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| Reviewed 2/2/2012 Patch 4.3.2 |
View other WHU WoW Cataclysm hunter guides.
Cataclysm brought us a big change in our ability to customize our hunter gear with reforging. We now have the ability to turn our worst secondary stat on any piece of gear into the best secondary stat (at least in part). One of the interesting side-effects of reforging in Cataclysm is that the difference between hunter loot of the same ilvl is much smaller than it used to be.
This guide will cover how reforging works and address how you should approach reforging your hunter gear.
Reforging and How It Works
To reforge your gear, you just need to visit the reforging NPC. These guys hang out in whatever building the enchanting trainers are in for each city. When you talk to them you’ll have the option to reforge any and every piece of your gear — or if it’s already reforged, you can restore it to its unreforged state.
Some important things to know about reforging in Cataclysm:
- You can only reforge secondary stats — for hunters these are hit, crit, haste, and mastery.
- You cannot reforge agility, or into agility
- You can only reforge into a stat that is not already on your gear. So if a piece of gear has crit and haste, you cannot reforge the haste into crit, or the crit into haste — but you can reforge them into hit or mastery.
- When you reforge, you turn 40% of one stat into another stat. So if your gear has 100 crit, you can reforge 40 of that into haste, to end up with 60 crit and 40 haste. No points are lost.
- You can unreforge your gear at any time, restoring it to its original condition.
- You can reforge and restore any number of times.
- Reforging costs a nominal fee. Restoring is free.
Reforging and Hit Rating
As a hunter, your first reforging priority is your hit rating. If you are over the hit cap, you will want to get rid of some of that excess hit and turn it into a more useful stat, since you get zero benefit from any hit rating over the cap.
Furthermore, if you’re under the hit cap, you will want to reforge into hit. With the exception of the one purple gem to satisfy your meta gem requirement, you do not want to gem for hit rating, but instead want to reforge for it when needed.
As hunters, agility is our most important stat and 1 agility will give us more dps than 1 of any other stat (except, of course, for our ranged weapon dps). This means we really want to use agility gems in our gem sockets.
- If we gem for hit rating we’re using a socket that could otherwise hold an agility gem. Therefore gemming for hit gains us 40 hit rating instead of 40 agility. This is a bad deal – a net dps loss in fact.
- If we reforge for hit rating, then we gain 40 hit rating instead of 40 of the worst stat for our spec — a much better deal!
Reforge the Worst Stat for Your Spec
In general we’re going to want to reforge almost every piece of our gear (unless the gear happens to have our best two stats) — turning the worst stat on that piece of gear into the best stat that’s available. Which stat is the worst depends not just on your spec, but also on your specific gear. The only way to know for sure what the stat weights for you is to use a tool like Zeherah’s spreadsheet.
Remember when you’re calculating stat weights to apply some common sense and logic, especially to your haste weights. You may need to tweak your haste numbers a few times to see what the weights should realistically be, and even then the actual value of haste will be lower. The better your movement skills — stutter-stepping and aspect dancing — the closer to the qualitative spreadsheet value your haste will actually be.
Here are some general guidelines for stat weights by spec:
- BM: mastery is the worst stat, and crit/haste is best
- MM: mastery is the worst stat crit is best
- SV: haste is the worst stat and crit is best
Patch 4.3.2 Update Note: Right now in 4.3.2 SV is the top spec, and with your t13 set bonus you’ll want to reforge into crit, and then into mastery when you can’t reforge into crit. SV now wants to get rid of haste. Earlier in the expansion SV wanted to get rid of mastery.
A Note on Haste
Be aware that the value of haste varies for hunters in Cataclysm. At certain haste levels haste helps us less, and at other haste levels haste helps us significantly more. Sometimes we want to reforge our mastery into haste instead of crit, and at other times we prefer the crit. We never want more mastery, however (mastery is still good, just not quite as good as the others).
The only way to know is to know the haste plateaus for your spec. The WHU has guides for haste plateaus for each spec:
Reforging Complications
While we usually want to reforge our worst stat on any piece of gear into the best available stat, that’s not always the case. After all, the real goal is to increase our dps as much as possible.
