Marksmanship?

[Niix 169]

So I just got done testing Marks, and honestly. Even though there is only a few abilities the spec actually feels very very good. I went with a heavy Mastery and Crit build because they compliment each other well. I was doing a decent amount more than Survival, which was struggling to keep above 12k. Marks easily was doing 15k consistently. Now this is slightly inflated because mastery is a very big gamble, if you get screwed by RNG and have to move a lot, your DPS is going to fall significantly. So me standing still attacking a dummy is a little unfair, so 15k is only possible playing 100% optimal, but it's always nice to know what the upper limit of DPS is.

 

A few points I want to make, Focusing Shot seems to feel a lot stronger than lone wolf, again, I was standing still, can't emphasize that enough, but the way the Focusing Shot restores your focus feels a lot better than only getting 14 for a 1.6 second cast. There were many times where I had to cast almost 4 steady shots in a row in order to have enough focus for glaive, chimera and then aimed. this is a non issue if using Focusing Shot. a 2 and a half second cast, for 50 focus is huge. you're saving a full global by using it. You're getting double the focus back from your generator. 

 

There is a lot of theory crafting to be done about what combinations are going to be the best, and until we get a more solid idea of what the numbers will be like the only thing there is to really discuss is how the class feels? Let's get some more discussion going just like the SV thread. I'm curious what you guys feel like about MM in it's current state. What it's missing? What it can do without? Anything you guys have to share.

[Orthios 271]

Using fervor on live I feel is almost mandatory, whereas in WoD, thrill reduces aimed shot cost as well, so I'd like to see how mm plays out using both, not just in terms of dps, but also feel. Which feels smoother/better. Since I don't have beta access (yet, hopefully), I'm stuck here wondering how different talent combinations between lvl 75 and 100 talents will feel and play out. It also seems a bit odd to have 3 stats that can be considered good, as crit, haste, and now apparently mastery are all good. Hmm..... Really wish I had beta access to see this firsthand.

[Kattii 40]

Im glad they have improved on MM in a way that makes the rotation flow better. However I do worry about the turrent playstyle when it comes to raiding in WOD. Most of the bosses seem to be heavy movement fights. To be fair it does seem that every boss fight has some sort of movement requirement or else it would be super boring. I'm happy that the movement penalty is an indended feature to even out the increased dps. Marksman hunters will need to plan out boss fights and watch mechanics in horder to optimize their dps.

[Niix 169]

Im glad they have improved on MM in a way that makes the rotation flow better. However I do worry about the turrent playstyle when it comes to raiding in WOD. Most of the bosses seem to be heavy movement fights. To be fair it does seem that every boss fight has some sort of movement requirement or else it would be super boring. I'm happy that the movement penalty is an indended feature to even out the increased dps. Marksman hunters will need to plan out boss fights and watch mechanics in horder to optimize their dps.

Yeah that's the one thing I absolutely love about it now. If you can stand still for a long period of time your DPS will be massive. Once you're forced to move, your DPS will drop, how much just depends on how much mastery you have. I really like what they've done with the spec.

[f0nZi3 7]

Awesome! This is really good news to me. I've always wanted to play MM, but when I did play it (especially in MoP) it just felt really "clunky" to me and didn't enjoy it as much as BM and SV.

[Niix 169]

The removal of arcane shot, and the addition of aimed shot to ToTH is honestly the best thing they've done to the spec in a long time. Sniper training will be interesting to see how it turns out in a live raid environment. Hopefully they buff multi-shot so it actually has some actual AoE for once. Serpent Spread and Beast Cleave are perfect, MM has no real form of AoE. Once we see more of the fights we'll be able to see how much AoE is necessary.

[Orthios 271]

Marksman has bombardment for AoE. 60% damage buff and 20 cost reduction. While bombardment is nice, I'd like to see a bit more to mm AoE, hopefully with piercing shots. When I used TotH for MM, combined with bombardment I would have free multi shots, though these wouldn't proc TotH since they were free.

[Brya 3]

People have been really divided on how marks feels now, but overall I like the way it's developed. I won't comment on the class dps yet because serious tuning has yet to be done.

 

The spec honestly feels similar to live if you are running the aimed shot setup, it's slowed down a bit but I believe that it will be needed with keeping sniper training up. Sniper training itself is an excellent way of creating a risk/reward system that hunters overall didn't have and gives a much better buff maintaining mechanic than steady focus has ever been. I believe it is also why they trimmed alot from marksmanship in the first place. I couldn't imagine managing SF, MMM, and Sniper training all at once in their new raids and keeping near 100% uptime. 

