How important is it to use the BIS talents/covenant in Mythic Plus dungeons? Can it make much of a difference if it’s just one player in the group?
For example, I ran a level 19 HoA key on my hunter and I was second in damage. We missed by 9 seconds. If I had used explosive shot instead of careful aim, but played the same otherwise, would we have timed it? What if we had missed by 2 minutes? Or 5 minutes?
Thank you to anybody with an informed take.
It definetely can, the extend depends on what you do exactly.
Playing Venthyr in M+ is borderline trolling, but Kyrian is fine.
Well, we will never know for sure, but i would be pretty confident to say Yes. Explo is very strong, expecially in Fortified. 9 seconds over the whole dungeon seems like something that could very well be saved with a switch to ExS.
2 minutes, i dont think so. This would probably be too much to ask for one talent.
You’re looking at most ~5% difference from best to worst covenant choice. IV lists Venthyr as 2% behind the best covenant choice for MM.
Armed with that, you could figure out the total HP of the path you took and understand if 2% better would have made time.
That is single target, my dude. Performance in M+ is a lot worse. Also, this wasnt exactly the question of the op, just an example randomly thrown in by me.
Could picking ES have made a difference towards the timer? Yep, sure.
On a +19 though, if they don’t manage to beat the timer, I would argue that there are probably other factors that played into the end result as well. Most likely, there are several other things that could be done to improve that time beyond what switching to ES could. And that is on a group-wide basis, not just a single player.
Anyway…
It was a pug and the only words exchanged in the whole run were “hi” and “so close.” 
That’s the main reason I’m curious how much one player can do, as that is all I am.
If everyone is playing optimally it’ll definitely save time. Almost like those raid bosses that wipe you at 1% when it would have died otherwise.
Yes, it would’ve mattered. You gave up a bunch of aoe damage on trash, which is where most of the time is spent in mythic +.
Well, like others have said, ES is very good for M+.
Sorry, I’ll try to stay on topic next time.