Scattered Shots: Hunter gems
by Brian Wood 
May 6th 2010 at 3:00PM
If you take the average hunter and strip him bare of all gear and weapons, he would still be a shining thing of such deadly beauty you would ache to look upon it. And should you dare to attack that hunter in all his natural grace, that ache would turn to sharp, searing pain as a fury of fur and fangs descended upon you.
But it is important to note that though we hunters are glorious to behold with all our parts exposed, it does not mean that we shouldn't wear our gear. With approximately 90% of all drops designed specifically for hunters, it would be a shame to let them go to waste. And as long as you're wearing you gear anyway, you should accessorize. Grab some gems to accentuate that sparkle in your eye and the lovely flash of muzzle in the face of overwhelming odds.
Join me after the cut as we do some window shopping and suggest what gems go best with eyebrow-searing DPS. Diamonds may be forever, but Relentless Earthsiege Diamonds mark the end of all life within range of your gun.
Rare vs. epic quality gems
In general, you want only the best quality gems in your gear; however, I certainly agree that you don't want to blow your cash on epic gems for your crummy quest blues that you're going to replace within a week or two. As a general rule of thumb, you can probably get away with rare (blue quality) gems in the gear you plan to replace soon. Save the epics for loot that's at least item level 232 -- the stuff you'll be purchasing with your emblems and getting from the ICC 5-mans.
Meta socket
You want a Relentless Earthsiege Diamond in your meta gem socket. The agility is nice, but the sweet part here is boosting your critical damage by an extra 3%. This meta gem requires you to have one of each color gem socketed somewhere on your gear. Be sure you meet this requirement.
Blue sockets
Blue gems do not increase our DPS, and as a result we do not use them. Even the hybrids -- purple and green -- are subpar for hunters. Your meta gem requires you to have one blue gem, and so you will want to use only one. Choose a blue socket with the best socket bonus and put a Nightmare Tear in it. This gem is giving you both 10 agility and 10 intellect (which translates into 10 attack power with our Careful Aim talent). You are only allowed to equip one Nightmare Tear, but that's okay; you only want one. This gem will satisfy your blue gem requirement.
In any further blue gem sockets, ignore the socket bonus entirely. It's not worth a subpar gem. Instead use agility, armor penetration or hit gems as needed.
Red sockets
Our red gem sockets are tasty deliciousness just aching to boost our DPS. We have two primary choices for our red sockets, depending on our gear levels. Delicate Cardinal Ruby is the standard go-to red gem for hunters, since for most hunters agility is our best stat. However, if you've reached the point where ArP is more DPS for you than agility, then you'll prefer a Fractured Cardinal Ruby.
The exact point when ArP is better than agility depends on a number of different factors on your gear and what raid buffs you have. As a general rule, MM should start considering it at around 800-900 passive ArP (ArP from gear only, not counting procs or gems). BM with a ilvl 264 ranged weapon should start considering it at around 400 passive ArP. SV almost never wants to gem for ArP, except in the most extreme situations with insanely good gear.
BM is the only spec that wants to consider Bright Cardinal Ruby for red gem slots. At what is considered very low gear levels nowadays, BM prefers the AP gem. As their gear improves, agility becomes better than AP, and surprisingly quickly they want to move on to ArP gemming.
Yellow sockets
Yellow gem sockets end up giving us hunters the widest variety of gem choices. With blue, you use the Nightmare Tear. With red, you figure out which stat is best and that's all you use. But yellow gives us some options.
If you are not yet at the hit cap, gems are an excellent way to prop up your hit rating and a very nice tool to balance that hit cap out as your gear changes. There's nothing like the joy of getting an upgrade that suddenly drops you 60 hit rating below the cap. A few gems and you're back where you need to be. The Rigid King's Amber is a giant 20 hit rating boost.
In some cases, if a yellow socket has the right kind of socket bonus, it's worth it to use a Deadly Ametrine to get the socket bonus. In most cases, this is only worth it for an agility socket bonus -- certainly not worth it for a stamina bonus, and usually not worth it for an AP bonus.
