Kheldul Should Be Glowing Red

Late the other night, I went in and did the unthinkable.  I nuked my secondary (Marksman) talents.  It was late and I had actually meant to nuke my primary (Survival) talents.  So following that mistake I went in and decided to make Marksman my "primary" talent choice.  That was neat.  After doing that I [thankfully] realized I had to re-glyph out of SV and into MM glyphs.  But why did I start all this?

I decided to almost drop Survival.  I made my secondary talents into a PvP spec.  It's focused around my normal Marksman talents and abilities.  I also keep all the same types of keys, but the macros under then are a little different.  I pulled a little out of the stand-and-shoot type stuff and more into mobility.  A little bit less DPS and a little more bells and whistles.  And a silly surprise.

Okay, I like PVP.  I've never had a PVP talent spec before.  This was kinda fun.  And the talents are fun.  And I can and do fire off three Arcane Shots in a row with my silly surprise.  But seriously, this is not why I started all this.

I started all this because of gear.  I got one upgrade and it made me shift at least five pieces of gear around for my primary Marksman DPS set.  If/when I get the 5th Sanctified piece, I'll trade in my 264 ArmPen shoulders for it, trade out my Sanctified pants for the ArmPen pants and call it a day.  Anyway, the main reason I got rid of Survival is that I re-gemmed all my gear to ArmPen.  Previously, I had half a set of ArmPen-Marksman-only gear and a full set of Agility-Survival gear.  Well, I said "fuck it" and re-gemmed half of the Survival gear's Agility with ArmPen.  That left Survival with a DPS loss (on top of it being behind) and we can't have that now can we?

I have twenty-two Armor Pen gems in my gear.  Hell, I even swapped out Zod's with the bone bow so I could slap in a gem and pick up a tiny hit. I should be glowing red.

PS: 0/53/18 is a nutty PvP spec.  I do love to trap dance though. And I never had Entrapment before!

PPS: I previous dragged around my previous Marksman set, my Marksman-sting-rolling set (T9x2), my Survival set, my PvP set, my Pet Tanking threat set, and my Pet Tanking stamina set.  I even toted around some of my toys and costumes.  I only left my frost-resist set from the Naxx days in my vault.  This talent change means I can vault the sting set and survival set.  While they weren't complete standalone sets, it's a fair amount that I can stop needing to consider.  Reducing complexity is very very nice.

On The Road To Being a Marksman - Part 13 - Loot Combinatorial Headaches Cause Mistakes

I did everything I said I would in my previous post. It involved buying a T9.5 and a T10.5, downshifting two use T9.5x2 and shuffling over to use different T10.5x2. It required gems and re-gemming. It required a chest enchant. It required me shooting out to Ebon Hold for the helm enchant. It required me to go to IF to respec. It required me to reset all my macros in the UI. I had to deal with addon issues from the patch. I tried some target dummy stuff. I made another Outfitter gear set. I did all this an hour before the raid.

But I made a mistake. I had been using the DPS calculator which also helpfully shows your hit rating and percentage. I wrongly thought it didn't include my Draenei buff. But it looks like it did take that into account.

I loaded a full +3% from talents. I snagged a Draenei in group for a +1%. But my "DPS-MM-Sting" gear set only had +3% hit. 3 + 3 + 1 = 7. We need 8. I'm looking at this after loading up on some new arrows and thinking about how I just regemmed everything. And then the raid started.

I got nervous and flipped to SV for the trash. I knew the sting set would suck for trash anyway. I flipped back to MM for Marrowgar and auto-equipped my new my sting gear set. I was second or third on damage done and had three missed auto shots. I didn't check the rest. One thing I learned though: it's difficult to roll your sting forward and still do a lot of immediate damage to people who are spiked. You kinda have to hold back a little.

So I was a little disappointed, but I kept at it. On Deathwhisper, I did my adds job. But again, I had to retain the Chimera just for the boss who I had a nice sting rolling on. Luckily the adds go down quickly so I didn't feel bad about the less-than-amazing damage I did on them. That said, I managed the #1 spot on damage for that fight.




For the Lootship Battle, I didn't take a cannon and I didn't just shoot from our deck. Instead I rocketed over and killed the mages. That was fun. But for that fight, I flipped gear (but not spec) to my previous MM-DPS gear set. No stings to really roll there...

For Saurfang, I went with the stings. It was reasonably easy to keep the nice sting refreshed and still kill my beast (and help with others). Again, I had to restrain myself and not completely unload on the beasts.

