Min-Maxing 101

Hey guys, today's post will be about min-maxing.

So, what is this magical "min-maxing"? Min-maxing to me, is when I'm doing everything I can to get the most DPS out of my hunter. Here are some examples of min-maxing:

1.Taking socket bonuses only when it gives you more DPS.

2.Making sure your talents(and your pet's) are always used in the most effective way.

3.Using the correct gems and enchants.

4. Using a correct rotation.

5. Taking gear that gives you the most DPS instead of the highest gear score.

6.Not being BM....hehe....I mean...oops, how'd that get in there? :P JK

One of the biggest things I see people doing wrong and then wondering "where'd all my deesp go?" is taking high GS items over tier pieces, which in my book is a big no no.

A great example of this, is that one of the hunters with the highest gear score(GS from now on) on my server, who has about 200 wow heroes GS more then me, (pretty big gap there) only does 14 more DPS on the spreadsheets then me. This is because He has no tier pieces on, and chooses poorly itemized gear for their GS, instead of the pieces that will give him the most DPS.

Another one of the bigger mistakes, is talents. A lot of people just don't want to change their talents because they don't want to mess them up. But seeing as there are tons of great guides out there on talent trees and the fact that even if you do mess up your talents, you can always spend a few gold and start all over again, there really is no reason not to change your talents. Then there are the hunters that like to make up their own talents, and while some may do a pretty good job on their own, chances are they missed something or made a mistake or two.

Anyways, this was just a quicky post, as I'm getting ready for a busy weekend. I hope to be doing a series of posts on min-maxing, but each one will be more in depth on a certain aspect of it.


thats all for today.

I'm Wowsa, and don't forget to pop your flask.

Haste

Hey guys! Today will be a quick post on all the haste I see hunters gemming/enchanting.

Lets right off the bat say that you never want haste, the only stat worse then haste, is hit rating when you're hit capped(which a lil extra hit is never really a bad thing).

The reason people are wanting haste is because of the 2 piece T10 bonus ( your auto shots have a 5% chance to cause you and your pet to do an additional 15% damage for 10 seconds )
Now this is pretty nice, and if you gem haste then it will probably proc faster and more often, but you always have to ask yourself, "is it really better then gemming or enchanting agil?"

Well I did a quick spread sheet test, most of the hunters that do use haste only replace 10 agil+10 crit with 10 agil + 10 haste gems, which really may not be that much....or is it?

On the spread sheet for my own toon, I put in an extra 10 crit, and then took it out and compared it to 10 haste, and found that for every 10 crit you replace with 10 haste you lose about 5 unbuffed dps. Now 5 dps might not seem like a lot, but thats per every 10 haste you replace, and if you went as far as replace agil with haste you'll lose even more.

So long story short.....as it is right now, you do not want haste, and should also try to get gear that doesn't have haste on it......and haste for the 2 piece T10 bonus IS NOT worth it.

thats all for today.

I'm Wowsa, and don't forget to pop your flask.

When Horrible Trinkets Attack!

hey guys!!Now I had been planing on posting about min-maxing today, but I wanted to try and break the curse of the one of the trinkets that I hate, The Mark of supremacy (If your not familiar with this trinket then click on the link, it'll take you to wow head item page).

Now if your wondering why I don't like this trinket, it's because the Banner of victory is better if you're not using all that trinket's hit raiting. So lets talk about trinket vs trinket assuming we're hit capped(without using any of the trinket's hit), on the spread sheet the banner of victory(for me) was 84 dps (unbuffed) more then the mark of supremacy(84 unbuffed dps on the spreadsheet is actually quite a bit).

So if a 200 ilvl trinket is better then the 245 then why do we still see people using it??
well either because people don't know, they want the mark of supremacy for the ilvl or both.

But what if someone needs hit rating?? Well I would honestly say that you should never use mark of supremacy unless you need all the hit, and you should never need all that hit, even a new lvl 80 hunter who is emblem farming for his first set of epic gear shouldn't need that kind of hit.

In order for you to use all of the hit on the mark of supremacy you would only have to have 135 hit rating Now for you to only have 135 hit rating on your gear, means that you would almost have to be choosing gear without hit on it, arm pen builds may be near this area but I honestly don't think that you would be min-maxing if you had that little hit.

a much better option if you were in the situation however, would be to take 3 talents in focused aim and gem a couple +20 hit gems

In short the Mark of supremacy is pretty much the bastard child of Blizz. It looks pretty nice, but may leave you with an itch.

till next time,

I'm Wowsa and don't forget to pop your flask.

