MM Hunters need a Rework

Classes Hunter
121

It’s that last half-sentence that is most relevant.

Arcane Shot is used because you can’t always use Aimed Shot. When Aimed is on CD, Rapid is on CD, and you have plenty of focus, Arcane is the spammable filler.

The charges are what let movement not actually be harmful in most situations. Since what controls how many Aimed Shot casts we get off is not simply how fast we can cast them, but the recharge interval of the ability, we lose zero DPS as long as we do not permit Aimed Shot to reach charge cap. It doesn’t matter whether you Arcane Arcane Aimed Arcane, Arcane Aimed Arcane Arcane, or Aimed Arcane Arcane Arcane, they’re all going to do the same damage. So if you have to move, and you planned ahead for it a bit, then you simply cast Arcane or Steady while moving, and resume Aimed again once you can plant. As long as you don’t charge cap, there was no sustained DPS loss, because you cast Aimed and Arcane and Steady the exact same number of times you would have had you not moved and done them in a different order.

Also, wow, finally caught up.

Ya, @Dawnspirit, charges are consecutive. If they were independent, you would always gain a charge back exactly twelvesseconds (minus haste) after each individual single cast, regardless of where the other cast fell. If you cast them back to back, they’d recharge back to back at the same interval, separated only by the cast time. If you used them 6s apart, you’d get the charges back 6s apart.

That’s not how it works, and this is readily obvious if you spend some time on a dummy. As Adreaver points out, if you chain cast two back to back, you’d expect to get a charge back 12 seconds after each cast finishes if they were independent. Instead, you get back one charge 12s after your first cast, and you don’t get the second charge until 12 seconds after that, 24 seconds after the first cast. If you cast charges as they come up, never letting them hit cap, you’ll get a charge back precisely every 12s (minus haste) after the first cast finished. When the second cast occurred has no impact at all on this timing or behavior.

But really, the easiest test is simple. Go to a target dummy, remove all of your gear except your weapon (ideally without haste on it, but it’ll be close enough even if it has haste), take out a stop watch, start it, and then cast Aimed twice back to back.

If the charges were independent, each charge should recharge 12s after its associated cast. Since it takes 5.0s to cast two Aimed Shots back to back, this would mean one would recharge at 2.5+12 = 14.5s, and the other would recharge at 5+12=17s. You should have both back in under 18s from when you started the first cast.

If they are concurrent, as we assert, the first charge will come back 12s after the first cast (still at 14.5s), and the second charge will come back 12 seconds after the first charge came back, which will be 2.5+12+12 = 26.5s.

So, should be very easy to see the difference between the two with a stopwatch. Do you get the second charge back after ~17s or after ~27s?

Another test is simply to count how many Aimed Shots you can cast in a given interval (say 60s, or 120s). If each charge were independent, then you should be able to get in 2 casts every 12 seconds, as if you were casting two separate abilities that happen to have the same length cooldown. Each one cools down independently, so you can cast each one every 12 seconds. 60/12 = 5, so you should be able to cast each charge 5 times per minute, or 10 Aimed Shot casts per minute.

If they are concurrent, it should be impossible to get more than 5 casts per minute, except for the first minute where you started with 2 charges. After that, you’d be getting back a single charge every 12 seconds, so 5 times per minutes.

So go to a target dummy, take off all of your gear except your weapon, and cast Aimed Shot every time a charge is available, as soon as it is available, for 120s. Count how many you cast it.

I bet it’s 11 (5 per minute, plus 1 extra charge in the first minute), not 20 (10 per minute).

And if you want to prove it to yourself further, do the same 120s, but instead of casting Aimed Shot as soon as a charge is available, wait to cast it until the button says “6s” remaining on the recharge. Count how many you cast in the 120s interval.

I bet it’s also 11.

