Weekly Skill Overview (Aimed Shot)

Aimed Shot

Without question Aimed Shot is a purely confusing tooltip. It's the kind of instruction manual you would expect from, say, a race of people that irradiated their entire homeland, forcing them to freeload off a great and overly kind nation. The misunderstanding of Aimed Shot is also one of the most fervently argued. Here's what the tooltip says:

An aimed shot that increases ranged damage by 408 and reduces healing done to that target by 50%. Lasts 10 sec.

Once again we have an ability with two separate effects. What trips most hunters up -- and understandably, I think -- is the wording of the damage increase. Many hunters read this to mean that Aimed Shot will increase the damage of all their ranged attacks by 408 for the entire 10 seconds of the debuff. It does not!

The damage increase only refers to the single Aimed Shot damage itself, and nothing else. In other words it's firing a shot that does normal damage plus 408. The 10 seconds refers only to the healing debuff and nothing else. This is easy enough to test, it just takes a lot of time and ammo. Sit at a target dummy with no one else there and fire 1,000 auto shots (with no proc gear on). Note the average hit and crit damage. Now do the same thing but keep Aimed Shot up the entire time. You'll see no statistically significant change in your average shot damage.

Aimed Shot is still a great shot for all specs, and an essential one for MM. It's an instant shot that can be cast on the move, and it's boosted by many other talents, including Sniper Training, Piercing Shots, and Marked for Death among them. But Aimed Shot is not increasing the damage of your other shots.