I have been reading this thread and it got me thinking. Is it EVER worth it to drop the 4pc T8 bonus in order to get to ~700 ArP. Currently I would have 642 ArP with out a trinket and having 4pc T8. If I were to only go with 2pc T8, I could get to 783 ArP.
According to the spreadsheet, both setups are worse then a pure agi surv setup. So my question is this. All I have been hearing is that ArP is king for MM but at what cost? Is it worth it to go that high in ArP and ignore the 4pc set bonus or should you acquire the 4pc and then stack ArP for marks.
I don't think there has been much debate in favor of using Arp over Agil if you not have a trinket. And if you are using 4 pc T8 I can't believe you have enough ArP to make it worthwhile. The window once you have a ArP trinket is very small, in many ways think of it as a hit cap. Personally I think 700 ArP is far to low in Ulduar if you do not have a trinket since you will be moving a lot and can not possibly reap the average dps gain that those of us do when we stand still during a Mjolnir or Grim Toll proc.
To answer your second question "Is it worth it" the answer is yes. I am achieving #1 dps on any fight the healers didn't let me die or I was on adds for, where previously in both Survival and MM normal spec/gear/rotation I was only hitting #3. Feral Druids, Rogues, Warlocks, and Mages are very hard to contend with for those top spots. My best example would be hitting ~8700 dps on IC hard mode Steelbreaker portion (next was barely 8k), and ~7000 dps overall for the fight, taking #1 in both situations last night.
The rotation is mind numbingly simple; you could practically have your eyes closed to do CS->AS->SSx4 with a lil chime to blow your cooldowns when they are up. The only issue I seem to encounter now is it best to continue on this route for Hard mode Mim, Vezax, and Yog where improved tracking does not help. Do I go back to survival? Do I use a MM spec with Aspect Mastery and Hawk Eye? For any other boss this ArP MM setup is clearly king IMO.
How does the ArP setup compare in a fight like Hodir? With extra magic damage done with the Singed debuff, it's tough to tell if it's worthwhile to focus more on AP and crit with priority on Arcane shot to get the most out of this fight. Has anyone tried this?
Do I go back to survival? Do I use a MM spec with Aspect Mastery and Hawk Eye? For any other boss this ArP MM setup is clearly king IMO.
I would say use a modified MM spec if your already gearing that way for ArP. Imp Tracking wont help you in the Surv tree either on those fights.
And I was also saying that currently I am using 4pc T8, but have pieces in my bank that could get me to the aforementioned ArP numbers. So I was wondering what would be better, use the increased ArP and drop 4pc T8 or keep the 4pc T8. Also I looked at your armory Ash. I noticed you only have three ArP gems in your gear. Why are you not completely gemmed ArP?
I would say use a modified MM spec if your already gearing that way for ArP. Imp Tracking wont help you in the Surv tree either on those fights.
And I was also saying that currently I am using 4pc T8, but have pieces in my bank that could get me to the aforementioned ArP numbers. So I was wondering what would be better, use the increased ArP and drop 4pc T8 or keep the 4pc T8. Also I looked at your armory Ash. I noticed you only have three ArP gems in your gear. Why are you not completely gemmed ArP?
ArP is a delicate thing. It must be kept tight like a hit cap. You don't want to go all out ArP because when you get the 665 Mjolnir Proc you don't want to go above the ArP cap, or you will have wasted stat points. About a month ago it was discovered something around 550-570 would be ideal, and more recently I feel 549 is the number you want to shoot for. Tonight I will toying with the gems a little more to come closer to that number. Shandara's latest spreadsheet more accurately defines the ArP behavior in game and the DPS gain per point of ArP falls beneath Agil after 549 with my gear set, and I would imagine other people will find similar results.
Hopefully I will get Gloves of the Steady Hand and Fluxing Energy Coils soon so I can move some Focused Aim points around more freely like to Improved Hunter's Mark, and my gemming would be able to lean even further on agility making the other Marks or Survival Spec easier to adjust to. I have the other T8.5 pieces, but they don't fit in with the Armor Pen gear set in order to achieve optimal dps
I like your spec, but for Mimiron and Yog the pet brings very little dmg to the table and can easily die. The secondary spec I am looking for needs to find a balance between all 3 fights, I think I would need to move a lot of your points around, to something like This Modified MM. I would then use T8.5 shoulders, etc to reach the hit cap and drop much of my armor pen since I won't be standing around spamming steady shot, but will instead be using a volatile priority rotation where Arcane Shot is priority over Aimed. As it stands right now though this will all be experimental until I see amazing results.
