Serpent Sting after 2.3Follow

Serpent Sting needs to be at least 30% of your RAP to be even remotely worth using.

A few things are a bit of in your calculations.

1) 1100 ranged attack power is not a number at which one should look at those shots. Shot rotations and DPM becomes relevant when you are raiding. For solo play, instances and for farming mana consumption and shot rotations and stuff like that are not so important.
Lets calculate those things at least with 2500 RAP raid buffed which should be very achievable for every hunter starting with 25 mans.
(I have 2100 RAP unbuffed with my survival spec and I'm still on early SSC gear level).
2) Both steady shot and arcane shot scale much better with RAP than serpent sting does (15% and 20% as opposed to 10%). Thus with adjusted numbers arcane shot and steady shot will have much better DPM values.
3) Serpent sting cannot crit while both steady shot and arcane shot can crit which further improves the DPM value of the two shots.
4) As a survival specced hunter I regain 40% of the mana cost whenever I crit. This again improves DPM of steady and arance shot while serpent sting remains unaffected.

So lets do this again with an assumed 2500 RAP and 30% crit (with my gear I'm at 2650 RAP and 42% crit with full raid buffs and I know many hunter which have better equip):

Before considering crit chance:
Serpent Sting: (660+2500*0.10) / 225 = 910 / 225 = 4 dpm
Arcane Shot: (273+2500*0.15) / 230 = 648 / 230 = 2.82 dpm
Steady Shot: (150+2500*0.2) / 110 = 650 / 110 = 5.9 dpm

When considering crit we have to acount for the extra damage. A raiding hunter will have specced into mortal shot adding 130% damage when the shot crits.
So basically we have to adjust the damage by multiplying the whole thing with 1.3*(1+c); c = crit chance

Including crit chance:
Serpent sting: 910 / 225 = 4 dpm
Arcane shot: 648 * (1.3*1.3) / 230 = 648 * 1.69 / 230 = 1095 / 230 = 4.76 dpm
Steady shot: 650 * (1.3*1.3) / 110 = 650 * 1.69 / 110 = 1098.5 / 110 = 9.99 dpm

Thus for every non-SV raiding hunter serpent sting will be the least mana efficient spell (although arcane shot comes close).

Survival hunters will get even better numbers since thrill of the hunt will repay 40% of the spells mana cost when the spell crits. For this we can calculate the SV hunters dpm values
Serpent sting: 910 / 225 = 4 dpm
Arcane shot: 1095 / (0.7*230+0.3*230*0.6) = 1095 / (161 + 41.4) = 1095 / 202.4 = 5.4 dpm
Steady shot: 1098.5 / (0.7*110+0.3*110*0.6) = 1098.5 / (77+19.8) = 1098.5 / 96.8 = 11.35 dpm

Obviously the trend only get stronger. Thus the more crit and AP someone has, the less mana effiecient serpent sting will be. For survival hunters this is even more the case as they have thrill of the hunt and naturally huge amounts of crit.

If serpent sting would have a lower mana cost and would scale with 15% or 20% it would be a worthwhile shot. At its current state it is not worth it with 2.3 as long as you have to restrict your mana consumption. If you can go all out, you might fire a serpent sting after a steady shot in your rotation now and then, but the damage per mana point spent is rather low when compared with the other shots.

edit: made the results and asumptions in bold text to keep it more readable

Edited, Nov 7th 2007 11:55pm by Mulgrin

*** No critisism, great job and very valid topic and info. However, to complement. ***


Actually it does relate to AP, but you'd have to take the weapon into consideration too. I can see why you left if out, but I'm curious myself, so just for clarity:

1.1k AP, is kinda mediocre (especially if it includes selfbuff), so we're going to assume [Hemet's Elekk Gun] (mind you, not the ideal weapon either).

Damage: 103 - 193.
Average: 148.
Speed: 2.5
AP: 1 100.
Damage from AP (using weapon speed): 196.
Damage from AP (using normalization speed): 220.
Formula for Multi-Shot (the way you've calculated so far): 148 + 205 + 220 = 573.
DPM for Multi-Shot: ~2.1.



