It’s one thing to be casual and therefore not have all the best gear. It’s quite another to blatantly disregard established facts about your class against a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

One of those “Rate the hunter above you” threads popped up in the forums… A guy responded and put a disclaimer for his toon…

He said he wasn’t convinced that a bunch of hit was needed. He had 100 hit. /facepalm

Facts and evidence outweigh your feelings… Elitistjerks does all the testing you need, but if you need more convincing that hit is important, take the following.

Just for poops and giggles, let’s do some math. This is hit capped… note that there’s some pet misses due to me not being gear-capped, but having the hit talent. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s just talk about the shots themselves. I am since then gear-capped.

He’s at 100 hit, which is about 3 percent. We need 8 percent to cap, so he’s 5 short. Look at the explosive shots on that chart. Averaging 1900 dmg per, with roughly 600 of them, that would mean he would have missed 30, for total damage of about 57,000 damage.

Autoshots, he would have missed about 40, for about 58,800 damage. Steadies, he would have missed about 18k worth of damage, and kill shots, he would have missed out on one for an average of 5k damage.

That’s over 130k missed damage, and that’s not counting multishots, or the pet misses that would come with it. The pet alone would lose out on roughly 80k of damage.

The point is, don’t use recount to “test” established facts about your class, then post to the forums your “findings.” Recount’s not accurate. Do yourself, and your class, a favor and don’t be an idiot. You don’t have to have BiS in every slot, but you dang well should know what the stat priorities are, and you CERTAINLY shouldn’t ignore established, tested, proven fact.

I’m patiently waiting for the patch to drop, and wondering what my first action will be.

The first order of business will be to respec. I’ve been doing some research on ElitistJerks, and THIS BUILD is what I’ve come up with. Should be interesting to see how all these new shots fit into my rotation.

I’m not gonna dual spec just yet. I am going to work on a PVP build but don’t have the gold to drop right now. My first playing order of business will be to get my but to Icecrown for the tourney.

What will you all be up to?

Up until my recent upgrades, I had a point in the hit talent, so that I could be capped without regemming my gear.

This is the result. Note the enormous miss percentages for PaRappa’s abilities.

Still kickin’ butt on the meters though.

Last night I had the pleasure of running a PuG with Evlbringer of the guild Twisted. Now, normally I hate pugs, especcially for Naxxramas, because typically it’s a raid leader who doesn’t check people, and will end up ninjaing loot anyways. So, after wipes on easy bosses, I leave them in frustration. But then I noticed Evlbringer asking for stats, spec, and a link to the achievement for having done it before.

A good sign. So I joined up. Less than one flask later, I was walking out of Naxx with [Journey's End] and a chestpiece that I will equip if I can get ahold of the T7 helm. No wipes, no drama, and a quick run. I love it!

One thing that set this pug apart was the fact that he stuck to his loot rules. Simply stated, his loot system was semi-free for all. He allowed a free roll on items, then after that let the other people in that class/spec “catch” up by not allowing the previous winner to roll. So, basically, everyone got a turn. Other than people who didn’t need much, like me, everyone got a fairly equal amount of loot. Which brings me to loot karma.

Several pieces were minor upgrades to me, but after inspecting the other hunter in the raid, I passed them off to him. This guy had some blues and a PVP piece or two. He was still doing respectable DPS, but his idea of hunter itemization was weird. He had expertise on his helm, saying he couldn’t find anything better. Time to run heroic UK, eh? Anyways… this guy was pretty grateful that I wasn’t rolling against him, and he and the third hunter were picking up all the gear. You see where this is going, don’t you?

When JE dropped, I was outrolled by these two hunters. The raid leader said “Darallun has only picked up one piece, and you guys have 3 or 4 each. Going to Darallun.” And both the other guys were cool with it.

w00t.

Another gear change I made was putting [Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets] on, in place of the “better” Valorous gloves. They have a bunch of hit, and i slapped a 20 hit chant and a 16 hit gem in them, putting me back over the cap with gear. The spreadsheet actually rates these gloves higher for DPS for a non-hitcapped hunter. Go figure.

Just moving… unpacking the new house in Oklahoma. Here for good ol’ Uncle Sam. When I get situated you should see more from me.

Fitz

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=16137618166&sid=1

Apparently, some changes made to [Bandit's Insignia] on the PTR bring it’s performance above [Fury of the Five Flights] in DPS. It will be right behind [Darkmoon Card: Greatness]

And SOMEONE I KNOW happens to have [Bandit's Insignia] and [Darkmoon Card: Greatness]

w00t.

From experience, you will lose lots of DPS by macroing your explosive shots… I made the “switch” to manually triggering things, and I’m just fine.

First, let’s talk shot rotations. Gone are the days of the 1:1 and 3:2 macros, gone are the button mashing glory of our past. With survival, it’s less about rotation and more about priority.

What do i mean by that?

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Drotara from Less QQ, More PewPew, has a great post up entitled Synergy. It’s most definately worth a read, as it really ties together some great ideas on why we pick the talents we do. For example, Drotara mentions Survivalist and Hunter vs. Wild. One talent increases your stamina, the other turns some of that stamina into raw AP. Another set of talents that have this kind of synergy are Lightning Reflexes and Expose Weakness

Which got me to thinking. If you apply the idea of synergy to gear choices as well, there’s no real need for a spreadsheet. I mean, sure, it’s nice to have… but you don’t NEED one. In sales, they use the term “value added” or “hidden value” to describe some of what I’m talking about here. Take, for example, this trinket.

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