Blizz is talking about nerfing armor pen, and frankly, I’ve been expecting it for a while. The kind of radical ArP stacking that was needed and the results just aren’t in line with the way Blizz wants things to work.
The nerf to armor pen in 3.2.2 is intentional. Compared to the recent buff where we increased the value of armor rating to 125%, this nerf would take it back down to 110%. While we are still evaluating the effects of this change in the 3.2.2 build, we did want to let you know of the possibility in case you were about to spend a lot on armor pen gems.
In fact, this was really the point. Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with.
So hopefully this will bring Armor Pen back into being a more normal stat for us. Still useful, but not something that we take over every thing else (but only if we can reach a certain threshold).
The big question has nothing to do with the armor pen build, but is instead will this change the tenuous balance between MM and SV as the top raid dps build at high gear levels. MM does in fact get slightly more of its dps from physical attacks than SV does. Several target dummy tests show MM getting 55-60% of dps from physical, compared to 45-48% dps from physical with SV.
Right now MM and SV are very close in dps (not counting armor pen builds) with MM in the lead at good gear levels. However the difference is small enough that this could very likely push SV over the edge.
One question that I think remains to be seen is the effect of the 2-piece T9 set bonus, which favors MM more than SV (though it may make Improved Stings a requirement for SV builds).
Well you know.. it IS good to see a chance because this was getting fairly ridiculous. Spending money on ArP gems and ArP pots.. just tryign to get as much as you could… it was just way too out of hand.
On the topic of SV possibly becoming better than SV… I think I’ll still be using MM on all boss fights. I do have the glyphs and talent points for hunters mark anyways so guildies love me in MM spec hehe. (Still use SV for Hodir of course)
Well you know.. it IS good to see a chance change*
i cant say im surprised about this either. i switched to the arp build and gemmed, didnt take improved arcane and removed it from my rotation… for the first time ever, i hit 6k in a 25m voa.
im gonna keep the build for the time being though. i love arcane shotless MM so bad.
i think it is sad that blizz finally reached a spot where hunter specs had equal dps (excluding BM) and now they r tearing it apart and everyone is gunna spec SV again
Well, not quite Andrew. If BM is behind, and it is, then they aren’t all equal specs. And MM definitely is above SV, especially with this armor pen bug. If anything, the nerf will re-equalize things. A mass exodus back to SV may happen, but certainly isn’t assured.
But beyond that, it’s doubtful that we’ll ever have 3 equal specs. Heck, having 2 viable raid specs (which we do right now) is more than hunters have historically been able to claim. Nerfs are never fun, but it’s still a good time to be a raiding hunter.
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Couldn’t care less about this particular nerf though. I ignored the armor pen. craze (too vague and gimmicky for me, even with info from various good theorycrafters), so I won’t need to change anything. I’m stuck in MM b/c our other raiding hunter is SV though, so I just hope it’s not cripplingly big.
If you look at the new gear and weapons that are available, like the ones from TOC, it does have Armor Penetration stats included. So I think this will influence in the way we hunters spec and what kind of weapon we will use in the future.
Hey, great stuff on this site.
i was just wondering if, when your doing your testing if you thought about launching your own private server to collect data?
if you do this, you can become a gm, you can grant yourself free, gear ammo, and even change your own sats around to test the affects of certain things,
its what i do when i want a certain build. or if a new update brings change and im unsure which stat to pursue.
it also saves me a hell of alot of waiting time at the practice dummies
i dont think its too crippling. if i understand the mathematic calisthenics correctly, all this does is raise the soft arp cap. ive seen numbers being thrown around, but i dont know how accurate they are. heres what i have heard:
3.2.0 Hard ArP Cap: 1232 RATING = 100.00%
3.2.0 Soft Cap with Grim Toll: 620 Rating.
———————
3.2.2 Hard ArP Cap: 1400 Rating = 100.00%
3.2.2 Soft Cap with Grim Toll: 788 Rating.
i also heard someone say something i thought was interesting, something along the lines of people ignored arp because no one understood it, and had someone not come along and did the math for us, we would probably still ignore it. not sure if any of this is accurate but its what im hearing. i need a few more pieces of ilvl245 gear to hit the soft cap for 3.2.2, so idk what im gonna do.
not meaning to double (or triple) post, i just realized my biggest problem with this arp stacking madness. i dont have the mjonner runestone, i have grim toll. without one of those proccing trinkets, gemming arp is pointless.
problem is, grim kills my hit rating, sending me sometimes to ~350. but i keep it because that proc is money, and my tests show its on a fairly consistent 50 sec cd, so when i can time it to occur within my rapid fire/ call of the wild CD, its nice.
in my experiment, i have 11 gem slots. 1 meta, 1 slot i use to fullfill blue and yellow meta gem requirements (i use the jagged zul, 10 crit 15 stam ), and 9 slots for arp, thats 180 arp 14.6%. that means i pass over 180 agil, ie 2% crit and 180 ap. i have to use a trinket whose passive ability is (currently) useless to me. maybe in the future it may have use if i upgrade something that knocks me under hit cap. if i had the runestone (which i doubt ill ever see), this wouldnt be an issue, but to experiment with the arp craze, i have to use a partially useless trinket. oy.
Thanks for the estimates quiv. I haven’t a clue how you guys got all your ArPen though. I have a couple 245′s, and nothing below 219 except for my trinkets, and I’m nowhere near either cap. Maybe I just haven’t checked my number in a while, since I plugged ArPen values into PAWN but don’t specifically try to gear/gem for it.
