Using 159 for the Stamina modifer, here is my analysis of the Green items:

Ango'rush Gauntlets of the Whale
424 Armor == Item Level 72
15 Spirit
24 Stamina

Predicted ItemValue = 57.22
Actual ItemValue = 57.71

Haal'eshi Gloves of the Bear

Same Analysis (identical stats), same result

Dregnood Armor of the Bandit
187 Armor == Item Level 75 (you'd think it would be Item Level 74 since required level is +2 of the others...)
17 Agility
26 Stamina
35 Attack Power

Predicted ItemValue: 80.95
Actual ItemValue: 83.69

Flanged Battle Mace of the Monkey
42.9 DPS = Item Level 74
9 Agility
14 Stamina

Predicted ItemValue: 32.69
Actual ItemValue: 34.11


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So yeah, my old calculations were abit off, I did these from scratch, not sure what I mistyped in the formula last time. The value for Stamina appears much closer to 159 (used for School specific +damage).

edit: Last time I did the Blue items, need to go back and redo them since around 120 worked like a charm with them, there might be something I'm missing here.

A lot of the new items and mechanics being put into place in the Burning Crusade really have me wondering if Blizzard is actively pushing to not only reduce the gap between non-raiders and raiders, but keep it throughout the life of the expansion. Consider that we have instances that will scale in difficult, and subsequently provide better drops. Consider, as well, that having a "critical strike rating" now affords Blizzard the ability to create more marginal upgrades from new content (e.g. +7 critical strike rating upgrade from tier 1 boots to tier 2 boots, for +.25% increase, rather than +1%).

Could we be approaching a point where raiders can still stand over non-raiders, but not in the God-like fasion we have now? Similarly, is it possibe that character growth through items will exist, but to a much lesser degree? Maybe when the first content patch comes out, we won't all be sitting here going, "GOOD LORD ARE THOSE STATS EVEN LEAGAL OHH FUCK" like we have with each patch, thus far.

edit: Slow work day has resulted in me having the grammar and organizational skills of a lemur.

Doing the math with Thug's Huntercalc, including the ranged weapon dps changes, the crit% from agility change, and the RAP from agility change, it all totals up to about a 10% decrease in dps output, at least for me. This would imply (hopefully) that there's other changes we haven't seen yet to make up for it.

if this RAP and crit/agi change is true, it would oddly serve to address at least part of the hunter mechanics problem with weapon speeds. as less of a hunter's damage comes from attack power, the difference between autoshots of different weapons goes down. the difference is still there, but it's much narrower.

i'm concerned with such a massive overhaul, especially as it pertains to hunter itemization in the future. previous itemization has been very confused, and shaking up everything just when they started to get it right with cryptstalker doesnt' bode well. also, it means items like Ring of the Godslayer and Band of Reanimation just flat out suck compared to +crit +ap items for every class :-P

Need more data points! Would be interesting if they kept that progression, so lvl 70 blues from 5-mans would be ilvl 91 rares... putting them just below tier 3 and well above everything else.

It's harder to get the numbers on those I'd say. We don't know the stat value on sockets exactly for certain, and the only items without sockets are quest rewards so might be level 60 items or might be higher level items than that (Though obviously it's possible to extrapolate these from the armour values now I think about it, since it's assumable no itemization points were spent on armour.)

I'm not exactly on expert on the subject though, I just simply calculated how much more stamina the green items had than the other stat on them.

It ranges from 86ish to 92 (ring/chest).

Yeah the t3 pieces are 86-88, except for the chests which are 92.

The later T3 loot is high 80s low 90s (chestpeice is 92). Sapphiron/Kel loot is generally all over 90.

At any rate, the Blues having higher ItemLevel than Naxx epics doesn't mean they will be necessarily better. What would allow them to be better is: The new Rating system, and devalued Stamina.

Under the current system it would take an ItemLevel 117 Blue to equal an ItemLevel 92 Epic statwise (weapon DPS and Armor on the other hand, would have scaled well past the epic).

Epics vs rares. Tier 3 still comes out ahead of the rares, just not by that much.

ilvl 91 would also make introductory epics (the MC equivalent) being better than Tier 3, ignoring the stamina issues.

At any rate, there may be a bit of a narrowing of the so called "gear gap" between casuals and hardcores, but I think this is more a result of a reset of the ilvl gear ceiling in the expansion. At first we had MC with items going up to ilvl 66, then Rag/BWL to 76, AQ40 hit 88, and now with Naxx we have items that are more than 30 levels higher than the level cap. So with the cap at 70 it's not surpising that the delta between end game raid gear and blues might shrink a little so the devs have some place to go.

