Note: Even though we are “quoting” this email-question, we did a lot of modification and hacked it up for readability and conciseness. Any attempt to show where and how we changed things made the question almost unreadable, so we’re going to pretend this is a direct quote, even though it isn’t. In the interest of full-disclosure, we thought you should know.

/ready

“Dear BRK, my main stats self buffed with talents/equip only, no consumables are 1904 RAP, a bit over 26% crit, 9k health and around 7k mana, and 110 hit rate. When it comes to 25 man raids, I’m always grouped with a feral druid and my stats become 2.3K RAP, 33% crit, over 8.2K mana and 10.2K health.

“Should I invest in more RAP, stack more crit, neglect a bit of both and raise my mana pool/Mp5, neglect all the above and get hit capped, or should I not give a flip about any of that and /rage /slapself /quit and go live in a cave? EchoVibes & Pilocas”

Yes; yes; a little but don’t hurt yourself; hold that thought; and no, caves are notoriously wet and it’s flu season.

When you go from a greenie to a blueie to your first purple, your stats are going to improve without too much thought or effort. Equip it and move on. But when one is looking at swapping an “Agi/Sta/Int” piece of epic gear for a “Sta/Crit/Hit/RAP with a red socket” epic item, things get more complicated.

Balance. We preach it for BM hunters. Crippling your Stamina for Agility isn’t smart. Neglecting Hit in Kara and beyond is a mistake, but going over the Hit Cap is a colossal waste. Loads of Crit but no Intellect is gonna hurt you in the long fights. Massive DPS with no Stamina makes you a glass cannon and hurts your raid’s healing.

Balance. Get and learn to use RatingBuster or a similar gear-stats analysis addon. Don’t give yourself a big weakness in any area while attempting to meet some stat-threshold.

Now let’s talk about the Hold Your Thought and capping one’s Hit Rating.

Our ranged Hit Cap remains 142 for level 73 bosses. However, having too low a Hit Rating will hurt your DPS, and that’s no lie. But do we recommend massively sacrificing Agility and Stamina and all the rest to get to that Hit Rating maxed? Nope; we just told you Balance is the key to MQoSRDPS.

Our Hit Rating through Gruul’s and SSC and Doomwalker has been 99. Yes that seems low and yes it affects our DPS; we miss approximately 1% of all our AutoShots against these bosses. We accept this because if we wanted to boost our Hit Rating, our other stats would be affected such that our DPS would decrease more than the amount our misses are costing us.

Read that again. By increasing our Hit Rating, our DPS would go down because we’d loose too many other stats while trying achieve the Hit Cap. This interplay of stats is what we call The Hit Cap Trap.

If we got caught up in the Hit Cap Trap and re-equipped our 3-pieces of Ebon Netherscale gear to get the +25 Hit Rating the set provides, we’d have to take off our new BoJ bracers and belt, two pieces of extremely powerful gear. Our Hit Rating would go way, way up, but our mana pool and health and crit and armor would all take a big tumble.

Do not let anybody say to you, “If you’re not Hit Capped, you’re not doing as much DPS as you can.” While technically a true statement, the methods used to implement it can cripple your DPS. It is very true that your Hit Rating is important and should not be ignored, but it is not the single most critical stat about which a hunter needs to be concerned.

The key to avoiding the Hit Cap Trap is Balance. So sayeth BRK, so let it be done.

Here’s an example of why this Internetty thing rox our sox.

Some nice person asks us a question about Ignore Armor. We answer it.

Someone else says, “Yeah, but how does this apply to raid-boses? Karthis answers it. He went to the Elitist Jerks, grabbed their theories about bosses and their armor values, and put up a nice list. Sweet.

Then Someone says, “That’s cool, but static info sucks. How about a web app?” and Someone builds it. He made a downloadable spreadsheet into which you can plug your personal Ignore Armor stat and see how much their physical damage mitigations will be reduced.

And since nobody emailed BRK to say, “OO! OO! OO! Lookie what we did!” we whip out our fun Technorati tools to find out who’s is saying what about da blog, find both their posts, and then link to them here.

Snazzy? You bet it is.

So we got our War-Feathered Loop and immediately the BRK Email and Christmas-Catalog Black Hole was overflowing with questions about how the Ignore Armor feature affects DPS. As usual, the answer is:

It depends.

