Paralysis by analysisFollow

First, a little background: I've been a MM hunter since the beginning (aside from a brief experimentation with BM for a week. Didn't care for it. Just not to my liking personally). It's what I'm comfortable with. I am the only 70 hunter in our guild for the time being. My guild is creeping ever so slowly towards Kara, but still a long way away overall barring some good recruits/alliance/merger. I'm eager to get into Kara, and beyond, but I'm on a lower pop server, and the guilds who are any good at raiding generally do so at a time when I'm unable to play. My cross to bear, but the price you pay as a second shift worker living on the east coast and playing on a west coast server. The upside is, most of my guildies play at the same time, so IF we ever get our guild in there, I'm set.

I've been playing for 5-6 months now. This is my first toon. My usual group of guildies/friends that run 5-mans together are all ready to run heroics, we think...

I'm also a relative newcomer to PvP, both BG and arena (yes, I know my arena ratings suck. But I'm learning, and my partners are as well). PvP isn't my focus, more of a pleasant side hobby when I'm bored. A few pieces of gear as a reward is just a nice bonus.

Anyway, looking forward to heroics very soon, and possible raiding in the future, I'm considering a respec. Hunter CC isn't always reliable in my experience (go go resists and early, unexplainable breaks). I'm good at CC, but in heroics, there's no margin for error, so I'd like to be better.

SV has intrigued me for a long time. I think I've finally got the gear to try it out. But, I'm fearful that I will gimp my DPS badly, which may not hurt TOO much PvEwise, but would really be horrible for PvP (even if it's only a secondary thing for me).

My profile:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Shu%27halo&n=Steelray

I've poured through the sticky, and a few other threads. And the more I read, and debate with myself, the more confused I get. Playing around with talents, I'm considering this spec:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=cZVVbRVzZIhoMtfMhVuh

It should greatly help my CC, and give me a few options for panic shots (scatter and wyvern when the deadzone is reduced and wyvern becomes an instant cast). I'm just not sure what that will do to my DPS and burst damage. And if it's too big a tradeoff, or not. It should also make me very mana efficient, so I can keep Hawk up most of the time.

Looking at my gear, I'd greatly appreciate any input. Also, if I were to respec, should I replace ALL my AP gems for agi? Or should I leave a few AP gems in place?

Last question (I swear). Aside from the trinkets you see in my profile, I have a few others. Most notably the Abacus of Violent Odds (the Hourglass just. will. not. drop.) Would the Abacus be useful to me? Or should I just let it rot in the bank?

(I apologize for the rambling, wall-of-text question. TIA)



Edited, Nov 7th 2007 6:32am by Steelray

If you're planning on running Heroics with your guild, SV is an exceptionally powerful dps/utility class/spec. If you plan on PUGing heroics, my experience is that SV is a wasted spec. Your friendly neighborhood Huntards have been working since Deadmines/RFC to prove to the gaming community that Hunters are next to useless. Most players have learned the hard way that even if a Hunter only has one mob to trap, they still have to be exceptionally wary about that mob running free before the party is ideally suited to manage it. SV Hunters shine when it comes time to manage multiple mobs cleanly without letting your healer get ganked. Few PUGs will trust you to push your role to its fullest potential. Hell, I've been running with the same people for over 2 months now and I finally convinced them to let me multi-CC when necessary this past week.

As far as damage goes, between hunter and pet, I keep pace on the damage meter with a very well equipped arms/fury Warrior. In fact, I ran Gruul's the other night and ranked 5th overall on the damage meter...and I've never been to Kara yet.

What seperates SV Hunters (when specced properly) from other Hunters is the incredible CC versatility we bring to a group. My current "static" group for Heroic dungeons is Prot Warrior tank, A/F Warrior dps, me (SV Hunter) and a Holy Priest. Right off the top we lose one potential CC slot from the Arms Warrior and occasionally we have to run with whatever we can get in the 5th slot. We cleared Heroic Mech the other night and I was the only CC job in the party. (Priest used Mind Control on some pulls which helped a lot, but that still left me very, very busy). No other class I can think of can start a pull and within 10 seconds have 3 mobs shut down (double trap + wyvern sting) and keep two of those mobs shut down for the duration of the fight.

My sincere thanks to everyone who responded.

I was hoping to hear from Aurelius, as I know he switched to SV not long ago, and especially Caldone, as he was a long time MM hunter who just recently came out of his comfort zone (something I always have trouble with).

Interesting that you say your DPS increased. That's encouraging. I noticed a few minor differences between your spec and the one I'm contemplating. You opted to put 5 points into Master Tactician. But from what I understand, this only amounts to 3% extra crit... maybe. Does it make that much of a difference? Is it worth sacrificing some mana regen? Or is this one of those "personal preferences" things?

Ok, we have 2 different opinions on the Abacus. I know the passive benefit on the Abacus is better than the Core. But the active benefit? Or is it better for someone (SV hunter) with good hit rate and higher crit, as the faster hits are more important than the power of each individual shot?

Assuming 2.3 is coming on Tuesday, I'm planning my respec for around then. That will give me time to gather enough gems to replace all the AP ones.

One more question, if you'll be so kind: Wyvern Sting is broken if the target takes damage. How do you prevent an errant autoshot firing off right after the sting? Does it reset the autoshot timer? That would help as you could just deselect the target after firing, and there'd be no risk of a followup shot. But I've had autoshots come out immediately after some shots are fired, and I'm worried about that happening with Wyvern Sting. Or maybe I'm just overthinking things again.

On a related note, if someone should trinket out of Wyvern, does the dot still apply? Or is that canceled too?

Yeah, I've had that happen on my traps as well, which is why I was curious about Wyvern. Not that it's a primary means of CC, but breaking it wouldn't be good nevertheless.

Well, I closed my eyes and jumped. I managed to get every gem replaced, and since a few friends wanted to run Heroic Mech, I figured, why not now?

After regemming and respeccing, I come in just a hair over 700 agi, with just a hair under 29% crit. My RAP dropped of course, but not as sharply as I had feared.

We didn't have time to run the entire Heroic Mech, but we managed to score 3 badges on a short run. No problems with CC... none. :D I didn't really have to do anything fancy, just the standard chain trapping of my mob. But not having one single resist, and the longer duration was VERY nice. I even had an opportunity to use Wyvern. A sapped mob broke free before we were ready for him and I scattered him to stop him in his tracks, then stung him to sleep until we were ready to tackle him. That was fun. Overall, it was a successful "trial run" or testing of the waters if you will.

We didn't use any damage meters, so I couldn't compare DPS. What I do know is, the mobs were dropping MUCH faster than they usually did in normal Mech. I'm not sure if the instance is designed that way, if we were just as a team more on the ball than normal, or if my new group buff had an effect. That, and I didn't run out of mana once on a boss fight (did pot on one of them, but as a MM,I'd often have to switch to AoV and just steady-auto after potting once already, until I could pot again - if the fight lasted that long. It rarely did)

Well, this will be a work in progress, and I have a learning curve to catch up on, but so far, so good.



Edited, Nov 8th 2007 5:44am by Steelray