nailbat.us

attached WoL URLs shortened for convenience. Below is the semi-regular reminder to myself that WoW is a game of largely arbitrary numbers that are modified at the whims of our crab avatar overlords.

One of our earlier Halfus 25m kills: http://bit.ly/icNXQ9
And yesterday's: http://bit.ly/h8xgvX
I had to take off my mic to suppress the gasping, maniacal laughter.

Patch Note:
# The captured drakes in this encounter now apply Dragon's Vengeance when they are killed instead of when they are freed. To account for this change, the health and damage of the drakes has been reduced, and the damage bonus gained from Dragon's Vengeance has been increased.

Dragon's Vengeance:
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=87683

Wait... I just re-read this... This just changes when they apply this buff, not the buff itself. It wouldn't change the damage Halfus takes.

Oh well... I thought it looked like the answer. Uber damage from aimed shot goodness

the debuff itself is higher, too, I think. +100% damage taken instead of +50% per stack, that's definitely a factor.

The rest of it is just them fiddling with the scaling knobs and messing with my head; Aimed Shot (no !) used to be nigh worthless.

Makes me really wonder what they did to Beast Mastery now. :p

The data I'm reading says MM is now really strong on single target stationary fights. Check the latest parse from http://stateofdps.com/ comparing the specs (Baradin Hold is bottom).

Hey Danny -

Can you supply us (er, me) with a nice little re-introduction to MM? Things like when to use cooldowns (rapid fire right away to gain the benefit of Careful Aim?), the basic priority system that you use, and other little tips and tricks that I probably could find if I sifted through 38 pages of forums on elitist jerks, but just don't want to?

Thanks.

A) get used to the idea of doubletapping Steady Shot at least every 8 seconds and never letting that haste buff fall off if possible. So much of the rotation hinges on your cast speed that "Keep Improved Steady Shot Up" is second only to "Don't Stand In That" in terms of priorities.

B) Arcane Shot isn't nearly as important to MM as it is for other specs. I probably would have taken it off my bar by now, except it still comes up for heavy movement phases since I haven't bothered to write/test an Aspect shuffle macro yet. Between the less torturous cast time and ridiculous damage buff, hardcast Aimed Shot has become a valid focus sink.

Generally speaking, you can treat it pretty similarly to your SV rotation, cycling every 10 seconds instead of 6. Chimera Shot when it's off cooldown, Aimed Shot! when you get the "this button is free now" proc to 5 stacks, and hardcast Aimed Shot to burn off excess focus. Steady Shot fills the gaps and keeps ISS up. This will change somewhat in each phase of the boss' health.

100-80%: the Careful Aim window
~80% crit rate on Aimed Shot with Careful Aim active means that even hardcast it'll hit harder than pretty much anything else you do. Definitely open with Rapid Fire + Readiness after your first Chimera Shot unless it happens to be a "Hero on open" type of encounter, since you'll want your Steady Shot cast time to be as close to 1.0s as possible. Other than that, enjoy the wacky numbers of the reverse-Execute phase; I only bothered with Chimera Shot when Serpent Sting was about to run out.

80-20%: the boring normal part
Back to having Chimera Shot as top priority here... not much to say other than that. It really is kinda boring. :p Note that the last 5% of this part Termination will be active but there's no real message to tell you as such, so you may notice your focus starting to creep up faster, but it's nothing compared to...

20-0%: <Kill Shot>
I'm sure you're familiar with this. Free shots for everyone. You'll likely cap focus a lot if you use Rapid Fire in this phase; just don't forget to Steady Shot even if your focus is near full so you can keep ISS haste up.

Sorry Danny, you knew this day was coming.

We are also looking at nerfing Aimed Shot, but compensating hunters through Aspect of the Hawk.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/1579 ... g-hotfixes

To be honest, as long is it doesn't go back to MM's signature shot taking three seconds of standing in a fire (and losing at least two autoshots) only to get outdamaged by an Explosive Shot tick, I'll be happy.

I do have to say auto-shot clipping was probably one of the worst Fail mechanics I can remember in wow's history. Weeee... I have too much haste, my dps just went down.