A Closer Look at Piercing Shots 3.1
Let’s take a look at Piercing Shots. If you were ever as confused as I was at first, this might help you visualize it a little better. I’ve looked deeper into it, studied a few different ideas, and feel I have a decent grasp on the concept now.
Piercing Shots – Your critical Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 30% of the damage dealt over 8 seconds.
At first, it seems like there has to be some kind of catch, like an overwrite from bleed to bleed or something of that nature, but that’s not the case. It’s also not the case that there’s a steady constant damage even if you continue to crit with different shots. Instead, it behaves exactly as is stated. Let’s create a scenario.
During a normal rotation, let’s say you crit with all of your shots in a row. Those which trigger the Piercing Shots effect are-
Chimera Crit: 8,000 damage
Aimed Crit: 5,000 damage
Steady Crit: 3,000 damage
I’m using these numbers for simplicity and they are, of course, made up.
So taking these numbers, your rotation will look like this:
Chimera, Aimed, Arcane, Steady, Steady
Each second it’s active, Piercing Shots will do 30% shot damage divided by 8. Broken down, your tics will look like this:
Chimera: 2400/8 = 300
Aimed: 1500/8 = 187
Steady: 900/8 = 112
I’m going to use 2 seconds as the “in-between” time to allow for the Global cooldown and shot travel time. If only Chimera crits, obviously your Piercing Shots damage will look like this:
Second: 300
Second: 300
Second: 300
Second: 300
Second: 300
Second: 300
Second: 300
Second: 300
If we add in an Aimed crit, it will look like this:
S: 300
S: 300
S: 300+187
S: 300+187
S: 300+187
S: 300+187
S: 300+187
S: 300+187
S: 187
S: 187
Let’s say we’re really lucky, and we crit with all of our rotation shots in a row. It would look like this:
S: 300
S: 300
S: 300+187
S: 300+187
S: 300+187 (Arcane Time)
S: 300+187 (Arcane Time)
S: 300+187+112
S: 300+187+112
S: 187+112+112
S: 187+112+112
S: 112+112
S: 112+112
S: 112+112
S: 112+112
S: 112
S: 112
As you can see, it behaves exactly as the tooltip states. It causes your target to bleed for 30% of the shot damage over 8 seconds. Because it is a “bleed” effect, people believe it should also be affected by Mangle from feral druids, which causes the target to take additional damage from Bleed effects for 12 seconds. However, many places I’ve looked have stated that this is not the truth, and that Piercing Shots damage is not affected by any bleed-enhancing abilities. If anyone can confirm or deny this statement with visual evidence, please let me know and I’ll post it here.
I hope this helps you better understand Piercing Shots. Quite frankly, it is just a damage-boosting talent that requires little focus on our part as the hunter. The damage is considered “rolling”, and is pretty similar to Wild Quiver in how it behaves – it just happens. If you want to increase your Piercing Shots damage, the only thing you need to do is increase your shot damage, crit bonus, or crit chance, but that will come naturally and Piercing Shots isn’t a main focus. However, you should most certainly ALWAYS spec into it, no excuses. Happy hunting!
❤ Nass
Diaries of a Marksman Hunter 
Great simple write-up Nass, thanks. I know there were a lot of questions around this when 3.1 initially came out. Most were questioning its ability to stack. This really is a great talent.
My question is, if one should stack Armor Pen oder Haste. As 3.1 hit the ground, one would only again use Steady Shot, if everything else was on CD. The Glyphs are now reducing your CD on Chimera and Aimed, which reduces the number of SS-es used on fights even more. So stacking haste to reach 1,5 Steadys is pretty useless amiright? But ArP also seems to be pretty weak as it is, since Arcane and Chimera are both magic based damage, as well as the procc of Wild Quiver.
So what is the one we should use after Hit AP and crit?
As far as I’ve seen with Ulduar loot, the pieces either have Crit, or they have Armor Pen and Haste. Since Armor Pen and Haste generally are coming standard, there really is no choosing between the two.
However, you’re right – both Haste and ArPen are pretty weak, but I would suggest taking Armor Pen over Haste if you ever actually do find the chance. However, I’m going to be prioritizing Crit over ArPen/Haste, which may be messy in Ulduar.
It’s not… quite exactly the way you put it. It’s more close to this:
Chimera crits for 8000
1s: 300
2s: 300
Aimed crits for 5000
3s: 412.5
4s: 412.5
…
10s: 412.5
The reason is that the damage from the last bleed is averaged in to the new bleed, not “rolled” like you map it out. In the above example I gave, the Chimera bleed bled for 2 seconds, leaving 1800 left. The Aimed’s bleed is 1500, so 1500 + 1800 = 3300 / 8 = 412.5 per second. 🙂
Hmm, everything I’ve read thus far has claimed that it stacks. Where did you hear that it combines and then divides?
Thanks Nass. Yours was the most easily understood breakdown of this talent since it went live. I don’t know if it stacks or combines, but from what I have read I thought that it combined like Rilgon stated. I’ve never understood the combining completely though until you broke down the stacking visually for me. After reading this and Rilgon’s comment, now I understand how the combining works. Either way, stack or combine, I like it!
And if none of that made sense, I blame it on the toxic fumes floating around my clinic. They re-paved the parking lot over the weekend and it smells like it!
My own math said it merges and re-divides. 😛 I’ll have to do a more in-depth post for you at SES.
Either way it works, no damage is ever lost, though.
Sweet, lemme know when it’s up.
I’d expect it to merge and redivide, since all the other, similar, talents do. Ignite on Mages, Deep Wounds on Warriors, and Righteous Vengeance on Paladins. Not that it really matters; it’s extra damage on crit and it all goes on the target eventually, assuming you have a miss streak and it doesn’t die first.