It’s important to bear in mind that your talent point distribution will be completely different while leveling than it will be once you settle into being a level 80. The reasoning behind that is you’re largely responsible for your own efficiency: mana, health, dps and the like. In a raid, you get other things thrown in which help mitigate your resources lost (as well as new abilities!)
So, I wouldn’t try to aim too much at working towards a raiding build while you’re leveling because what’s great at 80 might be less than ideal at level 73.
The general stat priority for hunters at lvl 80 is somewhat dependent on spec. For Survival and Marksmen it’s Hit (until capped) > AGI > AP > Crit > Int > Haste > ArP > Stam. I believe for Beastmaster AP become more important than AGI because it transfers to the pet and your pet is doing a much higher percentage of your damage.
Looking at your gear, Telperien you should probably be looking to replace the pants, melee weapon, bracers, and MP5 trinket - those all have stats that are generally better for a different class than a hunter (Spirit is just not that useful compared to AGI or AP or even INT, and Strength is pretty much useless).
One specific recommendation would be to get a Blacksmith to make you a Fel Iron Greatsword for when you hit 63. It will last you a good while and is quite strong for it’s level.
Because people who react poorly to being told that they’re shit players and their gear is shit are menstruating women, because menstruating women are emotional, overreactive, and unreasonable. :rolleyes:
Haha, no worries! Like I said, I should have explained things a bit better. I was coming off a string of really good pugs with well geared and experienced players and I didn’t make the mental shift to doing it with people starting heroics. Next time we’ll do the ez-mode of gathering spears and resetting, like someone else mentioned here earlier.
I’ve got a pally bank toon that I’m slowly leveling (need to get him to Outlands so I can start DEing my own trash) and one or two others who don’t see much play. I have to admit, I’m loving getting back into a DPS role with my hunter. My first toon, rolled on vanilla release, was a mage, but he’s alliance and alliance stinks. My main for a while was a disc priest who main healed back in the Molten Core days (I moved her to Cairne too but haven’t touched her much) but since I dual specced my druid I am *loving *tree healing and I might try to gear him out for our future raids so I can fill any slot needed.
Welcome to the new BDLers! We’re slowly growing our little guild, doing lots of heroics and getting more regular at doing ten mans, but still very casual.
Sounds pretty good to me, lizardling. I agree the talents at 80 can be changed around to maximize whatever role you’re looking to fill, same with +hit, which you can easily max with gems and crafted gear/rep rewards. Until then stack stats in the priority you mentioned. If you like PvP you can also get the whole 70 set pretty easily which will take you all the way through 80 with the rare replacement.
Thanks for the correction on the priority order for BM spec, guys – I still have too much blood in my caffeine stream and I knew I was forgetting something. IIRC, ArPen got upgraded very recently, wasn’t it?
Hahah, for some reason I could have sworn you had a hunter knocking around from earlier in this thread. :smack:
Regarding **ashman’s **comment about raiding v leveling, oh yes – but as most of the resources out there really digging into talent builds are for raiders, that’s what I read more to try to understand how everything goes together. I do know that this respec did nice things for my DPS even when just running around questing, so it was worth it for me although it might be different for Telperien, depending on your playstyle.
Good to know that the priest seems to be coming along okay!
Incidentally, is it crazy to be contemplating doing a dual-spec DPS/DPS for my death knight? One for soloing and generally messing about, the other for raiding? (The first would have the +20% mounted movement buff, as well as 4 talent points in rune tap for self-healing purposes).
That depends on how much time you spend in each. I have to raid holy, since all of my gear is heavily spirit-laden, but I get to pvp and goof-off as shadow, because the gear itemization is similar.
The gear itemization for dps specced DKs is rather similar. So, if that’s what you have the gear for, and it’s worth the price, have at it. If you’re on a pvp server, I wouldn’t suggest going halfway up the tree in 2 specs because you’re just deep enough in both trees to miss out on the spec defining talents in either. Your mileage may vary.
I haven’t played my DK since like March, so he doesn’t even have any talent points . . .
Not at all. I use my first spec for raiding, and my second to mess around with what ever crosses my mind at any given time. Right now, they’re both 0/13/58, though one of them’s garbage.
My pally is specced holy/prot, mostly because I found ret mind numbingly boring.
There is, indeed, a vast difference between a leveling spec, and a raiding spec. My raid spec is good at putting out raw deeps on bosses, but it depends heavily on gear, and is rather fragile. Unfortunately, I’ve no practical experince with early level locks or pallys anymore, as the classes changed fairly dramaticly from when I brought my main and alt up.
Will you please stop looking for opportunities to make snide potshots at people? I meant exactly what I asked.
Sigh I have a frost mage because I enjoy playing the spec, I like the control, it’s incredibly survivable, and works well in solo and instance play. Telling me to respec isn’t helpful. What I want to do is play the best frost mage I can play, not turn him into something else.
I understand that. What I didn’t understand is that people are quoting fully-buffed DPS. I’m simply not going to spend 100 gold on flasks, potions, oils, scrolls, and the like just to run a trial on the boss dummy. I’ll just make sure to specify “unbuffed” when people ask my DPS.
Gotcha. On heavy-AoE fights where I’ve got my water elemental out and such, I’ve hit 25,000 DPS, but that’s hardly a fair quote when I can’t do it against a single boss.
Thank you, Winterhawk. That’s the kind of information I was looking for.