If your original assertion was correct (that delaying casting it at all when you have a charge available pushes back further casts), you should see noticeably fewer casts in that second test. You’d be pushing back each cast by 6 seconds, if your assertion were correct, because you’d be letting it sit with 1 charge for 6s (half the recharge) each time it came up.

But that’s not what you’ll see. You’ll see 11 casts in both tests.

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122

And even there, it’s not completely independently. DK runes can be thought of as being 3 concurrent 2-charge systems, where it always uses one charge off each before using the second charge on any of them.

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123

Here’s an analogy. A normal cooldown can be thought of as a glass of water. When it’s full, you can use it, emptying the glass, and then it refills itself again at a steady rate over time as water trickles in. If the glass is full, any more water that would go into it instead spills, wasting water that could potentially be refilling that glass (ie. lost DPS).

How you think charges work is having two glasses next to each other, and if either one is full, you can use the ability, emptying that glass. Each one refills independently, just as if you had two identical abilities with separate cooldowns on buttons right next to each other. If it takes 12s to fill a glass, each glass fills 12s after it was emptied, regardless of when they were emptied relative to each other. If either one is full, that glass starts spilling over, wasting that water (DPS).

How it actually works is that you instead have a glass that’s twice as tall. Instead of having to wait for the glass to fill all the way to the top, you can use the ability any time the glass is at least halfway full, and doing so drains an amount of water equal to a normal sized glass (ie. half of this double-tall one). If the double-tall glass is 3/4ths full and you use it, it is now 1/4th full. If it’s 1/2 full, it’s now completely empty. If it’s completely full, it’s now half full, and the ability can immediately be used a second time (which would then drain it to empty).

But the glass still fills at the same rate (half of the double-tall glass every 12 seconds, or 24s to fill from empty to completely full). The only time the glass spills over is if it is completely full (ie. 2 charges). As long as it is not permitted to completely fill, all of the water is being captured in the glass, so nothing is being wasted. It doesn’t matter if you use the cooldown just before it fills or right as it hits halfway, because you’re not spilling any water either way.

That’s how Aimed Shot works. If you have one charge available and the second one is 50% completed, if you use that one, you now have 50% (plus cast time) completed on one charge, at which point the second one would start filling. You emptied the glass from 3/4th full to 1/4th full. You get one charge back when it’s half full, and the the other when it fills up the rest of the way. If you always use a charge before it caps, you simply get a charge back, like clockwork, every 12s from when the glass was first drained of its first charge, regardless of where during that 12s you use the Aimed Shot cast.

3 Likes
124

To make this short, it’s not a dual charge system. Xaedys explained it really well. You don’t have two glasses of water, but a double-length glass. But no, you don’t get the 2nd AShot charge ready to go until the 1st charge is done. Or in terms of computer processing, we have one CPU unit working as opposed to two working in tandem.

That would be better if we had a dual, triunal, or quartal charge system. You’d practically always have a AShot charge ready to go.

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But as Adreaver points out, the charge system is actually very beneficial for Aimed Shot. It is fundamentally what allows MM to be as mobile as it is. Sure, it’s not “what’s a movement restriction?” BM, but damn near 80% of MM’s rotation can be performed while moving.

If Aimed lacked a cooldown or charge system, then nearly any movement would be a DPS loss, as only RF and Steady should be usable while moving, and Arcane would simply be a weaker form of Aimed usable on the move.

If Aimed had a normal cooldown, then being on the move when it comes off CD would be a straight loss, as you’d be losing time it could be cooling down, and thus casts per fight.

With a charge system, every single charge has 9.5 seconds (reduced by haste) between when it becomes available for cast and when it becomes a DPS loss to not yet have cast it. That’s not true of either other setup. It gives us immense flexibility as to when we cast Aimed Shot, because the only way we can lose shots per fight is letting Aimed hit its 2-charge cap. As long as we cast Aimed sometime during that 9.5s period, we’re fine.

Since we can back-to-back charges if needed (casting right at that 9.5s mark, then immediately casting the new charge that came available as the last finished), that gives us up to 19 seconds of free movement without any need to cast Aimed Shot and without losing any damage from that movement.

