They do, but target dummies are permanently at 100% health, so Careful Aim is always active, Kill Shot is never available, etc.
They are good for practice, not so much for actual testing anymore.
Azerite isn’t random. Every piece has a specific set of traits, and the same named item will always have precisely those traits.
Really? Here’s a direct quote:
How else was I supposed to interpret that, except that you want Aimed gone? Even if it is just relegated to Master Marksman style procs, that’s not Aimed Shot anymore. That’s literally Marked Shot, a proc-based instant cast.
Even if you still call it Aimed Shot, it’s as much Aimed Shot as SL Chimera Shot is Chimera Shot, or SL Rapid Fire is Rapid Fire.
For those who are invested in MM gameplay, how would something like below feel/work for you?
MM Mastery effect changed:
Increases the range of all your abilities by (-)%.
Sniper Training increases the damage dealt by your abilities by X% when remaining stationary, and by Y% if cast while moving.
The cast time of Aimed Shot is reduced by 1% for each point of Mastery.
In addition to the above:
Aimed Shot can now be cast while moving.
Steady Shot reduces the remaining cooldown of Aimed Shot(next available charge) by X sec.
and increases the damage dealt by your next Aimed Shot by 5%. The damage bonus-effect can stack up to 5 times but is consumed the next time Aimed Shot is cast.
Basically, the Mastery-effect would have influences of what it is today, combined with how it worked(sort of) in WoD. Like others have suggested/asked for before.
The reduction in cast time on Aimed Shot might not be required but is more about catering to those who don’t like it to have such a long default cast time as it currently does. This way, you have the option to build towards a version where the gameplay/pacing that includes Aimed Shot, would feel somewhat faster.
The only way I’d be here for steady aim game play is if the end of the 5 steady shots made aimed shot an instant cast but not as much of a damage bonus.
1 Like
The mastery looks good, but I’m not as sure about the Steady Shot buffing Aimed Shot thing. I don’t particularly hate this azerite trait, but a lot of MM hunters hate this one, because we normally only need two Steadys to get the focus needed for an Aimed. Five Steadys for max damage is a massive waste of focus. (As in, focus gone unused.)
I’d recommend something more similar to how Steady Shot worked in Cata/MoP/WoD; cast two Steadys in a row and get a short buff that increases focus regeneration by X%.
I believe that was modeled after Cataclysm-era Master Marksman, which granted an instant Aimed Shot at 5 stacks. The difference, however, is that Aimed Shot back then was only used with that proc (and the opener). Since it is a direct piece of our rotation now, requiring that many Steady Shots would not make sense, imo. The cooldown and charge system on AiS already serves to limit its usage, I don’t see much need for a further pre-requisite via Steady. It could work if the buff from Steady is tuned to not be worth stacking to 5, so you simply get the benefit of however many you’ve casted before AiS. However, one, that lends more weight to Steady, which is our weakest shot and also the one most of us least like using, and it serves to greatly diminish the value of any focus-saving effects or auxiliary sources of focus generation, since those reduce the usage of Steady Shot and thus the damage of Aimed.
As for the mastery, it’s solid, but personally I’d rather see the movement portion have the WoD effect, where we had a grace period on moving. For those that weren’t around back then, MM mastery in WoD increased our damage and shot range while stationary and for 6s after moving, and took 3s of being stationary to refresh. This effectively gave us 3s of movement for “free”, without the mastery dropping, and reduced the impact of longer movement by letting us carry our mastery benefit somewhat during the movement. It encouraged judicious movement, “stutter-stepping” to let the mastery refresh, predicting upcoming movement requirements, and in general skillful play.
I’d rather that as a talent. Not really sure why the current version of Steady Focus isn’t exactly that, actually. The style of speeding up Steady as we chain cast it, but losing it on casting anything else, falls apart really fast in the face of us never really needing to cast more than 2-3 in a row. Also, we don’t want to dump then pool to max, because RF is both our highest-priority shot and a significant generator, so getting near focus cap is almost always a DPS loss.
We don’t need a rework. Based on alpha right now, we need some narrowly targeted changes, mostly to talents, and the spec will feel fun and full. These changes are in reference to what is currently on alpha, look at the beta talent calculator and ability listing on WoWhead for clarification.
Talents:
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Level 15:
- Master Marksman: Removed
- New Talent - Piercing Shots
-
Piercing Shots
Passive
Your Aimed Shot, Arcane Shot, Multi-Shot, Kill Shot, Rapid Fire, and Steady Shot critical strikes deal an additional 25% Bleed damage over the next 8 seconds. Subsequent critical strikes add to the existing effect.
-
Level 30:
- Careful Aim: Removed, made baseline.
