The fact that Claws of Agony have strength rather than agility, make it a clear dps loss to any decent agility weapon.

Actually it's not Multishot, but Serpent Spread. The latter does not refresh or increase duration of serpent spreads, but sets up new serpent sting with 6 or 9 seconds duration. As of stings nature, old one is instantly gone.

After some extensive gear shuffling with Zeherah's I'm finding a lot of the new enchants being lackluster in comparison to WotLK enchants.
[Enchant Cloak - Major Agility]
[Scroll of Enchant Bracers - Greater Assault]
[Enchant Gloves - Major Agility]
Are all better than the available rating-based Cataclysm options. For bracers [Draconic Embossment - Agility] (130 Agility) is obviously better by leaps and bounds and makes leatherworking the strongest Hunter profession by far.

Also I was tinkering around with gemming options and found [ZZOLD Design: Relentless Earthsiege Diamond] to be superior to both [Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond] and [Destructive Shadowspirit Diamond] with respective gemming to meet the requirements. I can't imagine that downgrading content to this extent is intended.

Cobra shot and serpent sting are also affected by Crit and Mastery. Kill Shot is not affected by Mastery at all, just crit.

Short answer: It's because of all raid buffs that give you more crit.

Long answer:
This is how I think when I am about to balance crit and mastery. I use the 100 shots model with each shot dealing 100 damage, and my current crit is 19% unbuffed, but in raids fully buffed with flask, agi food, 5% crit buff, horn of winter buff etc. I get about 29.5% crit. My current mastery is about 16.5%. And according to world of logs, my elemental damage is 80% and my physical damage is 20%.

So my combined crit and mastery is 46% and if i use the 100 shots model i get (100*100+x*100)(0.2+0.8*((46-x)/100+1)) and by using the derivative of that i get x~=35.5. So according to this i should balance my crit to 35.5% and that would give me a mastery of 10.5%

But if i analyze the formula above in my graph calculator i can see that anything from x=29 to x=40 gives really good result. So approximately 4/6 to 5/6 of total mastery+crit should be crit and 2/6 to 1/6 should be mastery. And from here it starts to get really interesting because glyph of es gives you 6% more crit to es. So for es i have 46%+6%=52% total mastery+crit to balance.

So if i now should balance 52% with explosive shot only (remember 100% elemental damage) i get (100*100+x*100)(1*((52-x)/100+1)) and as said before in this thread to get the best result x should now be half of 52, x=26. But once again analyzing the graph in my calculator i can see that anything from x=19 to x=33 gives really good result, or approximately 1/3 to 2/3 crit/mastery.

So for my current gear/stats choice i take from both worlds, I know I get really good result for explosive shot with as low as 1/3 mastery. And for my overall damage i get really good result with as high as 1/3 mastery. And to achieve this balance i need a lot more mastery rating then crit rating on my gear.

Can we please add section for best flasks, pots, gems, enchants to main page.

Thanks

I went to the spreadsheet after your post to verify what I also intuitively was thinking (already went back to Agility to Cloak).

I can confirm that the Agility to cloak and Agility to gloves is def better than the Cata best enchants. I did find though that 65 Crit was better than 50 AP to bracers. This may change as our crit percentage increases...but for now I am getting ~25 dps increase with the Crit. After drooling over the 130 Agility to bracers I am seriously thinking of picking up LW. That was an increase of almost 355 dps over the Crit enchant...Incredible!

I love the 130 Agility to 2H Weapon and the 40 Agility to ring, but these other enchants are very dissapointing.

Right now I am running with a pvp Meta that I can actually get the 21 Crit bonus, but when they fix the Relentless meta requirement that will def win out over the new Chaotic.

According to my character's FD profile, I rate agility at slightly over 4 dps per point, haste is a little below 1 dps a point. Factor in things like kings, and SV bonus to agi and your looking at the proc not really being worth it. Let alone the fact that two 1 hander enchants are not even remotely close to the 130 agi enchant for 2 handers.