How does the ArP setup compare in a fight like Hodir? With extra magic damage done with the Singed debuff, it's tough to tell if it's worthwhile to focus more on AP and crit with priority on Arcane shot to get the most out of this fight. Has anyone tried this?
I would always have a secondary spec that focuses on benefiting the most from whatever hard mode your guild does not currently have on farm. Every fight in Ulduar could have a spec tailored specifically for it, but that would be very expensive and unnecessary. Hunters are naturally weak on the Hodir encounter due to the limited use haste brings us and the large degree of moving which frequently interrupts our Steady Shots and Auto Shots. I would suspect a Survival Build would work best on Hodir, but then you would diminish yourself in every other encounter in Ulduar, and using it as a secondary spec would mean you would be still hindering yourself by having improved tracking which could be better spent for the last 3 boss fights.
I would say use a modified MM spec if your already gearing that way for ArP. Imp Tracking wont help you in the Surv tree either on those fights.
And I was also saying that currently I am using 4pc T8, but have pieces in my bank that could get me to the aforementioned ArP numbers. So I was wondering what would be better, use the increased ArP and drop 4pc T8 or keep the 4pc T8. Also I looked at your armory Ash. I noticed you only have three ArP gems in your gear. Why are you not completely gemmed ArP?
ArP is a delicate thing. It must be kept tight like a hit cap. You don't want to go all out ArP because when you get the 665 Mjolnir Proc you don't want to go above the ArP cap, or you will have wasted stat points. About a month ago it was discovered something around 550-570 would be ideal, and more recently I feel 549 is the number you want to shoot for.
Maybe you can help me out here since I must still be missing something. No matter the variants I try in the spreadsheet, I really can't find much benefit to gemming ArP.
Let's start with my desired base BiS gear set, which has the 4-set T8 bonus. It has 325 ArP naturally and the ArP trinket. It has has 16 red, 1 yellow, and 1 blue gem count. All red counts are +16 agi gems, except for the +8 agi/+8 crit in a yellow socket and +8 agi/+3 mp5 in a blue socket. Its spec is my current spec except that the point currently in FA is used to top off IB instead since the BiS set has more natural hit than my current gear. This spec does not use IAS. The rotation (which I am already using) is CS->AiS->SSx4, which is the same as the ArP rotation. With this setup, I get 8100 DPS in the spreadsheet.
Option 2 is using all the same gear but changing all 14 +16 agi gems to +16 ArP gems, which nicely comes out to the 549 number listed. I do this, and I only see a 10 DPS gain. That hardly seems worth it.
Option 3 is switching out some non-ArP pieces for ArP pieces while still keeping the T8 helm (which has ArP) and chest for the 2-set bonus). The best setup that I could come up with here with trying different variants still had no ArP in the hands, bracers, and ranged weapon and had 477 ArP naturally on the gear. With no ArP gems, this setup does -11 DPS compared to my original setup. With 4 ArP gems to get to 541 ArP (not really any change when adding a 5th ArP gem to get over 549), it only gains 6 DPS to -5 DPS from my original set.
Another factor is the situations (Hodir, Vezax, moving) where I need to use Arcane Shot. In these situations, the original no ArP gemming option wins out. If I just replace a Steady Shot with an Arcane Shot once per rotation cycle, the original option loses 51 DPS, but out performs options 2 and 3 by 24 and 31 DPS, respectively. If I prioritize Arcane Shot ahead of Aimed Shot, the original rotation loses 130 DPS, but out performs options 2) and 3) by about 39 DPS each. I believe that the gains in these situations out-weigh (or at least neutralize) the gain that option 2 has in the ideal case.
ArP is a delicate thing. It must be kept tight like a hit cap. You don't want to go all out ArP because when you get the 665 Mjolnir Proc you don't want to go above the ArP cap, or you will have wasted stat points. About a month ago it was discovered something around 550-570 would be ideal, and more recently I feel 549 is the number you want to shoot for. Tonight I will toying with the gems a little more to come closer to that number. Shandara's latest spreadsheet more accurately defines the ArP behavior in game and the DPS gain per point of ArP falls beneath Agil after 549 with my gear set, and I would imagine other people will find similar results.
The magical numbers should be 567 (1232-665) for Mjolnir Runestone and 620 (1232-612) for Grim Toll.
[edit:] Maybe one point less, because the actual cap should be 1231.62 and so 0.38 ArP rating would be wasted at 1232, but I guess it will be hard to reach the cap to the exact point.
Last edited by Hagen : 07/08/09 at 8:40 PM.
Reason: addition
Edit: Okay, I calculated a little on my own, seems I was wrong. Though I never saw those calculations on the forums, only people always saying how they thought it would be without proof or anything. Just like me - doh!
