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[fant0m8]

This is a guide for all Hunters (especially Marks) for Season 9 gearing. It covers Gemming, Enchanting, Gearing, and Reforging. Future versions may include Professions, Talent Speccing, and Glyphing, but those are more subjective choices. Gearing is very straightforward.


Gemming:
Gemming Philosophy:

Spoiler

The biggest decision when it comes to gemming should be this:
Do I think 1 point of Resilience is better than 1 point of Agility, or is it the other way around?

I think that Resil is better point for point, though I am willing to hear arguments the other way. Point for point it's 2 AP (2.1 for Marks) and 0.0027% crit vs. 0.011% damage reduction.

(In more manageable terms, it's 1% damage reduction vs. 190 (209) AP and 0.26% crit.)

And on a side note, Gemming to counter magic resistance is very, very important. Even though Spell Pen doesn't apply to traps, the effect that even a small amount of resistance has on our magic damage is very significant. Auras and Totems are 195 Resist in this expansion. I prefer to gem for 190 Resist, because I hate going over by 25 and losing the other stats. I'm fairly sure that at some point Blizzard will fix the underbudget Resil/Spell Pen gem, and we will all have 195.

Until then, however...

(In the current gearset, with full PVP gear you will have exactly 1 Meta Slot, 3 Red slots, 3 Yellow slots, and 3 Blue slots. The Blue slots are very straight forward due to Spell Pen needs, and the only variation in your Red/Yellow slots should be whether you want Resil or Agi)

These gems are geared towards full resil.
Meta Gem: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond (54 Agility/3% Crit Damage) (poor man's alternative).
Red Slots: 3x Lucent Ember Topaz (20 Agi/20 Resil).
Yellow Slots: 3x Mystic Amberjewel (40 Resil).
Blue Slots: 2x Stormy Ocean Sapphire, 1x Vivid Dream Emerald.
Prismatic Belt Buckle Slot: 1x Mystic Amberjewel (40 Resil)

Alternate Gemming Method:
These gems lose 160 Resil and gain 160 Agi compared to the standard method.
Meta Gem: Agile Shadowspirit Diamond (54 Agility/3% Crit Damage) (poor man's alternative)
Red Slots: 3x Delicate Inferno Ruby (40 Agi).
Yellow Slots: 3x Lucent Ember Topaz (20 Agi/20 Resil).
Blue Slots: 2x Stormy Ocean Sapphire, 1x Vivid Dream Emerald.
Prismatic Belt Buckle Slot: 1x Delicate Inferno Ruby (40 Agi).

Enchants for any Spec:
Enchanting Guidelines:

Spoiler

There is almost no spec where you will have any variation in enchants. It will hardly make a difference if you do vary it, the slots with more than one enchanting option are very minor enchants. Your first priority is Resil, then Agi.

Helm slot: Arcanum of Vicious Agility (60 Agi/35 Resil)
Shoulder slot: Greater Inscription of Vicious Agility (50 Agi/25 Resil)
Cloak slot: Enchant Cloak - Greater Spell Piercing (70 Spell Pen)
Chest slot: Enchant Chest - Mighty Resilience (40 Resil)
Wrist slot: Enchant Bracer - Agility (50 Agi) (poor man's alternative)
Glove slot: This is the worst slot for Hunters. Choose between 65 Mastery, 50 Mastery, 50 Haste, or 20 Agi.
Belt slot: As mentioned above, use a Mystic Amberjewel in your belt buckle. (40 Resil)
Legs slot: Dragonscale Leg Armor (190 AP/55 Crit)
Boots slot: Enchant Boots - Assassin's Step (25 Agi/8% Run Speed) (poor man's alternative)
Melee Weapon slot: Pyrium Weapon Chain (40 Hit/-60% Disarm duration) (If you have an offhand)
Ranged Weapon slot: Gnomish X-Ray Scope (Proc 800 AP for 10 seconds)

PVP Gear Choices:
Gearing Philosophy:

Spoiler

Several slots have multiple viable options to choose from. Of those, I would rule out any of the Haste items, it is simply not good enough for us compared to the importance of Crit/Mastery. Where there is a choice between Crit and Mastery, I have chosen Crit for a few reasons. I tested the raw DPS increase of Crit and Mastery for Marks a while back, and found them to be relatively equal. However, since then we have seen a 50% increase on Chimera's damage, 15% increase of Arcane Shot's damage, and over 100% increase in Aimed Shot's damage. Auto Shot while moving and a 17% increase in the efficiency of Mastery Rating is just not enough to compare with that. Not to mention that BURST is more crucial than ever, and sacrificing a 2-5k damage proc in order to gain 10k damage or more on your main burst abilities is a very good tradeoff.