For Dreamwalker I went with an obvious non-sting set but again stayed with Marks. I probably should have flipped to SV for the better instants and traps, but no biggie.

We then hit the Princes. We don't have good combatlogs from the night because people were DC'ng quite often (thanks to the patch). That said, I think I went with stings for the Princes. We had FIVE hunters, so I didn't have any orb duties. I'm not sure if using crit-stings was a win or not on the fight. You end up targeting five different mobs in the fight or so.

We also hit VoA and cleared it looking for a mount drop. (No luck!) I stayed in my crit-sting gear and it was easy to keep it rolling throughout each fight there.

The crit-sting gear should be great for Rotface, and Festergut. I'm not sure about Putricide and his adds. I guess it depends on how many ranged we have and how fast they go down. There are also those two pauses where the sting can (will?) fall off.

That said, I think we're hitting Sindragosa tonight.

On The Road To Being a Marksman - Part 12 - Loot Combinatorial Headaches

I picked up a ToC Trophy on Thursday. I'm toying with the idea of doing T9.5 x2. It seems like the head and legs would be the way to go with the armor pen. I currently have the T9.5 hands, legs, and shoulders. I don't think I bled through all my emblems of triumph on gems this month, so I'll buy the head.

I also got a wonderful and fabulous class mark. It only cost me almost all my class DKP. So that puts me at three. I have the hands and pants. So I can trade out the pants for the only other real option, the chest.

This would put me at T9.5x2 and T10.5x2. I might only flip to this when I'm doing a stand-and-shoot boss that I can reliably keep stings rolling on.

By the same logic, I probably should flip to SV for all other fights. Hrmmm.

The T9.5x2 and T10.5x2 bonuses sound great and all, but the chest kinda sucks compared with the BoE one and the badge one. And the logsplitters are crying for a fitting. Either of those choices would break my T10.5 set though. :-/ Oh, and my +hit takes a nose-dive so I end up needing to trade in some +mana and/or +dmg talents for focused aim. So... more shuffling.

On The Road To Being a Marksman - Part 11 - New Gear and Enlightenment

Last night I had a free night and ran with our guild ICC-10. It isn't a completely consistent group. Some "ten man nights" there aren't 10. Other nights there are plenty of people to choose from. I've only run with the guild in ICC-10 three or four times. The two most recent runs were last night and at the end of April when we first nailed the Lich King to the floor. Last night we had a bunch of people new to heroic 10man versions. Myself being one of them.

In a little less than three hours we killed Marrowgar, Deathwhisper, Lootship, Deathbringer Saurfang, Festergut, and Rotface. There wasn't too much to learn and honestly Marrowgar seemed the most difficult. Perhaps it was most difficult because our ten man had two hunters (neither of us had done the heroics) and Marrowgar's melee hitbox is ridiculously large.

I had to swap to Survival on Saurfang so we'd have enough replenishment for the spam healers. It was just us two hunters. (We also had no locks so we couldn't use the pally DI-and-soulstone-back approach.)

It was a lot of fun learning some challenging fights. I also came away with two new pieces of gear from the night. I thought that the Pauldrons of Lost Hope should replace my Dual-Bladed Pauldrons without question at least for Marksman use. I also thought that Saurfang's Cold-Forged Band would find an easy home with my Marksman gear. I was in error. All the numbers showed equipping these as a DPS loss. And regardless of how I gemmed them.

My enlightenment came from re-reading some of my previous posts. I decided to use Zeherah's Hunter DPS Analyzer to change my shot rotation and remove Arcane Shot. This let everything click into place:

• Don't use Arcane Shots for stand and shoot bosses for a DPS profit.
• Pull out the talents from the now less-used Improved Arcane and since I'm [amazingly] still above the hit cap dump them into either being the Hunter's Mark bitch or full bore steady shot which I'll now be spamming a bit more.
  
• HM on a personal basis is a +100 DPS win. I'll pull the other hunters along too of course. ;-)
• Full improved steady shot and rapid recuperation would help about the same with damage, but would work on adds. I may just split the difference a bit.
  
• We usually can rely on having a space goat so I am okay at 7% hit. But I will need to dip into the +hit talents with another gear swap.
• My Outfitter gear addon now auto-swaps gear sets for my primary and secondary talent tree swaps.
  
• I now do marginally better with armor pen gems now than with agility gems which is a first. I'll stay with agility gems in shared gear but move to armor pen gems in strictly Marksman gear. If I re-gemmed everything to armor pen I would get only about a 70 DPS gain. I would also hurt my Survival side. I may need to run SV for ten-mans in the future.
  

