Saturday, December 1, 2012

Gearing Thoughts




One of my usual tools is Zeherah's spreadsheet which tries to calculate (simulate) DPS based on a current or desired build and gear and also has export capabilities for other optimization tools. I noticed couple of error messages while working with the tool and after some investigation decided they were not previously reported so I just wrote an email to Zeherah describing what I encountered. I got a quick response back, she (I assume, at least in terms of WoW character) promptly updated the tool for one of the issues and noted that the other issue popped up was due to the fact I was using non-hunter trinket [Carbonic Carbuncle]. The only explanation I could come up with for why it had happened is that I wanted to bump up my ilvl at some point in time and completely forgot about it.

So I immediately went out and acquired [Hawkmaster's Talon]. It boosted my DPS significantly, like 3K, at least in theory. And my ilvl went from 471 to 474. I also upgraded couple of rare items with justice points. I do need to reforge, but decided to postpone it for a little bit since I am close to getting another valor points item and one more justice points upgrade. So after making these changes I went back to Zehera's and ran a quick and dirty test: I imported my current build and gear:







And compared it to recommended talents build with all the same gear and whistles:


As you can see I went for [Thrill of the Hunt] instead of [Dire Beast] on Tier 4 talents and [Blink Strike] instead of {A Murder of Crows] for Tier 5.
Here's the results, looks like I am missing on a noticeable chunk of DPS just because of my build decisions:



Not sure I want to change my build though. I chose [Thrill of the Hunt] because it's a passive ability and as a BM hunter I don't need any more buttons to push during the fight. And [Blink Strike] looks better for soloing instances. I will give it more thought next week but I am not ready for the change just yet.

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