Weekly Skill Overview (Noxious Stings)

Noxious Stings

The confusion with Noxious Stings over in the Survival talent tree lies in the fact that it has two unrelated effects, and many hunters mistakenly believe the two effects are the same. Here's what the tooltip says:

If Wyvern Sting is dispelled, the dispeller is also afflicted by Wyvern Sting lasting 50% of the duration remaining, and increases all damage done by you on targets afflicted by your Serpent Sting by 3%.

From a raid DPS perspective, we don't care about Wyvern Sting at all. We're shooting the boss, and as raid CC goes, Wyvern Sting is a horrible one. The important thing to note is the second effect of this talent, which has nothing to do with Wyvern Sting.

Ignore everything before the "and" in the tooltip. Everything after that conjunction is a separate ability. As long as we have Serpent Sting on our target, all damage we do is increased by 3% (with all three ranks of the talent). You don't ever need to fire Wyvern Sting to benefit from that effect. You only need Serpent Sting on your target -- which we're keeping up anyway -- and all the rest of your damage is boosted by 3%. That's why every SV hunter has that talent!