It's true that being hit capped is one of the most important things for a hunter, especially considering how easy it can be. However, if you are only 10 points or so away from the cap it isn't necessary to socket a 16 hit gem instead of a 16 agi gem. Being that close the hit cap you will almost never miss, and for most fights you will never miss once.

Obviously you don't need to socket a 16 hit gem if you only need 10 hit (note that is not the case with the guy I was responding to: he was about 30 points short of the cap if I remember correctly).

The whole "almost never miss" argument is flawed in two fundamental ways:

1. Nobody is claiming that if you are at 7.9% hit that it is a huge dps loss. There is nothing "magic" about being hit capped. However, the question isn't the absolute value of hit, it is the relative value. Should you add a hit gem or an AP/AGI gem? It is almost always the case (this guy being one of the rare exceptions), that hit has a higher impact on dps (for the same item budget) than any other stat -- all the way up to the cap. If you are only 10 points shy of the cap, however, it may be the case that a hit/agi gem (that still leaves you 2 below the cap) provides a better dps gain than a straight hit gem (where 6 of the 10 points are wasted).

2. Hit is transferred to your pet in whole percentages. So if you were at 7.9% hit, your pet would only be at 7%. While you'd only miss an average of 1/1000 shots, your pet would miss 1/100. For BM, where your pet will actually do more dps than you do on many fights, this is a real concern. Note that this is also why Focused Aim (whose hit does not transfer to pets) is often a bad choice -- especially for BM hunters.

Why would you gem assuming no buffs? To be brutally honest, Asarra's talent build is wildly different from anything that would be recommended for BM on this site, and that's obviously going to mean that the "common rules" don't necessarily work here.

i. as of 3.1.

I'm a little confused about the prismatic gem. If I place a delicate dragon's eye in one of the blue sockets, does it also count as a yellow for my meta?

Yes jc dragon eye cuts count as every color.

Given that ArP only affects physical shots, no hunter should chose ArP gems over agility (SV & maybe MM) or AP (BM & maybe MM), as the increased damage from non-physical shots, e.g. Chimera Shot, Explosive Shot, Serpent Sting more than covers the gap and wouldn't get anything from ArP anyway.

The only possible exception is BM where, as TrevvyTrev likes to remind us, autoshot is a significant part of a hunter's damage output. Even there though, ArP isn't going to be a huge value-add because it doesn't transfer to your pet.

Probably not even then. The problem with the ArP gems is that they are red, and both AGI and AP seem to be better options for any spec. Fractured (ArP) gems aren't as flat-out horrible as they used to be, though, so if for some reason or another you want to slot a new item with one until something better comes along, it's not too bad (at least for BM). I show a few dps lost for every AP gem that I replace with ArP in the spreadsheet. I have also noticed that the conventional wisdom that ArP gets better the more of it you already have seems to hold up. The per-point gap between ArP and AGI/AP is closing, and ArP is now ahead of crit.

This is all limited to my current gear/spec of course.

At this point in 3.1 I'm staying with survival and now that 8agi/12 stam gem is out I was wondering if it was worth it to swap my ap gems out seeing as I already have 36.5 unbuffed crit. Unfortunately I can't run the spreadsheet to figure the numbers out myself.
here is my armory link since I have the stupid characters in my name

The World of Warcraft Armory

Thank you in advance for your responses.

From 3.2 PTR: new Delicate Dragon's Eye
Notice that all dragon's eyes retain their prismatic status (at least so far). Also the difference of each in comparison to the new epic gems is +14 (34-20) which results in +42 (14x3) agility bonus for the JC.

That's odd, in this picture they lose their prismatic status, clearly stating which socket the gem matches in the note.

I think the MMO one might be outdated.

http://wowraid.com/gallery/0/1_24_06_09_4_31_22.jpg

Yes it converts, but honestly you'd be better off using a red agi or AP unless the socket bonus is so phenomenal or you just need any yellow gem to activate your meta gem.

I would like to use a Ap gem but I was thinking ahead for patch 3.2 where my JC gems won't fulfill my meta requirements.
Thank you for the answer hopefully I will have a better option when the patch comes out.

The best solution to fulfill meta requirements in 3.2 is to use the new prismatic gem Nightmare Tear; 10 int and 10 agi, leaving you with red gems in all other sockets (unless a socket bonus is really worth going for, but in this case you would put the Nightmare's Tear in it).

Is this list going to be updated with a complete list of the 3.2 Gems?

The naming convention holds true into the Epic. So just replace the type of gem, for example if it says Delicate Scarlet Ruby, change that to Delicate Cardinal Ruby.

It is always more beneficial to socket 10Agi/10Crit into yellow sockets if they have a +Agi Bonus. In terms of DPS value, 14(sometimes 16) Agi + 10 Crit > 20 Agi. If it provides a +Agility bonus, yellow sockets should have Deadly Ametrine in them.

Also to add on when you get to end game content gear, you get to a point where you reach crit cap, so AP/crit isn't so bad either or Agi/haste or AP/haste w/e... just keep the crit cap in mind the higher your gear score is because of the diminishing benefits of crit at a high number.

Even if you are specifically talented/glyphed it is very difficult for hunters to reach our crit softcaps for specific shots. It's not something to worry about unless you specifically gear/talent/glyph to reach crit caps, but who does that?