It’s time to discuss what shots we use as MM. Serpent Sting, Chimera Shot, and Steady Shot are all obvious staples of our rotation, but what about the other instants in our arsenal? Let’s examine Arcane Shot and Aimed Shot.
Aimed vs. Arcane
To begin, we assume no mana reduction talents or glyphs. Arcane Shot is known to scale with 15% RAP, and now in 3.0.8 costs 5% base mana, or roughly 250 mana. As we’re all aware, it is a baseline spell, ignores armor, and has a six second cooldown. Aimed Shot scales with 20% RAP, is normalized to 2.8 weapons, and costs 8% base mana, or roughly 400 mana. It’s a talent, doesn’t ignore armor, and has a 10 second cooldown shared with Multi-Shot.
Assuming perfect timing, for a thirty second period, we would fire five Arcanes for about 1250 mana and three Aimed for 1200 mana. Also assuming 5000 RAP (reasonable for 25 man gear), we can calculate approximately 4688 damage from Aimed, and 6210 from Arcane. The final result is 1522 more damage for 50 more mana. Were we to calculate Aimed damage being reduced by armor, Arcane would show even more impressive numbers.
Shot Buffing Talents
With 3/3 Improved Arcane Shot and 2/2 Survival Instincts, Arcane gains 15% more damage and 4% more crit (as well as 4% crit for Steady and some nice survivability for us). Thus, from our previous example, our five shots become 7141 damage.
With 3/3 Barrage and 3/3 Improved Barrage, Aimed gains 12% damage and 12% crit, along with Multi-Shot and Volley. Based on our example, Aimed gives 5251 damage.
Even with talents, Arcane is more attractive than Aimed. Five talents points boost it, Steady, and our survivability, versus seven points to gain Aimed and boost it. I exclude Multi-Shot and Volley from the comparison because Aimed locks out Multi and Volley is generally not used on bosses.
Another talent to consider is Improved Steady Shot. (Yes, I know I linked Rank 2, we’ll cover that in a future article.) If at all possible, we want to use the talent’s proc for Chimera Shot, as it is unquestionably our most powerful. If we have both Arcane and Aimed in the rotation as well, it’s very likely that one of them will consume the proc.
Final Thoughts
So does all this mean “Don’t ever use Aimed Shot”? Yes and no. Aimed is a good shot, but extremely mana inefficient. Including it in a rotation very quickly puts you in Viper, which of course we want to avoid as long as possible, as well as wasting Improved Steady Shots. However, as it is another instant cast, it serves as excellent situational burst damage. Fire it at Heigen as you dance. Fire it at Sartharion as you dodge lava. Enjoy having an extra tool in your bag for when you can’t employ your full rotation.
Trueshot Aura 