Elakuan

Dear Jerks,

I've been a long-standing theorycrafting poster on the Blizzard Hunter Forums...not sure why, more of an ego crowd than a numbers crowd...so maybe I'll hang out here for a while.

I've taken a look at some of the discussion with Survival and thought I'd throw out some of my own. FYI, other than Gruul Gloves and Kazzak Pants, I have no 25-man loot. MOST kara drops...but still 3 more that are upgrades for me.

I currently run at 720 agi, 1900 ap, 33% self-buffed (no TSA, I'm 0/20/41). Fully raid buffed (with grace of air, 4 pally buffs, feral druid in my party, and full host of pots) 1008 agi, 3023 ap, and 45.8% crit (jumps to 55.8% during master tac proc). Gotta love being fully buffed.

The way I go about my approach to survival is...a little different than the discussions I typically hear. A lot is made about what is lost from marksman in the conversion...and too little is made of what is gained. Someone in another post labelled the talents in the tree as "mediocre".

i'd throw out another point of view.

With surefoot, I require far less hit rating than a Marksman. 89, to be exact (well, 85 with troll bowskill and kazzak pants). This means I can spend a lot more of my precious itemization dollars on dps stats.

With Thrill of the Hunt, and 40% or more buffed crit...(more when they really care) i get 40% * 40% = 16% of my mana back. With mana efficiency as well...that's some pretty good mana return. In other words...I need less mana than a marksman.

After a while of living with the spec...I really started living with the idea that "survival" meant I needed less of these expensive itemization resources to survive...and I started cutting them back. Until I found myself geared in a great deal of rogue gear, stacking agi gems, and sending my "short term" dps through the roof.

On trash pulls...i did tremendous damage. Which makes sense. Many hunters now have a 'dps' set when sustainability isn't really an issue.

And for bossfights I'd dutifully put back on mail gear and say goodbye to the damage meters.

And then one day I forgot to switch. And I realized it as the fight started. So...I blew a mana pot early. And another when it came up. I FD'd and drank after 5 minutes, for 20 seconds (restoring 4800 mana + a little more from regen) and burned hard for another 5 minutes, popping pots.

After the fight, my text box turns pink with whispers...I'd just beat the best geared warlock on the server in dps on a 10 minute fight. Perhaps he was having a bad day.

It was a happy accident...and one that has spurred a whole new line of thought about itemization.

What's great about the survival tree is it doesn't NEED to accept hunter itemization costs. Why wear a Beastlord shoulders and Tunic when Assassination does so much more dps? Such choices throughout your gearset (morose boots over chess boots, etc etc) really do add up to some big numbers.

Though I see it built into many spreadsheets on this site and others, I'd suggest that our sustainability is a bit more flexible than a lab situation. There are plenty of bossfights where a 'stop dps' call goes out...there are plenty of moments where you can grab a drink. And even if there isn't...one could easily see that a loss of 1000 mana for a gain of...20% (?) dps is well worth it in a 10 minute fight where you need to give up 20 seconds (3% of the fight) to drink.

Though I certainly could throw out a lot of math here, after reading a few survival posts on this forum (raid viability) I realized that my approach maybe hadn't fully crossed the ocean between the offical forums and EJ.

So...I thought I'd start w/ the philosophy and see if we can break into the hard math as we go. Feel free to armory me, Elakuan on Mug'thul.

As for my dps...though I'm far undergeared compared to my raid-mates (including a hunter w/ t5 shoulders) my dps is...more than viable.

In other words, the "mediocre" talents in the survival tree, for me at least, have become the solution to medicore itemization...the rejection of which has put my dps through the roof.