While it seems like a simple question, it's actually quite complex. There are a lot of different variables that all interact in a number of different ways. Honestly, the best way is to grab Cheeky's spreadsheet and plug in your current gear & then play around with all the various "What Ifs" you can find.

Assuming a raid boss with sunder up, my quick and dirty guesstimate says -130 armor is 1% dps increase. Now, the value of -armor increases as more is stacked and as the mob's armor decreases, but -130 is a decent average for now.

Edit: For precision, use Cheeky's.

Hello! First let me say that I am a long time* forum lurker here, love the information that can be gathered at this very website.

*By long time I mean since I was a L70 hunter and started to raid.

Anyway I got into a rather heated debate with another hunter in my guild who considered +hit useless. He even has a considerable less +hit than me. (I am a 130 and he is at 89, he does not have surefooted.)

Anyway he told me that +hit was useless and should be replaced with more +crit or what not. Any thoughts... did I make a mistake by stacking the +agi and +hit gems?

Hit is an excellent DPS increase until you hit the cap, most certainly not useless. Those gems you have are fine for now, but as you upgrade your gear, you'll find yourself with enough hit rating from items to start socketing straight agility gems.

I´m wondering why most of the answers say that ravagers are the best dps pets.

According to Cheekys spreadsheet a windserpent deals more dps than an ravager/cat/raptor.
Is there anything I am missing?
I plugged my talents into the spreadsheet (41/20/0) and the windserpent deals about 20 dps more than any of the other pets.

It might be because Cobra Reflexes doesn't affect Lightning Breath, or because Serpents tend to move out of melee for LB casting and back in for Melee, that the spreadsheet won't account for. Personally, i've had Serpents pre BC, but the situation has since changed a lot, and pets were actually made a lot more raid viable, so my experience on that matter is irrelevant.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Currently I am at 1753 RAP, 28.5% crit unbuffed, but only 107 hit rating. Our guild is currently 4/6 SSC (no Hydross(!) or Vashj) and 3/4 TK. I have the gear in my bank to max out the hit rating (Kaylaan's signet, fiend slayer boots, full ebon set) if I want to. However according to Cheeky's spreadsheet my best set of dps gear is what I am currently wearing (against a level 73 mob, moderate amount of armour, fully raid buffed). Do you think I should trust the spreadsheet on this one or max out the hit rating regardless?

The spreadsheet gives 0 value to dps for +hit (according to the 'Settings and Results' tab). I think it's pretty much assumed that you seek to reach the hit cap, THEN toy with gear to max out your dps.

I think this is due to you being above the hit cap. In your case, adding +1 Hit Rating would yield +0 DPS, which is what you see in the 'Settings and Results' tab.

Ah, thanks for that (can tell I haven't been playing with the spreadsheet for very long).

Though I am having an issue where the paperdoll in-game puts me at 23.7% Ranged crit, but the spreadsheet only has me at 23.11%. I've rechecked how I put my gear and talent points in the spreadsheet numerous times, and it's all in there correctly. Any thoughts on the matter?

Nevermind, figured out that it's due to the level difference between the mob and myself.

I'd wager the general dps assumption for Ravagers & Cats is due to 10% damage bonus (Thottbot World of Warcraft: All Pets). Additionally I'd bet most people were probably judging pet dps w/o armor consideration; which when considered definitely lowers cats & ravagers but doesn't affect wind serpents as much.

My gut feeling has always been cats/ravagers until you get a decent crit rate for go for the throat. Plus wind serpents eat bread, something all pets really should do.

The move out behavior hasn't really been an issue for me, as raid mobs aren't typically stunnable. However, 2.3 will probably get most people to use the manual cast method as the move to the back behavior isn't active if a wind serpent is autocasting lightning breath.

Heh... messin' around with what I've got at my disposal it turns out I'm in the same boat. Swappin' my dual-wield for Sonic Spear and re-scoping for +28crit puts me at a gain of about 1.5%crit and 7dps overall, but falls to 132 hit. Guess it's goodbye dual mana oils!

Testing windserpent today. Might turn out to be pretty decent as I have a lot more AP and crit so pet will most likely just pew pew constantly.

quick question, as BM when you start to run low on mana, and (iguess any spec really) your mana pot is on cool down (i have to sacrafice some of my manapool to get comprable stats since i am 6 months behind my friends now from quitting) how would you suggest changing your shot rotation/mana conservation until the mana pot cooldown. Should i AoTV and just do a steady/auto rotation? Or would it be more beneficial to continue a full 1:1 rotation? Should i be downranking when running low on mana, or has it been proven that just switching to plain steady auto until mana for max rank rotation is available again?


thanks.

