… is going to be Bind-on-Equip. The keyword there is “is.” (“You can’t get very far in life without saying ‘is.’” ~Knights who say Ni) At first glance perhaps you thought I was talking about Don Santos’ Famous Hunting Rifle. And that would have been a valid guess. But I was, in fact, referring to the Barrel-Blade Longrifle.
At the moment, you can only get it from this guy:
But with the recent information that Blue has provided us with, you will soon be able to get it from this guy. Unless your Alliance, and you can find your own dang Auctioneer. :)
I will let you you decide which one is more painful. So what does this mean for our Beast Mastery brethren? First, let’s talk about price. It’s going to be expensive. I am going to wager a guess that it will hit the Auction House with a price above what Don Santos’ sells for. But the availability of the Barrel-Blade Longrifle will eventually force the price to go down. I mean, what are the chances of getting a Don Santos’ to drop? Probably around less than 1%.
However, the Barrel-Blade Longrifle has an 18% to drop off an outdoor raid boss that spawns every couple days. And considering he drops more than one item, the chances of getting one fairly quickly is easy. And with a new reason to kill this boss, raiding guilds will probably take the time to whack him over the head on their way to Black Temple.
With a plethora of other great loot, such as the Faceguard of the Endless Watch, and the Black-Iron Battlecloak which has better stats than the Vengeance Wrap (minus a yellow socket and doesn’t take tons of materials) guilds might find another way to generate revenue to fund flasks and elixirs for their guilds, repair bills, etc.
With this gun becoming readily available, I believe the price for Don Santo’s will go down, as now it will only be the 2nd best BM gun available on the Auction House. But why is the Barrel-Blade Longrifle so good? Let’s explore that.
The Barrel-Blade Longrifle comes with a base of +16 Agility and a socket bonus of +3 Critical Strike Rating. If you don’t buy Delicate Crimson Spinel (after all, who can blame you. You just bought this gun!) and socket it with Delicate Living Rubies, you now have more Agility on your ranged weapon than ANY other ranged weapon in the game. Second place, being the Legionkiller with a paltry 21 Agility. And you have to be in Black Temple to be able to loot that off Supremus.
The other reason is that the speed of this gun is phenomenal for Beast Mastery! So bear with me as we do a little math to explain why. At its base speed, the Longrifle shoots every 2.6 seconds. If you have a quiver that increases your attack speed by 15% (You do, don’t you?) this will bring your Auto Shot down to 2.21 seconds. Then factoring in Serpent’s Swiftness, it will reduce that by another 20%, bring the attack speed to 1.768 seconds.
So now we can revisit some of the fancy images from my Shot Rotation Guide.
You can see the dead space we had when I started creating a shot rotation using my Gladiator’s Heavy Crossbow. We were looking at almost 1.2 seconds of absolutely nothing going on! And that’s no good for DPS. But with the Barrel-Blade Longrifle, we get a shot cycle that looks like this:
That looks much better! So there you have it. Start saving your silver and copper to pick up this beauty! Or the hopefully soon-to-be-cheaper Don Santos’ Hunting Rifle.
This is of course Blizzard doesn’t drop a bomb on us in the patch. My hopes is they will re-implement that shot mechanics they attempted to a few weeks ago, just without the bugs, like the whole double Aimed Shot/Multi Shot thing.
If you think I missed anything, or my math is wrong, or if you found this useful, please leave a comment. Anything I think of or get corrected on, I will edit later.
*UPDATE AND CORRECTION* Some of the commenters pointed out I was technically explaining Steady Shot wrong in this situation. But make note that the principle remains the same. Serpent’s Swiftness and your quiver reduce the cast time of Steady Shot to 1.087 seconds. However the global cooldown remains at 1.5 seconds. As always, thanks for your responses. I don’t pretend to know everything about Hunters so I always am eager to learn something. :)
I would guess Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle as the Numero Duo as to my liking it seems better than Don Santos…
Wolfslayer and Don Santos’ are very close. I believe the numbers on Cheeky’s Spreadsheet show them interchangeable depending on gear.
But some people are just terribly unlucky with the Opera Event. :) I am Exalted with Violet Eye and have a Sunfury and I haven’t even seen the Big Bad Wolf event yet. :)
Hi there.
I think you math is not 100% correct.
As far as i know all haste effects also apply to your casting time of steady and aimed shot, so your casttime shown at those 2 pics is actually shorter.
Haste effects do increase casting speed. However Serpent’s Swiftness and a Quiver specifically state they affect Ranged Attack Speed, leaving the casting time for Steady Shot and Auto Shot the same. Things like Bloodlust/Heroism Abacus of Violent Odds, and other Haste items would reduce those cast times however.
Thanks for the comment!
Is there a linky to the blue post regarding this change? Or did I miss it that obviously?
Ah, you are correct about the increase cast time. I guess what I didn’t make clear is that hast rating, quiver, and Serpent’s Swiftness do not lower the global cooldown, thus leaving you with 1.5 seconds you must wait after you begin your cast of Steady Shot. Casters are lucky enough that haste rating will their their GCD in 2.4, with a maximum benefit of lowering it to 1 second.