WotLK Hunter gems

[J a v e l j a]

Hey community,

I,m a pvp hunter on ragnaros and i have 2 questions:

1 i see a lot of hunters with all red gems ( 20 agility ) and i see a lot of hunters with red gems ( 40 attack power ), what is better for pvp?

2 My blue gems are +25 spell penetration, the other day i was in alterac valley and another hunter whispered me that on our server ( ragnaros )
+25 spell penetration are worthless for a hunter, could somebody explain this to me?

Thank you
Nyxalar

[mEOnGG]

While Bright (+40 AP) Cardinal rubies are considered better for a BM hunter due to AP scaling down to the pet, and Delicate (+20 Agility) gems are considered better for Survival, I should think that when it comes to MM, it is mostly upto personal preference. Personally, I think I would choose Delicate gems (would, I don't really PvP though lol) but I believe that most hunters who gem for Bright gems do it to maximize their raw attack power than to also get crit, which is severely reduced by resilience. Agility gems would not hurt too much though either and you should be fine with either choice.
I believe that hunters get +75 spell penetration to negate some crucial buffs on enemy players which increases resistances to spell damage, and would be crucial as Survival, however, not so much as MM and BM and most would rather just gem Agility or Attack Power, whatever they are gemming. I do not know if this is actually bugged, and if having some Spell Pen is superior to just gemming Agi/AP or otherwise and you will have to wait for DarkenedHue to answer to find out exactly which is the better path (even if by just a small margin). :P

[J a v e l j a]

thank you for that answer mEonGG :-)

Nyxalar

[DarkenedHue]

For the Marksmanship spec, Agility weighs out ahead of the corresponding amount of AP.

MM has relatively high crit multipliers with Mortal Shots, Marked For Death, and then also the Piercing Shots talent that basically serves as a blanket 30% increase to your Crits in the form of periodic damage over the next 8 seconds, and this pushes the value of crit up to a point where at virtually all realistic gear levels, 1 Agi is always superior to 2 points of AP in terms of DPS output - this much was thoroughly confirmed on retail itself. Additionally, Agility also provides a fair amount of defensive benefits (1 Agi = 2 Armor and 0.09% Dodge chance), and this is something that can be essential in a PVP setting.

The argument between AP and Agi arises as a result of disagreements over how well damage predictions on paper translate into reality when it comes to actual PVP. Proponents of AP sometimes claim that the RNG nature of being crit-dependent could work against you if you're unlucky, and that PVP battles are more about immediate, up-front damage than about damage from lingering DoTs (since a significant part of Crit's value is in the Piercing Shots DoT that it leaves, by the time you actually get that bleed damage in, the enemy could have already healed up). Proponents of Agi counter-argue that a lot of fights are determined by whether your hard-hitters crit or not, rather than whether their base damage was marginally higher (you might, for instance, want to ensure a 3% higher chance for your Kill Shot to critically hit - since a Kill Shot crit spells certain death in most circumstances - than you would want to let it have 100 more AP at all times, for instance, since it doesn't achieve anything if it hits harder but doesn't Crit, as the enemy could easily get his health back up while you have your hardest hitter on cooldown).

I'm personally much more sold to Agi, although evidently that's a view a number of people don't share.

As to why Spell Penetration was declared useless by that guy, I have no idea. It could that there's some bug surrounding spell penetration/resistances that I'm not aware of, which he seemed to be suggesting, in which case I'd appreciate if someone else could chime in to enlighten me.

Here's a resource with some thoughts on the AP vs Agi discussion, as well as the value of Spell Pen:
http://temp.arena-tournament.com/for...49d5d9312ae742

..and another generally useful one for MM Hunter PVP purposes:
http://forum.warmane.com/showthread....nter-PvP-guide

[Xypher]

As a nerd who used to do nothing but PvP (both on Molten and AT, which is now known as Blackrock), I'll try to give my input on the matter.

AP vs AGI:

I used to roll with AP gems at the end of my WoW carreer, but in all honesty, I think both stats are really close. As said by DarkenedHue, AGI is very likely more valuable in an environment where raw stats and dps charts matter, such as in a PvE encounter. The thing is, that PvP is very different, you still want to do as much damage as possible, but you have to take into account much more.