Conscience's work has made me think a little harder about the survival shot sequence. While the value of haste only provides autos/regen/pet speed until you have enough to fit in additional cobra shots, it is not a fixed 5s window. The assumption I was going off is that explosive shot does so much damage that it's never worth delaying but this may not always be the case. What we should do is take a look at different scenarios and determine how much delay is worth fitting in the extra shots (arcane or cobra most likely). From that we can determine what levels of hatse are ideal for each situation.

This is a very complex problem that depends on: amount of focus going into the shot sequence, TotH procs, haste, BA cd, LnL, and I'm not sure there is going to be a nice clean answer. What I expect we will find is that cobra casttimes of around 1.66, 1.5, 1.33, 1.25, and 1 (or a little less) will be better choices while haste provides benefit throughout by reducing explosive shot delays (in addition to what we've discussed before).

Funny thing is: When I was playing around on femaledwarf today, I went from no enchant on cloak at all to crit on cloak and the calculated result was actually a dps loss. Now how is that supposed to work? Speaking of which, maybe I should report this as a bug in the appropriate thread.

It is because we still don't know what's best.

It was just about what damage portions are affected by Crit, while not by Haste. Still, SS is missing (like acknowledged a few posts below the one you quoted), because I though it'd be affected by Haste, and KS I did not include in the calculation, like stated at the bottom of the post.

Is anyone else seeing what I'm seeing in female dwarf? I'm roughly in pre-raid BiS from heroics and rep. I switched over to pvp 4 set (had to add the agility from the 2 set and 4 set manually). It was a significant dps gain and that's without FD taking the 4 sec BA CD reduction from the gloves or the 5% focus from the 4 set.

I was fiddling around myself and I noticed after selecting full raid buffs I and messing with some reforging and gear, I somehow ended up with 1012 haste, 1428 crit, and 1357 mastery.

I could modify haste up to 1015 and it would make my it valued at 0.008. Any other value +- would make it jump in worth. I could raise my crit up 75 point while keeping haste at that value, but if I lowered it 50, haste and crit values both skyrocket. If I drop it another 10, crit has a negative value (-0.036).

It appeared that I could modify mastery and the values would pretty much stay constant.

With such fickle stat priorities, how can we possibly decide what's best in slot or what could be an upgrade or side grade?

I've had the 365 epic PvP gloves for 2 week, got them from Baradin Hold. They haven't ever reduced the cooldown of BA for me. They also don't reduce the cooldown of my explosive trap when I use my macro for it:

#showtooltip Explosive Trap
/castsequence reset=5 Trap Launcher, Explosive Trap(Fire - Trap Launcher)

Not sure how some people are getting a 22sec BA cooldown and I'm still getting a 24sec CD.

I have got the 352 pvp gloves and it really increased my DPS.
However the 365 epic version seems to be bugged (it is written on the item 2 second).
I was wondering if arcane shot is worth using at all but with the 4 second reduction on BA cooldown, I don't have any focus left for it, and I only use it for the L&L procs.
So arcane shot represents 1.3% of my dps against 8.2% for serpent sting.
I don't see the use of the glyph of arcane shot.
Concerning the value of agility against other stats, has anyone do the maths to see if the 3% damage increase metagem is worth using, with the requirements ?
I have always considered agility as the best stat but the bonus seems to me as crucial as the mail specialization.

Its actually a 20sec cd on black arrow (with 3/3 trap mastery) and the 365 gloves have been reported as being buged, however the 352 gloves still lower the cd of black arrow to 20sec though whether that is intended I don't know.

edit: Seem to have been beaten to a reply delete please

I did my calculations fully raidbuffed and flasked, reforged mastery/hit to crit and using Glyph of ES and SS, so crit rates were already pretty high. I'm also thinking about switching to LW, although this will be extremely annoying to level.

