What’s the Deal with Weapon Skill
“Dear BRK, sorry to add to your flood of email, but I was wondering if you could help clarify the value of weapon skill for a hunter.
“I’m a dwarf hunter so I get +5 to my skill with guns. I’m trying to determine how much of a benefit that is relative to bows/crossbows. This has become relevant due to a very lucky week in Karazhan, in which I got the [Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle] and promptly blew about 200g on a Stabilized eternium scope for it. Then I proceeded to get the [Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix] the following night (please don’t hate me).
“My question is whether to get a scope for the bow, or keep using the gun. The bow clearly has a higher damage output, but I’m wondering if the +5 to guns offsets the difference or outstrips it.
“I have read mixed reports, but +5 weapon skill rating seems to increase crit rate by .5% and have smaller boosts to hit rating. It’s unclear to me if this applies to ranged weapons or just melee. It seems like +.5% crit might be worth more than the stat difference on the weapons, but I’m not sure about that either. Can you provide any insights, or are the differences too small to worry about? Thanks, Geoffrey”
Weapon Skill is a modifier that uses your enemy’s defense rating to calculate how extra-deadly you are. One weapon skill point gives +0.04% Crit, +0.04% Hit, (and your opponent’s chance to block, dodge or parry decreases by 0.04%), for every point you have more than your opponent’s Defense Skill.
You’re a 70 Night Elf hunter using a gun. You have a 350 gun skill rating. You’re fighting a 70 Troll hunter who is using a bow. You both have 350 defense ratings.
As the NE hunter, your 350 gun rating matches the troll’s 350 defense rating, so your weapon skill gives you no bonuses.
The Troll hunter, however, has a +5 bow skill as a racial ability. Therefore his 355 bow skill rating gives him +0.04% Crit and +0.04% Hit for every point he has more than your 350 defense skill. Since his bow rating is five points higher than your defense rating, all those bonuses are multiplied by five. The Troll hunter gets 0.2% Crit and 0.2% Hit against you because of the troll’s racial bonus to bows.
Now this all changes a bit against mobs higher than your level. The 2.0.1 patch has notes about weapon skill that say, against mobs above their level, players gain +0.1% Crit, not 0.04%. If the 73 elite you’re fighting has a 350 defense and you have a 355 skill rating on your gun, you get +0.5% crit, and that’s d@mn spiffy.
Now if you really want to get jiggy with it, you have to start worrying about glancing blows and the crit-cap and other esoteric nonsense that we don’t really worry too much about on this site.
But it should be pointed out that Weapon Skill Rating is different than Weapon Skill. At level 70, it takes 3.9 points of Weapon Skill Rating to increase your actual Weapon Skill by 1. A piece of gear that increases your WSR by 16 is not increasing your WS by 16, but only by 4.1.
But our reader’s question is: does his racial bonus to guns make the gun a better weapon for him than the bow? Pfft, h3ll no; not in this case. If the comparisons were between the Wolfslayer and the [Steelhawk Crossbow], then we’d say the racial bonus was a deciding factor. But the Sunfury is a Big Upgrade; it’s a level 125 weapon, not a 115. Take your Sunfury and get another 200g scope. Such is the price for phat loot.
Pepi, aka Trigity, aka Tiggy, is trying to formulate a plan to make off with the BRK puppy, a 100lb yellow Labrador who lives to swim. Tiggy is enchanted with the big lap-dog and wants to take him home. We will thwart her, oh yes we will.
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“If the 73 elite you’re fighting has a 350 defense”
Why would a 73 have only 350? He should have 365 no?
Depends on the how Blizz did the programming. One could assume that the rules for PCs always apply to NPCs and that 73 elite would have a 365 defense. But we know of mobs that don’t even have a bloody Threat List - think Shade of Aran - so assuming we know the defense progression of every boss mob would be dubious.
We said, “If the 73 elite … has a 350 defense …” specifically to address this situation.
[We said, "If the 73 elite ... has a 350 defense ..." specifically to address this situation.]
Then I’d say you failed at addressing the situation!
Don’t get me wrong, but I read the “If” as starting an example, not necessarily as raising the question whether or not the 73 elite had 350 defense skill!
But English is my 2nd language so it may just be my interpretation that was wrong!
Wolfslayer is better then sunfury anyway for BM. Sunfury is too slow for BM spec hunters.
I know the question was about weapon skill, but you also have to factor in the weapons attack speed. Wolfslayer has 2.7 which is pretty much perfect for the usual Auto/Steady Shot- rotation, whilst Sunfury has 2.9, which means after every Steady Shot, you waste 0.2 seconds doing nothing before your Auto Shot.
