Az MathFollow

Pretty much what alastair said -- a shot cycle is for long-term damage against a target, which really only happens against elites. For purposes of simply fighting a beast in the woods, I would stick to a pattern of using mostly autoshot.

Edited, Sep 18th 2006 at 9:12am EDT by Azuarc

Azuarc,

Thank you for a thought provoking and in-depth analysis of Hunter DPS. I have found the entire thread to be quite absorbing.

My only real point of confusion is over the evolution of the analysis. Many things have changed since your first post, and it's been difficult for me to follow the 102 posts over three pages and stil be confident that I've captured the correct information.

I hesitate to ask you to do more work than you've already done, but would it be possible for you to either re-post the most current and accurate breakdown of the shot cycle per weapon, or to point to the post within the thread which has the most current and accurate figures for shot cycle analysis? I'm not looking for the table version of the information, such as your link to Hunter ranged weapon analysis SS, but more of the analysis behind that table, such as your "Az Math #3" post which you began on Feb 21st but which has gone through a lot of threads responding and revising the analysis. The last edit of that original post was made on May 12th, and with all of the discussion which took place after that date I am not clear on how accurate the shot cycle breakdown in that post remains.

Azuarc,

If the spreadsheet is current, that's good enough for me, and thanks.

The expansion is a while away, and by current rumors getting further away rather than closer, so your current work will be valid for a while longer, and still very helpful for many Hunters.

Ding ding ding.

The character sheet only looks at "white DPS", which is basic non-crit attacks. 1% crit with Mortal Shots will add 1.3% of whatever that number is. So if it's 136.9 with Bloodsoul, your 2% crit is adding 3.56 DPS.

That isn't to say the Beaststalker isn't an upgrade. It's good for other reasons. There's more than just damage output, and the agi from the Beaststalker does come into play for your crit chance as well, even if it's nowhere near as much.

nvm

Edited, Nov 24th 2006 3:40pm by Smurv

February.

no

Right now? Not especially. I'd stick to a low rank of multi shot though.

I've been working on getting to 70, which I finished last night.

ok, well, I can say this much after putting on and taking off equipment, and checking tooltips and stuff...

If Blizzard's tooltips are accurate, then we get the following DPS benefits from gear AT LEVEL SEVENTY:

40 agi to 1% crit
22 crit rating to 1% crit
15.75 hit rating to 1% hit
14 AP to 1 DPS still

yeah, yeah, that was the prelude to posting something much bigger. It's already up at tkasomething if you can't wait.

You've probably noticed by now that the expansion has been out for over 2 months, version 2.0 a month before that, and there's been not a single post regarding any kind of hunter math out of me in spite of all kinds of changing formulas and stuff that has rendered a large part of the work I've done obsolete. You might be thinking that I've just been very busy, between site stuff and actually playing the game and maybe some RL stuff, and you would be correct. However, I also post over at tkasomething.com on occasion, which is a dedicated hunter discussion board and a better place to talk about the single thing that I have done, since it is by no means definitive work and needed some debate first, and I think it's time I finally mention it here.

I call it AEP, or agility equivalence points. It's a term that was coined by rogues almost two years ago for how to decide which gear is best for them. The original AEP was a crude system, coarsely stating what 1% crit was compared to in points of agility, and things like that. What I present to you now is an equally coarse system.

I'm not going to rehash all the details, but rather simply link you to the thread at TKA if you want not only my original perspective and reasoning, but also the (so far) 10 pages worth of discussion that have ensued as people have debated some of the assumptions I made in the work, but essentially I have come up with a system that compares agility to AP to crit to mana regen to anything else that can directly impact damage.


The basic numbers are...
Agi - 10 points
AP - 6 points
CR - 8 points
HR - 13 points
MP5 - 20 points
Int - 5 points

Example:
Item A has 15 agi, 15 int, and 10 hit rating, which is good for 15*10 + 15*5 + 10*13 = 355 points.
Item B has 5 MP5, 10 crit rating, and 25 attack power, which makes it worth 5*20 + 10*8 + 6*20 = 300 points.
Item A would generally prove more beneficial to your total damage, theoretically.


There are a few caveats:
-It assumes no talents, to speak of. So preferences for crit or agility from being a survivalist is not considered. A marksman will get more value out of int. Beast Masters will value mana regen less because of Serpent's Swiftness. Et cetera, et cetera.
-It uses some generalist set of gear that I made up as a moderate blend of AP, crit, and mana regen. If you are especially heavy on, for example, hit rating gear, you might find absolutely no benefit out of any more.
-There are a few other assumptions related to how the numbers were derived. Check that link if you care to know, because they *could* impact how accurate the values are for you.
-I only consider damage. This is a flaw in general hunter thinking, since stamina is very important in the expansion, however it's hard to put a value on stamina since PvP'ers might value it greatly and casual PvE players might not even want it. Defensive aspects of agility are also ignored, as well as armor from using a mail item over leather, though this translates into armor for your pet.


However, if you're lost and looking for which gear to use as you progress toward 70 and start running instances where you find items with very mixed sets of stats, this should help you give a single number to the value of each item. Of course the number doesn't tell the whole tale, but it's a frame of reference.

The subject has been a bit popular around the TKA boards, although I don't know if it has really transcended to being discussed anywhere else. Just the same, one of the other members of the site, Arcuss, altered a mod to display AEP values at the bottoms of items so you don't have to figure all this out yourself. It's talked about a decent amount in this thread.


I am going to continue to be largely preoccupied with other activities, and won't be working out any kind of specific spreadsheet or anything else any time soon, (although a few other folks have.) But at least you can say that I've done something on the subject. Hope this helps.

Man, I hate to have you necro that, but I barely even remember those days. I had gotten tired of leveling 50-some levels in beta with just sic pet and autoshot, and thought I'd do something different when I started in retail. So I meleed my way to 40 just because I thought it would be semi-original...of course, these days, it's just the hallmark of a noob that doesn't understand their class. Some might argue I'm still a bit of a noob though.