Don Santos vs Sunfury: Clash of the GiantsFollow

Hi!
I am the proud owner of a Don Santos' Famous Hunting Rifle:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31323

Last night Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix dropped for me:
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28772

Now, at a glance it looks like a no-brainer, and maybe it is, but I just thought I should ask you guys: Is it really an upgrade?

The thing is, as a BM, the rifle is a little bit on the slow side as it is, I would have prefered an attack-speed of around 2.5-2.6 (I have very little lag), and the bow is even slower.
And then it's the very nice chance on hit on the rifle which actually procs quite a lot.

If the bow was even slower, say 3.1-3.2, I could start weaving arcane shots into my rotation, but as it is, I feel I'm kinda in no-mans land.

My guess is that the 10-dps difference will make up for the sub-optimal speed, but I'm not sure.
OK, hit me.

I think as BM, you can afford to have a slower bow, since BM hunters have the talent to increase attack speed.

Keep your hunting rifle around, but play with Sunfury for a week. If you notice an increase in your damage output, do the no-brainer thing and keep it.

The Sunfury bow would be a better upgrade for consistant DPS, as it has stats+ an AP boost, Don Santos while nice, is still considered a burst due to the proc, and it has no other benifits than the proc, so while the proc is not active, you would be doing way less dps than you would with the box, while active, you would most likely be equal, I am not a number cruncher, but I would say go with the bow.

Yup, sounds about right.
OK, thanks for all your comments, much appreciated.

I tried out the bow for a bit now, and even without having found a decent scope to slap on it feels like I've upped my dps a bit.
I think I'll pay dr Boom a visit when I'm in the neighbourhood, but for now I'll continue using the bow. It looks sweet too.

if that is true, DS give ~80 AP vs 19 agi and 34 ap from Sunfury.
So 80 AP vs ~0.5%crit, 53 AP and ~10 more dps from the weapon.
I'd say its an easy pick.

I am looking at Cheeky's spreadsheet and damn if it doesn't show Don Santos as increasing my DPS by 20 over the Sun Fury Bow of teh Phoenix. How is this? Could someone please explain. I have both and hopefully will begtting Wolfslayer soon. That will be my obvious choice when all is said and done but how in the heck is Don Santos THAT much better?

The spreadsheet shows that with my gear/crit%/haste as a BM spec hunter, the proc should be up approximately 42.36% of the time, giving me an average AP boost of 105AP while equipped and in battle. Anyone know how accurate this? Should I be pulling my Don Santos out for raids until I get Wolfslayer?

I tend to agree but everyone talks about this spreadsheet as the "be all-end all" of calculating hunter DPS. Guess I will have to travel to Dr. Boom and see what he says.

Yes, I understand this "ideal" situation that the sreadsheet takes into account. So my question ultimately becomes this then, what is a long enough fight for Santos to come out on top? Would it be wise to use it on, say Gruul or other boss fights? It would be nothing to carry both on raid day and switch between when the situation calls for it.


After working with teh spreadsheet some more I finally got around to looking at the qucik shots proc and once I established my shot rotation under quick shots (which is the same as without quick shots .... auto, steady, auto, steady ....) the DPS started to make sense. As a matter of fact, it showed that Sunfury was more DPS than Don Santos and Wolfslayer. Go figure.

Edited, Dec 19th 2007 10:21am by Caspiris