First, allow me to thank everyone who contributed such great suggestions on my post about finding weapons for Mania. It’s weird to say but I really appreciate how you accept me for what I am and try to help me be the best I can within that niche. *grin*
Based on your advice and recommendations, I .. err .. went on a bit of a spending spree. What I bought was shaped by your thoughts, by my searches on the Armory and Wowhead, and ultimately by what was available on the Auction House when I went looking.
Overcome by the heady power of immediate gratification I spurned the slower benefits of rep rewards and the Argent Tournament and went straight for Bind on Equip epics. And yes, I drained my entire bankroll — a total of about 6500 gold.
The Equipment
The Results
I recorded my basic unbuffed stats both before and after I upgraded. For DPS I just used what was listed in the character panel — I didn’t do any fancy dummy testing or anything. I also didn’t record my pet’s stats, but those increased too of course.
| Stat | Before | After | % Increase |
|---|---|---|---|
| DPS | 421.6 | 549.3 | +30% |
| RAP | 2157 | 2873 | +33% |
| Hit Rating | 58 | 136 | +134% |
| Crit % | 13.51 | 15.69 | +16% |
| Armor | 7391 | 8622 | +17% |
| Health | 14,169 | 16,353 | +15% |
Not too shabby, if I may say so myself! I haven’t given my new equipment a full-out test pass yet, but I can already tell the difference even just pinging away at Scourge for the Argent Tournament daily quest.
What’s Next?
Nothing. Well, nothing for gear anyway. Oh sure, there’s still some pieces I haven’t upgraded … still some pieces I could upgrade further … and lots of enchantments of various types still to get. But in the immortal words of evil Willow, “Bored now.” I had my fun plotting and scheming and shopping — and I admit that I enjoyed it! But this is good enough for now.
I think I probably will spend some time looking over my talents and skills next, to see if I can optimize the way I randomly whack on the keyboard. But in all honesty I doubt much will come of that. I’m pretty happy with my random whacking.
So really the next big thing for me is thinking about what I can do with my newfound power!
Gratz on the upgrades Mania! Sure does make for a happier hunter doesn’t it?
GZ Mania… As you say.. you could spend a week shopping and still want more.. good to stop now while you can!.. haha
I just dinged 77 on my hunter and not a moment too soon either.. was getting bored running around northrend… Thank Jeebus for cold weather flying…
Once you get your gold store back up you should try to find a pair of cheap Slime Stream Bands
They are awesome and I’m sure you can find some for 1500-2500g
Love the buffy reference :)
Grats! Dare I ask… How much gold is left? :P
*Grabs his skin and hangs on* BAD MANIA!! NO FLAYING PEOPLE!!!
Gratz on the upgrade, any chance your gonna try sv as a second spec once you get your cash up? The dps is phoniminally better.
That’s quite the spending spree, although i don’t see any mention of melee weapon, is that one of the items yet to be upgraded? If so I suggest just questing your way through icecrown. It doesn’t take long to get revered with the Ebon Blade and the Runeblade of Demonstrable Power rocks. I’m still using mine. In fact, it’s also a great way to make gold. I think I racked up just over 2k in 3 days without really trying, just working my way through the quests. Also, the lore is thick here.
6k…ouch
You’ve gotta wait for the deals that pop up on like early Sunday mornings and stuff=)
Mania! I sent you an email about the Terromoth out in Terrokar! They retain the strange aura coloring no matter where you go! I tested this in shatt and stormwind :3
OK,I just came up with an interesting fact… I used SV as one spec and BM/SV for my tanking spec….and you would be very suprised at what i found. I don;t have the numbers handy, but I can tellyou that when i put more points into SV, my pet actually came out on top of the BM-heavy spec. In every category, except AP. And the difference i got in the AP, wasn’t worth a couple thousand HP, and a boost to all other stats. That just tells you how messed up BM spec STILL is. I will try to respec again soon and let you know just how staggered the numbers are, but it was kinda bad. Does Blizz really hate BM that much? I realise as a BM hunter, the pet’s AP is the most important thing, but my tenacity pet had a few thousand less HP and around 1500 less armor than if i was SV-heavy hybrid. Really messed up stuff.
dweezill- sv has some talents that boost the hunter’s stamina and agility.. maybe that boost is greatly effecting the contribution to the pet. moreso than say endurance training. Did you even take endurance training in said bm build? im not sure if this is why or not. but i AM frustrated that Wild Hunt doesnt work, and sent tickets on that. (it works ONLY after a log in and only until the pet is resummoned in any way. (zoning, mounting, flight, stable, dismiss. then its effect is gone again till next log))
Anyways shopping sprees are always fun. I just went on a mount shopping spreee with runecloth galore, exalted IF and Gnomer, and bought all the rams and robochickens. yay! I think Noba has 100g now. lol.
@mania
Gratz on your gearing. If I may make a suggestion; try grouping some 80 instances.
It’s a great source of gear and cash. If your quiet and don’t talk much then you don’t even have to put up with their annoyances. Plus we hunters don’t have to worry about bad tanks/healers: FD FTW!!!