Nachti: You might have said it three times, but that doesn't make it right. As former calculations have shown Agi becomes a bigger boost per point than ArP after the softcap. Of course you still gain DPS by collecting more ArP after reaching 1232 with the proc, but you would gain more DPS by collecting Agi instead. Have a look at this post please.
You want to reach the softcap with a trinket, then go for agility again until you are able to (almost) reach the hardcap without trinket.
Last edited by Hagen : 07/08/09 at 8:59 PM.
Reason: formatting
Nachti is completely and totally wrong on Arpen after the softcap. Do not listen to him. Calculations have been done on this forum showing that the wasted itemization points of a trinket after the softcap swamp the benefit of Arpen>Agility, leading to a DPS loss.
Maybe you can help me out here since I must still be missing something. No matter the variants I try in the spreadsheet, I really can't find much benefit to gemming ArP.
Let's start with my desired base BiS gear set, which has the 4-set T8 bonus. It has 325 ArP naturally and the ArP trinket. It has has 16 red, 1 yellow, and 1 blue gem count. All red counts are +16 agi gems, except for the +8 agi/+8 crit in a yellow socket and +8 agi/+3 mp5 in a blue socket. Its spec is my current spec except that the point currently in FA is used to top off IB instead since the BiS set has more natural hit than my current gear. This spec does not use IAS. The rotation (which I am already using) is CS->AiS->SSx4, which is the same as the ArP rotation. With this setup, I get 8100 DPS in the spreadsheet.
Option 2 is using all the same gear but changing all 14 +16 agi gems to +16 ArP gems, which nicely comes out to the 549 number listed. I do this, and I only see a 10 DPS gain. That hardly seems worth it.
Option 3 is switching out some non-ArP pieces for ArP pieces while still keeping the T8 helm (which has ArP) and chest for the 2-set bonus). The best setup that I could come up with here with trying different variants still had no ArP in the hands, bracers, and ranged weapon and had 477 ArP naturally on the gear. With no ArP gems, this setup does -11 DPS compared to my original setup. With 4 ArP gems to get to 541 ArP (not really any change when adding a 5th ArP gem to get over 549), it only gains 6 DPS to -5 DPS from my original set.
Another factor is the situations (Hodir, Vezax, moving) where I need to use Arcane Shot. In these situations, the original no ArP gemming option wins out. If I just replace a Steady Shot with an Arcane Shot once per rotation cycle, the original option loses 51 DPS, but out performs options 2 and 3 by 24 and 31 DPS, respectively. If I prioritize Arcane Shot ahead of Aimed Shot, the original rotation loses 130 DPS, but out performs options 2) and 3) by about 39 DPS each. I believe that the gains in these situations out-weigh (or at least neutralize) the gain that option 2 has in the ideal case.
How about trying option 4 and move the points out of Improved Barrage and into Improved Steady Shot? IB = 12% extra chance to crit on AS, which you probably are already criting with 50% of the time raid buffed. ISS = 15% extra damage on CS or AS. Given your chosen rotation it should yeild higher dps.
I have a question about PvE Hunter MM glyphs. After reading the post on ensidia.com the glyphs recomended were, serpent sting, chimera shot, and kill shot. But looking at some post here some hunters are using aimed shot glyph in the place of kill shot. Is it a dps gain to go with the aimed shot glyph over kill shot glyph, seeing as how kill shot can only be used at 20% or less life?
Also Ive seen some hunters going with steady shot glyph over serpent sting. Because steady shot is used more in th MM build then in the survival build. At what point is it viable to use steady shot glyph or serpent sting glyph? With chimera refreshing serpent sting would it be better to have the constant 10% gain? Or higher chimera shots because of the extended duration of serpent?
The answers to which glyph is best depends a lot on your current gear level and your current raiding focus. Some Hunters decide that a dps build that performs better on all bosses is more suited than one that performs best on their current progression focus. For example, Kill Shot glyph might not be the best when compared with the others for a model spreadsheet fight, but its very very useful for a fight like Yogg-Saron.
Ultimately, these are questions that should be answered by each person on their own, using the spreadsheet as a tool to help quantify some of the number differences. There is no hand's down best three glyphs since the best ones depend on your personal latency, gear, and shot rotation/priority.
The spreadsheet showed for me serpent sting, hawk and steady shot glyphs to be the highest damage ones, but as Rezdan said it would depend on the fight and your gear i suppose.
I have a question about PvE Hunter MM glyphs. After reading the post on ensidia.com the glyphs recomended were, serpent sting, chimera shot, and kill shot. But looking at some post here some hunters are using aimed shot glyph in the place of kill shot. Is it a dps gain to go with the aimed shot glyph over kill shot glyph, seeing as how kill shot can only be used at 20% or less life?