Also, you should be wearing 100% PVP gear. Resilience blows every other secondary stat out of the water, and since every slot has Agility/Stam/Resil/X Green Stat, you aren't losing Agi or Stam, just trading an inferior secondary stat for resilience.

Helm, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, Legs, Rings, Weapons: No choices in these slots (beyond your preference or racial benefit for ranged weapon- we're forced to use Pikes for Two Handers this season).
Neck: Vicious Gladiator's Necklace of Prowess (Mastery green stat) is the only available Hunter-friendly option.
Back: Vicious Gladiator's Cape of Cruelty (Crit green stat)
Wrist: Never wear the Haste bracer. Use Vicious Gladiator's Wristguards of Accuracy (Hit green stat)
Belt: Use the Hit belt (this plays an important role in your reforging) Vicious Gladiator's Links of Accuracy (Hit green stat)
Boots: Again, never wear the Haste version. Use Vicious Gladiator's Sabatons of Cruelty (Crit green stat)
Trinkets: Vicious Gladiator's Medallion of Tenacity and Vicious Gladiator's Badge of Conquest (Use this if you're an engineer)
Trinket choices:

Spoiler

Don't use the Crit trinket. If you want to drop resilience, regem for Agility first. Only after that (160 Resil->160 Agi) would I wear the Crit trinket. It's a good place to drop resil though, since unless you're clearing heroic modes, switching PVP gear for PVE simply swaps Resilience for a different secondary stat (and in other slots you'll lose ilvl going to normal mode gear, lowering your agility). In the unlikely event that you've discovered a comp where no one gets on the Hunter (hahaha) and you don't have ilvl372 Heroic gear with Crit/Hit, swap your resil trinket with the Crit version.

Reforging:
Reforging rules:

Spoiler

I left this section until close to the end because it heavily depends upon your other gear choices. The goal with reforging is to reduce as many undesirable secondary stats as possible, while maximizing the good ones. It boils down to exchanging Hit, Crit, Mastery, and Haste in a 1:1 ratio, the other stats aren't applicable to Hunters. Out of Crit, Master, and Haste, Crit should generally be considered the best and Haste the worst. Therefore once Hit is taken care of, everything that you reforge should be Not-Crit Rating => Crit Rating.

If you gear as I suggested above, you will have Hit rating on your Belt, Wrist, Glove, Ring, and Weapon Chain. Assuming Vicious gear (while you still have Bloodthirsty, reforge to some extra Hit somewhere), that is 626 Hit rating. The cap is 600. Now just sit back and be amazed at the magic of reforging...

Do not reforge: Cloak, Chest, Gloves, Belt, Boots, Crit Ring, Trinkets, Melee Weapon, or Ranged Weapon (all of these slots have either Crit or Hit already).
Helm: Reforge Mastery->Crit
Neck: Reforge Mastery->Crit
Shoulders: Reforge Haste->Crit
Legs: Reforge Haste->Hit
Wrist: Reforge Hit->Crit
Hit Ring: Reforge Hit->Crit

And magically, you will have exactly 5.00% Hit (600 rating).

Putting it All Together:
Here's a chardev (NO professions!) where I've put together full Vicious gear and gemmed/enchanted/reforged according to this guide.

Edited by fant0m8, 18 February 2011 - 08:54 PM.

[nattehfat]

there is no such a neck with hit
when i look at vendor its only expertise or mastery

[KennyEU]

Very nice guide!  I recently swapped to full Resilience gems aswell, my partner was convinced it's a far better stat than any other atm.  Also, yes indeed, there is no hit neck. Maybe it does drop in BH.

1 more thing: what do u think about enchant on bracers: +65 crit vs +50 agi? You put in 50 agi and 50 crit as poor man's only, does any1 know what's best out of 65 crit vs 50 agi? it's probably very close anyway

[Shootindice]

KennyEU, on 18 February 2011 - 03:18 AM, said:

Very nice guide!  I recently swapped to full Resilience gems aswell, my partner was convinced it's a far better stat than any other atm.  Also, yes indeed, there is no hit neck. Maybe it does drop in BH.

1 more thing: what do u think about enchant on bracers: +65 crit vs +50 agi? You put in 50 agi and 50 crit as poor man's only, does any1 know what's best out of 65 crit vs 50 agi? it's probably very close anyway

50 Agility is miles better than 65 crit, not even close.

[KennyEU]

It really can't be anything else than very close tbh, but yeah it's definately possible that 50 agi is slightly better!

[fant0m8]

nattehfat, on 18 February 2011 - 02:37 AM, said:

there is no such a neck with hit
when i look at vendor its only expertise or mastery

You're right, fixing that now. That's what I get for using Wowhead instead of what I'm actually wearing! (Mastery neck.)

