It is a good trinket for Hunters. But as a Hunter I am well aware that right now as things stand pre Naxx Blackhand's/DM/DFT are pretty much it. However I would rather keep my Blackhand's and DM trinket and let a Rogue or Fury Warrior have a DFT over me any day. They get much more use out of a +hit trinket than I would. Just take the slight dps hit from using a 3% hit scope. It's not worth it as far as the raid as a whole is concerned for you to take an item that boosts your ap slightly, and gives you hit and dodge you really don't need, while in the hands of a Rogue or Warrior it would be a huge bump in dps.

this is sort of a derail, but i keep seeing people commenting that dft should go to 'rogues or fury warriors' over hunters. we have no fury warriors in our guild, so i'm somewhat ignorant to their performance, but my understanding is that their damage output is limited far more by aggro than by gear. i can buy giving some degree of priority to rogues on DFT (thus my own passing on several of them before i took my own), even if i think people are wrong about the relative benefits hunters and rogues get from the item. but it seems to me that the raid benefit involved in giving a dft to a fury warrior coudn't possibly be higher than giving it to a hunter, if only because the relative value of the item (regardless of how good it is for fury - and yes, i know +hit is the most important stat for a fury warrior) is brick walled by aggro. sure, they can go nuts and put up insane numbers on aggroless fights, but is that realistically more beneficial to your raid progression than improving the performance of your hunters in every fight ?

We have one dedicated fury warrior and I know he wants DFT. It's obviously great for his DPS, but his DPS is already limited by aggro. When we were learning Vael we were never able to find a balance that let him do max damage without pulling aggro. This could be due to our tanks not holding aggro well, but I agree that it's probably more beneficial to the raid in the hands of a rogue or hunter.

We haven't seen a DFT yet, but I would definitely bid against DPS warriors and probably even rogues. It's the best trinket for all three classes from what I can tell, so I'm not sure there's an incentive to make it rogue only. If I could be convinced that it's a more significant upgrade to our rogues I'd happily pass.

Also the large amounts of +hit that hunters are swimming in during the mc/bwl days don't seem to carry over imo into aq, thus a greater need for dft.

Switching to cthun cloak, emps gloves, striker's legs, barbed choker are all losing hit%, and right now the best place to make it up is via drake fang.

Having to switch from +7 scope to accurascope is a huge loss there, on the order of 2.1dps. The current magnitude of my upgrades in aq40 are on the order of like .4 dps each, so i'd end up losing dps if i have to accurascope.

Just wait till a druid in the guild takes one... I'll summarize with: Drama explosion

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I have a DFT as a hunter and I really feel I get great use out of it. It allowed me to drop surefooted and move those points into improved aspect of the hawk, nice DPS increase overall as well as greatly reducing my tranq misses for resist fights.

meh. we have a feral druid with a DFT with rogues/warriors who still want it. it's only a drama explosion if you let it be.

survival is not the optimal raiding build for a hunter.

I don't really believe all the BS about one class getting more use out of these type of items than another. Hunters make excellent use of Attack Power, Hit, Crit, and Agility, and any item with large amounts of these should go to hunters just as often as they go to rogues or warriors. The testing that hunter DPS is less affected by weapon white damage and much more reliant on speed+ranged attack power is just more reason that hunters should take every AP upgrade they can get their hands on(barring melee weapons where the white damage goes to waste).

sure. given that your post is in a thread re: dft, hunters, and +hit, it seemed like you were suggesting that since hunters can get surefooted, they should, and thus DFT isn't as important. perhaps i was reading more into your statement than was intended. yes, if you're putting 30 in survival, you should certainly get surefooted, because it can optimize your gear and let you use more agi items rather than +hit gear.

I don't claim to be an expert on hunters or anything(mine's just barely 40), but why exactly is LR inviable for raiding? Last I checked, TSA affects people who don't neccesarily have TSA themselves. We find it works out rather well to throw the survival hunters in a group with the marks hunters, and we get more overall damage for it.

barrage + ranged weapons specialization is far more damage than LR could ever provide

A 15% increase in your main stat?

1 agility gives 2 ranged attack power, and every 53 gives 1 to crit. So the more agility you get, the more damage you do. Of course, this talent only shines with full epic gear so before that TSA is a stronger choice.

LR is perfectly viable for raiding. it is, however, not optimal. there is no reasonable point at which lightning reflexes and killer instinct (the only real DPS gains beyond 6 points in survival) outperform all four of Trueshot Aura (and the benefits it provides your raid outside your own DPS), Barrage, Ranged Weapon Specialization, and Improved Aspect of the Hawk.

Trueshot Aura is not the thing to compare with LR.

Basically, what sheepy said:

Those skills plus Improved Aspect of the Hawk and Trueshot Aura beat out Surefooted+Killer Instinct+LR. Survival builds will have more AP and Crit%, but Marskmanship will do more damage.

Interesting. I'll keep that in mind thanks.

