PSA: Legion Prepatch Guides - Azortharion

[Deleted]

ah yea forgot about barrage. anyways thanks mate ^^

[Deleted]

Is there a way, outside of trueshot, for marked shot to benefit from patient sniper if you do not use the sidewinders talent?
Or do you basically *have* to pick up sentinel if you don't want to play with SW (for whatever reason)?

[Indhex]

Is there a way, outside of trueshot, for marked shot to benefit from patient sniper if you do not use the sidewinders talent?
Or do you basically *have* to pick up sentinel if you don't want to play with SW (for whatever reason)?

I would assume you still do better with patient sniper even if you dont pick SW. But I could be wrong on that.

[Feanoro]

One interesting thing is that the bow will change your rotation as you progress in its talents. Off the top of my head (at work and can't really check), Windburst can apply Vulnerable, and Marked Shot can up the crit chance of Aimed Shot.

With the first one, you could open with Windburst, dump with Aimed, then Sidewinders for focus and refreshing Vulnerable. Disclaimer, haven't run sims to test this, but before you get the Marked for Death trait (the second effect above), it seems like you'd use Marked Shot late to extend Vulnerable. After you have it, of course you want to Marked Shot asap.

[Bisso]

Signal boost because I am desperate for attention. And because no one with a brain still reads the big guide thread.

Legion Prepatch - Marksmanship Hunter Guide
Legion Prepatch - Beast Mastery Hunter Guide
Legion Prepatch - Survival Hunter Guide

Spent a couple of hours or so yesterday reading all the guides from start to finish. Very insightful and helpful. I have beta access, and while I understood most of the rotations and stuff, I'm glad that you went the extra miles to explain talents recommendation and certain synergies. Very clear and to the point.

Thanks, good work.

[Trollragemore]

based on reading the survival guide, the Best pet for survival is now a damn spider, for its ranged snare?

[Galaar]

Thanks Azor for doing all this work!

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One thing I noted about MM when I use it in beta is that it's going to take a buttload of mastery to get up to any real percentage. Here are my current hunter stats in beta at 110 (I just noticed I have zero versatility...)

Mastery 9539
Haste 5171
Critical Strike 2372

Now for haste and crit the % in BM and MM are equal (16 and 22 respectively). However, for mastery in BM my rating is 79% and in MM is 22%! That's a pretty drastic difference.

My question still will be how much haste we will need (especially now with no raid buffs) to get the GCD down and then start focusing on Mastery. As it stands it's going to take a lot of mastery with the current numbers.

[Deleted]

I would assume you still do better with patient sniper even if you dont pick SW. But I could be wrong on that.

but you'd lose out on a lot of AoE damage with marked shot if you pick patient and no sidewinders, because marked shot won't benefit from patient sniper if you use arcane/multi.
And you spend quite a bit of focus with piercing shot if you don't take SW, which means AIS damage is even lower than the % difference in +% damage from Patient Sniper.

I'd like to know how big the difference in DPS is, because it sounds more *fun* to play without Patient/Sidewinders.

[Azortharion]

Thanks Azor for doing all this work!

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One thing I noted about MM when I use it in beta is that it's going to take a buttload of mastery to get up to any real percentage. Here are my current hunter stats in beta at 110 (I just noticed I have zero versatility...)

Mastery 9539
Haste 5171
Critical Strike 2372

Now for haste and crit the % in BM and MM are equal (16 and 22 respectively). However, for mastery in BM my rating is 79% and in MM is 22%! That's a pretty drastic difference.

My question still will be how much haste we will need (especially now with no raid buffs) to get the GCD down and then start focusing on Mastery. As it stands it's going to take a lot of mastery with the current numbers.

Does the guide say anywhere that you should get to a certain Haste softcap before going Mastery? No it doesn't. So I don't know where you got this idea from, exactly. Mastery is so much fucking better than Haste.

[Thursley]

Thanks Azor for doing all this work!

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One thing I noted about MM when I use it in beta is that it's going to take a buttload of mastery to get up to any real percentage. Here are my current hunter stats in beta at 110 (I just noticed I have zero versatility...)

Mastery 9539
Haste 5171
Critical Strike 2372

Now for haste and crit the % in BM and MM are equal (16 and 22 respectively). However, for mastery in BM my rating is 79% and in MM is 22%! That's a pretty drastic difference.

