01-24-2006, 04:21 AM
Shriek,Jan 23 2006, 01:51 AM Wrote:This is how I felt when Aimed was a longer cast and reset the autoshot timer. Now, it takes a flat three seconds (which is only about .5-1 second longer than standard rate-of-fire), and an autoshot will fire immediately after the Aimed goes off--no delay. It seems that even if it didn't add ANY damage, you'd still be coming out ahead.
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Agreed. As it is now, I believe the best weapon speed is as close to 3 seconds as possible without going over. I've found that I can start a fight with an instant cast shot (multi or a sting) and then hit Aimed right after the accompanying autoshot. While I'm waiting for the Aimed shot to go off (3 seconds) my autoshot is rewinding as well so I get another autoshot immediately after the aimed shot. Then, during the 6 second cooldown on Aimed, I get another 2 autoshots. Multi can be thrown in during the Aimed cooldown when its available and with an autoshot cooldown close to 3s the Aimed shot is basically pure icing on top of what I would be doing with autoshot alone.
When I hit lvl 53 with my hunter (now lvl 57) I happily scraped together the cash to buy a Dwarven Hand Cannon, thinking I would be using that well into the end game. Then I managed to not only get into an AV game, but actually end up on the winning team and scored myself a Bloodseeker! Why so happy? Well, actually I wasn't all that happy once I realized I had just wasted about 400 gold, but I switched to the Bloodseeker and havent gone back. Here's why:
The average damage on the DHC is 101 (including the fire damage) while the average damage of Bloodseeker is 106.5. Not a whole lot extra, but I also get the +7 Agil from the Bloodseeker (which is another 1dps, plus a fraction of a crit, etc), plus a larger RAP bonus due to the slow weapon speed. The best part, though, is that the 3.3 speed Bloodseeker drops to just under 3s with my quiver speed bonus, so with either weapon I'm getting 3 autoshots per Aimed, but the Bloodseeker is putting out more damage in each of those autoshots as well as more bonus damaged with Aimed and Multi. (not bad for a weapon that lists a lower DPS ;-))
Looking at all the weapons on thottbot's ranged weapon page, I'd say that Ashjre'thul is easily the best ranged weapon in the game currently. With the speed bonus of the epic quiver, its 3.4 speed should drop to just under 3s, giving you 3 monster autoshots between each Aimed shot. With the potential damage there, its a good thing we have FD to wipe aggro or a lot of the potential damage might end up going to waste.
In fact, it just occured to me (after reading that recent thread about warrior aggro) that it might be beneficial in some cases for hunters to pull with: Aimed, auto, Multi, FD (after the warrior taunts). If taunt really does match threat with the highest target, that would be a very nice boots for that tank to start the fight with and would make it easy for the DPS and healers to get started right away without any worry of pulling aggro. Of course, if either the taunt or the FD was resisted the hunter would be pushing up daisies very quickly, but at least he died a noble death for a good cause ;-)
P.S. Speaking of wierd hunter gear numbers: After looking at both epic hunter sets, I'm fairly convinced that full Giantstalker is better than Dragonstalker from a pure DPS perspective. Dragonstalker provides about 5dps more than Giantstalker from the extra 19 agil and 1% crit, but the full-set bonus for Giantstalker is a 15% damage boost to Mult which seems like it would be a much bigger damage boost overall (if average autoshot damage is > 214, then the 15% bonus is going to be over 50 damage per multi, which is comperable to the extra Dragonstalker dps).