 

For the most part, the talent and perk synergy is pretty nice with all the focus changes from the perks. I've still been leaning towards fervor mainly yet thrill creates an interesting and different playstyle for the spec that can feel rewarding(direbeast still feels out of place because its on the gcd). I've enjoyed running all three lvl 100 talents in various situations and each have their own strenghts and weaknesses for the spec as a whole. I'm leaning towards Focusing shot being the best of the three because its snynergizes with sniper training extremely well ( 3 second cast 3 seconds to  gain sniper training buff) and the other two talents following closely behind it. Exotic munitions felt extremely useful while leveling so I can definitely see it being used as my everyday talent aswell as for when i have kiting situations in raid. Lonewolf is more fun than I expected but it was difficult keeping ST up without a pet for targets to beat on so i can see it being out of place in a way. I also felt Focusing shots with thrill can feel a little wonky at times depending on how often aimed shots would crit but it would be expected with two rng based mechanics happening at once.

 

The only thing that has been bugging me is the aimed shot focus perk. I dislike that it refunds the focus instead of reducing the cost of the next aimed shot similar to bombardment. It's more a personal preference in that I map my focus use in my head and refunding feels a little jarring in that sense.  

 

As to marks AoE, I think between the changes to Multishot( dmg increase+focus reduction), the new cleave on chimera, and the removal of improved serpent sting, the spec's aoe capabilties will be more in line with the other two specs. This also creates a nice difference in playstyle for each spec's aoe similar to how it is with other pures. My only concern lies in beast cleave most likely being too powerful especially since I believe adaptability increases it, but we'll need to see how tuning proceeds.

 

I also just read that Beast mastery has lost the killshot perk which helps to define marksmanship's identity even more.

 

My last point is that I do miss Mastermarksman and I believe it should be reimplemented just to change the flow of the rotation once in awhile. 

[Niix 169]

 

As to marks AoE, I think between the changes to Multishot( dmg increase+focus reduction), the new cleave on chimera, and the removal of improved serpent sting, the spec's aoe capabilties will be more in line with the other two specs. This also creates a nice difference in playstyle for each spec's aoe similar to how it is with other pures. My only concern lies in beast cleave most likely being too powerful especially since I believe adaptability increases it, but we'll need to see how tuning proceeds.

I'm interested to see how Beast Cleave works with Adaptation. I'll post info about BM when I get around to it, but until we get a more solid idea of where the numbers are going to be. Take anything here with a grain of salt obviously.

[Orthios 271]

Marksman has bombardment for AoE. 60% damage buff and 20 25 cost reduction.

From the new beta build.  With TotH reducing the focus cost by another 20, would this mean we would gain 5 focus per multishot?  Now that would be some interesting AoE.

[Brya 3]

I'm interested to see how Beast Cleave works with Adaptation. I'll post info about BM when I get around to it, but until we get a more solid idea of where the numbers are going to be. Take anything here with a grain of salt obviously.

 

If adaptation works for beast cleave but lonewolf doesnt for multishot for marks and surv theres a huge design doublestandard theyre letting slip by. They speficially changed lonewolf to not work on our aoe toolkits why does the bm version get to? With the gamescom conference giving us a release date we'll be able to figure out when tuning will kick in, so solid data should be coming pretty quickly.

 

 

From the new beta build.  With TotH reducing the focus cost by another 20, would this mean we would gain 5 focus per multishot?  Now that would be some interesting AoE.

 

That would be amazing orthios but it wouldnt in the end, the game isnt designed for where negative focus generates for us. You can see it when using thrill during beastial wrath with arcane shot, 30F/2-20F=-5F, just makes it completely free. The focus change is good for the fervor setups though and adds ~3* extra multishots on a full focus bar before you need to cast steady/focus.

 

*mental math calculation.

[Fortyz 2]

I find the current 3 button rotation (excluding talents and KS since its not usable for 70% of the fight) on the BETA to be extremely dry and boring. MM needs another ability and the mastery is a good idea but needs to be refined a bit more to not penalize movement. I doubt there will be many heroic encounters that resemble patchwork (which is where the current for of MM will excel). But like i said MM is 1 more ability away from being fairly fun to play. 

 

Also lets not compare this to other 3 button classes like destro locks, as CB for destro is a huge DMG dealer and the equivalent ability in theory would be Chimaera shot, which is not a 2-4M dmg dealer. 

[Azortharion 60]

It's supposed to penalize movement.. That's the ENTIRE IDEA.

[Fortyz 2]

It's supposed to penalize movement.. That's the ENTIRE IDEA.

   I      I 

  V     V

I doubt there will be many heroic encounters that resemble patchwork 

 

Nuf said. 

 

But maybe I wasn't clear enough with what I meant, so let me explain.

