The clip above shows the new tree of life form that’s going to hit with Cataclysm.  Its a much needed upgraded to the frankly, old and crap design that’s been in the game for years.  One of the main issues I’ve had with Druids is being stuck in some form 90% of the time, it really puts me off playing the class.  Its the only class I’ve never managed to get past level 20 at least.  Its about time Blizzard got round to changing the appearance of some of the older models brining the game into 2010!

This new form really does look sweet though I must admit, sure there’s going to be 1000′s of people looking exactly the same after a while, but then don’t we all end up looking the same after we’re all decked out in tier 11 armour and above haha!

To me this is the best looking tier set I’ve seen so far.  A close second would be the old bad ass Warlock set from the Burning Crusade.  I really can’t wait to see the Warrior tier 11 and I hope they manage to top this Deathknigh effort. The Warrior helm mmo champion managed to data mine looks pretty nice with the shards of rock sticking out of it. So here’s to hoping the whole set looks legend beyond comprehension.

I’m going to go through and stick up a few posts of the amour sets that have been data mined so far. (or armor sets for you Americans ;))

Over the past few days I’d been thinking about Cataclysm and why its such an important milestone in the history of World of Warcraft.

Most people I chat to about WoW have rarely played any other mmo’s before they started playing WoW.  To them WoW invented the whole mmo industry.  In some respects it has, its launched the genre into main stream media.  My first introduction to mmo’s came in the form of EverQuest Live.  This was a very unforgiving game, there was very little in game help or anything like that.  It really was a world to explore. I then moved onto Everquest 2 back in late 2004.  EQ2 came out just before WoW went live.  Around my then circle of gaming friends there was a lot of hate for WoW and how cartoony and dumbed down it was attempting to make the mmo market.  When compared to EverQuest games at the time, WoW really did look just that, dumbed down and designed for people playing console games who wanted easy quick satisfaction.

I still picked up WoW come lunch to check out all the buzz.  Unfortunately I never followed through.  I managed to level my very first character a Dwarf Hunter to level 21 before I gave up.  I had some serious commitments going on in EQ2, I was acting raid leader and heavily involved in nightly progression raiding.  Anyway going off topic here, this is not an article about my gaming history!

What I’m trying to get at is that WoW did dumb down the mmo market when compared to EQ but was that really a bad thing?  How exactly did it ‘dumb’ down mmo’s?  This is the thing, at the time I honestly believed WoW was for dummies.  But now looking back I can’t believe how stupid I really was.  I got WoW wrong, very wrong.

Join me after the break.

To put it bluntly, World of Warcraft made mmo’s fun.  All previous mmo’s did have fun aspects don’t get me wrong or confused on that point.  What they did have a long side some fun mechanics was a whole bunch of time sinks.  It took ages to level in EQ, you lost xp when you died…..hell you could even de-level after enough deaths.  That’s not fun.  I could go on and on about systems which on the whole removed the fun aspect.  On the other hand the fear of death in EQ made people a whole lot better at the game and so the general player base was very skillied.

This is one topic WoW has issues with.

With the game being so accessible to almost any type of player you inevitably end up with droves of very poor players.  You also end up with people who love to spam chat channels with abuse and all kinds of crap.  For me this is the worst aspect of WoW.  For un guilded new players moving from older mmo’s or just more mature gamers in general the state of city chat channels can be very off putting.  I have first hand experience of this.  A member of my family (a very hardcore EQ Live raider) tried WoW. Only to then decide on giving up as group chat was none existant and general player attitudes were poor.  I don’t think WoW will ever manage to brush off this stigma.  Being the most popular its going to have the worst  community on whole, I just tihnk its unavoidable.

However as soon as you manage to get into a great guild, things can become very good indeed.  Theres nothing like having loads of like minded players to play with!

So whats all this got to do with Cataclysm you say?  Well I’ve been watching Total Biscuits heroic dungeons runs form the beta.  The difficulty level is awesome.  These are the kind of dungmeons we want.  Not only will people have to use their skills and abilities to the best of their knowledge they are also going to have to learn to effectivly communicate with each other.  If the difficulty level remains the same then you won’t be able to simply join a random group, say nothing, and blast through the zone walking away with the loot.

Heroics are  going to sort the men from the boys.  As it stands in Wrath if the tank makes a bad pull and causes a wipe, most of the dps will instantly leave.  Can you blame them?  The question is are they going to do it in Cataclysm?  If they do, they’ll find themselves never completing dungeons at all.  You are going to wipe multiple times.  You need to get used to it.

