The pre-Cataclysm patch is up on the public test realm. There hunters have focus and a dramatically different spellbook. Pets have their new abilities. Armor penetration is gone from our gear and haste is in ascendance. What can we do to prepare before these and other changes go live?
Gems
Armor penetration gems become crit gems with the patch. If you have an armor pen build, you will likely want to think about how to replace your crit gems. You can buy your Cardinal Rubies and Ametrines now at what are to my knowledge all time low prices or you can bet on cooldown-free epic transmutes reducing uncut gem costs even further when the patch hits. You have nothing to worry about if you currently gem agility; those gems stay the same (excepting agility’s new higher provision of ap).
Gear Itemization
There are changes to our gear’s innate stats as well. In direct itemization armor pen will be replaced with either haste or crit in 4.0. On most gear it appears to be replaced with haste, but there are examples like Deathbringer’s Will in which the passive arp has become crit. Intellect will also disappear from our gear. So too will attack power. Yet, unlike arp, intellect and ap’s replacement stat is found by way of agility simply providing more attack power than it does on live now. This partially makes up for the loss of ap from itemization and Careful Aim. Along with these major stat changes, there will also be subtler alterations. I have noticed crit and hit shifting by small amounts (between 0 and 15) on my gear and because of this I am now well over the current hit cap on the ptr. There is not much we can do about all of these itemization manipulations. You might find it to be worth reconsidering those odd pieces of gear that would have been outstanding for pre-4.0 hunters but for their haste, like Distant Land and the Herkuml War Token. Also, if you are in a position to choose between an ap-heavy piece and an otherwise comparable agi-heavy piece (like heroic Taldron’s Long Neglected Boots vs Rock-Steady Treads), stick with the agi-heavy piece for 4.0.
Tier Bonuses
The tier 9 two piece bonus has been changed so that it is not redundant with 4.0’s naturally critting stings. With the patch it takes on tier 8’s two piece bonus, a 10% increase to Serpent Sting damage. It is not a very interesting bonus, but it is better than nothing and will certainly help SV’s fun SrS aoe. It also reduces any pressure that hunters who are still running 2t9+2t10 have to get 4t10 (sanctified or no) before the patch.
Glyphs
As you may know, glyphs are changing with 4.0 so that once you learn a glyph you have it in a sort of glyph spellbook permanently. Known glyphs can be swapped with each other for the mere price of a reagent. Because of this, you might consider building up a glyph kit for yourself ahead of time because (1) prices have the potential to spike with the patch and (2) you may wish to have different glyphs for leveling. I make no guarantees about the worth of such a kit, though, because not only will glyph application processes change but so will glyphs themselves. If you buy your glyphs before the patch you may end up with some worthless scraps of paper, glyphs that are never worth knowing, etc. Compound my not having an inscriptionist with the apparent disabling of crafting professions on the ptr and I am left unable to say much with confidence about preparing for the glyph changes.
Pets
Our pets have their new abilities on the ptr. Cats have been fairly popular from what I have seen, likely owing to people just enjoying cats and to their now having the Horn of Winter effect. If you plan to raid between the patch and the expansion, consider leveling up some of those pets that offer buffs that your raid group is missing.
Currency
The new currencies are in effect with the patch. As such, take a look at the exchange rates and consider whether you want to make any planned purchases sooner rather than later. From what I have seen on the ptr, frost to justice multipliers for vendor prices are much larger than the multipliers that our emblems get in the exchange rates. It is a dramatic decrease in our purchasing power. At current coefficient values, you are better off buying emblem items (including heirlooms) before the patch.
There are new conversion rates that appear to work on a 1:1 basis with vendor cost changes. That is, vendor costs are determined in the same way that our currency is converted, at 11.58 Justice Points for each Frost or Triumph. It may in fact be slightly better to wait for the patch to buy heirlooms considering that chests now cost about 38 rather than 40 emblems.
If you have any additional tips about transitioning to 4.0, please leave them in a comment below.
Will I gain more dps increase as BM 4.0 if I gem Arp now? I guess crit and haste gonna be core stats come cata. Btw Ap gems turn into?
-Canute, shattered hand (eu)
I have not done any work on identifying dps conversion values for various stats. So, I cannot say how much better one stat is than another in numerical values. I can make some educated guesses though:
-Flat crit just tends not to work well as something to gem for. It very likely will not scale well as you level. My guess is that you will not want to have a bunch of crit gems come 4.0.
-Agility is very powerful in 4.0 and I believe it is the safest thing to gem for (for all hunter specs).
-Crit and haste likely will be in Cata what they are now, secondary stats. We like them when we have them, but they probably will not provide as much dps as getting more agility. Again, just a guess.
I do not know what will happen to ap gems (I don’t have my jc on the ptr). My guess is that they will be artifacts of wrath.
Now that we will have no arp i guess marksmanship will be losing its damage i guess? Which spec should we be looking at after the patch? What will be the primary stats for surv and bm?
I cannot say at this point which specs will be higher or lower in dps than others. Ranged attack power coefficients in our abilities are still being changed in dramatic ways, leaving us in uncertain territory.
My guess is that agility will be the stat of choice for all specs. It provides huge chunks of ap in 4.0. Theorycrafting any deeper than that seems to me to be a waste of time at this point considering how mutable everything still is.
