A guide to ArP for hunters!

[Vongimi]

THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED TO REMOVE OUTDATED INFO AS AGILITY IS NOW BETTER POINT FOR POINT THEN ARP UNTIL LATE T9 OR EVEN T10

Though everything in the post now is accurate, I edited out the parts that were no longer relevant.

NEW INFO: Turns out gemming ArP is not the way to go until you have a very large amount of ArP simply from gear. This magical number, if there is even one, has not yet been determined by the theorycrafting community. It HAS been determined that at some point ArP will become better, such as the EJ poster I quote below:

I am at 1132 ArP unbuffed (1217 in raid) and my spreadsheet shows ArP better than agi and agi/crit gems. Im not sure at what point ArP becomes better, but it seems that ArP is indeed the way to gem at high values and/or you don't have Mjolnir/Grim Toll.

---- EDITED ORIGINAL POST----

Im seeing more and more people on these forums asking about if they should switch to ArP build or not, or if they have enough ArP, or different aspects of how ArP works. So heres a nice guide for it. First things first, the actual HARD ArP cap:

1400 = 100% ArP

So the point of the ArP build, is to get to this cap so you are reducing the armor by as much as you can. Going halfway for the ArP build does not increase your DPS, if you arent near this cap, gem agi and stay with it. This doesnt mean avoid ArP on your gear, just dont gem it until you can make it more effective then Agility, which comes with capping it. Info on that above. ArP works in such a way that the more you have, the better each individual point gets, as armor itself scales the opposite way. Also, this doesnt mean you are reducing it by a pure 100%, making the damage reduction of the boss 0%. You cannot reduce the armor to 0%, but to a very small percentage above 0%. This does not mean that 99.9% ArP you will still get the same effect though, there is a certain percentage of the bosses armor that is "unpenatratable", and 100% penetrates 100% of the "penetratable" armor.

It is no longer useful to gem ArP till the "soft cap" of either Runestone or Grim Toll

The Role of Sunder/FF in ArP

If both sunder (or expose armor) and fairie fire are up on the boss, it reduces the enemy armor by 25%. Key word: REDUCES. Not penetrate. Thus, the bosses total armor goes down. So when 10000 armor is reduced by 25% it becomes 7500. Your ArP will reduce that 7500 by a percentage, not the 10000. Which means that, since the "unpenatratable armor" is based on a percentage of total armor, the bosses unpenetratable armor will go down as well. ArP spec relies on these 2 debuffs being put on the target to be effective.

Rotation Change

Now most assume that the dropping of Arcane shot has to deal with going to the ArP build, which is not true. Even Agi stacking hunters should drop arcane shot at a certain point. This point is roughly ~50% raid buffed crit. It doesnt have to do with ArP (though that certainly affects it), it has to deal with the Piercing Shots talent. With a certain amount of crit, your average steady will do more damage then your average arcane shot, due to the fact that steady crits deal 30% extra damage through Piercing Shots, which does not effect Arcane Shot.

[Sartuk]

The notion of "speccing ArP" is flawed in the first place. As you even mentioned, the only part that is spec reliant has more to do with Crit than anything (although, again, ArP makes the break point happen sooner.)

I will also say that you do not need to go towards the 1400 cap (either via trinkets or no trinket) for ArP to be a great stat, though. It's still good to *gear* (but not gem) for ArP pretty much all the time, since it becomes your second best stat (behind Agility, and not including hit) quite quickly.

[Vongimi]

The notion of "speccing ArP" is flawed in the first place. As you even mentioned, the only part that is spec reliant has more to do with Crit than anything (although, again, ArP makes the break point happen sooner.)

I will also say that you do not need to go towards the 1400 cap (either via trinkets or no trinket) for ArP to be a great stat, though. It's still good to *gear* (but not gem) for ArP pretty much all the time, since it becomes your second best stat (behind Agility, and not including hit) quite quickly.

When i say start stacking, that means gemming. And yes, "speccing ArP" was poor word choice, changing it.