The fabled Cataclysm effect I’m hoping for is a jump back in time to the good old days of quality players and people willing to engage in conversation in groups!  People will become better at WoW in time and we should be all able to rejoice in the sea of awesomness…..with some luck!

Anyways, come on patch 4.0.1 hurry up and hit the EU servers!

Reforging has landed on the US servers and is due to land tomorrow on the EU. This is going to be a short and sweet guide on the user interface for reforging. I’ll stick up some images of the interface and breakdown the concepts and uses of reforging.

Lets start off with the concepts. Reforging allows you to change one minor stat on any item of equipment you have. By minior stat I mean secondary stats such as hit rating, haste etc. It allows you to swap 40% of any secondary stat for another secondary stat. The process of reforging is done by NPC’s in capital cities. Just ask a guard if you want to find out where they are hiding!  Its going to be great to finally get rid of all that bloody unwanted hit rating.

Check out the screenshots of the user interface for reforging after the break.

The class changes for patch 4.0.1 are listed after the break guys. This is the main systems change before Cataclysm, none of the world itself is being changed yet. This is kinda like when wrath hit, the class systems were changed to bring them into line with the new content. Anyway enough of my blabbing, hit the read more to see the full statement by blizzard.

Or hit this link to MMO Champion for the full breakdown.

Having been over both trees, I’m no closer to a decision. For this post, we’ll take a look at the Priest talents, focussing on the Discipline tree, since that’s the one I have the most experience with. The Discipline tree has seen some huge changes in the early tiers, and the changes are interesting to say the least. From the addition of Power Word: Barrier to a slew of DPS talents, this is not the Discipline tree that we’ve been used to during Wrath. Not by a long shot.

The two Tier 1 talents are the same as they always have been, Twin Disciplines for boosting damage and healing… and the amount absorbed by Power Word: Shield! That’s right, Twin Disciplines now boosts absorption by 5% on top of the current effects. Or at least it finally tells you in the tooltip that it does, anyway. Unbreakable Will is the same good old PvP talent that it always has been.

Tier 2 now holds Improved Inner Fire and Martyrdom , no change there. Focused Power has been moved up from Tier 6, and is joined by a new talent called Penitence, which is a 3 point talent. Penitence increases the critical effect chance of Smite and Penance. Sounds weird, right? You wait until we get to Tiers 4 and 5.

Tier 3 still features Inner Focus and Improved Power Word: Shield, but has a new addition in the form of Atonement, 3 points. Atonement is… interesting. When you deal damage with Smite, you instantly heal a nearby low health target for 45% of the damage. Repeat after me: Erm, what?

Tier 4 gives us Evangelism, which requires Penitence. Evangelism increases the damage done by your Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova and Penance spells by 4% and reduces the mana cost of those spells by 6% for 15 seconds. 2 points, stacks 5 times. Now… I’ll forgive you for yelling “But that’s for levelling, you idiot!” Bear with me though. Tier 5 holds a surprise. Tier 4 still holds Mental Agility and Improved Mana Burn, so it’s not all strange territory!

Tier 5… the most important set of talents that I’ve ever seen. Ever. We’ll start with the boring one: Enlightenment. Increase total mana and health by 6%. Ok? Ok. That’s that bit done. Now, for the good stuff:

Archangel: Consumes your Evangelism effects, instantly restoring 3% of your total mana and increasing your healing done by 3% for each stack. Also allows you to channel Penance while moving. Lasts 18 seconds.
That, ladies and gents, is insane. And you know what? I love it. We don’t yet know whether it’s an on use effect (I’m guessing so), or whether it’ll have a cooldown. I’m sure it will though.

The other amazing talent that we’ve been waiting for is…

Power Word: Barrier! Summons a holy barrier on the target location that absorbs 293.25 damage done to party or raid members within it each time they take damage. While within the barrier, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage. The barrier lasts for 15 sec or until it absorbs 1955 damage.

That’s the new stuff, pretty much. Soul Warding has moved down to Tier 6, and is now a 3 point talent that reduces the cooldown by 3 seconds and reduces the mana cost of Power Word: Shield by 15%.
Everything under that is exactly as it always was, bar a little fiddling around of positions. The old staples of Rapture, Divine Aegis, Grace (with some changes to the stack effect, IE it now provides a 12% buff to healing), Pain Suppression, and of course Penance are still present.