Personally I would enjoy having our weapons make more of a difference in our over all damage, and not just because of the increased burst damage potential either. It's much more fun to look forward to a single item making a big difference, like how a warrior feels when he upgrades from an Untamed Blade to a DEoI, or a rogue when he goes from a Perditions Blade to a Maexxna Fang. Going from a Rhok to an XBow of Smiting just doesn't feel as significant right now.

AP does scale with Multi/Aimed Shot, the former basically acts as an instant attack such that both AP and Crit are important and an effectively done Aimed shot is essentially "On Next Attack" ability. I fail to see how this these shots "won't scale up DPS wise" with AP even post expansion, considering that you still need AP to do any damage. Aimed/Multi-Shot have become a larger part of Hunter damage because you just reduced the damage that Hunters get from gear. You can eat all the pretzels of a party mix and say that the cheese sticks and nachos now make up a higher portion of the bag, but there's still less tasty food inside.

The other thing to consider, if you apply the changes right now, is that Warriors have one handers with much higher dps and damage ranges than anything Hunters have currently with DPS + 10, plus are capable of using more instants/styled attacks in a given amount of time. Oh, and they'll also have higher crit and more AP than us.

I don't see how what we know so far actually improves anything at all, so I'm still waiting to see the talents and/or items.

He's right, halving our AP and then upping Aimed shot damage ties us even further to it. 870 base aimed shot damage vs Auto Shot damage which is half of what you're doing right now. Aimed Shot will start out equalling 2-3 Autoshots, 5-6 if it crits as opopsed to 2-4. It may increase the DPS cycles of faster weapons because giving up an autoshot for an aimed shot will become better overall, but slower weapons will still outpace them by far because they still won't be giving up any autoshots. 3.4 speed and greater for now and ever, apparently.

It just occured to me that increasing the crit% rate and lowering RAP would also serve to narrow the dps contribution gap between using Aimed vs Arcane, since both are benefitting from the crit% gain but only Aimed is losing from the RAP change. I wonder if this is part of the motivation?

Using a 3.4 speed weapon with 15% quiver, your autoshots are 2.96. For some reason, I think giving up the .04 seconds of your rotation to use an Aimed Shot for +870 damage is going to be better than firing an Arcane and an Autoshot instead in the same amount of time for +250 Arcane damage is still worth it. Also more mana efficient.

No no...the shots themselves of course scale with both AP and crit, but both of them have static portions (see original post) that do not scale with AP, but do scale with crit. +870 on your aimed shot is 870 with 3k AP or with 0 AP, but it's actually 1096 with a 20% crit rate vs. +870 with a 0 % crit rate.

By lowering your damage range (i.e. going from 300 damage a shot to 270 damage a shot) but compensating by increasing the crit rate, means that those static portions, and consequently the shots themselves, are a more significant portions of your damage and consequently DPS than they were before.

The first 20 points in all trees suck hard compared to MM, Mortal Shots, Lethal Shots, Hawk Eye and Aimed Shot. Any viable build will need at least 20 points in MM. Thats just how it works.

Indeed, that IS just how it works. My point is that it SHOULDN'T work that way, and these changes suggest that Blizzard may be making changes so that it WON'T work that way in the future.

I just can't see it happening. For one, the usefulness of the first 20 points in MM is unmatched in almost ANY talent tree for any class. Secondly, if they added similarly useful talents in the first 20 points of BM or Survival, then it just makes */31+/* that much better because you can also take them. Going just from the "leaked" talents Beast Mastery is getting 20 Pet Resistance at less then 20 points and Survival is getting Readiness at 21 points. Those things don't make the first 20 points better. You really can't without making full marks even better then it already is/wiill be.

You operate under the assumption that those first 20 points in marks aren't going to get changed. I'm not sure that's a safe bet. What happens to your position if they move mortal/lethal five points up the tree so you need 25 points in marks to get them? Changes like that have been made in other classes primary talent trees, I don't think you should be discounting the possibility it could happen to us too.

It's going to take a lot more than 10% crit to make up for the 500 RAP loss.

In my case, I'd lose something around 474 RAP from this, that's 121 damage on autoshots, 115 damage on multishots and 95 damage on aimed shots. That's roughly 64 dps in a rotation, not counting any crits.

Yes, you're going to need to give me something more than 10% more crit.