Do any hunters in a high-end raiding guild use these (craftable gloves using obsidian pieces from AQ)?

Thottbot Link: Black Grasp of the Destroyer

After reading through the "Sustained DPS" thread here and trying to break myself of the habit of FD+Drinking, I've been thinking about getting a pair of these.

Just so you have an idea of my situation, I recently joined a higher-end raiding guild, and I'm fairly undergeared at the moment. I usually make it through longer fights by using mana potions and deranking multi-shot in order to sustain my DPS.

Depending on your shot rotation, the gloves are worth about 20ish MP5, and I was wondering exactly how worthwhile of an investment they would be to a raiding hunter. Basically, is the 20ish MP5 gained worth the major stat loss (possibly a hunter's Aged Core Leather Gloves)? I personally see them as being incredibly useful on long boss fights, but I'm still not sure how effective they actually are. Maybe I just need to suck it up and spam more consumables.

Could anyone give me a first-hand perspective of how these gloves compare (i.e. effect on DPS in a 5/10/15 minute long boss fight) to an equivalent BWL or AQ item (DS/Veklor's)?

Thanks in advance!

I tried them out last night in our speed BWL/first half of AQ40 clear. The DPS loss isn't huge, but the loss of STA/INT is more noticable when you switch from DS->BG. I have +15AGI on both of them, so DS gains a 6AGI overall bonus over them in terms of pure RAP (without LR).

An interesting thing about them is that you get mana on every single hit with them (and if multi hits 3 targets, you get 3 procs so to speak!) so it's like your own mini JoW on every mob. Combined with my 4MP5 on my DS bracers (and BoW + JoW, assuming you're Alliance), it gives you a fairly substaintial mana regen boost. I don't have numbers for it (*sob*), but there definately is a noticable difference. DPS-wise, there isn't a huge difference that I can personally see. I'll parse numbers next time to come up with more useful info.

I do have 8/8DS so IMO, for me, breaking the DS proc isn't worth it right now, but it might become more attractive as I get more AQ40 5pc/CS to mix and match.

If your guild is going to provide you with the materials for them then sure thing, those will be handy whilst you gear up. If you have to buy them? Suck it up and drink more mana potions untill you get better gear. You'll find that folks with full DS are also drinking mana potions :).

I am in the same situation. My raid killed Nefarian in February but we still have to loot DS gloves...

Comparing with the GS gloves, the Black Grasp is clearly better. I wonder if I will still wear them once I will have DS gloves or the twins gloves. The answer will probably yes, because I'm horde. Mana is a huge problem on this side you know.


One thing that I still have to test is the usage of Hurricane with the Black Grasp in order to faster regen mana. Just autoshoot will give me 8 mana / 1.39 sec => 29 mana / 5 sec plus the spirit mana regen.


On the other hand, using the lack of int stats to compare DS to BG is just out of topic. Once you used your first ability, you'll never use the additional int any more.


Please forgive me if my english is bad but spank me if my reasoning is poor.

Thanks for all the help, I'll be interested to see some parsings if possible...

Found this buried on the WoW Hunter Forums (math breakdown - haven't really checked it for accuracy yet, but it seems like BGotD is a gigantic upgrade for anything up to Cryptstalker).

Math on BGotD

Never thought I'd see the day when the WoW forums were actually useful.

Edit: The math used appears to suck... Nevermind...

With Rhok, the Destroyer's work out to be 24/MP5 (ignoring Quick Shots and Rapid Fire)
I believe with a Crossbow of Smiting it would work out to 20/MP5.

For me, this works out to an additional 2 full 10-second cycles using max rank Aimed Shot and Multi-shot (even more when you downrank.)

The gloves are great if you don't have the cash (or motivation) to load out on Major Mana Pots for everything (and significantly increase your mana regen on boss fights even while using mana pots.)

The gloves are good, but not good enough to break an 8/8 GS bonus, or an 8/8 DS bonus. The hunter full set bonuses are just too good. They are awesome for that intermediate stage where you are gearing up in DS, but don't have a full 8/8 yet. (It's possible they'd fit in nicely again when you break your 8/8 DS for the AQ Striker's gear as well, but this may be minor.)

With consumables it's fully possible to have mana for a 7 minute fight, even as horde.

Short answer. NO.