Also Ive seen some hunters going with steady shot glyph over serpent sting. Because steady shot is used more in th MM build then in the survival build. At what point is it viable to use steady shot glyph or serpent sting glyph? With chimera refreshing serpent sting would it be better to have the constant 10% gain? Or higher chimera shots because of the extended duration of serpent?
The Serpent Sting glyph is an absolute must for MM hunters, no question. It increases the total damage done by Serpent Sting and thus the damage done by CS.
The usefulness of the Aimed Shot and Chimera Shot glyphs depends largely on latency, as at certain latencies it doesn't really end up providing much benefit, since they end up coming off of cooldown at the same time.
The spreadsheet showed for me serpent sting, hawk and steady shot glyphs to be the highest damage ones, but as Rezdan said it would depend on the fight and your gear i suppose.
And lag... If you have the latency set to 200 Chimera will never show a boost in DPS. But lower it to 150 and suddenly it looks very promising. At my personal level of around 120-130 (this is generally lower, but the figures are the top end of regular numbers) Chimera is a dead certain second glyph.
How about trying option 4 and move the points out of Improved Barrage and into Improved Steady Shot? IB = 12% extra chance to crit on AS, which you probably are already criting with 50% of the time raid buffed. ISS = 15% extra damage on CS or AS. Given your chosen rotation it should yeild higher dps.
I have already investigated that option, but it does not appear to be better. According to the spreadsheet, the ISS option is about 30-35 DPS worse than the IB option for the ideal case. Add to that the fact that many encounters are not ideal and require moving or involve interruptions where I miss SS casts or replace them with Arcane Shot casts while I still shoot Aimed Shot everytime its off CD. Furthermore, ISS has no benefit in AoE situations, while IB buffs AoE. With those considerations, the gap between IB and ISS is even higher in favor of IB for my character.
The magical numbers should be 567 (1232-665) for Mjolnir Runestone and 620 (1232-612) for Grim Toll.
[edit:] Maybe one point less, because the actual cap should be 1231.62 and so 0.38 ArP rating would be wasted at 1232, but I guess it will be hard to reach the cap to the exact point.
I understand that you will hit the cap @ 567, but playing with the spreadsheet showed that Agil + 1 was a greeater dps per point then ArP after 549. I'm wondering if this is do to there already being so little armor from the 549 to 567 range that the average gain per point of agility is higher during the proc enough so that it outweighs ArP as an average dps gain. I encourage you all to look into this as everyone's gear is different and all have slightly different stats (haste, ap, etc). I'm not saying 549 is the magic number for everyone to be at, it's just odd that the spreadsheet is reporting this, so there must be some logical explanation.
I understand that you will hit the cap @ 567, but playing with the spreadsheet showed that Agil + 1 was a greeater dps per point then ArP after 549. I'm wondering if this is do to there already being so little armor from the 549 to 567 range that the average gain per point of agility is higher during the proc enough so that it outweighs ArP as an average dps gain. I encourage you all to look into this as everyone's gear is different and all have slightly different stats (haste, ap, etc). I'm not saying 549 is the magic number for everyone to be at, it's just odd that the spreadsheet is reporting this, so there must be some logical explanation.
This might be because of the way the spreadsheet calculates ArP. The opposit of what you suspect is the case, the points closest to the (soft)cap are the most valuable ones. Here you can find a good way to calculate a more realistic DPS value for a setup with an ArP proc trinket. This should show a more realistic behavior for the ArP point between 550 and 570.
How does the ArP setup compare in a fight like Hodir? With extra magic damage done with the Singed debuff, it's tough to tell if it's worthwhile to focus more on AP and crit with priority on Arcane shot to get the most out of this fight. Has anyone tried this?
The singed magical damage bonus benefits survival more on Hodir yes, but MM has a significantly higher crit modifier that SV due to Piercing Shots and MFD, so benefits more from Storm Power - on the other hand Survival also crits about 10% more often... and extra crit on killshots for killing frozen adds is nice damage meter padding too.
Personally I've done better as MM on Hodir 25 Hard (12k on best kill) than as SV (~8k on non-kill attempts), but I think that has as much to do with the StormPower+Toasty Fire RNG as spec.
As for the glyph/arp discussion above, assuming I have to spend 3 talents in Imp HM, the highest DPS spec/gear/glyph combo I can find on the spreadsheet is my current one, which involves glyphing steady, serpent and hawk, dropping Imp Arcane, and dropping arcane shot from the rotation completely. The weird thing is that I only have 350 passive ArP and Mjolnir, yet when I calcattributes with this spec and glyphset and rotation ArP works out slightly higher than AGI.