Now, I may be reading the signals wrong, but I suspect that what’s happening here is that Blizzard are trying to push us towards a bit of combat healing. It’s not a playstyle that suits everyone, so it’s going to be very interesting to see how people react to this preview.

Personally, I think it’s a great idea. I’m not just saying that for the sake of agreeing with Blizzard either. I love dealing damage while in a healing capacity, not for the big numbers or anything like that, but for spicing up the encounters. This kind of meld between offensive and defensive spellcasting is perfectly suited for the Discipline tree. The DPS talents in the Discipline tree are perfectly complimented by a few similar talents in the base of the Holy tree. Talents like Divine Fury, and Searing Light which reduce the cast time and boost the damage of your DPS and Penance spells respectively. Divine Accuracy on the second Tier, which increase your chance to hit with Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova and Penance.

Holy, whilst containing DPS boosting talents, simply does not have the same synergy as Discipline when it comes to slipping in some Smites or Holy Fires whilst healing. Discipline is a mobile spec, you can run around the place without people dying in the time it takes to get from A to B. The addition of Atonement and Evangelism, and especially Archangel show a desire to get Discipline Priests doing more than just spamming bubbles and firing off Penance every 12 seconds.

If our Discipline tree looks anything like this preview when Cataclysm launches, I’ll be a very happy Priest.

Ah yeah, just as some food for thought… don’t expect it to last but, Discipline may well have another trick up it’s sleeve if Blizzard are feeling really generous:
http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#bVI0uGhckhsffRtMEzcc00000000M

There’s a single free point there. I’d like to draw your attention to a signature Holy talent on Tier 5. Something to think about, eh?

Blizzard has released information on the new talent trees for Druids, Priests, Rogues and Shamans.  We have started threads on our forums and would love it if you guys would jump in and start discussing what these changes could actually mean for you and your class.

Druid Forum

Priest Forum

Rogue Forum

Shaman Forum

We will add the other classes as the information comes out.

Check out the Cataclysm talent calculator on the link below too!

http://cata.wowhead.com/talent#h

Welcome to the first edition of Wipe Insurance, Waranvil.com’s new raiding column. This will be posted every monday, so make sure you come back every week for new strategies, tips and tricks! This week we are going to discuss when you are ready to raid. So you’ve just dinged 80 and all you’ve heard about since level 5 is endgame raiding – many people will tell you its where the real game is, you level up and may even do some raids at your level along the way. But entering the current endgame raiding is different. Theres tiers, caps, stat weights, enrage timers, gearscore, jerks, death knights in full tier 9 doing 2k dps (Theres a lot of them…), casual, hardcore, no-lifers, hard modes…its enough to make your head spin.

What should you run?

The number one thing I can recommend to people who want to start raiding is to know your limits.
The way blizzard tunes instances (Gearwise anyway) is so that it is just hard enough for people wearing gear from the last tier of content (and assuming a reasonable amount of skill). The problem with this is…people want the newest gear and freshly dinged 80′s want to run ICC. If you get into that ICC 10 group in your Naxx 10 or Uld 10 gear, there is a very (very) good chance you will not be up to the minimum requirements for that instance. This, boys and girls, is a carried player. Being carried will not get you invited back to runs, and it will most likely put you on a few players ignore lists, hurting your future raiding attempts – even after  you have the gear to pull your weight. Stay in your bracket and get gear, it doesn’t take long to move up the ladder.

Disclaimer: The badge leap

When WotLK first came out, there were 2 badge types you could get: Heroism and Valor. You got heroism from running heroics, and the 10 man tier 7 raids. The gear you got from badges was on par with running the raid content. These days, you can get a full set of tier 9, and its 25 man counterparts (245 gear) just from chain-running heroics. Thats great, its a great way to gear up -  but I still suggest doing the tier 7/tier 8 raids before jumping straight into ToC or ICC, they give excellent experience in your class and in raiding techniques. Below are the raid tiers and a dps mark of where you should be to do them. These are numbers are based on the way the encountered are tuned and failure to meet them may lead to your raid having difficulty. Think of it this way – if you dont meet the minimum, everyone else in the raid has to work harder to make sure it succeeds.