As an example, in some cases, DoTs are way less valuable than direct damage. In a PvE encounter however, both are as valuable if their damage is the same (in a general sense). Let's say someone is at very low health in an arena game, let's say 1500, and you want to finish them off. Doing 1500 damage instantly is way more valuable than doing the same amount as a DoT over 10 seconds, because the healer will be able to get a heal off, so your target won't die. Don't get me wrong though, this isn't always the case, some comps (like WLD or well, any comp with an affliction warlock) rely on constant pressure from DoTs, and not so much on burst. It's all dependant. I hope you kind of get the idea now that PvP is different, which is why some people go different gems, why there' s different specs and why there's different playstyles.

I used to play ATC (hpala/prot warr/mm hunt) and preferred very high AP (I had about 7000 without any procs, because of my gemming, battle shout, and blessing of kings). This made it so that I did not have to rely on crit for consistent damage, and that if I did crit, I would crit for higher amounts. I would crit a lesser amount of times, but I would do more damage if I didn't crit (more reliable), and I would do more damage if I did crit.

About the AGI stat itself: the armor and dodge you get from the stat is so low that it's not worth counting it into the equation, in my opinion. One of the biggest (and most common) problems in arena are warriors, and if you dodge more, they get more overpowers off. In that sense, you'll take more damage if you have more dodge. Of course, having more armor is always better, but AGI gives so little that it's not worth talking about. That's why I always consider AP vs AGI more like AP vs CRIT, since those are the only differences to the stats. Don't get me wrong, AGI does have its benefits, because crit scales really well because of certain talents mentioned already by DarkenedHue.

If you're going to PvE as well, just stick with agility gems. If you're playing PvP on rag, you have no real competition, the gems won't matter.

Spell penetration:

I'm just going to quote myself here, unless they changed how spell pen works on rag/dw, this should be correct.

"Spell penetration doesn't help you land more traps (traps will never get resisted) but it will increase the damage of your serpent sting and therefore your chimera shot, and your arcane shot."

"Spell pen is for extra (the serpent part) chimera shot damage, serpent sting damage, extra arcane shot damage and wild quiver damage. When they have 0 spell resistances, this will of course have no effect. It's only 3 gem slots and in my opinion it's worth getting, but do what you prefer (as with everything)."

[ppoupiuyiuy]

"Spell penetration doesn't help you land more traps (traps will never get resisted) but it will increase the damage of your serpent sting and therefore your chimera shot, and your arcane shot."

"Spell pen is for extra (the serpent part) chimera shot damage, serpent sting damage, extra arcane shot damage and wild quiver damage. When they have 0 spell resistances, this will of course have no effect. It's only 3 gem slots and in my opinion it's worth getting, but do what you prefer (as with everything)."

Traps will get resisted if target has lot of frost resistance and this cannot be reduced by spell penetration.



I never gem spell penetration. I have jewecrafting and I always carry a second melee weapon with 2 43 spell pene gems which iam using vs mage/druids.





If somebody could post exact damage formulas for all hunter shots it would be much easier to figure out how good is attack power.

I personally use agil gems.
But every time i play arena vs hunter who does "too much damage" is because he gemmed attack power.

[J a v e l j a]

wow, just wow...
Thank you all very much for your insights.
You know what you are talking about :)

Regards
Nyxalar

[DarkenedHue]

If somebody could post exact damage formulas for all hunter shots it would be much easier to figure out how good is attack power.

Preliminary testing from a guide I'm working on:

Weapon Damage = [(Min Wep Damage + Max Wep Damage)/2]
Ammo Damage* = Ammo DPS x Weapon Speed
Bonus Damage = Scope Bonuses, Trinket

*Only Steady Shot is unique in that both weapon and ammunition damage are normalized to a 2.8 Weapon Speed in the damage formula, rather than using the Weapon speed of your equipped bow. It’s for this reason that unlike your other Shots, Steady Shot deals the same damage if you switch to another bow of a different speed that has exactly the same DPS.
Its damage is the same whether you have a 3.0 speed bow equipped that does 300 damage (100.0 DPS), or a 1.5 speed bow equipped that does 150 damage (also 100.0 DPS). If, however, you switched to a 1.5 speed bow that did 300 damage (150.0 dps), its damage would increase notably. Steady Shot’s damage doesn’t scale with the weapon damage of your bow, but rather its DPS. This is also the reason Arcane Shot does more DPS than Steady Shot with a very weak bow, but with a BiS bow like Fal’inrush, Steady Shot’s damage increases much more than Arcane Shot’s does.