It's a fairly common drop, I'd be surprised if there was a lot of drama about it. A couple people already touched on it, but the impact on your dps would depend on how much your damage scales with +hit relative to other alternatives. The ap benefits are static, but the +hit benefit will scale.

While the damage mitigation from a tranq'd mob really shouldn't be discounted, I have no idea how you'd model that. Other hunters would take the shot within 2-3 seconds if you missed. A tank can easily die in that time if the damage spikes, but the tank can also compensate with shield block or other abilities. I have yet to be in an encounter where the frenzies happen faster than 3-4 hunters can rotate their shots as long as they pay attention and communicate (but I also have not fought huhu yet).


DFT vs comparable Melee alternatives:

Counterattack lodestone (1% parry, 22 attack power)
- Gain 34 attack power (6-7dps)
- +2% to hit (will vary based on current +hit gear, probably at least 4 dps for a base 200dps white dmg dual-wield spec - most melee will already have over 5% +hit so they will only benefit on their white damage)

Rogue DM trinket (2% to hit, 10 FR)
- Gain 56 attack power (10ish dps),
- +1% dodge (0.7% melee damage mitigation assuming 30% armor)
- lose 10 FR

I won't compare it to HOJ because most people would equip both DFT and HOJ. Blackhand's and the Vigilance charm really aren't comparable to DFT.


DFT vs Ranged Alternatives:

Hunter DM trinket (48 RAP, 10 FR)
- gain 8 AP
- +2% hit (not sure of the dps impact on hunter special attacks, otherwise it should be comparable to the melee increase for autoshots)
- +1% dodge (0.6%ish melee damage mitigation assuming 40% armor)


It probably isn't that big a deal either way, all 3 classes benefit and it is a fairly common drop. The theorycraft variance is pretty small relative to people's real dps output. It does seem to be a little bit better for melee, but not worth someone getting their undies in a bunch over.

Just like to add my 2cents to this topic as well.

Like Elendril I passed the first 5 DFT's for us to rogues/warriors personally before I took one myself(I got the 6th one)

For hunters from the DM trinket strictly speaking it's a 2 hit 8 ap upgrade but never missing on 63's anymore is what the overall goal is. If you see my profile, I have to spec 2/31/18 and pick up surefooted because guild doesn't do MC anymore and I never got my DS pants to finish the set heh, so I have to get 9% hit and I have 6% from gear.

Compared to rogues/warriors though, warriors need the same amount of hit 2hand as a hunter and if they are dw fury then like rogues they have a 24% miss rate cause of this? And I asked our rogues and they said white damage with a combat build is a majority of their damage, so reducing miss would help a lot more, least I think so. The DM trinket for rogues is 2% hit, so in terms of straight upgrade not that someone would wear it would be 56 ap, which is a bunch for a rogue being limited to 1 agi = 1 str = 1 ap.

If you really have issues over who's getting it, let DKP handle it. But speaking from a personal standpoint, wouldn't take a pretty good upgrade over rogues when they have to get a lot more hit (granted they also get talents/gear better for +hit) You can as a hunter make up for the DFT by wearing different pieces of gear to max hit anyway. But you're gonna have to talk to your hunters about it, and see if they understand.

Maybe you could try this post again, without the lines that talk down to hunters who take the DFT. "See if they understand." What the hell? This thread is getting dumber by the minute(aside from the good info on MMvs.Survival, but that's been debated to death already anyway).

The largest benefit of the DFT for a hunter, in my opinion, is that it gives you somewhat more flexibility in terms of gear choice. You're getting a very, very slight AP benefit, but what's more important is that you're getting 2% hit in a slot that (presumably) never had it before. What that allows you to do is mix/match equipment (for example: resist gear), and still maintain the hit cap, so that you're that much more flexible.

That said, I really doubt I would take it over a rogue/warrior since it is a fairly marginal (but nonetheless useful) upgrade for a hunter. We get +hit in droves, and don't need nearly as much as all those poor melee fools and their MISS MISS DODGE PARRY MISS madness. If it were going to get blown up (or go to a non-LotP feral druid, as LotP druids are awesome and it is the best talent ever and every druid should get it), though, yeah I'd nab it and run.

Royal Seal of Eldre'thalas and Blackhand's Breath 4 lyfe or something. I am looking to try out a badge of the swarmguard though, after seeing the numbers Louie pumped out on the last Rag kill I think it'd be quite nice for some fights.

What is the overall relation between using DFT over BHB, so instead of say, 2crit/48rap, you're working with 104? rap.

Right now, I have everything from BWL for a hunter save the xbow with +8 hit using DFT and being 5/31/15.

the relationship between the value of crit and AP is not a static one. it shifts (in favor of crit) as your attack power and weapon damage goes up.

It's a really nice trinket... however i think Hunters would benefit more from active trinkets since you can swap them out..... you can probly get enough active trinkets to keep 1 almost always up....