The quick explanation is that the hunter class pretty much revolves around Aimed Shot and it's cooldowns/cast time for it's optimal damage cycle. Aimed Shot has a cast time of 3 seconds, and will bank one autoshot during that time.

Fast things like Toxin Injector are going to lose an entire autoshot's worth of dps since only 1 shot will bank (when it would normally fire twice in that timeframe.) This is why fast stuff like Huhuran's stinger, Toxin Injector, etc. are utter trash for hunters, and significantly worse than the epic bow, even though they have higher dps (but faster attack speed.) The hunter class is rediculously tied to weapon attack speed currently.

If you use consumables then you aren't going to run out of mana. That being the case I would rather just farm some herbs than make gloves that would slightly lower my dps.

I'm sorry 4 warming up cold threads, but as a Horde Hunter you arent in the position to reg as much mana as you use for a perfect cycle without lags or somethin.

f.e:
10min fight:
Aimedshot: 279 mana, 6 seconds cooldown, 100 shots: 27900 mana
Multishot: 207 mana, 10 seconds cooldown, 60 shots: 12420 mana

so: 40320

All regen-buffs and potting the whole time gives you:
Nightfin: 960 MP5
Mageblood: 1440 MP5
lesser Manaoil: 1920 MP5
Consume manapots, runes, nightdragon: 21030 mana

so: 25350 mana

25350 40320 = - 14970 mana
even with 4k groundmana you cant full the deficit

BGotD are good gauntlets to try it

p.s. I'm sorry 4 some weird constructions, but i'm german :B

Aren't you ignoring normal spirit regen there? With Divine Spirit, I don't think it'd be that insignificant, and we must spend a little time in the 5-second rule every cycle.

You can only shoot an aimed shot once every 9 secs (not 6) so:

Aimedshot: 279 mana, 6 seconds cooldown + 3 second cast, 67 shots: 18693 mana
Multishot: 207 mana, 10 seconds cooldown, 60 shots: 12420 mana
---
31113 Mana

---
I get about 38 mana / tick unbuffed and about 45 mana / tick with Divine Spirit IIRC (maybe it's 40/50 /shrug)
That would add about 2700 mana (45 x 60 ~ 1 tick per cycle).

ack double post

You fire an Aimed Shot every 6 seconds? That's impressive. When did it become instant cast? Or when did it start cooling before the shot went off? Hrm~

Using proper math alone, that eats roughly 9-10k off of your assumed mana consumption. With a buffed mana bar of 4k+ (easily attained), your math shows that a hunter would just start running dry at 10 minutes (assuming no BoW/JoW or mana totems). Factor in some spirit regen here and there... It really isn't an issue with consumables. I end most Patchwerk fights (granted, only 5:30-6:00) with half a mana bar at least. If anything, I could use less consumables and still have no mana woes.


Like has been stated: if money isn't an issue, sure-- get a pair and use them as you see fit. Just realize you're not going to be doing as much damage as you would be otherwise doing if you were using cheap consumables instead.

I didn't end up getting a pair, but the only real use for them would be for grinding or farming content (who the heck wants to use consumables on Ebonroc?).

Basically, whenever there is a fight that you would regularly run out of mana on, but don't want to waste consumables, BGotD > *.

I currently use them as my main gloves (horde), but after much experimentation with them, I will probably replace them with Veklors when they drop. If I ever don't have a shaman I would probably switch to using them again, but being able to double mana oil, and pop greater mana pots every cooldown from when I first go under -900 mana, I don;t really go oom much anymore so I think it would be worth it to drop them.

I just passed CS gloves to another hunter last night because I have these and they're so huge for my mana conservation that I'd be wearing them over CS most of the time.

But really, what else does your guild use the shards for?

I believe we sell them to less informed or less geared guilds, and use the money to buy Flasks and other consumables which actually help us do MORE damage and/or progress faster.

I can't wrap my head around why people are willing to spend large sums of money (or use materials that can be sold for money) in order to craft an item whose only effect is to gimp your damage and save you a tiny amount of money each raid. Superior Mana Potions are very cheap, and Demonic Runes are very easy to farm as a Hunter. In return for this investment of time/money, you will be delivering your best possible output. You might not feel that the extra bonus that you get by optimizing in this manner is worthwhile, but if everyone takes that attitude in your raid... good luck progressing.


