Scattered Shots: 4.0.1 hunter gems, glyphs and stat weights
by Brian Wood 
Oct 18th 2010 at 3:00PM
On Thursday, we discussed hunter talents and rotations for 4.0.1, and today we're going to get into gems and glyphs, as well as talking a bit about stat weights. But before we get into all that, a word of caution about rotations.
Many hunters have been playing around with rotations focusing on Arcane Shot only and ignoring the signature shot for the spec. I have to recommend against this. It is certainly much easier, and for some specs (like BM) may actually be a bit more DPS, but it is a bad habit to get into! Expect to see a slight boost to the damage of all hunter signature shots in the very near future that makes these shots clearly worthwhile. It is well worth your while to learn the correct rotation now rather than spending your time developing lazy habits. Be a hunter, not an elf.
With that out of the way, join me after the cut for more info on how to customize your hunter to optimize raid performance in the brief window before Cataclysm hits.
4.0.1 hunter glyphs
Our glyph choices for patch 4.0.1 are going to be different than they will be when we finally get to level 85. Most particularly because we don't yet have access to Cobra Shot, the BM and SV rotations are substantially different than they will become.
As a result of this, our prime glyph choices are surprisingly uniform across the specs. I avoided the new Glyph of Serpent Sting here, but that glyph may be surprisingly good combined with Improved Serpent Sting; however, I have not yet tested this thoroughly enough to recommend it.
Our major glyph slots seem to be mostly focused toward PvP and soloing, with very few options that even tangentially improve our DPS. I'm a big believer in the benefits of using Disengage and jump-disengage for movement, and it's because of those benefits that I recommend the Glyph of Disengage. If you don't make use of this skill to minimize movement, than the glyph will certainly not benefit you at all. Generally, you can choose whatever major glyphs you think will improve your quality of life the most.
Minor glyphs offer is far fewer choices, and it's easier to choose three that are likely to have the most impact (however minor that may be). Again, feel free to swap whatever you'd like here, though I do highly recommend the Mend Pet glyph -- you'll never have to feed your pet again.
Beast Mastery glyphs
- BM prime glyphs
- BM major glyphs
- Glyph of Disengage
- Glyph of Bestial Wrath
- ... your choice
- BM minor glyphs
- MM prime glyphs
- MM major glyphs
- Glyph of Disengage
- ... your choice
- ... your choice
- MM minor glyphs
- SV prime glyphs
- SV major glyphs
- Glyph of Disengage
- ... your choice
- ... your choice
- SV minor glyphs
Stat weights could be argued to be at the very heart of theorycrafting, and it's very complicated to get precise stat weights. When we're talking about stat weights, we're talking about exactly how much DPS do we get from one crit rating or haste rating. How many haste rating is one agility worth? Only by answering these questions can we know with some precision which piece of gear is better or which gem is more desirable.
Of course, there are a lot of problems with stat weights -- more, in fact, than I have room to get into here. Suffice it to say it is complicated to calculate without an actual model of every aspect of hunter DPS (i.e., spreadsheets or simulators) and currently, we still haven't even sorted out exactly how some of the new shot equations actually work. In addition, stat weights are specific to not just your talents but also your gear. In general, by testing a lot of configurations we can usually make some broad recommendations by spec, but even then the "best" gem for your spec sometimes changes as your gear changes.
Right now, no one has created a mathematical model of the 4.0.1 hunter that is close to accurate. Therefore, we cannot calculate exact stat weights.
I cannot tell you that you'll get 1.57 DPS per point of mastery rating or that 1 mastery rating is worth 1.12 crit rating. No one can yet. But we can calculate less precise weights.
Stat priority and reforging
Doing some calculations from both raid parses and extensive dummy tests, we can say with great confidence that 1 mastery is better than 1 crit (thus 1 mastery rating is better than 1 crit rating, as they both scale at about 45.91/point). Thus, if you reforge crit into mastery, your DPS will improve.
Because haste is monumentally complex to calculate without a complete mathematical model (because it affects your number of auto-shots, Steady Shots, Arcane Shots, and possibly Explosive Shots and procs of Wild Quiver and Aimed Shot), we have to resort to exhaustive, controlled testing, which is less precise because there are an insane number of variables contributing to our margin of error. However, a series of half-hour tests under identical conditions (with no one else at the dummy) combined with far less-precise parses suggests with pretty good confidence that 1 mastery rating is better than 1 haste rating. Thus, if you reforge haste into mastery, your DPS will improve.
Haste is a bit complex in another way, because there are certain haste plateaus where you hit a "magic" spot in your rotation, and dropping just a couple percent suddenly removes an entire shot from your rotation. Still, the general rule seems to apply in most situations.
