Viper Sting/Insect Swarm debuff

Hello all. First post here, though I've used this wonderful resource many times.

I'm hoping you can help me out with a disagreement I am having with another player. He claims that there is some sort of diminishing return on the to-hit debuff provided by these abilities against against +level mobs, and is hence next to worthless on bosses. This goes against everything I've ever heard. I even remember some paladins counting on it when calculating their uncrushable stats in BC.

Assuming I am correct, and these abilities work against bosses as the tooltip would have you believe, are there any guilds that still strive to maintain this debuff on progression fights, or is it felt that the dps loss is not worth the amount of survivability gained?

Thank you for your time.

1) I think you mean Scorpid Sting, Viper is the mana drain.
2) Your guildy is wrong, it does what it says on the can. It is not affected by DR by any means.

Yes, I meant scorpid of course. Thank you for the input.

He just doesn't want to apply it so he comes up with some reasoning for why not.

Actually, ther person in question isn't in my guild, or one of the classes at question, but it did come up in a thread on whether a boomkin should glyph IS or not.

Still curious if there are many guilds that ensure this debuff is used on progression still.

due to both Moonkin and Hunter's high reliance on Insect Swarm dmg and Serpent sting dmg this debuff is usually ignored. from what I have seen at least

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Blasterion

due to both Moonkin and Hunter's high reliance on Insect Swarm dmg and Serpent sting dmg this debuff is usually ignored. from what I have seen at least

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IS is about 10% total damage of our druids without Glyph. So at most this is a 3% increase. (Compared to not glyphing anything at all)

Serpent Sting for a Surv Hunter is about 6-7% + TnT procs + 3% flat out dmg if talented.
Serpent Sting for an MM hunter is about 15% total damage.

I don't think you need a Master in applied mathematics to figure out Boomkins don't (or shouldn't) glyph Insect Swarm in favor of a pretty large tanking debuff.

It's been said, but I can offer something more.

1.) the 3% miss buff is not at all subject to diminishing returns, nor does it trigger any reduction in value of the miss stat the tank already has. This gets the same treatment as +dodge/parry from talents, it's completely ignored in the equation.

2.) That 3% miss is a very valuable survival buff to tanks, if you don't have it, your tank is not going to be his heartiest.

3.) the IS glyph for Boomkin is a luxury that should only be used when the debuff is already definitely accounted for, and even then, unless you're trying to min/max the heck out of your dps, it's probably worth it to have back-ups in case the main applicator dies, or the buff falls off (or sometimes when you have two major enemies in an encounter).

4.) Hunters do *not* usually get much value from Scorpid Sting, particularly not Marks Hunters which is a very popular spec. Usually it only accounts for a small loss in dps, and for Marks Hunters it can be a little more severe (see: Chimera Shot). Usually, my team prefers to have a Boomkin responsible for the buff when we can. (Also, see WarTotem's above)

Also, you get a little bit of opportunity by the fact that in order to bring the debuff, a boomkin has to NOT glyph, thus opening up another glyph slot.

Granted there isn't much to choose from, but its another little detail favoring the boomkin bringing the debuff.

It would have to be a metric ton of lost DPS to not be worth giving the tank 3% extra chance to be missed at the push of a button anyway, and it isn't.

Scorpid Sting is useless to a Hunter's rotation. The two dps spec are Survivial and Marksmanship and Scorpid Sting is basically never disucssed. Not even for FC where Wyvern Sting, Aimed Shot, Concussive Shot all find their uses. Aimed Shot is acutally in both rotations, but on FC it becomes priority #1 because of the healing debuff.