OutDPS!

First, let me say thank you, Zeherah, for your continued efforts toward modeling hunter dps.  Second, I think it’s worth sharing that Zeherah updated her site with new options for modeling different MM rotations.  Continue reading after the break for a brief look at these changes.

Some caveats: these options are new and are innovations by Zeherah; they also are trying to model fairly nuanced shot priorities. 

The new options can be found at Shot Priority > Spec Specific Settings > Marksmanship and appear as in the picture below.

Improved Steady Shot Behavior has been around for a while and is fairly self-explanatory.  It lets you adjust your modeled shot priority slightly regarding Steady Shots and the maintenance of the Improved Steady Shot buff.

Aimed Shot Behavior tells the modeler how and when you want to use Aimed Shot (and, consequently, how and when you use Arcane Shot). 

• Instant only will cause AiS to be fired only when you get the Aimed Shot! proc. 
• Manual cast during careful Aim and instant fires AiS as a hard-cast focus dump during the Careful Aim phase but only uses it when it procs at all other times. 
• Manual cast and instant enables hard casts of AiS throughout the fight.  How these hard casts are employed depends on the next option.

Maximum speed to cast Aimed Shot (suppressing arcane shot) is how Zeherah implemented a choice regarding how we use Aimed Shot outside of the Careful Aim phase.  It appears to require that the Aimed Shot Behavior option be set to manual cast and instant.  The shot speed adjustment allows you to tell the modeler, effectively, whether or not you only want AiS to be hard cast under huge haste buffs (so only under RF or Heroism).  Practically, though, you are telling the modeller when to suppress Arcane Shot. 

• 1.0+always says ‘always suppress Arcane Shot when the cast time of Aimed Shot is one second or less’ (if only…). 
• 2.9+never says ‘never suppress Arcane Shot when the  cast time of Aimed Shot is 2.9 seconds or less.’  Thus, AS will not be suppressed at any AiS cast time when never is enabled. 
• Except during careful aim appears to behave like the always setting except that it does not suppress AS during CA. 
• Using the setting of 2.9+always will hard cast AiS as the default Focus dump throughout the whole fight. 
• Reducing the speed to 2.0+always will cause it to only be hard cast under dynamic haste buffs like Heroism and Rapid Fire. 

Chimera Shot Careful Aim Behavior tells the modeler how you want to use Chimera Shot and Serpent Sting during the first 20% of a boss’s health.  If you want to see what it looks like to go without them the whole fight, simply remove them from the shot priority list.

• Standard priority is using CS on cooldown. 
• Delay until <= 2.9 seconds left on sting uses CS only to refresh SrS. 
• Disable sting and chimera causes neither of the abilities to be used during Careful Aim.

Some words of advice:

• Enabling debug data under Settings > Display Debug Data (includes shot simulation report) reveals a shot sequence at the bottom of the calculation results.  Looking at this report is very helpful when it comes to figuring out how exactly your settings are directing the modeler.
• If you want to use AS as a hard cast during all of CA and under each dynamic haste buff but at no other times, select Disable Arcane Shot while Careful Aim is active (which is above the spec-specific options), set Aimed Shot Behavior to manual cast and instant and set Maximum speed to cast Aimed Shot (suppressing arcane shot) to 2.0+always.
• If you want to know how your settings behave without dynamic haste buffs, disable Heroism under Buffs/Debuffs > Hunter/Pet Buffs and take RF out of the list at Shot Priority > Shot Priority.
• Make sure to switch glyphs accordingly when comparing AiS vs. AS as a Focus dump.
• Removing AS from the shot priority list used to be necessary to model hard cast AiSs.  This is no longer the case.