Scattered Shots: Patch 4.3 hunter trinket roundup
by Brian Wood 
Dec 15th 2011 at 2:00PM
It's trinkets day here on Scattered Shots, back by popular demand. The number of emails I've been getting about hunter trinkets lately has made me suddenly realize that I have not posted my usual new tier trinket round-up and reevaluation -- and with the new tier of Raid Finder trinkets out, there the decision of when to upgrade is yet more complex.
Trinkets are a lot like the nine support classes in WoW: You know they're useful, but it can be hard to figure out exactly which one is worth using without doing some math. Only unlike the support class players, you always want to have two of them with you. And they don't smell funny, or refuse to heal your pet, or screw up your lovely execution of executions.
Maybe trinkets aren't much like the support classes after all. They're better.
Join me after the cut as we run down the new 4.3 trinkets, compare them to the best of the previous tier's trinkets, and give some thought to the new Raid Finder versions of the trinkets as well.
The trinket short list
The first step in trinket analysis is to give 'em the 'ol sniff test and decide which ones are worth mathing out. For the short list creation, we're going to look at all of the new trinkets that drop from normal raids and add on the best of last tier's trinkets (the Matrix Restabilizer and The Hungerer).
Then we'll run some numbers, take the best of the 4.3 trinkets, and see how the Raid Finder versions compare to the heroic versions of last tier's trinkets.
In the past, we've often seen a lower-tier trinket hold its place across several tiers -- Darkmoon Card: Greatness and Fluid Death -- but they just don't hold up against the itemization available in the last tiers of loot. If you're still wondering if you should use your Fluid Death, the answer is no, if you have access to the newer trinkets. You also don't want to be using Greatness anymore.
The new trinkets
We're at the final tier of content and loot with patch 4.3, and that means that we're getting some of best itemization in the expansion. We have some sweet trinkets available to us, and all of them will be at least equivalent to your heroic 4.2 trinkets at normal level. Here's what we got:
- Kiroptyric Sigil This trinket is giving us 458 haste and procs 2,290 agility for 15 seconds. This looks to be one of the weaker of the 4.3 trinkets.
- Starcatcher Compass This trinket gives us a flat 458 agility at normal level and procs 2,904 haste rating. This should be about equivalent to heroic Matrix Restabilizer; the two are darned close in DPS.
- Vial of Shadows This trinket gives us the flat 458 agility again and procs an extra physical attack. This physical attack scales with your attack power and can crit like a truck. However, it's been fairly widely reported that bosses can indeed dodge this proc even when it comes from a hunter (our ranged attacks normally cannot be dodged). Since we don't use expertise, we have no dodge reduction, so we want to keep in mind that most hunters will lose some of their procs to dodges.Ignoring the dodge, this trinket rocks and the normal version instantly replaces 4.2 trinkets. In practice, it's still better, but I wouldn't replace heroic Matrix Restabilizer with the Raid Finder version of this trinket. With any luck, we'll hear about a hotfix for hunters soon.
- Wrath of Unchaining This trinket procs for 88 agility, stacking up to 10 times to quickly bring us to a bonus 880 agility for the rest of the fight. This trinket is awesome. It's phenomenal and is the hunter BiS trinket. In fact, the Raid Finder version of this trinket is clearly better than the heroic Matrix Restabilizer or heroic The Hungerer. You want this trinket, and you'll have to kill Deathwing to get it.
Here is a general ranking of the trinkets. Keep in mind all the usual disclaimers: Gear is different not just for every spec but for every character, depending on the rest of your gear and your stat weights. That said, with the much greater impact of agility across all specs, gear in Cataclysm is far less wildly different from spec to spec as it was in Wrath. This ranking should apply pretty well to most hunters. If your particular gear setup and spec is different, it shouldn't be too far off. Trinkets are normal raid drops unless otherwise mentioned.
- Wrath of Unchaining (normal)
- Vial of Shadows (assuming no dodges)
- Wrath of Unchaining (Raid Finder)
- Starcatcher Compass (nearly identical to Matrix Restabilizer heroic)
- Matrix Restabilizer (heroic)
- Kiroptyric Sigil
- The Hungerer (heroic)
Scattered Shots is dedicated to helping you learn everything it takes to be a hunter. From leveling your hunter and choosing the best patch 4.2 gear to learning the DPS value of skill, we've got you covered. If you're stuck in one of the nine support classes, why not move up to the big league and play a hunter?
