Hunter raid check

[Sazda]

Hello guys. I had some time at work, so I figured I would check out our raiding Hunters talents, glyphs and reforges - to maybe highlight areas of improvement or simply get some ideas for my own hunter. I looked at Sazda, Snugglbunny, Darkhuntar and Lampray.

Talents:

All of us are using a standard 3/7/31 build, with slight variations of 2 points in the SV tree.

Point of no Escape: Lampray and Darkhuntar (increased 6% crit on targets effected by ice/freezing trap)

Hunter vs. Wild: Snugglebunny (increased 10% stamina)

Survival Tactics: Sazda (reduced trap resist by 4% reduced disengage cd by 4s)

Imo these 2 points are pretty optional. I personally decided to go with the reduced disengage cd, because I can use it in many situations. I found that I do not throw any AoE ice traps in DS (ever), so that talent is absolutely worthless for me. As worthless seems the stamina buff. If I die in a raid, the reason will never be that I did not have that talent. Either way - in the end this will not really make any difference.

Glyphs:

Here is what our Hunters have:

Sazda - Explosive Shot, Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting

Snuggle - Explosive Shot, Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting

Dark - Explosive Shot, Arcane Shot, Serpent Sting

Lamp - Explosive Shot, Arcane Shot, Kill Shot

The glyph ranking is as follows:

Explosive Shot = must have glyph

Arcane Shot (with 2 piece T13) = must have glyph

Those two are the clear winners. For the third glyph, you got to decide between Serpent Sting and Kill Shot glyph.

Serpent Sting - 6% crit to each SS. SV gets more out of that glyph than other hunter specs due to mastery and the Toxicology talent.

Kill Shot - allows to shoot 2 Kill Shots in a row.

Especially with reforging to mastery, being SV and having so many AoE situations in DS - SS seems to be the clear winner to me. Very often, even if I wanted to, I would not be able to fire 2 Kill Shots in a row, because that would mess up my rotation. I suggest you switch to Serpent Sting Glyph Lamp and see your dps improve on AoE fights (and not change or even improve on others).

Major and Minor Glyphs:

There is a lot more room for these ones obviously (and will be even more in MoP). But there are some that are preferred over others. Here is what our raiding hunters currently have:

Sazda - Disengage, Mending, Raptor Strike and Feign Death, Scare Beast, Revive Pet

Snug - Misdirect, Mending, Trap Launcher and Feign Death, Aspect of the Pack, Revive Pet

Dark - Disengage, Misdirect, Ice Trap and Feign Death, Lesser Proportion, Revive Pet

Lamp - Disengage, Mending, Trap Launcher and none

Looking at it from a raiding perspective only, you definitely want to use Disengage. Misdirect on the other hand (raids only) does not help at all. There are no other glyphs that help a raiding hunter except Raptor Strike and Trap Launcher. So the suggestion would be that raiding hunters use Disengage, Raptor Strike and Trap Launcher. However, those effects are so minor - that using glyphs that help in sutations outside of the raid (like MD or Mending) really is completely fine as well. For the Minor Glyphs, there is nothing that will help during raiding except maybe Revive Pet. So take whatever.

Reforging:

As SV hunter with T13 bonus you want to reforge into Crit. If that is not possible, you want to reforge into Mastery. Haste is your worst stat now (as opposed to BM and MM). Obviously you need 8% hit. If anone of you wants me to look at your exact reforging to see if I would do something differently (and why), just let me know here. Just glancing at everyones stats, it seems more or less solid.

Exception:

Snuggle - you are at 7.28% hit. Forgot to reforge something?

Enchants:

Everything looks fine, except here:

Lampray - Greater Critical Strike on back is better than Major Agility

Darkhuntar - Greater Agility on gloves is much better than Haste

Snuggle - Greater Agility on gloves is also better than Greater Mastery

The rest of the enchants seem ok (Assassin's Step versus Major Agility is up to each one of your playstyles to decide what suits you better). For me (and Snugg), Assassin's Step seems miles ahead of the little Agility boost.

All in all, our hunters pass the raid test with only few exceptions that should be fixed.

Edited May 11, 2012 by Sazda

[Lyntha]

I forgot to reforge my pants when I upgraded them. TBH, I completely forgot about reforging as I hadn't upgraded any pieces in more than a month of raiding.

I should probably swap around glyphs as well. Don't know how I forget to get the agi chant to gloves. Thanks for the spot checking.

[Lyntha]

Update: Fixed

[Sazda]

I see that Lampray fixed some of his stuff too :-) ( dont be shy, post here )

Minor bug: You put "Critical Strike" on your back instead of "Greater Critical Strike".

[Lyntha]

Actually, +65 Mastery is better than +20 Agi.

I ran SimC with 25k iterations over a 350 second long Ultrax-like fight with scaling factors for Agi, Crit and Mastery (So I could compare the +22 agi cloak chant as well).

Scale Factors (My gear):

Agi: 4.0700

Crit: 1.4527

Mastery: 1.4463

Total DPS Value of +65 Mastery to Gloves: 1.4463 * 65 = 94.0095

Total DPS Value of +20 agi to gloves: 4.07 * 20 = 81.4

Mastery is better.

Total DPS Value of +65 Crit to Cloak: 1.4527 * 65 = 94.4255

Total DPS Value of +22 agi to Cloak: 4.07 * 22 = 89.54

Crit is better.

Math'd

[Sazda]

Well yeah - it really all depends on the scaling factors, doesn't it? But where to take those numbers from? You might just be right with that.

In the end it wont make any noticeable difference taking one over the other.

Funny thing - just checked 3 Blood Legion Hunters.. all of them have agi over crit on Gloves. Either it really does not matter, or there are some factors we are not thinking about. I certainly do not trust simcraft.

[Sefi]

Reason why you choose agi aka main stat if it is close on sim craft is because secondary skills vary with each new piece of gear and with procs but with agi it normally keeps the same dps increase