Barrage vs Glaive Toss

[Mandragorn]

Glaive is better for constant dmg for sure. If you are going to be doing challenge dungeons or something where u plan on pulling a big group and popping it as fast as possible, barrage will do more burst aoe than glaive, and id recommend hasting in some way when you do it.

[Illana]

multishot spamming does more damage than barrage, as i said the only time where i see barrage being useful is a 3 second aoe pack.

for survival at least.

[Deleted]

this statement is just... completely baseless.

none of the 90 tier beats multi shot for survival anyway so using it for any situation other than single target is a silly prospect. Only aoe situation where powershot/barrage would be superior if the adds literally died in 3 seconds or less.

For BM/marks it might be viable to use barrage/powershot while hasted before going into the multishot rotation but really these talents need a lot of work

Barrage is good for bm during the last second of BW. Especially when popping all yours cds with lust, glaive toss stays way behind.

[Shinzai]

Barrage is good for bm during the last second of BW. Especially when popping all yours cds with lust, glaive toss stays way behind.

I would prefer to land another KC or Glaive Toss in the last second, than be forced to channel for any amount of time.

[Barnacles]

This is why I think you're all complaining about nothing, and that Blizzard actually did a great job in allowing us to pick what we prefer.

I would argue that Barrage scales much better than Glaive does right now, especially at high gear levels.

Secondly, if you're using Barrage in single target situations, you are doing it very, very wrong. It's only useful on packs of 4 or greater. However, this allows you to single target DPS and gain your focus back quicker for more AS if you pick TotH. I feel like a lot of BM hunters neglect both talents and when they choose one or the other, they feel it's weak and glaives are better. Glaives do a lot of AoE damage, but it's nothing compared to going TotH and Barrage. This allows a BM hunter to actually keep up with other classes in true AoE situations. You can even use BW to endlessly AoE with TotH up.

However, that being said, this only scales up when you've got a lot of crit, above 25% (use your damn wolves), and your weapon is 463 or higher ilvl (because of the base damage).

Barrage scales at an absurd rate right now, just wait until heroic gear levels are attained. It will come out well ahead of Glaive toss, just because in practice, you will be required to AoE burst in raids. Glaives isn't actually that much of a single target improvement, and it severely hampers your AoE ability over periods longer than 3 seconds.

---

As well, Barrage is actually fine while unhasted. It's best to save barrage for a haste proc or lust, it's true-- however it's still a DPS increase to AoE with it when 4 or more targets are up. As well, if you know that a boss will spawn adds and there will be 3 targets in range of the boss (including the boss), then you can substitute your AS with MS because TotH actually procs individually per hit. The more you hit, the more it procs. Pop BW, and you have unlimited AoE with MS. I can't believe this is so overlooked right now. Just try it out for a week, and see what happens.

While Glaives may simcraft better than Barrage, and it is more single target DPS; it's prone to missing some targets, it's not as good as barrage in AoE over 3 seconds, and you often won't be picking up TotH with it when TotH is a huge DPS increase in practical situations. However, using TotH effectively requires a very quick-thinking mind and a lot of experience in managing your cooldowns on the fly to avoid capping focus. CoS is a terrible damage ability, and the more AS you have going out rather than CoS, the better. It procs so often that sometimes I have to manually refresh SS if I neglect to cast a CoS. It's a vastly underestimated talent.

[Illana]

why is it that barrage scales higher than glaives? I'd love to hear your reasoning behind this.

[Okacz]

No love for Powershot?

As much as I mostly agree with the fact that Glaive is the best DPS provider, I prefer Barrage or Powershot much more. But it seems no one else likes PS. Why? Its long CD may feel obnoxious, but it works the best with Readiness - reseting CD of 15 sec Glaive is nothing special, and having 2 250k hits one after another is something worth noting. Also the cast duration is very smooth during RF/Bloodlust phases. I also love the 1 minute cooldown on it because while playing you already have your toolbar clowded, and you can easily forget bout an ability to use every 15 seconds. + the simple awesomeness of this shot

Right now I'm testing and squeezing as much as possible from MM hunter (being called the worse hunter spec at the time) with Powershot (being called the worst hunter 90 talent). And it's going pretty fine, considering over 70k dps at certain (short) bosses. Give those things a shot, it's worth it I guess.