- Moved talent: Volley
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Volley
40 yd range
Instant, 45 sec cooldown
Rain a volley of arrows down over 6 sec, dealing up to [(35%AP)*12] damage to any enemy in the area, and gain the effects of Trick Shots for as long as Volley is active.
-
Level 30
- Camouflage - Removed, made baseline.
- New Talent - Active Camouflage
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Active Camouflage
Passive
Your Camouflage ability may now be used in combat. When used in combat, the duration is reduced to 4 sec and the cooldown increased to 2 min. When used out of combat, Camouflage lasts until cancelled, and the cooldown is reduced to 15 seconds.
-
Level 35:
-
Steady Focus: Changed
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Steady Focus
Passive
Using Steady Shot twice in a row increases your passive Focus regeneration by 20% for the next 15 seconds. -
Streamline: Removed
-
New Talent: Focused Fire
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Focused Fire
Passive
Rapid Fire deals an additional X% damage over its duration, and each shot has a 30% chance to generate 2 additional Focus.
-
-
Chimaera Shot: Changed
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Chimaera Shot
40 yd range
Instant, 15 sec cooldown
Replaces Rapid Fire
A two-headed shot that hits your primary target and another nearby target, dealing 150% AP Nature damage to one and 150% AP Frost damage to the other. Generates 10 Focus for each target hit.
-
-
Level 40: No changes needed.
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Level 45: No changes needed.
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Level 50:
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Lock and Load: Changed
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Lock and Load
Passive
Your ranged auto attacks and damage over time effects have a 5% chance to trigger Lock and Load, causing your next Aimed Shot to cost no Focus and be instant. -
New Talent: Exotic Munitions
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Exotic Munitions
You can now enhance your ammunition with Explosives, Frost, or Poison, causing additional effects on your ranged auto attacks. 30 min. You may only have one type of Exotic Munitions active at a time. -
Explosive Ammunition
Your ranged auto attacks explode, dealing an additional X Fire damage to all enemies within 8 yds of the target. -
Frost-laced Ammunition
Your ranged auto attacks reduce the target’s movement speed by 30% for 3 seconds. -
Poisoned Ammunition
Your ranged auto attacks apply a poison to the target, dealing X damage over 8 seconds.
-
And for those who want cast while moving:
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Steady Aim
Passive
Casting Steady Shot allows your next Aimed Shot to be cast while moving for 3 seconds. Aimed Shots cast while moving will deal 10% reduced damage.
5 Likes
I like it. However:
Not sure that’s enough. That’s only 36 focus per minute (3 * 60 * 0.2) before haste, which is about 2 extra Arcane Shots per minute. I doubt that would compete with Focused Fire or your new version of Chimaera Shot.
I also feel like we should roll in the existing Alpha behavior of both CS shots hitting the primary target as explicit behavior. If there are no other nearby targets, both shots hit your primary target.
Wouldn’t this make Piercing Shots or Serpent Sting basically mandatory? The only other DoT is from Exotic Munitions, which is mutually exclusive with this.
I feel like that’s a very narrow window to also have a damage restriction on it. I feel like it should be one or the other, either passive cast-while-moving with a damage reduction, or a fairly short buff that requires a rotational change to use effectively.
Same post:
Also (just my personal opinion), chimera should replace aimed shot as the main MM ability.
Other replies to you:
Perhaps I misworded that. I don’t want aimed shot removed, I want chimera to be the bread and butter of our damage.
I think aimed shot would feel better as our secondary priority operating off procs , talents, or openers such as previous camo mechanics, lock n load, or even a greater pyro type mechanic. This way our class isnt rooted into a hardcast so often.
Also I’ve said multiple times that I don’t want aimed shot to be removed. I want it to return to it’s previous role which didn’t require so much hardcasting. It relied on procs, talents, and situational use. There was times you wanted to hard cast, there was also times You waited for procs. It was fun and dynamic.
Aimed shot was in the game since vanilla, but even in vanilla it was secondary to autoshot. TBC it was situational at best, wotlk i dont even remember if it was in our rotation, if it was it was certainly not a priority, cataclysm iteration of the spec it was also secondary to chimera. What i’m suggesting isn’t outlandish, its what the ability as been for almost the entire game.
Crows is also a DoT. Anything in the first row could proc LnL.
That’s the point. If you want cast while moving Aimed Shots, there would be a rhythm to it - Steady, Aimed, Arcane to dump Precise Shots. The inspiration here was the legendary gloves from Legion, where Aimed Shot made your next Aimed Shot cast while moving. Can’t use Aimed since it has charges now, so it gets Steady instead. I could see widening the window a bit, if needed.
Ok, that’s fair. Ya, a bit wider window (I’d love to see it be at least 5s, so you could, in theory, cast two Aimed Shots back to back in it) would work, imo. I don’t really see the need for the damage reduction, though, especially since taking this talent would already be at the cost of Exotic Ammo or Lock and Load.
