highstakes
07-15-2009, 02:59 PM
Talents and glyphs:
With the changes to ranged weapons over 226 item level, marksman clearly dominates as the best talent tree for high end raid dps. The talent build I currently use is 7/57/7 with Kill Shot, Steady Shot and Serpent Sting as major glyphs. I also use Feign Death, Mend Pet and Revive pet as minor glyphs. In case you are needed to get TSA, because you are either in a 10 man raid, or in a 25 man where your group gets split and no one in your section is providing the 10% attack power buff, you could drop a point from Improved Barrage. This is only about a 20 dps loss for you, but the 10% ap buff will surely be up around you.
Let’s start with the glyphs first:
The reasoning behind Kill Shot is that a large number of fights involve handling adds. Being able to do 16k damage with a single shot when the 500k hp add is below 20% hp is a huge dps boost. So therefore it's pretty straight forward, the more kill shots you can squeeze out in phases where you have to handle adds, the better. Serpent Sting because, Chimera Shots serpent sting damage gets calculated based on how much damage the serpent sting would have done, therefore if it has a longer duration it’d do more damage. Regarding Steady Shot glyph, it just seems to give the most dps compared to Aimed Shot or Chimera Shot glyphs.
Shot rotations:
• { IV/1 } Kill Shot: No brainer. You can dish out 16k+ crits with it, you want it on CD day and night.
• { IV/2 } You need serpent sting on the target before you can gain full benefits of chimera shot. Make sure you always use serpent sting first on bosses, before using chimera shot. However, on some adds that die way too quickly, I find it a waste of global cooldown to use serpent sting. This is especially if the add dies really fast and somehow due to global cooldowns you end up not being able to use kill shot.
• { IV/3 } Now that you have serpent sting up, you can use chimera shot. This ability can crit over 10k and then the serpent sting part of it can crit over 4k as well. Making it the biggest overall source of damage, right after auto shot.
• { IV/4 } Due to the nature of aimed shot having a longer cooldown, and it being a physical damage ability affected by armor penetration you will want to use it before you use arcane shot.
• { IV/5 } As mentioned before, arcane shot sadly does not deal physical damage, therefore it is not affected by armor penetration. This results in a couple of hundred less damage than aimed shot.
• { IV/6 } Despite the fact that I mention silencing shot after all the other shots, in reality you always use it as soon as it comes off cooldown. Check out the macro section for some simple macros so you won’t miss any opportunity for firing your silencing shot. If you don't feel comfortable with macroing silencing shot, lets say because you are asked not to mess up the interrupt rotation (for example on General Vezax), then you shouldn't do it.
• { IV/7 } Last but not least, steady shot: With the nerf to steady shot in the expansion, this shot sunk from the top of the priority list to the bottom. This is now our least used damage ability. Its casting time and lack of scaling really doesn’t make it an attractive ability. Use it as filler, only when everything else is on cooldown. If you see that a higher damage ability will come off cooldown before your steady shot casting would have finished, don’t start to cast a new steady shot. For the reason mentioned a couple of times before, you always want to have your higher damage abilities on cooldown.
{ V } Pets:
After quite some testing, it’s pretty clear now. Wolves dominate in overall damage gain. While raptors might do more dps on a single target, overall wolves boost your and their own damage to the point where they turn out to be better.
Despite the fact that your pet no longer provides the significant part of your dps, it still does over 1k dps on single target fights. Keeping your pet alive on a debuffed taget is the best pet dps increase. Probably in a later boss guide I'll give some specifics what to watch out for, which abilities must be avoided and which ones your pet can just live through. For now if you see melee running away from the boss because some short range aoe is coming, try to pull your pet back as well for a brief moment. After a couple of pet deaths you will learn how much your pet can take anyway. Just remember, after a combat res, getting yourself rebuffed is hard enough and most likely no one will try to rebuff your pet. A pet resurrected in combat loses significant dps, due to them scaling with buffs really well. Therefore if the boss is below 30% and there are no new phases coming you probably shouldn't even bother to waste the time trying to resurrect your pet.
{ VI } Macros
COOLDOWN MACRO: Use all your cooldowns with 1 button. Notice how it DOES include kill command now. With a wolf you want to use kill command as soon as possible. It also includes bestial wrath in case you decide to try out BM. However it does not include call of the wild, since you want to use call of the wild only during bloodlust/heroism, where else you might use this macro at the beginning of a fight. It also includes readiness, this way it’s assured that you use readiness right after you used rapid fire, decreasing the possible wasted seconds between two rapid fires.
#showtooltip rapid fire
#show rapid fire
/use 13
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast blood fury
/cast rapid fire
/cast kill command
/cast readiness
CHIMERA SHOT: This is just like with all the other abilities, it has kill command, and silencing shot.
#showtooltip chimera shot
#show chimera shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] kill command
/cast chimera shot
/cast silencing shot
AIMED SHOT: This is just like with all the other abilities, it has kill command, and silencing shot.
#showtooltip aimed shot
#show aimed shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] kill command
/cast aimed shot
/cast silencing shot
ARCANE SHOT: This is just like with all the other abilities, it has kill command, and silencing shot.
