Ela's Guide to BC Hunter Gear and DPS v2.1(STEP 2: GEAR VALUATION)

STEP 2: GEAR VALUATION
Date: 05/07/2007

With these numbers, you are now armed to evaluate your gear. You could certainly do this with a pocket calculator, but knowing that your numbers will change as your gear evolves (and your spec changes) you may simply want to build yourself a spreadsheet.

Make columns for each stat, including # of sockets. At the top, list the values of each stat and socket. In each row, list a piece of gear and its attributes. Then simply multiply the # of stat by the value of the stat to get a total dps value for a piece of gear.

Note that you may find switching to a higher-valued gearset may actually DECREASE your paperdoll dps. Don’t worry, many find after this analysis that they have undervalued crit in their gear. If the numbers change drastically you may want to recalculate your numbers.

Once the dps analysis is done, you need to take a look beyond the dps numbers. Depending on your spec, your play style, and the encounter before you, the gear you have on may change radically. Few high-level hunters would wear the same gear to an arena match (where they are taking a lot of damage) and a 25-man raid (where in general they shouldn’t be taking much). Many build different sets. You now know how to build a max-dps set. From there, determine your mana, health, and hit needs to optimize your other gear.

It should be pointed out that often times, the highest pure-dps gear come from leather items. This is because gear itemized for rogues does not have int or mana/5, and therefore has more stats to spend on hit, crit, ap, agi, and stamina. Be on the lookout for good leather items to round out your choices…and remember that gem bonuses are often easily discarded in rogue gear.

Certain encounters require a great deal of stamina. Facing doomwalker with less than 8500 is a big mistake, but there are many opportunities to stop and take a drink. A fight like Prince is likely to burn through your mana in a hurry, so you may want to make sure you have a good mana pool…or be prepared to burn a lot of mana pots to compensate.

Hit rating deserves its own discussion. Blizzard has told us that 15.8 hit rating equates to a 1% chance to hit. Since we have a base miss rate of 5% for level 70 mobs, we need 5*15.8 = 79 hit rating for anything up to Level 70. Naturally some bosses go beyond 70, so to avoid misses you may need to adjust your gear accordingly. The experts tell us 8.6% added to our hit does the trick, or 136 Hit Rating. Jot this down, it’s an important number. Naturally if you’re a survival hunter, you get a 3% inherent chance to hit with Surefooted. So, your needs for L70 mobs are 2*15.8 = 32, and 5.6*15.8 = 89 hit rating.