Again beating the crap out of the heroic dummy

I'm once again testing my rotations (as well as re-configuring my UI) and it's time to pewpew that target dummy again. One rotation consists of Serpent Sting, Explosive Shot and Steady Shot. The other one has Aimed Shot added in with priority LOWER than Explosive Shot but HIGHER than Steady Shot. Let's see what the numbers say - I'm completely unbuffed for these tests.

(Draining mana to 5% three times, viper up to 100% two times - i.e. drain, viper, drain, viper, drain)

Test #1: 309.35 sec (a bit over 5 minutes)
Me: 2102.2 DPS
Pet: 357.6 DPS
TOTAL: 2456.2 DPS

BREAKDOWN:

Explosive Shot: 156 shots, 81 hits (average 1.2k) / 75 crits (average 2.9k)
Auto Shot: 127 shots, 84 hits (average 0.8k) / 43 crits (1.8k)
Steady Shot: 107 shots, 56 hits (average 0.75k) / 51 crits (1.9k)

Serpent Sting was up all the time so Steady Shots get that extra 10% damage from our Glyph PLUS all 3% damage increase from Noxious Stings. Explosive Shot in this parse did 49% of our total damage, autos doing 22.5%, steadies 21.5% and Serpent Sting 7.6% of our damage.

Ok so, let's move to our rotation number two.

Test #2: 301.98 sec (a bit over 5 minutes)
Me: 2168.4 DPS
Pet: 352.4 DPS
TOTAL: 2514.2 DPS

BREAKDOWN:

Explosive Shot: 159 shots, 79 hits (average 1.2k) / 80 crits (average 2.9k)
Auto Shot: 126 shots, 82 hits (average 0.8k) / 44 crits (average 1.8k)
Aimed Shot: 22 shots, 11 hits (1.1k) / 11 crits (2.5k)
Steady Shot: 84 shots, 58 hits (average 0.9k) / 26 crits (average 2.2k)

So, our total DPS went up for about 65DPS, which is nice. Still, when you look at the average damage of hits and crits done by Aimed Shot versus Steady Shot, you can see Aimed doing a little bit more damage but indeed - it's ONLY a little bit more. So, using Aimed Shot will be left to your discretion - whether you want to mix in a shot that potentially does a bit more damage than Steady but consumes more mana. This is a trade-off and there is no definitive answer to this, at least I can't provide one.

Aimed Shot is good for fights like Heigan, Grobbulus and any other boss encounter which requires moving. Explosive Shot followed by an Aimed Shot is a great way to move - you spend two global cooldowns but if you move during the GCD's, you won't lose any Steady Shots! Anyway, I can't give you the answer whether using Explo->Aimed->Serpent->Steady is better (or worse) than rotation without Aimed... the results are just too similar. I'm going to do one more test parse, without Aimed Shot in the rotation and will be doing a judgement on whether to keep Aimed Shot in my spec or toss the point to 2/2 GftT or something.

Test #3: 315.84 sec (a bit over 5 minutes)
Me: 2135.8 DPS
Pet: 354.6 DPS
TOTAL: 2477.1 DPS

BREAKDOWN:

Explosive Shot: 171 shots, 82 hits (average 1.2k) / 89 crits (average 2.85k)
Auto Shot: 132 shots, 90 hits (average 0.8k) / 42 crits (average 1.8k)
Steady Shot: 108 shots, 71 hits (average 0.8k) / 37 crits (average 1.8k)

This parse was tiny bit better than our first test with Explo-Steady rotation (~20DPS better) but still slightly inferior when compared to the one with Aimed Shot mixed in. Anyway, the difference is very small and it may just be fluctuation of the average numbers but still, it seems that mixing Aimed Shot in may produce very, very slightly better numbers.

Still, the mana consumption is an issue; firing two shots which cost 7% and 8% of the base mana, respectively, is going to get mana-heavy during long fights. I'm starting to be pretty content with the fact that "Explosive, Serpent, Steady" is going to be my main rotation... I may use Aimed after LnL procs like this: "Explosive Shot -> wait 0.5sec -> Explosive -> wait 0.5sec -> Explosive -> Aimed" to produce more burst damage but I probably won't weave it in every ten seconds. We'll see, I gotta do the testing in 25-man Naxxramas we should be having tomorrow.

So, here we go... I'll be concluding my tests here for now. I'll be getting back to ya with the full Recount data for our Naxx-25 tomorrow! Happy hunting!