Hunter ready for SSC?Follow

or should I first try gruul/maggy?

http://armory.wow-europe.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Anachronos&n=Dwarfchapke

I'm stuck in this gear for a long time now, so should Upgrade on gruul/maggy first? Or can I try SSC with my guild?
There aren't a lot of guild maggy/gruul runs anymore, so I'd really like to know


thanks in advance

Actually there are a few super easy upgrades available to you.

1. 41/20 = fat DPS increase.

2. S2 helm vs badge helm -
+13 AGI
+19 Stam(I know who cares)
+2 AP
+22 Crit
-13 Intel
Relentless as mentioned earlier.

3. S2 shouldger vs beastmaw
+8 AGI
+23 Stam
+14 crit
-8MP5
-22 AP which you can make up with a
+1 Red socket
+1 Yellow socket

4. Replace the nifty dual wield with hellforged halberd(you have the rep)

-1 AGI (actually will be -6 after enchanting wiht +35 agi)
-20 crit
-expertise you don't need.
+4 Hit
+60 AP

I hate running around in welfares as much as the next guy but if you do you will gain:

15AGI
16Crit
40AP
24stam
+4 Hit
2 gems slots which could probably add 12agi and 4 hit

The S3 arena axe is much better if you get it.

S2 helm>T4 helm and way easier to get.

I would recommend going BM for maximum damage for raiding. You don't have to do it, but it will boost your DPS by quite a bit.

I wouldn't take you with that kind of attitude.

...You don't like PvP, but you insist on staying MM? So what DO you like to do? Go into a raid and be mediocre? 'Cause mediocrity doesn't cut it past Kara.

You don't want to spend a few hours running AV to get a helm that is FAR superior to the one you have, and the others that are available to you?

The helforged Halberd would give you an extra 4 hit, putting you 1 point over hitcapped.

And yes, MM is THAT far behind in DPS. The 20% haste that you get makes up for losing the harder hits. Plus, your pet will go from doing about 80 DPS to about 200 DPS (the gap gets even bigger in T5 and T6 content. My pet does between 300-400 DPS). So When you're doing as much personal DPS as a MM, plus, your pet is doing MORE damage than a Marksman's pet, you're doing WAY more DPS.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v651/gcngrrl/BMvMM.jpg

check that out. That was when I was in Full T4 gear. The MM hunter severely out-geared me with 4 pieces of 2.4 badge gear and a few pieces of S3.

Edited, Aug 11th 2008 8:01pm by ProjectMidnight

I know you've said you dislike PvP, but in 4 weeks of running 10 2v2 Arena matches and probably a lot less time invested than running AV you could buy the very fine S3 helm rather than the S2 helm.

But to echo some of the advice you're getting above: You might have a hard time even being offered a raid spot in a Guild running SSC if you both insist on maintaining a PvP spec and refuse to run PvP. What is it about MM which appeals to you if it's not the PvP Talents it offers? It can't be the massive DPS the spec gives you because BM is easily superior without changing a single piece of gear, gem, or enchant. And if you do gem and enchant correctly the BM lead is stretched even further. If your Guild Officers are at all savvy about Hunter DPS they are not going to be interested in a Hunter who consciously decides to not bring more DPS to the raid. It'd be like refusing to bring along stat food and elixirs, just a lost opportunity to do more damage for no supportable reason other than your right to play your character however you choose to play it. Solo.

And your MM spec isn't very efficient, either. You've got Concussive Barrage, Combat Experience and Improved Stings, but not Barrage and Imp. Barrage and GFtT?

Edited, Aug 12th 2008 9:34am by Kompera

Yes BM hunter buffs stack with each other. So if you have 2 BM's, you can get an extra 6% Damage when each of your pets crit. Stacking BM hunters in a single group makes for one of the most efficient DPS groups in a raid.

Since TSA doesn't scale at all, it's just a flat rate of AP, which would make it a great party buff if Expose Weakness (Survival Tree) didn't scale with agility and affected the raid as a whole instead of just one party. Unfortunately TSA is just outclassed (literally) by the other two tree's and the buffs that they add.

TSA Rank 4 - Level 70 - 125 AP To the Group/Party.

To get Expose Weakness to do the same amount of AP (for the raid and not just the party), you would need a grand total of 500 Agility. There's no reason to bring a Marksman hunter to a raid when a Survival Hunter could add the same buff to the whole raid, and deal more damage.

Pure single target DPS, the BM hunter will always deal more damage over the other two specs. You would have to have an ungodly amount of Attack Power or Agility to ever outdo a BM, and even then if you respec'd to a BM with the same amount of ungodly Agility or AP, you would still deal more damage as BM Spec.