Particularly when we have stat weights that are close to each other, we have to consider the amount of a stat that we’re reforging. If we have a piece of gear, for example, with 100 mastery and 65 haste, it may be worth reforging the mastery even if haste is a slightly worse stat.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say we have the following (totally imaginary) stat weights:
- Crit: 1.5
- Mastery: 0.9
- Haste: 0.7
Now we have our imaginary gear with 100 mastery and 65 haste. Right now, without reforging, those stats should be worth a theoretical 135.5 dps. If we reforge our worst stat, haste, into the best stat, crit, we end up with (100 mastery, 39 haste, and 26 crit): 156.3 dps — a clear gain.
But there a lot more mastery than haste on the gear, and even though the mastery is worth more than the haste, by reforging mastery we can get more crit. Again we start with the same base stats worth 135.5 dps. If we reforge the mastery into crit we end up with (60 mastery, 40 crit, and 65 haste) for a total of: 159.5 dps. Not just a net gain, but also better than reforging our worst stat, haste.
Certainly in this example the gain is small. In fact, the gain from any reforging is fairly small, and reforging any one piece of gear is a completely indistinguishable dps change — the gain or loss is far, far smaller than the margin of error of RNG.
However, just like all the optimization we do to our hunters, all those little gains add up to be the difference between holding your weight and topping the meters.
Hmm so for BM Hit (till Capped) > Agi > Crit > Haste > Mastery ? Surely thats on another post lol, Ill go find it.
Thanks for including that last section. I think it’s an issue that is too often left unmentioned in discussions how to reforge gear.
So for the MM leveling spec you posted a while ago, when it comes to reforging that haste, would it be best to reforge the haste to crit, or slap it to mastery? I just want to reconfirm that I am understanding this.
Do you have a post explaining your findings of
* BM: mastery is the worst stat, and crit is best
* MM: haste is the worst stat crit is best
* SV: mastery is the worst stat and haste or crit is best
for instance why does mastery toad the wet sprocket for bm and sv, why is haste good for sv and such
I agree with him ^ why is mastery worse than haste when you stated that haste was our worst stat? And on your example, wouldn’t you reforge mastery anyways? Even though it had a higher benefit in reforging since it gave more crit. Oh, and when you said “better than reforging our worst stat” don’t you want to reforge your worst stat? Sorry for all the questions! Thanks Frost!
In the reforging example given above by Frost, both mastery and haste scale worse than crit. So reforging to crit is a gain in both cases – you just need to calculate which option is better.
And for that you have to take into account not only which stat scales better but also which one gives you the chance to reforge the bigger ammount.
To make an extreme example, if you had 10 haste and 10,000 mastery in a single item, you could either reforge 4 haste -> 4 crit or 4,000 mastery -> 4,000 crit (which is clearly better).
I am also interested in knowing why haste is better for BM hunter, I am BM and with the new tier set after4.3 i have so much haste to dump that i hardly find place to throw in cobra shot to keep serpent alive. So unless i am missing something basic ( i joined wow after 4.2 so i might not be that knowledgeable yet), i think mastery is better than haste. So plz explain on it so that we can benefit from your knowledge and make our chars performance better. thanks
(can you plz include date stamps on posts so others know when that post was posted, i.e., someone might be talking in past)
It is important to note that stat values change based on the stats you have. I was playing around with the calculator at Female Dwarf, and I noticed that reforging sometimes changed the stat values enough to change the order. And that didn’t include haste (which is very noisy). I reforged Crit -> Mastery, only to find that Mastery was now more valuable.
Are those fluctuations do to the inherent (i.e. correct) values or are they artifacts of the simulation process? Any recommendations on evening out simulation fluctuations?
@Raiyous: Mastery is basically completely different for each spec. Other stats vary due to the different skills in each spec. BM and MM have a haste talent for example.
After all it seems like Mastery IS the worst stat ever?:O)
And if so (or not – whatever), can someone give ANY ideas or full guide on how to reforge 5 piece t10.5 set?
Um…. your gear is going to be obsolete in 2 days. It will suddenly be leveling gear, and for leveling you probably want to reforge out of haste and into crit, and then mastery if you can’t do crit.
