Having been out for a while, I fear this post may be too late. However, I still believe it’s important to have this information out in the open for all the misinformed MM hunters out there.
Removing Arcane Shot from your rotation isn’t something that should happen with the MAJORITY of standard raiders. In fact, very few raiders will ever have the level of gear required to make this a worthwhile change. So don’t just jump on the “EJ Told Me To” bandwagon. Let me explain.
The whole purpose behind removing Arcane Shot from your rotation is to do more damage in your extra Steady Shot cast than you could do with that Arcane Shot. This requires the following:
Your Steady Shot must do MORE damage than your Arcane Shot, and not just more damage, but significantly more damage, because of the fact that Steady Shot has a longer cast time and requires a stand-still AND Arcane Shot could be doing more damage if you specced into Improved Arcane (which, if you are using Arcane Shot in your rotation, you SHOULD have Improved Arcane). Let me explain.
A rotation in the MM world is like this: Hunter’s Mark, Serpent Sting (both applied only once at the beginning of the fight), Chimera Shot, Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot until Chimera has cooled down, repeat and fire as available. In between those shots, you should be weaving Silencing Shot and your per-use Trinkets (like Rocket Launchers or AP boosts) since they don’t use the GCD (Global Cooldown).
If you were to remove Arcane completely from your rotation, the point would be to insert another Steady Shot in its place (because your other shots would not be available do to previously triggered cooldowns). THIS IS ONLY VIABLE IF YOUR STEADY SHOT DOES MORE DAMAGE THAN YOUR IMPROVED ARCANE SHOT!
Make sense? Please, please only remove Arcane from your rotation if the above is true, and your Steady Shot consistently does more damage than Arcane. The only way this is possible is if your Armor Penetration rating is high enough. There is no other way you will ever see your Steady Shot doing significantly more damage than your Arcane – an Armor Penetration rating of at LEAST 600 is required. Even then, please double-check your damage on WWS or WoWmeters to make absolutely sure.
If you do not make certain that this is true, YOU WILL NERF YOUR OWN DAMAGE!
Okay?
Okay.
Glad we had this talk.
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but but but, glyph of steadyshot / ArP trinket would reduce the passive ArP required to make the switch yes? Though i do agree far too many hunters are making the switch early =p
ps – <3 that your back and reading your blog always helped me out when i needed some MM tips.
Haha, truth.
A good idea however is to macro Silencing Shot to your other regularly used shots the way you probably do with Kill Command. With it being off the GCD it will be used more this way ^^
Nah. I fire Silencing every time it’s available again. I just have it keybound. However, if you’re concerned about player error, you can, of course, macro it, though I don’t recommend it. Flexibility is key.
tis not as simple as you make out. you also have to factor in piercing shots and Imp Steady Shot Proc’s. i found at Uld 10-25ish lvl gear it was optimum to remove arcane shot from my rotation as it did nothing more than damage. Steady affects your other shots too.
With T9 being available to everyone no it is prob likely a DPS increase for ALL T9 hunters to remove talents from imp arcane shot and remove the shot from the priority list unless running now.
Hey Nass!
One detail that may be relevant is that steady shots contribute toward the bleed effect, where arcanes don’t. Arcane, however, does ignore armor and can be fired while moving. For this reason, if you are min/maxing stand still DPS (which seems to be what everyone goes for), you could probably remove arcane shots from your normal rotation and see a slight DPS boost even if an individual arcane shot does a little more than your steadies, however if you are min/maxing for movement and multi-target (where the second target rarely gets a major armor debuff) improved arcane looks pretty appealing, even if it’s a tiny loss in DPS for standstill.
One other interaction- if the points taken from improved arcane are being used for mana efficiency and you can count on a judgement of wisdom (in addition to all the replenishment etc), arcane is a clear winner most of the time. If, however, improved arcane is coming in at the expense of improved steady shot, it’s more of a grey area. The improved steady shot talent is not much DPS on its own, however it gets better when its proc has a greater chance of being consumed by a chimera shot, such as if you’re not firing arcane shots.
You are quite correct, sir. And because of this, the average raiding hunter should simply stick to that which is simpler. Instant cast.
Also note the Glyph now works for Marks hunters.
as i tend to Readiness Kill Shot right away.
As for Silencing to everything i skipped over that for the pure fact that some times you need silencing shot to silencing things. So i just Marcoed it to Kill Shot
Welcome back
I use Arcane Shot when the boss is near death and everything else is on cd. Instant but a little less dmg > cast time and no dmg.
Welcome back!
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!
Glad to see you again Nass, welcome back!
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.
Thanks for the write-up Nass and it’s good to see you back! I didn’t know you were writing again.
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.
Agreed, I’m sick of these ridiculous stats. Back to basics, please. <3
I am currently sitting at 548 ArPen, and I recently picked up the Needle Encrusted Scorpion.
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.
Oh, yes please let me know how that goes. And grats on the nice gear! If only I could be so lucky…haha.
Well, the no-Arcane Shot build was great through the first 3 bosses in ICC, but it completely fell to pieces on Saurfang, as I suspected. Without the buffed up Arcane Shot, the kite-and-burn job on the adds was a disaster.
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.
[...] has the scoop on removing Arcane Shot from your rotation (and when not to) – OK, post is a few weeks ago, but is still [...]
May i state this,
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.