I have been thinking about the complaints about Rapid Fire and how it doesn’t feel good without severs stacks fo Focused Fire. Also about how some feel it’s awkward as a focus generator.
I had an idea for changes which I think may satisfy both problems.
What if we had a passive where we treated Steady Shot as not just a focus generator but a builder. Say if you Steady Shot twice or three times in a row, you gain a buff for 5 seconds increasing the damage of your next Aimed Shot by 200%.
Then after landing two or three Aimed Shots on the same target, you become Locked In or something like that. Which triggers the ability to use Rapid Fire, doing high damage over a 3 second channeled flurry of shots. Each Rapid Fire requires the Locked In buff from landing Aimed Shots. Instead of being a focus generator, it becomes a spender that is only unlocked by landing Aimed Shots.
This I think would retain the feel of a powerful Rapid Fire. It would leave Steady Shot as the focus generator. It would improve mobility as Steady Shot would be intrinsic to the rotation.
For AOE you could skip buffing Aimee Shot, instead going straight for the Rapid Fire. You would Multi-Shot> Aimed Shot twice then Multi-Shot>Rapid Fire.
Big no from me fam. I don’t want Aimed Shot to need a buff to do good damage. This was the problem in legion. I also don’t want to just spam steady shots. This also decreases our mobility, because now your tying both of our mobile damage abilities to an immobile cast, which defeats the whole purpose. Precise shots is bad, your locked in idea is bad. No to both. If an ability is poorly received by the community, then just get rid of it. For those that still want it, they could take it as a talent. Chimaera Shot is the most fun damage ability hunters have ever had(the old one, wrath was best, cata was still great). Just give us that back in place of rapid fire and get rid of precise shots.
You would be able to steady shot at all times it in no way is tied to Aimed Shot. It’s the other way around, your Aimed Shot would be tied to Steady Shot.
It would absolutely be a mobility improvement. For single target you would only ever want to cast back to back Aimed Shots during Trueshot. Otherwise you would want to cast steady Shots between to setup massive Aimed Shots. You would see huge Aimed Shots when you stopped for them, and otherwise you would be fully mobile. You would always get Rapid Fire unless you never casted Aimed Shot.
Other than not wanting to Steady Shot, I cant help but think you didn’t even think about what you wrote.
Bring in the old Sniper Training buff talent thing where you got a damage boost if you stood still for X seconds and you could cast on the move or whatever.
Or aspect of the fox.
I don’t mind being rooted in place to DPS, but it really does suck sometimes.
Like Ghostwalker said, the first part is similar to the thing I hated from MM in Legion. Having a very powerful buff window that’s up very often resticts your rotation in a very annoying way, because it makes all your abilities worthless outside of the buff window. It’s better if it works like a proc. Something like the next Aimed Shot costs less focus, or gets a free charge, or becomes an instant cast. So you’re not rooted for the full duration of the buff or forced to cap focus in advance or hit specific Haste breakpoints, or missing the last Aimed Shot because it failed to fit into the buff window.
The second idea is only so-so. It’s a proc, so it can work, but you really can’t have the proc be too dominant, or Rapid Fire will become useless without the proc. You want procs to improve an ability in a way that makes it more accessible, not just do more damage. Or if they add damage they need to be somewhat rare so it doesn’t force you to wait on it. The worst situation is where you have Rapid Fire off cooldown but you shouldn’t use it until you get the damage proc. If that happens the proc dominates the rotation and the ability becomes useless by itself. That’s usually pretty bad. Damage procs should land on abilities that don’t have cooldowns like Arcane Shot so you can just hit it whenever is most convenient.
Also, I don’t understand what’s the issue with Rapid Fire being a generator. If it’s going to do the same amount of damage, a generator is objectively better than a spender. It’s not like it’s hard to manage focus on a spec that has an extra focus dump (Arcane Shot) and a generator filler (Steady Shot).
Yeah I personally like rapid fire as is. Last time I checked it does more base damage then aimed shot. I think it’s a great addition and if it was not a focus builder if wouldn’t work as well. I will say that on paper it doesn’t look like good design which makes it easy to criticize, but in practice is a really fun ability to use.
My beef with RF being a generator is that it makes consumers feel less worthwhile. Managing your focus properly matters rather less if your highest damage ability is a generator, because there’s never a situation you cannot cast it. It has no pre-requisites, so it feels bad as our highest damage shot.
Also, without Focused Fire, our focus balance is rather more brittle. That’s actually one of the biggest issues with Serpent Sting and other focus-consuming talents. We have a mandatory set of focus that is consumed by our Aimed Shot and Precise-buffed Arcane Shots, and a set amount of focus that is generated passively and via Rapid Fire, which enforces a fair chunk of our GCDs.
In BfA, we generate 180 focus per minute passively and 30 focus per minute from Rapid Fire, for 210 per minute. We consume 150 per minute from Aimed Shot (12s CD) and another 15 * 1.5 * 5 = 112.5 from Arcane Shot, which is 262.5 focus per minute, leaving us with a deficit of 52.5. We have to make that up with Steady Shot casts, which requires 5.25 casts. In total, that’s 3 RF casts, 5 AiS, 7.5 ArS, and 5.25 SS, which is a total of 41.9375s out of 60 consumed, and a net focus of 0. The remaining ~18s are filled with a focus neutral balance of Steady Shot and unbonused Arcane Shot. Any talent that costs focus must be balanced by additional SS casts, and consumes that relatively limited 18s per minute of “filler” time.
