Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week, Frostheim uses logic and science (mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout) to look deep into the hunter class. Got hunter questions? Feel free to email Frostheim.

Patch 3.3.5 is live, and it won't be long now before the Ruby Sanctum opens, giving us yet another dragon to kill and another chest overflowing with nothing but hunter loot. Like a good hunter, I've been poking through the Ruby Sanctum loot lists and doing some paper napkin math to decide exactly what drops I'm going to want to keep safely out of the hands of dirty rogues.

Now, the loot lists we have access to may not be complete. I want to stress this. I really, really hope they're not, because, all joking aside, the hunter loot selection is grim as all heck. I'm seeing three hunter drops from 25-man, which is fine. But in 10-man I'm only seeing one hunter drop, and it's probably not going to be used by any hunter -- basically no hunter loot in the 10-man version. On the bright side, awesome new trinket!

Join me after the cut as we take a look at what kind of worthwhile loot (i.e. hunter loot) Ruby Sanctum has to offer.

Twilight Scale Shoulders (10-man, shoulders)

We do not yet have a convenient Wowhead tooltip for these, so here are the stats:

98 Agility
90 Stamina
52 Intellect
Red Socket
Yellow Socket
+12 attack power socket bonus
153 attack power
66 armor penetration rating
48 haste rating

About the only thing these shoulders have going for them is the ArP and even with that they are worse overall than our ilvl 264 tier 10 shoulders -- and that's without the set bonus. The fact is that every hunter out there is absolutely going to be using the shoulder slot for the set pieces. Our set bonuses are totally awesome these days and are not worth sacrificing even for a gear upgrade, let alone a downgrade or sidegrade.

Sadly, this is the only piece of hunter loot currently known to be on the 10-man loot table. QQ.

Returning Footfalls (25-man, feet)

The Returning Footfalls look quite lovely for most hunters. A straight upgrade from the Rock-Steady Treads that most are sporting, Returning Footfalls is probably the best foot slot loot available for most hunters, regardless of spec. If you're truly hit-starved, you will probably still get more bang out of Treads of the Wasteland (Blood Princes 25-man), but I highly recommend finding other sources for your hit rating. While you can technically get more ArP from Taldron's Long-Neglected Boots (Festergut 10-man heroic), the overall stat loss for them isn't worth it.

Returning Footfalls is a delightful drop in a slot that needed some more options.

Signet of Twilight (25-man, finger)

Signet of Twilight brings another ring into the hunter mix, and it's a perfectly good ring. The Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance will remain our first choice for our first ring slot, of course. If you're stacking ArP, you're going to want to pass on the Signet of Twilight and will still want the Frostbrood Sapphire Ring (Valithria 25-man) in your second ring slot.

However, if you don't care much about ArP and need the hit rating, the Signet of Twilight will make an excellent second ring, trumping the next nearest Band of the Bone Colossus (Marrowgar 25-man).

Sharpened Twilight Scale (25-man, trinket)

The Sharpened Twilight Scale is the real treasure of Ruby Sanctum, and this is a trinket every hunter is going to want. Since the very nicely sized AP proc lasts for 15 seconds, it seems reasonable to assume a 45-second internal cooldown (just like every other 15-second proc trinket) which makes the proc quite nice indeed. But the real gem here is the whopping 163 passive ArP. This trinket will suddenly allow a whole new generation of hunters to hard cap their ArP.

The only downside of the Sharpened Twilight Scale is that since the proc is attack power, we don't have as many opportunities to use it to stack cooldowns for multiplicative advantages. Even so, this trinket theorycrafts out better than any other trinket, including normal mode Deathbringer's Will (though technically DBW has a few other advantages, including cooldown stacking at the start of a fight and reapplying Serpent Sting on the 600 crit proc).

Regardless, there is no question about the quality of this trinket. You want it. Even if you aren't pursuing the ArP hard cap, you still want it. Even survival, which doesn't worship at the same alter of armor pen as marksman and beast mastery, even they want this trinket. Even for survival, it's better than Deathbringer's Will (though not by nearly as large a margin).

So if you only get one piece of loot from Ruby Sanctum, make it this one. And if you only raid 10-man, well, I'm so sorry. My only advice is to desperately try to form up a 25-man, preferably through some kind of guild alliance. Ruby Sanctum looks like it's designed to be a PUG-killer.

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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 vs. gear, get started with Beast Mastery 101 and Marksman 101 and even solo bosses with some extreme soloing.

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Tags: class-help, featured, guide, guide-to-hunters, hunter-guide, hunter-info, hunter-talents, ruby-sanctum-loot, talent, talents, world-of-warcraft-class-guide, world-of-warcraft-guide, wow-class-guide, wow-class-help, wow-guide, wow-hunter, wow-hunter-info, wow-hunters, wow-talent-guide

Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots