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Pretty Interesting

BRK on 31 Jul 2007

What’s really astounding is the number of self-described hybrids. We never thought there were that many, especially after viewing a couple of data mining projects’ data. What are you guys? 0/31/30?

15 Responses to “Pretty Interesting”

Zotiko on 31 Jul 2007 at 2:59 pm #

The less common Prot Hunter spec.

(Aka the warrior who wishes….)

-Zot
Anonymous on 31 Jul 2007 at 3:21 pm #

BRK

As my guild has been owning gruul consistantly and looking towards TK/SSC and taking kara off the schedule I’ve been looking at things to help my raid. Right now our dps is not up to where I think it is so I have been keeping my BM build. However it seems that most top end guilds are stacking many more 0/31/30 hybrids as well as full survival builds.

Although BM has increased in viability it seems that some of the SSC fights are very prohibitive to BM’s dps. As such alot of guilds are bringing hunters to fill in as more agro mgt like 31/30’s high crit rate and base dmg for good misdirects as well as survivals ability to basicaly double the number of misdirects per encounter.

I’m hoping to stay BM, I love the output I’m hitting (I almost always lead except for special cases like Illhoof or HKM where I tank an add) but if the direction is that hunters are not needed to top the dps in SSC i’ll respec deep survival again since its also a fun build.

I’m also astounded that there are soo few survival builds as it seems that 31/30 or 0/20/41 are very popular once raid gear is obtained and a 32% unbuffed crit rate is obtainable. From my understanding at this point surv can actualy pass the built in dps of BM via higher crit and things like dual rapid fire.

Guy, could you perhaps share some insight into how you are doing in raiding as a surv build. I for one am curious what is in my future when I will be fighting Lurker and Alar rather than Gruul and Mag.
Zerei on 31 Jul 2007 at 3:56 pm #

20/21/20!
HELL on 31 Jul 2007 at 3:57 pm #

SSC is virtually 100% pet friendly, only exception is Leo where it might get cleaved to death if you don’t keep control of it.

Hydross, lurker, morogrim & vashj it can just sit nuking the boss without taking any serious damage, Fathom lord you just need to keep an eye on it for totem damage, leo stay awake and move it in and out for whirlwinds (dash is helpful).

TK i’ve only done VR so far (starting tonight properly) and thats pet friendly if you have a bit of arcane res on it and keep awake to pull it out if it goes low hp to heal it.

BM is still a viable raiding spec as they keep changing various encounters to help pets get reduced damage (lurker spout change for example).

I am a 0/20/41 Survival hunter with 829agi unbuffed without leather (Sicsiksix wildhammer EU). I can hit 42% crit, 1150agi without LotP in raids, still 1% or so short on hit but the high critrate makes up for any missed shots to be honest, EW is up 99% of the time buffing the raid (9-10physical) for 287.5AP each.

If you can keep the pet up with a surv spec you get a fair amount of damage done by pets also due to Go for the throat and the critrate meaning your pet can spam away with specials, I use a Ravagar as its physical damage to take benefit from the EW I’m putting up. Gore is a nice DPS boost when you have near on 50% crit giving him 100focus every few seconds.

EW really boosts Hybrid 31/30 specs damage by alot too if they know how to play their class, often pushing them far above other classes on damage due to high RAP and agi benefits to Crit%.

When I was BM (I tried it out) I wasn’t keen on the playstyle of it, was too boring for me, but I could see it did more damage on the encounters I tried it in, I think a BM hunter in a raid with survival with EW up will be doing a hell of a lot of damage due to the double buff from EW (hunter+pet).

Guild downed Vashj last night so starting in TK so can’t speak about hyjal and beyond, but the gear there is VERY good agi and AP wise so may benefit the hybrid builds well.
Guy on 31 Jul 2007 at 4:57 pm #

What Hell said..

I’m not completely surprised with the numbers here. BRK’s audience tends to be more BM orientated, so that’s going to skew the numbers of this poll substantially.

Also, it’s been my experience that a good number of Hybrid hunters prefer you call them SV hunters, I can’t help but think that’s the way they voted..

