instant aimed shot thoughtsFollow

It will probably cost too much mana to be put into a regular shot rotation. BTW, what is the CD on it?

From what I can imagine, this isn't going to be that big of a PvE buff. Rotation-wise, I don't see Aimed Shot getting used too often.

DISCLAIMER: I have not actually mapped it out, nor have I done any complicated math there. It's all guestimation.

Why? Well the fact that it resets your auto-shot cooldown. Assume you'd use a modified version of the 1:1.5, or just weave it in everytime it's off cooldown. Effectively, you'd have 1.5 seconds of a global cooldown, in addition to resetting your autoshot. This ends up to be around 2-3 seconds or so of "dead time" where your autoshot is loading, but the global cooldown is up.

Now, currently, my Hunter crits around 40% of the time. Will full raid buffs, my Aimed Shot normally hits from 1.5k up to 4.5k crits. In those 3 seconds, I can get a Steady-Auto-Steady off. Average damage would be about 1k, up to 2.7k crits for each. I just don't see it working out.

PvP, this is a must-have for kiters.

I think it's not even meant as a PvE buff. As said above, the mana cost will probably be way to high to make it worthwile. It's great for PvP though.

Just came from the beta boards. Damage will be reduced to "something above multishot/arcane shot"

-if mana cost is not reduced this will only be usable in PVP.

Other changes inc over there too, scatter a 11 talent in SURV tree, readiness to MM tree, explosive shot damage significantly reduced, 41 pt SV talent trap mastery (undefined changes inc to make it better according to blue)....and alot more.

The only thing I got from an hour or two of browsing is that we have no idea what our final builds will be. I get the impression they are trying to do alot of changes for arena TBH.

Fun to read warriors QQ about instant aimed shot though:)

Edited, Sep 26th 2008 11:24am by Sweathog

Lewtz > DPS anyway

Yuppley, I don't care about the rating system. I've seen <100 post sages, it doesn't mean anything to me. It's usually odd to rate someone down just because you disagree with them though. I only downrate if someone is being belligerent or a total unhelpful idiot, but that's just me, I don't care what other people do.

My thoughts were forward looking anyway. It seems like they'll be dropping the damage for it so yeah, it loses its luster there.

It used to be that Aimed was only a viable shot for a big hit. Then they added the healing debuff which made it viable in PvP (though I do use it against Blood Knights PvE in Shattered Sun stuff for the same reason IF they get their heal off- which is rare).

So my comments were 'forward thinking' if they kept the damage the same as it used to have. I wasn't addressing a given shot rotation. According to most folks, the entire concept of shot rotation will need to be reworked in some fashion since the Autos will be un-linked from the specials. With the reduction in damage and making it an instant, then that will likely emphasize the debuff, not the damage so I agree with you that it has less utility for a 'quick down' of a target. However, my statement still makes sense. If you're ever in a situation where downing a target quickly has a priority over mana endurance then you usually will do more burst dps if you dump almost every damage special you have, especially if they don't interrupt auto. That's essentially what I was saying.

I didn't run my Hunter last night (first night in a long time) so I haven't had a chance to pay attention to the changes in Aimed. I'll play with it some on Sunday and see how it has changed for myself. I haven't paid attention to it since it's usually just an opener for me.

Oddly, now that I think about it, if it's instant, the Beta 'glyph' as listed in the glyph thread will have to change as it's useless to reduce cast time on an instant... LOL!

LoL! Simple agreement no. I usually rate up for work done or something discovered, new stuff, something really funny, etc. So, I'm kind of stingy on both ends I suppose.

I agree with you on the mana thing, but it's possible that anything we 'plan' on using now for mana regen, specials use, etc. is completely useless. So, I'm just trying to keep an open mind and think laterally a bit.

It's probable that we will end up with just autoshot and weaving in steady plus whatever specials apply or are not on CD, etc. In that case, I'm all for more instant shots. Ready when you need them kind of things.

What did they change about viper? I didn't know about any recent changes.