Another important factor to consider, however, is that while haste seems to be the lowest DPS stat for hunters in a 4.0.1 world, it takes less haste rating to get 1 percent haste than it does crit rating to get 1 percent crit. You will have to drop your crit by 1 percent to get 1 mastery, but you'd have to drop your haste by 1.4 percent to get the same 1 mastery.
Ultimately, it looks like mastery is our best secondary stat after hit rating. So reforge to hit until you're at the hit cap, then reforge to mastery. Take it away from either haste or crit -- I'm sure there'll be endless debate about which is best (everyone's reporting different numbers, most within the margin of error). I don't suspect we'll ever settle which is best for level 80 -- we're too busy working on those complicated models for level 85.
Whether you take from crit or haste, the difference will be small enough that it'll be lost in the mess of RNG, so don't stress about it too much.
Gemming your 4.0.1 hunter
Gemming is a pretty easy discussion to have. In the vast majority of situations, you want to use agility gems; agility remains our best stat, aside possibly from hit rating. If the socket bonus is a nice agility bonus, go ahead and use agility/crit gems for yellow sockets. You'll want to use one blue or purple gem for your meta socket requirement, which will most likely be a hit rating gem.
If you are below the hit cap, you still do not want to use more than one hit gem! Get your hit rating by reforging!
If you reach the hit cap via reforging, you're sacrificing either haste or crit rating to get the superior hit rating. If you do it via gemming, you're effectively sacrificing the agility you could otherwise put in that socket. You're better off getting your hit through reforging and stacking as much agility into your gem sockets as is reasonable.
Scattered Shots is dedicated to helping you learn everything it takes to be a hunter. Our Scattered Shots Resource Guide takes aim at everything from improving your heroic DPS, understanding the impact of skill vs. gear, and getting started with Beast Mastery 101 and Marksman 101.Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
justarb Oct 18th 2010 3:17PM
If I am way over my hit cap just on my gear, would it make sense to reforge the excess hit to mastery?
Vladeon Oct 18th 2010 3:27PM
You'll definitely want to reforge that hit into something. Mastery is good depending on your spec, I really like the SV mastery bonus. but honestly, it's between mastery and crit. if you already have a lot of crit, go mastery.
Tirrimas Oct 18th 2010 3:28PM
This.
katharine.toth Oct 18th 2010 3:32PM
yup!
Pyromelter Oct 18th 2010 3:31PM
definitely reforge all that hit.
also, you can reforge the static part of hit/crit/haste on trinkets (so you can take a hit trinket and reforge it into mastery)
Microtonal Oct 18th 2010 8:30PM
I managed to reforge about 3.5% excess hit into mastery. On the pieces that I didn't use to reforge hit (or didn't have hit on them), I reforged all the crit to mastery, as well (I was sitting at just under 60% crit prior to the patch, so I had plenty to spare), and kept the haste as it was. In doing so, I gained something like 1500 DPS on the target dummy no matter what spec I was. Yes, mastery is that good of a stat for us. I'm semi-interested in seeing what would happen if I reforged the haste instead of the crit, but I'm not raiding right now, so it's not particularly important.
On a somewhat related note, marks has gone from my least favorite to my favorite spec overnight. I stuck with survival all the way through the marksmanship ascendancy because the latter always felt clunky and un-fun to me. Now, however, marks feels smooth and natural, while I just can't get the hang of the new survival (BM feels about the same). I'll reevaluate things when Cobra Shot becomes available, but for now, I'm marks for the first time ever.
Toothy Oct 18th 2010 3:20PM
Only been on my hunter a few times since the patch but I noticed a minor annoyance. My pets get unhappy very easily, and feeding them doesn't seem to help much. Yesterday I went through all 10 berries I had on me and my warp stalker was still red. Was there a change to the happiness formula that I missed? They still get green once I let them kill a few things, but I have been used to them not going below yellow (without dying) for over a year now.
Moofius Oct 18th 2010 3:31PM
Maybe last patch you had a point in the pet talent Bloodthirsty before the patch and not now?
Get the Glyph of Mend Pet and you will not have to worry about finding food for your pet again.
Tirrimas Oct 18th 2010 3:33PM
Covering the obvious here:
Did you retalent your pet after the patch?
Did you take it out of the larger stable recently? Stabling resets pet talents.
There's a Growl = happiness talent - did you miss taking that?
Do you have the minor Glyph of Mend Pet?
I've noticed that my pets seem more high-maintenance as well, so it's not just you.
VioletArrows Oct 18th 2010 3:37PM
I haven't had that problem, mine seems to be that any time I mount up, take a taxi, or teleport, my pet's health drops to about 25% and I have to heal it back up again.
Cody Oct 18th 2010 3:41PM
I noticed on my hunter that his happiness level display was different than if I checked the Pet Details screen. Could be a bug.
