The MM hunter in 4.0.1 - Page 11

R00k!3 · 10/14/10, 3:33 PM

Depending point 2, our global is fixed at 1 second just as it was fixed at 1.5 seconds before. It is not affected by haste.

dcwarcraft · 10/14/10, 3:44 PM

I am at work right now so testing is not possible. However I spoke to a hunter friend of mine who told me that doing a 5 minute DPS on the heroic dummy resulted in surprising numbers.

Senario #1: Reforge Haste to Mastery on all items
Resulted in 9.5k DPS

Senario #2: Reforge Crit to Mastery On All Items.
Resulted in 11k DPS

Has anyone done similar tests or found results like this?
I am very interested in this as I (like many) reforged Haste into Mastery.

Rivkah · 10/14/10, 3:46 PM

According to my math, in order for a 6 agil socket bonus to be worth getting, the stat you'd be losing the agil to get would have to be worth 40% the value of the agility. For a 4 agil socket bonus, it'd have to be worth 60% the value of agility.

Figure it this way, for a 6 agility socket bonus you give up 6 agil plus 10 of another stat to gain 10 agil, so:
(agil * 6) + (alternative stat * 10) = (agil * 10)

If agil is worth 1, the alternative stat maths out to .4 relative to it to make the two options equal.

For other stats from bonuses it gets a bit messier.

dcwarcraft- did your friend account for careful aim?

Ratek · 10/14/10, 3:54 PM

Originally Posted by R00k!3

Depending point 2, our global is fixed at 1 second just as it was fixed at 1.5 seconds before. It is not affected by haste.

His point is getting to the GCD, not actually affecting it. So under the stated effects his Steadies would be 1 second casts. Any faster would be somewhat wasted.

Personally I'm sitting at just shy of 20% Haste, I guess it makes sense what Whitefyst says, so I better reforge tomorrow. And since my crit is close to the 'cap' Mastery is the only real option.

dcwarcraft · 10/14/10, 3:58 PM

Rivkah

I will do my own testing in a few hours and post the results here.
Hopefully I can post a link to a combat log so people can analyze.

What is the general feeling among MM Hunters now regarding reforging? Are you guys removing haste for mastery? Or Crit?

Nbstrong · 10/14/10, 4:02 PM

Originally Posted by Măcelaru

If you can back that up with some strong maths. Or a good logic, I'm gonna be convinced.

Ok, let me give it a try. We are looking at how much 1 agility does for us versus 1 haste or crit. Mastery is not an issue because you cannot gem for it (yet). Ill give you some of the info that led me to this conclusion. My math isn't exact, and I would hope someone a bit better at it could support this, but it is close enough to hopefully show you my reasoning.

Agility-
Now gives us 2 attack power for every point, instead of 1 like it was before. The tooltip is not entirely accurate about this, but looking at attack power you can see it is true. Most shots are based off of RAP * X. Thus, attack power directly affects the damage we do per shot.

It also gives us SOME crit. Naked with 185 agility the tooltip says it gives me .69% crit. My crit chance is 1.56% (40 rating seems to be the base, which is .87%) Geared with 2245 agil which gives me 25.46% crit. My crit chance here is 46.63% (972 rating (21.17%)).

So 1 point of agility gives us-
- 2 attack power
- About 0.18 crit rating

Not to mention, agility is made stronger from the fact that the more you have, the better it is. Mail Specialization and Trueshot Aura both come to mind to support this.

Crit
It takes around 50 crit rating (this is not exact, but this is close) to equal 1% to crit. A critical hit will give us double damage for that shot (this is also influenced by the meta so its about 103% increase.

1 point of crit rating gives us roughly
- 0.02% to crit

Haste
This is where it gets a bit harder to do the straight math. Haste affects focus regen, autoshot speed, and steady shot time. We do know, from other posts here, that changes in haste as you will get from gemming will not greatly affect your rotation.

From the above info, it is my opinion that agility is a better stat for hunters than crit/haste/mastery at this time.

Note this is strictly to try and support skipping blue socket bonuses and reforging for hit instead of gemming for it. Yellow sockets I would assume go by the same rules they did before.

Reforging for hit is better because instead of sacrificing agility for hit you are sacrificing haste/crit/mastery for hit, which I am willing to bet will still not be better than agility.

So thus, it's going to get you better stats overall to put 1 +10 hit/agil gem in your best blue socket for your meta and ignore all other blue sockets for +20 agility gems.

Perhaps at certain levels haste/crit/mastery will overtake agility but until that is decided then this is the best way to go.

Edit: Not to mention reforging is better because you can more finely tune it to get closer to the hit cap, thus you will waste less stats.

As I said here, you are going to have to sacrifice some stat for hit. It is my belief it is better to sacrifice crit/haste/mastery for it than it is to sacrifice it for agility.

