Scattered Shots: Simply enchanting

While compiling the master Scattered Shots Resource Guide, I spent a lot of time digging back through months (and years) of hunter columns here on WoW.com, and one of the things I realized was that some of the key guides were woefully out of date. The game keeps changing and information that was great one day becomes obsolete a few months later. So I'm going to try to fill in some of the more glaring gaps in the resource guide from time to time, starting today.
I have not forgotten Survival 101 -- the specter of that column still looms over my shoulder, haunting me -- and we won't be doing dull, boring basics guides every column. We'll continue to look at hunter news, end-game raiding strats, hunter loot, pets and why healers hate them, more ways to use your hunter that Blizzard never intended, and of course Grandpappy Frostheim will make an appearance from time to time.
But on the agenda today is a straightforward guide to the best level 80 hunter enchants. If your gear can have an enchant, it should have an enchant. While any single enchant doesn't make a huge difference to our total DPS, all those little things add up to the kind of DPS that has those wannabe DPS shadow priests crying in their decorative orbs.
A note on professions
Most crafting professions provide a custom enchant for a couple slots of gear that does not stack with the standard enchants available to everyone. In most cases, that profession's enchant is better than the standard one. This guide will cover the enchants available to everyone regardless of profession -- so be aware that you probably want to use your profession-specific enchant over these.
Head
- Arcanum of Torment Requires Knights of the Ebon Blade revered reputation. Will cost you 150 gold.
- Greater Inscription of the Axe: Requires Sons of Hodir exalted reputation, and sells for 100 gold. There's a lesser version available at honored reputation, but you really want the best. Fortunately the blinding, horrendous pain of grinding SoH rep has been replaced with much easier methods, including buying your way in. On that note, for everyone who gets to grind SoH rep nowadays: I hate you all. I want you to suffer as I suffered.
- Major Agility: Available from enchanters or on the AH. Agility uber alles.
- Powerful Stats: Available from enchanters or on the AH. What we really care about here is the 10 agility and the 10 intellect, which translates into 10 attack power with our Careful Aim talent. For such an important slot, chest enchants are pretty sad (and always have been).
- Greater Assault: Available from enchanters or on the AH.
- Major Agility: Available from enchanters or on the AH. This is the most common hunter enchant for the hand slot, but we do have an alternative.
- Precision: Available from enchanters or on the AH. The hit rating from Precision is useful for hunters who are having troubles reaching the hit cap. The only reason you want this enchant is if you're under the hit cap, and if you are, this is the best enchant for you.
- Eternal Belt Buckle: Available from blacksmiths or on the AH. This gives you an extra colorless gem socket on your belt. So if your belt has two sockets, it will now have three. You can put any color gem here that you want, and it does not affect your socket bonus in any way.
- Icescale Leg Armor: Available from leatherworkers or on the AH.
- Superior Agility: Available from enchanters or on the AH. The standard hunter foot enchant. One enchant good for both feet.
- Icewalker: Available from enchanters or on the AH. Much like our hands slot, we have here a hit rating option for the hit-starved. And just like the hands slot, if you're under the hit cap, you want this enchant, and that's the only time you want it.
- Tuskarr's Vitality: Available from enchanters or on the AH. This interesting enchant is desirable by many raiders for the 8% movement speed boost. The logic is that that faster you move, the fewer auto-shots you'll miss and the greater your margin of error when getting out of void zones. In fact, many top progression raiding guilds require this enchant of all raiders. However, if you're BM, you've already got a better version automatically with Kindred Spirits, and they don't stack.
- Heartseeker Scope: Available from engineers or on the AH.
- Biznick's 247 x 128 Accurascope: Available from select engineers or maybe on the AH. This badass scope was something that we engineers got from a drop in Molten Core back in vanilla. Back then it provided a flat 2% hit, which was incredible. Event now, two expansions and 20 levels later, this scope can still be useful. Again, if you're having problems reaching the hit cap, this scope may be for you. From a purely stat-weight perspective, 30 hit rating is better than 40 crit rating. That said, you'll prefer to get your hit elsewhere if you can. This scope can be a bit hard to find, and a bit costly as well, since it uses Molten Core mats (though you can just solo it to get them if you want).
- Superior Potency: Available from enchanters or on the AH.
- Accuracy: Available from enchanters or on the AH. A fantastic way to get hit rating if you're below the cap.
- Massacre: Available from enchanters or on the AH.
Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
mheldt123 Apr 19th 2010 3:21PM
"What we really care about here is the 10 agility and the 10 intellect, which translates into 10 attack power with our Careful Aim talent" You mean 20 AP Frost.
Also: Why not use the 35 Agi enchant for 1 handers? Picking agi over ap in every enchant/gem possible don't see why make an exemption for weapons.
Frostheim Apr 19th 2010 3:28PM
I'm sorry, what I was trying to say was that 10 int = 10 AP because of the talent.
Mmmm, the best 1h agility enchant I'm aware of is Exceptional Agility, which is only 26 agility -- did I miss one that's actually 35 agil? What's it called?
Chaoschild Apr 19th 2010 3:36PM
Frost has the right idea, 2 hander enchant is for 35 agility and doesn't stack up well next to 110 ap.
MoonlightDeviant Apr 19th 2010 3:42PM
No, he's right. It's all about the context it which it is read. We already know we get AP from AGI, so the secondary comment was in reference to just the INT.
