A Constant Expose Weakness?Follow

So I recently respecced my hunter to survival for my guild's raiding habits (trying to get beyond kara into t5 content, just downed Gruul as a matter of fact.) Since none of the other hunters were willing to do so I just threw myself at it.

Now, having just respecced (and having fairly sh*tty gear, all quest blues and a handful of 70-instance blues) I don't think I'm looking too good. I'm packing a whopping 23.12% crit and a grand total of 576 agility, I'm currently using the Gyro-balanced Khorium Destroyer, and all of my gems add to my crit and agility.

So I've been wondering, more than anything, how high a Crit% should I work for in order to keep Expose weakness up 100% of the time? (assuming I can just sit there and shoot at the *******, of course.)

I've done a little bit of math on the subject, but I'm certain I f***ed up in many spots along the way. And I think I know exactly how I'm gonna get some of that crit up (Time to farm some S1 gear!)

Any and all information is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Damn, I forgot to tell you what my spec was, hehe.

Edited, Jan 9th 2008 1:21am by Jonofthedead

Well, from your Agility, I would say you were Karazhan ready but not ready for 25 mans. Keep farming Karazhan for epics, and increase your unbuffed Agility to 600+, preferrably 650 with enchants/gems. For the Hunters in my guild I set a 550 agility minimum for Karazhan, and 650 for higher raids. Well, Gruul can see lower agility if the rest of the raid makes up for it. 25 man raids can be somewhat forgiving for one or two "slackers". Of course, this applies for Surv Hunters.

Don't bother with more than a couple of pieces of S1. As have been stated repeatedly, PvP gear allocate quite alot of stats towards Resilience and Stamina that would in PvE gear be allocated towards Agility, Int and AP.

So more than two, or possibly three pieces, would actually be less viable than farming Karazhan and Heroics for gear.

Also remember that as the only Surv Hunter, you should in fact be the raidgroup's most valued Hunter. Thus, ask the rest of the Hunter group if you could have priority on Agility heavy items. If you are working on a dkp system, this will work against it and could turn out to imbalance that system once you progress further into End-Game though. Keep that in mind.

I've become quite fond of the term "Welfare Epics" when talking about the S1 gear. Sure, I spent the last few days farming AV (and I'm glad I'm done -_-;) for the S1 Xbow, but I only plan on keeping that around for PvP after I get a weapon from Kara. The S1 gear really isn't all that great. You can farm dungeon blues that have much better stats for raiding than the PvP gear has.

By the way... Where's your armory link?

Actually, it was only my intention to get a very small handful of S1 gear, Just the AV pieces and the X-bow really. You've also brought up another point, I've yet to properly enchant my gear (just tacking armor kits to whatever I can really). I can probably get my Agi up to a more proper number with enchants to my weapon, cloak, boots, etc. I feel incredibly retarded for not doing those first-hand.

On another note, since the other hunter's in my guild weren't being as communicative as I would have hoped (apart from the class-leader) I went ahead and took Imp Hunter's Mark (I guess I'm going to be that "one" hunter)

So my aim should be for roughly 600 agility and about 35% crit?

On another, embarrassing note: This being my alt, I've yet to get this toon keyed for kara *shrug* but I'm working on it. The only true reason that I recently started playing my hunter again was because the guild felt that ranged DPS needed to be fierce (so they had my rogue hang outside and my hunter waltz in)

If you want to max yourself out for the early 25man content, you should aim for > 800 agi and > 30%crit unbuffed (I'm at 822agi and ~32%crit at the moment, but I have access to gear from Mag and early SSC/TK as well).

That is hard to reach, but possible (Just to give you an idea. I'm at early 25man content atm: my armory).

For a spec, try 5/20/36 if you think you can manage the haste in your shot rotation.
If you have a high latency, or like to you aspect of the viper a lot, or just don't want to switch between different shot rotations, you might put those 5 points from improved hawk somewhere else. Barrage or Master Tactician come to mind here.

Since you asked, I'm throwing out a build that might work good for raiding. Remember I'm not really a raider so this is speculation. Seems like it'd be a good idea, but I'd rely more on others real experience.

Buildy

It has around +8% critical strike, of course expose weakness, but I also went down to master tactician for occasional 10% extra critical chance which is quite a lot.

It has some improved trap utility if you need it, and two extra zomg stop hitting me! abilities in scatter shot and wyvern sting. If you don't feel you need it, you could put that point into resourcefulness for even better trapping ability.

Rapid killing to do rapid fire more often for more criticals, you'll probably be using aspect of the viper a lot. I also chose improved hunter's mark, which seems like it'd be a good talent for raids.

I chose mortal shots over improved stings because if you're planning on criting a lot, might as well make them hurt, but I don't know if improved stings might be better. You could skip aimed shot then. Nothing in Beastmaster tree that you could get with those points seems that great except improved aspect of the hawk, and if you're using lots of mana, that might not be the greatest.

To me, the added oomph of improving your criticals by 20% when you're planning on having a ton of criticals may outweigh improved aspect of the hawk for overall DPS, and you can get scattershot which you can't if you get improved aspect of the hawk.

EDIT: After reading other people's comments, here's a moar updaty one:
New buildy

It sacrifices the CC of scatter and wyvern which apparently aren't that useful, and should be quite a bit more mana efficient. If you find you don't use aspect of the hawk much, or your raid has lots of melee people, it might benefit to go with improved hunter's mark instead of improved aspect of the hawk for max raid dps.

It still has quite a bit of trap improvements, since I didn't know a better rout to get to the bottom of the tree, but traps can still be useful in a pinch anyways, n'est ce pas?

Edited, Jan 14th 2008 2:22pm by digitalcraft

Master Tactician will never be a good replacement for IaotH. It is a 6% dps increase, and should never be forgotten by a raider. Tweaked your build a bit, and came up with this instead. Now, this kept Scatter for Heroics/PvP and so on. It took away Entrapment because you never use that in a raid. Well, might pop a slowing trap before Alar trash, but that's it. If you don't trap much, you can take the two points in Clever Traps and put them in Survivalist. Deterrence is also optional, but saved my life a couple of times in raids, when I fUcked up.

However, as a Raiding Hunter, you need either Efficiency or TotH maxed out. One or both. I put Imp Mark into Efficiency, but if you are the only Imp Mark Hunter in the raid, you might want to redistribute points from Focused Fire and Scatter into TotH. Wyvern, you almost never use in a raid.

Now, all builds must be tweaked for personal use and for your own gear. Do you have low manapool/mp5? Get Efficiency and perhaps TotH maxed. Do you have relatively low health? Get Survivalist maxed, because you will take some hurt during raids. There is no perfect world where you can just stand back and shoot safely.

For a pure raid build, I wouldn't even take Scatter Shot. It is of very limited use in raids.