KennyEU, on 18 February 2011 - 04:14 AM, said:

It really can't be anything else than very close tbh, but yeah it's definately possible that 50 agi is slightly better!

I didn't put 65 crit because that's nearly as expensive as 50 agi, you might as well get 50 agi. And it's definitely much much better to get agility than crit.

[Pandamcpanda]

Jesus you have alot of res, but is that 5% reduction really worth the 4% less crit? atm marks is the rng fest of will i hit hard or like a kitten, and i dont feel like an extra 500 res will save me most of the time.

[KennyEU]

I think 5% dmg reduction is obviously far better than 4% crit. For one, 5% > 4%. Other than that, if you're the target being focused over 50% of the time, this number basically becomes exponentially better, also consider 2 people hitting you in 3v3, you're reducing -both- their dmg on you by 5% while you can only be damaging 1 person at a time and thus only get a 4% dmg increase once. 5% dmg reduction with 2 people training you becomes the same as 10% off 1 person who could be doing around equal dmg to your own.

Edited by KennyEU, 18 February 2011 - 06:09 AM.

[Nadagast]

Pandamcpanda, on 18 February 2011 - 05:42 AM, said:

Jesus you have alot of res, but is that 5% reduction really worth the 4% less crit? atm marks is the rng fest of will i hit hard or like a kitten, and i dont feel like an extra 500 res will save me most of the time.

Looking at it in this way is deceptive...  He has 38.53% damage reduction, you have 33.22% damage reduction.  Subtracting them and getting 5% does not provide a number of any use.

He takes 61.47% of all damage, you take 66.78% of all damage.  61.47/66.78 = .92.  He takes 8% less damage than you.  Alternatively, 66.78/61.47 = 1.086.  You take 8.6% more damage than him.

Would you rather take 8% less damage or gain 4% crit?  Also note that every extra point of resil he gains is more effective than every extra point of resil you gain.  When he upgrades to Vicious he will be getting more out of the resil than you do.

Edited by Nadagast, 18 February 2011 - 05:57 AM.

[Devion87]

there is some strange way to get better stats by reforging some crit stuff to hit and hit to crit... i was lucky one time but dont remember what i did...

+rep for nadagast, he said a smart very smart thing

Edited by Devion87, 18 February 2011 - 05:56 AM.

[Pandamcpanda]

Nadagast, on 18 February 2011 - 05:54 AM, said:

Looking at it in this way is deceptive...  He has 38.53% damage reduction, you have 33.22% damage reduction.  Subtracting them and getting 5% does not provide a number of any use.

He takes 61.47% of all damage, you take 66.78% of all damage.  61.47/66.78 = .92.  He takes 8% less damage than you.  Alternatively, 66.78/61.47 = 1.086.  You take 8.6% more damage than him.

Would you rather take 8% less damage or gain 4% crit?  Also note that every extra point of resil he gains is more effective than every extra point of resil you gain.  When he upgrades to Vicious he will be getting more out of the resil than you do.

I never did quiet understand this math, if i take 100k damage and its reduced by 33.22% i take 33220 less damage or a 66780 hit. If he takes 100k its only 61470. Isn't that 5310 less damage then me?

[Nadagast]

Pandamcpanda, on 18 February 2011 - 06:02 AM, said:

I never did quiet understand this math, if i take 100k damage and its reduced by 33.22% i take 33220 less damage or a 66780 hit. If he takes 100k its only 61470. Isn't that 5310 less damage then me?

Yes, it's only about 5300 less damage but it's out of a 67k hit.  If you take 100k damage, he'll take 92k damage.


Think about the extreme end of things.  If I have 99% damage reduction and you have 98% damage reduction, I take only half the damage you do, even though a naive look at it would say "I only have 1% more damage reduction."

Edited by Nadagast, 18 February 2011 - 06:39 AM.

[Pandamcpanda]

So if i get hit by a 150k attack, that's 49830 damage less i take or 100k to his 150k hit or 57795 reduction which is a 92k damage hit on him. But that's still only a 5% reduction to the damage i took. He took 8k less damage then me out of 150,000, that's still the same 5% unless im hideously off. This also boils down to the glass cannon approach, if they don't get on me and sit on my teammates, then 600 more res does 0% more good if i cant put any pressure out.

[KennyEU]

Yes, obviously if you take 100 dmg and you have 99% dmg reduction, you take 1 dmg, while the guy with 98% reduction takes 2 dmg - double the damage you're taking. However, the reduction is still 1 per 1% point per point. At no point are you getting any more value out of your stat in pure numeric values, and since the damage being dealt is also always in pure numeric values, and not percentages of HP pools, aswell as healing done being point per point values rather than a percentage healed of anyone's healthpool, no1 ever gets 'more' out of his resilience than one another. However! resilience IS a strong stat, and getting lots of it will in itself benefit you much, and thus obviously the more you get of it, the more good it'll do for you.