[Sartuk]

When i say start stacking, that means gemming. And yes, "speccing ArP" was poor word choice, changing it.

Yup, again, I'm just being a bit nit-picky. Very good guide though, should help answer a lot of questions.

[Vongimi]

Report to get this stickied, I dont want to have to go find it everytime I need to explain ArP rules to someone on this forum. :P

[Fahtrim]

This is great...........

Grim Toll - 1400 needed arp - 612 arp from proc = 788 ArP needed from gear
Runestone - 1400 needed arp - 665 arp from proc = 735 ArP needed from gear


But the thing that people really need is the hard number at which to start "Gemming" armor pen

I played with the 92a spreadsheet for a while and I can't seem to justify Gemming ArP over Agi at all with my current gear and Grim toll.

I don't know what the number is, but after the ArP nerf, almost all hunters should gem agi from what I've seen.

Armor pen is a nice thing to have and the trinkets are a huge dps gain.........but think if that trinket was proccing 612 or 665 agility...........

Thoughts?

[Vongimi]

There is still a point when 1 ArP becomes greater then 1 Agi, even after the nerf. And I answered your question in the original post, you gem for ArP when you can hit the cap with said gemming. Gemming ArP doesnt mean you stack nothing but ArP in gems. For example, I still have some agi gems, I only gemmed up to that 735 ArP soft cap (I have runestone) and the rest are Agi gems, which is like maybe 1 or 2. Before the nerf I had almost full Agi gems but was still at the soft ArP cap with Runestone.

[kesukei]

The more players persue 100% ArP the more likely it is that blizzard will just completely nerf the concept (which we know is already on the table for Cata anyway). I'm not advising against it, but I'd consider it before you invest a lot of money regemming because its entirely possible 3.3 or a later patch could totally dick on the ArP mechanics and you could be forced to respecc and regem.

[Vongimi]

Well 3.3 itself is not for a long time, and with epic gems only costing 10k honor, i have only bought like 3 epic gems since 3.2 came out and ive regemmed 2 characters, and regemmed my hunter 3 times. So if its a DPS upgrade, then do it! If you dont have the setup for it, dont!

[Fahtrim]

There is still a point when 1 ArP becomes greater then 1 Agi, even after the nerf. And I answered your question in the original post, you gem for ArP when you can hit the cap with said gemming. Gemming ArP doesnt mean you stack nothing but ArP in gems. For example, I still have some agi gems, I only gemmed up to that 735 ArP soft cap (I have runestone) and the rest are Agi gems, which is like maybe 1 or 2. Before the nerf I had almost full Agi gems but was still at the soft ArP cap with Runestone.

I played with the 92a spreadsheet and I have Grim toll. I gemmed up to 790 ArP and it is showing a dps loss over having those gems as agi and leaving my passive armor pen at 710. Maybe the spreadsheet is off, but I haven't read that anywhere lately. That's why I thought/think the 2 numbers are at different spots. I could be wrong tho.

[Vongimi]

I played with the 92a spreadsheet and I have Grim toll. I gemmed up to 790 ArP and it is showing a dps loss over having those gems as agi and leaving my passive armor pen at 710. Maybe the spreadsheet is off, but I haven't read that anywhere lately. That's why I thought/think the 2 numbers are at different spots. I could be wrong tho.

Well Grim toll is a fairly weak one, i myself would not suggest switching to ArP with Grim Toll.... Mind giving me your armory so I can look at femaledwarf.com with your character? Its the same thing as the spreadsheet, just put into a website with a different layout. The entire thing itself is based off Shandara's spreadsheet, uses all the same equations and everything.

[Fahtrim]

Well Grim toll is a fairly weak one, i myself would not suggest switching to ArP with Grim Toll.... Mind giving me your armory so I can look at femaledwarf.com with your character? Its the same thing as the spreadsheet, just put into a website with a different layout. The entire thing itself is based off Shandara's spreadsheet, uses all the same equations and everything.