MM having a casted focus gen and a casted focus dump will be very hard to use in any heroic encounter (except patchwork style which is also why above I noted that) when is the last time we have had a heroic style encounter with little to no movement? the closest thing i can think of would be Malk or maybe IJ in this tier. Even in these fights there is plenty of movement and the ability to stop for so much casting is very restricted, and as Bliz makes fights more and more advanced, you can very well assume that means more movement. 

 

Which brings me to my next point, 

 I     I 

V    V

MM is 1 more ability away from being fairly fun to play. 

 

 

The ability that MM is missing, could be something to bridge the gap between a no movement class and a mild movement class. Maybe something along the lines of the T16 2pc set bonus reducing RF CD (that may not be the best fix, but that idea)

Edited August 13, 2014 by Fortyz

[Azortharion 60]

But Aimed Shot and Steady Shot can be cast on the move.......

[Fortyz 2]

But Aimed Shot and Steady Shot can be cast on the move.......

 

As MM, Focusing shot is the tailor-made and intended to use Tier 7 talent. 

As a way to play to MM without a lot of penalty however, I doubt it will be chosen. 

 

As far as the change to moving aimed shot, I didn't see that in the patch notes as it is listed under "miscellaneous" 

Tangent: should be under MM changes

 

I didn't try moving while casting on the Beta as there was never a tooltip change

 

Beta tooltip -> 

 

All this being said, I still feel MM is very dry and missing something. The removal of "button bloat" for MM has taken away a lot and not given much, to the point where it reminds me of BC ele shaman. 

Edited August 13, 2014 by Fortyz

[Brya 3]

Note that tuning hasn't happened yet and I'm assuming reasonable balancing will be done.

 

Fortyz I can see where you are coming from but the entire point of why marks has nothing else is exactly what you mentioned with how fights are having more movement than ever before. Blizz has redesigned the classic concept of ranged based attackers needing to pay attention to their movement and turned it into a mechanic that will require a decent amount of skill to master. 

 

The whole point is that you should need to focus more on your movement(or lack thereof) than just a rotation for optimal dps, which is something that the other two specs don't Need to do but could if they wish. They want marksmanship to focus on being a sniper, not moving, and knowing your surroundings when you need to. 

 

The important question that comes up though, is blizz tuning marks around always 100% sniper training uptime? or is there going to be a bit of slack? If they're expecting full 100% never dropping, I can see where the concern that many hunters bring up is coming from. If there's a bit of slack though, and they're tuning at a 'sweetspot' (say  80 or 90% uptime as the average) it would create a skillcap for the spec similar to other ranged based dps while still being different. I'm leaning towards the second option mainly because they have been extremely adamant about not adjusting the 3second standstill or the buff duration. Would it mean that marks would be one of the strongest single targets on the ever so rare patchwerk fights? probably.

Does it mean marks hunters who decide to run around and have low sniper training uptime(with alot of mastery gear) do crap dps? most likely, but that is a part of how they want to have the spec work when going mastery( they have said you can go multistrike instead and get a more classic marks feel with less penalty but we'll need to see tuning). 

 

The other question I have is whether or not hunters have been really testing marks in raid environments and trying to keep sniper training up with the '3 button rotation' as you put it? It was quite a nuisance on the couple of fights I tried and from what I've seen most people have been running bm for various reasons the mmochamp thread has covered already. I enjoyed it though and do agree a little something is missing, not another button though, maybe MMM being brought back but on chimera instead of aimed shot?

[Orthios 271]

MMM being brought back would make my day.  But it just fits better for it to effect Aimed shot over Chimera, especially flavor wise.  Something needs to be brought back, whether its MMM or steady focus.  Either way, without beta access for myself, I'm just stuck here speculating.

[Brya 3]

Hey folks new stuff coming for us and some of it is pretty awesome! Just keep this thread focused on marksmanship discussion ( I'll be adding this to the survival thread shortly.

Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/13978297949?page=3#60

"Hey all. Please focus on continuing to give good feedback, not the style/amount of our responses to said feedback. We're just extremely busy, not ignoring or spiteing you.

Now then... Yes, the Marksmanship and Survival rotations are simpler than they were before. The goal is to have a simpler baseline rotation, and have meaningful choices that allow you to layer more depth onto that in talents, if you choose.

Hunters have a ton of talents which grant rotational or short CD abilities, to support this design. However, they were lacking in rotational depth. The gameplay of most of them boiled down to "use on cooldown". No need to think about preparing for when you're going to use it, or how it interacts with your rotation, etc. So, we're going to make some tweaks to try to add some rotational depth to several of the talent choices.

Barrage is being changed to make it more rotational, with Focus-pooling gameplay required to min/max its benefit. You'll want to pool 60 Focus in anticipation of it coming off cooldown.

Barrage now has a 20sec CD (down from 30sec), costs 60 Focus (up from 30 Focus), and deals 100% additional damage.

