Hello once again everyone.

So, I have spent the last few days researching the hunters in our guild and I noticed some trends that I believe some maybe confused on. I am no "expert", but I do spend many many hours researching (ask Zoo it drives her nuts) hunters and gear yadda yadda.

The below information is based on the items purchasable with Emblems of Triumph. (... of Conquest items) for PvE

2pc set: The damage done by your Serpent Sting ability can now be critical strikes.

4pc set: Each time you hit with a ranged attack, you have a chance to grant your pet 600 attack power for 15 sec.

Complete 5pc set: Nothing, there is no further bonus to have a 5pc set (don't do it, fight the urge)


Marksmen:
The only set bonus that should be considered "Oh that is a good goal to improve DPS" is the 2pc set. Reasoning, as a Marksmen your pet is only doing 5%-10% (10% would be a weird highend day and the gods like you) of your overall damage, so you would get much more benefit from saving/using your badges to fill in gaps in your equipment with higher end 245 pieces.


Survial:
Same as Markmen section


Beastmaster:
Here you should be looking at the 4pc set bonus. BM pets do somewhere around the 50%'ish range of overall hunter damage, so by all means the more attack power your pet has = more overall raid damage/DPS/performace.


I am brining this up because as I researched our hunters I was noticing a lot of duel spec'ed Marksmen/Survival with 4pc set bonus and even complete 5pc sets. Without interviewing the hunters in our guild, I am making the assumption that the pure fact you are duel spec'ed Marksmen/Survial is because you are attempting to bring up your DPS, perform a little better in raids or heroics, and overall just trying to make me proud (<---yeah I am sure is the real reason) lol. Anyways, I would suggest breaking up or getting away from the 4pc set bonus of T9.
Now if you are duel spec'ed BM/SV or MM/BM, then by all means go for the 4pc set - but other than that, you are lossing DPS.

One final note, I did see a couple hunters out there that were sitting around the 235 - 250'ish Hit Rating range yet have all high end agility enchants on all pieces of equipment possible. If you are 10 man raiding, or planing/hoping to soon; get hit capped (263). There is nothing out there that will raise your DPS more than actually hitting the boss as much as the game will allow. I would suggest the +25 hit/crit enchant to a weapon (single hand weapon), or +20 hit on gloves, or even the +12 hit/crit on boots to free up your focused aimed talent points so you can put them into a more DPS focused talent.

Just a couple sites below that discuss best/worst T9 and T10 gear combos. I am just linking these two cause the information is quick to gather from the posts without having to read 1,000 pages of chat.

WorldofWarcraft.com
and
Tkasomething.com

Very good points brought up Shadesta. Sometimes it has to do with not knowing where to find, or getting the drop for other, better gear. sometimes it is a matter of what you can afford at the time.

Hit is the single most under geared score on most DPS. Crit is sexy and so is a DPS's primary stat.... Many stack these only to watch their numbers on trash be good but really low on bosses.

Ya gotta hit it to crit it.

As far as hunters go the Hit cap can be different depending on one talent - Focused Aim. This is a 0/3 talent on the first tier of the MM tree, each point gives you a +1% boost to Hit and helps Steady Shot avoid pushback from damage. If you do not have Focused Aim your hit score must be 263 to reliably hit bosses.

So:
Focused Aim 0/3 - Hit needs to be at 8% (263)
Focused Aim 1/3 - Hit needs to be at 7% (230)
Focused Aim 2/3 - Hit needs to be at 6% (197)
Focused Aim 3/3 - Hit needs to be at 5% (164)

I am interested on your take on cross-gemming. A number of good hunter pieces come with the dreaded blue socket and a +4 Agil if you put a blue gem in there. However, it seems to me that a +20 Agil would better (or +20 Crit, hit, etc.) so I go with that unless it is PvP gear then I gem for +20 Stam.

Nymrodel wrote:

I am interested on your take on cross-gemming. A number of good hunter pieces come with the dreaded blue socket and a +4 Agil if you put a blue gem in there. However, it seems to me that a +20 Agil would better (or +20 Crit, hit, etc.) so I go with that unless it is PvP gear then I gem for +20 Stam.

Hit Rating for a hunter isn't really that hard to get to cap, the hard part is balancing your gear to keep you around the cap and not way over (like i am lol).

As for the Gems, You're right on the money Nymrodel, +20 Agility over +20 crit anyday.

Or,

+10 agility and +15 stam / +10 Agility and +10 crit rating.

Those are the two i use. Reason being, most fights have some form of AoE or something that can cause the hunters pain. This is the reason i mix up the gems i run, give me some extra stam with the +15 gems to increase survivability. the +10 Agility/+10 Crit..... i hate not going with the assigned socket lol.

I know blizzard has made some retarded gear in the past, Spirit and strength on a chest piece?? However, i think for the higher level gear there's a reason they placed the sockets the way they are so i tend to run with it.

Quote:

I am interested on your take on cross-gemming. A number of good hunter pieces come with the dreaded blue socket and a +4 Agil if you put a blue gem in there. However, it seems to me that a +20 Agil would better (or +20 Crit, hit, etc.) so I go with that unless it is PvP gear then I gem for +20 Stam.

You asked the question that has been driving me nuts for almost a month now... Come home from work, spend an hour or so everyday researching, weekends - I have lost track of the hours I spent (example today I have already spent 3 hours on just this aspect)

Short answer = 1 blue socket should be a nightmare tear (+10 stat one - this one gem also covers all the required gem counts for the hunters meta gem of +21ag +3%crit damage), all other blues should be the +10 Arp/+15Stam gem

In my opinion:
Cross-geming should only be done when you are attempting to reach an "end game style of play that has an obtainable hard cap for your talent/spec and play style."