Being 0/20/41 myself, I spend a lot of the raid managing cooldowns. A double MD on the MT at the start of a fight gives them a good amount of threat to start with. But you need to make sure and burn your Rapid fire immediately. This way when you pop readiness you can rapid fire again. In longer fights, like just about any boss fight, you want to build a list of cooldowns to burn before you hit readiness and you want to execute that list fast so you have more opportunities to do it again.

I’ll tell you, managing readiness alone has given me a good feel for the length of some of these fights.

Several fights in the game too are more easily done with multiple tanks on a single mob. More MDs lets you put more tanks higher on the threat list.

Lurker is really a gimmicky fight, fun as hell, but mostly a tank and spank which doesn’t require a whole lot of agro management. I do stand out on the island and freeze trap or wryven sting adds that come by throughout the fight.

The longer range of SV and the slaying talents really shine in Gruuls, but both MM and SV hunters can get that.

In TK I get to trap a lot, which means I fall to about #10 on the damage done list.. I’m not so happy about that, but by the time we get up to VR I’m usually sitting in the top 4. By the end of the fight I’m in the top 3 and if heaven forbid we have problems and we have to reset him, I’m almost always in the top 2.

I would disagree with Hell on one point, I do not think that these instances are very pet friendly. The boss are, absolutely, but I go through a shit ton of meat feeding the kitty on trash. Trash in both TK and SSC will eat your pet alive if you aren’t careful.

There’s only one person that’s consistently beating me on the meters every night, and that’s a BM hunter. I say that with the caveat that with his gear (and I have to admit, awesome skill) he has beaten everyone with both BM and MM specs. He’s said he’s tried SV and did good with it too, I believe it, though I haven’t seen it.

Trapping and Wyrven stinging get used some, but not a lot. SV hunters spend raids managing cooldowns and keeping EW up on a target. Maintaining EW is easy as long as your crit threshold meets or exceeds what is required by your weapon speed. This threshold will vary from about a 32% crit rate to a 38% crit rate, numbers easily obtainable with raid buffs. As long as you can DPS your target without stopping there’s no reason why EW shouldn’t be on your mob.

We’re also keeping a CLOSE on the that threat meter.. It’s easy if master tactician procs to jump several spots on threat. We watch that shit like a hawk.

-guy
Anonymous on 31 Jul 2007 at 5:14 pm #

Hey Guy,

The original poster asking the Q’s to you surv folks was me shifttusk. My other concern is the gear cutoffs where surv becomes effective. Now obviously raid buffs help alot and raid buffed as BM i generaly see a crit % of well over 30 I’m at 25% unbuffed. Basicaly I’m not sure what our hunter group should look like as we move forward. generaly we have 3 in our raid the first two are consistant:

Me - BM 41/20/0 I have 24.97% crit 120 hit rating. 1690AP and about 6800 mana unbuffed. Agil is at 510 since I’m wearing the ENS which gets my crit up but owns my agility.

MMer - 7/4x/xx with no clever traps. Rocks around 2200AP 22%crit 80 or so hit rating and 7100 mana unbuffed. His agil is lower than 500.

Now we have three others that swap on and off. Another MM with about 24% crit 450agility and only around 1900ap. He is lacking in gear because he usualy gets pulled out of kara.

Two other BMers with 1500ap or so 22% crit and 500 agility.

Basicaly how should we spec it out to maximize our effectiveness. I was thinking the best bet would be to have one of us go 0/20/41, one go 0/31/30 or full marks and one BMer.

Just rough guestimate above who should go what way. I mean with my crit rate I see me as MR go survival and with the +hit rating I’m rocking right now I could def drop some hit gear for additional crit/agil (read sonic spear and heroic neck go bye bye) but I’m at a loss.
Anonymous on 31 Jul 2007 at 5:23 pm #

My spec is Hybrid with the following distrubution:

1 point in BM (Don’t hate me please)
28 points in MM
32 Points in Survival
Zemulos on 31 Jul 2007 at 5:44 pm #

Do not drop hit rating for crit. It’s counter intuitive. You have a higher chance to crit if you’re hitting more often, and at 120 hit rating, you’re not where you should be, especially if you’re beyond gruul’s lair and mag into the tier five realm. At least, that’s my two cents.
Anonymous on 31 Jul 2007 at 6:02 pm #

@Zem

With +5 to bows 120 hit rating puts me at the hit cap vs raid bosses. (355 wepon skill vs 365 defense on raid bosses) being raid bosses are “level 73″ in terms of hitting.

