Post by New Admin on Oct 11, 2007 15:36:22 GMT -5
Thought it was time for another installment in the Class section, so here are my thoughts on hunters. As a warning, pet information is covered in another post to keep this one reasonable in length.
Specific builds are listed in another post, but if you have a new hunter and are wondering how to spec yourself, the rule of thumb is this: For soloing and grinding, the Beastmaster tree is unstoppable. You essentially get to play tank and dps in one character, and as long as you stay at range, nothing can stand in your way. In late game you'll want to respect to Markman and touch on Survival to get Improved Traps if nothing else, because pets in instances are less useful, and respeccing to Marksman makes you an insane source of damage. So, that's a place to start depending on where you are with your hunter.
I've scoured the web looking for the mechanics of hunter stats, so you know what to compare when considering armor.
Basic hunter stats to pursue are Agility, Stamina, Intellect (if you're a Marksman spec, otherwise it doesn't matter too much), crit rating, attack power, hit rating, and +mana per second if you happen to get any. Personally I think that last one is so minimal that it's not worth it, but every little bit helps.
Now, the best mechanic synopsis I've found actually came from wowwiki found here:
www.wowwiki.com/Hunter
The trouble in discussing hunter stat mechanics is that there IS no real upper limit. More is ALWAYS better. Depending on how you're building your gear, the stats you want may differ, but its important to know what each stat does for you.
Crit Rating ups your critical strike chance: At 60 and 70 respectively, 14 and 22 crit rating give you +1% chance to crit.
Attack Power ups your damage: At 60 and 70, 14 attack power give you +1 dps (before other calculations are made)
Agility ups your attack power (raw damage), critical strike chance, armor, and dodge: Just to make the numbers work out taken from the wowwiki chart, at 70, 40 Agility gives you 40 attack power (roughly 3 dps), 1% critical strike chance, 80 armor, and about 1.75% dodge. But again, these are rough numbers subject to diminishing returns. The more you have, the more you'll need to make a difference. If you want a general rule of thumb for END GAME HUNTERS: Attack power and Agility are equally important, followed by crit rating
The reason for the above is that end game hunters should be about sustained dps. High crit rating is nice, but if you crit every third or fourth shot, you'll draw aggro off the tank constantly. But if instead you're doing constantly high base dps through attack power boosts, aggro is easier to control. So while it's fun to crit, you should focus more on attack power in end game.
As for hit rating: As with every other class, your base hit chance is 95% on a mob of equal level, so to max out your hit rating you need enough to get +5%... The basic equation is 10 and 15.77 hit rating at 60 and 70 equals 1% chance to hit. Now, because instance bosses are actually level 73, to max your hit rating against THEM, you need a total of 9%, which is 142 hit rating. If you care to read further, the discussion is here:
tkasomething.com/hitrating.php
Those are the absolute basics of getting gear for your hunter. I'll cover pets, enchants, weapons, and builds in other posts. If these rough mechanics aren't to your liking, I direct you to this site, which has numerous spreadsheets which can calculate differences in gear and which you should keep based on the stats.
tkasomething.com/spreadsheets.php
Specific builds are listed in another post, but if you have a new hunter and are wondering how to spec yourself, the rule of thumb is this: For soloing and grinding, the Beastmaster tree is unstoppable. You essentially get to play tank and dps in one character, and as long as you stay at range, nothing can stand in your way. In late game you'll want to respect to Markman and touch on Survival to get Improved Traps if nothing else, because pets in instances are less useful, and respeccing to Marksman makes you an insane source of damage. So, that's a place to start depending on where you are with your hunter.
I've scoured the web looking for the mechanics of hunter stats, so you know what to compare when considering armor.
Basic hunter stats to pursue are Agility, Stamina, Intellect (if you're a Marksman spec, otherwise it doesn't matter too much), crit rating, attack power, hit rating, and +mana per second if you happen to get any. Personally I think that last one is so minimal that it's not worth it, but every little bit helps.
Now, the best mechanic synopsis I've found actually came from wowwiki found here:
www.wowwiki.com/Hunter
The trouble in discussing hunter stat mechanics is that there IS no real upper limit. More is ALWAYS better. Depending on how you're building your gear, the stats you want may differ, but its important to know what each stat does for you.
Crit Rating ups your critical strike chance: At 60 and 70 respectively, 14 and 22 crit rating give you +1% chance to crit.
Attack Power ups your damage: At 60 and 70, 14 attack power give you +1 dps (before other calculations are made)
Agility ups your attack power (raw damage), critical strike chance, armor, and dodge: Just to make the numbers work out taken from the wowwiki chart, at 70, 40 Agility gives you 40 attack power (roughly 3 dps), 1% critical strike chance, 80 armor, and about 1.75% dodge. But again, these are rough numbers subject to diminishing returns. The more you have, the more you'll need to make a difference. If you want a general rule of thumb for END GAME HUNTERS: Attack power and Agility are equally important, followed by crit rating
The reason for the above is that end game hunters should be about sustained dps. High crit rating is nice, but if you crit every third or fourth shot, you'll draw aggro off the tank constantly. But if instead you're doing constantly high base dps through attack power boosts, aggro is easier to control. So while it's fun to crit, you should focus more on attack power in end game.
As for hit rating: As with every other class, your base hit chance is 95% on a mob of equal level, so to max out your hit rating you need enough to get +5%... The basic equation is 10 and 15.77 hit rating at 60 and 70 equals 1% chance to hit. Now, because instance bosses are actually level 73, to max your hit rating against THEM, you need a total of 9%, which is 142 hit rating. If you care to read further, the discussion is here:
tkasomething.com/hitrating.php
Those are the absolute basics of getting gear for your hunter. I'll cover pets, enchants, weapons, and builds in other posts. If these rough mechanics aren't to your liking, I direct you to this site, which has numerous spreadsheets which can calculate differences in gear and which you should keep based on the stats.
tkasomething.com/spreadsheets.php