Dreaming of Heroic Zod's

According to the spreadsheets, my biggest DPS increase from gear will come from a better weapon. Currently, I am using the Heroic Stakethrower, which is an awesome weapon thanks to its stats (decent agi and ArP) and the socket.

However, unlike Frostheim, I'm not such a big fan of guns ... or Alliance, for that matter. He, playing a dwarf hunter, unequivocally refuses to use bows or crossbows. I, on the other hand, love bows.

In this game, guns are LOUD. Even though there's a way to silence the constant chitty-chitty banging via addons, I would much rather prefer the quiet, elegant 'ffft ffft ffft' of a bow or a crossbow. As you are raiding, you have enough to worry about in-game and on vent, and I don't think people appreciate another loud, obnoxious distraction that never frigging seems to end.

I did some min-maxing in spreadsheets, and turns out that the biggest DPS increase from a single piece of gear comes from upgrading my ranged weapon. It trumps everything, including upgrading major pieces of tier gear to BiS 277's. Since I already have the regular Zod's, the only way to go is straight to Heroic Zod's.



It's such an awesome weapon it makes all the frustration of wiping, grinding, enduring server downtime sooooo worth it.

Here's some items from my wishlist laid out in Zeherah at femaledwarf.com. I called my standard raid gear setup "ArP" because I'm a Marksman hunter stacking Armor Penetration, currently at around 1,240.


First off, look at those 6k DPS values and ignore them. They don't mean actual DPS you'll ever see in-game on Recount. Don't ever relate those numbers to anything you do inside the game, ever. Instead, treat those numbers as an index used to rank theoretical DPS values within the same population of values. In other words, the 6,670.55 of fictional unbuffed DPS I should be doing doesn't actually mean I should stand in front of Festergut, add the 25% charity buff Blizzard gives me, and expect to do 6.7 + 25% = 8.4k.

I instead do a different calculation: (6824.72 - 6670.55) / 6670.55 = 0.023, which means that if luck smiles upon me and we kill LDW in a Heroic 25 AND I outroll 3-5 other hunters in the raid, I should expect an incredible, amazing, massive DPS increase of at least 2%.

After all the stacks, procs, and buffs, that could mean a difference of 0.5-1k DPS if pulling above 10k, especially if intermingling with Volley pulls. On straight Volley pulls I'm scared to think of what this upgrade can mean.

Take a look at the other values in that list. Curiously, the extra armor pen from the 251 twohander off Princes provides roughly the same DPS bump as the heroic Whispering Fanged Skull if used in place of the Herk War Tok (is it "HERKUML" ??? I thought it was "HERKUMI" !!!)

Also, getting my hands on the awesome armor pen trinket that is Sindy's Claw is actually not that great when it stands by itself because after dropping Wodin's I become so hit-starved that I'd have to gem it. Pairing it with the 264 twohander, surprisingly enough, is not as good as just upgrading the weapon by itself because of fancy hit jiggling I'd still have to do. The real surprise for me is the massive 1% DPS bump from just upgrading the helm to its 277 version, most likely because of the meta socket crit bonus.

In general, this list shows the wide array of gear options I have, each providing a definite DPS increase. I can do every version of ICC and still find something I can use!

Well, it took me 4-5 months to finally roll a winning 21 on the normal Zod's in a pug (yeah, I know, for YOU it drops LIKE EVERY TIME), so I am hoping we down LK in our 25 and start grinding those hardmodes!