Any Other Hunters Have This Problem?

I've said before, there is really only one piece of gear I would like from any 5-man. It's the Needle-Encrusted Scorpion. Well, it did drop yesterday in a 5man daily random PUG. Something interesting happened. Not one, or two people also rolled Need. Nope. Everyone did. The tank, the healer, and the other two dps.

Evidently, this is something that is happening everywhere now. I've just lead a sheltered life I guess.

Strangely, in the same run (and same boss loot) everyone rolled Greed on the orb.

So what does this mean?

I pulled over 6k dps on the run. The second was around 2.3k dps. So it's quite possible the dps needed it somehow. The tank was a Warrior. The other DPS were a DK and a Ret Pally. The healer was a Druid. Was I just extremely unlucky? Or is everyone rolling Need on stuff they don't need? Can DKs, Warriors, Rets, and Cats actually make good use of it?

DPS Hunter Talent Specs for Patch 3.2

Updated for 3.3 here.

DPS Hunter talent specs didn't change much in patch 3.2. They did refund our points on Thursday. This is not because of almost-significant changes to the BM tree (Animal Handler and Catlike Reflexes). It is because they accidentally allowed Hunters to take an extra talent point somehow.

So for the round up, here are the recommended hunter DPS specs:

Survival Talent Spec: 0/15/56
Wolf Talent Spec: 16 pts.
Glyphs: Explosive Shot, Kill Shot, Serpent Sting
Note: Aimed Shot available as another instant shot.

Marksman Armor Pen Talent Spec: 7/57/7
Wolf Talent Spec: 16 pts.
Glyphs: Serpent Sting, Chimera Shot, and then either Hawk, Steady Shot, or Kill Shot
Note: You don't fire Arcane Shots. Really. You want Armor Pen 600-800 depending on your ArmorPen-proc'ng trinket.

Beastmaster DPS Talent Spec: 53/18/0
Wolf Talent Spec: 20 pts.
Glyphs: Serpent Sting, Steady Shot, Bestial Wrath
Note: Yes, fire Arcane every uptime. Fire Aimed only when you have to miss a Steady.

There are variations on MM for a non-ArmorPen build and BM for 4 points in Improved Tracking. These are simply the leading hunter talent builds.

If you were looking for your hunter pet-tanking talent builds, the posts made during 3.1 are all geared for 3.2. Hunter talents and glyphs. Pet talent builds.

Armor Penetration

One of the juiciest GC posts I've seen. But then, I'm a numbers guy. I'm copying it here in case they decide they shared too much.

Okay, here is a fairly technical explanation we put together for how armor pen works.

We didn’t want Armor Penetration Rating to be too powerful against low armor targets, like it had been in BC. We also didn’t want Armor Penetration Rating to be too powerful against high armor targets.

So, we decided on a system where there is a cap on how much armor the Armor Penetration Rating can be applied to. So, the first X armor on the target is reduced by the percentage listed in the Armor Penetration Rating tooltip, and all armor past that X is unaffected. Another way of understanding that is we multiply the percentage in the tooltip times the minimum of the two values: the cap, and the amount of armor on the target after all other modifiers.

Computing the cap is a little tricky unless you are already familiar with how World of Warcraft armor works. There is an armor constant we’ll call C. C is derived as follows (in some pseudocode):

If (level<60)
C=400+85*targetlevel
Else
C=400+85*targetlevel+4.5*85*(targetlevel-59);

For a level 80 target, C=15232.5. For a level 83, C=16635.

The cap for Armor Penetration then is: (armor + C)/3.

A level 80 warrior creature has 9729 armor. C=15232.5. So, the cap is (9729+15232.5)/3=8320.5. Let’s say a player has 30% armor penetration from armor penetration rating and no other modifiers that complicate the calculation (talents, Battle Stance, Sunder Armor, etc.). The game chooses the minimum of 8320.5 and 9729, so 8320.5. That is multiplied by 30% = 2496.15, and so that much armor is ignored. The effective armor on the target is 7232.85 (9729-2496.15). From a player point of view, the armor penetration rating didn’t ignore the full 30%, but instead ignored 25.66%. (85.5% as effective as expected).

These equations should help you be able to test and verify that Armor Penetration Rating is working correctly and as we designed. The tooltip is not actually inaccurate, as it states: “Enemy armor reduced by up to 30.00%.” That "up to" is key.

Please be sure to test without any other effects which modify the armor calculation (Battle Stance, Sunder Armor, Mace Specialization, etc.) as they may involve other systems that add additional complexity to the calculation.