You could never cast two Aimed Shots back to back while moving. Aimed Shot consumes the buff.
You only get the damage penalty if you cast while moving.
This isn’t a talent, it’s a baseline passive. The other level 50 talent remains Calling the Shots.
Ooooooooooh. I definitely misinterpteted that. In that case, :stamp-of-approval: (sad the forums has no emoji that matches that). As a baseline, the limited window and the damage penalty both make sense. Rewards skillful play and opens up mobility without making it straight irrelevant, like it is for BM.
I still personally think it’s not really needed, considering almost 80% of our rotation can be used on the move, but ya, it’s a good way of implementing it for the peeps that just can’t imagine MM without Aimed-on-the-move (which, to be fair, has plenty of precedent behind it).
1 Like
The part with Steady Shot does not affect the cast time of Aimed Shot. It would only reduce the remaining cooldown of AiS, and add some extra damage to the next AiS fired.
Fair enough, though the goal was not to make it a “requirement” to cast 5 Steady Shots in between each AiS. It was essentially just meant as a bonus.
But yeah, if people don’t like the damage component, that can be scrapped. That part was mostly for the CDR on AiS, less about the extra damage.
Like I said above, it was not meant as a “requirement” to cast 5 Steady Shots.
We can either lower the max stack to 2(down from 5), or we can remove that damage component entirely.
Thx.
Also note that, even though I did not specifically write that down, there’s nothing that stops us from getting the Mastery effect above with the WoD “grace period” built into it as well.
Like you said here:
In WotLK, Aimed Shot was an instant cast. That together with Chimera Shot at the end of the MM tree, those were meant to be used on-CD.
Meaning high prio.
WotLK talent calculator:
https://wotlk.evowow.com/?talent#c
Can we please stop with this charge thing on Aimed Shot. It doesn’t feel good when you’re trying to dps and you can’t use aimed shot because you ran out of charges… I mean seriously, it’s super annoying.
1 Like
There are several possibilities for Aimed Shot:
-
Charges like current
- Pros: Limited portion of the rotation, Aimed Shot able to deal higher damage, proc effects to reset or grant additional charges.
- Cons: Unable to unload Aimed Shot indiscriminately.
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Unrestricted use, managed by resources only
- Pros: Able to use Aimed Shot as much as you want. Abilities and procs that benefit Aimed Shot directly feel better.
- Cons: Aimed Shot damage must be lower to compensate for constant use. Any movement whatsoever is a DPS loss. Arcane Shot serves little or no purpose aside from dumping Focus while moving.
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Traditional cooldown
- Pros: Likely to have highest per-cast damage. Minimal time spent standing still and hardcasting. Instant cast and CD reset effects feel incredibly powerful.
- Cons: Barely use a key ability. Dumping Focus becomes spamming Arcane Shot. Instant cast effects can expire before using them if they proc at an inopportune time. Movement when CD expires feels awful. CD reset effects when you have little time left on CD feel near useless.
Having played with unrestricted Aimed Shot as the Focus dump throughout WoD and Legion, and the charge-based system we have now, I think the charge based system allows for a more interesting spec overall without being punished any time we have to move. Considering Aimed Shot charges as a resource where you want to spend it as it is available, ensuring you never cap, is interesting gameplay in a way that merely “don’t cap Focus” isn’t.
2 Likes
Going to have to disagree with you. Aimed shot being casted and unable to move while casting makes moving a dps loss regardless of what kind of system is in place. Currently if we have to move and RF is on CD means no aimed shot and no aimed shot means arcane shot does less damage then it could. The only reason people even use arcane shot currently is because it does more damage when proced by aimed shot and it fills in the time when AS and RF are on CD. If AS also proced the increase in damage on Steady there would be no reason to ever use arcane to do anything other than to keep yourself from focus capping.
Having a traditional CD would be better than having charges, simply because how it feels.
I use it, wait so many seconds seconds and I can use it again.
vs
I use it, use another ability or two, use it again, now the amount of time I have to wait to use it again varies based on how many abilities I used in between the two.
This is essentially why I suggested the change/addition of the passive effect for Steady Shot. The one you quoted in your previous reply.
It would promote that interplay between AiS and SS, especially when not under the effect of Trueshot or others similar to it, causing the pacing to feel faster in general.
I also added the cast time reduction for AiS in the suggested Mastery effect so that AiS wouldn’t feel as slow to use, again, especially when not under effects like Trueshot or other.
I’m not saying that the slow cast time of AiS is a problem for everyone, but it is a fact that many hunters stay away from MM for the pure reason of all those casts and how slow the gameplay feels because of them.