Kill Command: Is It Is or Is It Ain’t Yer Baby
Ding 67. Aimed Shot is back and you’re gonna be in trouble, hey nah, hey nah, Aimed Shot is back.
Kill Command - “Give the command to kill, causing your pet to instantly attack for an additional 127 damage. Can only be used after the Hunter lands a critical strike on the target. “So sayeth Thottbot, so let it be done.
What Thotty does not say is that this spell - and it is a spell, not a talent or pet spell, to use it in a macro, one would /cast Kill Command (Rank 1) - scales with your gear. My Kill Commands regularly hit for 300-500 and crit for almost 1000. Is that nice? Of course it is. What could possibly be the downside?
Well, since it is a hunter spell and not a pet spell, it works with your global cooldown. Essentially, if you have a shot rotation that you like, using Kill Command will disrupt it. If you choose to use Kill Command whenever you crit, you won’t really have a shot rotation anymore; you’ll have to pay a lot more attention to your crits, the Kill Command cooldown, and the global cooldown cycle to maximize your dps.
Is Kill Command worth the extra effort? Marksmen, if your shot rotation is where your bread is buttered, I would say no. Marksman aren’t relying on their pet for damage and would rather have a Steady Shot crit for 1400 than a 400 damage Kill Command. Understandable, you may leave the class.
Beastmasters, wake up! Kill Command is your buddy. The usefulness of this spell is most applicable in instances where your pet can tank. Why? Because the whole key to tanking is aggro control and Kill Command allows your pet to do more damage, thus doing a better job of holding aggro. When I send BRK with Growl, Bestial Wrath, and Intimidation, he procs Frenzy, I proc Kill Command, and BRK gets an extra 900 crit, you cannot pull aggro from him; that mob is his, end of discussion. I dare mages and warlocks to try grab aggro, it just doesn’t happen.
As a Beastmaster, do I use Kill Command when I’m soloing? Yes. As I go up in level, my crit rate continues to fall; it is now down to 17%. I would rather BRK have a chance at a Kill Command crit then hope for a Steady Shot crit.
It can be hard to wrap your head around this concept. I was once a 0/21/30 Survivalist with 28% crit chance. Most of my damage came from crits and I was the highest damage dealer in my guild. Now, I’m a 47/12/0 Beastmaster giving up crit chances so my pet can do more damage.
Pretty freaky.
AJ on 31 Jan 2007 at 2:06 pm #
From what I’ve read on forums, the dmg from kill command is counted as hunter dmg, not pet - so is useless at getting more aggro for pet if true.
Damh on 31 Jan 2007 at 4:53 pm #
Blizz is very specific in the details of this spell. The hunter crits, expends mana, and without spending any Focus, the pet deals damage.
I have used Kill Command to get my pet to grab aggro from a mob that was attacking me. If the Kill Command counted toward my damage done, BRK probably should not have been able to pull the mob from me.
I have checked every WoW resource at my disposal to confirm or deny whether or not the damage from Kill Command is counted as pet or hunter damage and found nothing that indicates that what you have read is accurate. I am very certain that the mechanics of Kill Command are working as designed.
However.
Tonight, I shall fire up the ol DamageMeters addon and compare the damage it records against the damage shown in the combat log. By this method, we shall see who is credited for what damage.
It is Galileo who is rocognized as the first to use quantative measurements and mathematically analysis the results. Let us follow in the footsteps of the Father of Science and sort out this Kill Command higglty-pigglty once and for all.
More at eleven.
Lassirra on 01 Feb 2007 at 8:00 am #
I miss the good old days of Survival spec. :*(
I was spec’d very similarly to how you were (if not exactly the same), but had to abandon the spec for obvious reasons. Man, I miss the amount of damage that spec used to mette out!! :*(
Now I’m almost completely Marksman spec’d (something like 2/42/9, I think) and I’m not sure I’m entirely happy with that spec anymore, either. /sigh
I’ve been hmm’ing and haw’ing about my spec for a while now, and I’m not altogether sure what to do about it. When it comes to ranged combat, I would like to be a force to be reckoned with, certainly. (A mage in my guild and I consistently have DamageMeter wars to see who puts out the most damage… I’m usually a close second–he’s six levels higher than me, lol.) But, I’m not sure how much of a benefit there is to being Marksman spec’d anymore, in terms of overall gameplay.
Bah. I’m just thinking out loud at this point, lol.
/wanders off muttering…..
Anonymous on 01 Feb 2007 at 8:33 am #
I’ve discovered that Kill Command is even better than advertised (even tho I actually “only” hit for 250-300 and crit for 5-700 with it), namely that I can use items if it does not trigger!
If you’re like me, and don’t want to spend all your time on your toes but still want to be efficient, and at the same time you got those 2 minute cooldown trinkets that are goodness, use the following macro for Kill Command:
/cast [target=target, nodead, harm] Kill Command
/castsequence [target=target, nodead, harm] Trinket #1, Trinket #2
My macro is:
/cast [target=target, harm, nodead] Kill Command
/castsequence [target=target, harm, nodead] Bladefist’s Breadth, Core of Ar’kelos
The downside is that there will be a lot of spam - there are addons that will stop that, though (and a sound options to disable error speech).
Sarf (playing as Arfs on Silvermoon, EU)
Bonqo on 23 Jun 2007 at 11:14 pm #
After the last patch, Kill Command is no longer on global cooldown. It can be used between steady shots now.