Hunters and Armor Penetration

It’s no secret that the different hunter specs have all relied on various stats to be at their best. Sometimes the stats get adjusted and players adjust accordingly. Sometimes the talents change and players don’t like those changes and reliance on a stat also changes. Overall, hunters have been a very versatile and ever-changing class for quite some time. The latest change is related to Armor Penetration. While it may not be specifically aimed at hunters, it does affect at least one hunter build.

Marksmanship Hunters

Marksmanship hunters are unlike any of the other two hunter talent trees. Beast Mastery hunters rely on their attack power and agility to boost up the stats of their pets and Survival hunters are rather versatile stat-wise. If they spec just a tiny bit into the Marksmanship tree, a Survival hunter can gain attack power bonuses from Intellect, Stamina and Agility. Marksmanship hunters, however, primarily rely on just intellect for their talent-based stat bonuses and then boost their stats through primarily agility and attack power.

Since 3.0.1, Marksmanship hunters began discovering the power of Armor Penetration. The more a hunter had, the more damage was done by Steady Shot and Auto Shot. Once a hunter hit a certain amount of Ar.Pen, roughly 50% without a trinket, they could stop using Arcane Shot in their rotation because it would actually cause a loss of overall DPS. The incredible power of Ar.Pen made it so that it was virtually mandatory if a marksmanship hunter wanted to be decent in any PvE situation, and as such caused hunters to stack it with their gear and their gem slots.

Ghostcrawler Says

In fact, this was really the point. Several melee specs (and Marksman hunters) had begun to focus on armor pen at the expense of all other stats. Gear without armor pen was being passed over and gem sockets were increasingly being filled with just this one stat. While every spec has stats that are more valuable than others, this one felt like it was starting to trump everything. Not coincidentally, characters stacking lots of armor pen were starting to do more damage than their peers and more damage than we were comfortable with.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Hunters, including myself, were passing up some of the best gear in the game in order to keep Ar.Pen at ‘acceptable’ levels. To me, a 3-5% increase in Ar.Pen would be considered to be worth more than 20agility. I was even willing to go under hit cap for the DPS boost that came from stacking Ar.Pen.

As a Marksmanship hunter, my Auto Shot did about 30% of my damage in any given fight, so the Ar.Pen boosted that damage to incredible amounts. When I was around 20% Ar.Pen, I was able to pull 7-8k DPS on Hodir hard mode without trying. I had never done the hard mode for Hodir, so I was learning some new things (like not moving as much) and I was able to top charts. Even in newer fights like the Coliseum I was doing incredibly well against people who were far better geared than I was. Holding one of the top 3 positions wasn’t a challenge because of the Ar.Pen that I was stacking.

The amount of damage that a Marksmanship hunter became capable of was barely rivaled by the damage of Survival hunters, and Beast Mastery hunters fell far behind. It was a noticeable change to anyone who played any of the three hunter talent trees, and it was obviously noticeable to the WoW dev team as well. When one spec can do 2-3x more DPS and damage than another DPS spec, there’s definitely something wrong. The game has always been about having fun, and when you have to change your spec to keep up with others and be viable in a PvE setting, it isn’t fun at all. That’s why the devs try to balance everything. It keeps everyone happy more or less and then it keeps people playing because they enjoy the game.

We’re not trying to prevent having a “best stat for me.” To some extent, that’s unavoidable. But if the best stat isn’t far above the second best stat, then gearing is a decision beyond just “take the thing with the best stat.” While there may still be a best in slot item, those are rarely trivial to obtain and in the meantime you might have to actually consider the drops you do get.

Again, Ghostcrawler has an amazing way with words. What happened to hunters was that we were given a “best stat” that we had to focus on to be considered any good. If the devs can increase the number of decent stats that we can use for our characters, then we can actually begin having a true decision on what gear is best. It wont be based on a single stat so we will actually have more accessible gear. Instead of having to go to specific instances and instance modes for specific bosses, a hunter will be able to have some diversity in instances and gear choices. It’s actually a good thing in my mind. Being stuck in the same instance week after week has never appealed to me, and now it’s possible to vary your choices and experience more content on a regular basis. Definitely worth it.

Final Thoughts

There will always be changes in any game, especially one as large as WoW. Considering how much classes have changed in general, and how much hunters are going to change in the future, the Ar.Pen change really isn’t all that bad. It’s a rather large change, yes, but it wont make or break hunters at all. As a hunter you should adjust and take control of the situation. Make it work for you, don’t just rely on some QQ posts to get Ar.Pen buffed back up. It’s not even worth the effort. If you can’t adjust, then you are destined to fail as a hunter. I know it’s a bit harsh, but it’s true. It’s just like the theory behind evolution. Only the strongest survive and they do so by adjusting to fit any situation that threatens a species. Considering that hunters will be changed drastically in Cataclysm, if you can’t adjust to smaller scale changes such as these, then you will never be able to adjust to a change that affects the class as a whole.