Nadagast, on 18 February 2011 - 06:38 AM, said:

Think about the extreme end of things.  If I have 99% damage reduction and you have 98% damage reduction, I take only half the damage you do, even though a naive look at it would say "I only have 1% more damage reduction."

  

And well yeah, you would have 1% more damage reduction of the original total attack, this just happens to be double the damage in pure numeric values after all of the resilience has taken its effect.

Edited by KennyEU, 18 February 2011 - 07:03 AM.

[Pandamcpanda]

Res is an incredible stat, but I don't understand how people think it somehow exponentially scales magically and gives you immunity from death. In the end its just a flat reduction to damage you take, weather its 1 damage or a billion. The 99% or 98% example is terrible, it doesnt mean you take 50% less damage then the other guy, it means you take 1% less overall.

[KennyEU]

Yep indeed. Make the numbers bigger and you get: 100 less dmg on a 10000 dmg attack per 1%, and when u get 2%, you'll take 200 less dmg, when u get 3%, you'll get 300 less dmg, and so forth - at no point are you getting any anything more out of your resil in pure damage numbers.

[Nadagast]

Yes, if you have a 10,000 damage attack, obviously each 1% resil will make you take 100 less damage.  What you guys aren't understanding is that taking X damage out of an attack of size Y is better than taking X damage out of an attack of size Y*Z where Z > 1.0.

Look at it in terms of effective HP.  How much (pre-resil reduction) damage can I take before I die?

Say you have 100k HP.

Let's start with 30% resil reduction.  (100/.7) = 142.85k effective HP.
35% resil.  (100/.65) = 153.85k effective HP.  (+5% resil gained us 11k effective HP)
40% resil.  (100/.6) = 166.67k effective HP.  (+5% resil gained us 12.82k effective HP)
45% resil.  (100/.55) = 181.82k effective HP.  (+5% resil gained us 15.15k effective HP)
50% resil.  (100/.5) = 200k effective HP.  (+5% resil gained us 18.18k effective HP)

As you can see, as your resilience increases, your effective HP increases exponentially.  Each point of resil is really worth more than the last.

[fant0m8]

Devion87, on 18 February 2011 - 05:54 AM, said:

there is some strange way to get better stats by reforging some crit stuff to hit and hit to crit... i was lucky one time but dont remember what i did...

+rep for nadagast, he said a smart very smart thing

Check the updated post! I found the magic combination of reforging. Thanks chardev.

Nadagast, on 18 February 2011 - 05:54 AM, said:

Would you rather take 8% less damage or gain 4% crit?  Also note that every extra point of resil he gains is more effective than every extra point of resil you gain.  When he upgrades to Vicious he will be getting more out of the resil than you do.

Yea unfortunately it wasn't so easy for a Hunter to find partners from scratch at the beginning of this expansion, so I'm pretty far behind in terms of points gained (especially since I didn't take advantage of either the MMR bug or the extra point reset). I still have quite a lot of Bloodthirsty gear, so my personal numbers won't be exactly what you see in the first post. That also means of course that if you are gemming differently that your personal stats may seem better than mine.

Pandamcpanda, on 18 February 2011 - 05:42 AM, said:

Jesus you have alot of res, but is that 5% reduction really worth the 4% less crit? atm marks is the rng fest of will i hit hard or like a kitten, and i dont feel like an extra 500 res will save me most of the time.

5% Resilience is 475 Rating. 475 Resil Rating converted to Crit Rating is only 2.5% Crit (there is no way you can trade 475 Resil for 475 Agi, about the max is gemming differently, which is a 160 point swing, 1.68% Damage Reduction vs. 336 AP and 0.43% Crit).

Edited by fant0m8, 18 February 2011 - 10:23 AM.

[Futon]

Your chardev is missing leg enchant and tier 2 bow. Just thought you should know. Good guide

Also i'm curious if there is a difference between 600 hit rating and 601. Both give 5% hit , does it matter?

Edited by Futon, 18 February 2011 - 03:23 PM.

[Cinderglow]

Futon, on 18 February 2011 - 03:22 PM, said:

Your chardev is missing leg enchant and tier 2 bow. Just thought you should know. Good guide

Also i'm curious if there is a difference between 600 hit rating and 601. Both give 5% hit , does it matter?

Each point of hit is worth .00833 hit rating. It's just a matter of decimals floating past the 2 place values that the sheet gives us. 601 hit is 5.00833% hit.