Armor Penetration vs. Agility, Redux!
November 6, 2009Armor penetration or agility? I’m going to give you the rules of thumb.
- Never go ArP if you’re not MM.
- If your gear has less than about 350 ArP from gear (not including gems or a trinket proc), then you should use arcane shot taking improved arcane shot talent, as well as gem agility.
- If your gear has more than 350ish ArP (this amount changes based on how much crit and AP you have), but less than 850 (again, not including gems or a trinket proc), then you should continue to gem agility, but drop arcane shot from your rotation, and use the improved arcane shot points somewhere else. To see whether this is a DPS increase, you need to use a DPS calculator for your spec and gear.
- If your gear has over 850 ArP (again, not including gems or a trinket proc) and you don’t mind being a bit of a “one trick pony” (a term Tobin at EJ coined to mean that you don’t AOE or DPS while moving well), then you can gem ArP and will get a DPS increase.
These are not going to be accurate for everyone, but they will be most of the time. I’m going to reserve the bottom of this post for exceptions to the rules.
euripidesoutdps
jurgwena
Faeghleis
lemli
eidotrope
My understanding was that, if you wanted to go the ArP route, you needed to have an ArP proc trinket, like Mjolnir’s Runestone, and then gem to get your ArP to cap when your trinket procs. Are you suggesting that you don’t need the trinket, just a ridiculous amount of ArP?
That trick won’t work any more- not since the nerf. At least, according to my calculations.
I had around 350 arp. On DPS spreadsheet i get about 30 more dps if i take arcane shot out the rotation and replace it with hunters mark 3/3. Ive done some more tests now though cus 30 dps didnt seem worth it and the best build I can get is http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#cxbZ0eqoRhzGIsguAox00b. The 1 point from hunters mark is a filler you can move to anywhere you like.
Improved hunter’s mark is actually an incredible DPS increase, but when you use the web based calculator (femaledwarf.com) and click “best available buffs”, you’ll get it from there, which assumes that someone else is doing it. In my case, we have another hunter who takes that talent (and glyphs for it as well).
As for the marked for death thing- I had heard that steady shot was bugged and you could get the bonus without the glyph, but it’s clearly an unintended change and I am always leery about using those for DPS increases.
Ok thanks a lot. I forgot about the best ava buffs thing. Ill rerun it through and have a look, thanks alot.
You have made my short straw spec look good now, ty! :)
Can i ask a question please its not really related but id like to get it cleared up. Does marked for death and steady shot glyph stack, ive been told it doesnt.
They do stack.
Also, marked for death increases the critical strike damage bonus by 10% where Steady shot glyph increase all of steadies damage by 10%.
Currently there is a bug where you get the effects of the steady shot glyph when you have at least 1 talent point in marked for death even if you don’t have the glyph. This is assuming the target is marked. So right now they stack in the sense that you get both benefits, but you don’t need the glyph if you’re specced into it.
Reports from PTR indicate this is likely fixed in 3.3 but it’s been tested repeatedly on the live servers and as of recent test reports it’s still broken on live.
Hello m8 ,i have one question for you ,how much minimum Armor Penetration hunters need for MM spec ?and also do u have maybe some macros for MM ?
There’s no minimum arp- MM starts to overtake SV based on overall gear level, not ArP. There are no marks macros that I know of- shot macros you use in SV will be find, just make sure to add one for chimera shot. You could macro silencing shot to everything if you like, but I don’t (just in case I ever need to conserve mana or silence something)
OMG… it worked :D
i have 550 arp and have used the arcane shot happely in my rotation. and when i on femaledarwf replaced my 3 points in improved arcane shot and put 2 points in improved hunters mark and one in improved steadyshot i got nearly a 100dps gain :D
but… this is on papir. i will test it out the next couple of days
/azkas
Make sure nobody else in your raid has that improved mark- if they do, you could put the points into efficiency (or any unused DPS talents).
I’m very wary of putting points into IHM as a Hunter without those points can overwrite your better HM with his lesser one. There is none of that “a more powerful spell is already active” feature here.
So if you are regularly the only Hunter in your raids, or you have been clearly and explicitly been assigned marking duty, it will be worth taking, but unless the above is true, chances are your IHM is going to be rendered useless.
Unless things have changed recently, that is.
As for the orginal post, I still show a dps decrease by taking out Arcane Shot and the Improved Arcane talents and redistributing them. I’m around 550-ish ArPen.
I had read that another good measure that you should switch to an ArPen build is when your Steady Shot consistently does more damage than your Arcane Shot.
I got IHM and respecced to the gimp spec. http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#cxbZ0eAoRhzGIctuAox00b:IAaMz, with them glyphs and my dps was a little higher but not much but the other hunters in the raid last night were getting atleast 100 more dps from my IHM, and its not hard to say to the other hunter dont remark the target i have IHM and glyph spec.
For a lone hunter, I doubt a static 150 (165, assuming multiplier buff) RAP is worth 3 talent points, for the end-game raids we’re talking about. Consider that TSA is a 10% AP multiplier for a single point, but IHM is more like 2% when you’re raid buffed.