Add to this the weapon skill racial bonus plus 43dps Adamantite Bullets for those special occasions, I think Sunfury isn’t such an obvious choice ahead of Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle.
By coincidence, I was also lucky enough to pick up the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle this week. As a troll with +5 bow skill I was, for a tiny fraction of a second, disappointed that this was a gun and not a bow. But a power increase from 66.4 to 79.1 dps made the disappointment VERY brief.
The party wondered why I didn’t try out the new gun. A wave of embarrasment hit me as I suddenly realised that I couldn’t equip it - I had never bothered to learn the gun skill!! I made an excuse and headed off to learn the gun skill asap and buy something called an “ammo pouch”.
Now, here we get to the point. The difference between 350 and 355 weapon skill is fairly minimal as far as I can tell. But the difference between ammo pouches was quite significant. I bought a 16-slot 13% pouch from the AH. However, I noticed on Thott that Consortium rep would give me an 18-slot 15% pouch. So I spent a few hours last night grinding Obsidian Warbeads and bought the Smuggler’s Ammo Pouch. There was a massive 6% increase in tooltip dps. Definately worth a fews hours of killing ogres. I am now annoyed with myself that I have spent the last few months with a 13% arrow quiver and never bothered to upgrade.
Sorry for the long posting, but I thought I’d try and help others to avoid making my lazy mistake
Fitting your gear to match a shot rotation… it makes BRK ill just to think about it. Passing up an 83 dps weapon because it doesn’t allow for maximum Auto/Steady spamming?!
We’re getting some cocoa.
Instead of starting to argue about the importance of attack speed, I’ll just post this link to a nice comparison between Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle and Sunfury Bow:
http://forums.tkasomething.com/viewtopic.php?t=5020
I for one trusted the numbers posted there and after trying out the bow for two nights in Kara, I decided to switch back to my Wolfslayer Rifle and tucked the bow away into my dusty bag.
The same night I have got the Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle I have bought the Don Sants Famous Hunting Rifle.
It gave me about 10 DPS more than Wolfslayer (the proc is fantastic for a BM because of the machinegun-like shot speed)
I have passed for the Sunfury bow that dropped a week later for a rogue.
Having so much dead time in my shot rotation is a DPS killer.
So I have chosen a weapon with about 10 less DPS, but I still do more damage with it.
It’s becoming increasingly evident that Don Santos’ is the best weapon for BM.
<3 the labby
Hmm - I bought a Don Santos and took it to the PTR - I was very dissapointed - fired 3200 shots at DR Boom - the Proc Rate was just under 4% - autoshot only and the DPS only about 1.5% greater than my Consortium Blaster over the same number of shots because the Blaster’s crit rate was higher. I am tempted to put it back on the AH. Doesn’t seem to be worth the 14ooG
Would a normal shot rotation extend the advantage of the Don Santos?
cheers
Fatboy on Khaz Modan
@Fatboy
Well… The Procrate should be more like 7%…
I hope they didnt silent-nerf it in 2.2.
P.S.: And yes: Shooting more would extend the advantage - more shots fired means more shots benefiting from the +AP buff. Shooting more means more proccs. Your pet would also benefitr from having more AP.
All ?? Boss mobs are treated as Level 73, and they DO have 365 defense.
This is the very reason why melee hit, ranged hit, spell hit and spell penetration are so important in PVE (yet relatively unimportant in PVP).
You need that extra hit rating (or spell hit or spell penetation) because your chance to miss a boss, or have the boss resist your spells is higher than it is on trash.
We recommend all our Hunters have a minimum 5% hit (from talents or gear) for this very reason.
Wow, this is the first time I’ve seen BRK recommend something completely wrong. The Sunfury is actually a horrendous weapon for BM specs, weapon level be damned.
(Check out Cheeky’s spreadsheet at TKA Something, it’s fabulous!. I lose 16 or so straight dps w/ the Bow NOT including the 43 dps ammo vs 37 for Bows).
Otherwise love the blog, keep up the good work!
Ok, as I’ve said before, i’m not good with the math. But I can tell you this about Don Santos. Regardless of what the actual proc rate is supposed to be… this gun seems to proc constantly. If there’s a pull of two mobs or more, I actually EXPECT it to proc. I have not gotten the wolf weapon to drop for me. But I would actually pass it to another guild hunter if I was not the only hunter there. I want it, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure it’s an upgrade. And you say that it’s good for BM because of firing speed. I agree. With it’s insane proc, it’s great for BM. But bear in mind also, that for MM, instead of 250ap when it procs, you get 275. And I’ve read that proc rate is per minute or something and that faster weapons do not equal more procs over the same amount of time assuming no misses…If that’s the case, it’s technically better for MM. But, it’s still hot no matter what.