Agility/Crit: Raid bosses DO have a hard cap crit limit, it is just over 104%. But even with the current ingame highest gear from iCC25 man heroics, only a SV hunter will get close to this cap due to talents/procs. I believe the ending number was somewhere around 93% crit that a SV could theoretically achieve, but to actually reach that point the hunter has given up a lot of power due to diminishing returns and having to take certain gear that virtually hurts all other stats. My personal opinion is not to completely get on the kick to gem completely agility. Most, but not all sites/forums suggest that as a hunter if you can maintain a crit rating somewhere between 50% - 60% before buffs/food, then you are sitting good.

Armor Pen: The hard cap limit for this stat against a raid boss is 1400pts. Believe it or not - this is not that hard to achieve. I am currently in item level 251 gear (ICC 10man), some frost gear (T10 and others), and yes even some 232 T9 gear. With this setup, along with the trinket from FoS I have sitting in the bank, I could cross-gem and actually be over the ArP hard cap. My concern here is that you have to be a phenomenal player, have your autoshot cool down on such a precise rotation (stop-shoot, move-stop-shoot, stop-stand in the fire for that extra .5 secs to get autoshot off while the healers are yelling for you to move-shoot)........I will never be able to maintain this if nothing else for the pure fact that my internet/latency will totally screw this up. If you go this route, and you miss a dozen or so auto shots and an aimed or steady because you have to move during a 5 - 10 minute boss fight, your DPS will be 100's less. After raiding/running with Felidae now for over a year, I completely believe he could pull this type of hunter off - yes yes, he is pretty much that awesome. But, unless by some weird act of a WoW GM god I suddenly recieve the higher end T10 gear and ICC25 fill-in gear, I will not soley be gemming for ArP hard cap - rather I will be attempting to maintain a balance.

What I gem while attempting to keep socket bonus:
Red socket = +20/+34 agility...though, a couple may turn into +20/+34 ArP depending on how the rest of the boss mechanics for ICC work out
Yellow socket = +10ag/+10crit
Blue socket = +10ArP/+15Stam

Why I gem the +10ArP/+15Stam:
A) I am hit capped through gear, so that leaves me a lot of flexibility in my gemming choices.
B) Due to the fact that I am using Red and Yellow socket gem choices to maintain a balance for crit/agility/Atkp (and freebie socket bonus), I am over the suggested 50% unbuffed crit. Therefore certain amounts of ArP actually do help with a higher level of consistent (<--- key word) DPS on those boss fights where I am able to stand still long enough that autoshots are not interrupted, yet, if I do have to move DPS is not completely trashed. And, having an extra +15/+30/+45/etc... stam during boss fights with raid wide AoE not only helps me stay alive longer so I can continue to DPS, but the more health you have means the healers can concentrate on others
C) Keeping the socket bonus you get the "freebie +agil, or +Atkp, or +Hit, or whatever it is without having to try and enchant/makeup for it somewhere else.

One thing to realize also in regards to Hit is that Draenei in your party/raid automatically grant you a buff +1% to Hit. So, if you are 30 points or less from hit cap (say 230 Hit or Higher), with a draenei in your party, you should be at or over the Hit Cap.

Cross-Gemming:

Came across another site this morning, says "udated/reviewed for 3.3.3, it actually has a nice break down and opinions on when to cross-gem, possible socket/bonus to not cross-gem, and what to cross-gem with and appears to cover this topic for all hunters specs (BM, SV, MM).

A) this thread goes back over a year, not sure why I have never came across it.
B) I shall be attempting cross-gemming based of this article sometime later today, but won't be able to give real feed-back until I see results after an actual raid

Site = Cross-gemming

*correction - after looking at my current gear and gems/sockets I will not be regemming for I am almost already identical to this article. *

Does bonus from different tiers stack, for example, ahving two pieces from each?

It would be nice if we could combo serpent sting crit and +10% on serpent sting.

Yes, none of the set bonuses "cancel each other out," so to speak.

This is why, when transitioning from one full set of tier gear to the next, you often see the advice to wait until you have a new bonus before breaking your set.

For example, 4pT9 probably shouldn't be broken until you have 2p10, which would give you 2p10 and 2p9 at the same time.

By that same token, you most likely don't want to break your 2p9 set until you can go all the way to 4p10.

Some sets have better bonuses than others, of course, and I don't know hunters specifically, so I can't say whether the full set bonus is "worth it."

But yes, you can definitely have 2p10 and 2p9, for example.

Just so you know... The T-9 (2) Set: Your Auto Shots have a 5% chance to cause you and your pet to deal 15% additional damage for 10 sec.

The T-10 (2) Set: Your Auto Shots have a 5% chance to cause you and your pet to deal 15% additional damage for 10 sec.

That combo of procs is mighty nice and I would not break the T-9 (2) until a full T-10 (4) Set: When your Serpent Sting and Wyvern Sting abilities deal damage, you have a 5% chance to gain 20% attack power for 10 sec.

You would want to have NeedToKnow track that proc to run through your best shots when it is up.

I dont know if it was clearing posted in here but when it comes to sockets like blue one use a cross socket is key...have talk to a few others and seen of myself that you actually get more from matching the set bonus and color correctly.

Say if you have a blue socket and put +20 agil, that +20 agil I guess doesnt convert the same if it was in a rad socket...

And to point out the +4 agil you get isnt subject to diminishing returns like your enchants and gems.

At least this is all of what I have gathered thru lengthy convo's with guildies and what not

I agree with you. Putting a red +20 agi gem on a blue slot would be much more beneficial to the SV hunter, ie.