It does not matter if arcane shot does more or less damage steady shot is better, why?

First the bleed damage from piercing shots, you get much more steady shots in meaning much more bleed damage.

Second, imp steady shot. This talent procs a ton for me because i place three in it having none in focused aim. I get one every 2-3 steady shots and it makes it where the best shot for imp steady (aimed, it equals more dps to be used over chimera because of this) continuesly gets the buff instead of arcane.

Third you do not need to place unneeded points into imp arcane shot. I’ve also tested in wow, and done the stat sheets and it all concludes not using arcane shot=more dps even at 30% armor pen.

All through ICC my guildies were commenting on my DPS being great and noticeably improved. But the Saurfang kiting was a mess I thought.

So I’m torn. I could go for a dual spec but I’m trying to save money to buy Primordial Saronite so I can make my Rock Steady Treads.

I really don’t like not having Arcane Shot in the rotation – for one it feels like I’m missing something important, two the rotation is really dull and three, I don’t feel I have the same flexibility. But I do like the higher DPS I’m posting.

So what to do.

This trinket replaced my Mark Of Supremacy, so I needed to recover that lost Hit, so I took the points out of Improved Arcane and put 2 into Focused Aim and another into Improved Barrage, and took Arcane Shot out of the rotation.

Doing so has increased my DPS by an average of approximately 300 but WWS reports indicate a much larger gain to the tune of 700.

Now, I have not done extensive raiding with the no-Arcane Shot build, so I have not seen the results of being forced into more movement situations. We are hitting ICC tonight so we’ll see what happens.

I’m right in the middle of playing around with this myself. I am currently at about 40% (552) ArP and have two specs to test this out for myself. I did see a slight bump in DPS last night when I ran ToC 25 after dropping AS and glyphing Steady Shot. OutDPS says you should see a DPS increase by dropping AS after reaching 350 ArP but personally I think that’s too low. I tried that previously and saw a 500ish DPS drop-off. But now that I’ve been stacking ArP I’ve noticed a difference. Who knows… /sigh.

The one good thing about dropping AS is that I used those talents for Focused Aim and was able to drop my Hit trinket. That won’t benefit everyone, but it did for me!

I’m glad they’re simplifying this and totally removing ArP come Cataclysm, seems like a smart move.

On topic: removing AS from your rotation is only resulting in a DPS increase, if your bleeding proc. damage surpasses AS. That comes if you reach the arm.pen. cap, which is VERY hard to reach for an average raider. Also you will need some very decent armpen trinkets.

And after this comes the real problem: if you want max. DPS with bleeding proc., you have to stand still all the time, so you can cast Steady Shot. And frankly, that’s hardly possible in the actual content.

In Patchwerk-like encounters, the Arm.pen heavy Steady Shot spec is clearly superior, but encounters with minimal movement will favor Imp. AS. You can dual-talent it, it’s worth a try, but in my opinion, it’s hardly working as a standard raiding spec.

I’ve run into competition with the other hunter in my guild for DPS, and he swears up and down about removing Arcane shot. I don’t remove it and spank him on meters every night.

Good post!