To start with, the formulas that govern damage mitigation are not linear; they are partially based upon your target’s level. If your enemy is between the levels 1-59, their armor-mitigation is calculated with this formula:

%Reduction = ( Armor / ( ( Armor + 400 ) + ( 85 * Enemy_Level ) ) ) * 100

And if your enemy is 60-73 - remember that heroic bosses are assumed to be level 72 and raid bosses are assumed to be level 73 for mathematical purposes - the damage-mitigation formula is this:

%Reduction = ( Armor / ( ( Armor - 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * Enemy_Level ) ) ) * 100

Now then, let’s pretend you’re fighting a level-70 BRK and he has 6142 armor. How much physical damage is he mitigating?

%Reduction = ( Armor / ( ( Armor - 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * Enemy_Level ) ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 6142 / ( ( 6142 - 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * 70 ) ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 6142 / ( -16025.5 + 32725 ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 6142 / 16699.5 ) * 100

%Reduction = 0.3678 * 100 = 36.78% and if you check our armory profile and the armor tooltip, you’ll see that these figures match.Now you buy your new belt with the “ignores 70 of your opponent’s armor” capability. How does this affect BRK? When you attack him, it reduces his armor by 70 and thus decreases how much physical damage he mitigates.

%Reduction = ( ( Armor - 70 ) / ( ( ( Armor - 70 ) - 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * Enemy_Level ) ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( ( 6142 - 70 ) / ( ( ( 6142 - 70 ) - 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * 70 ) ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 6072 / ( -16095.5 + 32725 ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 6072 / 16629.5 ) * 100

%Reduction = 0.3651 * 100 = 36.51%

You’ve just reduced the amount of physical damage mitigated by armor from 36.78% to 36.51%. Congratulations!

Now let’s switch your target to Aetherial Circle’s main druid tank, Kelektra. Fully raid buffed, she has 27,801 armor and mitigates 72.48% of all physical damage. What does your little belt do against her?

%Reduction = ( ( Armor - 70 ) / ( ( ( Armor - 70 ) - 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * Enemy_Level ) ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( ( 27,801 - 70 ) / ( ( 27,801 - 70 ) - 22167.5 ) + ( 467.5 * 70 ) ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 27731 / ( 27731 - 22167.5 + 32725 ) ) * 100

%Reduction = ( 27731 / 38288.5 ) * 100

%Reduction = 0.7243 * 100 = 72.43%

You have now decreased the amount of physical damage Kel mitigates from 72.48% to 72.43%… Congratulations? Kinda.

How much DPS does Ignore Armor provide? As you can see, it completely depends upon the armor and level of the mob you’re fighting.

Theorycrafting time!

So the good ole boys and girls on Elitist Jerks are fleshing out just what the bloody heck the Hit Cap is and if they had a PayPal account we’d send them some moolah to help with their research. They rock, they do, even if it takes 500+ pages of notes and slams to get to a single, simple answer.

(That’s a total lie. We’d never send anybody moolah. Mrs BRK would explode; she needs her bam-bam.)

The Non-Math Basics on +Hit (Well, with as little math as possible.)

When you fight someone of higher level, their higher Defense rating causes you to miss.

Defense Rating = 365
Weapon Skill Rating = 350

DR > WSR thus you miss. Not all the time, but a percentage of your shots shall miss.

To counter these misses we can raise our Weapons Skill. Dwarves get +5 to Guns and Trolls get +5 to Bows.

Defense Rating = 365
Weapon Skill Rating = 355 thus we still miss but just not as frequently as if our WSR were 350.

To further reduce our misses we can increase our Hit rating. As we increase our Hit rating, we increase our Hit Percentage. As Our Hit Percentage goes up, the possibility of a shot missing goes down.

Simple.

The Hit Cap

With the combination of Weapon Skill and Hit Rating, we can almost entirely eliminate the probability that we’ll miss a shot. If one has no bonuses to Weapon Skill, the de facto standard for eliminating misses is achieving a Hit Percentage of 8.6%. If one has a +5 to Weapon Skill, like we do, the necessary Hit Percentage is reduced to 7.6%. This 8.6%/7.6% is known as The Hit Cap.

