Gear

Example Gear Patch 3.3

The Build:

Assassination Rogue Build

Glyphs

Major

• Hunger For Blood
• Rupture (the build shows tricks of the trade glyph – your choice)
• Mutilate

Minor

• Your choice in the minor glyph category; whatever floats your boat baby.

Priorities:

Make sure hunger for blood doesn’t drop off and Slice and dice is maintained by envenom. Poisons: main-hand Instant Poison, Offhand Deadly Poison.

The rotation:

1. Garrote
2. Start Hunger for blood
3. Start Slice and Dice
4. Mutilate to 4 or 5 combo points
5. Envenom
6. Mutilate to 4 or 5 combo points
7. Rupture
8 Go to step 4

Being that this example is for a target that’s not moving, ie your not chasing it around or moving constantly to avoid those nasty void zones, etc. You simply sneak up behind your target, Garrote for the initial bleed and first Combo point, start up Hunger for blood and slice and dice. After that its Mutilate to 4 or 5 combo points (Depending on how much time is left on your slice and dice you may want to envenom before rupture in order to get a full 20 sec duration), Rupture, Mutilate some more, Envenom which also conveniently refreshes your slice and dice, and back to Mutilate. Be sure to refresh Hunger for Blood before it drops off, and don’t let rupture drop off.  In a Raid scenario where you have multiple classes with bleeds on the target you may opt to skip garrote. Mutilate for some quick combo points, start up slice and dice, and Hunger for blood, then jump right into the rotation.

With the best in slot gear the dps for this build can turn out a whopping 10,204 avg dps, or a theoretical maximum dps of 11,052! Take that mages.

For about as long as we’ve been in WotLK the Boomkin druid is always something you want in your raid for the killer buff – but might have been a little hard to justify bringing because it was tough to do great DPS as a Boomkin.  Apparently Blizz didn’t want Moonkin form to be an also-ran in the latest patch, and so the Balance tree got some really significant buffage.

With the following gear, the balance druid can actually get respectably close to his feral cousin with a max theoretical DPS of 10,034.  That’s a bit of a far cry from the top end feral build going at more than 11,000 but there are a couple of things to keep in mind about that.  First, the feral priority list is far more complex and it’s much easier to drop or clip the rotation.  Next, while people like a nice kitty around, a boomkin who can pull their weight will get a warmer reception.

Plus, how much more fun can you have than pwning face while dressed up like a giant owl?  And the SNL dance – awesome.  I always liked Thunder chicken more than cat form anyway, so it may be time to dust the old druid off and give him a spin around the block in the following spec.

Gear

Example T9 Gear For Balance Druid

Talents

Druid DPS Talent Build Balance Boomkin

Glyphs

Major

• Starfire
• Moonfire
• Insect Swarm

Minor

• The Wild
• Unburdened Rebirth
• Thorns

Of course, the minor glyphs are completely up to you, but the set above is pretty standard.  If you do a lot of running around you might use the glyphs of Aquatic form or dash, since they boost movement speed (dash only occasionally).  And since none of the above glyphs figure into DPS at all you might also consider the Typhoon glyph if you can find reasons to use it.

Priorities

• Flask = Frost Wyrm
• Food = Fish Feast
• Mark of the Wild
• Moonkin Form
• Faerie Fire
• Typhoon – when moving
• Speed Potion
• Innervate – when mana below 2,000
• Treants
• Starfall – when NOT under effects of Eclipse
• Starfire – when 4pc T9 buff is up
• Moonfire – if no moonfire debuff
• Insect Swarm – if no insect swarm debuff
• Wrath – until lunar eclipse procs
• Starfire – if cast time is less than remaining timer on lunar eclipse
• Wrath – if cast time is less than remaining buff on solar eclipse
• Starfire

I’m no expert on Boomkins, and I’m sure the thread will help me iron this out.  But it doesn’t look like a lot has changed for a while with thunder chickens.  Hit the boss with FF, pop treants, potion, trinkets, Moonfire, Insect swarm, Wrath until Lunar Eclipse, Starfall, Starfire until solar eclipse.  Refresh Moonfire and insect swarm debuffs and just swap back and forth between wrath and starfire depending on which eclipse has procced. If you have neither eclipse and dots are ticking, throw starfire until solar eclipse.  Past that just remember to pop treants and starfall when the cooldowns are up.  I will update this based on input from the thread, but it’s basically what I was doing a year ago on my druid.

Damage Sources

It wasn’t until patch 3.3 that the boomkin really had a true chance of getting back in to the top DPS mix, but whatever they changed sure has helped.  We might even convince Gavin to crawl back behind the feathers and start slinging a little chicken pain around in ICC.  But one thing is for certain – it’s not just cats that Dominate any more.