This is all before haste and talents and traits, of course, but traits are gone in SL, and our haste values are definitely going to be lower than they are with Expedient and In The Rhythm in the mix (haste actually increases how many SS casts we need to do, since everything except RF’s CD scales with haste). Still, it’s an edifying look. Serpent Sting, for example, costs 5 GCDs (12s duration) and 50 focus per minute, which requires another 5 SS casts to balance. That’s 16.25s of our ~18s just to maintain and focus-balance Serpent Sting.
And the important consideration here is that the DPS average over those 16.25s (which is 5 Steady Shot casts and 5 Serpent Sting casts) is compared against a focus-neutral balance of Arcane and Steady, which is what we would otherwise be filling with. Arcane consumes 15 focus, and Steady generates 10, so we need 3 SS per 2 ArS. Those 5 shots take 3*1.75 + 2*1.5 = 8.25s and deal a total of 2*60% + 3*60%*0.7 = 246% AP (the 0.7 multiplier on Steady’s damage is for the 30% boss armor DR). That boils down to an average of 44.73% AP per 1.5s GCD.
The Serpent Sting set is 5 Stings plus 5 Steady casts, which takes a total of 16.25s and deal a total of 5*82.5% + 5*60%*0.7 = 622.5% AP. That’s an average of 57.46% AP per 1.5s GCD. So Serpent Sting is adding only 12.73% AP per filler GCD over the duration. In total, that’s ~138% AP per minute, or roughly 80% of a single Aimed Shot.
Now, SL changes the balance a bit by increasing our passive focus regen to 5/s rather than 3/s, which is an extra 120 focus per minute to play with. That shifts the dynamic strongly towards Arcane Shot. However, Master Marksman is losing its focus savings, which was worth 75 focus per minute itself, so the net on our gameplay isn’t as significant (though it makes Serpent Sting less bad. SS costs 50 focus per minute in addition to its 5 GCDs, while BfA Master Marksman costs 0 GCDs and grants 75 focus per minute).
This is one of the reasons Barrage and Piercing Shot are so bad. While they are both rather hilariously undertuned, they also cost a boatload of focus, on a spec that simply doesn’t have the focus economy to fund them. Piercing Shot alone is 2 GCDs and 70 focus per minute, requiring 7 Steady Shot casts to balance, which is 15.25s of our ~18s of filler.
Basically, MM’s focus economy isn’t really as stellar as it seems. Ya, we have a spammable generator, but ~2/3rds of our GCDs are already allocated due to Rapid Fire, Aimed Shot, and Precise Shots. Any talents must consume the remaining third of our rotation, and have to compete against our normal filler balance to do so.
What I’d much rather see is RF replaced with a focus-consuming nuke like Windburst or WoD-era Chimaera Shot, and then either or both Steady Shot and our passive regen buffed to compensate. Removing Precise Shots would also help that equation, though it does reduce the interaction in our rotation.
We have (basically) this already as Azerite. It sucks, and nobody takes it.
That makes Rapid Fire all but useless in most content, where enemies are going to die before you land 3 Aimed Shots on them. That also kills Rapid Fire’s use as an AoE tool, which is one of the few situations where it doesn’t completely suck.
That’s still 3 GCDs and 2 hardcasts, totaling 9.5 seconds, before you can start using Rapid Fire in AoE. That’s terrible. It also assumes other people don’t blow up your Aimed Shot target during those 9.5 seconds, and that there is anything left worth using AoE by the time you get to Rapid Fire.
I don’t like Rapid Fire as is and I want it gone (or a means to opt-out). If you are going to saddle me with this ability I despise, at least make it worthwhile to use. Making it some garbo pseudo-finisher that we need to build up to over multiple Steady Shots and Aimed Shots is just going to make it worse, because damage will need to be tilted to Rapid Fire to make it worth using at all, making everything else worse.
You would be able to steady shot at all times it in no way is tied to Aimed Shot. It’s the other way around, your Aimed Shot would be tied to Steady Shot.
It would absolutely be a mobility improvement. For single target you would only ever want to cast back to back Aimed Shots during Trueshot. Otherwise you would want to cast steady Shots between to setup massive Aimed Shots. You would see huge Aimed Shots when you stopped for them, and otherwise you would be fully mobile. You would always get Rapid Fire unless you never casted Aimed Shot.
Other than not wanting to Steady Shot, I cant help but think you didn’t even think about what you wrote.
Yeah but now you’d only be able to cast rapid fire after casting aimed shot. in addition to arcane shot only being worth casting after casting aimed shot. steady shot damage is not good, and this idea is to spam steady shot, like during uldir, just for aimed shot to get nerfed to deal with the fact that the only time is will be cast is during the buff, just like uldir. It was a bad, boring mechanic and is why it got changed. Nobody likes spamming steady shot for an improved aimed shot. Aimed Shot should be good without a buff. If you want ability interaction, get rid of precise shots and have arcane shot remove a second off Aimed Shot’s CD. Rapid Fire is fine as is, i just feel like it should be a talent, and replaced with something baseline like Chimaera Shot
Also while your correct that there is no point when you can press rapid fire, there is a point when you would over cap on focus and you shouldn’t press it. You will get more out of your rotation of you plan ahead and don’t waste the focus.
It has higher DPE (damage per execution) than Aimed Shot. It’s not usually our highest damage source, simply because we cast Aimed Shot substantially more often, but it is the strongest damage button we can press outside of Careful Aim windows.
Azerite can push it near or even above Aimed Shot for parse breakdown, but RF is stronger than AiS even baseline. AiS is 248% AP, RF is 10 hits of 26% AP for 260% AP total.
That may have been fun but I didn’t enjoy the rotation being mostly about remembering to press one ability on CD every 30 second or what ever the CD was.
Edit: I enjoyed the original version that interacted with your strings though.