Mastery isn’t a bad stat by any means — it’s just not a top stat for most specs.
Thanks you so much!
Sad that mastery doesn’t work the way it suppose to…
I wouldn’t go as far to say Mastery doesn’t wok the way its supposed to, I doubt Blizz ever intended it to be the best stat for every class.
It’s far from the worst for Hunters, just not our best. That’s how it should be in my opinion, I wouldn’t want there to be one universal best stat for very class.
So at the risk of being redundant and dense, the fact that I reforged crit into mastery for my BM hunter is looking like a tactical error right now, eh?
> SV: mastery is the worst stat and haste or crit is best
Why ? SV’s Mastery is the worst stat ??? I thought you said few post ago it was the best for SV because of all elemental damages ?
You’re likely referring to the line where he commented that 8% spell dmg effects everything a survival hunter does except auto shot and kill shot. The thing that makes mastery worse than say crit is that crit does effect those things in addition to extra effects like 3% dmg from the meta, and Gor the Throat and Sic ‘em. And Haste is slightly better for Survival likely due to their lack of focus regening talents which means a lot of Cobra Shotting and the fact that it takes less haste rating to gain 1% haste.
Put another way 180 Mastery Rating is 1% more damage on about 85% of the Hunter’s Damage. 180 Crit rating is 1% more damage on 100% of the hunters damage and his pet’s damage, and gives additional bonuses via meta gems, talents. And haste is in a similar situation except that its not quite as good but is 30% cheaper ratings wise for a 1% gain to make up for the fact it doesn’t effect our specials aside from cobra shot.
Its not exactly that cut and dry but more or less thats’ why its the way it is.
I only hit 80 a month prior to 4.0 but ran only SV. Reforging ICC loot crit to mastery really upped my DPS. Maybe its different at 85 now but seeing that statement of Mastery being the worst stat really blows me away! Time will tell I guess.
im not much on throrycraft, but im a MM hunter and i reforged into haste until 22-23%, im not sure how this will work at 85 but at 80 this brings steady shot 0.05 seconds below the GCD with rapid fire on, and even then, with MM we get careful aim, which if you have 40% crit or higher (im at 52%) you cant not crit with steady shot for the first 20% of a fight. im not sure if this helps, im just pointing out what i know.
Everything changes at level 85 : )
It’s very unlikely that you’ll ever have crit chances high enough to hit the careful aim soft cap (44.8% before raid buffs). Likewise your haste percentages will be lower — though you still shouldn’t be trying to stack haste — not a great stat for MM at all!
Yes I am not quite sure I full understand the theories behind Reforging. If an item has say 125 Mastery and 75 Crit, are we not reforging either stat? Are we just forging stats on gear that has mastery, haste and hit if at cap all to crit?
well, you don’t want to reforge a better stat to a worse stat and you can’t reforge to the stat, that already is on your piece of gear
if you are MM, you want to keep crit, so you would reforge the other stat which is mastery, but as you can’t reforge to crit in this case (because it already is on the piece), you can choose hit or haste
haste is the weakest stat for MM, so by reforging mastery into haste, you loose dps
hit is very useful until hit cap, so if you can’t reach hit cap other way, it is a good idea to reforge mastery into hit, but much better would be to get the hit rating by reforging some haste on other armor pieces and keep the mastery
this changes for other specs, because as a SV or BM hunter, you don’t want mastery
Assuming Mastery and Crit are your two “best dps” ratings then we would only reforge that piece if we were not hit capped. Generally you’d reforge off the mastery in that case since its weaker than crit.
Sadly reforging is quite complicated and varies extensively based on your current gear ( both in options available and stat weight). I imagine after cata launches “reforging” calculators will be made where you can put in your armory, stat weights for ratings and your hit cap and have it spit out the optimal reforging pattern for your gear. Until then re-read this post and make the best decisions you can. Use pen and paper if necessary.
So basically when considering reforging on your gear, we are reforging in this order. Hit first until cap, then reforge any extra hit, haste, and mastery into crit, whether your under MM or BM? is that a safe assumption?
