Being a Hunter - The ABC and my D's

[Axcy]

***** This guide is intended for 3.3.0a and is copyrighted by "Axcy's International multi-ethnic Brown Agency" - Also known as "Axcy's IMBA" *****

Disclaimer: This was a guide mostly intended for our internal guild forum, but I thought I might as well put it out there so anyone else could benefit as well. If you find any mistakes, please tell me and I'll correct them ASAP

The basics

• A basic guide to a survival hunter and things about what stat u need and so forth can be read on Blizzards forums, which will basically take you through all you need to know in regards to talents, gear, glyphs, rotation and so forth. This thread can be viewed here
  
  If you want to go the MM route I suggest you take a look at this thread on the Blizzards forums, which takes you through all the important things in terms of MM.
  
  This link will take you to MMO-Champion hunter facts, which contain some good to the point information about different aspects.

Quick list of stat breakdowns

• Agility, Provides 1.04 AP and .012% crit per point.
• Int Provides 1.04 AP and 15.6 mana per point.
• Armour penetration rating, decreases the target's armour - Sunders, Fearie fire and so on reduce effective armor but you still need 100% ArP to ignore their armor completely.
• Haste Rating, increases your attack speed and reduces your cast times, sadly for a hunter it does not affect our Global Cooldown of 1.5 sec.
• Crit Rating, increase your critical strike chance.
• AP, provides AP.

Pre-raid gear - The best you can get before raiding( As of patch 3.3)

• Click here to see the list

Best DPS builds:

• Best DPS builds can always be seen on the EJ forums.
  
  Current the Best DPS build:
  
  1. Marksmen - However u should be in End-game gear to make it worth ur while imho.
  2. Survival - If your used to it stick with it till end-game.
  3. BM - I wouldn't recommend it, but hey, knock urself out ^^
     Always remember: It's not just which spec you have, but how well you play the spec you've chosen. Being a MM wont assure you a higher DPS, if you play better as a survival.

What do I have?

• Spec: Axcy's Armory

Usefull links

• Femaledwarf - Online version of the hunter Spreadsheet(Calculate DPS increase by gear changes and more)
• Hunterloot - A gear guide tailored for your specific char if you don't wanna use spreadsheets
• MaxDPS - A gear guide tailored for your specific char if you don't wanna use spreadsheets - Don't trust too much

My list of Macro's

• Here's a list of the macro's I use - Kill command is included in most of them, as it's should be cast as soon as it's up. Simple macro's as pet care and such are left out.
  
  Explosive shot macro - Will account for the LnL and make explosive shot usable.
  

  #showtooltip Explosive shot
  /cast Kill Command
  /cast Explosive Shot
  /qt ESDot 2

  Steady with kill
  

  #showtooltip Steady Shot
  /cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
  /cast steady shot

  Wyvern with emote - Note: Mouse-over usage!
  

  #showtooltip Wyvern Sting
  /cast [target=mouseover,exists][] Wyvern Sting;
  /cast Wyvern Sting
  /say Go to sleep %t !

  All-in-one melee - A Lazy button, there are better things out there
  

  /castsequence reset=3/target/combat Wing Clip, Raptor Strike
  /cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
  /cast Mongoose Bite
  /startattack
  /script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

  Aimed/Multi - Holding down shift casts multi
  

  #showtooltip AimedMulti
  /cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
  /cast [mod:shift] Multi-shot; Aimed Shot

  Kill shot - Will cancel a casting of a midway Steady shot if kill shot becomes available
  

  #showtooltip Kill Shot
  /stopcasting
  /cast Kill Shot
  /script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

  
  Marksman macro's - Make silencing shot a part of every shot
  
  Aimed/Multi - Holding down shift casts multie
  

  #showtooltip aimed shot
  #show aimed shot 
  /cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
  /cast Silencing Shot
  /cast [mod:shift] Multi-shot; Aimed Shot

  Serpent sting
  

  #showtooltip Serpent sting
  /cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
  /cast Silencing Shot
  /cast Serpent Sting

  Readiness and rapidfire - Pops rapidfire and then readiness, after 15 secs I pop rapidfire manually again
  

  #showtooltip readiness
  /cast [target=pettarget, exists] Kill Command
  /cast Rapid Fire
  /cast Call of the Wild
  /cast Readiness

  Steady shot
  

  #showtooltip Steady Shot
  /cast [target=pettarget,exists] Kill Command
  /cast Silencing Shot
  /cast Steady Shot

---------- Post added 06-16-2010 at 04:37 PM ----------

Gemming

A gemming guide if your MM or Surv you can follow the gem guide below. The guide is based on the following post on the EJ forums.

Surv and MM(Agility)

• Blue sockets: +10 stats "Nightmare tear" in ONE blue socket to activate Meta bonus. Choose the blue slot which gives the best socket bonus - Go with +agi after that.
• Red sockets: +20 agi in Red slots(Surprise eh? )
• Yellow sockets:
  
  • Gem up yellow sockets with +hit gems until you're hit capped at 263. If you have points in "Focused aim" the hit cap gets reduced by 33 for each point.
  • If the socket bonus is good -> "+4 agi, +6 crit, +12 AP or +6 ArP" socket a +10 agi / +10 crit in them.
  • If the socket bonus is below the stated above get a +20 agi.

[/COLOR]MM - ArP build - 1400 ArP to reach the cap.

