If you aren’t getting into the higher echelons of raiding then there isn’t really much of a difference in DPS between Surv and MM due to the wonky way ArP scales. In fact, I’d argue Surv is way better for 5/10man content because it’s way less dependent on other classes for mana regen. I’m the surv hunter in our fairly casual ICC because we needed Replenishment, but I can compete fine against the marks hunter and the rest of the DPS.
You can definitely do way more DPS at your gear level. It’s hard to tell what you’re doing wrong on the gameplay level (I’m willing to bet that there’s improvement to be had there), but here’s a number of more or less expensive gear/talent tweaks that will help:
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Agi gems on everything. Stuff everything full of agi gems, except for one Nightmare Tear to activate your agi meta. You can maybe use an agi/crit gem if the set bonus is really, really good (i.e. lots of agi). You probably get the idea by now. Surv hunters are pretty easy like that.
Regemming is enormously expensive these days, but this is something you should at least keep in mind when you get new gear. Your current gems aren’t gimping you badly or anything, they’re just somewhat suboptimal.
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You are waaaaay over the hit cap! Those trinkets are really not doing much for you at all. Heroic Forge of Souls has an okayish APen trinket, and you might consider investing in a Nobles Deck for an agility Darkmoon card. There’s also the ancient Mirror of Truth, which will still benefit you more than what you have now.
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Massacre is a better enchant for your polearm, but kinda expensive if you don’t have the mats handy.
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Change your spec and major glyphs to something more like this. Your spec seems to be meant for some PvP use, but I highly recommend having a dedicated PvE spec if you already bought dual talents anyway. Also, change your wolf’s spec to this and use him for PvE. Handy tip: Macro Call of the Wild and Rapid Fire together since that’s how they’re best used and they have the same cooldown as Surv.
Beyond that, it’s all a question of what shot priority you’re using and whether you’re managing your Lock & Load procs correctly. Surv hunters aren’t that terribly complex gameplay right now.
idrisz
1722
yeah, you gearscore is getting boosted somewhat from your trinket, but your trinket is crap for their item level.
Job #1 has to be replacing those trinkets. You are so far over the hit cap that has to be a major part of what’s holding back your dps. Blizzard seems to have gone a bit hit-happy in the itemization on ICC and Tier 10 gear, so any excess hit is almost certainly going to be superfluous.
zabuni
1724
Does anyone have any experience with Simulationcraft?
I’m trying to determine the difference between two very very close sets of gear as a shadow priest. Simcraft gives a 78dps difference between the two sets. It’s a tradeoff between a massive amount of crit (176) about 60 spellpower, and 130 odd haste on the previous of gear. Rotations on a training dummy have come at a wash.
I was really wondering under what conditions haste is better than crit in a raiding environment for shadow priests (multi target, movement fights, etc.) Being able to ramp up so quickly (836 haste before the upgrades) was great fun, but I’m trying to determine my best path for overall damage.
Thanks for the advice guys!
In the spirit of posting hunter armories, here’s mine.
I’m not sure what to do immediately about rings and trinkets. I had been planning on getting Mark of Supremacy, but since I’m hit capped it’s of limited value.
I also could use enchant advice. The hunter can’t get the faction enchants (still working up those quest chains) so, what else is available.
My overall DPS on 5-mans naturally depends on buffs, but on average I do about 2-3k overall (which is usually meaningless) and mid-3k on bosses.
JM1
1727
Quest… chains?
Just wear the right tabard in instances and you’ll be exalted pretty quickly.
Well, I can’t get the Hodir tabard yet, I don’t think.
JM1
1729
No tabard for Sons of Hodir. But there is one for pretty much everything else, so there’s no excuse ;)
Sons of Hodir questline sticks you at virtually Revered once you finish it, so a couple of days of dailies and you’re done.
As a general note, don’t rely too much on DPS measurements in 5mans. The high amount of target switching and AoE makes it a different beast from the raids where most DPS yardsticks come from.
Heroic Pit of Saron has a very nice agility ring that you want. For trinkets, you definitely want to run Heroic Forge of Souls until the scorpion drops, and then you have to choose between evils: Spend 40 badges on the Mirror of Truth, buy a Nobles deck or farm a Banner of Victory in normal TotC. Don’t get Mark of Supremacy, you’re fine on hit.
I’d only worry about enchants on the gear that you won’t replace in 5mans. Powerful Stats on chest, Greater Assault on bracers, Crusher on gloves (you can swap this to the hit enchant if you find yourself below cap) and an AP/crit armor patch on the pants. Also, get a meta gem and make sure it’s activated, even if you’re just using cheap green gems otherwise. Metas aren’t that expensive but still give you an enormous boost.