Wow – this certainly does not get me excited about our mastery. Sounds like hunters got shafted. How will they use mastery to balance our specs, if we are all reforging out of mastery as much as possible? How will they use mastery to balance different DPS classes, when some are reforging for more mastery and others are avoiding it?
Everyone will still have plenty of mastery – it’s still a great tool to balance. Keep in mind even if you have no mastery rating on gear you’ll still have a bunch of base mastery they can tweak.
Idk if thsi is the right place to ask or not but seemed like a good spot. I went from mm to surv today and saw an immediate dps boost so im staying for now. As far as gearing/chanting/reforging go im gonna reforge my mastery to haste or crit. So here starts the question at what point does haste or crit win out, i.e. build haste till cobra is at 1.5sec cast then stack crit or try to keep them even…? Im just starting heroics and thought now was the time to ask as it may help me choose an item over another.
Hello Frost, i read you use the pwn addon for gear too, it does give suggestions for your reforging too, are they accurate? cause as i read here; i should as a survival hunter reforge my mastery into haste or crit as long as i got my hitcap, but pwn suggest that i go for mastery and loose the haste and crit…
Heya Frost,
I see many of the top-guild hunters reforging into mastery in stead of out of it.
Any idea why?
greets Arithon
Couple of reasons I can think of. First of all, for MM if their gear has crit/haste, you’d want to reforge that haste into mastery. For SV it’s possible that they’re using older info — mastery was much better for us at level 80 than it is at 85 with the new combat ratings scaling. It’s also possible if you’re looking at lead raid guilds that they’re reforging for one specific fight — you gotta keep in mind that bleeding edge progression guild tend to respec/glyph/etc for each fight they’re working on.
Finally, there’s always the possibility that they’re just experimenting. I know Kripparrian would have everything reforged one way on tuesday, then reforged entirely differently on wednesday.
In other words the possibilities are: they’re doing it for a very specific function, they’re experimenting, or they’re doing it wrong for various reasons.
dps only persay is part of the battle, i ma bm, surv, and even if i don’t do higer dps persay, the overall damage is there. is there a happy “norm” to follow to each spec?
OK. I’m a little confused as to reforging for a specific target. I get that ideal is 8% for hit, but what about haste?
I read this post elsewhere:
- Survival is bound by the 6s CD for Explosive Shot. Which in turn gives you 5s of fill time.
- Your slowest shot is Cobra Shot.
- With no haste you can fire two Cobra Shots in between Explosive Shots.
- You want enough haste to be able to fit in three.
- You do not want so much haste that Cobra Shot is lower/exactly on the GCD. (Rapid Fire)
So the initial haste cap is around 6.2% (794 rating) or whatever works for you to get Cobra Shot (and your lag) to the point where you never clip the next Explosive.
My current haste is 7.30% (935). I’d happily reforge some of that into crit, but how much? How do I account for lag? How much is too much?
hi from me i’m akylla a hunter from twillight’s hammer-EU,nice work here think it takes long time and research to figure out what are the best gear stats gems enchants etc. etc. for the top best for our class keep up the good work we are here with you to read and comment about your practices and posts about our class.
The thing i want to post without reading all the comments is that i’m playing as SV at the momment and from what i saw from the practice i made in heroic dungeons is that the best secondary stats for hunter in the gear section is crit+haste and not so much mastery(for now).why that?
Crit=is like mastery boosts all elemental damage so you want as much crit as possible without losing your hit cap of some haste.
Haste=increases focus regeneration and also increases attack speed,so iwould go into reforging mastery to crit and kepp haste to my gear because i saw to some dungeons that i go focus starved very easily and i’m loosing amount of dps so my opinion is reforging mastery to crit and in some circumstances to haste would fit better than taking out haste and putting mastery cause mastery is allready high enough to our tiers so you have to build a balance.
I don’t know if i’m wrong to my opinions right now i will see it later to my raids and i will comment again thnx again the UNION for the posts a good advisor for our thoughts keep up the good work
Alright. Clearly all of the random members here have some sort of mental retardation and deserve to be decapitated and have someone spit down their gaping throat holes. Until one of these admins posts some sort of proof or tables or something back some of this information then I yet to see the point behind this post. I’m tired of people asking me about this post based purely on what random mebers have said in these comments. Please post something backing this information so that we can finally put this to rest.