What would happen if we ramped our Hit Percentage to 10%? We’d be “wasting” that 3.4% as there is no benefit to it. The number of misses would not be reduced as we’ve already minimized the possibility of a miss.

If one is over-hit-capped, one is free to reduce their Hit Rating and increase another stat. For example, replacing an agility/hit gem with an agility/stamina gem.

ElitistJerks folks have been toying with the idea that The Hit Cap was either incorrectly derived or it has shifted and the correct value is 9%, (8% with a +5 Weapon Skill Bonus). We have no position on this argument and will happily accept the learned opinion of those theorycrafters.

But it should be noted that our Hit Percentage is 7.1% and we haven’t recorded a miss since… well, since we don’t know. We haven’t kept a record of our Hit Percentage and the number of recorded misses, but we do know that since we started running WoW Stats we haven’t recorded miss at all. Not one.

What could this mean?

1. WoW Stats is flawed and is missing our misses.
2. We’ve just been really lucky and haven’t missed even though we mathematically could have and statistically should have.
3. We haven’t accumulated enough data to record a miss because the chance of a miss is so low.
4. The Hit Percentage required to eliminate most, if not all, misses is being established too high.

One, two, and three could all be true, easily. But so could four; perhaps the Hit Percentage calculation isn’t linear.

Supposition: The higher your Hit Percentage, the chance of a miss decreases non-linearly.

Let’s make up some numbers and pretend we’re level 70 and attacking a level 73 mob:

If one’s Hit Percentage is 0%, the change one will hit will be 90%.

If one’s Hit Percentage is 2%, the chance one will hit will be 93%.

If one’s Hit Percentage is 4%, the chance one will hit will be 98%.

If one’s Hit Percentage is 6%, the chance one will hit will be 99%

If one’s Hit Percentage is 8%, the chance one will hit will be 99.2%

In this mathematical universe, the benefit to attaining a Hit Percentage of just 4% is tremendous, increasing the number of hits by 8%. However, once past this point, we experience diminishing returns. To increase one’s Hit Percentage from 4% to 8% one needs to double one’s Hit Rating. When we double our Hit Rating to achieve this new Hit Percentage, the number of hits only increases by 1.2%. Not as efficient as the 0%-4% increase.

What we’re theorizing here is that, yes, the Hit Cap of 7.6% - or whatever number the ElitistJerks agree upon - will probably be accurate in that it will almost totally eliminate the possibility of a miss. However, it could also be stated that diminishing other stats in order to reach that Hit Cap may not always be the most beneficial use of stats.

The Hit Cap may not be as important as a Minimum Hit Percentage.

If you look at our made-up numbers, we would say that it is more important to achieve a Hit Percentage of 4% than it is to achieve a Hit Percentage of 8%. Getting to 8% would be great, of course, but it would be d@mn well critical to get that 4% in order to get our misses down from 10% to 2%.

Having a Hit Percentage of 0% would be bad.

Having a Hit Percentage of 4% would be reaching the Minimum Hit Percentage, as it would eliminate all but 2% of one’s misses.

Having a Hit Percentage above 4% but less than 8% would be great, but not as important as perhaps increasing your RAP.

Having a Hit Percentage above 8% would be over The Hit Cap and unnecessary.

Um… Theoretically.

Again, we made up all those numbers. We built them off the modeling we’ve done with our 7.1% Hit Percentage and how we haven’t seen a miss with it, even though it’s 0.5% below our 7.6% Hit Cap.

Bottom Line: we’re in no rush to increase our Hit Rating until we start seeing some misses.

Edit: Do not look at the Java signature and think those are our stats. Right now it shows our crit at 21.57% when it is really 25.08% and we’re positive our Hit Rating is higher than 93. We logged out without something on, active, or peculiarly set.

OK folks, the comments and emails have made us feel uppity. Please standby for a rant.

/rant on

What is Ranged Attack Power? RAP is a damage-modifier. The higher your RAP the more damage you do.

What is Crit? Crit is a damage-modifier. The higher your Crit the more damage you do.

What is Hit? Hit is a damage-modifier. The closer you come to being hit-capped, the more damage you do.

