We Prefer a Stick Shift, But Not Always
“Dear BRK, got a question about trinkets for you. My very first BM run I got the Hourglass of the Unraveller, I quickly replaced my Bladefist Breadth.
“Another hunter in my guild says I was stupid for doing so because I can’t “control” when the trinket will proc and he would rather have a controlled 200ap for 15 sec every 2 minutes than an uncontrolled 300ap for 10 sec. My thinking is that it should proc at least twice every 2 minutes on average thus it would be better, but I look to you for guidance. Thanks, Alanor.”
So let’s talk about these two popular trinkets, shall we?
First we have the Bladefist’s Breadth. This is a quest reward so every hunter should probably have this bad boy at one time or another.
Next is the Hourglass of the Unraveller. This contraption is a drop in Black Morass so you may or may not ever get one. We have not. /grumble
Note: We may start a new policy where we don’t talk about gear we’ve never gotten. Sonic Spear and Hourglass would lead that list.
Anyway.
The Hourglass has a higher crit rating, 32 to 26. That right off makes one one to equip the Hourglass. Plus, it’s from Black Morass, not a quest. It’s got to be better right? Hello? Bueller?
Let’s look at the bonus stuff. The Breadth trinket is a solid 200 attack power for 15 seconds, every 1.5 minutes due to cooldown. Our pretty Hourglass increases our attack power by 300 for 10 seconds, but only on a per-chance basis on every crit.
Whoa.
Now we’re done our research and can say that the Hourglass’s probability to proc is 5%. This is not on every hit, but only crits. The number of times this trinket will proc depends upon your crit rate AND your shot speed.
Hunter A has a 20% chance to crit and a firing rate of one shot every 1.8 seconds. In 90 seconds – 1.5 minutes, just like the Bladefist cooldown – he’ll fire 50 Auto Shots, of which only ten will crit. Of those ten crits, only 5% will cause a trinket proc, which means he has a 50/50 chance of a proc or not. If he had the Bladefist, he’d be guaranteed a “use”.
Hunter B has a 27% chance to crit and a firing rate of one shot every 1.8 seconds. In 90 seconds, he’ll fire 50 Auto Shots, of which thirteen will crit. Of those thirteen crits, only 5% will cause a trinket proc. Again, no mathematical guarantee of a proc.
Let’s work it backwards. In order to mathematically guarantee a proc, we need twenty crits. Twenty crits from 50 shots is a 40% crit chance. In order to mathematically guarantee that our Hourglass procs as frequently as we can use our Bladesfist, with a firing speed of 1.8 seconds per shot, we need a 40% crit rate.
Yikes.
“Why the huge requirement BRK?”
Because one is a Use and the other is a Proc. If you made the Proc on par with the Use, you’d never use the Use, would you.
Blizz is making you think! Those b@stards.
Now these calculations are only taking into account the proc-events, not the proc-results. The Bladefist is 200 AP for 15 seconds, the Hourglass is 300 AP for 10 seconds. If you fire at a 2.0 rate, you’ll only have five Auto Shots get the benefit of the 300AP bonus whereas you’d have seven Auto Shots get the benefit of the 200 AP bonus.
There are a lot of variables involved here, yes? And nobody can work out what exactly is “best” for you without knowing your gear and your stats; you have to do the math yourself, (until Someone makes a web app or spreadsheet). And even if one of the trinkets is “better” for you than the other, your preferred playstyle may dictate that you chose the “lesser” trinket.
In the meantime, we’ll offer this advice: The Bladefist requires you to “use” it, the Hourglass is automatic. Are you going to Use that Bladefist everytime its cooldown is up? No, you’re not; you’re going to save it for when you need it, like boss fights. Now you can’t guarantee that the Hourglass is going to proc during a boss fight, but it’ll help you out much more against the trash mobs because it’ll proc all on its own.
You know what some hunters do? Save the Bladesfist for boss fights and use the Hourglass for all the trash mobs. Or even more popular: equip them both.
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But BRK!
No hunter in his or her right mind only shoots once every 1.8 seconds. This trinket can also Proc on crits from steady shot, arcane shot and multi shot (I think!!). Lets just say you are weaving auto / steady (admittedly I know you are not a fan of this!). Doesn’t this mean the 20% crit rate will be enough to satisfy the 5% Proc rate?