Tier 7

• Tier 7 is the entry level raiding tier in wrath – as such, the gear requirements are lax and you can pretty much jump into these raids with heroic gear.
• This tier comprises of Naxxramas, Obsidian Sanctum and The Eye of Eternity. To run tier 7, you can pretty much be a fresh 80. A few heroic drops, some level 200 craftables – your good to go. The main purpose for these raids is to wet your feet in raiding, give you a taste of its glory. By the time you have completed these raids and gotten a few pieces – you will be ready for the 25 man version of tier 7 and the 10 man Tier 8 stuff.
  • Fasttrack: The ToC 5 man dungeon will drop Naxx 10 level gear in normal mode and Ulduar 10 in normal. The ICC 5 man dungeons also drop Ulduar 10 level gear on normal. These are a great way to get gear without raiding the tier 7 stuff.
  • DPS Mark: 1.5-2.5k

Tier 8

• Tier 8 is comprised of the Ulduar raid, which is an amazingly well done raid that most players these days will never do. The prerequisites for this tier are gear from Tier 7 or higher.
  • Fasttrack: The ICC 5 man dungeons drop ToC 10 level gear on heroic. If you are in mostly Tier 7 or ToC 5H/ICC 5N gear these heroics are manageable and an excellent way to gear up.
  • DPS Mark: 2.5-3.5k

Tier 9

• Tier 9 is comprised of Trial of the Champion , which gets a real bad rep, and Onyxia’s Lair 2.0 (Which is easy if you understand the basics of movement) . Once you have farmed tier 8 or heroics, this will probably be where most of your upgrades are. As I said before, I highly suggest you do the previous tier raids before this. There is not a whole lot of room for error in these fights – you need to know how to play your class, what your utility is and how not to stand in the fire/slime/cloud.
  • DPS Mark: 3.5-5.5k

Tier 10

• Tier 10 is the final tier of raiding in Wrath, and is comprised of Icecrown Citadel and the soon to be released Ruby Sanctum.|
  Icecrown Citadel is the culmination of all that  you have done in wrath, and the fights are great – but some of them come with serious gear and skill checks.
  • DPS Mark: 5.5k-7.5k

With the badge changes in this expansion, it will be easy to get geared in a matter of time, but until you meet the gear requirements – try to resist the urge to go into runs you are not ready for. Now, I am a firm believer that skill heavily outweighs gear, and that a 200 piece can be better itemized than a 219, it happens. This brings me to my next point.

Know your class.

I know you know your class, but do you really know your class? Do you know what buffs you bring to the table? Is your spec giving you the best tools you need to do your job? Are you stacking stats that give you more of what you need to do your job?

Ok, I’m probably going to catch some flack for the numbers above, but if you are in a gear setup that the instance is tuned for (see above), you should not have problems meeting these numbers. If you are in all ToC 10 and 25 gear and can just barely hit 3k, ask yourself – “Do I really know my class?”. Blizzard tunes the enrage timers and add health around what they expect (from lots of data gathering) players wearing a certain gear setup to put out.

If you happen to be a tank, here are some numbers that are good checkpoints to START tanking a specific raid.Keep in mind these numbers are unbuffed. As you can see, health requirements scale up significantly, this is due to bosses progressively hitting harder as you go up in tier.

Minium Tank Requirements per instance: (ALWAYS at least 540 defense.)

• Heroics/Naxx 10: 20-23k health, 20-30% avoidance, 20-23k armor.
• Naxx 25/Ulduar 10: 23-25k health,30-40% avoidance, 22-25k armor.
• Ulduar 25/ToC 10: 27-29k health, 40-50% avoidance, 25-27k armor.
• ToC 25: 33-35k health, 45-50% avoidance, 27-28k armor.
• ICC 10: 35-38k health, 45-55% avoidance, 29-30k armor.
• ICC 25: 39-44k health, 50%+ Avoidance, 30k+ armor. (The icecrown numbers reflect the current 20% buff).

Be prepared.

There are mountains of information out there regarding raids, bosses and abilities. Videos, if you like to watch – text guides otherwise! Its all out there, It will even be here in this column. Theres no excuse for going into a run dry – if you have at least a passing familiarity of what the encounter is like, it will go a little smoother when you attempt it. Also, if this is content that is challenging for you (or geared towards you) be prepared with consumables. Bring your own flasks, pots, elixirs and food. Most groups will provide fish feasts, but is that the best food buff you can get? Always try to do your best.

Ok,I’m Ready! I got my flasks, know my class, and studied the encounters!