Whitefyst · 10/14/10, 4:08 PM

@Rook and Mustacheride

I am not talking about haste affecting our 1s GCD. I am talking about haste getting our SS cast times down to the 1s GCD, which is the point where haste no longer has any benefit on SS. Essentially, it is a softcap. Mustacheride may laugh about it thinking it is ridiculous, but it is actually quite easy and I had it occurring last night in raids when under any 1 of RF, Bloodlust, or Potion of Speed. As I stated above, all it takes is 9.6% haste from gear with RF alone and I was running with 18.9% last night, which is above the amount needed for either of the 3:

2.0 s (base SS cast time) / ( 1.096 (haste on gear) * 1.03 (3/3 Pathing) * 1.15 (ISS) * 1.1 (raid buff) * 1.4 (RF)) = 1s

With any additional haste on gear, the RF glyph, or stacking any of RF, Bloodlust, and Potion of Speed, our SS cast time falls below the 1s GCD.

Now I am not talking about getting the SS cast down to the 1s GCD with gear alone, along with Pathing, IS, and the raid buff. First, that would take a ridiculous amount of itemization (enough to get 53.5% haste on gear) that is better spent elsewhere. Second, it would greatly reduce the benefit of RF, Bloodlust, and Speed Potion for us.

What I am talking about is the opposite, making sure that we do not have too much haste where we are not getting good value from the dynamic haste effects.

Stinkles · 10/14/10, 4:15 PM

Originally Posted by Ratek

His point is getting to the GCD, not actually affecting it. So under the stated effects his Steadies would be 1 second casts. Any faster would be somewhat wasted.

Personally I'm sitting at just shy of 20% Haste, I guess it makes sense what Whitefyst says, so I better reforge tomorrow. And since my crit is close to the 'cap' Mastery is the only real option.

Any faster attack speed would be wasted, clearly. You have other reasons to still stack haste though 1) regenerate more focus 2) wild quiver.

You aren't focus starved? Don't need the extra focus during your rotation? When you can't steady you will be. Without iSS you will be even more. It won't work if you don't adjust your talents and glyphs to compensate.

When you reforge crit, you need to take 2/2 careful aim. Don't be scared of arcane, we don't rely on arp anymore; it is better than you think.

Măcelaru · 10/14/10, 5:00 PM

Originally Posted by Nbstrong

Ok, let me give it a try. We are looking at how much 1 agility does for us versus 1 haste or crit. Mastery is not an issue because you cannot gem for it (yet). Ill give you some of the info that led me to this conclusion. My math isn't exact, and I would hope someone a bit better at it could support this, but it is close enough to hopefully show you my reasoning.

Well your reasoning is bad to begin with. As Rivkah posted above.

You'd have to compare 4-6-8 agi (the agility you'd lose from gemming any other stat, hence gaining the socket bonus instead of blankly socketing 20 agi) (depending on the socket bonus) with 10 of the stat you'd gain from reforging / gemming

So all in all, 4/6/8 whatever much agility has to value more than 10 of the other stat, I believe that means that depending on the situation
x agi, in budget would be like x+x*0.05+x*0.2+x*0.05 =1.3x Correct me if I'm wrong

4 agi,(5.2 in budget), 1 agi should value more than 1.92 of the desired stat.
6 agi (7.8 in budget) 1 agi > 1.28

I don't really know whether 1 point of agility would be worth more than 1.92 of any other stat.
Though if you gain only 4 agility it seems that the actual value of agility should be worth more than 1.28 of that stat, which I find plausible, but it needs confirmation.

Oh and also, I don't remember who, but somebody posted on the Cata hunter thread, about gemming hit and reforging for mastery, given the fact that it's gonna be the only way for us to get it before cata hits.

Nbstrong · 10/14/10, 5:11 PM

Originally Posted by Rivkah

According to my math, in order for a 6 agil socket bonus to be worth getting, the stat you'd be losing the agil to get would have to be worth 40% the value of the agility. For a 4 agil socket bonus, it'd have to be worth 60% the value of agility.

This is correct and I believe it is true. Especially now since agility has been made nearly twice as important for us.

Ratek · 10/14/10, 5:12 PM

I'm most certainly not scared of Arcane Shot. It never have been. I used it on the move, and I liked it. Similarly I like it now.
But the fact remains, that while Haste does impact passive regeneration is isn't terribly much. It is what you can call, a bonus, but nothing to gear around.
4 fps at base. That's an Arcane every 5.5 seconds. Over a minute it is 10.9 Arcanes. To gain one more Arcane over a minute you would need 9.25% Haste. That's a lot for that benefit. Remember we have removed the active income to focus (mobility). I'm sure it is going to be nice when you get that extra Arcane. But we are talking 9.25% for one Arcane for a full minute of mobility. Meanwhile you lose some benefits while standing still.