#showtooltip arcane shot
#show arcane shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] kill command
/cast arcane shot
/cast silencing shot
With the changes to ranged weapons over 226 item level, marksman clearly dominates as the best talent tree for high end raid dps. The talent build I currently use is 7/57/7 with Kill Shot, Steady Shot and Serpent Sting as major glyphs. I also use Feign Death, Mend Pet and Revive pet as minor glyphs. In case you are needed to get TSA, because you are either in a 10 man raid, or in a 25 man where your group gets split and no one in your section is providing the 10% attack power buff, you could drop a point from Improved Barrage. This is only about a 20 dps loss for you, but the 10% ap buff will surely be up around you.
Let’s start with the glyphs first:
The reasoning behind Kill Shot is that a large number of fights involve handling adds. Being able to do 16k damage with a single shot when the 500k hp add is below 20% hp is a huge dps boost. So therefore it's pretty straight forward, the more kill shots you can squeeze out in phases where you have to handle adds, the better. Serpent Sting because, Chimera Shots serpent sting damage gets calculated based on how much damage the serpent sting would have done, therefore if it has a longer duration it’d do more damage. Regarding Steady Shot glyph, it just seems to give the most dps compared to Aimed Shot or Chimera Shot glyphs.
Shot rotations:
• { IV/1 } Kill Shot: No brainer. You can dish out 16k+ crits with it, you want it on CD day and night.
• { IV/2 } You need serpent sting on the target before you can gain full benefits of chimera shot. Make sure you always use serpent sting first on bosses, before using chimera shot. However, on some adds that die way too quickly, I find it a waste of global cooldown to use serpent sting. This is especially if the add dies really fast and somehow due to global cooldowns you end up not being able to use kill shot.
• { IV/3 } Now that you have serpent sting up, you can use chimera shot. This ability can crit over 10k and then the serpent sting part of it can crit over 4k as well. Making it the biggest overall source of damage, right after auto shot.
• { IV/4 } Due to the nature of aimed shot having a longer cooldown, and it being a physical damage ability affected by armor penetration you will want to use it before you use arcane shot.
• { IV/5 } As mentioned before, arcane shot sadly does not deal physical damage, therefore it is not affected by armor penetration. This results in a couple of hundred less damage than aimed shot.
• { IV/6 } Despite the fact that I mention silencing shot after all the other shots, in reality you always use it as soon as it comes off cooldown. Check out the macro section for some simple macros so you won’t miss any opportunity for firing your silencing shot. If you don't feel comfortable with macroing silencing shot, lets say because you are asked not to mess up the interrupt rotation (for example on General Vezax), then you shouldn't do it.
• { IV/7 } Last but not least, steady shot: With the nerf to steady shot in the expansion, this shot sunk from the top of the priority list to the bottom. This is now our least used damage ability. Its casting time and lack of scaling really doesn’t make it an attractive ability. Use it as filler, only when everything else is on cooldown. If you see that a higher damage ability will come off cooldown before your steady shot casting would have finished, don’t start to cast a new steady shot. For the reason mentioned a couple of times before, you always want to have your higher damage abilities on cooldown.
{ V } Pets:
After quite some testing, it’s pretty clear now. Wolves dominate in overall damage gain. While raptors might do more dps on a single target, overall wolves boost your and their own damage to the point where they turn out to be better.
Despite the fact that your pet no longer provides the significant part of your dps, it still does over 1k dps on single target fights. Keeping your pet alive on a debuffed taget is the best pet dps increase. Probably in a later boss guide I'll give some specifics what to watch out for, which abilities must be avoided and which ones your pet can just live through. For now if you see melee running away from the boss because some short range aoe is coming, try to pull your pet back as well for a brief moment. After a couple of pet deaths you will learn how much your pet can take anyway. Just remember, after a combat res, getting yourself rebuffed is hard enough and most likely no one will try to rebuff your pet. A pet resurrected in combat loses significant dps, due to them scaling with buffs really well. Therefore if the boss is below 30% and there are no new phases coming you probably shouldn't even bother to waste the time trying to resurrect your pet.
{ VI } Macros
COOLDOWN MACRO: Use all your cooldowns with 1 button. Notice how it DOES include kill command now. With a wolf you want to use kill command as soon as possible. It also includes bestial wrath in case you decide to try out BM. However it does not include call of the wild, since you want to use call of the wild only during bloodlust/heroism, where else you might use this macro at the beginning of a fight. It also includes readiness, this way it’s assured that you use readiness right after you used rapid fire, decreasing the possible wasted seconds between two rapid fires.
#showtooltip rapid fire
#show rapid fire
/use 13
/cast Bestial Wrath
/cast blood fury
/cast rapid fire
/cast kill command
/cast readiness
CHIMERA SHOT: This is just like with all the other abilities, it has kill command, and silencing shot.
#showtooltip chimera shot
#show chimera shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] kill command
/cast chimera shot
/cast silencing shot
AIMED SHOT: This is just like with all the other abilities, it has kill command, and silencing shot.
#showtooltip aimed shot
#show aimed shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] kill command
/cast aimed shot
/cast silencing shot
ARCANE SHOT: This is just like with all the other abilities, it has kill command, and silencing shot.
#showtooltip arcane shot
#show arcane shot
/cast [target=pettarget,exists] kill command
/cast arcane shot
/cast silencing shot