However, you leave out a crucial part of the calculation, namely crit. This of course favours Serpent Sting over all the others. Now, no offence, to be a bit more exact:

I'll use my stats for this. I've got 1.6k AP selfbuffed and I've got [Emberhawk Crossbow]. I'm also BM/MM (41/20/0), so I've got Mortal Shots. I've also got around 18% crit.

Skipping all the maths I do and just hit you with the answers:

Serpent Sting: 3.64.
Arcane Shot: 2.69.
Steady Shot: 4.61.
Multi-Shot: 3.18.

I now realized that I forgot that I have efficiency too, but since that's percentage based on your mana, we'd get the exact same outcome, only with all variables smaller.

My conclution of this is indeed that I'll use SS post-2.3. Might even be worth speccing Imp. Stings if you're MM (or SV/MM) (assuming you've got near 2k AP selfbuffed, and with the extra 10% from talents), your Serpent Sting will do 860 damage. By specing stings you'll increase that to 1118. That's nothing to frown at.

Edit: I wrote this last night... somehow it seems to have been delayed.

Edited, Nov 8th 2007 6:54pm by Utarius

Scorpid sting is a hell of a lot better than any other sting.
A good warrior tank has a very decent amount of parry, miss and dodge. So a tank will only get hit by perhaps 30% (perhaps less) of all attacks the boss does.
Reducing those 30% to 25% reduces the total damage your tank receives by 1/6th. Those 5% are really big since this saves a lot of mana on your healers and it greatly increases your tanks survivability.

Whether one should use serpent sting in his rotation I'm not so sure. Serpent sting has still a rather low damage per mana. Yes, this sting is better than before, but it'll drain your mana pool for still to low damage. Additionally one has to remember that a mob can only have 40 debuffs. If he has more than those, others will be pushed off. As this dot is one of the weaker ones I'm not sure that it should be used by every hunter.
I would only use this sting if I was grouped with a shadow priest for mana regeneration which is highly unlikely for a survival hunter. In all other group compositions I won't spend my precious mana on serpent sting.

It is actually a bane in Raids/Dungeons, think if you had to emergency trap a mob that your scorp was on?

No thanks, too much of a risk for me, you would have to turn off the poison, and then, what is the use of having a pet with a special ability if you can't even use it 95% of your play time?

Yeah, I was talking about the shot, not the pet. Those things are fugly. ;)

Something you haven't considered yet is, what does that debuff slot give you? As you've already said, Scorpid Sting is much better, and with only one hunter is should be kept up instead of Serpent.
However, what about multiple hunters on a boss?
I'm going to use over-the-top numbers to prove my point. 3000AP, Improved Stings, Misery. That debuff slot gives 1310 damage at 87.4dps. Now compare that to Immolate, an affliction warlock's worst-scaling DoT (besides SL, which has a function beyond damage), Imp Scorch, untalented CoE, Misery, and a conservative pre-raid 800 buffed fire damage. That Immolate is 1507 damage over 15 seconds at 100.5dps purely on the DoT portion.

Unfortunately, high mana cost and poor scaling means it's still going to be one of the first debuffs called off when you approach the 40-debuff cap, right up with Rend and Rake.

Utarius does becoming "Un-Crushable" also affect what you were saying?

Like Utarius is hinting at, Warriors aren't created to be uncrushable off the bat. They have to keep Shield Block up to attain uncrushable, and that means anything with a high attack speed will still gain the odd Crushing possibility. However, due to Shield Block, a Warrior can attain nigh-uncrushable status with far less gear than a Druid would.

Pre raids though, a Warrior can still go for high avoidance. With the number of mobs normally beating on a tank, rage isn't really a problem. Healing can be, thus Avoidance. In raids though, as Utarius is saying, Warriors head far more towards the Druid type tanking these days. Alot of Stamina and so on, and still Uncrushable on most bosses when you calculate Shield Block into things.

It means he won't go down quite so fast on bosses. That's pretty much it. Healers won't have to spend quite so much mana on him.