What is Attack Speed? Attack Speed is a damage-modifier. The faster your Attack Speed the more damage you do.

What is Mana? No, mana is NOT a damage-modifier. The amount of mana you have does NOT affect your damage.

Mana is a Resource. Converting mana to Damage is damage-method, not a damage-modifier.

“WHOA!! Time OUT BRK! That there is a total load of bunkum. We hunters use Mana for our shots and stings and THOSE are damage-modifiers, ain’t they?”

Yes. But mana is not. Neither mana nor your Mana-Efficiency are damage-modifiers. The whole Auto/Steady argument is based around this mistaken concept:

Mana Efficiency = DPS

And that is totally, completely, off-the-wall Wrong.

Hunter #1: Has a pool of 5000 mana. He fires everything he has, goes balls-to-the-wall crazy. He kills his mob in 10 seconds and has no mana left.

Hunter #2: Has a pool of 5000 mana. He uses an Auto/Steady macro. He kills his mob in 13 seconds and has 1500 mana left.

Who wins?

Hunter #1 did the same amount of damage as Hunter #2 but he delivered it in a less time. His DPS was higher. He used more mana, he consumed more resources, but he did more DPS.

New mob, tougher and with more health.

Hunter #1: Has a pool of 5000 mana. He fires everything he has, goes balls-to-the-wall crazy. He runs out of mana after 10 seconds and has to rely on Auto Shot to kill the mob, which takes 20 seconds.

Hunter #2: Has a pool of 5000 mana. He uses an Auto/Steady macro. He kills his mob in 15 seconds and has 1300 mana left.

Who wins?

Now this time, Hunter #1 didn’t have enough resources. He was not capable of sustaining that level of DPS and used all his mana before the mob died. That certainly wasn’t optimum, of course not.

And this is when Hunter #2 yells out, “DUDE WTF! If you used Steady Shot you’d do more DPS!” And while technically Hunter #1 would’ve done more DPS with an Auto/Steady rotation it wouldn’t be because that combination does more damage. It would because Auto/Steady automatically manages mana consumption.

It is entirely accurate to state that Steady Shot increases people’s DPS because it alleviates them from having to manage their mana properly. But if you effectively manage your mana yourself you can do a lot more damage than Auto/Steady spamming.

Look at our data. Our Arcane Shot does more damage per shot than Steady. Yes, Arcane uses more mana, but if we don’t run out of mana then SO WHAT?!

We do more DPS with Arcane Shot because we deliver more damage at a faster rate than we do with Steady Shot. Now if we were a different spec that might be reversed, we’re not arguing that. But for Beastmasters, Arcane is a more powerful shot. Look at the data, it’s all there.

If you had Infinite Mana what would you use, the most mana-efficient shot rotation or would you go balls-to-the-wall crazy? That’s the key, right there. As long as you can maintain your mana reserves then you don’t need to use the most mana-efficient shot rotation. You can go balls-to-the-wall crazy if you practice one very important thing:

Better Mana Management.

High mana pools, high mana regeneration, Fel Mana potions, Mana totems, Mana Oil, Vampiric Touch, and Aspect of the Viper. There are loads of ways to increase your mana reserves and mana regeneration rates. If you can keep your mana reserves high there is no reason in the world not to use Arcane Shot instead of Steady Shot.

Weaving Auto/Steady is the most mana-efficient method of increasing your DPS. We have no argument with this statement, it’s a fact, end of story.

Weaving Auto/Steady is the most effective method of increasing your DPS. Bullpucky.

If you can maintain your mana reserves, using Arcane/Multi/Steady whenever their cooldowns are up, and without affecting your Auto Shot delivery, will provide the highest-sustained DPS possible.

Nobody calls Auto/Steady “Balls to the Wall DPS” for a reason. It ain’t.

However, it become your responsibility to modify your shot-rotation based upon the mana regeneration methods available to you. If you’ve got a shadow priest, mana totems, and an endless supply of Fel Mana potions, your clearance to go balls-to-the-wall crazy is granted. If you’re stuck in the MT and MH’s group and are potionless, the Auto/Steady rotation and Aspect of the Viper will probably help you the most.