The fact remains that as soon as one stat caps something, it loses power. It doesn't matter that part of it's power is a diverse multitude of effects. Unless of course it is vastly more powerful than the alternatives. And right now it seems to not be.
When you reduce the Haste to the non-capped (at all) levels, and transfer it to Mastery you regain the lost value from more Wild Quiver, and dare I say a little more than that. So it comes down to the passive regeneration, and I'm not convinced it will be great.

And you definately don't need Careful Aim 2/2. We are talking crit for 20% of a boss. And if you drop a little crit (at little can be as much as 10% in this case), you don't overcompensate with another 30% crit for those 20% of the health. That's not a good way of doing it.

mako · 10/14/10, 5:15 PM

Originally Posted by Ratek

And you definately don't need Careful Aim 2/2. We are talking crit for 20% of a boss. And if you drop a little crit (at little can be as much as 10% in this case), you don't overcompensate with another 30% crit for those 20% of the health. That's not a good way of doing it.

While that's true in some aspects, there's really no other place to put the talent point some people use for 2/2 careful aim. Rapid Killing and Silencing are options, but neither will have a notable impact on DPS in current fights.

Whitefyst · 10/14/10, 5:21 PM

Originally Posted by Stinkles

Any faster attack speed would be wasted, clearly. You have other reasons to still stack haste though 1) regenerate more focus 2) wild quiver.

You aren't focus starved? Don't need the extra focus during your rotation? When you can't steady you will be. Without iSS you will be even more. It won't work if you don't adjust your talents and glyphs to compensate.

When you reforge crit, you need to take 2/2 careful aim. Don't be scared of arcane, we don't rely on arp anymore; it is better than you think.

My point is not that haste beyond what gets you to the GCD still does not have benefits, its that its not as beneficial and that other options are now probably better.

Concerning 1), as I indicated in my post, after finding the optimal balance between SS and ArS in the rotation, it requires about 12.9% extra haste on gear in order to have enough additional focus regen to be able to swap 1 extra SS not needed to maintain ISS to a ArS once PER MINUTE. That is very costly for very little benefit. Now I do advocate though running with a little extra haste and focus regen than you need to have for a little extra cushion.

Concerning 2), I posit that after getting enough haste to support the focus regen requirements for the "optimal" rotation with having a little extra focus regen than needed to be safe and not going below the 1 GCD much during dynamic haste effects, that it is better to reforge any additional haste, which is less beneficial since we have crossed several thresholds (SS soft cap, optimal rotation shot selection/focus balance), to mastery so that WQ will proc more often for shot.

If we already have enough haste where our steady state SS cast time is below 1.5s. There are only 2 discrete points with additional haste where we can add in an additional shot per 10s. So at most, you can gain 2 additional shots per 10s by stacking an additional about 20% and 40% haste. Now on first glance that seems good, although costly. However, once you factor in that with dynamic haste effects of RF, Bloodlust, and Speed Potion, that you can already be getting those extra 2 shots at current haste values about 40-50% of the time of a 5 min fight due to the dynamic haste effects getting you there. Thus adding that costly additional haste itemization does not increase your number of specials by much. It does however still increase your number of autoshots, but with current low mastery values that it is probably more beneficial to increase mastery over autoshot rate.

Ratek · 10/14/10, 5:22 PM

Originally Posted by mako

While that's true in some aspects, there's really no other place to put the talent point some people use for 2/2 careful aim. Rapid Killing and Silencing are options, but neither will have a notable impact on DPS in current fights.

That's true. But as noted, the impact is awfully slight. I would most definately grab 2/2 had it been a more significant loss of crit than a few percent. The value of RK or Silencing Shot are naturally more vague, but that all comes back to the post GC posted, of when utility is worth it. The RK benefit on addfights is not to be underestimated. And a timely Silencing Shot can be very useful.

Not that I will be reforging Crit at this time. I think it should be clear I'm looking at Haste right now.

Adyssa · 10/14/10, 5:46 PM

I think it is best to think of Silencing Shot in terms of what it stopped. If you Silence a heal, that's as good as damage done. If you silence a frost bolt volley, think of it as healing everyone and dispelling a snare from them. What you prevented is what would have had to been dealt with. It is also great for MDing a stray caster to a tank. I also feel like many people underestimate the value of a ranged interrupt. Apparently, yes, the travel time on the silence is back, but what's the travel time on a melee interrupt if he is 20 yds from the target? I can't imagine ever skipping this talent point as MM.

As for Rapid Killing, the amount of focus it gives is tremendous. In a 10m raid, for example, you only compete with 4-5 other DPS for the killing blow. If you know your raid mates don't have an on-killing-blow effect, ask them to not take the killing blow with the assurance that you will stay on the target and finish it off. When it isn't useful, it's worthless, but when it is, the returns are huge.