MM mechanically is freaking awful. All people see is the damage lmao. It needs to be reworked badly.
6 Likes
Depends entirely on which blue posts you are talking to. Actual developers (Nimox, Sigma, etc) give actual development realtalk almost all the time.
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MM mechanically is a lot better in SL than it is in BfA. Kill Shot and shorter Rapid Fire does wonders for making it feel better.
I have issues with talent balance and damage distribution, not with the core gameplay loops. I’d still prefer Rapid Fire be removed and replaced with an 8-10 sec instant “signature shot” (e.g. Wrath->MoP Chimera Shot, an instant version of Windburst, Powershot, etc), but by and large I am enjoying what I’m playing on beta.
Covenants and legendaries are another matter, with Venthyr having the most fun gameplay loop but being difficult to fit in the rotation (especially with Dead Eye) due to Focus economy issues. Necrolord fixes Focus issues to a certain extent, especially during Trueshot (if you spec Calling the Shots they line up almost perfectly every other Death Chakram), but its a single instant every 45 seconds and doesn’t add much aside from the Focus. Kyrian (and in theory Night Fae, if/when they fix it and tune it properly) give nice big chunky AoE burst, but both are ground targeted set up abilities, which don’t feel great to use in practice. If you spec DT/Volley with Kyrian/NF and Soulforge Embers, you are burning 6 GCDs (plus Trueshot) before you use your first Aimed Shot. That feels super lame.
My preferred option would be MaMa/CA/CS/DE/LnL with Serpentstalker’s Trickery and Venthyr, but SST benefits too much from Volley not to take it, and Flayed Shot starts to push Precise Shots out of the rotation, not to mention Trueshot feeling like garbage if you don’t have either Death Chakram or Eagletalon’s True Focus. Also I hate Venthyr thematically and aesthetically and their weekly (Ember Court) is hot garbage, and I’d rather be Night Fae, but their abilities suck. Soulshape is not much better than Trailblazer given they don’t stack, the blink can “crit” the same as Mage Blink and just not actually go anywhere, and it breaks on many attacks anyway. Wild Spirits is literally broken right now, as in it doesn’t work, and even if it procced off all the things we think it is supposed to proc off of, the tuning is so bad that unless you spam Multi-Shot non stop and have a 1.0s Hasted GCD, the damage is far worse than even Venthyr in AoE. Not to mention you can’t actually spam Multi-Shot that fast even if you wanted to (which you don’t), because you don’t have enough Focus regen to do so.
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/sigh, maybe I’m just letting my anger and frustration over the lack of action and not just ignoring but in fact blatantly going against feedback rule me here.
That said, one thing I’ll say and stick by is that anything Ion says has a much better chance of being complete PR BS than an actual legitimate reflection of pulse of the development staff. They’ve said they’ve “learned lessons” so many times over the last few years, then immediately proceeded to do something even worse than what they just “learned a lesson” about.
Specifically on this, I’ve not checked if anyone’s done any talent sims yet, but I highly suspect that MaMa isn’t going to be viable for at least the first raid tier, simple due to the fact that it scales exponentially better with crit than the other talents on that tier (ex. 10% crit -> 20% crit doubles MaMa’s DPS contribution, but only increases the other two by 9.09%). That means it’ll either be completely non-viable for at least a tier or two while we’re gaining itemlevel to reach the requisite crit levels, or it’ll be worth using in the first tier, meaning that it’ll become absolutely and unquestionably mandatory in every tier after that (and probably even in mythic gear in the first tier).
To be honest I thought it wasn’t too bad but can’t lie after focus nerfs it doesn’t look interesting to me anymore. Casting up to 3 steadys in a row is just god awful.
2 Likes
My thinking is that I’d (personally) rather have the suboptimal talent and better Focus economy. I’m not pushing CE or anything so a couple percent throughput doesn’t make much of a difference in terms of what I play most of the time.
Is MaMa better focus economy, though? Serpent Sting takes the place of what would otherwise be unbonused Arcane Shots, and is half the focus cost for that GCD (and of course more damage). Sure, it’s a maintenance DoT, which may be annoying to some, but it’s not that big of a deal. The only time Serpent Sting’s focus cost (and GCD cost) becomes a focus issue is with Dead Eye + execute range or Flayed Shot, when you already cannot spend all your Precise Shots and Aimed Shots. And given the focus starvation issues that come with it, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Double Tap or Lethal Shots wins over Dead Eye right now, especially if you’re running one of the other covenants.
Still, I’m still hoping Blizzard does something about Dead Eye, and Trueshot, and our focus in general. I’m not holding my breath, but I am hoping.
MaMa better at 3+ targets, without question. It’s about even but with less GCD bloat at 2 targets, and SS is better on Focus and a wash in GCDs in single target.
I’m finding that the base rotation feels good, and I don’t really want to add more abilities to it. I could see an argument for SS or ES if you like those abilities, with SS being better than MaMa in pure ST, and ES better than CA in constant AoE, but Crows feels really bad unless you can game the reset, and Barrage is DoA unless they buff it considerably and change it to cap damage rather than only hit 8 targets.
Double Tap is good for the one shot openers sure to get us nerfed in PvP right out the gate. Volley is great for AoE, but I would take that in lieu of ES, not in addition to.
When you consider covenant abilities as well, Venthyr adds a lot of extra mandatory time to the rotation (about 3s of GCDs every 20s, plus Dead Eye pushing more AiS). Necrolord helps by essentially replacing a Steady Shot every time you use it, and Kyrian/Night Fae are 2m CDs so kinda outside scope here (though they increase setup on the opener, further exacerbated by Double Tap, and Trap/Flare if you take that legendary).
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m enjoying the less bloated rotation, especially with Rapid Fire down to 2s.
It’s important to note MaMa scales incredibly well with crit (obviously) and there are some nice interactions with crit amp damage, like Kill Shot crits for 25% more than other shots, (even more fun when you crit something with a damage taken amp and have a 21k MaMa bleed):
AmoC is dead on arrival, and Serpent Sting is probably close to dead on arrival too. We’ll have to wait to see what sims produce but right now I don’t see myself using serpent sting in any situation outside of pure single target, and even then I’d probably prefer MaMa purely from a gameplay point of view because MM’s focus economy is atrocious.
2 Likes
Wait what? That’s news to me. And very important to know, if so, since that makes crit more important for all 3 specs, but especially for MM.
I guess the concern overall that I have, though, is that either SS is stronger in the first tier, which is annoying, or MaMa is, in which case MaMa will be the only option all expansion, period, due to how it scales. If it’s stronger in the first tier, it’ll be 3-5 times stronger in the final tier.
Still, regardless of balance, I can definitely agree that the rotation feels cleaner without Serpent Sting in the mix. MM isn’t a DoT spec.