I understand how much consumable use has been basically jammed down our throat in Naxx, and it sucks compared to how easy content was prior to this. Not devoting the money/time (when it's a reasonable amount) to perform the best you can is akin, in my mind, with not enchanting your gear. You're gimping yourself, and your cause for doing so is to save money. I can see the argument for using these on farm-status bosses, but in most of those cases I simply use r1 Multi... it provides me all the mana-to-damage efficiency I could ever desire, without having to dump a ton of money or guild resources into bad craftable gear.

I see many hunters claiming that with cheap consumables, they are able to do patchwerk ending up fine on mana.

Lets take a look at the mana consumption vs. regen numbers.

Each TSR (Ten Second Rotation) uses 468 mana. Given a raid buffed 4200ish mana pool, with zero regen, you'll get about 90 seconds of uptime before you have to stop.

In order to be just perfect on your "Mana to Boss Health Ratio" for a 7 minute fight, you need 134 mp5 worth of regen.

The biggest source of mana regen is of course, the major mana potion, which works out to about 70 mp5 average (This is not including mana potions critting, because a) I have only seen healing pots crit, and b) I have absolutely no idea what the crit% of a major mana potion is)

This is of course not always the cheapest of consumables (about 15-20g a stack, you can look at probably 9-10g per 7 min. encounter worth of pots)

Now you're down to 64 mp5 needed to hit the mp5 mark. Double mana oil is pretty dirt cheap to chuck on your weapons, by herbing in Azshara and DE'ing level 41-50 greens. That's another 8 per weapon, bringing us up down to 48 mp5 left.

Mageblood pots are gold here, knocking out 12 mp5. Of course these require dreamfoil as do most end game raiding consumables (Die in a fire whoever created the alchemy recipe reqs, by the way)

36 more mp5 is needed. Chug a nightfin soup for an easy 8 mp5 and we're down to 28.

Now, pending the fight doesn't have any splash damage, and you have some friendly healers, dark runes can be purchased on the AH or the BoP counterpart farmed off demons. If you have my luck, you can farm up the gold to buy the dark runes off the demons before a single damn BoP rune will drop, but either way it's worth 50 mp5 at the cost of your health.

So pending the cost of the above consumables, those are your options. If you have to downgrade to non-major mana pots, your mp5 goes down rather quickly.

Superior/Combat mana pot - 50 mp5
Greater mana pot - 33 mp5

So with the superior/combat pots that are typicall the most cost effective, every boss fight you'll be burning through your stacks of consumables really quickly.

The Black Grasp of the Destroyer represents a 48 mana per rotation (using 4 auto shots) regen, and can supplement any of the above consumables that you may run out of.

It's a one-time cost that in the long run saves quite a bit in terms of how long you're able to use the gloves.

Also, in the event that you have a fight longer than 7 minutes, you're able to keep your dps going for that much longer.

I suppose I have a somewhat skewed viewpoint, being easymode Alliance.

1) Blessing of Wisdom-- this eats up a TON of the MP5 necessary.
2) Judgment of Wisdom-- if this is on Patchwerk, mana conservation and consumable use is a joke.
3) Patchwerk doesn't take us 7 minutes. Our last Patchwerk kill was in the neighborhood of 5:45.

Normally I use maybe 2 Demonic Runes and 2 Superior Mana Potions per kill.

It's only a matter of time before many Naxx raiders (myself included) touch that golden pearl that is 6/9 Cryptstalker. And lo, our mana woes shall forever be a thing of the past.

Perhaps we can agree that BGotD is good for Horde, situationally. My past sentiments were spoken from a biased point of view. If you're Alliance, there just isn't any excuse to craft it. I cannot think of a single boss fight where I've had the desire for more mana to such a degree that these gloves would have made a difference-- but that is largely because BoW alone does nearly twice what these gloves to do.

Another thought, if you are able to reach the minimum required by a Rank 6 Aimed and Rank 5 Multi shot cycle for 7 minutes, and have an excess of mana regen, shouldn't that excess mana be used by burning serpent sting?

That is, you're able to reach and exceed the mana regen requirement limits, now the limiting value in hunter dps is lack of options to dump mana into damage abilities, not mana requirements. After Aimed/Multi, serpent is all thats left that a hunter can dump mana -> damage. I would be curious to see what a Aimed/Multi and serpent every other rotation works out to be coupled with BGotD vs DS for a 7 minute fight.