I have actualy dropped my 137 hit rating to 120 when I picked up the sunfury. Swapping the chess boots for the SSC LW patern.

If I were to respec survival I would gain aother 3% hit rating via talents and would be able to reduce the hit rating that would be excessive on my char.

You don’t need to stack hit rating past a certain point. You need hit in the following ammounts assuming you have 350 weapon skill

+5% Hit rating to hit a Level 70 or 70 elite with every shot

+6.2% Hit Rating to hit a level 71 or 71 elite with every shot

+7.4% Hit to hit a level 72 or 72 elite with every shot

+8.6% Hit to hit a level 73(??) or 73(??) elite with every shot this is a raid boss Kara through BT this is 136 hit rating. If you have more than 136 hit rating you are wasting stats as it will provide you with no benefit. If you have no additional weapon talents or hit from talents this is the point you want to get to.

Now it was my understanding that weapon skill (+5 racials) gave you a reduction of 1.2% (1.2% hit extra is needed to hit a mob per level it is higher than you) hit needed however it looks like this number is closer to 2%. If you scroll to the last post where BRK got opera loot you can see some of the info that I need to look at when I get home.

Shift
Guy on 31 Jul 2007 at 6:56 pm #

I really think that too many people focus on the agility threshold too much when they look at the SV tree.

As I mentioned yesterday on Zems article (getting a little OT I know..) You only need 435 base agility to spec into EW. After that, it’s much more important to have a high crit rate capable of sustaining EW on your target.

Yeah, Agility will give you more crit, but try to look at crit rating and agility as independent numbers. From 435 agility you can get LR which gives you 500 agility, 25% of 500 is 125, or what the melee would need to have the same imp as TSA.

Just remember, EW has to stay up. So take your weapon speed and multiply it by 100, then divide by 7 and you will find your optimum crit rate for you. All you need is 500 agi and whatever crit rate that last equation gave you.

I think a lot of people stay away from SV because they think they need some kind of ‘unreachable’ agility number, this isn’t the case.

Shifttusk,

We roll with 4 hunters, 2BM 1MM and 1SV(me). What’s nice about it is that it fits our play styles. BRK is right in that I just wouldn’t be comfortable playing a BM hunter, it’s not my style. So your raiding hunters need to enjoy whatever spec they’re going to use. Telling someone how to spec, doesn’t increase their damage or utility. This I’m sure you already know.

If you do however find yourself in a spot where you can mold the talents of these hunters then I would recommend:

One SV, as EW doesn’t stack.
One MM, as TSA doesn’t stack and you won’t have too many full Melee groups.
Two BMs, as in a pinch they can be added to any DPS group to increase damage AND FI stacks.
The balance of hunters should probably go Hybrid.

So that works out to:

Me - BM 41/20/0 I have 24.97% crit 120 hit rating. 1690AP and about 6800 mana unbuffed. Agil is at 510 since I’m wearing the ENS which gets my crit up but owns my agility.

Stay BM.

MMer - 7/4x/xx with no clever traps. Rocks around 2200AP 22%crit 80 or so hit rating and 7100 mana unbuffed. His agil is lower than 500.

Good candidate for SV, I’m sure you’ll notice right away a DPS increase because of the higher hit rating, though he’s going to be hitting for less. Don’t be worried if he wants to stay MM, if your raids haven’t rolled with EW before, they won’t know what they’re missing, they’ll see TSA as being just as good.

Now we have three others that swap on and off. Another MM with about 24% crit 450agility and only around 1900ap. He is lacking in gear because he usualy gets pulled out of kara.

I would recommend builds that have surefooted for the two guys with the low hit rating. Hybrid, SV, even 0/41/18 would do the job.

Given these numbers I think you would do great SV, but you seem to be one of your more powerful hunters, and at that level of progression EW might increase melee’s DPS but I think it would lower your DPS too much. The difference would mean less raid damage produced.

Ultimately I like the spec I think is going to be the most powerful in the endgame. I’m pretty certain that someday that’s going to be SV. I think it scales the best.

However in the last 8 months Blizzard has shown through itemization that they can make any hunter’s spec a viable raid option, so maybe I’ll eat my words later.