The part that got overlooked in regards to the 'Powerful Stats' enchant is us Survival Hunters with 'Hunter VS. Wild' 3/3. Now that +10 to all stats gifts us 23 RAP overall.
hawaiiansouljah Apr 19th 2010 3:42PM
Umm...because +35 agi is for 2 handers and even if it were possible on a 1h, 130 AP > 70 agi.
njbostian Apr 19th 2010 4:02PM
AP is slightly worse than agility unless you are BM. Agility is more reliable as well. about 1/10 of the damage you get from the 130 ap is from/ your pet where marginally less comes from your pet with the agi enchants. This allows you to rely less on your pet. It's honestly nitpicking, the difference is so minor between the 2 that RNG will never give you the same results with the same enchants anyways.
On a side note, you should tbh always be using 2 handers. 1 handers are nice if your 2h is pretty trashy, but not many dual wieldings can beat [Distant Land] and what makes dual wielding harder is that you need to get 2 drops before it overtakes your 2h.
Relk Apr 20th 2010 3:34PM
According to Zeherah's DPS website, my survival hunter would get better dps from either using 2x 26 agility on one handers or 2x 30 intellect enchant on my one handers. (Obviously the latter has more to do with the use of viper on the spreadsheet, but I still thought I'd mention it.)
Frostheim Apr 20th 2010 4:03PM
Ah, if it thinks 30 int is better dps than 65 AP, you've probably got something funky going on in your spreadsheet settings. Very likely not showing raid buffs.
Caliea Apr 19th 2010 3:20PM
Thanks for this guide. As a brand-new (less than a week) level 80 - I'm starting to look at this stuff more seriously. Anyone have any guidelines on when I should start enchanting? I'm in the process of updating my gear, and am not sure when to invest in enchants/gems, or when to wait and hope for better gear.
wrendil Apr 19th 2010 3:28PM
At this point, we don't really look for top enchants/epic gems till tier 9 level gear. Skip the epic gems and +10 stats enchant on that BoE Blue if it is iLevel 200.
bldavis59 Apr 19th 2010 3:35PM
i would say yes get enchants and gems in your gear at 80, but go for the cheaper ones, as youll be replacing gear fairly quickly if you're running heroics.
just get enchants like the +8 stats to chest if its cheap, and blue quality gems (90% of which are 30g> on my realm)
not until T9 do i suggest to my guilds new 80s to get the high end enchants.
that said, anything out of H-PoS,H-FoS, or H-HoR i would deem worthy of a nice enchant.
the only ezception to this is a scope, they are cheap and most of the time our guns/bows/x-bows last us a little while, so grab a scope and slap it on there!
Reynolds Apr 19th 2010 3:28PM
Healers hate pets because Healbot doesn't show them by default.
Reynolds Apr 20th 2010 6:13AM
Actually I'm serious, I play both a hunter and some healer classes and the reason why I never dropped a heal on a pet was because I use Healbot and 'out of the box' it doesn't show pets in that little box of bars that you have to keep alive.
Once I worked out how to get pets to show up on that box, I started healing pets.
So I seriously wonder how many other healers don't realise that you can show pets in healbot and if that is the reason why they don't heal them.
Negatron Apr 20th 2010 9:05AM
It can be turned on...to see pets as you know but, pointless. Pets should benefit from raid heals/AoE and be controlled proplerly... ie: make them retreat if they are fighting in Death & Decay etc...
Justin Apr 20th 2010 10:23AM
My healer friends say that they don't heal pets because they are not important enough. They also only heal DPS part of the time.
I know thier number one job is keeping the tank alive, but I always thought it was a fairly standard thing to try to keep the whole group alive if possible.
bldavis59 Apr 19th 2010 3:35PM
this is funny, becuase just last night i was looking for a topic like this on wow.com.
thanx for the great guide frost!
Scunosi Apr 19th 2010 3:32PM
I do hope you go over profession-specific enchants at some point. Like many others, my hunter is an Engineer, and I often find myself wondering if the hand-mounted pyro-rockets are better than say, the hyperspeed whatsits or the regular old enchant. And then there's frag belts and bombs and crazy stuff I always seem to forget I can do. :x
Frostheim Apr 19th 2010 3:41PM
I probably will not go over profession-specific ones. Again, the general rule of thumb is that the profession-specific ones are always better than the generic ones.
Engineering is a bit unique in that they have 2 possibilities for the hand slot. By stat weights alone, the hyperspeed accelerators are best; however, note that because this is a haste bonus, you won't necessarily always get the full use out of it. If you're on the move, you get zero benefit from the haste unless you're very good at stuttering your movement (which you cannot always do). For this reason I prefer the Pyro-Rockets. The theoretical difference between them is very small, and in practice I suspect you'll get more dps out of the rockets, which you can just macro into your other shots. Plus, you know, you're shooting ROCKETS out of your gloves!
EderX Apr 19th 2010 3:40PM
Cape enchant = +1 agi, so its better, if only slightly.
Hands = +60 (iirc) passive haste or +1-2k fire damage. I like the haste personally, but check the ss.
Boots = +24 crit/3min CD super speed boost. Better point for point than the AP or Icewalker and the boost is crazy useful.
Belt = Frag belt, Its on a 6min CD, but eh, not that great. Nothing else can go there so its not a complete waste.
All the engineering enchants work out to be better than the plain ones, even if slightly.
wutsconflag Apr 19th 2010 3:55PM
It's no secret that the spreadsheets overvalue haste because they model fights on the assumption that you will never move.
Check the Hunter forums for a thread related to this topic, though, as there was quite the debate about the rockets vs the haste. I went with the rockets, myself. I mean, come on, they're ROCKETS!