I ask because I know rogues go for a diff. number, etc.

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

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

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

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

1 point in BM (Don’t hate me please)
28 points in MM
32 Points in Survival

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.