Aimed Shot - Not for 1-Shotting Squishies Anymore

BRK » 20 March 2007 » In PvE, Screenshot, Spells »

Ah, the old days of Aimed Shot. Weave it in your shot rotation for max dps. Sneak up on a squishy, drop a 2500 damage crit, and it’s like a death off-switch. Click! You’re dead. /point /wave

No longer, though. Nope, Aimed shot has been reworked (read, Nerfed) so that using it in your nomal shot rotation will severly gimp your dps, not enchance it. With the new BC stamina frenzy, nobody gets one-shotted anymore, either. Heck, I have a guildie warlock with over 10,000 health. Hit him with 2500 and he’ll react like Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack.

“HEY! You scratched my armor!”

So what does Aimed Shot look like now?

Aimed Shot (Rank 7)
370 Mana
8-35 yd range
3 sec cast
6 sec cooldown
An aimed shot that increases ranged damage by 870.

With those Cast and Cooldown times and that it affects the global cooldown, Blizz just killed this, and killed it hard. Some people say that Steady Shot is the new Aimed Shot. BRK disagrees; the old Aimed Shot is gone, may it rest in peace. The old shot rotation always included Aimed Shot while the new research has shown that, depending on your weapon speed, Steady Shot doesn’t always provide the most damage when included in a rotation. It’s all a matter of fire rate, weapon speed, using lower ranks of Arcane Shot to maximize mana conservation… {yawn, snore}.

So for what do we use Aimed Shot now?

Aimed Shot is an Opener and frankly that’s it, in both PvP and PvE. Rogues don’t try to use opening skills as closers, and neither should hunters. Even more important, however, is the fact that you never use Aimed Shot on a mob when you don’t know how the aggro is going to affect the flow of the battle.

For example, soloing with your pet. If you send your pet and hit Aimed Shot immediately, your pet will have little chance of holding aggro when you blast a 2500 crit. As we have covered previously, your solo opening shot is almost always Serpent Sting.

In an instance, you want your tank to grab and hold aggro. Blasting with Aimed Shot right off the bat is going to piss your tank and your party to no end…

Unless you use it in conjunciton with Misdirection. Aimed Shot and Misdirection are a match made in heaven. Cast Misdirection on the tank, launch an Aimed Shot on the target, and a 3000 crit will give your tank more aggro than he knows what to do with. As our main tank says, “Serve him to me on a platter, please.”

Keep in mind that Aimed Shot with Misdirection will still aggro all the mobs that are affected by the damage-effect of that shot. If you’re trying to pull one mob from many, and using Misdirection, BRK recommends you pull with your Arcane Shot (Rank 1) pull shot to prevent accidental wipes.

Aimed Shot can also be used as an opener again mobs that are being off-tanked. Let’s pretend your pet is off-tanking a mob and that mob is going to be taken down after the main tank’s mob. Your party finishes burning down the first mob and your group’s firepower is switching to the off-tanked mob. Your pet has had an opportunity to use Intimidation and several Growls, plus all the damage he has given and received. Your Pet has aggro, period, so go ahead and start an Aimed Shot while the rest of the party is switching to the new target. You’re not going to pull aggro and a 3000 crit would be spiffy to start with, you’d agree.

Take a look at this screenshot:

As you can see from the CriticalAlert portion of the log, the order of battle was Monk, Cleric, Stalker. After the Cleric was taken down, the pary refocused its dps on the Stalker, which BRK had been happily off-tanking. Since we had killed two mobs already, I knew that BRK had built sufficient aggro to handle an Aimed Shot crit, should one occur. So we killed the Cleric, switched targets, launched an Aimed Shot to open, and crit it did. WooT!

Aimed Shot Summary

• Opener only; don’t try to weave it your shot rotation
• Do not use if tank hasn’t established aggro.
• Use with Misdirection when the situation is appropriate.
• BRK needs a brownie…Well, I’m sorry, but he does.

Comments