What meta to use at 85 as Surv

[Rabian]

I have been having a hard time deciding which meta to put in my engineering helm, the 54 crit/3% more crit dmg one, or the 54 mastery/run speed increase one. Normally I'd go with the crit one, but its requirement is that you have more blue gems than red gems....which is really counterintuitive for a dps class. The mastery one had pretty easy requirements, it was like one yellow and one blue I think. So, the crit one would probably do more damage on its own, but at the sacrifice of having to use blue hybrid gems. The mastery gem is probably a bit behind the crit one, but it won't create a nightmare of having to constantly make sure your blue gem count is high enough when you get a new item. Which meta will you guys be using?

[Deleted]

Good question, the only useful meta for melee dps/hunters has a ridiculous requrement. The only chose you have is mastery/minor speed one or to go with a meta that has more pvp usage the pve.

[taekvideo]

The crit meta is having its requirements changed back soon.

[S7orm]

mastery, the 54 crit maybe will be used on topend when you can afford "trashing" few gems for that 3% damage

[harky]

As far as I know it's still Thundering Skyflare until the meta requirements are fixed. Then it will be level 80 Relentless as there is no 85 Agi/Crit damage meta, only the much worse Crit/Crit damage.

[Kripparrian]

the fleet meta should come out ahead of thundering. plus you get the run speed.

chaotic is best if your gear has few/no sockets in it

[harky]

Fleet will only come out ahead in very specific cases. You need to check at +480 and at +0 and see the gain as Haste is too unpredictable to get a real-world model. Thundering averages 64 haste vs 54 mastery, but because you don't ever just gain +64 haste it's worth more than it appears to be. I have yet to find a setup as SV where Fleet is better for anything except the runspeed. Chaotic is better if you have very few gem slots though. Sadly I'm already at 9 gem slots and not willing to go for the pitiful Blue>Red activation and give up all that Agi..

[Renley]

But mastery>haste. So I'd still say 54 mastery in the end is much better than the haste proc. Granted, I am using the haste proc until I can xmute/afford the fleet.

[Monkeyofcode]

Personally ill be using the 54 crit/3% more crit dmg one as right now i need the hit gems. But once i need less hit gems. The mastery one is quite nice for surv.

[harky]

But mastery>haste. So I'd still say 54 mastery in the end is much better than the haste proc. Granted, I am using the haste proc until I can xmute/afford the fleet.

Except that's not accurate at all. Mastery > Haste assuming Haste is at a poor value. Haste > Mastery if you can attain a good value. However, once at a good value addition Haste < Mastery as more haste would give you a new poor value. Haste for Hunters has a very small amount of linear scaling (auto-shot), but is otherwise completely non-linear. So saying Mastery > Haste is wrong without context. In most cases gaining +64 Haste would be inferior to gaining +54 Mastery, however gaining +480 Haste temporarily is very likely to give much better scaling than a static +54 Crit.

That said the runspeed on the meta amounts to +10 Agi as you switch Boot enchants. So if that is a high priority to you, then Fleet is better until the Meta requirements on Relentless are fixed.

[Xerdux]

if you are SV, you only need about 7% haste to always make sure you get 3 cobra shots and get a good synergy with black arrow etc

[Renley]

Except that's not accurate at all. Mastery > Haste assuming Haste is at a poor value. Haste > Mastery if you can attain a good value. However, once at a good value addition Haste < Mastery as more haste would give you a new poor value. Haste for Hunters has a very small amount of linear scaling (auto-shot), but is otherwise completely non-linear. So saying Mastery > Haste is wrong without context. In most cases gaining +64 Haste would be inferior to gaining +54 Mastery, however gaining +480 Haste temporarily is very likely to give much better scaling than a static +54 Crit.

That said the runspeed on the meta amounts to +10 Agi as you switch Boot enchants. So if that is a high priority to you, then Fleet is better until the Meta requirements on Relentless are fixed.

Even so, 480 haste when it pops isn't that much. Still keeps a 1.6s cobra shot, give or take. I find it to be marginal, personally. I'd much rather have the mastery where it applies to almost all of my shots. But I guess I see what your saying.

[harky]

Keep in mind that you will get additional Arcane Shots throughout fights as well, even if you can't get 4x CoS in between ES. It's part of why glyphing Arcane Shot and going for Haste works out so well.