Well, the armor pen nerf will lower all hunter dps, of course (and melee as well). It will affect MM more than SV, but neither horribly.
I think SV really hurts in mobile fights because you end up with the periodic downtimes of sniper training. Both specs though need the shoot & scoot skillset – it’s just with more instants MM is better at it
Needing to be stationary to maximize Rapid Fire, which is a HUGE part of MM, hurts MM as well in mobile fights. Not to mention Wild Quiver being hurt by the lack of autos. I’m less and less convinced that MM really has a big advantage in mobile fights over SV, despite more powerful instants. It likely still does have the advantage, mind you, but the “omg, raids are constant movement” cries for MM should be tempered by this somewhat.
you mention T9, set bonus, are you assuming that the possible crits for serpent sting ticks will be worked out for chimera’s damage?
T-9 Set bonus are not going to effect Chimera Shot. It “should” only effect the Serpent Sting. Chimera is calculated off your specific base damage of Serpent Sting. I have no T9 yet to test this as of yet.
I can’t imagine that the T9 bonus would have any affect on chimera.
Arthemystia , you’ve got a good point here. But SV has the sniper training issue. Frost claims simply said MM is better as it has more instannts. That is however incorrect. The argument usually was that MM does better because it can control its burst better. Most fights have stable moments. As a MM you can decide when to use readiness and rapid fire during those 15 seconds windows. That is what makes MM also be better in many mobile fights.
The big issues with MM are mana in case no team mate will replenish you, BUT more importtant its dependence on sting and mark. If there is no sting andmark, the MM loses 8 talent points plus 40% of its CS. SV is much less dependent on this. These two are the true advantage of SV. The amount of instant shots is not so much an issue, as explosive shot is such a terrific fine shot it usually makes up for that.
Overall most hunters will see MM doing more damage at the same gearlevel. In addition, their TSA will help the raid dps more than the SV replenishment usually does. Of course if you got two hunters, the best is a mix. (Just need to educate SV hunter’s that the mark behaviour was changed in 3.1.3 and they should refrain from using their mark or any macro’s that have it when in a raid with a MM hunter.)
About whether ArP will hurt MM, I doubt it. You can simply check in the famous EJ sheet, by removing 14% (125/110) of your ArP by changing one gear-item with ArP bya custom one with the same stats except with its ArP lowered with your 14% less total points. In my case this is against a dummy 19 dps, so probably no more than 100 dps in even the most extreme 25 man cases.
I don’t see much difference between MM and SV as in both cases, it is just 40% to 50% of the total damage that is affected by it. SV has for its shots slightly less dependency on auto etc, but MM does usually more damage with its pet (depending on talents of course), which makes up for the greater dependency on Auto, AiS and Piercing Shots. But perhaps I’m wrong
The dps changeby the nerf is so small that it won’t matter except for the ArP build of MM.
Oh, I said MM loses 8 talent points plus 40% of CS shot. Of course that should be 11 … (3x HM, 3x sting, 5x marked for death)
Oh 2, T9 2pc bonus cannot affect CS damage. It is physically impossible to predict how many crits would occur in the future. CS is more important howver not depent on actual sting damage, but only on the theoretical (non crit) damage it would do if you’d leave the sting tick off. As Frost explained in an earlier postit is ‘fire and forget’.
I’m still 2 daillies (or a raid) away from getting the second item, but just like Frost, I may wait to get a 50 emblem piece.
I find it a really poor delaying tactic that will solve nothing. As its been said, all it will do is push up the amount of ArP needed to reach the soft cap. Given that people can already make the cap in current gear and this won’t take effect until Icecrown people will simply be delayed at reach it again until they have abit of Icecrown gear to make up the deficit. Lets say 4-5 resets?
If they’re going to try and resolve this, they should have just removed it from the game and bumped up other gear itemization points to cover for it. Anything else is a waste of time since they’re gonna remove it anyway, come Cataclysm.
A pointless fix by Blizzard who don’t seem to understand the issue of Armour Penertration.
Lucky my hunter went duel raid spec so i got SV and MM best of both worlds and my alt hunter is now the engineer, SV and BM tank . Im glad i never went to the armour pen madness looks like i have saved a small fortune there , i have been checking out the new gear looks like the tier 9 gear had less stats then the normal triumph gear however you dont get a set bonus . Like the shoulders for instance the tier set cost 30 emblems however the triumph vendor has higher stats on theres but there 50 emblems and no set bonus. This is making my decision hard is the set bonus worth losing the stats ?,and will the armour pen on the gear still be worth having or will the extra stats on the triumph gear out way the set bonus and the armour pen. Possible Serpent sting Cits has anyone tested this as my 8.5 gear has much better stats then the 9 it seems to be getting confusing up here in the end game my 8.5 gear has 200 atttack power on average and tier 9 only 100 and a drop in stats how could it be better ?.
As I read it, Blizzard doesn’t have any issue with ArP itself and also not with us stacking it. It is just that the damage is too high. Yes, it is just a hunter’s max dps nerf (and that of several other classes), and is not because ArP itself needed fixing. They started out too low, and now they overshot it and will correct it.
If Blizzard woulnd’t want us and all the other classes to use ArP instead of something else, there wouldn’t be ArP gems. Simple as that.