Running out of mana in the middle of a fight is very, very Bad. But likewise, there is no bonus prize for finishing a boss fight with mana in reserve. The ultimate efficiency-goal is to watch a boss drop as you consume your last mana point.

Any mana you have remaining after a boss dies is Damage you didn’t do.

/rant off

P.S. Of course, we hope nobody takes this post as a personal attack. We expect lots of theorycrafting, number-crunching, STFU, and ElitistJerksFTW comments. As usual around here, that’s totally cool with us.

Edit: /mini rant on

We just looked at the WWS stats pics again. We did >25k damage more than the #2 and #3 total-damage folks and somehow Auto/Steady is going to make us do MORE damage? The people in our guild didn’t just fall through the Dark Portal wearing Winterspring greenies, folks.

/mini rant off

“Dear BRK, I have actually never seen the gloves the maiden drops in the 10+ times I have killed her but they look nice. I have the ones that drop in heroic mech. The T4 gloves are so very similar to the ones from mech. Can you please help me compare the maiden’s gloves vs the gloves from heroic mech? Furio and Vash.”

Let’s do take a look at all three pairs of entry-level epic gloves and see what we can see.

Handguards of the Steady (HotS - drops from heroic Mechanar)
486 Armor
+29 Agility
+22 Stamima
+21 Intellect
Attack Power +54

Gloves of Quickening (GoQ - drops from Maiden of Virtue)
507 Armor
+22 Stamina
+24 Intellect
Blue Socket
Red Socket
Socket Bonus: +3 Agility
Crit Rating +17
Attack Power +52
4 Mana per 5 Seconds

Demon Stalker Gauntlets (DSG - token drops from Curator)
528 Armor
+28 Agility
+24 Stamina
+24 Intellect
Attack Power +58
6 Mana per 5 Seconds

DSG > HotS, period. Any questions on this point? Probably not. The difference isn’t huge but it’s easily seen. More RAP, Stamina, Intellect, Armor, and MP5.

But what about the DSG vs GoQ? That’s a little different story, isn’t it. Because you can customize the GoQ as you need, if you are deficient in an area and you build the GoQ to fill those holes, these might be a better fit for you.

How so?

You’ve Survivalist spec and have oodles of Agility and Crit. But now that you’re in Kara your lack of +Hit is hurting you; you’re missing a lot. Also, you’re burning through your mana too fast; you need mana and more MP5.

You snag your GoQ and get your friendly Jewelcrafter to make you some speciality gems.

For the red socket you get a Glinting Noble Topaz. With this you get +4 Agility and +4 Hit Rating.

For the blue socket you get a Dazzling Talasite. Slapping this in your gloves gives you +4 Intellect and 2 MP5.

Now your GoQ look like this:

Gloves of Quickening
507 Armor
+7 Agility (with the +3 Agility socket bonus)
+22 Stamina
+28 Intellect
Hit Rating +4
Crit Rating +17
Attack Power +52
6 Mana per 5 Seconds

Is this a “better” setup than the DSG? Maybe, maybe not. If you need the +Hit and mana-reserves and regeneration, we think it could be considered such.

Let’s experiment further and put two Balanced Nighteyes (+10 AP and +6 Stamina) in there.

Gloves of Quickening (GoQ)
507 Armor
+3 Agility (socket bonus FTW)
+34 Stamina
+24 Intellect
Crit Rating +17
Attack Power +72
4 Mana per 5 Seconds

That looks more like a Marksman-PvP set of gloves, doesn’t it; good pure-RAP and higher Stamina. If that’s your bag, if that’s how you like to spec and play, this is probably a nicer setup than the Tier 4 gloves.

How about the BRK-favorite Agility gems and compare that to the DSG.

Gloves of Quickening (GoQ)
507 Armor
+16 Agility (no socket bonus, so not +19)
+22 Stamina
+24 Intellect
Crit Rating +17
Attack Power +52
4 Mana per 5 Seconds

Demon Stalker Gauntlets (DSG)
528 Armor
+28 Agility
+24 Stamina
+24 Intellect
Attack Power +58
6 Mana per 5 Seconds

That looks almost the same, but weaker in the RAP-department, 68 vs 80. By this analysis, one could say that for pure DPS the DSG are a better choice than the GoQ with Agility gems.