If the socket bonus isn't a sweet stat, then ignore that bonus and go straight for the old standby, Delicate Cardinal Ruby. I know passing those socket bonuses by can be a hard concept to wrap your head around. They call out to you, they sing their siren's song and try to trick you into taking sup-optimal gems until you're wearing a glittering rainbow of silly stats. But hold firm, and the ultimate DPS will be yours.
You want to be a hunter, eh? You start with science, then you add some Dwarven Stout, and round it off some elf-bashing. The end result is massive DPS. Scattered Shots is the WoW.com column dedicated to helping you learn everything it takes to be a hunter. See the Scattered Shots Resource Guide for a full listing of vital and entertaining hunter guides, including how to improve your heroic DPS, understand the impact of skill versus gear, get started with Beast Mastery 101 and Marksman 101, and even solo bosses with some extreme soloing.
Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
busuan May 6th 2010 3:16PM
I want some confirmation from people with practical experience with this:
As for yellow ones, Brilliant King's Amber (+20 Int) may be a good choice for MM hunters because most of them would have 3/3 Careful Aim that converts Int into AP, 100%. It's from the spreadsheet calc on femaledwarf.com.
Frostheim May 6th 2010 4:47PM
Femaledwarf is likely valuing Int highly for you because your are modeling your dps with no raid buffs, so it's assuming you are desperate for mana. Once you have raid buffs, most hunters never, ever run out of mana.
Even without them, at good gear levels mana is seldom a problem -- I never need to go into Viper during fights in heroics, for example, regardless of my group composition. The fights are so short that the amount of mana consumed is minimal.
duskhawk May 6th 2010 3:40PM
Gemming for Int (20 AP + some mana) vs. gemming for Agi (20 AP + some crit) - Agi wins. You should be getting enough regen from your group (except in 5s probably) that gemming for mana is superfluous.
If you're running out of mana too often in raids, either you've got some misplaced talents, aren't using Viper (at all or enough), or don't have replenishment in the group. Consider popping an occasional Viper sting on bosses with mana, getting talents that reduce your mana costs (probably not Efficiency, but if you have to, you have to) or increase your regen, turning on Aspect of the Viper (get an addon like ViperNotify if you forget to turn it off), or begging any of the following to spec into the Replenishment talent they're apparently missing: Ret Pally, Surv Hunter, Destro Lock, Spriest, or Frost Mage. (In the case of several of them, you may just have to beg them to stop tanking the floor.)
I used to enchant +Int on my melee weapons prior to the advent of replenishment, and had the +mana librams on my T1, but I haven't had to worry about it in raids since we got enough replenishment. (I took much ribbing, but I figured being able to continue shooting was a greater DPS gain for my mediocre skills than feigning mid-boss to drink.)
xiani May 6th 2010 3:41PM
All hunters (well, the ones who aren't utterly awful or doing some very extreme soloing) will take 3/3 Careful Aim.
The AP bonus is equal from agi or int with that talent, but I think that the extra DPS from the crit will outweigh the benefits the mana that int gives, especially when you have all the usual raid buffs & replenishment up.
Still, it isn't the worst thing you can put in a yellow slot, not by a long way.
Microtonal May 6th 2010 3:41PM
No. 20 agility also converts into attack power, usually by a little more than 100% depending on spec, and it gives you crit (and armor, fwiw) as well. Intellect doesn't do anything else except increase your mana pool, which is just about the most pointless thing you can waste a gem slot on. I don't know about you, but I can't even remember the last time I ran out of mana in a raid, even on a long fight like Sindragosa or LK.
kingoomieiii May 6th 2010 3:42PM
10agi+10crit beats 20 AP every time. If femaledwarf is overstating the importance of Int, it's because you haven't turned on any mana regen buffs in the Buffs section (replenishment, judge wis, mana stream totem).
Sean May 6th 2010 3:44PM
Never gem 20 int. 20 agi >> 20 ap that you get from focused aim.
Beamz May 6th 2010 3:53PM
That's only a 20 AP bonus.
Putting a 20 agility or 20 ArP gem in that slot would be a greater benefit for MM.
This is assuming you're making use of your nightmare's tear for the meta bonus.
Juzelle May 7th 2010 8:36AM
For SV:
x1 meta - R. earthsiege
x1 Nightmare tear
all slots = +20 agility > everything else
It's _extremely easy_ to hitcap via gear without wasting precious gemslots on it, so you should never gem for hit. ever. Ignore crit gems as well (ag + crit = waste). Stacking pure agility will outweigh any benefit for gemming crit.
