After reviewing some thought provoking comments and doing some careful analysis (in other words, running builds through femaledwarf.com), I’ve gone back and updated my Marksman Hunter Raiding Guide.
I’ve updated my pet build slightly after one of my readers suggested I look at Wild Hunt again as opposed to Shark Attack. The DPS gain was very minor, but a gain nonetheless.
I also updated the section about armor penetration and elaborated upon things a bit. After analyzing reader feedback and testing some things for myself, I’ve concluded that armor penetration is very relevant to a majority of level 80 MM Hunters, not just the well geared end-game raiders.
It occurred to me that with level 226+ gear being so easy to acquire nowadays, not to mention 232+ just around the corner, armor penetration is easily obtained. Heck, Heroic ToC’s giving the stuff away every day. Therefore, it’s fairly easy for most Hunters to stack enough of it without gemming and still see the benefits from a pseudo armor pen build.
As a result, I’ve touched on some different mechanics of the spec and how they’re affected by even moderate amounts of armor penetration. With my current gear, which has 444 armor penetration, I was able to achieve a 40+ spreadsheet DPS increase by changing a few talents and dropping Arcane Shot from my priority. Although spreadsheet calculations aren’t a truly accurate representation of actual in-game results, it was enough of a gain to have me take a hard look at Arcane shot’s viability for MM Hunters.
Check out the update, and as always, let me know if you think I’ve missed something.