No other ranged class in the game can do that (BM is the only one that can do it better). For the overwhelming majority of other ranged specs, their mobile DPS options are limited to 1-3 GCDs before they become straight DPS losses. For some of them, they lack even 1 GCD (baseline Demo is a great example of this, which is why Soul Strike is such a popular talent selection for them).

We literally have the best possible design would could have for Aimed atm. The relatively high cooldown-to-cast-time ratio ensures that the vast majority of our rotation can be used on the move, and that Aimed Shot itself can hit hard and matter, which is important for an ability with such a long cast time. The charge system means layers on that to give us immense flexibility about when to cast it without actually losing any DPS.

This, incidentally, is why I generally say MM doesn’t need Aimed on the move. Aimed only occupies 20.83% of our rotation, before True Shot is factored in. That means (nearly) 80% of our time we can move however we want, and the charges gives us the ability to allocate that 80% as we need, casting Aimed when we have the chance, and moving when we need to without losing damage.

Yes, it requires you to plan ahead a bit. Yes, it can be a DPS loss if, due to poor planning, or those rare fight mechanics that are pure RNG, too rapid to plan for, and require instant movement, you are forced to interrupt Aimed’s cast. But MM suffers less from movement than any DPS spec in the game except BM. I honestly think most of the calls for Aimed-on-the-move come from peeps so used to BM and thus so used to never having to think about when movement is coming up and whether they need to plan for it. That, or the psychological effect of having cast bars on screen roughly ~2/3rds of the time, even though only about a third of those cast bars actually inhibit movement.

Other classes have to plan far more. A fire or arcane mage needs to know exactly when those movement effects are coming out, because if they pop Arcane Power or Combustion and are forced to move (especially out of Rune), they lose a lot of their DPS. Most classes need to know when movement is coming so they can have instacast abilities pooled and ready to use during that movement (ex. Destruction’s conflag, Elemental’s Earth Shock, Balance’s Star Surge, etc). MM simply has to avoid casting Aimed, or cast it earlier than normal to get it out of the way, so that when the movement comes, they can simply move without any loss at all.

I mean, I get why peeps want Aimed on the move. It’s easy. It takes zero planning or effort or timing. But playing DPS in this game is supposed to require at least a modicum of timing and planning. It’s really only BM’s complete lack of movement restrictions that makes MM feel “immobile”. Objectively speaking, MM is just flat out factually one of the highest mobility ranged DPS specs in the game.

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126

In the comparative sense, this just doesn’t work out for MM. Timing and planning is non-existent for other DPS, with the exception of Rogues because of their cooldowns. And it’s too little of a reward. We don’t exactly rate when it comes to burst. Blizzard has had to tune us down.

I’m experienced enough to know how to plan ahead on Aimed, but make no mistake I’m not going to beat the better RDPS of equal or greater skill.

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In fact, here’s a comparison. We can actually predict how much rotational time Aimed Shot would occupy if it lacked a cooldown.

Right now, if we ignore all of the rental power systems, rotational-affecting talents (in this context, that’s largely just Master Marksman and, if taken, Lethal Shots), and cooldowns, then the rotation can be computed from available GCDs and focus. RF is used on CD, consuming 3s every 20s and generating 10 focus, or 9s and +30 focus per minute. Aimed consumes 2.5s and 30 focus every 12s, so 12.5s and and -150 focus per minute. We passively generate 180 focus per minute, giving us a surplus currently of 180 + 30 - 150 = 60 focus per minute, and a total time consumed of 9 + 12.5 = 21.5s.

60 focus surplus is 4 Arcane Shots, which consumes another 6s (4 GCDs). That leaves us with a focus surplus/deficit of 0, and 27.5s consumed of the minute. The remaining 32.5s is consumed by a focus-neutral ratio of Steady Shot and Arcane Shot casts, so that at the end of the minute we’ve used all 60s and have a net focus of ± 0.