Oh, that's old news, it's also not quite true. It regens mana based on your weapon speed, so it's usually closer to 3%. I've found it a nice mechanic. Essentially you'll be swapping back and forth between viper and hawk at 10% and 90%. When you swap over to viper your mana boosts up very quickly and then you go back to hawk. It's also only a 40% damage reduction on the beta atm.

I like it because

a) you have to pay attention.
b) it gives them an easy way to change our dps to keep us competitive.
c) it's amazing for grinding.

Interesting how this went from aimed shot in a rotation into mana regen. I see the change from a casted aim shot to an instant aim shot as a pure PVP based change. Even before they changed the damage aspect of aim shot, it only did slightly more damage than a steady shot (but would crit for a lot more, if you got it to crit). By making this an instant cast, it makes it very easy to keep the mortal strike effect on the target all of the time, which warriors can do now already, and pretty ez for most rogues to keep it up most of the time. So this will just put us more in line with those classes and make us more competitive in arenas than we are now.

As for mana regen, Ret pallies are the new spriest. Most raids will probably have at least 1 ret pally and 1 shadow priest. Also take into consideration the SV hunter and a water ele from a frost mage, and mana totems from shammies, and you are looking at a ton of mana regen. Even if you base it off current mana pools of 10k+, regening 300mp5, that's 300mp5 per sourece. 1 hunter, 1 ret pally, 1 spriest, 1 water ele, and at least a shammie or 2 and we are looking at well over 1k mp5 alot of the time.

I copied my hunter over to the PTR the other day, and it's not very encouraging.

Aimed Shot:
Instant
Increases ranged damage by 205, and reduces healing by 50% for 10 seconds.
10 second cooldown
(It also triggers the GCD on multi-shot, the average hit was 1150-1200, crits 2400-3K. My hunter's damage range with hawk on shows as 918 to 1034. With the new talents, I have 2426 AP, up from 2,000 Live. Currently live, my aimed is critting for 29-3800, so damage is somewhat nerfed in exchange for no cast time, considering I crit for more now with 400 less AP. As far as using it in a rotation, I'm thinking they made MS and Aimed on the same cooldown for CC/non-CC applications. Aimed is 30 less mana than multi, but multi does 25-30 more damage, so Dmg per mana is roughly the same. In my personal opinion, if that's the case, the .5 cast on MS should be removed as well.)

Aspect of the Viper:
The hunter takes on the aspect of the viper, causing ranged attacks to regenerate mana, but reducing your damage done by 50%. Mana gained is based on the speed of your ranged weapon.
(It took 25 seconds to regain 7288 mana, using a regular steady/arcane/auto shot rotation, 19 seconds to refill after I popped rapid fire from zero mana. The 50% damage sucks but the math works out to 291.5 mp5, this is while you are just going through the normal shot rotations, and 383.6 mp5 while using rapid fire under AotV. Just for giggles, 17 sec. refill with RF+Abacus for 428.7 mp5. Figuring in racials and drums/other trinkets, it's not impossible to see 500 mp5 with the way it is now. I can deal with 20 seconds of mediocre damage to refill, this is just Blizzard's way of forcing hunters to change aspects more often, instead of running viper all the time.)

Edited, Oct 7th 2008 10:10pm by TatteredOne

I do not understand why anyone currently uses viper when he is not farming or doing long arena battles.
With the patch this might change a little (because of potion sickness). On the other hand I expect the manareg from raidwide buffs to compensate for a lot of the lost manareg.
I don't think that AotV is implemented in a bad way. The only sad thing is that it does not scale with damage anymore, but I can see why this would be overpowered.

Currently no decent hunter uses AotV in a raid setting. It is just a waste of good damage almost all of the time.
In raids I used viper twice during the last two weeks.
Yesterday against Illidari Council (messed up with mana pots, took the first one a little to late and had ~15seconds of viper between the 2nd and 3rd pot).
Somewhen last week against Muru Adds. We had more than enough time for the adds and I wanted to keep my mana pool up for fighting Entropius.