The GoQ allow you to use gems to address any deficiencies in your gear. The DSG provides a very good but locked set of stats. The only direct comparison that matters is yours.

You want to know more about gems? Here’s a handy site for gem research:

Xornot’s Gem Finder

Note: that site allows advertisements for gold sellers.

Why Denmark? Because, as the saying goes, there’s something rotten there. We present BRK’s and Fio’s combat logs, just the first few lines, from our Gruul’s Lair run. These are parsed from the complete data file from the first Misdirection to the death of Maulgar:
We recorded four events before Jerkhead gained 12 Mana from his totem. Fio recorded six. Houston, we have a problem; our data cannot be trusted yet.

We probably screwed something up.

So into the config files and FAQs we delve. More on WWS later as we try to figure out just how dumb we’ve been.

“Dear BRK, I know the mantra is AGI then STA then everything else. But when does the bonus from an AGI item out weighed by the bonus from STA. I asked this because at 57 I have two rings that both give like +6 agi and I went to Hellfire and one of the first mobs that I killed dropped a lvl 57 ring that has +21 STA on it. Would not the +sta [outweigh] the little agi bonus that I get by giving my pet and myself more [health]? Mshirley.”

It depends.

If you’ve got loads and loads of stamina but very low agility, keep your DPS-rings. If you’re running around Hellfire Peninsula with 1000 health, slap on the +Stamina ring.

An item can be “better” than another, but that does not necessarily require you to use it.

Let’s say that, for right now, the agility rings are what you need. Don’t run off and vendor that stamina ring! Keep it hidden, keep it safe. You may need it in the future. The immediate future. Tomorrow. Your next quest. The next mob.

“hello my name is deji, i have bentry to communicat with the BRK europ office for weeks now, i will like to correspond with Pam Worrall of BRK Brands Europe Limited. ihad writen to him some months aga and he replied. i had applied to become BRK african representative. now i am ready to place order for somke alarms and i cant get through to him , i want to please help by directing me to who i can talk to or send mails to. thank you, deji”

…

Hey, BRK EA! Do we have smoke alarms? Do we sell them in Africa? And who the h3ll is Pam? Stand by, Deji, we’ll get back to you.

“Dear BRK, Please, please, please, tell me what UI is it that you’re using… Zemulos.”

We use:

Perl Unit Frames
Bartender 3 and Cycircled
Baud Bag
CT_RaidAssist
Titan Panel
Titan Panel [Guild]
Omen
Fizzwidget TrackMenu
Cooldown Timer Bars
Critical Alert
Kharthus’s Hunter Timers
MobInfo-2
ScrollingCombatText
SCT-Damage
Atlas

Most can be downloaded from Curse, Omen and Cycircled are from WoWAce downloads. And in case you forget, we link to these two spiffy sites on our right sidebar.

More WWS stuff soon, we promise, after we overhaul our cr@p. And BRK on WoW Insider column today at 3pm! Don’t miss it!

This completes the set, thank Elune. Now we can make some money again. With this piece of gear completed, our ability to craft leatherworking stuff is on an as-needed basis. No more set-pieces, no more epic boots, that’s it. Phew.

By itself this isn’t the bees-knees compared to the Stalker’s War Bands that drop from Attumen. However, the ebon chest is awesome and the belt is spiffy. While the bracers could be considered a down-grade, the bonus to Hit from the three-piece set makes the decision pretty simple.

Loose some mana and RAP in exchange for health, Crit, MP5 and the nice Hit bonus. We said we’d get that back, didn’t we. So we’re Hit-capped again and the feeling is groovy.Our agility is almost embarrassing low, we must say. But the combination of Hit, DPS, and Crit is Love-R-Ly.

In other news, we ran around with WoWWebStats cooking during our goofing off tonight. Here’s a screenshot of the important data we collected:We think this is probably the nicest stat-analysis tool we’ve seen. We finally have some definitive data that Hobbes is missing 8.7% of the time against level 70-71 mobs. That’s probably higher against the Kara bosses and even more of an argument for BM hunters to get Animal Handler for the pet-Hit alone.

We slapped the whole shebang on the WWS site, it wasn’t that hard. Here’s the link. You may notice a bizarre combination of mobs we were killing that got recorded. Can you guess which instance we were in?