Steady Shot generates 10 focus (remember, we’ve already accounted for passive regen), and Arcane consumes 15, so we need 3 Steady Shot casts per 2 Arcane Shot cast. 3 Steady Shots takes 5.25s to cast, and 2 Arcane Shots takes 3s to cast, for a total of 8.25s. 32.5s fits 3.95 cycles of those 3 Steady and 2 Arcane casts, so we see 3.95 * 3 = 11.82 Steady casts and 3.95 * 2 = 7.88 Arcane casts, plus the 4 we cast to handle the focus surplus, for a total of 11.88 Arcane casts per minute.

So that’s our full minute. 3 Rapid Fire casts, 5 Aimed Shot casts, 11.88 Arcane Shot casts, and 11.82 Steady Shot casts. And just for confirmation, 3 * 3 + 5 * 2.5 + 11.88 * 1.5 + 11.82 * 1.75 = 60.0s.

Now, let’s do the same analysis, keeping all existing mechanics, but remove Aimed Shot’s cooldown. It can be used at will. Arcane Shot will still be used to consume Precise Shot charges, because a Precise-buffed Arcane Shot is both higher damage-per-cast-time (70% AP/s versus 69.552%) and damage-per-focus (7% AP/f, versus 5.796%) than Aimed Shot, once you account for boss armor DR (-30%). Since we get an average of 1.5 Precise stacks per Aimed, we can factor in 1.5 Arcane Shots per Aimed Shot.

RF still gets used 3 times per minute, 9s and +30 focus per minute. We still get 180 passive focus for the minute, for a total of 210 focus surplus. That surplus is now consumed by Aimed+Arcane1.5 combos, which cost an average of 30 + 151.5 = 52.5 focus. 210 gives us enough focus for exactly 4 of those (that was actually surprisingly round), so we’re at 3 RFs, 4 Aimed Shots, and 6 Arcane Shots, with 0 focus surplus or deficit, plus a total of 3 * 3 + 4 * 2.5 + 6 * 1.5 = 28s consumed.

The remaining 32s will be consumed by a focus-neutral ratio, but this time of Aimed + 1.5 Arcane, plus enough Steady Shots to offset that. Aimed + 1.5 Arcane is still 52.5 focus, as above, so that requires 5.25 Steady casts to offset, returning us to focus-neutral. Aimed + 1.5 Arcane + 5.25 Steady takes 2.5 + 1.5 * 1.5 + 5.25 * 1.75 = 13.9375s to complete. Our 32s gives us enough time to cast that sequence 2.30 times, so we get an additional 2.3 Aimed Shots, 3.45 Arcane Shots, and 12.05 Steady Shots.

Net total for our minute is 3 RF casts, 6.3 Aimed Shot casts, 9.45 Arcane Shots, and 12.05 Steady Shot casts. For verification, 3 * 3 + 6.3 * 2.5 + 9.45 * 1.5 + 12.05 * 1.75 = 60.0s.

Compared to current, the net change is that we’re spending 15.75s rather than 12.5s on Aimed Shot, with that offset by a very small increase in Steady Shot usage and a lose of Arcane Shot as a whole. So actually, not as large of a change as I expected. Aimed Shot’s damage would likely have to come down a bit, though, since we’re casting 26% more of them per minute.

However, the other piece is when we can time our movement. With charges, we have a minimum of a 9.5s window and a maximum of a 19s window during which we can move with zero DPS loss, as the only thing enforcing timing of Aimed usage is the charges.

In this system, the driver is instead the focus cap. We can only cast Arcane Shot during Precise Shots, and then we can only chain-cast Steady Shot. If we reach focus cap (or have to use unbonused Arcane Shots to avoid that), we lose DPS.

The best cast scenario is if Aimed Shot left us with 0 focus and 2 Precise stacks. With that, we need to cast Arcane twice, and then we can regenerate up until no more than 92.5 focus (more than that, and we cap from passive regen during the cast time) before casting Aimed.

