Just want to place a few bits of evidence regarding Barbed Shot’s lack of interaction with critical strike and haste; it’s damage is not affected by critical strike chance in anyway whatsoever nor are the ticks of barbed shot affected by haste. It also lacks the pandemic functionality.
I have pulled some back end spell information to prove this:
Barbed Shot
Crit Chance = 0 (crit has no interaction with this spell).
Duration (sec) = 8
Interval (sec) = 2 (note how there isn’t the haste function written).
Periodic Refresh Type = Legacy (no pandemic function)
Tick Immediately? Yes (this gives 5 ticks of Barbed Shot for its duration)
Now, compare this with Arms mastery: Deep Wounds:
Duration (sec) = 6
Interval (sec) = 2 / (1 + [TotalHaste]) (haste grants more ticks over the duration).
Periodic Refresh Type = 30% Rule (pandemic function)
Partial Tick? Yes
This is also the same for one of Feral Druid’s bleeds, Rake:
Duration (sec) = 15
Interval (sec) = 3 / (1 + [TotalHaste])
Periodic Refresh Type = 30% Rule
Partial Tick? Yes
As a disclaimer; I haven’t pored through every bleed based spell in the game to check for any others that function like Barbed Shot does, I hazard to guess that Barbed Shot is unique as it wasn’t until patch 8.1.5 that it was modified to ignore armor like a bleed spell should.
With the baseline passive: Wild Call as well as the talent: One with the Pack; it is not uncommon with a decent amount of critical strike chance to have many refreshes of Barbed Shot become available to you. This is fine in a cleave or multi target scenario as you can affect the secondary targets with Barbed Shot and not constantly overwrite a fresh Barbed Shot as you would on a solo target.
The best practice is to hold out on Barbed Shot for as long as you don’t let Frenzy stacks fall off or find yourself sitting on two charges of Barbed Shot. However, with optimal play you will commonly overwrite a relatively fresh Barbed Shot with a new one in order to remain at 1 charge of Barbed Shot and since the spell doesn’t pandemic you waste a lot of potential damage throughout a fight of any meaningful length.
I strongly believe that Barbed Shot needs to be brought in line for a consistency point with the current functionality of bleed spells in the game.
- It’s damage should be affected by critical strike.
Damage can tuned accordingly which is fine, this also brings more critical strike scaling to the Beast Mastery spec - It’s damage should be affected by haste.
As per above, damage can be tuned and this also gives haste a bit more bang for buck. - It’s damage should pandemic.
Pandemic functionality is the second best alternative to Igniting functionality. This gives the Hunter a bit of leeway to try and hold off on casting a Barbed Shot until its pandemic window which, in this case, would be 2.4 seconds remaining.
This spell performs exactly the same in the Shadowlands PTR and it would be a great opportunity to have this amended for the upcoming expansion.
I hope this reads well; I’m a bit of a forum noob.
Thanks for your time!