[Illana]

powershot is just.. bad.

3 sec base cast is just =S. Also 250k is IF it crits, we barely have 25% crit chance yet fully raid buffed.

so every minute we get around 156k damage which averages out to 2.6k dps.

Glaives hit around 50k for me non crit so with 25% crit thats around 62k damage every 15 seconds which is 4.1k dps.

[Deleted]

in fact they are quite close. curently barrage is the better choice but once we reach more haste they are getting closer. by the end of t14 ppl might pick ps over barrage.
keep in mind that glaives cost 60 focus and 4gcds per minute compared to 20 focus and 3.2s casting time. ps is also more valuable with readiness than glaives.

[Daetur]

I prefer Glaive Toss, myself. I find it to be cool looking, and I like how it fits into my rotation while keeping me mobile. Its damage seems to be excellent when used in rotation.

[Illana]

in fact they are quite close. curently barrage is the better choice but once we reach more haste they are getting closer. by the end of t14 ppl might pick ps over barrage.
keep in mind that glaives cost 60 focus and 4gcds per minute compared to 20 focus and 3.2s casting time. ps is also more valuable with readiness than glaives.

that would matter if we were limited by focus, realistically we are more a GCD capped class so the more damage we can do per GCD the more dps we will do and glaive toss fits that description perfectly

plus it replaces and arcane shot so we're actually GAINING 5 focus every 15 seconds whereas powershot taking up over 2 GCDs and doing less dps overall is just mathematically not as good on single target.

[dexx]

Is Glaive Toss on the GCD? I'd prefer to macro it to cooldowns rather than having to have an extra button

[Woobels]

Is Glaive Toss on the GCD? I'd prefer to macro it to cooldowns rather than having to have an extra button

It is on the GCD, macroing it is a bad idea.

[Amsden]

Barrage has caused me some headaches (such as pulling entire rooms) so I switched to glaives, though I think barrage is more fun.

[Thesentinel]

that would matter if we were limited by focus, realistically we are more a GCD capped class so the more damage we can do per GCD the more dps we will do and glaive toss fits that description perfectly

plus it replaces and arcane shot so we're actually GAINING 5 focus every 15 seconds whereas powershot taking up over 2 GCDs and doing less dps overall is just mathematically not as good on single target.

Thanks Illana - just checking tho.

If Glaives replaces Arcane Shot and AS does say 25k non-crit and Glaives does 50k non-crit - is it fair to say that Glaives only does 50% extra, for say ~2k dps increase?

[Nangz]

Thanks Illana - just checking tho.

If Glaives replaces Arcane Shot and AS does say 25k non-crit and Glaives does 50k non-crit - is it fair to say that Glaives only does 50% extra, for say ~2k dps increase?

It would do 100% extra but yes thats fair to make.

However barrage must be compared aswell. For instance during the 3 second channel you could have used a cobra/steady shot and one arcane shot. Im not sure how 1 AS and 1 CS compare to barrage damage but you actually gain focus a opposed to barrage where you only lose focus.

[Jeremypwnz]

It is on the GCD, macroing it is a bad idea.

If all you are doing is single targetting, you can macro it up to Arcane Shot like Dire Beast is.

/cast Arcane Shot
/cast Glaive Toss

It's cast on CD about 85-90% of the time, the other 10-15% it's cast on the next GCD. It's just a slight pain when that is your only way of Glaive Tossing and you want to do some AOE, which in turn you can macro it the same way to Multishot.

[dzidek]

For me Glaives are much better than Barrage. Not even better dps but, what is more important, you don't have to channel this.

[Prokne]

This thread reminded me about the Klaxxi enhancement thread. Every hunter should try out barrage with Raining Blood. Its absolutely ridiculous. You will get 2 explosions on your main target and pretty much everything dies to 1 barrage. If it doesn't a KS will finish it off.

For regular situations, I use GT for raids and barrage for soloing for the aoe and pack pulling ability.