I got a comment on one of my recent posts regarding some of the gem choices I made on my Armory and why they did not necessarily match up with what I recommend.
So I’m gonna let you in on a little secret.
Ready?
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I am super OCD for set bonuses. I don’t care what the set bonus is, I will get it. I only made one exception once, it was when I needed to stick a +16 hit in there and I was crying inwardly the whole time and I replaced it as soon as I could. The little grayed out +4 stamina or whatever was killing me.
Is this smart? No. Does this mean I end up with wonky “+agi and +mp5” gems, despite the fact that mp5 is a bad stat to gem for? (Seriously, do not gem for mp5) Yes. Is this gimping my DPS? Probably a bit, yeah. Does this mean I tend to get a lot of comments and e-mails regarding my “special” gem choices? Yeah, and it’s kinda embarrassing.
But ya know what, tough. =P Besides, it’s better that my OCDness manifests itself in a video game than in a real life. (As someone who went through and somehow conquered the “write down every number I hear on some scrap of paper” phase… trust me on this).
This is why I squirm a little bit when people ask me if they should go for socket bonuses or not. Because I want to say “No, you shouldn’t,” but I always always do, personally.
I am a special case guys. Don’t be like me. Really. >.> Hey, we all have our little quirks, and that’s mine.
I’m Pike, and I go for socket bonuses. I also tend to go for what’s cheap because I’m cheapskate.
There, I said it.
/sits down
I, too, must always have the socket bonus in my gear. Except if the socket bonus is crap, and I’d be better served overall breaking it. Which has been never so far.
I usually gem for intellect or mp5 if I have to steer out of the red gems, simply because that’s where I start hurting in 5-man groups. Having to turn on Viper after each pull is annoying. -_-;
Tip to beat the problem:
Drop herbalism. Get JC. The JC-only gems have no color, so you can put 32 agility to a blue slot instead of stamina.
Or: you can be survivalist and then stamina will give you AP.
While I gem to get the best DPS (socket bonus be damned), we all have our quirks. I canNOT stand NOT using a quiver!
A place for everything and everything in it’s place? HA! Not anymore! Using a regular bag for arrows SUCKS as it drives me crazy when non-arrow items are placed in that non-quiver arrow bag, making my bags messy and unorganized. Yeah, arrows stack to 1000, more bag space, more slots, blah, blah, blah!… so what! I split those arrow stack of 1000 to fill up every slot in the arrow bag just so ONLY arrows are there. If a slot opens up, I’ll split another stack.
While I obsessively sort my bags, I find that my tank has made the pull.
Wait… wait wait. Hold on just a darned minute here. You’re telling me that there are people out there who DON’T do this? What sick mind can stand to? How can they not just feel so dirty and wrong with it on?
D:
@Gevlon- the JC only gems will have color soon. No easy solutions here, sorry 🙂
@Pike- Despite the fact that you’re not obsessing about squeezing the last few min/max DPS out of your hunter. you’re still topping charts with the people you play with. This is a testament to the fact that the largest factor in hunter performance is the player, and all the correct gemming, speccing, and enchanting in the world will only change the final result a little bit.
I used to do this too. But sometimes it was just ugh? +4 stamina ? And I began to put +16 agi gems in blue slots… And everything went very quickly… +16agi gems began to take blue and yellow slots when the bonus what even AP…
I’m a +16Agiholic… And I heard there will be +20agi in the next patch. My addiction will be even stronger…
Please help me !
…
I used to do this back in BC but I would only ever gem pure +agi, +agi +crit/+hit, and +agi/+stam gems. Eventually I grew out of it though.
You are Pike … and you make people smirk.
/sits down and smirks
I only share a minor variant of the mentioned disease as I’m usually willing to pass on stamina set bonuses. 🙂
Wow even the Greedy Goblin reads this blog. He must have a hunter alt stashed away somewhere!
Now in terms of being a cheapskate, how cheap do you go on your ammo? Back in BC I was raiding t6 content with lvl 45 arrows, cheapest you can find in Shattrath!
O!M!G!!!
You don’t actually practice EVERY little thing you reccommend and know as correct?
I mean we’d never expect to see Pike actually change specs and decide to run as MM or SV right? Nah. that wouldn’t happen. 😛
Its a bloggers basic right to say something then do the opposite.
I always felt a bit guilty giving people advice on how to top the meters then looking at my own char and realizing… yeah I rarely do any of that stuff. The important thing is knowing enough to help, not your ability to follow your own advice!
@Lupius, I’m not too much of a cheapskate so I tend to use pretty good ammo — at least the Frostbite bullets. I honestly don’t find the expense to be a burden at all.
Also, on boss fights I like to hit ’em for all they’re worth, so I use Mammoth Cutters. Now those are expensive but you’ll only be using ’em occasionally.
To make sure I don’t forget one way or the other, I use this macro, which I found at the Hunting Lodge: http://www.brigwyn.com/2009/04/10/automatic-ammo-switching-macro/
Make sure you’re using the right ammo names (I don’t think there’s such a thing as a frostfire bullet).
BTW, any macro experts out there — I run a lot of heroics, and in general heroic bosses are like lvl 82, not “??” (which reports as -1 i believe) so I’d like to have a third parameter in there that uses the good bullets if the target level >80. Any pointers? I tried simply putting in another if-then statement but got an error…
@jarnow – you cant do conditionals in macros anymore, they took that out with.. i think 2.0. unfortuantly, addons also cant do any “logic” in combat you you are stuck having to manually change ammo.
Well the macro in the linked post *does* work just fine (with properly named ammo). It uses blue ammo on bosses (lvl ??) and white ammo on everything else (including the 82’s, which I want to use good ammo on). I just want *another* condition in addition to the one.
I have never NOT matched sockets. Even when the bonus is something silly like stamina or resilience. I feel empty when those numbers are grayed out. But those times that a boss hits me and I end up surviving with 27 health left (which actually happened in Gundrak once) really justify this for me.
Of course, as a healer, blue and yellow stats aren’t useless to me, because it’s more balanced between output and regen, unlike you crazy DPSers. But even when playing my DPS alts, I don’t care if it lowers my DPS a little. You never know when a little more stamina might save your life.
@ Lupius – I use Mammoth Cutters in raids and Frostbite Bullets on everything else. Though I have been known to break out the Mammoth Cutters when I am in a heroic and there is a particularly good hunter in the group (I get so competitive with other hunters that it’s silly… silly I say!)
I keep several, several stacks of both in my Ammo Pouch which yes, I still use *nods at Llyrra’s comment* =P
Hi Pike!
Thank you for sharing and we’ll work through your problem together! ;D
@ Kiryn – at a risk of sounding contrary you never know when a little bit of extra dps will cut the fight a little shorter meaning your healer doesn’t oom and your tank doesn’t die 🙂
@ Pike – I LOL’d when I saw you’d made a post about your gemming, v sorry.
@ Echo – no worries at all, your comment in the last post provided a great springboard for me to make a post I’d been needing to make for a while! *nods*
Wait… wait wait. Hold on just a darned minute here. You’re telling me that there are people out there who DON’T do this?
Yeah, I don’t. If the socket bonus isn’t better than the 8 Agility I’d lose by using a non-red gem, why gem for it? /boggle
Well, unless you’re Pike, who has an explained reasoning 🙂