Steady Shot

The cast time of Steady Shot is indeed 1.5 seconds, not 2 seconds.

This has been addressed on the official Forums in this threat from February 2011:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2112373390?page=4

This is also good time to clear up some of the confusion about hunter shot cast times. Essentially, ranged attacks in World of Warcraft have always had a built in 0.5 second delay to their cast time. Since this does not apply to instant attacks, for hunters it only really applies to Aimed Shot, Steady Shot and Cobra Shot. Prior to the 4.0.6 changes, Aimed Shot was listed with a 3.0 cast time, but due to the delay, in reality it had a cast time that amounted to 3.5 seconds. Now that it is listed at 2.4 seconds, the actual cast time is now closer to 2.9, which is where we want it to be. We realize this caused some confusion (even for us), and we’re going to see if we can make the 0.5 second delay more visible in the future.

Hope that explains it. :)

Do you continue to Auto Shoot while casting Steady Shot? If not, is there a best way to time Steady Shot between Auto Shots?

It's rather odd, I'm playing a beastmaster hunter, and when i trigger Focus Fire (5 charges) together with Rapid Fire I have ~70% ranged haste, this includes my basic haste from rating.

Yet somehow my cobra shot is still at 1.16 sec cast time, while standard it's 1.89. it should be alot more, can someone explain how this is calculated, it's extremely foggy and not explained anywhere in WoW at all. (This has been a problem for blizzard ever since Diablo, actually, never explaining their rating systems.)

Ammo has no affect on Steady Shot damage. Fact.

Steady Shot does not break Auto Shoot. Thus you do not need to time it, feel free to spam it !

1st Macro:
/cast Hunter's Mark(Rank #)
/PetAttack

2nd Macro:
/castsequence reset=combat/target Serpent Sting(Rank #), Arcane Shot(Rank #), Arcane Shot(Rank #), Arcane Shot(Rank #)

3rd Macro:
/castsequence reset=combat/target Concussive Shot, Steady Shot(Rank #)

Hints for Optimizing your action bar: Put the Mark/Pet Attack Macro in slot 0, and put the Shoot Macro in slot 9. Then link the scroll down button on your mouse to slot 0, and the scroll up to slot 9. Put the Concussive Shot Macro in slot - and put your Frost Trap in slot =. Then link shift + mouse scroll up to -, and shift + scroll down to =.

Presto, your most useful spells in the most useful place, and you have freed up slots 1-8 for Raptor Strike, Mongoose Bite, Multishot, etc.

This is a great spell.

My optimum damage (after long tests) come from this sequence:

Arcane / white / aimed / steady / white / arcane...

Trying to use concussive shot wastes mana and breaks the rythm.

OF COURSE, I'm talking about PvE DPS here.

Use this for Steady shot, and dont use multi+arcane it lowers your dps. 2 hunters in our guild is doing it like this spamming this macro + their buffs (rapid fire and beast withing for bm hunters) and useable trinkets and they are top on the dmg meter

/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot, Auto Shot
/cast [exists,target=pettarget] Kill Command
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

Believe me i have been both survival and MM - this is the way to do it.. multi and arcane have to much cooldown and too little dps compared to mana cost

This skill only costs 99 mana with efficiency (marksmanship talent) rank 5

There was a time when Steady Shot was released that you couldn't Auto Shoot while casting Steady Shot. This meant you had to time Steady Shot inbetween Auto Shots. And this is because hunters used to be called "Macro Class", by some silly people back in the days. The macro was like this. (Note: This is no longer true, this post is merely for flavor, and some steady shot history.) /castsequence reset=3 Steady Shot, Auto Shot Which basically made Auto Shot and Steady Shot cast at the same time, so they were on the same sequence. Basically Hunters were spamming this macro, p

Steady Shot actually is only available for Marksmanship [class=3],

for Beast Mastery, Survival [class=3], Cobra Shot replaces Steady Shot.

