I am having trouble justifying using Explosive Shot in my rotation. I consistently crit with Arcane Shot for 14k-17k. I don't think I have had Explosive Shot crit from both procs and I will have only one of the procs crit. Pretty much every forum or resource I look at has ES as being better than Arcane, I'm just not seeing it. I feel like I'm missing something. Any suggestions?
edit: Ok total newb moment here. The shot does initial damage and then ticks twice for three separate instances of damage. Forget my inane ramblings above.:)
Spamming arcane, or using it for focus dump is not a good habit for SV.
As a principal, I removed the Arcane Shot icon from my main action bar.
Using Arcane by any means as SV, leads to dps loss this or that way - even after recent buffs.
SV shots consume huge chunks of focus, so in practice, you will hardly ever have high focus situations to have the luxury to dump it with arcane shots.
If you have decent/balanced amounts of crit & mastery, not using arcane at all will be a dps gain.
Everything is about maximizing ES usage. Everything is about preserving focus for when it is ready to go. waiting for focus or delaying ES is what most cripples SV dps.
And please remember, AS may scale with crit, but ES will scale with mastery also. when you have an ES tick crit you also have it multiplied with the mastery gain.
The *only* time I ever use Arcane Shot is during a Lock N Load proc when I am at or near full Focus. Otherwise I weave Cobra in there instead. I have never found myself needing to "dump" focus as SV.
Ditto to Ozolin
Ozolin said:
The *only* time I ever use Arcane Shot is during a Lock N Load proc when I am at or near full Focus. Otherwise I weave Cobra in there instead. I have never found myself needing to "dump" focus as SV.
You don't mean that you use arcane shot for the procs do you? If so, it will be the worst thing to do -not spending the free procs for explosive shots but arcane-. The ideal sequence during a LnL is;
ES>CS>ES>arcane shot if 70+ focus, CS if low focus>ES
I hope you were referring to the AS after 2nd ES.
Definitely, Imoen, definitely.
I've seen multiple discussions (mostly over @ EJ) about what the best plan for LnL procs is, and I bascially just stick with ES>CS>ES>CS>ES, but yes, I put in an Arcane if I'm at or near full on Focus. I've seen it suggested to use Kill Command in there too, but I can't say I've tried it.
I've not had any time to actually do any Dummy testing, so I'm certain my rotation could use some tightening up.