The only way that’s a good deal is if you have multiple hunters in the raid, on the same target, who are expert enough (or lazy enough) to not overwrite. (Or if you’re a new level 80, just getting started raiding, and your RAP is still fairly low.)
it’s worth it if you have 3 hunters, and maybe worth it if you have two. TSA is almost never worth it because if you have a shaman or DK, they almost always have a buff that will overwrite it. Another issue- I have trouble finding places to put points in that will increase my DPS at all. The last few points almost always go into mana, and if you’re already never in viper, there’s not much choice.
How do you never go into VIPER! Im finding it really hard not to go oom in about 2/3 mins its insane! The boost in IHM is quite nice tbh, I get more dps with it that on my old spec with TSA and imp arcane. TSA is really pointless in 25 man raids and most the time in 10 cus you always have shamans or DKs so one or the other will have it.
I’m wondering, if you think about removing Arcane SHot from your rotation since you have more armor pen, should you take glyph of aimed shot over kill shot, to dps more 80% of the time
That is a valid option that some people do, however they do it more to keep their rotation the same, since that change allows you to keep a pretty stagnant rotation.
I would say take the glyph of killshot everytime. Its ok having more dps throughout the fight but on bosses where its important to get that last few % out kill shot wins every time anub is a good expample of this.
I agree with Bowya, the KS glyph will help you when it _really_ counts but the AS glyph will give you an overall DPS increase. I just recently switched to the AS glpyh over KS and saw a 200-300 DPS increase, overall. If you do decide to glpyh it be sure to have all talent points in imp barrage and piercing shots.
edit: 200-300 might actually be on the high side… sorry about that. It was an increase but it might be more around 100-150. :)
Hi all,
So … “Are you suggesting that you don’t need the trinket, just a ridiculous amount of ArP?” … if I have like +1k ArP (gear + gems) I dont need any ArP proc trinket ?
That’s right. In fact, gemming to get to the soft cap and the getting a trinket is usually no longer more DPS than gemming agility and using just the ArP on your gear. There is a point between the soft cap (which is the hard cap minus your trinket proc) and the hard cap where ArP becomes more DPS than agility. In order to determine where this is, you should always check the spreadsheet or femaledwarf.com, as it varies with the amount of other stats you have.
One mistake i see in wow that makes me almost laugh is Hunters stacking armor pen. The funny thing is they gem all armor pen and have no armor pen trinket. Well for Armor pen no Hunter should stack any armor pen unless above 700 or reach 700. Good trinkets can help you reach that such as Needle-Encrusted Scorpion, Mjolnir’s Runestone and Grim toll. There has been tests that have shown a dps increase when stacking armor pen if you have the proper gear i.e BIS(Best in Slot) wich at that time would be full TOC Gear. PRE ICC raid. Kriapparian has almost 100% armor pen from stacking armor pen gems and trinkets. He has said it helps in TOC fights for single target while Volley will lower his dps slightly compared to gemming straight agility.
In this post it says 850 i would like to see a reason or theory behind that.
did hit give u certain amount of arm pen ?
No it does not. Hit prevents misses, and armor pen makes your physical damage higher.
Euripde. quick question. are you a member of elitist jerks? if so i read a forum that was titled ” marksmenship questions”. Now in that post you say right at the top, if your passive ARP should not exceed 566 with runestone and grim toll with 619 EXCLUDING PROCS. Say im over 619 and i equip runestone, with the proc im at 1354 with the proc active. if i gem full ARP i will hit the cap at 1400. Does this make sence? When is it a good idea to switch to Armor pen when your passive and have NO ARP trinkets and not gemmed. Kripparian and Frostheim have a differnt theory from you. Also i doubt any1 has 815 passive ARP without gems or trinkets, mabye if there BIS.
This is an old article that’s due for an update.
can i still get an answer of a good number to consider swithcing to armor pen gemming and trinkets? for a passive rate
I’d recommend always using a spreadsheet or DPS calculator, however I’m going to steal Frostheim’s short answer and say 400-450.
Quick question on a kind of related note,
for a PvE Survival hunter, what would be a better trinket, the Mirror of Truth (for the 1000ap proc) or the Needle Encrusted Scorpion (for the 600 odd ArP) ?
Femaledwarf.com is pretty good at modeling trinket values- the only deviation is when you stack procs with cooldowns, and that the site assumes you’re standing still. Enter your data, and take whichever is more DPS.
Don’t forget that the needle encrusted scorpion is not proccing nearly as much as other ArP trinkets- it’s uptime is a little lower.
I am a Surv. hunter who is looking to do the transfer over to MM. I would like to try out this Arp MM. As of right now my ArP is only at 379(27.08%)without any ArP gems and I have the encrusted scorp. tricket in the bank. So as of right now I should not gem any ArP gems? I only have a few gear that are 245 everyhting else is higher. So do I change the 264 stuff to a lower gear lvl to get the ArP needed? Seems like a waste of good gear. Not sure what to do, What is my best course of action?