Filed under: Hunter, (Hunter) Scattered Shots
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
arizona Dec 15th 2011 1:17PM
Hi Frostheim,
I want to mention that the Kiroptyric Sigil is an on-use-trinket with a cooldown of 90 seconds only. I changed my Fluid Death for it and always try to arrange the on-use-effect as best as I can with rapid fire or in general aimed shots.
Best wishes and thank you for your fabulous work over the past years, I appreciate it very much!
Everclear Dec 15th 2011 2:31PM
Yup, that's pretty much what I do, albeit on my Rogue. But I'd imagine you could do the same on a Hunter for burn phases, Call of the Wild, engineering glove tinkers, Rapid Fire, etc. Unless you're a Crit Hunter instead of Haste. *shrug*
Microtonal Dec 15th 2011 5:19PM
In the limited testing I did with it (in both target dummy and live-play situations) before selling it back to the VP vendor, Sigil was noticeably weaker than Vial of Shadows even if used on cooldown.
stewiefied Jan 7th 2012 1:27PM
I was just thinking about this. Dragon soul has a lot of fights with mini burn phases (ping pong boss after he absorbs, hagara after lightning/frost phases, and spine on tendons). Would this trinket be worth more on these fights where you can choose when to use that huge agility boost? Compared to a random proc that may proc at times when dps is not as important.
kingoomieiii Dec 15th 2011 2:25PM
Ahhh... just the article I was waiting for.
Daniel Dec 15th 2011 2:29PM
Clearly Arrow of Time doesn't compare to the raid trinkets, but I replaced Ricket's with it. (I have really bad luck with trink drops.) How does Arrow of Time compare against other options? Is it worth spending time farming FL for the Tier 12 trinks, or will Arrow hold me over until I get DS trinks?
kingoomieiii Dec 15th 2011 2:39PM
Arrow of Time is about 20% better than Ricket's, haste and crit being almost equal.
kingoomieiii Dec 15th 2011 2:40PM
Oh, I misread. If you're running firelands anyway, sure, but otherwise, the bump is minimal, unless you pick up normal Matrix.
Mynamehere Dec 15th 2011 3:29PM
I kid you not, I bought the Kiroptyric Sigil last night during raid, and was trying to determine if it was better than my Hungerer trinket - and I found myself saying, "God, I wish Frostheim would put up a trinket post." Get out of my head! :D
Skarn Dec 15th 2011 3:40PM
Thanks for this Frost! This matches up with my own ideas about the trinkets. I expected the Wrath to be the best and the Sigil to be the worst, with the Compass in the middle. I was mostly curious about how the Vial measured up, which seems to still be a bit uncertain.
If I can get my hands on it, I'll see what happens!
GabeCo Dec 15th 2011 3:58PM
How much dps does a MM hunter gain between 10 man and 25 man raiding?
I'm Just starting to get into Raiding this tier (mostly for the Epic Gems & Hunter PVE gear for PVP), and I normally PvP, so I'm starting out raiding in mostly PvP gear.
In the LFR, I pull about 25k DPS, even with the extreme lag. However, I joined a 10man DS PUG the other day, and was going to get kicked for my PvP gear, but I told him i could do 20k DPS (I also trade out my trinkets with PVE ones.). However, I was was kicked after we downed Morchok first try, cause I was only doing 17k DPS. Do the Buffs from 25 man really make that big of a difference?
s.scott.staten Dec 15th 2011 4:04PM
Yes, they do. It's extrmely unlikely you'll get all the beneficial buffs and debuffs in a 10 man group, while in a 25 man, it's very likely you'll get every beneficial buff and debuff.
Joe Dec 15th 2011 4:21PM
Well, in regards to buffs, it really depends exactly which ones are missing from the 10man.
You can get into a 10man that has every buff that is useful to hunters, and you could get into a 10man where all the key hunter ones are missing, or any point inbetween.
So there's a high amount of variability and you can't just say: "in 25man you'll do X dps and in 10man you'll do X-Y dps".
