2.1.0 Patch Notes

[Lissa]

Don't twist my meaning. I said if you stack the raid for the hunter. That means you're not stacking the raid for superior classes. Grace of Air totem? Just means another warrior is missing Windfury. Shadow priest? The mana regen serves warlocks and mages better. When you stack the raid for the hunters to lead DPS, you're sacrificing overall DPS.

Also, while I only skim the EJ Hunter threads, pretty much everyone I've seen doing the theorycrafting (mainly Lactose) states that AP/crit will always beat out intel/mp5. They do not offset the mana issues enough for the lost damage to be worth it.

Quark, when I get back to work tomorrow I'll sit down and list out some of the items I found. Yes, some are from SSC and The Eye, but most are not. If a Hunter is willing to look at what gems they have available and maximize their gem use to increase their longevity along with getting certain enchants (mainly mana prime for chest), they can increase their longevity as well with only sacrificing a small amount of crit and AP.

Everyone complains about Tier4/Tier5. Most people are wrong. Is it enough of an upgrade (I'm talking pure item level)? No. Did they mess up some ilvl conversions? Yes. But wait for 2.1 to see if that's still the case. Are the stats distributed properly? Excluding minor examples, yes.

Stop comparing it to Tailoring. Tailoring was the dumbest move Blizzard could have made -> they made "perfectly" distributed gear, and then use school specific (cheaper) instead of +all spell damage. If you have any "perfect" gear in the game, it forces all later gear to be perfect in order to have progression. All gear being perfect would be boring as hell, with no chance for deviation.

Quark, I'm not just comparing the items to tailoring, I'm also comparing them to random drops that you can get from various bosses. Handwraps of Flowing Thought and Soul-Eater's Handwraps > Tier 4 and Tier 5 Gloves for most Cloth DPS classes. This extends to other slots for Head, Chest, Pants, and Shoulders. The set bonuses do not make up for the disparity on this either. And before you say, you're not looking at 2.1 stats, I am Quark. I'm very much paying attention to all the information coming off the PTR and is being put out there for people to see and the fact of the matter is this, the sets are not worth it most of the time, even when considering the bonuses you can get.

Hunters are the exception, because Blizzard is trying to fix a class flaw - longevity - with itemization. You can't do that. When you try, that's when you get dodge on Rogue gear.
We argued about this when 2.0 was first announced. You claimed Survival would come out on top because of Expose Weakness. I said no way, the lost DPS wouldn't make up for it. All the Hunters did their testing, and ended up choosing between BM and MM, completely abandoning Survival. So now I'm more behind on Hunters, but show me why the new Expose Weakness makes up for the DPS loss.

Show me how raid DPS goes up with a Survival hunter instead of a Marksman or BM.

Let me ask you this Quark, how closely have you looked at the differences between a BM, Marksman, and Survival Hunter? Do you realize that most Survival Hunters take the most damage producing talents in the first 4 Tiers of Marksman? Do you also realize that if you stacked up a Survival Hunter next to a BM or Marksman Hunter that, while they will have anywhere from 200 to 400 less AP, they will instead have on the order of 10%+ more crit? Do you also realize that Mortal Shots, if you go 5/5, means that every 1% crit is equal to 1.3 times more damage? This means a Survival Hunter is going to have more damage through crits meaning that even with that 200 to 400 less AP they're going to be close, not surpass Marksman, but close to them in DPS.

Like I mentioned above, I have sat down and looked at gear pretty extensively and a Survival Hunter can get to around 730 unbuffed Agi, throw in things like pots, BoKings, G/MotW, Agi scrolls, and food and you now have a hunter pushing close to, if not going past, 900 Agi giving all physical damage dealers around 225 AP because the change in 2.1 will mean that EW will be on the target near 100% of the time (since 3/3 EW means a crit puts the debuff on the target and a survival Hunter will be pushing 33%+ crit after buffs).