Jag
1731
Since we are talking Hunter stuff, I strong recommend checking out
http://www.femaledwarf.com/
This is a web based version of the ‘famous’ EJ Hunter spreadsheet and is really slick. Import your Armory and you can start playing with the gear to see what affect it will have on your game. It doesn’t recommend gear, but if you are curious whether a gem or item will improve your DPS, plug it in.
Also I agree with Oscar regarding specs. While Marks is technically better than Surv (b/c of ArP), I’m running ICC25 with my Surv buddy who is topping better geared MM Hunters, so really the difference isn’t that much. Play what you like (as long as it isnt BM!).
RickH
1732
You could also pick up a lot of Relics of Ulduar to buy rep once you have access to the turn-in. Since the enchants are BoA you only need one exalted char.
Which is the pisser since I’ve been BM since launch. And for running 5-man and VoA, I’m not sure the difference is that much over MM – I’m not at the point where gear scales to level, I don’t think.
DOH! My DK is revered with Ebon and Hodir. I forgot they were BOA.
Because I’ve kinda hit a wall of idiots in PUGs, Right now I’m only running randoms if a guildie is, and only guild raids. I’ve never been a big raider, anyway and I’ve been leveling up a paladin with a friend. I’ve changed my goals from “best gear I can” to “get epic flying and a motorcycle.”
Maybe with Cataclysm I’ll get back into it. Right now, I’m so far behind the curve I feel like I’m always going to be “that guy” and I hate that so many people in the game, their response to you screwing up or not being 110% of what you can be to yell, scream, call you names and vote kick you. It’s the rare day when someone mentions, “Hay, I play a DK, here’s a few things I do that may help you out.”
Jag
1736
Actually if you trust Ghostcrawler, he just came out and said that 3.3.3 will bring BM right in line with Surv, so you are probably fine with it even in raids.
If you’re talking best possible gear, we think BM is pretty close to Survival in 3.3.3. Marks is ahead, and that’s largely a function of armor pen, but again you are talking about absolute best gear. If you aren’t in Icecrown 25 hard modes, then gear is likely to have just as much effect on your damage as spec. Ideally, things are balanced at all levels between level 1 and 80 with BiS gear, but there are going to be a lot of points along the way where that’s probably not true. We see Survival hunters beat Marks hunters all the time in what I would categorize as average (meaning not server first guilds but capable of progressing) raids. Hopefully we’ll see some BM guys up there too, but it may take higher gear levels.
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/23767539635-bm-hunters-still-need-help.html
Athryn
1737
That’s one of the big things that keeps me from going back to Wow right now. Even though I was raiding 25 man ulduar and Coliseum when last I played, I know that my gearscore would keep me out of most pugs now, and the amount to time to catch up would be prohibitive.
I figure when Cataclysm comes out it will be another gear reset again and I can start playing again.
I think that one of the problems that Blizzard created by making raiding too accessible is that instead of having a few elitists and a bunch of normal players, now everyone is an elitist.
That’s one problem with making raids more accessible, yes, but it’s a pretty huge success in every other way. Those same jerkbags were always around, they just have access to better gear now. The vote-kicking for low gear score isn’t nearly as prevalent as some people make it out to be. It just sticks out more because people are more likely to yell about bad PuGs than good ones. I know I am.
sluggo
1739
That’s far from accurate, Athryn. The way things are now, you can get yourself into a full set of tier 9 gear in a week or two just from running randoms for emblems, and that would be more than enough to get you into VoA and other non-ICC pugs.
And you have the added luxury of knowing you have an active, competent guild waiting for you, who would gladly tote you along to ICC or ToC or whatever to help gear you up. So it’s not like you’d even have to deal with pugs to get back up to speed.
Jooooiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin usssssssssssssssss! You know you want to!
sluggo
1740
Also, am I the only person who thinks that heroic randoms are, in fact, ridiculously tolerant of poor behavior, especially for DPS characters?
I have 3 well-geared toons all running ICC 10/25 on a weekly basis. I run heroics on each daily for frost badges, and I’d estimate that over the last 4 months, I’ve probably run a ridiculous 500-600 randoms. And I’ve NEVER seen a group kick a DPS just for low gearscore or output. Not once.
This doesn’t mean I haven’t seen people doing dumb shit or bitching at each other. In fact, just the opposite – heroics are unquestionably overloaded with stupidity and asshattery at every turn (we have a “Tales of Random Heroics” thread on our guild forums that’s at 12 pages and growing). But until people start dying, no one ever seems to care that the tank is wearing PvP gear or the healer has no trinkets or a DPS has been AFK half the run. And even then, when people start dying and the inevitable finger pointing begins, it’s always the tank or healer who gets the boot, never the DPS.
So as far as I can tell, if you’re a DPS and want to get booted or people to bitch at you, you’ve got to guilty of something far worse than being a fresh 80 doing < 1k DPS. It generally seems you’ve got to be doing something way, way worse that’s actively getting people killed before people will bother whining about it.