We do have to use modified “focus costs” for this, though, because we have to account for passive regen. Arcane costs 15 focus, but we regen 4.5 focus during the GCD from it, so net is -10.5 focus. Steady generates 10 focus, but we also regen 5.25 focus during its cast time, for a net of +15.25 focus. Since we have 2 Precise charges, that means our total focus deficit before we have to cast is 92.5 + 2 * 10.5 = 113.5. That gives us 7.44 Steady casts, but we can only cast 7 before overcapping (no partial casts here). 7 * 1.75 + 2 * 1.5 = 15.25s.

So in our best case scenario, we’ve got roughly 80% the window of the best-case for the charge system.

What’s the worst case? Worst cast is when we finish Aimed’s cast right as we hit focus cap, and get only 1 Precise charge. We still can’t go past 92.5 focus, and we’re at 70 to start with, minus a 10.5 focus Arcane. Total deficit is 30 + 10.5 = 40.5. That’s 2.66 Steady casts, plus our 1.5s Arcane cast, for a total of 6.15s, about 65% of the worst cast for the charge system.

TL:DR: Removing Aimed Shot’s CD results in about 1.3 more Aimed Shot casts per minute, at the cost of ~2.5 Arcane Shots fewer. We spend about 5% more of our rotation mandatory-immobile. Our minimum window for movement without losing DPS drops by 35% (to ~4.10 GCDs, compared ~6.33 GCDs with charges), and our maximum window drops by 20% (to ~10.17 GCDs, compared to ~12.67 GCDs with charges).

Not really worth it, imo.

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That’s…factually untrue, and I believe you know it.

Fire has to extensively pre-plan for Combustion, even without Lucid + Bracers in the mix. Arcane has to similarly pre-plan for their burn phase. Shadow has to pre-plan for every insanity phase, especially where movement is concerned. Affliction has to pre-plan for Deathbolt. Destruction has to rather extensively pre-plan for their Infernal phase. Havoc has to do a modicum of planning for each Eye Beam phase, especially with a Demonic Appetite build. Assassination has a 4-5 GCD setup for their CD, or 7 GCDs if they are Shrouded + Subterfuge + Exsang build.

And every ranged spec, except BM, loses DPS is they have to interrupt a cast, and loses even more if they’ve not pooled instacast abilities to use on the move (even Fire loses, because while they can revert to Scorch, that’s a ~20-25% loss in overall DPS compared to Fireball). Every melee spec has to plan for upcoming movement mechanics as well, as being forced out of melee range during points in all of their rotations is a pretty considerable DPS loss.

MM has to plan movement around Aimed Shot charges, and around Trueshot windows, that’s it. Compared to every other range spec in the game (except BM, of course), they have much more freedom of movement and lose the least amount of damage, and zero damage if they’ve planned ahead properly, especially for longer movement mechanics (ex. running souls out for Prophet, doing the Torment dance on Inquisitor, spreading and stacking on Hivemind (and even dodging rollie-pollies), running debuffs out on Vexiona, running lightning out on Ra’den and dodging swirlies in the last phase, kiting oozes out and running to soak orbs on Shad’har, etc).

On a high-movement fight, MM is literally only second to BM when it comes to their ability to maintain DPS on the move, and they require the least planning around it to boot, since most of their rotation is already usable on the move.

I mean, this is all predicated on MM, and DPS in general, being balanced on DPS. If your point is that having superior mobile DPS won’t make up for being currently undertuned, you’re probably correct, at least to an extent. It makes a difference, but many raid movement mechanics only require a few seconds to handle, and most classes have enough instacasts to avoid too much DPS loss during that time (though most of them take at least some loss even using those. ex. early refreshes for DoTs are better than not doing anything for that GCD, but they’re still worse than waiting until pandemic range to refresh), and skilled DPS will know how to time things well.