- Thar & Catsby
I’m not clear on where you’re getting the data from the Hourglass proc rate. If it’s from this WoWHead post (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28034#comments:id=29592), one of the guys says his proc watch saw it proc on 5% of all his hits, not just crits. Since he had a crit rate of 20%, it went of on ~25% of his crits by his maths. Of course, others have reported different results, but I’ve never seen anyone report such a lot proc rate on the Hourglass. Also, the trinket has a built in cool down, and you don’t even mention that in your calculations.
Here’s the proc: http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=33648 It’s a 10% chance to proc off of crits. The hidden cooldown is something like 40-45s based on testing.
Hi BRK!
There IS a Spreadsheet that accounts for pretty much everything: The Cheekys DPS Spreadsheet.
You can get it here http://forums.tkasomething.com/showthread.php?t=8616
For those with “on-use” macros, I heartily recommend the following macro:
#showtooltip Sinister Strike(Rank 10)
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/use Abacus of Violent Odds
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();UIErrorsFrame:Show()
/cast Sinister Strike(Rank 10)
Just replace “Sinister Strike(Rank 10)” with whatever attack you spam the most (hunters, steady shot? don’t ask me) and “Abacus of Violent Odds” with the name of your trinket.
With a single buttonpress, it will automagically use the trinket and your attack.
The two script lines suppress all the error message you get from “activating” the trinket the 50 times it’s on cooldown.
IMO the proc on Hourglass of the Unraveller is far superior to Bladefist’s Breadth. It procs for me at least once a minute (or whatever the hidden cool down is) and once i get into a shot rotation it’s going off every 45 secs. I usually forget to pop my other trinket except in boss fights so it’s nice to have an automatic proc. Not to mention the awesome berserk-ish appearance of the effect when it procs. I’d actually be willing to give up the crit on this trinket for an AP trinket but i’m too attached to the awesome looking proc
i’d say get it and use it and figure out for yourself what works best for your stats/ equipment/ playstyle. Here’s my armory if it helps any :
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Bloodscalp&n=Kroniko
BTW Don’t listen to your guildee he’s the stupid one.
BRK said: “In order to guarantee a proc, we need twenty crits.”
But BRK, there’s no way to guarantee a proc! I think you mean that in order to get one *expected* proc, you need twenty crits.
Love the site!
Equip them both? Now why does that sound like a sensible idea? Oh yes – because that’s what I do
When I started the level 70 5-man instances, I went in with Bladefist’s Breath and the Dranei War Talisman (well, actually, it was the mana-giving mushroom, but I quickly realised that with a rogue around, I was never gonna get the killing shot required to activate it). After many, many runs of BM, the hourglass dropped, and that forced out the Talisman. I now run instances with the two equipped, massively increasing my crit chance (along with Leader of the Pack from a lovely druid tank) to somewhere around the 30% mark (depending on buffs).
Yes, I wish it would proc more often, but there is nothing sweeter than activating my Breath, FI hitting from our BM hunter, a shammy dropping Heroism, and seeing the Hourglass proc all at once (YES! It happened twice in 3 Kara runs!)
Someone’s busy!
As for Cheeky’s Spreadsheet linked in a comment above, it’s not useful here because, for Hourglass of the Unraveller, he does not use the proper values… (No cooldown, no +AP, no duration, nothing: the only thing he uses from this trinket is the crit rating)
equip them both.
Oh, and if you have a respectable crit rate.. like over 34%, then trust me when I say that every 45sec ’secret cooldown’ it’s up.
Non WoW related but..
stick shift FTW
I roll with the Hourglass and an on-use AP trinket. Only way to travel.
If I can ever get the hourglass to drop from BM I’ll be equipping them both. Not that that will ever happen of course.
Anyone have any thoughts on popping in the Alchemist’s Stone for boss fights? (Along with Bladefist’s.)
The 40% healing bonus per pot works to take some pressure off the healers and the 40% mana bonus also seems to assure a low risk of OOM — but is it worth the reduction in dps by not having ancient dranei in? (I don’t have abacus or hourglass.)
For larger AOE pulls and soloing I use the Skyguard Cross.
I would love this trinket along with my Mark of Conquest for trash and grinding. The mana returned (plus the staic AP) from the Mark and the crit and proc from the Hourglass would dowright own!
On bosses I would return to the Breadth and the awesome Core of Ar’kelos. Those two make for some evil DPS. Core and BW, then Rapid Fire and Breadth… From then on just go with the flow.
