Why We Study WoW, Part Deux

I'm looking for a ranged weap upgrade. I'm reading. I find this. Now I'm not a theorycraft person and have no inclination to begin to move into that sort of level of obsession. However, because the hardcore community is accessible, I can take advantage of their knowledge. And, because noob and pro both engage (post) in the same area, I can even get a decent explanation. If I were to go to a straightup theorycrafting site, such as ElitistJerks, I might not get as elementary an explanation as this.

At ElitistJerks, I get a spreadsheet and a pat on the tush, to go work it out. But, even there, the conversation is accessible, and frankly, the intell. is a bit more accurate, insanely and obsessively accurate, but there you have it, and it's not YOUR OCD behavior so it's cool.

This is from Thottbot:

Even if you have 2 weapons with exactly the same min/max damage, but different speeds, the slower weapon will deal more damage per shot. This is because the AP bonus it gets will be higher, and the bonus from ammo will be higher too.

Formula is (if i'm not mistaken):

Weapon Damage + AP*WeaponSpeed/14 + AmmoDPS*WeaponSpeed = Damage

Add scope damage to Weapon Damage. Use maximum weapon damage to calculate your max dmg after AP/Ammo comes into effect.

Don't forget to adjust your result according to talents, such as Ranged Weapon Specialization in the Marksmanship tree.

This doesn't mean ofcourse that the slower weapon will deal higher dps than a fast weapon with the same min/max damage. Infact, the opposite is true. The faster weapon will deal more dps. If you look at the 2nd and 3rd parts of the formula, it basically assures that they will yield the same DPS (for autoshots) regardless of what weapon you use. Since you have 2 weapons with the same min/max damage, the faster one will deal more autoshot DPS.

This is not the case with our abilities such as Multishot, Silencing shot, Scatter Shot, Aimed Shot and Steady Shot. Those abilities have the same cooldown regardless of what weapon speed you use, so a slower weapon (with the same min/max damage) will yield more DMG per hit with them AND also more DPS with those abilities.

2 Notes:

Aimed shot cooldown is actually not the same, it is 6secs + quivered weapon speed, but no one uses aimed shot to DPS, only as an opening shot. And it will do more damage with a slower weapon.

The tooltip for Steady shot suggests that it's damage doesn't depend on weapon speed, but I have it from reliable sources that weapon speed does affect steady shot damage output.

I hope this helps :)

And as for what to do about optimizing for a Beast Mastery hunter, here's someone else checking in with some help:

For a BM hunter the 2.6 weapon speed is perfect, so combine this (with a +Crit Scope and two +8 AGI gems), and the easily obtained http://thottbot.com/i34014 (with the +35 AGI enchant on). This, in my opinion, is the best pre BT/MH weapons combo.

In total these give:

+62 STA
+77 CS
+67 AGI
+92 AP
+15 Hit
-98 ArP

Which works out as:

+159 AP (including AGI)
+5.16% Crit

Or if you prefer AP to Crit, then you can swap Savagery & two +16 AP gems, for the +35 AGI enchant & two +8 AGI gems, to give:

+210 AP
+3.89% Crit

The additional ArP, Hit & Stamina are also very nice.