First of all, personal attacks are not acceptable. Disagree with someone by presenting data or logic, not by insulting them.
Secondly, this post has tons of information — which parts do you disagree with? If you’re talking about the stat weights themselves, those were obtained in two ways. First I did extensive testing (with first tier of raid gear) to determine qualitative weights. Then I did a bunch of modeling in Zeherah’s spreadsheet with about the same gear level. The data from both agreed, so it got posted.
I would like to start by saying that i only just found this site today but it has already got me plotting for the future of my beloved hunter. I am a BM through and through never spec anything different.
all that aside I am wondering if the maker of the reforging guide took into account that mastery rating not only affects the characters DPS but also the Pets. that said the example you gave for switching mastery into crit for an “optimum” increase of +3.2 DPS but was the effect of our pets dps taken into account when the difference was calculated?
This is merely a theoretical question based on the BM spec effects that state every point of mastery increases damage by 1.7%. i do not wish to attack the writer of this site. The information here is gold, this is just a clarification of information.
Please keep in mind i dont even have 1 point of mastery on my gear and have not tested this theory on my own.
Tresiqus (Fight Club)
Maiev
Yes, we took what mastery does into effect : )
BM’s mastery boosts *pet* dps by 1.7%, which includes Kill Command.
hey Frostheim
BM: mastery is the worst stat, and crit is best
MM: haste is the worst stat crit is best
SV: mastery is the worst stat and crit is best
is mastery good for a MM hunter
which stats shall i aim for
thx
Okay I’m trying to make this easy on myself so I don’t spend hours every time I get an upgrade. Stats wise, I’m main SV off BM. So the first thing I want to do is reforge for hit, well do I reforge haste or mastery to get it? I clearly if the gear has crit I want to just leave it alone.
Once I’m hit cap (5% for me as I pvp) do I want to leave the haste alone and only reforge the mastery into crit or should I reforge all the haste and mastery into crit?
Minor typo:
Reforging Complications
While we usually want to reforge our worst stat on any piece of gear into the best available stat, that’s not always the **cast**. After all, the real goal is to increase our dps as much as possible.
I’ve tried finding Frostheim’s opinion on this in various posts (here and on Scattered Shots), but if he’s said it, I missed it.
If we are at the haste plateau of 6.23%, would it then generally make more sense to reforge into mastery instead of haste as an SV hunter (assuming the item already has crit and we’re hit-capped)? Basically, is there a point at which mastery moves into 2nd place in the crit -> haste -> mastery equation?
This is assuming we have no chance of getting to another plateau or haste cap of any kind.
OK — if DPS is our key goal, what about this? I play MM, and you have said that Crit is much better than Haste. At L85, with shoulders +150 haste, +130 hit, I have a DPS listed of 1250.4. When I reforged the haste into crit I now have +90 haste and +60 crit. Howerver, my overall DPS has gone down to 1244.9. So, it seems that haste is very important as well. I appreciate any feedback you’d like to give on this.
Hi Guys.
Found a link on the forums.
Have a look– Reforging Calculator. (German only)
http://reforgecalc.square7.ch/
Greetings, will this be updated to 4.0.6 soon? Or is there no relevant changes that make the optimal reforging recipe different?
have been a bit confused since the haste guides came.
i curently have 4 t11 set soo i got the bonus.
question is should i reforge into haste (my cobra shot cast is less then 1.5) too push for the 1.23 cast time or should i keep too mastery (my second specc is MM and switching between em based on the fights) would be great whit a little hint as for now the other hunter in my guild (also Sv) are using mastery and crit while i’m using haste and mastery and our dps is very even.
Can we get an update as to whether this is current or not?
Cheers frost.
Hey Frost, with the new patch, is the Mastery still the worst for BM and SV?
Still referencing us using a purple gem for our meta. I’ve been all reds for some time now:)
if gear has a “10″ bonus” go for agility, if a “20″ bonus, even using a purple to fill the void is a 20 stat gain which can be reforged out
Question about the BM reforging and mastery:
BM: mastery is the worst stat, and crit is best
Would mastery in BM not be better since a good chunk of BM damage is from kill command and our pets?