We want our pets to ride beside us on our ground mount and auto-dismissed when we use our flying mount. If we have a flying pet, we want him to fly beside us on our flying mount. Ditto flying non-combat pets. We want to fly into Shattrath with our Dragonhawk and 27 non-combat flying pets in a V-formation.

We want our flying mount to bank through turns. Obey the Laws of Physics!

We want to be able to put our flying mount on auto-straight, jump up off the saddle, shoot stuff, land back on the saddle and keep on truckin’. Ignore the Laws of Physics!

We want our gun with a scope to look like a gun with a scope. We want scopes to look more and more wicked as they get more powerful.

We want bows to have something besides a scope; that’s just dumb. Let engineers make synthetic string or graphite shafts, whatever. Bow-scopes are a cop-out.

We want an epic craftable ammo pouch and quiver, dagnabit! A 28-slotter, no skimping!

We want craftable ammo to cost less. We want rocket-propelled ammo. We want armor-piercing ammo. We want explode-on-contact ammo. We want some variety!

We want the Hawk Eye talent moved out of the Survival Tree.

We want Combat Experience buffed. We’re probably never going to go Marksman, but CE is abysmal and needs some love.

We want Trueshot Aura to be a real Aura, like Paladins have.

We want Steve Jobs to retire, Apple’s board of directors to hire us as the new CEO, and for us to green-light the iMac Gamer project.

We want the 95% of our pets which have no Reason To Be to be given a Reason To Be. Make a Sporebat special or just get rid of it, ya know what we’re saying?

We want Gnome hunters. BRK would reroll a gnome hunter tomorrow and get a bear pet and PvP until we died laughing.

We want more Fel Mana potions. Alchemists, please advertise these to the hunter community and put more on the Auction House.

We want more stable slots. Make them expensive, we don’t care. We can have 165 different epic mounts but only three pets? Yes this “want” has been beaten to death, but OMG just how stupid is it that this hasn’t changed yet?

We want greater pet-deltas. Make a tank-pet a real tank-pet and not just give him +5% armor. Enough half-@ssed efforts, already.

We want pet-stats! What is Hobbes’s dodge percentage? What is his crit? Hel-lo?!

We want more pet snacks. Sporeling Snacks FTW but where are the Serpent Snaugages, the Felboar Bacon Bits and the Clefthoof Cookies?

We want less quest-reward Shammy-gear. Lots less.

We want spec-geared gear, like the Shammy’s get. The Beastmaster Leggings are a good start, now make an entire set and call it Beastlord. Make Desolation just for Marksman and a new set with agility out the ying-yang for Survivalists.

We want kids today to know the joy of Bugs Bunny/Road Runner and that all their new-fangled crap can’t compete.

We want to be able to scale our Mend Pet spell. Let us use +Healing enchants and gear again. It wasn’t that popular before, but we’d sure chuck some on now.

We want Cower to be free, like Growl.

We want a better animation for Kill Command. We have recommended that Hobbes grab the enemy by the throat and toss him around like a toy for three seconds.

We want to Misdirect onto anybody. Especially that undead Warlock who kept trying to ninja our Cobra Scales last night. We went so far as to flag PvP and get him to flag too so we could nuke him into the next dimension, no luck. Stupid PvE server, let us Misdirect all the Naga at Coilfang Point onto his @ss.

We want Serpent Sting redone; it both sucks and blows now.

We want Viper Sting redone. Ditto.

We want our pet to die when we Feign Death. Hobbes can tank Murmur but he cannot “play dead”? Pfft.

We want the old Raspberry back, Starbucks! You sick, communist, tree-hugging, muffin-headed, bed-wetters!

We want a new Hunter Quest of Epic Proportions. The big problem with the Rok quest was that you needed a 40-man raid to get you to the Leaf to start the whole shebang. Make Nessingwary’s grandpa show up in Nagrand with the HQoEP. Any hunter can start it, only the very best can finish it. Make it cool, make it really, really hard, make it take a long time. Make our pets important to completion. Make us use every skill we have, not just kiting. No tricks, no buffs, nothing but gear, experience, and skill. Make the reward something really small, though, like a tabbard or a shirt. Make hunters do the quest for pride.