[Renley]

Keep in mind that you will get additional Arcane Shots throughout fights as well, even if you can't get 4x CoS in between ES. It's part of why glyphing Arcane Shot and going for Haste works out so well.

Eh, I dont think thats right. Or it doesnt sound right to me. I hardly arcane shot because 1) its damage is terrible compared to cobra 2) between explosive shot/black arrow/traps, I dont have the focus for it. I've done upwards of 16k in my gear with this method. I dunno, maybe haste+arcane is good, but I can't see it being better than mastery.

[harky]

Arcane Shot and Cobra Shot scale at the same rate with Mastery. That said until you get very high haste Arcane Shot is quite a bit higher DPS. If you're at say 1.6s on Cobra then your Cobra needs to hit 60% harder than Arcane for Cobra to be better. If you look at the scaling this is completely impossible. Arcane also scales better with AP. My Arcane Shot hits for almost the same as my Cobra Shot, with Cobra hitting for a bit less than Arcane (~8k vs ~9k non-crit). That makes Arcane Shot about 70% better.

[Mehveliina]

Don't forget, that with mastery/runspeed you can also swap your boots enchant into agility rather than agi/speed.

[Renley]

Arcane Shot and Cobra Shot scale at the same rate with Mastery. That said until you get very high haste Arcane Shot is quite a bit higher DPS. If you're at say 1.6s on Cobra then your Cobra needs to hit 60% harder than Arcane for Cobra to be better. If you look at the scaling this is completely impossible. Arcane also scales better with AP. My Arcane Shot hits for almost the same as my Cobra Shot, with Cobra hitting for a bit less than Arcane (~8k vs ~9k non-crit). That makes Arcane Shot about 70% better.

Er, I thought arcane wasn't affected by mastery? Arcane=\=elemental?

Also, my arcane vs cobra: 7.5k hit vs 11.5k hit.

[harky]

Elemental = Magical. It works on everything except physical damage. Black Arrow for example is Shadow, which is technically shadow element damage.

Go to a dummy and actually test your Arcane vs Cobra. Those numbers look completely off. Unglyphed your Cobra and Arcane should be about the same. Glyphed and Arcane will hit noticeably harder. Go to a dummy and just hit Cobra -> Arcane for a few minutes. Cobra will benefit from Careful Aim so it will crit much more, but compare the actual damage and you'll find Arcane hits slightly harder. It also scales better with AP.

Though even at 7.5 vs 11.5 that's only 53% more damage, which means Arcane Shot is higher DPS despite doing less damage per shot.

[Renley]

Elemental = Magical. It works on everything except physical damage. Black Arrow for example is Shadow, which is technically shadow element damage.

Go to a dummy and actually test your Arcane vs Cobra. Those numbers look completely off. Unglyphed your Cobra and Arcane should be about the same. Glyphed and Arcane will hit noticeably harder. Go to a dummy and just hit Cobra -> Arcane for a few minutes. Cobra will benefit from Careful Aim so it will crit much more, but compare the actual damage and you'll find Arcane hits slightly harder. It also scales better with AP.

Though even at 7.5 vs 11.5 that's only 53% more damage, which means Arcane Shot is higher DPS despite doing less damage per shot.

Those were from Bastion of Twlight. So had raid buffs/flask/etc. :\
Spent 4 mins on boss dummy, self buffed. 7.3k arc shot vs 7.8k cobra shot.

[harky]

You need a larger sample size from raids. Arcane Shot actually scales better than Cobra Shot, so there's no reason for it to be hitting lower. Like I said I'm used to seeing right around 8k for Cobra, right around 9k for Arcane. That is glyphed though, so I would expect them to be dead even unglyphed.

Still, you're talking about a 1.6s cast vs a 1 second GCD. 7.3 Arcane vs 7.8k Cobra is 7,300 DPS vs 4,875 DPS in Arcane's favor. With raid buffs that should widen as you'll be gaining AP and Arcane gets higher AP scaling than Cobra. Also at 7.3 vs 7.8 if you were to glyph Arcane it would become 8.175, meaning it would be higher than Cobra, while still being 60% faster. You claimed yoy're basically ignoring Arcane, so I would assume the low numbers from Bastion are due to not using it as often when you have procs up, which makes it look lower. However, if you were to compare the Cobra Shot damage that occurred in the same time-frame you'd probably find Arcane beating it on damage per cast.