On this Windserpent Vs Ravager debate....

I have a windserpent, always have since I first got him from ZG when he still changed colour when I summoned him and before the whole pet scaling that made them god-like pre BC

The spreadsheet says that he is only a couple of DPS below a ravager and I figured, seeing as I am at about 40% crit raid buffed the Lightning Breath would be a great focus dump and it might even up his DPS a little bit.

The problem is, that even with LB placed in my macro rather than being on auto cast so that he doesnt back out to cast it, his DPS is about half of the ravagers of the other hunters in my group. EG last night he was at these stats for the whole run in SSC (hydros lurker morogrim and a couple of Fathomlord attempts) and this is about the same difference when you look at the individual fights as well.

Pets - WWS

Why is he sucking so hard in comparison? I Spec him in LB6 Stamina10 NatureResist3 FrostResist3 Avoidance2 and Bite8. Would Cobra Reflexes be better in there than something else? I tend to spec him for resists for where we are going on any one night.

Or should I just suck it up and get a ravager and leave my poor Zephyr in the stables?

In my personal opinion, get cobra reflexes because it reduces down time of frenzy and ferocious inspiration. You may have seen a lower dps output from your pet compared to ravagers and cats because I would assume mobs in ssc generally have high nature resistance as well as half of the entire hydross fight making lightning breath useless.

I would also suggest not having a windserpent use bite - Lightning breath is its bread and butter and is the best thing to use it's focus on: don't worry about being at 100 focus because whenever he goes above 50 focus he will simply dump it all on a lightning breath which has no lengthy cooldown.

people, ive read most part of the thread, and found come things about gems.

my big question is if AP gems are better than AGI gems if im MM spec.

my guild is in 3rd boss of hyjal right now, and i have decent dps. disconsidering bosses without AOE, i ussually stay at least 4th on the meters. hunters in my guild ussually dont receive dps buffs, when we receive, ots a shadow priest. rogues are buffed with shaman + feral druid, and mages with elemental shaman, and sometimes shadow priest. considering the dpsers buffs, i can consider my dps decent.

u can check my armory The World of Warcraft Armory

i stacked everything with AP, just put some AGI on shoulders to test. because a friend of mine, that is in a guild with more progress than mine, told me that AGI gems are better for ANY build, even MM (considering that mortal shots make it better, and agi still gets you bonus for master marksman). He showed me a calculation based on cheeky's spread sheet. But i D/L the spread sheet, and changed all my enchant/gear for AGI, but my dps went down a bit. he told me that that occured because the spreadsheet doesnt count the mortal shot buff on crits.

so please, can cheeky or lactose or someone help me telling if AGI gems are better than AP gems for marksmanship? (based on some maths plz)

thank you very much!

Because you're survival and the other 2 hunters are beast mastery. Half their talent tree gives them boosts to their pets damage, what did you think would happen? There may be other factor such as hydross' nature immunity, pet running out of melee range sometimes etc but survival vs beast is the single biggest reason.

Re: bite, its best to untrain it most likely... if you rarely drop below 50% focus, then if he ever uses bite, its at the expense of a lightning breath. Pets have global cooldowns too.

Thats a very good point, I'm surprised I didnt think of that.

To be honest, I dont think I thought about it that way because everyone says BM is the DPS spec but I seem to dps about the same as the BM hunters in my guild, so I assumed that our pets would dps about the same as well. Thanks for the help.

The ratio is very different. In marks and survival, the pet does a much lower % of your total damage, however your personal dps is most likely significantly higher. (Well for marks anyway, I never felt the urge to try survival but I'd assume similair holds true if you have the right gear).

Regarding the Wind Serpent vs. Ravager Debate.

Direct buffs to your pet's AP do not affect LB as they do normal melee, there are also a fair number of raid debuffs which benefit melee much more than LB.

Expose Weakness, Earth Totem, Air Totem, 10% AP, Might, Kings, 20 Str food, Leader of the Pack, Blood Frenzy, etc.

If your group setups are ideal you will have some (if not all of these) on your pet at all times. That extra 3% damage modifier ravagers get is pretty significant if you include all of that.

Question about current state Leo. My goal is to mitigate the various risks with killing inner demons as much as possible. Do snake traps work properly now or is frost trap the way to go to kite them around. I've come to the conclusion that while I can freeze trap / run to range / nuke the guy down with a few seconds to spare, its too unreliable given the chance of resist on the freeze trap and all that. Seems better just to have some sort of slowing trap already placed and kite them through it a few times with serpent sting up and firing off arcane / multi when the cooldowns are up. Ive had them spawn behind me a few times as well which results in my starting off dazed. Obviously that doesnt help the situation. Thoughts?