Great! Come back next week when we discuss the art of being a good pug, and until then happy raiding!

We’ll start with the Shaman. I enjoy healing with mine, and throwing on an Elemental spec and hurling balls of lightning and lava at people is just downright awesome as well, but I’ve always felt there’s something lacking about the class. Levelling is a pain, due to a confusing mix of ranged and melee range attacks, although downtime isn’t too bad now we have the increased health and mana regen at lower levels. I think my issue with the Shaman is that feeling of being nailed to the floor. You place your totems, and… well, you usually end up anchored to them. The lack of mobility and repetitive rotations make for a good, just not exciting playing experience.

I’m expecting big things of the Shaman come Cataclysm however. A melee attack gained at level 3 will push Enhancement to better performance at lower levels. A new heal at level 4 will keep the martyrs healers interested and give some extra survivability to those hellish points where you pull 3 mobs too many. Really though, the goodies start rolling in when enter the early 80s. Unleash Weapon (level 81): Unleashes the power of your weapon enchants for additional effects. The nature of the spell changes with the enchant, making it viable for every spec. It’s instant cast, with a shortish cooldown of 15 seconds… Shamans just got a new attack/heal to play with! There’s Healing Rain, which is pretty self explanatory. It rains, and people it rains on get healed. What more do you want? At 85 though, you get possibly the coolest spell Shamans could ask for: Spiritwalker’s Grace. For 10 seconds, you can move while casting. Let me repeat that again, just in case you missed it. You can move while casting. That there is going to be good. Really good. Really, really good. I said I was expecting big things of the Shaman. I suspect I will not be disappointed.

Priests! Without wanting to sound like I do nothing else with my life, I have an Undead Priest at 80, currently dual specced for Shadow and Discipline. I prefer Discipline (I liked it before it was cool, I’ll have you know), but you can’t go wrong melting some faces. I’m of the rare (and probably wrong) opinion that there’s not much you can do with Priests really. Every spec I’ve tried has been absolutely fine, but then I’m not ripping through ICC25 Heroic.

So far, we know that Priests are getting a basic nuke for those occasions where DoTs just aren’t going to cut it. That’s… alright I guess. Nothing special is it? An instant cast spell, on a caster class? Big whoop. Shadow gets a few more interesting abilities, such as Shadow Orbs, but overall I wasn’t expecting a lot of changes to that spec, and it seems we won’t be getting many either. Holy gets a neat little ability that increases the healing from a spell the more you use it, which is a good idea in theory. How well it will pan out is anyone’s guess, but provided it’s balanced right it should give some interesting results. An alternative to Inner Fire will apparently be available… and it’s sounds rubbish. Increased movement speed and 10% mana cost reduction on instant cast spells. As opposed to more armour and spellpower. Yeah… best leave that alone, for the moment. Finally, the big 85 ability will Leap of Faith, which is Death Grip in reverse. The potential for abuse of this spell is off the scale. It’s beyond the scale. It’s so far away from the scale that the scale is nothing more than a dot on the horizon. I can’t wait to see how long it lasts.

Oh yeah, and Discipline is getting Power Word: Barrier. Nearly forgot about that.*

*Best news of the expansion. Ever. EVER.

Finally, we’ll finish this segment off with the Rogue. Last time I played mine in Burning Crusade, stabbing people was the order of the day, and as far as I know that’s not changed. The Rogue only really does 2 things: Hit people, and hit people hard to make them wander around in a daze. They have a neat toolbox of little tricks, like lockpicking and disctracting mobs, but really it boils down to “Where is that guys spine and how do I stick something in it?”.

To that end, Rogues are getting the ability to move their combo points from one target to another on the fly, which should be good. They’re also getting a stacking damage reduction ability, which they need. My Hunter’s Hyena has more armour than a Rogue. They get killed far too easily if you get the jump on them. Finally, they get Smoke Bomb, which is kind of like Anti-Magic Zone, only unbelievably awesome. Throw down the smoke, and anything outside it’s area of effect loses it’s target on you, and cannot hit you with single target abilities. I see one major issue with this, however. I doubt Smoke Bomb will be a subtle ability. I suspect everyone will know when it’s happened, and the area it occupies will suddenly be the target of every AOE capable class in the game, all of them laying down the hurt.

Next time, Hunters, Mages and Warlocks. Tune in for Part 3 later in the week!