I’m just curious on it because I’m reviewing my stats atm (6.13% haste @ 650, 14.86 mastery @ 1229, and 27.19% crit @ 2136) , and my steady shots are holding normally at 1.88 secs, which I am finding slow. With BL and Rapid fire it’s around 1.3
theres a website called http://www.wowreforge.com that can do your reforging for you (at least crunch the numbers for hitting precisely 961 hit or any haste steps)
I know that a true imba hunter will do the numberchrunching themselves but for the rest of us merely mortal hunters this is a great help (and a serious way to spend LOTS of gold)
From one mortal hunter to all readers here (and the immortal Frostheim)
May your aim always be true and never run out of ammo
/Inciter
Frost I would love to know more of your thoughts on haste and mastery. Right now I am currently gearing up in pvp gear because I am not in a large guild and am not currently doing any raiding. I keep replacing gear and my haste seems to keep dropping. I am wondering if I should reforge some of my mastery into haste to try to make my shots a little faster because my steady shot is currently sitting at 1.9 seconds before improved and I am wondering if it would be a better idea to put some more haste on my gear as I seem to be casting a little slow.
ok i am having major dps problems when it comes to fl bosses, here is my hunters armory http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/blackwing-lair/Fightsu/simple, I am duel speced for beast and mm but i have just rescently started using mm for the fl boss fights and yes i realise i do still need gear but while in mm my dps is only ever at 5-6k tryin to do the aoe fights and even less surprisingly enuff when doin single target im best at beast but cant be hittin more than 3 multishots before i need to regen focus with cobra shot, my gear doesnt change when i change specs, can anyone herlp or make suggestions? thanks for your time on this matter.
hi
Im a BM hunter so I keep hearding mastery is our worst, is that just because we can do more dps with agi., hit and crit.?
i have read most of the hunters pages that you have and im still not good dps. i have asked a few others on what they did and when i do it its not working. i would like a general rule on what everything should be such as hit as close to 8% as i can get haste should be ___%, mastery should be___%. something like that because i could spend a fortune in gold trying differnt things with the refoge. please any info would be great.
try looking at your shot rotation. the “sequence” in which it is used can change your dps dramatically.
I got a question i cannot seem to find answer to on google.
When is it “best” to switch from SV to MM? With what ilvl is it most optimal?
Right now i am SV with ilvl 375, doing around 25-33k dps in heroic dungeons (depending on groups, and even higher dps sometimes if there are huge groups).
This ofc is with 300 agility potion and 90 agility buff. Without it, im around 22k dps.
I’m thinking to switch to MM, as i heard that with better gear it’s more optimal. But ofc, i can’t find any answer to “prefered ilvl for MM”.
Also, with MM, if i understand correctly – you reforge your haste into mastery? What is the optimal haste percentage in this case?
Thank you
OK so i followed ur guide and b4 it was sitting at bout 19-20k dps NOW im sitting at 18-20k dps….wats goin on?
Concerning mastery, if i notice after reforging to the “rules” in the beast mastery tree, i have noticed if i am at lets say 10.85 mastery, i’ll get to the 11.0 mark just to reach the plateau and notice a gain in overal damage , not just “dps” persay. not all shots at main target may be made because of the “barrier” when i am not able to directly dps a boss. but, if i am 11.25, i’ll back off to 11. just depends on gear where that plateau is, and which way to reforge.
Stat weights continue to perplex me. I’ve played around with Zeherah’s spreadsheet and can’t get consistent answers. Specifically, if I import my toon, set our raid’s usual buffs, and check dps, I get a set of stat weights. If I clear all current reforging (taking me under cap), but leave everything else the same, I get different stat weights that shift haste to mastery. WHU conventional wisdom is reforge for crit, which is what Zeherah’s sheet recommends for me without raid buffs. So what is the best way to use Zeherah’s sheet? How can I use it to make good decisions if it’s going to give me different answers for the same gear?
I believe mastery is currently best stat for MM Hunters atm
For my previous post i want to add if you are using the arcane dump rotation not the aimed shot rotation