Switch to Marksmanship!
July 3, 2009
Well, it was bound to happen. First, the eggheads over on the best possible DPS thread at elitistjerks.com started talking about how marks overtook SV as top DPS. Then the filter down blogs started mentioning it, and eventually it became such common knowledge that wow.com (formerly wow insider) posted it. Well, the reality is that you can’t just switch to marksmanship from survival and always expect to see a DPS increase.
Most importantly, put your character into the DPS spreadsheet, and change the spec and glyphs to compare what you’re doing now to marksmanship. In my case, with a fair portion of my gear from Ulduar 25 (no hard modes), I saw a 1.7% increase. I was literally just over the cusp.
Next, understand that a huge portion of hunter DPS is being able to execute the shot rotation efficiently. If you’re good at survival, don’t expect to be as good at marks the first night. I went through 10 boxes of ammo before I got used to my new action bars enough that I could stop obsessing about what to do next.
Now a large part of our DPS comes from auto-shot. Much larger than with survival. We’re a little less dependant on having to stand still because we have one more instant shot that SV hunters don’t, and they need to worry about sniper training uptime, but that won’t save your auto-shot DPS.
Get quartz to watch and display your “swing timer” (more like a shot timer for us), and every time it finishes cooling down while you’re running, stutter your run. By stutter, I mean lift your finger off the run key for as small an amount of time as you can manage. It shouldn’t slow you down by any noticable amount, but if you do it right and you’re facing the boss when you do it, you can keep your auto-shots up while on the run.
If you have the right gear level (in my case, 7 pieces of ulduar 25 non hard mode, including a gun and stat stick), and if you become as good at marksmanship DPS techniques as you were at survival DPS techniques, you can certainly get an increase by going marks. But, and I’m going to emphasize this because this is the whole point of this post, Marksmanship is not the highest DPS spec! For that to be true, it would have to beat survival at more gear levels than it currently does.
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Not one of your better articles, IMO.
Loved the stuttering tip, not many people realize that works, but you should really write an article about WHEN the time to switch is. Once you’ve got an appreciable amount of ArP and a decent mana pool, there is no reason in the world not to be MM in every 25 man you’re in. Most comps are regen-heavy at that point, and the mana-price-tag of that higher DPS just disappears.
It’s not nearly as clear cut as you make it seem, and I think your readers would benefit more from an analyzation of when the time is right.
Armor pen is less DPS per itemization point than crit until you’re swimming in it. Don’t forget, it doesn’t affect chimera shot or arcane shot.
As for when to switch, I believe that “use the spreadsheet” is the best and only advice I can give. Anything else would be making assumptions and thus inaccurate.
I didn’t think he made it seem clear-cut at all. I didn’t realize quartz would show the autoshot timer. That might get me to load it.
And no, I’m probably not switching to MM from SV any time soon. I like having my secondary spec as BM pet-tank a little too much. And I run 10mans where the SV replenishment is too important.
His method, at least as it seemed to me, was more or less “Spreadsheet yourself, if your damage goes up, switch.” The fact that the spreadsheet simulates buffs and a literally PERFECT raid environment skews that data beyond repair. For instance, that 1.7% could be entirely due to a regen-heavy simulated comp. If you are running with a comp that isn’t as mana friendly, MM probably isn’t for you. For people like yourself (focus on 10 man), who follow blogger’s advice blindly (obviously not like yourself), this could be an enormous hit to their DPS. I didn’t think the depth was there, and it’s something this site is usually better about.
I modeled my buffs and replenishment uptime based on real personal raid data to get a 1.7% increase. The only answer I can give to when people should switch is “spreadsheet yourself”. Anything else would be inaccurate.
I’m assuming people know how to input their buffs and replenishment uptime though. Maybe I’ll write up a post about how to get and use that data.
That would definitely be just as helpful. My (admittedly cynical) assumptions are based on people saying “Oooh spreadsheet”, opening it, hitting the grab gear from armory button, and never looking back. That was my first experience with the sheet, and it was a month or two before I realized just how perfectly-perfect the preset comp was, and that to get even slightly reliable data, work was required.
Woo, glad to see my pic up there!
Myself, I think Marksman and Beast Mastery are more fun than Survival… so Marksman/BM is me! =P
Yeah, I’d been saving it for the right post :) Thanks again!
I gave MM a go, and was confused, as Autoshot seemed to be the largest proportion of my damage. Unfortunately, I’m unable to run the spreadsheet as I lack MS Office, to see what I’m supposed to do, so I wasn’t sure if this was intended or not.
The rotation really is a lot different to SV, and I had a lot of issues scrambling for a particular shot on cooldown, cause I could wait half a second for the next priority, depending on which cycle I was on, or go for the one already off cooldown.
It was a little confusing all in all.
You’ll get used to it. Auto-shot is a very large percent of your damage, but whether it’s the largest can vary. As you get better with the rotation, this will settle down.
What sort of order do your shot damages tend towards?
On the top right you have a “guides” bar- one of them is for the marks rotation in this patch. That’s a good place to get you started.
Apologies, I kinda meant “What ratios of damage do your various shots end up compositing as? What rank of total damage do each shot end up totalling?”
Go to http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/toepbNiHJQJiDOUL/details/21/?s=3661&e=4011 and click on “damage by spell”- it looks like you’re right :)
Heh! I feel a bit better about MM now =) I’ll swap back and work on my rotation a bit. I was kinda thinking I was doing something terribly wrong =P
Despite what it says in the Elitist Jerks thread, the DPS spreadsheet can actually be run from Open Office. It doesn’t do the automatic armory grab, but most of the gear is available on the drop-downs, so I’ve never had a problem. I’m running Open Office under Windows; I haven’t tried it in NeoOffice on my Mac, but I’ll try it and post the result.
Hi !
I read somewhere (can’t tell you exactly where, maybe on several blogs or forums) why MM is supposed to give better dps once you got a range weapon from Ulduar (ilvl 226 I think).
That’s because MM main abilities scale more on raw dps (Chimera shot, autoshot) than SV, the main abilities scaling more on AP (Explosive shot mostly). And the raw dps of Ulduar weapons have been boosted.
So, there are two well geared, well experienced hunters in our raiding guild. (We’ve down’d Yogg in Heroic + some hard modes, for what it’s worth).
Anyway, his gear score is slightly higher and he switched to MM focusing on ArP 3 weeks ago. But, I stayed SV and pull more DPS with ease. At first, I figured he needed to get used to the rotation, but I’m still pulling 5200-5500 DPS verses his 4400-4800.
I’m not buying the MM argument just yet. And, ArP is one of the most understood stats in the game. Gearing for it looks good on paper (spreadsheet) but doesn’t pay off the same in-game reality. Any other high end raiders experience this?
the MM argument is compelling. At his level without stacking armor penetration, he should be a fair bit better once he got used to the rotations. Also, armor pen only looks good on paper assuming you can fire off nothing but steady shots when your trinket(s) proc. Not many Ulduar fights afford us that luxury. Patchwerk would of course, but not any movement fights.
Tell him to regem agility or AP (as the spreadsheet suggests), and make sure he knows his rotations.
Bah! He doesn’t listen to me. One of those ‘I know everything’ hunters.
My posting was more in regards to not seeing the MM vs SV advantage executed in reality. I am more than happy with SV as long as I’m top DPS and damage – why change.
I just don’t understand the argument about switching to MM since between the two of us in our guild, the SV spec seems to pull more damage.
I saw a distinct increase in my DPS when I went MM, but only once I learned the rotation and its adaptations to the encounters I do.