad mojo.) but they do exist and you need to be mindful of it.

You CAN use it in solo play but it's an unecessary waste of mana, IMO, when you are NOT threatened by your target. Is it FASTER for you to use multishot, burn the mana and the target faster and have to recover more mana before the next target? Or is it faster to just go target to target at a steady rate that doesn't suck the mana (and your water supplies) dry so it can keep pace with your target damage? I don't know the answer to that question, nor do I care. *I* personally prefer consistency of pace to max dps and drinking a lot when I'm solo. That's player preference. I didn't say you couldn't I just said it wasn't necessary.

Since we've completely hijacked this thread, I'll let it go back to the original topic and say I've said my piece on this.