07-12-2006, 05:43 PM
Quote:Arcane shot does benefit from +spell damage, but at 33% of your total +spell damage, you don't see much gain unless you have a lot (and what hunter gets +spell damage? :wacko:)
That's why I said "effectively":). Same with rogue poisons, as I understand it--they'll benefit from anything that increases nature damage, but no rogue will have much of that, so it's usually irrelevant (exceptions maybe being nature-vulnerable wyrmguards in BWL and rogues who hang out with Stormstrike shamans).
Quote:Curse of Doom does actually get affected by +spell damage. I have seen CoD actually hit for upwards of 5k damage when a Imp Shadow Bolt is on the target and the Warlock has a lot of +damage gear. So it does scale, it's just harder to see cause it's 3.2k damage outright after a minute (if you only have +200 damage or less, you'll miss the bonus on it).
Good to know. I could've sworn I'd heard that it didn't benefit from +damage; effects like Improved Shadow Bolt, Curse of Shadows, and Shadow Weaving are a bit different, though, and I don't think it's really fair to say they count as scaling in the same sense--it'd be like saying Eviscerate scales with Sunder Armor.
Quote:Aimed shot is the best choice for a Hunter for outright damage. It's cooldown is about half that of Multi-shot and while it takes 3 seconds to fire, crits are much higher that Multi-shot and more frequent. Aimed shot is a mana hog though which is its downside. Overall though, a crit Aimed shot is going to range between 2k and 3k depending on weapon used while a crit Multi-shot is going to range between 800 and 1.5k depending on weapon used. Also, the mana costs between the two skills is around 400 to 500 mana per Aimed shot and 270 to 280 mana for multi. So you really don't gain a whole lot sticking with Multi vs. Aimed. You don't go dry as soon, but your DPM is lower with Multi than with Aimed.
Well, I did specify Arcane vs. Multi for a non-Marksmanship hunter, who won't have Aimed Shot. I agree entirely that Aimed is the best scaling damage special attack a hunter has against a single target. (Come to think of it, though, Serpent and Viper stings don't really scale either, nor does Volley. Add them to the list.) In shorter fights, of course, the hunter can use both Aimed and Multi (and Scattershot) since they have separate cooldowns, unlike Aimed and Arcane.