The Marksman 102 guide is up over at wow.com. This one is just basically all about armor pen, and probably nothing there is news to WHU readers, who know all about armor pen from the WHU guides.
With the right gear choices and the right gems hunters can reach the ArP hard cap, and with comes some truly impressive DPS — in fact the very best DPS available to the hunter class… Read More
Loading ...
Member
I think this was a much-needed article (at least, as you say, for the non-WHU audience). Thanks for writing it.
Great article as always Frost. But, your talk of Hard Cap vs. Soft Cap has me wondering if gemming for the Soft Cap will produce more DPS than straight Agility gemming.
Given the following using femaledwarf.com for comparison with NO raid buffs:
Agility gemmed with Mjolnir Runestone trinket:
Combined: 6395.94 100.00%
Agility: 2195
Crit: 56.34% on target (61.14% displayed)
AP: 6136
Armor Penetration: 511 – 45.86% (36.51% before procs)
889 rating below cap (224 rating below cap with best proc)
vs.
ArP gemmed to get close to Soft Cap during procs:
Combined: 6377.18 100.00%
Agility: 2012
Crit: 52.62% on target (57.42% displayed)
Ap: 5935
Armor Penetration: 731 – 61.57% (52.23% before procs)
669 rating below cap (4 rating below cap with best proc)
Which would produce better DPS in a raid? Unfortunately, replacing 15 gems would be quite expensive or it would be the target dummies helping with the decision.
Contributor
Good article. I’m not convinced that MM really pulls away from SV until the really high ArP levels, simply because I know I’m a fairly skilled hunter and I routinely fight with my guild’s SV hunter for the top spot. The bastard has Deathbringer’s Will, granted, but we’re at very similar gear levels overall. And I’m in an ArP. build, but am working toward the soft cap at about 550 right now….I can’t really pull away from him even in a single target fight when we’re just mashing away at our rotations. Obviously we know that MM has the best dps right now. But I think the gap, like the ArP. itself, gets bigger as that number increases, and among similarly skilled hunters is relatively negligible.
Clearly my example is only an anecdote, so I’m not positing it as evidence, but I eagerly anticipate adding just a couple hundred more ArP. so that I really start to reap the benefits.
Very useful as was 101. Having been SV spec for a long time, I just changed to MM agility build. This gave me a boost of almost 500dps in ICC 25 (8400 against Lady Deathwhisper). As my ArP is around 650 (unbuffed/procced) I have just tweaked to the ArP talent build and will see what difference this makes.
Ty Frost for your great guides. I m at the point where i wanna master my mouvement before switching to ArP. Do you have a addon to get track of my auto shot and steady shot to plan my movement better? I tried Kneedtoknow but i couldnt set it right. Thanks for your time
I’ve been obsessed with the theorycraft surrounding the armor penetration issue for quite some time. I’ve tried soft-capping with several different proc trinkets. I’ve regemmed back to agility. The harsh truth I’ve discovered about armor penetration is that for the vast majority of players, one will only see a considerable dps increase when one is able to hard cap armor penetration. I saw a minor dps loss when I tried to soft-cap armor penetration as compared to when I was gemmed agility. I currently have 1266 armor penetration unbuffed. That goes to 1355 with food/elixir. At that level, the dps increase is significant and noticeable. I would strongly recommend following this site’s suggestions to avoid gemming for armor penetration until your passive rating is 800 or greater. Until then, agility will give you the most bang for your buck.
Well done:D
Lovegun,
Thanks for the info. That was the kind of test I was looking for.
Another tool I’ve found interesting, and all in all fun to play around with, is the dps simulator at femaledwarf.com. It’s very simple to navigate and allows for character upload directly from wowarmory.com. As this site has to masterfully explained, this simulator shouldn’t be used as a way to formulate how much dps one can expect to do in real-time situations. Rather, it’s a great tool to use to check whether or not a certain piece of gear, gem set-up, spec change will increase or decrease your damage.
That is certainly much cheaper than re-gemming or even re-speccing. When I plugged in my old agility based spec, gear, and gems, then switched the gems to all armor penetration and changed my spec, the simulator showed a 1600 dps increase. I didn’t expect to those exact numbers translated in game. I was however convinced, because the increase was so significant, that I had reached the passive armor penetration level required to make the shift worth while.
I’m a long time reader, new poster. Forgive the noob-ness of my last post as it was clear to me after re-reading that most people here are aware of femaledwarf.com…DOH!
This article is definitely informative. Personally I am using the ArP build and rotation while maintaining the agility gems. I am at 529 from gear and re-gemming to ArP would put me at 849. Taking food buffs into consideration as well as changing to an ArP trinket still always showed a net loss on the spreadsheets (about 200 dps). It may have been the way I was running something. I intend to revisit this again as I am closer to approaching the 800 passive mark from gear. I will be following the comments to see other people’s thoughts and results.
Member
So is a wolf still the best pet for an ArP build or is there another option that might work better? Or if the wolf is still the shazbot furball to take along do you retain the pet build or any modifications there?
I’m not familiar with any pets that buff armor penetration. The wolf’s howl is the best pure dps ability as far as I know.
Member
@Lovegun
Wasps perform a minor armor debuff. If your raid is lacking a minor armor debuff (which is usually the case if you have no boomkin) and your raid does a lot of physical damage, it might be good all around to have a leveled wasp at the ready.
Worms perform a major armor debuff but using one would require (1) raiding with a tenacity pet and (2) running as BM.
Member
Thanks for the info about those debuffing pets.
@pitmaillet:
Try Quartz. It has a little weapon swing bar which basically shows when your autoshot is about to fire off so you know when to stop to let it fire
@Messi
Posting your DPS on Lady DW doesnt say anything because it is a terruible fight to compare DPS with others. Were you on boss only? How many times you had to burn through the shield on Adherent (Absorbed damage is not shown as damage on meters)? How many times you were MCed and didnt the mage put polymorph on you just two seconds before the MC was about to end? Without this info, any “I did X DPS on LAdy DW” statement is pointless
Member
And so, since many (if not all) raid bosses have hindering DPS environment, it’s best to really sum any form of *maximum* DPS conclusions based from a boss dummy =P (Don’t cheat and use Multi Shot or Volley!).
On a note, had a lock bragging that he did 10k dps on XT-002 Deconstructor in my raid. Like any jealous DPS class, I had a look at recount and oh to my surprise he did most of the damage to the Heart. Lol…
I have a question about the hunters mark.. I have specd 3/3 for hunters mark now;if some 1 else uses there hunters mark and they are not specd into it.. do i have to put my on again or do i get the effect of 3/3 hunters mark regardless of who has it up?????