I think the equation to determine the point at which haste breaks in value is not too complicated.
Since many people here are probably better in math than I am, it is likely that you can figure out something I've overseen. Please correct me if so. My apporach would be the following:

Given:

• Average ES-Damage
• Average CoS-Damage
• GCD
• Cobra-Casttime

If we consider one rotation cycle we can easily calculate the DPS through CoS and ES. For example a rotation with 4 CoS and 1 ES (Expecting Cobra-Casttime > GCD).
Damage = 4 * CoS-Damage + ES-Damage
Duration = 1s (ES GCD) + 4 * Cobra-Casttime
DPS4 = Damage/Duration

A cycle with 3 CoS would not delay ES if we had a CoS casttime < 1.67s. The rotation cycle duration is bottom-limited to 6s, by ES-Cooldown.

DPS3 = 3 * CoS-Damage + ES-Damage / 6s

So stacking haste beyond this point does not make sense, until we reach the point where it is worth using 4 CoS. We reach it when DPS3 and DPS4 are equal. So we can solve the following equation to get the haste-rating required, where it is worth using 4 CoS instead of 3.
DPS3 = DSP4

After that point haste-rating will be much more valuable as it directly increases the DPS value of a rotation cycle until we reach the 6s cap or the point where we should switch to a 5 CoS rotation cycle. More than 5 CoS/AS does not make sense as long as we do not have a cast that does more damage than ES, as then GCD is the limitting factor.


This model is a bit too abstract. It does not consider focus. As there might be a point where it is not worth to use a cycle with 4 CoS, but it might be worth using 3 CoS and one ArS.

Does this make sense?


Beside, I've also experienced DPS loss in FD despite increasing single stats. My explanation so far has been, that the stat change might cause a shift in the rotation due to focus-regeneration. This might delay ES, as another cast might become useable, which eventually results in a DPS loss. But this is more likely to be a topic for the corresponding thread.

Just to add to the list of wonkiness around AGI enchants, the agi+stam Twilight Leg Armor seems to be better than the AP+crit Scorched Leg Armor, and has a hefty chunk of stam which I'm appreciating for early raiding (still unable to find upgrade to 2pc T10 heroic pieces, so low on stam). Unfortunately the epic version of the leg armor only increases agi by 10 (but increases stam by much more), so the epic AP+crit one is better.

First I think this is the right place to start, but looking at explosive/cobra damage and cobra cast time is only part of the issue.

As long as arcane shot does more damage than cobra, for high focus situations where explosive shot and BA are on cd, you should be casting arcane. What you do during the time between explosives is going to vary, depending on the amount of focus you have after ES and TotH procs during the window, because they determine shot composition.

While a scenario like:

ES->Cobra (1.67)->Cobra (1.67)->Cobra (1.67)->ES

is likely, if you really want to quantify the value of haste you have to look at the entire picture. Something like:

ES->Cobra (1.67)->Cobra (1.67)->Aracane (1.0)->(0.67 wait?)->ES

is also likely if focus is high (you can substitute BA for Arcane if the CD is up). In this case is it worth waiting 0.67 seconds to fire the next ES or should we put another cobra in there? You can see that additional haste either increases the wait time or decreases ES delays. With a cobra shot cast time of 1.33 we can fit in 3 cobras and an instant shot with no ES delay or 4 cobras with only a 0.33s delay (this requires about 33% haste so it may not be feasible right now).

Right, well the epic versions are what we should be looking at. 55 agi/145 stam vs. 190 AP/55 crit. Agi scaling is 5%*5%*15%%*2%~=130%. That puts this enchant at about 143 AP and .22% crit which is less AP and crit than the alternative. Depends on if the stam is worth it or not.

Also, just for the record, I am tending to side with Serpent Sting as the glyph of choice over Arcane Shot now. The two are almost a wash theoretically, and in practice I think the value of AS is only going to go down vs. SS as focus usage becomes less efficient. Serpent Sting also wins out in aoe but honestly it's rather insignificant since most of our serpent spread damage comes from the multi-shot and imp SS portions of that damage.

That's even more a reason to go for SrS over Arcane Shot glyph if you ask me, unless I missed the note that ISrS is not affected by the glyph.

Merry Xmas btw.

Hi, I didn't understand a thing:

1% crit is 1% more damage (assuming a 100% bonus damage per crit)
1 point of mastery is 1% more damage to elemental damage only. So why should we ever prefer mastery over crit?