Comments on: Minor Updates

By: Kiso

Kiso — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 05:26:29 +0000

errm Frost, small mistake there: “Arcane is your 2nd hardest hitting shot, and when it crits it procs piercing shots” You mean aimed shot. Seems the mistake melenaus made was contageous.

By: Melenaus

Melenaus — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:55:57 +0000

/facepalm
This is why I read your blog and don’t try to cobble together my own disgrace of a spec. Thanks!

By: Frostheim

Frostheim — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:23:26 +0000

Ah, I see the confusion. Imp Barrage affect *aimed shot* — not arcane. Aimed is your 2nd hardest hitting shot, and when it crits it procs piercing shots. Increasing the crit a ton doesn’t just increase the damage of the shot but also boosts the damage of your piercing shots by proccing them more often.

By: Melenaus

Melenaus — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:35:30 +0000

Hmm. I see what you’re saying with the Hunter’s Mark vs. Imp Barrage, but I still get this nagging feeling that an extra 195 ap for every shot for the entire fight is going to do more for a hunter than 12% extra *crit* on arcane shot. I mean personally, it seems to me that a shot which only outdamages steady shot by a couple hundred or so isn’t worth the extra crits. Again, I love ya for your bullheaded testing on your theorycrafting, so when there’s a definitive, statistically significant dps increase i’ll go and respec. until then, my fellow SV hunters do quite like my mark

By: Frostheim

Frostheim — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:54:56 +0000

Yes, if you aren’t using an ArP build, you should absolutely be using arcane shot. You need something in the vicinity of 450 ArP passive before you drop arcane — at which point you’ll want to move from the standard MM build to the ArP MM build.

By: Magli

Magli — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:10:56 +0000

So you’re recommending MM hunters use Arcane Shot even with ilevel 232-ish gear? Because I dropped Arcane from my stationary rotation about half way through 10-man Ulduar, or 212 – 219 ilevel. That’s when the combined damage of Steady + the extra bleeds matched what Arcane wad putting out. I switched over to something similar to your Armor Pen build even though I was (and still am) nowhere near the ArPen cap.

If nothing else it simplifies the rotation, which makes getting all the shots out in the right order a lot easier.

By: Ironthumbs

Ironthumbs — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:24:22 +0000

Un-commonly good looking.
Nuff said

By: Arthemystia

Arthemystia — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 05:50:24 +0000

I’m always comforted by Kriparrian’s simple advice that how you play the fights has MUCH more to do with dps than the last few talent points in a spec. I use the WHU as a template for almost everything hunter-related, but my spec usually deviates 1-2 points from Frost’s. And it’s just a matter of personal preference or awareness of my raid circumstances (how many ranged dps will benefit from Imp. Mark? Do I have mana issues? etc.), not because I think I have some insight that he doesn’t.

By: Frostheim

Frostheim — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 04:28:27 +0000

Hunting party is definitely a viable dump talent now with the higher levels of agility, though I still find that imp hawk works out a bit better, particularly if you glyph it, and I do in the guide recommend Imp stings while you have the t9 set bonus.

By: Eidotrope

Eidotrope — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 04:24:45 +0000

Thanks for updating the guides. They were a huge help to me when I was making the transition from leveling to taking dps seriously. I’m glad the guides will continue to be of use to people learning the ropes.

I have to say, though, I still don’t understand why you recommend IAotH for SV. Hunting Party and now Improved Stings with tier 9 seem to always come out higher on the speadsheet as dump talents.