My point is that, if MM were tuned on level with other ranged DPS, and they were being played by a high-skill player in a raid of other high-skill players in a raid instance full of typical raid bosses, that MM hunter would likely find themselves near the top of the meter on most fights, because they tend suffer least from having to move (again, except for BM).

Would Aimed-on-the-move make it easier? You bet. Do we need it? No. We’re already substantially better off than most RDPS when it comes to movement. Again, I believe most of the desire for Aimed-on-the-move is a result of the comparison to BM’s complete lack of movement sensitivity, the psychological effect of the relatively high presence of cast bars (despite most of them not restricting movement), or some combination of the two, rather than an actual weakness in our mobility.

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129

Nobody really wants to put in work. To appeal to human nature, we’re lazy. I can handle it. A lot of others can’t. That’s not to toot my own horn, but I would not have made this far with the spec if I was just like everyone else.

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Ya, sure, if you’re poor at planning, you’ll suffer some losses from movement as MM. But that’s true of every ranged DPS (well, almost ever). For those poor souls, BM is just a respec away, and completely removes any need to plan for movement.

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131

I started out as an Aff warlock main and played that for the best part of 14 years. I know what it’s like to deal with this brand of drudgery. But at the same time I try to be considerate of the rest of the community and not just focus/discuss myself. I only played BM this xpac just to do the Hati quest lol.

I got to say that Affliction would have given me the best prep schooling for this spec.

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The way to do that is to provide either passives that enable options without destroying tuning for those who don’t need or want them, or to put them in as talents.

Lone Wolf in BfA is a good example - if you use a pet as MM, as you did for the entirety of WoW up to WoD, nothing changes. The pet damage and utility are exactly as you would expect. If you run Lone Wolf, you get a damage boost, lose the pet damage and utility, and either option is viable outside of a min/max PvE situation (progression raids and M+).

An option for cast-on-the-move Aimed Shot could be one that reduces Aimed Shot damage based on time spent moving during the cast (e.g. 1% reduction per 0.1s of movement, so 25% if you are running the whole time), one that offers a smaller damage decrease with some setup required (e.g. casting Steady Shot makes the next Aimed Shot castable while moving for 3s, with a penalty if you move while casting), or a talent that has an opportunity cost (what talents can you NOT take if you want this?) but no direct damage cost.

I personally enjoy the fantasy of setting up for a big hit, and don’t want that taken away.

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133

I decided to try MM because I always saw them killing it in low level BGs and was curious. Even into the 50s brackets I’m having an easiest time killing healers since Wrath on my DK (a close second is MoP on my BM with stampede for a finisher). I think we have the pieces to make the spec work it’s more an issue with tuning. Perhaps once I reach max level I’ll have a different view.

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134

MM is incredibly strong at blowing up clothies on the opener. Once you get to max level everyone, clothies included, is a lot tankier, and that becomes far more difficult to do.

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Yaaa, definitely don’t judge a class by their performance while leveling, especially their PvP performance while leveling. Low-level PvP is about the opposite of balanced.

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136

I mean, it’s not unpalatable from WoD. If you’re on the move, your Mastery: Sniper Training stat is completely negated. That’s going to be a significant DPS loss with the exception of some honorable mentions, such as ChimShot.

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Not really. It was designed to be able to move in 3 second bursts because you had a 6 second grace period to move and had to stand still for 3 seconds for it to activate. So you’d move for three seconds, pause for three and then move again if you needed to.

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138

You may be right. That may be my WoD newbness talking there. But I also remember that it was a ramp-up to the fullest benefit, so you had to be standing still for a good little bit, about that long.

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There was no ramp-up, it was either on or off. If you stood still for 3s, you gained the mastery buff that lasted indefinitely while standing still, and for 6s after you started moving. As long as you moved for no more than 3s at a time, and stopped for at least 3s between movement, you’d have 100% uptime on the mastery, at full strength.

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The things I forget…