You pull back the hammer on your gun, the hammer lands, the bullet flies. There are three things that can happen: Miss, Hit, or Crit.

How does it work?

Example: You are level 70, your enemy is level 70. You have 0% +Hit and 0% +Crit. Blizz has made the following mechanics standard:

Miss = 5%
Hit = 95%
Crit = 0%

Example: You are level 70, your enemy is level 70. You have 0% +Hit and 20% +Crit. Blizz has made the following mechanics standard:

Miss = 5%
Hit = 75%
Crit = 20%

Everyone OK so far? Good. Now, let’s freak you out. Everyone should agree that a 5% miss-rate means that for every 100 shots, we will Miss 5 times. But is this miss-rate calculated with a One-Roll or a Two-Roll System?

The One-Roll System

Imagine, if you will, a 100-sided dice. If you roll a 1-5 you Miss. If you roll a 6-80, you Hit. If you roll an 81-100, you Crit. One roll, everything settled, pretty simple.

The Two-Roll System

Imagine, if you will, a 100-sided dice. If you roll a 1-5, you Miss. If you roll a 6-100 you Hit. If you Hit, you roll the dice again. If you roll a 1-20 you Crit, if you roll a 21-100 you just Hit.

In both systems, the Miss/Hit/Crit percentages are applied but the mechanics are very different. Which system does Warcraft use? We’re not certain. The writer of the HunterGuide project has this to say:

“More recent observations suggest a 2 roll system is being used for special attacks: First a roll to see whether you hit or not, then another roll to determine if you crit or made a regular hit. The exact roll system used for Hunters is hard to determine. The results are, in the case of Hunter attacks, very similar. Melee attacks, which suffer from parries and dodges, and often a higher miss rate than our ranged attacks, have results differing much more. Currently, I assume a standard 1 roll system for all attacks for my calculations.”

He reports that data suggests a two-roll system is used, but then says his calculations assume a one-roll system. Peculiar to say the least. Does BRK have the data analsyis to confirm one of these systems is correct? Nope. But we can show you how they both work.

Watch the magic!

The One-Roll System and Crit

Back to our 5% Miss, 75% Hit, 20% Crit model, which we will call the 5/75/20 for simplicity.

If we shoot 1000 times, we should miss 50 shots, hit 750 shots, and crit 200 shots. Simple roll of the dice.

The Two-Roll System and Crit

If we shoot 1000 times, we should miss 50 shots and hit 950 shots. Of those 950 shots, we should crit 20% of the time. 20% of 950 shots is 190 shots. 190 is less than 200…

Under the Two-Roll System, a 20% Crit rating does not mathematically mean that we will crit 200 out of 1000 shots! OMG!

Take a moment to recover. Have a raspberry coffee.

What does this all mean? It means that under the Two-Roll System, your +Hit becomes even more critial than you think it is. How? Why?

Watch.

The One-Roll System and Hit

If our +Hit increases by 1%, our 5/75/20 is modified to 4/76/20. The number of crits we have does not increase, the frequency of crits does not increase. We Miss less often, thus we have more Hits. If we fire 1000 shots, we should see 40 misses, 760 hits, and 200 crits.

The Two-Roll System and Hit

If our +Hit increases by 1%, our miss-rate falls from 5% to 4%, so we should see 40 misses out of every 1000 shots. Our Hit-rate jumps from 95% to 96%. Since we crit 20% of our Hits, we shall have 20% of 960 shots be crits. 20% of 960 shots is 192 shots.

When we had a 0% +Hit we had 190 crits, but with a 1% +Hit, we had 192 crits…

Under the Two-Roll System, as we increase our +Hit, our crit percentage remains the same but the number of Crits increases!

This seems pretty d@mn important, doesn’t it. If we’re playing under the Two-Roll System, our +Hit has a much larger influence over our total-damage than it does under the One-Roll System. The problem is that we cannot find any blue-post or stastical analysis to prove which system is used in the miss/hit/crit calculations for us hunters. Nothing, nada, the empty-set.

Why does the HunterGuide guy assume a One-Roll System? Our inital thought is that it’s an easier system, mathematically. No if-then statements to program saves work and makes more simple forumlas.

But is he right… and what if he’s wrong…