Guglier on US server Sargeras, feel free to look it up.

Yeah maybe with Runestone it changes when to gem for armor pen. If you come up with anything that hooks me up better I'm more than willing to change things up.

Pet name = Wolf

My alternate spec is my guild 25 man raid spec.
Haven't renamed it yet

[Vongimi]

Hmm... I was assuming that after the ArP nerf it was still an upgrade over agility, turns out its not! Now i look stupid, fun! Lol, anyways did some work on yours, and you see a small decrease in damage for gemming to ArP. I actually went back and looked at my own character, and even I should be Agi gemmed! Ya... 4th regem since 3.2! Anyways, ArP will eventually come out on top again, but its not going to come until BiS t9 or even not till t10. Heres a nice post from EJ forums that sums it up.

You have to remember that ArPen is not the only stat you have, and its value depends on everything else. For a lower ilevel weapon, or for less AP/crit it is perfectly understandable that ArPen might be a dps decrease. The key word here is scaling. The better your other stats are, the more valuable it becomes to invest towards the ArPen cap. Don't focus on a ArPen alone as the magical stat to boost yyour dps through the roof. For ilevel 219 gear, it's obviously better to gem Agility, since most of the stuff is so packed with ArPen that it becomes lacking in other stats. For ilevel 245, where you find about the same amount of ArPen per individual piece, the stat budget difference is spent on AP and crit (either directly or through Agi and Int). And it should go without saying that the harder your shots hit, the bigger the gain from ignoring armor is.

Short version is: there is no magical number for gemming ArPen, regardless of what the hard and soft caps are.

[Infs]

Recently switched back to agi gemming, back from soft ARP cap + GT. The spreadsheet showed a 20dps gain gemming full agi, and when I put my SV spec in te spreadsheet it actually showed a 200dps gain as survival over MM. Now that I'm full agi again its also easy for me to swap specs for example in 10 mans etc.

[Vongimi]

The post itself has been updated, sorry for the confusion! Still a good guide for effectively using ArP as a hunter though!

[Sartuk]

I played with the 92a spreadsheet and I have Grim toll. I gemmed up to 790 ArP and it is showing a dps loss over having those gems as agi and leaving my passive armor pen at 710. Maybe the spreadsheet is off, but I haven't read that anywhere lately. That's why I thought/think the 2 numbers are at different spots. I could be wrong tho.

You only have 4 gem slots? You should be able to gain at least 160+ from gemming for ArP.

[Vongimi]

You only have 4 gem slots? You should be able to gain at least 160+ from gemming for ArP.

The way we gammed arp (before nerf) was to gem TO the soft cap, beyond it, ArP wasnt as valuable as agi.

[Organoth]

Thanks for the detailed guide. Not being in a serious raiding guild I get griefed but stuck up Hunters for stacking Agi and being Surv spec'd. Although I see some of them with +20 hit gems and 3 points in Focused Aim....

[Sartuk]

The way we gammed arp (before nerf) was to gem TO the soft cap, beyond it, ArP wasnt as valuable as agi.

I wasn't following the conversation as well as I should of been. The fact is, though, that this nerf has been out for a good long while now and it's pretty shocking more people don't have a darn clue about how ArP works since it. I guess I'm just assuming some things are general knowledge when they're really not.

[Fahtrim]

I wasn't following the conversation as well as I should of been. The fact is, though, that this nerf has been out for a good long while now and it's pretty shocking more people don't have a darn clue about how ArP works since it. I guess I'm just assuming some things are general knowledge when they're really not.

Yes there are a lot of people who still think they should gem ArP. I think the number for gemming ArP is very very very high now. You would have to spreadsheet it to be sure for your gear, but as a rule, gem AGI unless you are in the top 3-5% geared MM hunters then go research to see if you have the gear to support gemming ArP yet.

Gemming ArP does make even the top hunters more of a one trick pony tho, Agi will give better overall on multiple targets still imo.