As Muratsuki stated below, this is only true as of Level 81. Until then, all specs have Steady shot which you get at level 3.

To solve the issue since 5.1 where steady shot starts your auto-attack at the beginning of it's cast instead of the end, you can use the following macro:

/cast steady shot
/stopattack

Or you can use:

/cast steady shot
/stopattack [mod]

If you only want to suppress it while holding a modifier key down (so you still keep your autoattack damage while using it regularly).

It would seem this spell is making a comeback after being removed in Legion pre-patch. Would be great to have it back, seeing how spamming Arcane Shot to generate focus is not really satisfying.

Ummm... What is your reasoning behind having aimed shot in your rotation? It resets the shot timer now which still leaves a gap between your steady shot and the next autoshot. The rotation I have is like this: Arcane Multi Steady until Arcane cooldown Repeat This is for Instance PvE DPS. Grinding is different as you want to stop and drink as rarely as possible. I only use Aimed for breaking Freezing Traps when I want the mob's aggro, or in PvP. It is also useful for a burst of aggro when using Misdirection.

having high crit you can crit with all 3 arrows with multishot which is over 5K damage out of an instant cast... Please tell me how I can get 5K damage out of a 1.5s cast Steady Shot and an Autoshot... Arcane Shot and Multishot are both basically free shots in between Steady Shot and Autoshot for MM because of the slow bow speed. All you use up is mana which can be regained by aspect of the viper.

Isnt steady shot just a 1,5 sec cast shot without Global Cooldown, while abilities like arcane shot is instant and triggers a global cooldown?

...which is why that Legendary bow that makes its own ammo and has the ammo DPS built into its weapon damage is so awesome.

Really? Good, and with aimed shot being instant cast, I guess hunters don't really have to worry about getting slow attack speed bows/guns.

Many people think of haste as a reduction. It is really a bonus. Say you have 15% haste. Instead of casting cobra shot in 85% of the time, you could cast 1.15 cobra shots.

Thanks for this. I picked my hunter back up at 80, so came here to make sure it was the sub for steady shot when she leveled and got the ability, but I hadn't noticed that the ability had disappeared entirely!

Since prepatch for Shadowlands this change now happens at level 14

arcane shot and multi means you will go OOM alot faster regardless of mana reduction talents. still since MM doesnt have serpents swiftness BM is the way to go when it comes to dps.

this skill will seriously improve your dps but with a few drwabacks
1.the damage is physical so armor affects it
2.if your weapon is too fast this will not fit into rotation
so for me this doesnt come close to arcane because arcane is arcane damage(little protection from) and its instant...just depends on your style and weapon
nice skill though ^^

Remember! You get an extra 175 damage against dazed targets. Fury Warriors spamming piercing howl get the added benefit of heroic strike, it should be no different with hunters. Use Concussive Shot whenever the CD is off; if you have Rapid Fire on, you can get two Steady Shots off before that 4 sec is up. If you don't, immediately begin casting Steady Shot while CS is travelling to its target.

on a pvp stand point AS(arc shot in this case) could be as effective as long as you have AoV, the reason i say AS could be effective is you can shoot it on the run so you can shoot, run up WC, then jump over them and start hammering away again, while ur pet is still attacking, this comes especially handy when fighting squishes like mages/locks and they cant hit u which helps, though this move can be an ace in the hole if some1 immoblizes you and for some reason is in your firing range

Does anyone know whether Steady Shot is increased by your arrow DPS? I've been debating other hunters about this, and it seems there are conflicting views. From my own tests it appears it isn't affected, but others insist it is. Anyone know for sure?

Don't rate this guy down, it's true though, the difference in DPS for the Star's Fury seems insignificant because you think adding ammo overrides the damage difference, but steadyshot damage will be much greater with that bow.

I have a question, for example, i have Sunfury Bow of The Phoenix , for a steady shot attack, the base damage would 169 - 314 Damage ¿?

