[Hunter] Going MM for 4.0.6

From what I've been reading from various sources, it looks like MM will be the top hunter dps spec come 4.0.6, so I've been trying to get a feel for what I'll need to be ready.

As far as reforging goes, I'm under the impression that stat weights aren't radically different than what is currently the case for SV: agi >> hit > crit > mastery with haste either better than or worse than mastery depending on who you talk to (probably mostly due to how sensitive the haste stat weight calculated by the Femaledwarf sim is to your current haste amount).

In SV, you would shoot for 757 haste rating to get 3 cobra shots per explosive shot cooldown. For MM, as far as I can tell you're wanting to get your steady shot cast time down to 1.5 sec assuming IIT / Windfury / Hunting Party and Improved Steady Shot are up, and the amount of haste rating required will depend on how many points you put into Pathing.

I've seen there's another soft cap you can shoot for: 1.0 sec steady shot with Rapid Fire up, but I doubt I want to make that kind of haste investment (1325-ish haste with 2/3 Pathing) at the expense of mastery and possibly even crit. TL;DR - looks like I'll have 300-400 haste to swap over to crit and mastery.

At first glance the rotation looks to have a similar theme to the current SV priority: put up Mark, maintain Serpent Sting, Chimera Shot on cooldown, instant Aimed Shots when procced, then fill with Steady and Arcane depending on your focus and Imp. SS situation. The big difference it seems is cooldown management, mostly in terms of Rapid Fire and Readiness. I've also read in the EJ MM thread that some people on the PTR are seeing good results using nothing but Steady and Aimed (both instant and hard cast) for the Careful Aim phase of fights. I've not had time to test this personally , but it should be easy enough to test out on a dummy.

I'm guessing the Careful Aim phase with just Steady and Aimed will be a good candidate time for using all your cooldowns (which should make for some awesome Misdirect threat ), but I wonder when will be the better time to use Readiness: immediately after that first Rapid Fire to get two full Rapid Fires during the Careful Aim phase, or waiting until after you've hit the first Chimera Shot, i.e. at 79% boss health hit SerpSt -> Chimera -> Readiness -> Rapid Fire -> Chimera?

One thing I haven't been able to find much information about is the better trash aoe spec. Does anyone know if MM will be better than or at least close enough to SV aoe post patch dps so that I won't need to bother swapping specs?

Gerunna wrote:I'm guessing the Careful Aim phase with just Steady and Aimed will be a good candidate time for using all your cooldowns (which should make for some awesome Misdirect threat ), but I wonder when will be the better time to use Readiness: immediately after that first Rapid Fire to get two full Rapid Fires during the Careful Aim phase, or waiting until after you've hit the first Chimera Shot, i.e. at 79% boss health hit SerpSt -> Chimera -> Readiness -> Rapid Fire -> Chimera?

Why would you wait that long to start using Chimera shot? Is it just because doing so would be a wasted GCD during the Careful Aim phase (since that gives extra crit chance on other attacks)?

I imagine that it depends on the fight itself -- e.g., Magmaw has some dedicated burn phases that you'd likely want to save it for -- but I'd say you're probably better off using Trinkets+RF right at the start -- getting two in now, and maybe a third later, on most fights. Obviously, this depends on the fight and when the burn phase is, if there is one.

Kelaan wrote:Why would you wait that long to start using Chimera shot? Is it just because doing so would be a wasted GCD during the Careful Aim phase (since that gives extra crit chance on other attacks)?

After reading some more, it's based more on a simulation than actual PTR testing. I did the sim comparison with my current gear, and dropping Chimera and Serpent Sting during Careful Aim is about a 5% dps increase over the duration of that phase, so more like roughly 1% over the full duration. It must be what you were saying about how using Chimera would be a wasted gcd since Steady and Aimed hover at about a 90% crit rate during that phase.

Are the buffs to MM, and the nerfs to SV, enough to make them more comparable?

Since I haven't had a chance to hit the PTR, I've been relying on the Femaledwarf sim with the PTR changes enabled. For my current gear (~345 ilvl average) I was seeing PTR BM about the same as SV live for single target dps, around 20k, PTR SV about 1k behind, and PTR MM with hard cast Aimed Shots instead of Arcane Shots to burn focus a little over 2.5k ahead of BM.

In the real world though, I think that movement heavy fights will put a dent in that ideal MM case since Aspect of the Fox doesn't affect Aimed Shot, so I'd probably end up with some weighted average of that ideal and the current MM rotation with Arcane Shot as the focus burner, so somewhere in the 20k to 22k range for MM.

If it's a fight where you can expect to move a lot but can leave your pet parked on the boss while you're running around, I'd say MM and BM are pretty close to one another.

If Aimed Shot turns out to be back in the rotation, that sounds kindof neat, if only for Nostalgia reasons.

There's a quick and dirty patch job up on the first post of the EJ MM thread, and it does look like Arcane Shot is out for all fight phases unless you need to bleed focus while on the move. I spent some time at the dummy last night trying to get a handle on the rotation, and after seeing Aimed Shot routinely critting in the 45k-50k range I can understand why.

im going to need to do alot more research now
back between 4.0.1 and cata release i was MM, but i never hit aimed shot except when Master Marksman proced

bldavis wrote:im going to need to do alot more research now
back between 4.0.1 and cata release i was MM, but i never hit aimed shot except when Master Marksman proced

That is the only time I ever hit it as well. But then, Blizzard's love of porting Rogue type mechanics to other classes is killing this game for me. I hate my rogue. I stopped playing my rogue because I hate it. I hate Energy I hate Combo Points. I hate Finishing Moves. Stop porting these ideas to other classe!

I put together a little spreadsheet to help me plan out my rotation given various haste effects. Basically it calculates your total haste from all effects, calculates the cast times for Aimed and Steady, then lets you determine the cycle duration for a set number of Steadies, Aimed, and instants. Ideally you'll want to right at or just under 9 seconds total duration without the Chimera Shot glyph, or 8 seconds with the glyph.

I uploaded it as a Google doc here, but I think you'll have to download your own copy to make edits. Feel free to let me know if anything looks like it's not working right.