For Raid wide damage, SV will always come out on top, but will never actually show the Single Target DPS numbers of a BM. Not to mention other factors come into play when you have an SV hunter in a raid, and if it's even viable to warrant having one in the raid. Typically speaking 1 SV raid is ideal for most raids. The rest of the hunters should be BM spec to take full advantage and to deal the most damage possible.

MM is a PVP Spec, and is just not a very good source of damage for typical PVE.

Take it from me, in all honesty, I hate BM spec. I leveled purely as MM just because I couldn't stand the BM spec. Before the Burning Crusade even came out, I leveled with my brother who played a shaman on the horde side. I was MarksMan and he was enhancement. When I got into the higher level raiding at 60, I eventually got enough gear to try out Survival (I had always liked the spec to begin with but knew it was pointless to spec into without enough agility). After having spec'd that way, I was hooked.

Then BC came out, I went back to Marksman Leveling this time with about 20 or so odd points into BM, just for leveling purposes. Just those 20 points made a huge difference in my DPS as well as survivability. In the higher end raids I once again spec'd for a SV spec, as I just loved the talents, and after the final reworking of the talents (EW up to 100% instead of 30%), I found myself just hungering for more and more agility.

It wasn't until I got into SSC that I found out just how much damage I was missing. I had maybe at best 700 agility unbuffed, and was struggling to get kings constantly cast on me during raids. The group setups were terrible, and I hardly ever saw a shaman in my group for the group synergy that I needed. As such when the DPS reports were posted, I was literally near the bottom of the lists in the 13th-15th slots.

I was told to pretty much respec BM until I received better gear, and to use the basic shot rotation macro that just spammed out Kill Command + Steady Shots until my fingers went numb. So I bit the bullet and respec'd to BM. Hating every minute of it, and watching as my personal DPS soared. I went from being 13-15th to being in the top 5 over night, I mean it was that big of a change. I still hated it though. I couldn't stand being BM, and sought every possible option I could to gaining more agility to the point where I could respec and not have it hinder my personal DPS nearly as much as it had in the past.

Now here I stand, Survival Spec for our raids, being typically in the top 5 for DPS over any given raid, and usually holding steady at the #3 spot for any given boss we fight (on average, always different scenarios). The only ones to surpass me in single target DPS are the other 2 hunters who are in fact BM specs. I'm loving every second of it.

I know where you're coming from, but in a typical raid setting you have to look beyond your own personal bias toward a spec, and go with what the group needs more so than what you prefer. It's a group effort, the old joke being "There's no 'I' in team, but there is a ME" is funny at first, but grows old when you just can't dish out the DPS that matches or comes close to the others in a raid setting. There's anywhere between 9 (Kara) and 24 (SSC or Higher) other people that you're letting down because you refuse to spec a certain way to help out with progression.

Just my 2 cents, take it as you will.

Edited, Aug 14th 2008 1:42am by Joobishwun

Internal contradiction at it's best.
MM is a PvP spec, it doesnt cut it in high end PvE.


1: It does make a big difference, BM uses less mana to do more dps.
2: BM use their pet just as much as MM, it just does more damage. and you yourself dont go down in dmg either.
3: Ferocious Inspiration stacks, wonderfully even. with 3 BM hunters you get 1.03 x 1.03 x 1.03 = 1.0927 so 9.27% dps increase.
4: FI gives more dps than TSA and since it stacks, TSA is more or less useless.

Also, you're not cocky, you're just wrong/misinformed.

The reason you are really MM isnt because of the petstuff, it's because you like to see big numbers.
And really, everyone likes to see big numbers. I love seeingmy multishot crit for over 2.5k on clothies as MM.
But for PvE you'll have to understand that big numbers =/= big dps.
And I'd rather see myself at nr 1 in the dps meters with 1k shots than at nr 3 with 1.2k shots.

That is a REALLY common misconception. If you take two equally-geared, equally-skilled hunters into a raid, 1 MM and 1 BM, and merge pets, the BM will come out way ahead. If you don't merge pets, they will come out about the same. The MM hunter may have bigger hits, but the BM hunter does 20% more hits which makes up for the smaller damage per shot pretty quickly.

As for out in the solo-world... What if you could send your pet after 1 mob, Misdirect your pet and start hitting another mob. By time mob 2 is dead, your pet will have gotten its target down to 20% health. Hell, what if you send it after a mob, MD 3 other mobs onto it, pop Bestial Wrath and take down all four in the time it would take to kill 1? It's fun. Makes grinding a lot more interesting.

OK you got me convinced :-)
Will try it out this weekend (prob tomorrow since I have a day off from work)
And off course you all will be the first to know :-)
Hope I get the hang of BM fast enough.

Cheers