One tool that we have talked about many times in the past, and bears reminding again, is the existence of the the Hunter Spreadsheet. Originally and lovingly known as Cheeky’s Spreadsheet, is alive and well, and currently exists in a much more accessible format over at Female Dwarf. And I have been busy plotting out upgrades for myself to further push my ability to mow down the bad guys!
But unfortunately, it’s a problem in its current scenario. And that problem is that I can’t break 2-piece Tier 9. Chances are if you are a Hunter, and you load yourself into the spreadsheet, take almost any combination of gear and make two pieces of set gear Tier 9 you will find yourself seeing a theoretical DPS increase.
I have a pair of Handgrips of Frost and Sleet sitting in my bags at the current moment. And even though the stats are a bit hotter than my Tier 9 gloves, I need to keep my bonus in place. Another problem exists with my T9 pants which have Armor Penetration on them and the tier 10 pants which have haste instead. Ah, the joys of gear choices.
It is keeping me pigeon-holed into what gear upgrades are accessible to me. In reality, Blizzard just needs to adjust Serpent Sting to be to have critical strike without the need for a set bonus. And while I realize that would negate the Tier 9 bonus, but in the long run who really cares?
If there is one thing I am cursed with this expansion is my inability to get trinket upgrades. Don’t look at my trinkets. They are embarrassing. But I can definitely say that my investment in a Darkmoon Card has definitely paid off. I’ve tried my hardest to get trinket upgrades. I even run Forge of Souls once a day (before and after my break) attempting to get a Scorpion. But alas, it still eludes me. You know who does have one? My Warrior, that’s who!
I’ve tried GDKP runs for Death’s Choice but of course it didn’t drop. I’ve tried buying it from people who won the roll in PUGs. I was the second-highest roller on a Deathbringer’s Will. The Whispering Fang Skull doesn’t exist.
As it stands, I have exactly 95 Emblems of Frost sitting on Drotara, waiting for the next purchase. Decisions, decisions. Thoughts, comments, suggestions on upgrades available for Frost badges welcome!
That’s why the sets look like thus:
*T9 Helm/Pants, T10 Shoulders/Chest, Logsplitters
*T10 Helm/Shoulders/Chest/Gloves, Leggings of Northern Lights
That’s basically the only two viable pairings :P
No doubt. Which makes some of my earlier gear choices less than desirable at the moment. Dumb chest piece. Ah well, I foresee many badges in my future.
Rilgon wins, 4 piece T10 with either Legging of northern Lights or the 264 Crafted legs.
Serpent Sting, as well as all dots critting is a planned feature of Cataclysm. I think one of the things Blizzard likes to do, when they come with a cool idea like making serpent sting crit, it to throw it on a tier set bonus or a glyph (Making hots affected by haste) as a trial. If it works out, they remove the glyph and build it into the class during the next major patch/expansion. I am hopeful that this gear bottleneck won’t happen in Cat, although to be fair it probably will with whatever the next great set bonus is that we’ll clamor to be baseline. Heck we’re still crying out for scatter shot to be a baseline ability.
Trinkets continue to be a torn in my side aswell. It seems to be a problem that’s running rampant in WoW. The problem lies in extremely low drop rates, in addition to having so much more competition for each trinket drop, especially the dps ones. When deathbringer’s will only drops once every two months per raid group (Seems like even lower than that in my experience), and there’s on average 10 physical dps per group, all looking for that one trinket drop. Blizzard has stated they enjoy the drop rates of trinkets, and that trinkets should be the one flavor item that’s difficult to get, but for some of these trinkets that are so rare, and contribute so much to dps, it just doesn’t seem right to me. I don’t mind them being a rare drop, it just feels like it’s too rare. Honestly, how many times have you heard of Death’s Choice being ninja’d in a pug. I know it’s happened to me. (Bliz subsequently refused to do anything about it even though the loot rolls were clearly defined in chat, and I had screen shots of me winning the roll and the following mockery of my top 3 dps. A great way for the top guild on the server to act.) Ninjas will always happen, but to have the only shot I’ve had during this expansion at a trinket that I didn’t have to spend 10kg on during freaking Nax, taken away due to greed perpetrated by an extremely low drop rate, just isn’t right.