Noyou Oct 18th 2010 3:42PM
sounds like something is majorly wrong. since the patch came out I have trained 4-5 pets and got them all to happy with feeding (1-2 pieces) and 1-2 mend pets. make sure you went back and put your glyph of mend pet back in. I noticed on some of my toons the glyphs were removed and some weren't. If you don't have the glyph I would suggest getting it. Hope that helps.
Dreyja Oct 18th 2010 6:48PM
Actually I've been noticing a lot of unhappiness as well. The mounting/porting thing is really odd. They keep going down to like 25% in one go. It's weird.
ladygamertn Oct 18th 2010 3:33PM
I am also seeing my pet's health take a dive when dismounting from the air taxi's and other times when my pet disappears into the ether. They come back at partial health. I am hoping this is a bug...
Radioted Oct 18th 2010 3:56PM
I've been seeing this bug, too, though I was seeing it before the patch, too. It can happen when I'm zoning into something which is a huge pain.
Scott Oct 18th 2010 4:18PM
Seconded.
I've been seeing the mysterious "health drop" for a few weeks before patch 4.0.1 hit, was hoping it would go away - it's still there.
My pets will invariably be at half health when i zone into a random instance group or hop off a taxi. I havent noticed it affecting their happiness though.
The Dewd Oct 18th 2010 4:55PM
I was talking about this over the weekend with the others hunters in my guild. The general consensus is that when a pet respawns (taxi, mount, instance, whatever) it first shows up with its "default" stats and then gets its talents and the master's (your) stats applied.
Assuming that's the case, it's easily explained why it happens but it's no less frustrating. :(
QQinsider Oct 18th 2010 10:47PM
Have you people seriously not seen this bug before? It's been in the game for years, but it definitely has become a lot more noticeable after this patch. It used to happen infrequently, now it happens much more often.
What it seems to be is that there is some kind of delay applying your stats to the pet after it is summoned, and they set the pets hp to full before the scaling instead of after.
Well, on the plus side, maybe they'll actually fix it now if so many people are noticing it.
Chris Nov 5th 2010 4:53AM
I never saw it happen until now: its always been the case that the pet will momentarily have low health (likely loading the scaled stats) but then it jumps to its current health. I've never seen it get stuck on the un-scaled health before, but its very annoying when your pet is tanking an elite and you dismount only to realize he'll probably die soon because he has almost no health -_-
Gnashan Oct 18th 2010 3:37PM
I've been reading every bit of information I can, including your WHU posts as well as info from Elitist Jerks, Arena Junkies, several of the blogs Rilgon references, and virtually any other bit of information I can get my hands on, and between that and my own testing, I can't see how anyone is safely saying that mastery is better.
On a dry run with my gear set up from pre-patch (4 piece T10, all 264 with two 277 pieces and the 258 staff from LK) and gems refitted (Agi, crit, one hit), I could consistently reach 8.5k based on the accuracy of my rotation (using wolf pet for 5% crit), and occasionally hitting and sustaining about 9.1 to 9.3k. The gear setup I've got had me at around 21% haste and 63% crit. Dropping my crit down to 50% (which is about all I could manage via reforging) and pumping into mastery resulted in a consistent loss of between 500 and 800.
I reset everything to its original state and then reforged as much haste as possible into mastery, dropping myself to around 14%, and nearly the exact same loss occurred over multiple trials.
The only thing I actually found to increase my dps was a spot between the two where I'm still sitting around 17-18% haste, around 55% crit, and other stats forged into mastery. It's only in these inbetween states that I've actually seen my dps get as high as 10.5k with far more regular occurrences of 9.1-9.6k with a sustain of at least a minute and a half before I flub my focus somewhere or other (usually due to that new ability queue system).
Even still, it's barely a substantial enough gain with sufficient regularity to say that my particular stat weighting is what's causing it. I could just be having really solid runs through my rotation and not missing beats.
Also, I am accounting for trinket procs and such as well. I only pay attention to DBW procs of the Vrykul or the Taunka (since I assume the 600 agi from the Vrykul is now granting my 1200 AP as per the new rules, which makes it roughly equivalent to the Taunka with the exception of the crit boost. But let's face it, crit's so ridiculously high--especially with Careful Aim on a dummy--that it's not THAT relevant).
I'm genuinely curious to see what other people's conclusions are. As of now, I see a lot of comments in the vein of 'well, I do x and my dps is y, so x must be right' followed by 'well, I do x and my dps is z (and z is a variable that sucks, evidently), so you are wrong and I will flame you'. Unfortunately, none of these really help with anything, and the only analyses I seem to be able to find either say exactly what you've said, or exactly the opposite.
Either way, it's very odd to go from pulling 15.5k on 10 man H-Festergut to only being able to peak at 13k and normalize at 10 to 11. Hunters are too good looking for that nonsense.