I’m just glad that I’ve finally levelled high enough that you guys are talking about something I actually own and can use!(Bladefist’s Breadth)
Thing is, we should only wear 1 “use” trinket, since they share cds (correct me if I’m wrong).
That’s why I use Abacus + Hourglass, and now working my way to replace my Abacus with the Brooch.
The equip bonus from the hourglass is obviously better, so it’s a matter of comparing the proc benefit and proc rate. If we make the assumption that dps would go up proportionally with attack power increase, then 300 attack power for 10 seconds would be roughly the same as 200 attack power for 15 (200*15 = 300*10). Therefore, if we can come to the conclusion that the hourglass procs as many times as the bladefist is made available due to cooldown over a given amount of time, then it’s safe to say that the hourglass is better based on it’s superior equip bonus.
Thus, if you really want to know whether or not this trinket is better for you, I would suggest doing some long term tests on Dr. Boom and measuring the amount of procs you get per minute and a half. If you get at least one proc of the hourglass per bladefist cooldown, then the hourglass is hands down better for sustained boss dps. Of course you could also measure your damage done using one or the other and use that as a metric, but remember Dr. Boom is not a raid boss.
That said, I recommend having a “use” trinket, since it allows you to ramp up your dps if you need to. I find having one active and one passive trinket is very effective.
“As for Cheeky’s Spreadsheet linked in a comment above, it’s not useful here because, for Hourglass of the Unraveller, he does not use the proper values… (No cooldown, no +AP, no duration, nothing: the only thing he uses from this trinket is the crit rating)”
Thats not correct, this trinklet is fully modelled in the Spreadsheet (Check the calculations Tab)
Sayth is correct. The spreadsheet assumes 45 sec cooldown, 10% chance on crit, and works out an average +AP benefit based on your crit chance and attack speed. With my stats, I ended up with around 11% up time, making it slightly better than bladefist’s.
yeah, i would go with the hourglass any day… but then, id also rather use the bloodlust brooch and skyguard silver cross
@Gtech and Sayth: why then are these values in the Trinkets tab (relating to said trinket):
+Crit = 32
Proc? = No
+AP = 0
Duration = 0
Cooldown = 0
???
The only thing I see in the Calculations tab related to the trinket is this formula:
=IF(VLOOKUP(D56;TrinketStats;17)=”Yes”;(VLOOKUP(D56;TrinketStats;18)*VLOOKUP(D56;TrinketStats;20)/VLOOKUP(D56;TrinketStats;21));0)
Which, filling in the lookup columns from the TrinketStats range in the hidden Trinkets sheet, translates to this:
=IF(”No”=”Yes”;…;0)
@Someone
I have no Idea on the internal workings of the Spreadsheet, so lets do a pactical test:
I remove one of the trinklets in the Spreadsheet (DPS drops to 1492,07) and add 32 CR at “Hand Adjust” (DPS goes up to 1510,87)
Now I remove the 32 CR at “Hand Adjust” (Back to 1492,07) and select the Hourglass als the Trinklet (DPS at 1520,16)
If the Spreadsheet doesn’t account for the proc of the trinklet, why do I get higher DPS values with the trinklet?
personally, I roll with the cross and the hourglass… and usually swap the cross for the abacus(though I’m not sure if breath is better than the abacus… that one would be easy enough to figure out…
@someone, cheeky’s sheet averages out the procs of the hourglass over the course of your shots until mana exhaustion… OR you can turn that feature off, and manually put the proc into your shot rotation. you have to manually put the use for the abacus into the shot rotation.
in our battle with nightbane last night(down in one shot) my hourglass proc’d 7 times in the 12 minute encounter… which is impossible for the bladefist. that was with a raid buff’d crit% of around 34%(elixir of major agility, warp burger, leader of the pack, hourglass, abacus)
http://wowwebstats.com/rzqjd6yoxeplw
there’s our anonymous report… I am “Deimos”
The awsomeness of use trinkets with 2min CD for BM hunters is that they could be macroed together with with the BM-beast-gets-angry abillity (actually don’t remember the name, play my hunter very rarely these days)
If that makes the bladefists better I honestly don’t know. I’m not raiding with my hunter so I havent bothered to run the numbers.
I just picked up the hourglass yesterday unscientifically I can tell you its great. I have the Bladefist equipped as well. Replacing the war talisman with the hourglass raised my raid dps by a few % on the damage charts, doing nothing different (besides not using the war talisman’s ap buff) I would recommend whoring yourself out for BM runs until you get it.