In this article, I am going to try to evaluate how well they’ve nailed the new Tier Set Bonus for Marksmanship with some musing on its power, gameplay impact, and what it says about the direction Marksmanship is going. I hope to leave you with a deeper understanding of how the Tier Set Bonus works, and how it might change Marksmanship’s feel and power in PvE going forward.
Marksmanship Auto Shots in Patch 11.1
Many of you will probably be confused as to why the Tier Set Bonus is buffing something as boring as Auto Shots, in both damage and cast time, and also that instead of increasing the attack speed by a %-amount, it is a flat 0.5 sec.
To understand this, a little bit of background on the Marksmanship Hunter Rework is required: Marksmanship is now far more heavily built around generating and spending more Lock and Load. Several Talents, both new and redesigned, lean into the raw power of Auto Shots, as well as their ability to generate Lock and Load procs, such as In the Rhythm, Quickdraw, Obsidian Arrowhead, Magnetic Gunpowder, and the new, second half of Precise Shots.
In general, they seem to be pursuing a more proc-oriented playstyle for Marksmanship in Patch 11.1, and this informs its set bonus.
Playstyle Impact
Marksmanship’s Tier Set in Season 2 broadly looks like it will not change your gameplay or introduce new mechanics that you have to manage; the bottom line of the Tier Set is that you will occasionally get procs where your Auto Shots fire more often, causing more Lock and Load procs, which means more instant Aimed Shot’s. The 4-set bonus adds extra power to these Aimed Shots, by attaching a Explosive Shot at 200% effectiveness to every single Lock and Load proc spent. The value of Haste will probably go up significantly once you obtain the Set, as more Haste increases our attack speed, thereby generating more Lock and Load procs, which means more empowered Explosive Shots, and also potentially more power from the Magnetic Gunpowder Talent. This does not necessarily mean that Haste is now the best Stat, which will likely still be Crit, but it is worth noting this interaction.
One of the most requested Tier Sets in Marksmanship’s history has been a return to the Hellfire Citadel Tier Set, Item – Hunter T18 Marksmanship 4P Bonus, which made Aimed Shots instant and was extremely powerful. We are not getting that, but we are getting a lot more instant Aimed Shots than before, and thanks to their extra power, they will also feel more exciting.
How Good Is it?
This Tier Set Bonus is somewhat biased towards AoE, and particularly of the bursty variety, both because it always procs from Trueshot, and because Explosive Shot generally packs a greater punch on AoE than on single-target.
It is hard to know exactly what sort of impact the Set Bonus is going to have power-wise, because with the PTR being up, it is hard to really gauge if a 0.5-second improvement to Auto Shot’s swingtimer is enough to make a big difference to your Lock and Load proc generation. At 30% Haste, we will have a base Auto Shot cast time of around 2.8s-3.8s, depending on whether In the Rhythm is active (it has quite high uptime), which is still slower than what we have currently (~2.7s max, and usually lower). Lock and Load’s proc chance has not been increased to compensate. A 0.5 second reduction to a ~3.3s average base swingtimer translates into a ~15% increase in Lock and Load proc generation, which is decent, but not fantastic.
One neat part about the set bonus reducing our swingtimer by a flat amount, is that at higher Haste levels, such as during Harrier’s Cry (yes, Marksmanship now has its own Lust, I thought I’d sneak that into this article), this relative power shoots up dramatically. During Lust, with 30% Haste, In the Rhythm active, and On Target stacked up, we’re looking at an auto-shot swingtimer of around 1.6s, and our set bonus is now improving that by 31%.
It also remains to be seen if the extra Explosive Shots from the set bonus will proc effects like Precision Detonation, further improving its power.
The 200% Auto Shot damage could also end up being a factor for our Hero Talent selection, synergizing heavily with Dark Ranger’s Bleak Arrows. Dark Ranger is currently not very far behind Sentinel (temporary bugs nonwithstanding as I write this article), and Sentinel’s outright power is looking like it is taking a nerf. On the other hand, our Patch 11.1 Rotation will have a higher density of hard-hitting abilities, leaving less time to be focused on Black Arrow, so time will tell if this interaction is enough!
Overall, I am cautiously optimistic about the power level of the set bonus going in, but of course, everything will ultimately be compared relative to the set bonuses of other specs and classes, which I have limited insight into.
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