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Chased, Ysera.
This guy has all the T6 Pieces except for the leggings, though he might just be using another pair. He has 2.2k + AP, which is quite a bit for a BM hunter. He's in a good 5v5 and both his weapons are great. I've been in AV with this guy 3-4 times, he pretty good when it comes to 1v1.

It's interesting that he put 2 points into Endurance training over 2 points in Bestial Discipline, but I guess with a 34.65% crit chance Go for the Throat is kicking in quite a lot.

Actually if you do the math, agility gems are better then AP gems even for kara geared BM hunters. IIRC the turning point is around 300 tooltip dps.

Also crits let you hit kill command which crits a lot and keeps ferocious inspiration up.

edit: this of course applies to enchants as well.

Edited, Nov 9th 2007 12:02pm by Xsarus

except BM is all about the pet and Agility doesnt do half as much as what Pure Raw AP does.

You are still spouting that nonsense? Seriously, a BM without a pet would outDPS a Marksman without a pet. A Beastmaster's pet hits like a Mac truck, sure. But the main DPS comes from the Hunter itself, through Serpent's Swiftness and The Beast Within every two minutes.

Besides, Agility does pretty much exactly half as much as Pure AP through scaling on gear, but also adds Crit and so on. But sure enough, a BM Hunter will to begin with benefit the most from pure AP gear. Up to a certain point! Once you are past Karazhan, I'd start taking Agility over Attack Power. Why? Because that's when you will slow down on AP increase, which won't scale all too good anyway with the lowered percentage to your pet. And thus, Agility will give you Attack Power, but also the much needed Crit chance.

Anyway, past Karazhan a Hunter had better have capped Hit or I would beat him with his own Epics.

For the AP / agi argument, AP does add a little more damage to your pet and you tend to be able to get 2 points of raw AP per point of agi. (1 AP) However, the additional effect of adding crit is significant as well. Your own personal damage, forgetting about the pet for a moment, will go up by about 1% if you can add 1% crit. (Not exactly true, but not going to explain the math.) That takes 40 agility or 22 crit rating. Can you get enough damage in 40 AP to match 1% damage?

So for a survivalist, it's a braindead choice. For marks, it's not actually that hard either. I'm aware that Beast Masters will think, "but what about the pet?" Even if you are BM, your pet is doing less than 1/3 of your damage, and receives less than half the benefit of the AP that you do -- notwithstanding that they normally have no special attacks that make use of it -- so they get considerably less mileage than you do from AP. And if we're arguing about the value difference between AP and agi/crit, the pet only tips the scales a little. Not enough to fully throw the scale the other way.

I realize this is all anecdotal, but I'm just shooting out a quick reply. There is a point where AP > agi, and then there is a turning point when you have enough non-crit DPS compared to your crit rate. Usually the raw DPS outstrips the crit rate easily, so anyone raiding is more likely to be interested in agility. I won't begrudge hunters that would prefer attack power, but you'll never see me using it. (Because I'm survival. ^_^)

I am BM and slowly migrating to Agi as Kara/Gruuls geared. Agil/crit just scales a lot more in raids and while pet does benefit from AP, it is just not worth it when you are giving up crit in raid situation. Besides your pet gets direct AP buffs in raids anyway, bringing it to high lvls. Though, I kind of regret switching my 24ap run speed helm meta to 12agi 3% crit dmg. That run speed was really handy even in pve.

Changing my gems out was something I had been considering lately anyway and after reading this thread and thinking about the numbers a bit I've made up my mind. First the numbers with AP gems, then agi gems, switching to all equivalent quality gems. Note: I only switched Red AP gems and left a couple of blue AP/Stam and AP/MP5 gems.

318.2 Tooltip DPS
1499 RAP
18.49% to crit


314.4 Tootip DPS
1461 RAP
19.49% to crit

To me it looks like the AP gems were better, but I know I don't have a full grasp on how tooltip DPS affects total DPS. It could easily be argued that more crits equals more kill command, more focus for gore spamming for more chances to crit and set off FI.

<shrug> I'll probably still buy AP gems next time.

Edited, Nov 10th 2007 12:29pm by Ieatrocks

That's a 1% higher chance to crit. which is 1.3% higher dps(when talented). .013*314.4 = 4.1

314.4 +4.1 = 318.5

This is higher then 318.2

Obviously it's a small difference, but this also triggers kill command and procs the unraveller trinket etc.

To Caldone: When I said I had done the math, that included factoring in pet damage. Agi gems are indeed better then AP gems once your dps is at just above 300.

Edited, Nov 10th 2007 3:13pm by Xsarus

Teh
Also another T6 hunter from the same guild as Ahoq.

I disagree kompera. Maybe my math is wrong. Use the difference between the gems. ie: 6 ap to .15% crit.

ap gem -> 6 AP + 1.32 petAP = .523 dps

agi gem = .15% crit (.15 = .195 with mortal shots)

(assume mortal shots) = .00195X (X = tooltip dps)

We want to find out when they are equal. .523 = .00195X

X = .523/.00195 = 268 dps.

Now for BM hunters there are pet dps boosts which is why I said around 300. But clearly this math shows that agility gems are better even in kara.

without buffs

Now, I don't know of a buff that scales AP, only stats are ever scaled, so agi benefits more in that scenario as well.

Edited, Nov 11th 2007 3:39pm by Xsarus

I'm willing to entertain the idea that mine is wrong as well. I found one of my prior posts, way down on page 19 (I've got the calculation on a spreadsheet, but I'm away from that computer)

So simply formulated, once you reach ~300 tootlip dps, stop using AP gems and go for agility?