That's a bit misleading. Concussive Barrage is still in the game. It's learned by MM hunters at level 30.
Heh, Beth'tilac was horrible.
Anyway I absolutely love Concussive Barrage. Currently having a lot of fun by soloing TBC dungeons on my level 67 Hunter. I'm just pulling large amounts of mobs and kiting them around with Multi-Shot, it's quite satisfying.
Was I the only one that enjoyed Beth as a hunter? (ESP in 10 where you had to do all lanes on your own)
Enough OT, I don't mind MM, but BM and mostly SV is so much more fluid and it is almost the same specs anyway so it is the small differences that makes the personal preferences chose. Then add that they don't do very good damage over the others at all.
Beth was good because in 10m we felt important. Back then, MM was used a lot, especially in 25m. CA was so powerful that, when fight times were short, it was impossible for SV to catch up to the Careful Aim burst (high, but mostly trivial DPS). They rightly responded to this by removing Careful Aim.
The mistake came when they put CA back into MM in MoP. In PvE it is a really braindead way to deal damage. I think SV is a really awesome spec because it deals consistent DPS across the entire fight, and with Serpent Spread and Entrapment we have nice tools and versatility.
A great step in the right direction for MM would be to get rid of Careful Aim again. You could compensate it by shortening the Rapid Fire CD for MM, making it align with Readiness, and bring down the cost of Aimed Shot so you don't feel focus-starved every time you cast it. That would give you coherent Aimed Shot phases at regular intervals. This would of course need some Aimed/Arcane balancing so that Aimed wasn't optimal outside of Rapid Fire/Hero etc.
Improved Steady Shot? It simply feels arbitrary. Its not an engaging mechanic. It has been nerfed into oblivion and is at the point where removing it completely (make it passive) would have little impact to the skill requirement.
The question was WHY is it the lowest damage?
The answer is that Aimed Shot would keep life in it, but every buff to Arcane puts it further and further ahead. They don't realise that one of the signature shots is barely worth using. Chimera could likely use a buff, too, but they'll just slap %dmg to Arcane and % AP to Hawk and call us fixed.
And to the poster above who said the playstyle changing based on target HP and Lust/Hero was more interesting - no doubt that it is. But, and especially with the low damage output of MM's main abilities, it is extremely unforgiving if you miss a shot. Delaying a Kill Command or an Explosive Shot will hurt your dps, but missing an Aimed or a Chimera or whatever you should be using will beat your dps to a messy pulp. That shouldn't be the case.
How is Careful Aim a "Braindead way to deal damage"? You actually have to look at the targets health, think, and adjust shot rotation. Hunters... Stop trying to make every ability we have a passive ability! How does this make our class more engaging? It makes our class more boring and reduces the skill level... as it is BM is one of the easiest specs to play in the game. Stop trying to make MM this way too. MM just needs a little buff here and there and it will be competitive with BM and Surv. MM is the most fun spec with the highest skill cap we have right now. I wish it could perform at the highest dps levels because then it would be the most rewarding spec too, but please stop trying to make every ability we have passive and thinking that will fix our class. It's just dumbing it down to the point where anyone can do good dps by smashing 4 buttons. PS: Blink Strikes should be changed back to the way it was and ill go back to using crows... I like pressing buttons and having to think. It makes the game more fun. PSS: To fix MM just give chimera and aimed a slight buff or buff piercing shots.
Because it's a passive that contributes little in the long term and becomes more trivial as gear increases or on certain encounters like say Megaera where the Careful Aim phase lasts for basically 1 Aimed Shot worth of time at this point.
Careful Aim worked better when Aimed Shot was such a heavy hitter but with it being in the "meh" area and Blizzard apparently being ok with Aimed being "meh," it needs a rework. It's not even much better to use Aimed during Careful Aim than to just keep using AS after the AS buff.
Personally feel that Marksmanship needs to use Aimed Shot as its main dump just for the sake of spec flavor, but Blizzard is apparently deadset on all Hunter specs having 35% of their DPS coming from mashing the same shared filler /sigh. In the mean time, wish they would at least let Arcane Shots proc Piercing Shots so the spec could be playable this expansion.
-Careful Aim: Redesigned. Now provides 20% critical strike chance to Steady Shot and non-instant Aimed Shots.
-Wild Quiver: Removed.
-*New* Sharpshooter: Increases the damage dealt by shots with a cast time by x%. Mastery increases the damage by y.
Something like that could go a long way towards making Marksmanship feel like it has some flavor. But that will be left to next expansion. In the mean time, it basically plays the same as the other specs but with more punishment for error and less damage potential even when played perfect. It's stupid that they let it get to this point.
Last edited by Bullettime; 2013-06-17 at 09:22 PM.
While MM isn't really anymore clunky than it's been in the past, it's still a large determining factor in today's raiding scene of endless boss abilities and mechanics. The less you have to pay attention to your rotation, the better your survivability and raid awareness. I can play Survival blindfolded, and almost can play BM the same. MM requires a lot of micro-management, which not only results in lower DPS, it would result in lower survivability, which is a big deal.
Then there's the whole "Aimed Shot does shit damage and is completely non-viable as a focus-dump" issue, which wasn't a problem in Cataclysm.
I'm not saying MM is on the level of Feral as far as complexity goes, far from it, but to say it isn't MUCH harder than Surv/BM is a fallacy. You actually have to pay attention to your focus bar to not focus cap while using a 50 focus ability, judge when to use Aimed Shot, and maintain Steady Focus without focus capping. That's a lot harder than hitting ExS and Black Arrow on cooldown.
Steady Focus was introduced in Wrath, reworked in Cata, and nerfed into the ground in MoP. The rework was a total failure and 100% uptime just happens now. It used to be annoying, now it is trivial.
Also remember that MM has its special on a 50% longer cooldown, which means delaying it is much less punishing to overall dps, and there is only 1 spell that you need to keep on cooldown.
Its marginally harder to rank as MM, mostly because of douchebags CA whoring their aimed shots on things they shouldn't be.
Is it? =/
I was bored a few weeks ago and decided to go Marksmanship on Twins heroic for the hell of it. While completely butchering the rotation and messing up about everything I could possibly mess up, I got rank 1 for god knows what reason.
I don't think it's hard to rank as Marksmanship, and not just because of this one Twins rank. No one in their right mind plays Marksmanship right now unless they want a cheap rank or just want to mess around, and even then only Hunters in guilds who can afford to mess around and are done with progression are able to do this.
But hey next reset I'm able to play Marksmanship for most of the raid. I'll see if I'm wrong or not, without the CA whoring and actually following proper tactics. I'm probably not swapped in for many fights because there aren't many bosses left I still need but let's see where I end up.
Last edited by mmoc973e6c390d; 2013-06-18 at 09:48 AM.
Not hard to rank as it is now, since almost no one plays it but rather when it is the go-to-spec.