I guess what I’m saying is: Be a rockstar now and and spec BM, or be a rockstar later and spec SV. Realize that there can only be ONE SV, so take that chance before someone else in your guild grabs it.

I hope in all of my ramblings here I answered your questions.

-guy
Anonymous on 31 Jul 2007 at 7:56 pm #

Guy, More than you know you hit on the primary points. The biggie is right now I am on top. And I do think I’ll be gimping the raid somewhat if I drop in DPS. I do think though that the additional misdirectsmay allow some of the warlocks to open up more as they are starting to hit basicaly the threat cap. I do completely agree that you are right on the worry less about agility and more about crit getting up there, this is where I think I’d end up being the surv candidate. With surefooted I can drop some more hit rating and more than likely hit the crit rating I need. I should be at aruond 29.5% if I respecced survival in my current getup and if I replace the extra +hit items I should be in a good spot.

You’re of course 100% right about people not becoming better just on spec and it needing to fit their play style. The MM regular will never spec out of MM. The non regulars to be honest don’t discuss things enough for me to know if they would prefer the change. Me? Well at 60 I was 0/21/30. When I hit 70 I was specced 5/15/41. I have no worries about seeing readiness on my bar, its just a concern for the whole raid. I’m tempted to try out a survival respec today for gruul.

I think I may need to email Guy many more questions
Suzanne on 31 Jul 2007 at 8:49 pm #

My hybrid isn’t SV at all (other than 3 points into it for hawk eye). My hybrid is MM to TSA, then I’m still filling out BM since my hunter is only 65. So that would be an MM/BM hybrid, thank you very much!
Guy on 31 Jul 2007 at 10:12 pm #

Hey no problem Shift, best of luck to you.

Remember too that when you spec SV and flush out Master tactician you’re basically picking up another couple of crit points which isn’t reflected on the paper doll.

I think I mentioned this somewhere, but I was hoping to see rogue and fury warrior DPS increase significantly. While they do like EW, I don’t think they’re up where they should be on the dmg meter yet.

The other hunters I roll with though went from being slightly ahead on the DM to blowing the other classes out of the water.

It’s to the point of where we’re seriously wondering about the skill level of our casters, they have moonkin, shadow priest, totem of wrath.. We have leader of the pack, and each other. I would think things would be more even, but it’s not. I’m going to start checking the armory for our casters, I think it’s a +hit problem. Casters stack +dmg all day long and forget that it don’t mean shit when their spells are just getting resisted.

+hit is huge no matter what your DPS class is. If someone is really low on the DM chances are it’s because they’re missing a lot. That’s why people just getting into kara should roll with x/4x/18, it’s awesome. Gets you that plus hit for the hunter not interested in doing the math.

You’re also going to find that regardless of your spec, +hit gems are pretty wasteful. T4 has some plus hit to it, so does the head enchant, I can’t actually drop +hit and pick up any other stat. The itemization just doesn’t exist for me yet.

Lastly, I think you might have a lot of fun with SV on the High King Mulgar fight. We have our boomkin tank Kiggler because he likes to polymorph. He also does a knock back and clears is agro table, so our boomkin has a macro whisper me when this happens allowing me to MD the mob back on to him. That’s a MD on the pull, readiness, and an MD mid combat, if you can sync it, it’s cool.

On Gruul we kept our MD’s like our Tranq shots, alphabetical, but with a SV hunter it’s best to let them use their MD at the end of the rotation. This gives you time to blow ALL your cooldowns and analyze which tank on the meter needs a boost in agro next.

Additionally, your MD timer is going to be on a different clock the any other hunters you’re bringing, which is good cause it SUCKS when someone’s MD overwrites another persons MD.

Have fun and let me know how things work out!

-guy
Anonymous on 01 Aug 2007 at 1:12 pm #

The odds of anyone still reading this particular thread are small but just wondering if casters aim for the same approx. +8% to hit like hunters do?

I ask because I know rogues go for a diff. number, etc.
HELL on 01 Aug 2007 at 3:02 pm #

casters need 16% or something… I think thats what I remember reading on our guild forum once… So depending on their specs some need +12% or +5% from gear etc (varying from mages/shadowpriests/warlocks etc)