I promised my buddy Doominus a post with some of the do’s and don’ts for level 80 hunter gearing and whatnot, as he is unhappy with his DPS output. He rerolled to hunter from DK (thank the gods) and claims he’s not realizing his full potential.

Honestly, his gear has only minor problems… But, in an effort to assuage him (cuz i know it’d bother me) I’ve come up with a few do’s and don’ts for gearing a hunter. If you need help with shot rotations, My earlier post (minus the part about macroing, since killshot triggers the GCD now) still applies.

Do’s

• Get hitcapped via gear if you can. Hit points via the talent mean that you’ve put talent points there that could otherwise be used for pure DPS talents. Try try TRY to get hitcapped via your gear.
• Attempt to get gear-hitcapped without resorting to gems/enchants that add hit. Once again, a hit gem is a gem that COULD be used for agi.
• Know what gems are good for you. For a BM hunter, it’s AP. For an SV Hunter, it’s AGI, all the way. AGI also is affected by kings.
• Gem to activate your meta, and gem for hit if you need to. After that, it’s STRAIGHT AGI/AP, ignoring the socket bonuses.  Think about it. Using a stamina gem to get a 4agi socket bonus… does that make sense when you could just plug a 20agi gem into the socket in the first place. There is no requirement to put certain color gems into certain sockets.

Don’t

• Wear gear with expertise. I understand that some of it may be an upgrade for the blue that you had there, but there’s entirely too much good non-expertise gear available. Rings is where i see this most often… that goddamned Hemmoraging Circle. There’s a ring from Valor emblems (which can be converted from Conquest emblems) and a BoE ring from EoE 25 that’s cheap now (Surge Needle Ring) There’s also a crafted ring and a ring from Triumph emblems.
• Wear gear that isn’t enchanted properly and then expect raid invites.
• Spend a ton of money on crafted gear. There’s another soft reset coming, and I made this mistake… The raids/heroics will soon drop triumph emblems. I bought some boots then had better ones drop in a Pug.
• DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT use green quality gems. There’s no excuse now. The blue ones are cheap, and the epic ones can be had for a mere 10k honor each, which is one wintergrasp. Don’t do it.
• Don’t use a meta if it isn’t 21 agility/3 percent crit damage.