Damage formula for Chimera Shot:
{[(0.2 x RAP) + Weapon Damage + Ammo Damage] x 1.25}

Damage formula for Aimed Shot:
(0.2 x RAP) + Weapon Damage + Ammo Damage + 408

Damage formula for Multi Shot:
(0.2 x RAP) + Weapon Damage + Ammo Damage + 408

Damage formula for Steady Shot:
RAP*0.2 + AmmoDPS*2.8 + (WeaponDamage/WeaponSpeed)*2.8 + SteadyShotBonusDamage + [Dazed: DazedBonusDamage]

Damage formula for Kill Shot:
{[(0.4 x RAP) + Weapon damage + Ammo damage] x 2} + 650

In general, a slower, harder-hitting weapon increases the DPS of all your shots except Auto Shot, Steady Shot, and Arcane Shot.


Auto Shot Damage formula (Note that 14 RAP = 1 DPS, since 0.2/2.8 = 1/14):
(((0.2 x (Weapon Speed/2.8)) x RAP) + Weapon Damage + Ammo Damage


Damage formula for Silencing Shot:
{[(0.2 x RAP) + Weapon Damage + Ammo Damage] x 0.5}

Damage formula for Serpent Sting:
(RAP x 0.2) + 1210

Question: Is Serpent Sting meant to benefit from ranged weapon specialization? Retail data suggests it doesn’t. On Molten it does.

Damage formula for Chimera-Serpent:
0.4 x [(RAP x 0.2) + 1210]


Immolation Trap Damage Formula:
377 Fire Damage every 3 seconds + ? (not sure what RAP scaling is)

Explosive Trap damage formula:
Place a fire trap that explodes when an enemy approaches, causing (RAP*0.1+523) to (RAP*0.1+671) Fire damage and burning all enemies for (900+RAP) additional Fire damage over 20 sec to all within 10 yards.

Volley damage formula:
Continuously fires a volley of ammo at the target area, causing {RAP*0.083700+353} Arcane damage to enemy targets within 8 yards every 1.00 $Lsecond for 6 sec.
Question: Should Volley benefit from Ranged Weapon Specialization? DrDamage seems to think so. Can't find any other sources that either confirm or deny this.

These formulas are all available on Shandara's Spreadsheet as well, though they're probably a lot more readable in the format above. Note that none of these include any multipliers like Ranged Weapon Specialization, Focused Fire, and raid buffs like Arcane Empowerment.

So far on Lordaeron, there are 2 major inconsistencies:

1) Volley's damage formula at max rank is entirely off. It uses a completely different RAP coefficient/base damage from what it's supposed to. I'm also not sure whether it benefits from RWS or not, nor am I completely sure whether it should.

2) Ammunition DPS is normalized to a 2.8 weapon speed, where instead it should actually scale with your weapon's speed.

[Xypher]

Traps will get resisted if target has lot of frost resistance and this cannot be reduced by spell penetration.



I never gem spell penetration. I have jewecrafting and I always carry a second melee weapon with 2 43 spell pene gems which iam using vs mage/druids.





If somebody could post exact damage formulas for all hunter shots it would be much easier to figure out how good is attack power.

I personally use agil gems.
But every time i play arena vs hunter who does "too much damage" is because he gemmed attack power.

I've had a person with 130 of every resistance (frost being the one that mattered), duelled him, and shot a trap every 30 seconds for about 15-30 minutes (aka 30-60 traps) and not a single one got resisted. As far as I can recall, traps CAN get resisted on retail, but they just don't on Deathwing/Ragnaros. Maybe my sample pool of testing is too small (even though I'd think that if you have 130 frost resist, atleast 1 should get resisted out of 50 unless I was extremely lucky/unlucky), but resists just never seemed to happen. If you can record a trap resist on Deathwing/Ragnaros, please let me know :)