Murder of Crows had a cooldown-shortening effect that hardly mattered in practice; either the fight would likely be over within 1min if used on a low-healh boss, or you'd likely waste most of the damage of the crows if used on a low-health add. Instead, we're changing that mechanic, so that it's primarily useful on those low-health adds. You'll want to time it well to finish off low health targets, while still being as Focus-efficient as possible.

Murder of Crows has been changed. Its duration, cost, and cooldown have been reduced by 50%. It no longer has a shorter cooldown when used on low health targets. Instead, its cooldown is reset if the target dies.

The gameplay of Fervor and Dire Beast were extremely similar, so we opted to replace Fervor completely. It's rather late in the development process to be doing that, so went with something tried and true: Steady Focus. This iteration of Steady Focus purely increases Focus regeneration, and has a duration short enough to add depth.

Fervor has been replaced with Steady Focus: Using Cobra Shot or Steady Shot twice in a row, or using Focusing Shot, increases your Focus Regeneration by 50% for 10 sec.

We think that these changes will allow Hunters of all types to customize their gameplay to their liking.

Oh, completely forgot that another relevant change hasn't made it into one of your builds yet. Apologies.

Lock and Load is returning to the previous version of it, and Multistrikes will simply do more damage for Survival instead."

I'm really liking everything they've listed, only thing that bothers me is why cut fervor over dire east for the focus talent row when direbeast has a ton of issues with pet ai?

Murder of crows is looking great and will be a lot more fun to use especially on fights similar to paragons.

The changes to barrage feel odd to me but I can see how powerful it will be now as an aoe tool. It does worry me because of balancing with glaive toss and power shot.

Steady focus is probably going to be excellent especially when not using focusing shot as our 100 talent. The regen also seems to be on par with SF on live so it will also give us a closer feel to live marksmanship that many hunters have been asking for.

What do you guys think?

(Sorry about the formatting website doesn't have easy mobile editing I'll clean it up tonight)

[Orthios 271]

Murder of Crows has been changed. Its duration, cost, and cooldown have been reduced by 50%. It no longer has a shorter cooldown when used on low health targets. Instead, its cooldown is reset if the target dies.

 

Yes, yes, yes, a thousand times YES!!!!  I love this change, as it really makes AMoC a lot easier to use.  One thing that kinda worries me is gaming the cooldown reset in fights with a bunch of adds.  

 

Barrage is being changed to make it more rotational, with Focus-pooling gameplay required to min/max its benefit. You'll want to pool 60 Focus in anticipation of it coming off cooldown.

Barrage now has a 20sec CD (down from 30sec), costs 60 Focus (up from 30 Focus), and deals 100% additional damage.

Now this seems interesting.  100% additional damage I assume translates to 740% (+100%) weapon damage and not 1280% (*1+(100%)).  The focus increase makes it a bit harder to use, but with the changes to Aimed and Chimera Shot this shouldn't be too big of an issue.  

 

The gameplay of Fervor and Dire Beast were extremely similar, so we opted to replace Fervor completely. It's rather late in the development process to be doing that, so went with something tried and true: Steady Focus. This iteration of Steady Focus purely increases Focus regeneration, and has a duration short enough to add depth.

Fervor has been replaced with Steady Focus: Using Cobra Shot or Steady Shot twice in a row, or using Focusing Shot, increases your Focus Regeneration by 50% for 10 sec.

Now I don't like this.  I like fervor too much to see it go, but getting a new version of Steady Focus is nice.  The 50% Focus Regen is huge though, and the fact that this can be used by all 3 specs seems, odd.  Another thing I'm not too keen on is the 10 sec duration.  Considering that it takes 4/(1+haste) seconds to use 2 Steady/Cobra Shots back to back, this could throw us into a massive focus dump and regen cycle.  It could play out nicely, but I feel that it's a bit too short.  IMO 15 seconds would be a better duration so that we're not so pressed to reapply it so quickly.

 

All in all I'm liking these changes and I really wish I had beta access to try everything out for myself.  

[Niix 169]

To be honest. After playing with marks some more tonight. I'm really not all that excited about it. It felt so good when I tried it before but after messing with it today in raid testing. I hated it with a passion. It's a huge pain to monitor how much you can move, and the DPS difference between a well executed MM rotation with a close to 90% uptime on the buff, is very very poor compared to a poorly executed rotation. Was less than 2k DPS. I can't see marks playing a mastery build at all, which seems kind of daft to me simply because it has no upper limit as to how much DPS it could give you, but it's just a waste of a stat if you end up moving at all. 

 

All in all, MM is easy to play meh, and hard to play well, but the reward? Isn't even noticeable. Not worth it when BM is as strong as it is. SV even beats it out by 3k+. Curious to get some numbers tuning.