@Noba
The wild hunt talent does seem to work now. Even though it’s not always effective, it does work. All you heve to do is mount and dismount to make it take effect. It won’t immediately apply in most circumstances because it modifies modifiers and takes a second to actually apply to your pet whenever it’s summoned.
That’s not really what I call a working talent though, that’s like the cower bug. Oh it’s not there all the time, but when it is, you notice it, only here it’s the reverse.
Anyways I’m glad to see you got geared Mania, and yes I gotta agree, one of the cures for my boredom, was grouping up for some lv 80 instances. I have to say norm CoS was the most fun I ever had :)
but everyone on my server wants to do CoS hc for the drake and if you fail on the time they abandon you :/
Anyways I suggest hc Nexus and UK, and for normal lv 80 dungeons, UP, CoS and VH.
Just with er VH, pray you dun get the Ethral dude.
Cause I mean you don’t know how fun it is to take down a pat of 5 elites in CoS hc when the healer dies and decides screw it I can’t take the pressure!
I mean it wasn’t horribly fun, but downing the mobs without wiping was a real thrill! And sometimes being a hunter, you can prevent a wipe! I’m not talking about FD’ing, I mean being the last to survive/take down some trash mobs :)
I mean I can understand your hesitation Mania, I never grouped before lv 80 really, I had very little experience, and very, very bad gear. But a few runs, and ignoring the real.. elitist jerks- I found a real spark and thrill in playing my lv 80 hunter.
I mean all you really need to know is to save CD’s untill needed, or a boss, and it’s easy :D
Oh and have pet on passive in some places/Dismiss pet for ‘short cuts’.
Yay for Buffy fans! 6500g seems like a good deal (at least for my realm). Grats.
Being an activer puger because it is difficult to schedule times and being able to commit to them, I have found since my first VC runs a few years ago that they, by and large, are not THAT bad…usually ;)
That said, I know you’re really not a fan of the gun sound. I would pretty much quarentee that among your legion of adoring fans (and I say that in all seriousness, btw) that there are a handful on Farstriders that have other 80′s besides hunters. I would also dare say that they would GLADLY cherish the thought of doing heroic Utgarde Keep with you to try and get the Drakemounted Xbow to drop for you. The stats are comprable, without the annoying gun sounds. If I had anything close to that level on your realm (20 is as high as I got before the xpac and, well…multiple grinds on my main server lol) I would do it in a heart beat!!
Thought I would throw it out there as a suggestion :)
PS…it’s an easy instance, even on heroic. Looking at the gear and stats you posted, much better than what I had when I ran it (xbow dropped on my 2nd run, woot!), which was 12 minutes after hitting 80…barely enough time to train!!
There’s some good suggestions for easy instances in the posts above :)
As a hunter, youre “just dps” and not likely to get hassled by your group unless you do something blatantly wrong. Don’t worry, the healer who didnt do anything wrong will take 90% of the insults and hassling! ^^
Just be sure to dismiss your pet before jumping off ledges and things where it’d run off and bring friends. If there’s cc be careful, but seriously almost no one uses CC in lich king anyway, not likely to see it. Other than that, just do your thing with your pet not growing, maybe toss on a threat meter, and be FD happy if youre worried about pulling aggro and having people bug you about it.
Besides, who would bug mania?? If I was on your server, I might pay for an instance run with you! And then bore the paladins while chatting away about pets.
Congratulations on your nifty new gear, Mania. I’ll keep this post in mind for when I finally hit 80 (currently 71 >.> ), but the shaman main comes first (currently 77 <.< ).
@Mania: “What’s Next?”
Go ahead with your dk ;)
I hope you got your epic flyer first…
Don’t forget the enchants!
I would expect a +20% improvement from no enchants to
good enchants on all pieces
Hey Mania, Could you post a link to your armory on this blog? I would like to see the results on your toon.
These sorts of posts are wildly helpful for me, because while I’m happy to bumble along with folks on instance runs I constantly feel shy about grouping with my hunter. Plus my hunter is the character I tend to love soloing on the most. So finding other ways to gear up besides instancing is wonderful! I really love bows best (I really like the sounds and arrow animations) – but that Nesingwary gun is really beautiful.
One question to all readers of that blog…. am I the only one which does have difficulties using Viper Sting on a mob/boss but have almost no effect ?
Mana exhausting was in the past something I also used if fighting against NPCs with a mana consuming ability (e.g. mages but not players, just NPCs).
Since a few weeks (not sure it was Patch 3.10) it seems Viper Sting is useless against NPCs (it’s still working in PvP). Is that as intended ? Or is this a hidden nerf against hunters ?
now thats what i call Lackadaisical gear u got there mania, good job. could upgrade the bracers with the giantmaims, way higher armor and Ap than eaglebracers. i would have also said if u pvped, the new gears out but its still weak on ap. and 6500g is cheap compare to my server ( baelgun ) all those items would have costed all together as much as the bike or even more. ( 12k -15k )
Someone noted about the annoying gun sound. Bout a week ago i found another way to fix that. A nice guy posted up an addon on curse for it. It replaces the normal gun sound with a nice sniper rifle sound, including the reload for it. And it applies it to EVERY gun in your group. not only your own.
And gratz on the gearing Mania.