• Blue sockets: +10 stats "Nightmare tear" in ONE blue socket to activate Meta bonus. Choose the blue slot which gives the best socket bonus - Go with +ArP after that.
• Red sockets: +20 ArP
• Yellow sockets:
  
  • Gem +20 ArP
  • Gem up yellow sockets with +hit gems if needed until you're hit capped at 263.
    If you have points in "Focused aim" the hit cap gets reduced by 33 for each point. In all honesty you shouldn't need hit gems or enchants with the "Focused aim" talent coupled with the hit from end-game gear.

---------- Post added 06-16-2010 at 04:37 PM ----------


Marksman - ArP or Agility?

Questions and answers

• Q: Uh uh! Mr. Axcy I wanna go ArP cuz I wanna pew pew everything and have a larger e-peen!
  A: Well that's all good laddy, but it's actually more technical than that - Read below for explanations.
  
  Q: Why do people switch to ArP instead of agility?
  A: To get higher DPS.
  
  Q: What is the ArP hardcap?
  A: 1400 ArP
  
  Q: Is ArP build always better than a agi build?
  A: NO!!! ArP allows you higher DPS, however you will get severely punished if you bad at managing your movement. As ArP a lot of your dmg comes from your psychical shots e.g. Auto-shot and Steady shot, if you suck at managing your movement, you will be punished, where the Agility build is more forgiving and easier to maintain high dps while on the move.
  Secondly with ArP build you need to get "Piercing shots" ticking on the target before you start dishing out the nice dmg, while this isn't the biggest issue with the agility build - So on fights with a lot of switching to adds you will see less DPS than a agility build.
  
  To be frank - It's actually a DPS loss to switch to gemming ArP below a certain threshold, which is usually around 700-800 ArP from gear alone - However this is dependent on your gear so the switchover point will vary from person to person.
  
  The general rule is that you want to switch to ArP when the spreadsheets show you that +1 ArP will yield you a higher dps pr. point than +1 agility(Or when they are very close to each other) - And in general when you gem ArP you really want to be able to hit the hardcap or be very near it.
  
  Do keep in mind that when you gem ArP you loose the flexibility of switching back to Survival and at the same time some usefulness in PvP, as ArP usually isn't a stat you wanna go for in PvP. Other than that as explained above, multi-target isn't your thing and neither is dps'ing on the move - You want to move in small increments to be sure your autoshot goes off(Get a addon like Quartz that has a swing timer built in).
  
  Q: Ups! I actually switched to ArP too early :/
  A: GZ, your actually gimping ur dps now and thus doing lower DPS than you could be doing - You basically have two choices.
  
  1. Switch back to Agility gemming untill you have gear with more ArP and then switch to ArP
  2. Make a list of specific items you need and pray to the loot gods.
  Remember if your low on ArP you can use the Hearty Rhino(40 ArP food) instead of Fish feasts and Elixir of Armor Penetration(45 Pen) + Elixir of Mighty Thoughts(45 intellect) instead of a Flask of endless rage - Yes it's a lot more expensive especially on wipe nights, but it comes with the territory.
  
  Q: Hey! This ilvl 245 item has ArP, screw this ilvl 271 item!
  A: No! You don't want to start downgrading in order to reach the ArP cap. A upgrade is a upgrade, which should yield more DPS. Use the spreadsheets or femaledwarf to calculate you gearlist.

So when do I want to Gem for ArP?
You want to gem for ArP when +1 ArP will yield you a higher dps pr. point than +1 agility with your stats.

Load you char into femaledwarf.com and if you don't know how check here:

• http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/...-spreadsheets/

A bit further down you'll see your stat weightings looking something like this:


When looking at the "Stat weight" column ArP should show as a higher DPS increase than 1 point of agility - If it's lower your probably best off stacking agility for now until you have more ArP from gear alone.
In the above picture +1 agility will yield 1.816 DPS, while +1 ArP will yield 1.637 DPS - Therefore this person is probably best off stacking agility for now.


Further reading
Some links to understand the whole ArP issue in greater detail.

• http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/...en-vs-agility/
• http://www.wow.com/2010/03/15/scatte...ars/#continued

[Lysah]

I support this, perhaps there will be one less thread asking about gemming ArP in the future.

[Thereign]

MM - ArP build - 1400 ArP to reach the cap.[*]Blue sockets: +10 stats "Nightmare tear" in ONE blue socket to activate Meta bonus. Choose the blue slot which gives the best socket bonus - Go with +ArP after that.
[*]Red sockets: +20 ArP
[*]Yellow sockets:

• Gem +20 ArP
  
• Gem up yellow sockets with +hit gems if needed until you're hit capped at 263.
  If you have points in "Focused aim" the hit cap gets reduced by 33 for each point. In all honesty you shouldn't need hit gems or enchants with the "Focused aim" talent coupled with the hit from end-game gear.

Should probably focus more on the factor that when gemming arp, you really must avoid gemming hit, as much as possible. If you have to gem hit, you very likely will not hit the arp cap.

As for the specs, I feel like you should go into a little more detail, rather than pointing to EJ. To me, they have always been a bit slow in updating their specs, and as I last recall, haven't updated MM since 3.2. If you would just show a few builds of 7/57/7 for MM, and explain the spread of points between IHM, ISS, RR, and FA, then people have the ability to make intelligent spec decisions on their own, rather than seeing the hunter with 3/3 FA because the most geared hunter on his server does it, so obviously it is the best spec.

Other than that, I really like the chunk on ArP, it will cut down on the ever-present "HAY GUISE DO I GEM ARP" threads, although to be perfectly blunt, I feel like the rest of the post has been covered in the sticky, with a bit more detail and focus. Clean up a bit of the grammar here, and then make it a sticky. GOGO LYSAH