For those of us who have using ArP heavy builds, another thing to consider is the potential loss of hit from the focused aim talent. Generally, attempting to hard cap Armor Pen meant sacrificing hit on gear, and relying on talents to make up the difference.
Come the patch, it may be useful to have a couple of pieces of hit gear around to keep hit capped.
That’s a good tip for arp hunters, thanks!
Pyrite Infuser anyone? Its the perfect +hit piece of gear, and may be a far better item than DBW post launch.
It is also failry easy to get being the first boss in Uld.
Suggestion, if you don’t have one, get one.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’ll be better than DBW in the time between 4.0 and the expansion There are better ways to get hit than dropping that trinket.
However, you’re right that hit trinkets will be nice to have. As we level the amounts of hit on our gear currently will not be enough for 0% miss on higher level mobs and bosses, making wrath hit trinkets like Pyrite Infuser and Mark of Supremacy nice options to have.
Also keep in mind that hit will become a blue stat, so gemming agil/hit or hit to pick up blue bonuses isn’t a bad idea. Reforging is also an option.
Don’t expect gem prices to raise, it is my understanding the CD will be removed from Alch gem transmutes so uncut gems will be abundant.
I haven’t heard anything about that, but if you’re right it will be one of the few things that could even partially offset the huge dips in supply and spikes in demand for gems that will likely come with 4.0.
Edit: Euripides tells me that epic transmutes are indeed off cooldown on the ptr.
I read the same thing somewhere. I can’t remember where though.
I’m getting ready for the many transmutes it is going to require to regem my hunter.
Realize though, it may not bring prices down on some servers. Most often the price check rises and falls based on people simply being greedy.
Mats for the transmutes might go through the roof… especially for reds…. I assume.
I agree with this statement, while it might seem that the supply for epics will be unlimited, the price for those mats will go up, potentially forcing alchemists to charge more for the epic gems. Also, ore prices might rise as JCs prospect? Who knows!?!
ALL prices changes are based on greed.
The real question is will greed reduce the prices by generating a undercutting frenzy, or will greed increase prices due to a spike in demand (or a severe cut in demand).
When I copied my hunter to the ptr (Surv) I all ready had all AGI gems so there was no change. My rogue though had all AP gems and they were all switched to AGI. So if you are running all AP gems they all should be converted to AGI.
Reaching the hit cap for ArP MM hunters won’t be that hard when 4.0 hits. With all the changes to stats on our gear, we are now swimming in crit. Re-forging some of that excess crit into hit rating will more than likely be better than grabbing worse gear that has hit already on it. On the PTR I re-forged some crit on my DBW and 277 chest to bring me to cap, and even after replacing my crit gems to agi gems, I was still above 70% crit unbuffed. The rating to cap hit also seems to be lower in the PTR than it currently is on live.
I run with an ArP build currently and have roughly 55% crit.
When I logged into the PTR even with all the ArP to crit changes…I had like 30% crit.
Not sure where you see us “swimming” in crit. Everything I have read says it will be the opposite.
Has something changed that I missed?
I honestly have no idea why your crit is so low.
On live I currently have 58.08% crit with a 1097 crit rating. Just logged into the PTR, my crit is 70.20% with a 1758 rating.
I do have both DBW and STS, which had their ArP turned to crit. Also, most of my gear is iLev 277. On average the gear that had ArP on it gained 30-40 crit rating. Given that, I figured we would all have way more crit than we needed come 4.0.
yeah, you and I pretty much have the same items. Not sure…might have been the PTR was not calculating correctly? My UI was off? I looked at the wrong number?
I was under the impression our crit was going down, even with the heavier amounts available on gear.
Something could very well have changed since the last time I checked…I admit I have not been eager to jump on the PTR to check it out further.
Scribe.
There’s no such thing as an “inscriptionist”.
Yes, there is. Check the Oxford English Dictionary. An inscriptionist is “the writer or carver of an inscription.”
Also I would double check how weapons convert on the PTR. So far I find stakethrower having higher weapon damage and stats than Zod’s. While you can reforge for mastery, the mastery gems are not available on the PTR. I believe they are yellow. While the marksmanship mastery is pretty bad right now, it may be worthwile for the other specs. Hit is a blue stat now.
Has anyone checked DBW’s Procs in Beta?
* Agility of the Vrykul: 600 Agility
* Power of the Taunka: 1200 Attack Power
* Aim of the Iron Dwarves: 600 Critical Strike Rating
What happens to the AP proc?
DBW never dropped for me, but other trinkets with AP procs still appear to produce AP. Removing AP procs would be needless complication for Blizzard I think, so I imagine they decided to leave such procs as is.
On the PTR, the DBW procs are the same.
Ok, I am FINALLY starting to look into the new changes, as I have been VERY reluctant to accept the change to focus. Since I cant do anything about it, I might as well deal with it.
Has anyone on Beta/PTR worked out a decent talent tree for MM or SV that they are finding is comperable DPS-wise in ICC?
Also, what will be the conversions again for our stats, I understand Arm Pen is going probably haste and sometimes Crit, but what about AP? What stat will pick up the slack when we lose Int?
Thanks,
Jonker @ work
Oh one more question….I have recently been collecting more SV gear for the 4.0 while being MM. Now I was just lucky enough to get a H T10 token drop. My question is after 4.0, what is the best piece to get? I have the H Caprice of the Kings, Reg Leggings of the Northern…and rest reg T10.
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