Originally Posted by
Guran
The 3% dmg on Serpent Sting is worth it.
I did a comparing with highest ranks of both Steady Shot and Serpent Sting in the expansion using my current gear (2.6k AP against target including everything, 40% crit including MT)
Result:
Steady Shot: 2047,47 damage each hit
Serpent Sting: 1543,5 damage each 15 sec.
That's 504 damage lost every 15 seconds to keep Serpent up.
As a result I get atleast:
Steady Shot: 9 times 61,42 damage
Serpent Sting: 46,31 extra damage
Total damage gained: 599 damage
Win of 95 damage or 6 DPS
Granted, it's not much, but that's excluding armor on the mob, or any Nature damge increasing abilities such as a shadow priest, a boomkin, an Enhancement Shaman (while the SS debuff is up ofc), ... and not counting in the fact that at 30% you're using Kill Shot, which has even higher average damage.
So I'ld say it's not exactly amazing, but it is better.
(Note: Steady Shot scales far better with AP and also scales with weapon dmg and ammo, so the further you will go in raids the less benefit this talent will give you)
The 10-15% is what my pet is now. He usually is around this number depending on what group I'm in and what buffs I have on. But with pet's white hits, Claw & Kill Command added up that's what shows on my SW Stats personal dmg chart.
As for GftT goes, 1 point in it means your pet will be able to do 1 Claw/Bite/whatever everytime you crit, which I think costs 25 as well in WLK (but I might be wrong). With an average damage of around 150, you can easily check the DPS:
Assume an average 15 attacks that can crit every 15 seconds (6 auto-shots + 9 steady/kill shots). That's 1 attack per second that can crit. With a 25% crit rate, that's 37.5 DPS from GftT. With a 40% crit rate that's 60 DPS. That's including MT ofcourse.
If you max out GftT you will make it far more difficult as you will constantly be topping off his focus bar, but say around 70-100 DPS with Focus to spare for other abilities.
Edit 1:
Serpent Sting with Shadow Priest(5%) and Boomkin(6%) would get almost 200 damage increase, meaning the difference with my current gear would become 329,56 damage between steady and serpent and a damage gain from the talent of 604,36 which results in a 18 DPS gain. That's with T5-level gear. A starting raider would see more gain from this due to the Serpent Sting damage being closer to Steady Shot.
Edit 2: Just 3 things for Spl4sh3r:
1) Entrapment + Explosive Shot. One only works on close groups, the other one breaks close groups apart. Think about it.
2) Master Tactician in the expansion will give around 6% crit with a 2.80 speed weapon, that's 20% more effective then what you get from Lethal Shots. But a base of around 35% raid buffed is indeed a pretty good goal to aim for. It would give you 41% with MT, which is more then enough to make AP start scaling really nice. Problem is, you need agi for EW, which gives both :P
3) Potent Venom does not give you 3% DPS, it varies depending on your AP scaling, the armor of the mob and so on. On mobs with high (20ish%) armor just Serpent Sting along is better, on 0 armor mobs it gives you the full 18 DPS at the loss of a possible crit.