Pyromelter Dec 15th 2011 6:01PM
I can think of a few things that would affect your dps:
loss of 3% damage buff from arcane mage or ret pally
loss of 5% haste buff from moonkin or shaman
loss of 8% "curse of elements" type debuff (which you can provide if you have a fire breath or lightning breath casting pet)
loss of 5% crit debuff on boss
loss of sunder armor type debuff on boss
So if you lose a bunch of these going from 25 to 10, your dps could be affected quite a bit.
pyratedude Dec 16th 2011 6:35AM
@pyromelter: the 5% haste buff from boomkins/spriests/shaman only refers to spell haste. Hunters care about the 10% physical attack speed buff given by shaman, frost dk, and sv hunters. And is a very crucial one for MM hunters. There is also the 4% increased physical dmg buff from frost dk's, combat rogues and arms warriors, and also ravager pets. the 30% bleed damage from ferals, arms warriors, sub rogues and pets are also quite important for MM. I find MM to be overly buff dependent, and have switched to SV in my 10man group due to our shaman not raiding anymore and lacking my haste buff. SV is rather less buff dependant, and does well if you are in a caster heavy 10 man group.
Hobstadt Dec 15th 2011 4:18PM
I couldn't agree more about your evaluation of the support classes and those that play them. We definitely need to be able to solo group content better. It's such a huge nerf that our pets can't replace main tanks like they used to, and that we can't use healing gear to boost Mend Pet any longer. If Blizzard fixes this, lets our pets be gaining from all of our stats, and gives us a healing tree like some of the lesser dps classes have, maybe we could at least raid with nothing but hunters? Especially if they stop hurting us by forcing us to wear mail only. Come to think of it. since in MoP only guns, bows and crossbows are hunter weapons (which is a huge nerf, they've given all our melee and caster weapons to lesser people, and they never even gave us maces despite years of demands that everything is a hunter weapon) we should demand that Blizzard not only allows us to wear plate but also lets us wear ANY armor class while still having the mail boost. Since our pets can replace every buffs that the support classes gives us, if we get a healing tree (sub, i'm looking at you), and if we can wear tank gear and have out pets gain all our stats, then we can have all-hunter raiding guilds which would be awesome.
As an extra bonus, it gives us a legitime reason to /gkick all the gnome players, because, you know, we are only keeping them for their playing skills now anyway? It's absolutely not because we enjoy spending time with people desiring to be childlike, small, sweet and cute in a game where everything is about killing as fast and effectively as possible, right? Right!
Drahken Dec 15th 2011 4:42PM
Since you mention stat weights, does anyone has a link or list of solid hunter stat weights. I only just realized that I had WoWReforge and Female Dwarf operating under different weights (and in fact Female Dwarf's weights change every time I switch an item. It was fluctuating between 1.5 and 2.28 for haste. That's an awfully large difference). I could just go with WoWReforge's but it has crit higher than haste, so I'm not sure I trust it. I'm also not sure I'm making any sense.
Teaspoon Dec 15th 2011 6:05PM
The thing about stat weights is that the value of every stat varies based on what your other stats are at. For example, your average DPS will be (1+crit%)*(whatever your DPS would be if you had 0 crit), but your DPS-with-zero-crit depends on your weapon, attack power, haste and mastery.
Also, the contribution from haste in particular often has a staircase shape, where getting that one extra point of haste will add an extra dot tick or allow an extra medium-shot to be squeezed in between cooldowns of a big shot, so it leaps up by a large amount and then goes fairly flat until the next big leap. I'm guessing Female Dwarf gives its stat weights based on how much damage you would get by adding another 10 of each stat so if you're getting a high weight for haste it's probably because you're only a few points short of the next big step.
Drahken Dec 15th 2011 9:24PM
Ah. The haste plateau effect. I didn't realize that's what I was looking at there. I've been going by stat weights for a couple years now, and I never knew they changed like this. Thanks. Since I've seen the weight for a single stat change by up to 2/3, I guess that means I just have to plug every variation in and see which one nets the highest.
ril-gania Dec 15th 2011 4:50PM
Maybe it is worth mentionning that the Vial of Shadows is very awesome for BM hunters with their 30% extra AP. I believe that it is very desireable for us despite the dodge buff, because the alternative (Starcatcher Comapass) doesn't offer such a great proc for BM. Of course it's sweet, but heck, haste hardly changes anything for us like it does for MMs where it's significant.
I for one will go for the Vial no matter what (and make tickets every ID to report the dodge bug if necessary) and leave the Compass to our MM