Hi there, as you may already know, we here at Waranvil.com want to make this site better, and we want to give you more content! A good way to start would be some regular class specific columns for you guys and girls! So welcome to the brand new Waranvil.com hunter column Double Killshot, making its debut here and continuing every wednesday! Ok, thats enough exlamations (thats what the kids like now, right? Exclamations?) To kick this column off we are going to do a standard “get to know your class stats” rundown.

Keep in mind these stat explanations are for PvE, leveling and beginning endgame. Extreme soloing is a different matter, and will most likely be discussed at a later time. There will also be a lot of talk about itemization points,and  that article will follow next week.

Base stats: We call these the base stats since they are basically our bread and butter. Pretty much every piece of gear you get from level 10 on will feature at least one of these.

• Agility: Agility is your number one stat. From just one point of Agility you get .012% crit and 1 attack power.
• Intellect: Intellect is a stat you will never gem for, but you will miss it at the early levels of endgame and leveling. Intellect, like all caster stats, will give you a bit of mana, a bit of mp5, and a small bit of spell crit. From a pure dps standpoint, int is nice because it lets us have less time in aspect of the viper, and less viper time = more damage. Also keep in mind that 1 point of intellect is equal to 1 ap if you took careful aim in the marks tree.
• Strength: Strength gives you MELEE ATTACK POWER. You don’t want strength. Move along. No, I don’t care that your pet uses your melee attack power and you specced beast mastery. Move along.
• Stamina: Stamina is tricky. If you are specced survival, it will provide a small dps boost (and piss off the druid tank you keep rolling against staves on). Other than that its only real value is giving you more padding against unavoidable damage. Avoidable damage is avoidable and you really don’t need to stack stamina.

Secondary stats: These are the secondary stats that appear on your gear (the green text), most of these you will not deal with until level 25 and higher, and are more of the contested and varying levels in your set.

Hit: Hit is important, you want to cap it at 8% (7% if you are, or know you will run with, a draenai). Anything over 8% is wasted itemization. Try to balance your gear around the hit cap if you can.

Crit: Critical Strike Rating is very important to us as hunters, a great deal of our trinkets and talents proc off of crits, so you want to make sure you keep a high crit rate to keep dps up.

Attack Power: Attack power is good. It scales our dps (like agility) very well. Not as good as agility, but close, due to the fact that you get double the itemization points.

Expertise: Like strength above, expertise is for melee classes. I understand there are some pieces that look pretty great when just gearing up (Uruka’s Band of Zeal, I’m looking at you.) and they are ok to take them as a stepping stone to better gear. Its just wasted itemization in the end though. (In case you are wondering about your pet, they get expertise equal to your hit rating.)

Spellpower: Back in Burning Crusade, Arcane Shot scaled from spellpower because…its arcane. Anyway, it doesn’t anymore, so stay away from spellpower-it does nothing for us.

Haste: Haste is not a bad stat, but not a great one either. It will speed up your steady shots and auto-shots (It becomes more valuable with 2t10, where more auto-shots = more procs), but it’s not worth gemming for.

Armor Penetration: Armor penetration, to put it simply (because the real explanation is very mathy) reduces the amount of armor your target has, thus increasing the amount of physical damage they take. It also gets better the more of it that you have! I do however have to issue the following big red warning label:

>>IF YOU ARE NOT IN FULL ICC 25/ICC 10 HEROIC GEAR, YOU SHOULD NOT BE GEMMING ARMOR PEN, YOU SHOULD NOT STOP USING ARCANE SHOT<<

Let me explain. There is a special spot in gearing for Marks hunters where ArP actually becomes worth more dps than agility. This is somewhere around the 850-950 ArP mark from gear alone. It also requires more than 4k attack power and over 50% crit. At this point, its usually more dps to drop the improved arcane shot talent and drop arcane shot from your rotation in order to get more steady shots off. It also comes with the condition that if you have to move, you will lose a good deal of dps.

I cannot tell you how many times I have zoned into a ToC or Ulduar run just to see a hunter with 100 ArP from gear, all gemmed up for ArP, just leaving potential dps on the floor.
Bottom line for ArP: Gem Agility, but take whatever ArP you can get from gear – as long as stat wise – its an upgrade.

Not all stats are created equal and we will go heavily into stat weights and itemization points next wednesday! All feedback is welcome in the comments, including column topics.

For those who are interested in my credentials: Armory