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28772

Yes, then it adds your AP at the end. Weapon damage is also affected by scopes, so keep in mind that a scope should affect your main shot rotation as well.

well, i was reading wowwiki and i noticed it said steady shots cast time was affected by ammo pouches and serpent's swiftness, but then you had to had .5 and .2 seconds to it so the actual cast time of SS should be 1.787 with no haste. so the optimal weapon speed should be 2.466.

I've found that auto shot is great to spam with steady shot. A good spam macro would be

#showtooltip Auto Shot
/cast !Auto Shot
/cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill command
/cast Steady Shot
/script UIErrorFrame:Clear()

basically it casts steady shot whenever it's ready and auto shoots the rest of the time while making the error messages invisible for just this macro. once you get kill command it casts that whenever its up. personally i add trinkets in there

/userandom trinket,trinket works great, you can put it anywhere between showtooltip and the script line it basically uses your trinkets whever they are up. also if you beastmastery u can add

/castrandom Bestial Wrath,class skill. always remember to put the EXACT name of the trinket or spell or else it won't work. Hope this helps.

Edit:steady shot and auto shot by themselves with aspect of the viper and no other spells can give you an endless grind with no downtime. Although adding kill command isn't a bad thing. the original macro is set as such.
-Josa

Take a look at the tool tip again all

A steady shot that causes unmodified weapon damage, plus ammo, plus [RAP * 0.2 + 120]
It now scales with attack power too.

how does it affect steady auto macros with serpent swiftness now thats its 2secs?

Just ran some 25 man naxx last night and all 3 of our hunters were on top of the meters. Our top dpser by a very small number (less than 1000 damage) was a MM hunter. After crunching the numbers of what the MM dps would be after the nerf, the MM hunter would still be well in the lead for damage. The nerfs to BM are major, but this one isn't so bad that you'll drop from 1st to 5th or worse.

is it practical 2 use this in PvE? (sry im a lvl 52 hunter noob) and wondering if i should use this while lvling, it definately does increase my dps but it costs alot of mana by the end of the fight

if any1 can help it would b greatly appreciated

In cata. this spell with regenerate your focas, (12 per second, rather than 6.)

Why do i see downrate,this is a fact. If you down rate, then reply to this.

I hope they fix this move, I waited a while to get it, and when i got it, it was depressing to see it do less damage then my auto shot

Cast time from 1.5 to 1.6 to 1.94, nerf, nerf and more nerf. Ok, I want to flame about many abilities that have been nerfed on my hunter because it's been frustrating being a BM hunter since WOTLK.

Cobra Shot however seems to replace steady shot all together, and the cast time says 1.5 seconds, if that is true your rotation (with the right haste) can hit that sweet spot again. Thanks blizzard, thanks for fixing what has been broken for a long time, "steady shot"... now "Cobra Shot".
I hope we see more of the world evening out in PVP and PVE.

About Steady shot being affected by haste, yes it does.
Your global cooldown doesnt..
So if u have a weapon thats fast, then u will clip autoshots if u try to put anything into the shot rotation other then steady shot. So dont get a weapon thats faster then 1.8 or something once all haste is proced.. from there on it gets hard with lag and all no to clip autos.

Currently no reason to use higher than rank 1, because the increase in mana use is terrible compared to how much more damage it adds... spamming potions is NOT an option in WOTLK due to potion sickness, so you'll have to find ways to keep your mana bar full without hurting your DPS too much... and down ranking is definitely one of them (Perhaps they'll fix the mana cost once enough hunters do it).

from 10% RAP... to 2.1% RAP... all because pro hunters smashing the dps charts against the 20+k per spell casters?

of course, you have to learn Cobra Shot first then replaces Steady Shot, and tooltip of Cobra Shot clearly shows it's lvl 81 right? also for WoW, the game just beginning when you reach full lvl.