As for why the spec is outperforming others for me, I believe it's largely because with 3 points sunk into Imp Mark and 1 in TSA, you can only afford 1 point in RR, which means arcane shot runs you oom quickly enough to increase your Viper uptime, resulting in lowered DPS in spite of not really having enough ArP to make StS always better than ArS - dropping arcane and imp arcane to pick up ISS instead and spending no time in viper is a net DPS gain. The fact that all the steady spam increases uptime on T8 4pc bonus which I'm stuck wearing, and guarantees IIS procs go to chimera doubtless factors in too.
I have been reading this thread and it got me thinking. Is it EVER worth it to drop the 4pc T8 bonus in order to get to ~700 ArP. Currently I would have 642 ArP with out a trinket and having 4pc T8. If I were to only go with 2pc T8, I could get to 783 ArP.
According to the spreadsheet, both setups are worse then a pure agi surv setup. So my question is this. All I have been hearing is that ArP is king for MM but at what cost? Is it worth it to go that high in ArP and ignore the 4pc set bonus or should you acquire the 4pc and then stack ArP for marks.
Getting to 783 ArP doesn't tell the whole story... ArP is great, but, for example, 783 ArP+0 crit+400 haste = fail set-up.
Personally, I have 2 well geared hunters. One has the trinket, one doesn't and I test different set-ups on Patchwerk every week. So far the best "real world" result (scroll to Patchwerk) I have had is with the trinket, 567 ArP - 2 piece T8 - 3/3 Foc Aim. This is the only set-up I have found where I can actually exceed the theoretical spreadsheet numbers. Other set-ups I fall well short of the theoretical. Next Tuesday, I'm going to try the same set-up but stacking even more ArP, about 740 with the trinket and see how that goes. I know one Patchwerk test is meaningless, but it gives me a good sense, and I hope others a good sense, of what is good and not good - plus it's really, really fun putting up huge numbers without worrying about standing in the fire.
The singed magical damage bonus benefits survival more on Hodir yes, but MM has a significantly higher crit modifier that SV due to Piercing Shots and MFD, so benefits more from Storm Power - on the other hand Survival also crits about 10% more often... and extra crit on killshots for killing frozen adds is nice damage meter padding too.
Personally I've done better as MM on Hodir 25 Hard (12k on best kill) than as SV (~8k on non-kill attempts), but I think that has as much to do with the StormPower+Toasty Fire RNG as spec.
As for the glyph/arp discussion above, assuming I have to spend 3 talents in Imp HM, the highest DPS spec/gear/glyph combo I can find on the spreadsheet is my current one, which involves glyphing steady, serpent and hawk, dropping Imp Arcane, and dropping arcane shot from the rotation completely. The weird thing is that I only have 350 passive ArP and Mjolnir, yet when I calcattributes with this spec and glyphset and rotation ArP works out slightly higher than AGI.
As for why the spec is outperforming others for me, I believe it's largely because with 3 points sunk into Imp Mark and 1 in TSA, you can only afford 1 point in RR, which means arcane shot runs you oom quickly enough to increase your Viper uptime, resulting in lowered DPS in spite of not really having enough ArP to make StS always better than ArS - dropping arcane and imp arcane to pick up ISS instead and spending no time in viper is a net DPS gain. The fact that all the steady spam increases uptime on T8 4pc bonus which I'm stuck wearing, and guarantees IIS procs go to chimera doubtless factors in too.
Arcane and steady have the same mana cost, specing imp arc does not effect this either. However from a mana perspective yes iss procs on chimera shot as aposed to on a arcane shot are a greater mana saving because chimera shot costs more (iss not only increases damage bit reduces mana cost). I know you weren't saying this was the only part ofthe changes you made you feel increases your dps but just pointing out arcane was no costing you more which was what I read in your post.
Arcane and steady have the same mana cost, specing imp arc does not effect this either. However from a mana perspective yes iss procs on chimera shot as aposed to on a arcane shot are a greater mana saving because chimera shot costs more (iss not only increases damage bit reduces mana cost). I know you weren't saying this was the only part ofthe changes you made you feel increases your dps but just pointing out arcane was no costing you more which was what I read in your post.
Good point, I hadn't noticed they're both actually at 5% now, could have sworn I had one showing higher in my game tooltips.
The spreadsheet still shows me reducing my Viper uptime with the switch though :/
The increase in IIS procs appears to be a decent savings in mana, especially if the points dropped from imp arcane go directly into ISS and RR.
07/08/09, 12:21 PM
Similar Threads