This Weeks Top Posts

It's the weekend! While I hope to use this weekend to set up the blog better, and to get a head start on next weeks posts, I didn't want to leave the blog bare. So I'm going to link a few posts from other hunter sites, just as a kind of recap of the weeks really good posts that I think you should check out(the post from WHU.com isn't from this week, but it's fairly recent and I really wanted to put in in here because I really enjoyed it). Since I hope to be posting on the weekdays and take the weekends off I will probably be doing this regularly on the weekends.

First off I'd like to thank Euripides at Out DPS.com for putting a link on His site to The Hunter Pew Pew.Also Euripides made a post about the end game Marksmanship hunter is defiantly worth checking out very good post.

Darkbrew's post about gemming armor pen,and waiting and keeping lower-end pieces of gear, instead going for gear with higher items lvl, it is a must read for all hunters. I know I'll be sending it to a few friends of mine XD

Last but not least, frostheim's guide on the factors that affect your dps, such as your raid competence, skill and gear. It's a great read for all hunters and especially newer hunters.

So, here are the links:

Euripides' post on the End game marksmanship hunter.

Darkbrew's post on gear/gemming selection, Swimming in the deep end.

Frostheim's guide on raiding factors, Everything else being equal.


So check those great posts out, and thats it for the week.

till next time, I'm Wowsa, and don't forget to pop your flask.

Battle of the specs

*EDIT: I'll be updating the data on this post whenever any big changes happen.*

Hello hello.Welcome to my second post, in this post I will talk about the current status of hunter specs.So here are the specs in order of highest dps to lowest according to data I found at
WowMeterOnline.com

*this data is from 25m festergut, the reason for using festergut is because it is the best dps gauging fight in ICC*

1. Marksman at 13,384
2. Survival at 11,835
3. Beast Mastery at 10,896

Now one important thing that we do have to remember here, is that these numbers are the highest recorded dps of that spec, and that the people behind the numbers are some of the best of the best, and that just because we know that Marks has that highest potential dps, it doesn't mean that it's the highest dps for all hunters.

Now for an example: lets say that Billy is a newer hunter.Billy knows a fair bit about hunters, has been 80 for a while and raids as Survival. But now billy, who has joined a casual raiding guild and wants to start min-maxing, so billy decides to go Marks, but billy sees a dps decrease when he does so, why?

While billy is a good survival hunter He hasn't had the time and experience in Marks as Hes had with survival, I have seen this in person many times, just because the potential dps is higher in spec one does not mean you will do more by raiding in that spec.
So in case you're wondering, this Billy guy describes me pretty well. when I started raiding ICC on a regular basis I was Surv, but wanting to pursue the armor pen hard cap i decided to go Marks. When I made the switch I was doing less dps in Marks, and just like lil "billy" it was because I didn't have the experience.

Long story short, if you want to be doing the most dps you can be doing you need to be raiding in the spec that you can do the most dps in.

Just note not to take what I have said to the extreme and think that because you can do more in lets say, BM then in Marks that you should never touch Marks again.

In my opinion I think that almost everyone should be able to do more dps in Marks if they take the time to properly learn how to play the spec.

Thats all for now, till next time.....
I'm Wowsa and don't forget to pop your flask.

Hello World

Hey guys and girls!Welcome to my blog.I hope to make this blog somewhere where I can share what I know about the hunter class,as well as my ramblings and things that happen to me in game.

So, let me tell you a lil' about myself,my named is Wowsa,I play as a hunter on the US server Azuremyst,and I am in the guild Defiant. I have been playing WoW since way way WAY back, just a few months before TOC came out.....yep my first game card was activated mid June of 2009,which also makes me kind of a noob in my opinion ^.^ .I treat my hunter as more of a hobby then anything else,I enjoy trying to min-max it (within reason)to always try to be the best hunter I can be.

When I hit 80 in September of 2009 I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground and I think it was quite obvious to other players XD.just before ICC came out I stumbled across WarcraftHuntersUnion.com it was there that I spent countless hours reading and re-reading through Frostheim's guides. It was there I also found links to OutDPS.com , TheBrewHall.com and FemaleDwarf.com.

So, that is all for now, I hope you come and check in regularly to see what I'm up to,I hope to be posting a few times a week.

till next time.....I'm Wowsa, and remember to pop your flask.

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