[1.2.381] The Wind

I think a significant buff to Pierce would be to roll Dragon Pulse's push effect into the Pierce attack. This reduces the crapload of SP that Marksmen need to be good and can give MM another passive that puts it on edge with Bowmasters. It also solidifies MM in dealing with heavy amounts of mobs. Then you could do Pierce --> Blizzard --> Ulti Strafe --> Ulti Strafe... Instead of Pierce --> Pulse --> Blizzard --> Ulti Strafe --> Ulti Strafe

In thinking about it, Snipe has no use within the MM arsenal of skills. Their skillset heavily leans to dealing with groups of mobs, so why is Snipe even there? So they can do okay 1v1 damage every 5 seconds? Snipe would have far more use and make more sense with Bowmasters.

Disclaimer: Never played a bowman.

A huge problem with Pierce is the charge time. I feel if it just had a really long delay like Buccaneer skills, and you could fill the space with another skill, it would be perfect. No one uses Pierce without charging it. Or if they do, they're doing it wrong, seeing as Iron Arrow is better, and it scales better as you charge it so the only reason you wouldn't is due to overkill.
Instead of charging for 840ms (~current time) and then spending another 720ms (boostered) to fire, it should shoot at 810ms standard (speed before booster, what it is now), but then have another 810ms (boosterable) before being able to use it again, making it effectively spam at 1620ms, and you would naturally fill the gap with Blizzard or Dragon Pulse. i.e. 810ms Pierce + 810ms Dragon Breath instead of 810ms Pierce and waiting for another 810ms delay to use Pierce again. With this, they could either decrease the damage, or remove/change the increased damage effect to balance it, since charging is pretty stupid.
You waste a lot of potential DPS charging. Ask an Arch Mage (if an Arch Mage feels Big Bang is useful time spent charging, they shouldn't =[ ). They lose out on being able to Telecast it, which without charge actually comes close to matching its fully charged DPS, and has less room for error (read: overcharging).

With the way Pierce works now, you would freeze if necessary, Dragon Pulse, then charge up Pierce. Anything that survives would be Dragon Pulsed forward to get a larger mob, and then Pierced again to efficiency make use of its charge and damage, as opposed to Piercing twice on one cluster half of which just died, if possible. Otherwise, it's for a large burst DPS where you charge it while moving around/climbing/falling to do a big burst when you find something to kill. I very much dislike this methodology since the charging wastes time, and burst has little sustainability compared to something like Ultimate Inferno, but they improved it so that you don't have to wait another 7 levels to get 6 mob Dragon Breath in 4th job. It's still a bad model since you lose a lot of DPS Dragon Breath-ing and over charging. Maybe adding a passive to Pierce to improve Dragon Pulse like how Boomerang Step works, but it still doesn't address the charge problem.


Another interesting thing they added which I found to be very thoughtful was the 1 second buff of Evasion Boost (Dodge). When a monster misses on you, for 1 second, all your attacks have 100% critical. This means that instead of 1 Arrow from Hurricane being 100% critical, all shots for the whole second are guaranteed, and Ultimate Strafe gets two shots (12 arrows) that are 100% critical since you can shoot twice in one second. (720ms for the first shot, and then the second shot starts before the buff wears off, therefore giving it the effect). This helps Bow Masters more than Marksmen (8~9 Hurricane Arrows and the average AFA, 3110~3330% vs 12 Ultimate Strafe Arrows and the average FA 2880%), but the previous Evasion Boost was laughably useless, especially for Bow Masters.