Many SV talents augment your total agility (lightning reflexes + hunting party for a potential total of +18%), and since agility scales with raidbuffs/totems/whatehaveyou, the greater total agility you have, the greater you scale with buffs, increasing your benefit from abilities like expose weakness exponentially.
if you're lucky to be rocking DC + DBW, the dual proc from those two trinkets periodically grants you in the neighborhood of +1050 agility. it's not uncommon to see a geared SV hunter hitting the critcap (104%) this way.
Gemming for SV is kind of a no brainer in this regard ^.^
Valt May 6th 2010 3:18PM
"This gem will satisfy your blue gem requirement."
..and meta socket requirement with just one gem ;)
MightyMuffin May 10th 2010 10:56PM
Correct. Nightmare Tear will allow you to forgo yellow and blue gems to activate meta. Using Female Dwarf analyzer, it says technically, one nightmare tear can activate the meta. So you never have to worry about a single yellow gem so long as you get the tear. If you are worried about meeting the meta, just get nightmare tear.
But again, follow Frostheim's words - Only get the best gems when you have gear that is not as easy to replace. Nightmare tear is just as expensive as other epic gems.
Another thing to add though is this - If you are planning to raid and don't have the money to buy epics for your gear, don't worry and stick blue gems in there. It is better to have gems in your body (that follow the guidelines above...please no +spirit...my ex g/f put in +spirit on her hunter and then complained to me about low numbers...then yelled at me when i suggested how she could improve...) than to have none.
Cyanea May 6th 2010 3:23PM
I don't play a hunter anymore, but always read these articles because you're an amazing, funny writer.
Thanks. :D
Wirhl May 6th 2010 3:33PM
So at what point in my MM career do I drop arcane shot from my rotation. I've read that at some point when you reach a certain gear level or a dps break point that it's better to drop arcane shot entirely from your shot rotation and just cycle serpent, chimera, aimed and steady.
Is this true? False?
Thanks
-a dues paying member :)
busuan May 6th 2010 3:39PM
When ArP factors in the most. I somehow remember it's around ~800 (from gears only, w/o procs or debuffs) for MM and ~400 for BM. It's surprised me to see BM benefits from ArP so early on.
Bob Dewane May 6th 2010 3:47PM
Why is it that BM benefits from ArP so early when MM, the spec which takes the most advantage of it and does the most DPS, needs so much more?
Mean Gean May 6th 2010 3:52PM
There are 3 ways to answer that, first one way that you can tell on the simpplest level, is if your steady shot does more damage than your arcane shot then you should probablly switch to steady. If it is close, then you can use a spreadsheet like www.femaledwarf.com to tell when steady shot starts to give more dps than arcane shot. I think the genral rule of thumb is around 400 ArP.
Also rember that you should still keep arcane in easy reach because if only because its an instant you can use whenever.
Frostheim May 6th 2010 4:57PM
@Bob: BM actually gets more of its dps from physical damage than any other spec. Steady Shot, Aimed Shot (or multi), and auto-shot make up almost all of a BM hunter's dps. MM has tons of dps from Chimera and it's much stronger serpent stings.
Since BM gets more damage from physical attacks, ArP is more helpful for BM.
Bob Dewane May 6th 2010 5:49PM
OK so if, in the gear I have, I am just over 400 ArP then, as BM, I should swap out my AP gems for ArP ones?
P.S. Thanks for giving constructive advice instead of just telling me I'm a n00b and should l2p before asking questions.
Boobah May 6th 2010 8:52PM
Frostheim said with a 264 weapon; weapon DPS is a big boost to both autoshot and steady, while mattering not at all to arcane or your pet. Which means you'll need more passive armor pen before it's worthwhile to ditch arcane shot and/or pick up ArP gems with a lower quality weapon.
Play around with Rawr or one of the spreadsheets floating around to find out what'll be best for your setup.
Undra May 7th 2010 2:54PM
You drop Arcane shot when you switch your gems over to ArP. But again, that moment only happens when you're in full 25man ICC gear. If you're jsut in 10s, you don't have to worry about the ArP mindscrew.