I have a tendency to alternate frostfire bolts with the frostbolts. Every time the target is frozen, I snap off an ice lance that hits at the same time as the frostbolt (thus, both crit, generating over 7,000 damage in one whack), and I do the same when the free fireball procs. When the mob gets close, I’ll frost nova, blink away, and do the frostbolt/ice lance combo. For multi-mob fights, of course, it’s all much more complex and varies from fight to fight. It’s been so long since I ran an instance that I don’t even have a standard rotation any more.
When I used to do pre-Northrend instances, they didn’t invite me for DPS. They invited me for pulls, polymorphs, curse removal, pulling adds off healers, and all the other things a good frost mage can do. As I understand it, most of that stuff doesn’t matter in the current endgame. Have they really turned the mage’s role into just straight DPS button-mashing?
Understood. I know I need to improve it to run heroics, but I just haven’t had the time to make the money to buy the good gear/enchants/gems for hit rating.
Sorry, I fell into the trap again. I tend to think in terms of raiding rotations. The Shatter combo is a staple of frost mage tricks, and very useful while questing. Rotations aren’t nearly as important in solo questing, since odds are you aren’t going to have time to stand there and do one. Either the mob will be dead or you’ll have to nova it, move, and start over again.
In early WotLK and a lot of BC it was like that–once your tanks got geared well enough to handle pulls, they just grabbed a group of mobs and the DPS AoE’ed it down. We used to do a lot of sheeping in Black Temple and Sunwell until we got better gear, and we’re doing some in Ulduar now (especially in the pulls between XT and Kologarn, and the trash in front of General Vezax). Curse removal was a big deal in BC and somewhat in Naxx, but not so much in Ulduar. Occasionally we do a sheep pull. But all in all, a raiding mage’s primary purpose is DPS. And catering.
You should be able to run some of the easier heroics (like Violet Hold–well, easy for the DPS, not so much for a fledgling tank) or Utgarde Keep with your current gear, as long as the folks you’re running with have gear that’s at least your level. Some of the later ones like Culling of Stratholme or Oculus might be a little tougher, but as you collect Emblems of Heroism and purple drops from these heroics you’ll easily be able to move up. Hit isn’t nearly as important in heroics as it is in raids. The numbers are much lower, and if you miss a few times, it’s not a big deal.
Pardon, I took your question to mean you wanted to maximize your dps absolutely, not maximize it within your current spec.
Okay then. If you have atlas loot loaded, you can look up some reasonably decent (cheap) green gems for hit rating. If you don’t mind mixing colors, you can get spirit and hit, spell power and hit, crit and hit, mp5 and hit, intellect and hit. But if you’re looking at doing heroics in the short term, you don’t need to stack a great deal of hit rating as you can get elemental precision (or is it just precision now?) which increases your chance to hit by 3%. That makes you hit capped against a level 80 mob. To fight a heroic dungeon boss, you’ll need to get something like 6% hit rating. So, you’re looking for, in the short term, to get about 100 hit rating. The rest you should be able to pick up from gear drops in the heroics.
Also, be sure to grab faction tabards so you can grind out your rep with them while hunting down gear and emblems of heroism.
Did I miss a link to your armory somewhere?
If you do plan on raiding or running heroics a lot, then the glyph of ice lance is something to look into as it increases your damage on targets higher than your level. Like bosses. I think instead of triple damage, you do quadruple damage.
Also, what’s your source of gold? Have you started the Sons of Hodir quest line?
There are also minor ways to increase your dps without buying flasks (oils aren’t useable anymore), scrolls and the like. You just get friendly some other players: paladin, priest and shaman will most noticeably increase your spell power, hit and crit chance. Also, you can get the glyph of molten armor for the 20% greater benefit of spirit to crit.
At least I haven’t been encountering as many rude strangers lately that run up to me when I’m in the middle of something else, open a trade window, and say “food, plz.”
I figure it goes without saying that when I join a group, I’m going to buff everyone with Arcane Brilliance and provide them with yummy sustenance. It’s my gig. But I don’t do it for everyone that happens to run up and interrupt me.
However, I did encounter someone that knew how to ask. I was in a tough fight with multiple mobs. A priest ran up, healed me, buffed me, and threw a Power Word: Shield on me. When the last mob died, he bowed and asked if he could buy some water from me. I buffed him and gave him two free stacks.
For some added fun, you can make a level 30ish or so mage, name it “vendor” or something like that and stand in starter areas “refusing” to “sell” your wares to people. I’ve never done this myself, but I can imagine it being amusing for a little while.
It’s really the best (p)revenge you can get on people for all of your vendor services later on.
The game designers have obviously made them “mentally challenged” because all they do is “grunt” when they see me comin’ and then groan so pitifully when I kill them.
I know they do fight back, but damn, that is tough to listen to, when they fall.
Sorry Quasi, but even the most quintessential Warcraft icon, the orc peon, has always sounded “retarded”. Even when they die, heh. Maybe you could go kill some sheep and cows in between slaughtering the Defias to make you feel better.
My main for a while was a disc priest who main healed back in the Molten Core days (I moved her to Cairne too but haven’t touched her much) but since I dual specced my druid I am *loving *tree healing and I might try to gear him out for our future raids so I can fill any slot needed.
I tend to think in terms of raiding rotations. The Shatter combo is a staple of frost mage tricks, and very useful while questing. Rotations aren’t nearly as important in solo questing, since odds are you aren’t going to have time to stand there and do one. Either the mob will be dead or you’ll have to nova it, move, and start over again. 