My question still will be how much haste we will need (especially now with no raid buffs) to get the GCD down and then start focusing on Mastery. As it stands it's going to take a lot of mastery with the current numbers.

You're thinking about stats in a fundamentally wrong way. It doesn't matter that the same amount of mastery rating causes BM's mastery % to show 79% and MM's 22%, what matters is how much each point of mastery rating increases your total damage (also how much it increases your damage compared to other stats, for the purpose of deciding which gear you want), which is different from just the % number in the character sheet.

Likewise, why do you need to "get the GCD down?" With the way short ability cooldowns work now (modified by haste) there shouldn't be a threshold you want to hit in order to make your rotation work. Haste is a stat that increases your damage output by a certain amount per point, just like mastery or crit or versatility, it just does it in a different way. It's value on gear will be determined by its overall contribution to your total damage, just like any other stat.

All that said, I'm not in the beta but I think you may be looking at the wrong number for MM mastery anyway. Look at the tooltip for mastery and read the part that says "damage of all focus spending abilities by x%." Does THAT say 22%?

[Trictagon]

Small thing with the marksman guide, it says marksman isn't good with spread targets. With sidewinders (create a line between you and target to hit everything) and barrage, marksman is easily one of the best specs at dealing with spread targets.

Unrelated: It's surprising how horrible a lot of the trinkets sim. Socketed soul prism sounds amazing considering how unlikely you are to get a high ilvl Kira roll.

Sorry for being lazy and not checking for myself, but is it possible you can add the estimated raw sim dps value of a 200 mastery socket onto the trinket sims? That way people can just add that value to whatever trinket they have. Would be helpful for some people for sure, without the need of adding a half dozen variants of each trinket to the list.

[Effinhunter]

Keep in mind the sockets we have been simming are now wrong. We'll have the 75 gems, not the 200 gems.

[Azortharion]

Small thing with the marksman guide, it says marksman isn't good with spread targets. With sidewinders (create a line between you and target to hit everything) and barrage, marksman is easily one of the best specs at dealing with spread targets.

Unrelated: It's surprising how horrible a lot of the trinkets sim. Socketed soul prism sounds amazing considering how unlikely you are to get a high ilvl Kira roll.

You will absolutely not always have the luxury of positioning yourself to hit everything you want to, Xavius being a good example.

[Trictagon]

Thanks Azor for doing all this work!

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One thing I noted about MM when I use it in beta is that it's going to take a buttload of mastery to get up to any real percentage.

The low % value you are reading is the increased range, hover mouse over that to check the % damage to focus spenders, the return per point is huge. I submitted feedback to them that they should show the important value on the default % instead of range a while ago, but just hasn't happened yet.

[serra2]

Looking over the Trinket rankings, what do the numbers next to each trinket mean? Like Skull of War(725), is that my ilvl, or the ilvl of the item?

[Trictagon]

Opener with 4p is probably right click boss for guaranteed mark proc, sidewinders, trueshot+ring+barrage, marked shot, etc.

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Looking over the Trinket rankings, what do the numbers next to each trinket mean? Like Skull of War(725), is that my ilvl, or the ilvl of the item?

Trinket item level

[Thursley]

Keep in mind the sockets we have been simming are now wrong. We'll have the 75 gems, not the 200 gems.

Wait, really? I mean, the gems being changed to +200 in the first place is much weirder, but after the +200 gems made it all the way through alpha, beta and PTR, without any communication, only to be sniped just in time for the servers to go live? That also seems pretty strange. Have to make sure those theorycrafters stay on their toes I guess, can't let them get complacent even for a minute.

[Brocksley]

For MM. I don't really like the rotation/shot priority. I don't like sidewinders feeling so mandatory. I just don't feel the spec yet. Hopefully I get my groove soon.

[Akainakali]

AMR doesn't seem to have updated the stat weights and the guide doesn't mention any.

Should I just swap the existing ones around in the new order from the guide?

Looking over the Trinket rankings, what do the numbers next to each trinket mean? Like Skull of War(725), is that my ilvl, or the ilvl of the item?

That is the ilvl of the upgraded item. You can tell, because it lists a Kihra's (735) since the max ilvl (at least it was max) is 725. That has to include the +10 ilvls from upgrades.

[3clipse]

It's pretty depressing how poorly balanced the talents are. I feel like there are very few actual choices.