Make Hemmoraging Blast and Sanguinary Shot apply the dots to both Sharp Bomb and Vital Shot, as well as their existing effects.

 

When either ability is on cooldown dots can be applied as they are today. Any additional affects would require the use of the primary ability, ie the slow on sharp bomb still requires using sharp bomb.

 

This would have little change to overall DPS, but just make dot application more fun by giving options. It would also lower ramp up time, making the specs more viable in PvP.

Actually, it would dramatically change the spec and improve sustained DPS:

a) dot application energy would go from 25 energy to 0

b) it frees up 2 additional GCDs per rotation: 1 speed shot or 2 dirty blasts or whatever - all huge dps gains

 

but yes it would improve burst... a lot

 

~Lunagazer

Good points. I'm not a PvEer, would that make the class too strong from a DPS perspective. For PvP I think the change would bring the specs closer to the others.

A change like that wouldn't really be viable for pve as it would probably grossly overpower the dps potential of the specs. In pvp there are probably better solutions to lack of burst. If you wanted something such as this to benefit burst you'd probably need to look to nerf something to offset the drastic gain in sustained dps.

I wasn't really thinking about increasing burst, just improving dot application and making it a bit more fun. I get what you're saying in pve, but the additional cooldown would only come once every 12 seconds and if it's used for speed shot the channel is actually longer than the gcd, so you'd really only get one additional ability. Would an extra speed shot every 12 seconds be that game breaking?

I wasn't really thinking about increasing burst, just improving dot application and making it a bit more fun. I get what you're saying in pve, but the additional cooldown would only come once every 12 seconds and if it's used for speed shot the channel is actually longer than the gcd, so you'd really only get one additional ability. Would an extra speed shot every 12 seconds be that game breaking?

 

Using one of my parses and expected damage averages of the additional fillers I very roughly calculated virulence sniper would go up to around 7500+ with a change like this (I did not factor in the fact that lingering dots would never occur in the parse either which would be an even bigger boost), bringing it to the top of the leaderboards. It's already a very good pve spec, no need to make it stronger.

You'd basically mix the best parts of both the 2 and 3 wounding shot rotations... Now if only they increased the radius of the shrap bomb explosion or made it a ground target aoe to make it easier to dotspread (you know, like balance and vigilance...) Edited March 3, 2016 by ThomasCool

So possibly lowering the damage of dirty blast to account for the extra speed shot in the rotation could level off any dps increase. I'd be willing to take that for faster more engaging dot application.

 

Any thoughts on how this could impact Ruffian dps, again I only PvP with one so couldn't say if this change would break the class for pve.

no. If you lower the damage of dirty blast... DF would be getting a replacer ability that's WORSE! than it's baseline ability it's replacing (charged burst).

Such a drastic change in the rotation is very difficult to do and would require pretty much a full rebalancing.

It would also pretty much make a dot spec a normal burst spec (as you would never need to manage anything)

T.