A few weeks back we gave our readers the new top dog of hunter builds with our Marksmanship spec here: Highest Hunter DPS Build For Patch 3.3.  But just because Marks made a push past Survival in the max DPS build race certainly doesn’t mean that Survival is now an also-ran.  As a matter of fact, if you are more used to playing Survival and don’t feel like making the switch to a whole new play style, this Survival build still Dominates.  At a mere 164 DPS short of the max Marks build, this Survival spec pumps out a brutal 10,920 DPS (max theoretical).  So without further ado . . .

Gear

Sample Gear Survival Hunter Patch 3.3

Talent Builds

Survival Hunter Build Max DPS

Glyphs

Major

• Serpent Sting
• Kill Shot
• Explosive Shot

Minor

• Mend Pet
• Feign Death
• Your Choice

Priorities

1. Flask = Endless Rage
2. Food = Blackened Dragonfin
3. Hunters Mark
4. Summon Pet = Wolf
5. Auto Shot
6. Aspect of the Hawk
7. Rapid Fire
8. Kill Shot
9. Kill Command
10. Explosive Shot
11. Black Arrow
12. Serpent Sting
13. Aimed Shot
14. Steady Shot

As usual with all our build guides, this is a priority list and NOT a rotation.  You obviously cannot use kill shot until the mob is below 20% health, but it would take priority over all your other shots if the mob is below 20% health.  Keep an eye on the thread below for expert commentary from master hunters who can fill you in on all the details of a prioritized shot rotation.  It’s far less complex for hunters than DK’s and feral druids, however.  You should be able to figure the rotation out on your own based on the priority list here.

Damage Sources

Yeah, the uber geared marksman may still beat you a little in DPS, but if youre like a lot of people and loath change you can just stay survival and do just fine.  It’s too bad there isn’t a completely Dominating Beast Mastery build for raiding, but hey, you can’t have it all.  besides, the gigantuan pets tend to tick people off.  Too much stomping leads to bad blood between friends.  But this Survival spec will certainly keep pace in the latest round of top DPS wars, and we still see a lot of hunters sticking with Survival over Marks.  Good luck Dominating with your Survival hunter.

Not too long ago we did a post about feral druid cat form and had our fair share of negative feedback from the feline community.  It seems that any feral build without mangle was just not going to satisfy certain kitties with quite finicky tastes.  we promised we would revisit the build in a form that included mangle, and here it is.  It’s not going to put out as much overall DPS, but if you’re used to it it might just be better for you than the new version without Mangle.  Besides, with a max DPS of 10,913 theoretical dmg you might just find it’s plenty anyway (plus one moar button to push when face-rolling).

Gear

http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=14726081#talents

Talent Build

http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=14726081#inventory

Glyphs

Major

• Savage Roar
• Rip
• Shred

Minor

• The Wild
• Unburdened Rebirth
• Dash

As is the case with most builds, the minor glyphs are mostly up to you since none of them figure into direct DPS in any way. So if you are in love with something else feel free to use it, but these are pretty typical.

Priorities

This build does Mangle, and adding something to the priority list certainly does not make the list less complex.   It’s not nearly as bad as some DK lists with internalized rotations inside the list, but there are some conditionals you have to bear in mind. Check the thread below this post for input from the folks who do this all the time for more nuts and bolts. And remember, this is NOT a rotation, so things may seem a little out of order. It’s a priority list, so get that straight before you complain.

• Flask = Endless Rage
• Food = Hearty Rhino
• Form = Cat
• Maim (interrupt)
• Faerie Fire
• Tigers Fury (when energy is less than 40)
• Berserk (when energy is less than 90)
• Savage Roar (without SR buff)
• Savage Roar (With 5 combo points on target and Rip has more than 6 seconds left)
• Shred (to extend Rip when Rip has less than 4 seconds)
• Rip (when at 5 combo points to debuff target)
• Ferocious Bite (when combo points are at max and target has less than 6 seconds to die)
• Ferocious Bite (at 5 combo points and rip has more than 10 seconds left)
• Mangle
• Rake (unless the target will die in less than ten seconds)
• Shred (if you have more than 70 energy)
• Shred (when Omen of Clarity procs)
• Shred (when combo points are below 4 and rip has less than 3 seconds left)
• Shred (if the target will die in less than ten seconds)
• Shred (if Berserk is still active)

Damage Sources

Remember that according to the wikki simulcraft engine, this build Feral Druid Spec Pwns Face WITHOUT using Mangle does 214 more DPS than a mangle rotation. And the build above is the Mangle inclusive build everyone yowled for.  Either way you want to go , it turns out that a well-played cat really does Dominate.

When all you’ve got is a two button rotation, things can get a little dull.  And at least with the build below you can go right from leveling directly to raiding for at least part of the time.  You might still want to go arcane on Boss fights, but the frost spec has a little more utility on trash.  It’s an idea anyway.  I actually keep this frost spec on my mage for doing dailies and just random 1v1 killings.  In the long run it’s not going to rival the top DPS builds, but it can keep you from going completely numb in the brain from face-rolling arcane.  You can see our Arcane spec here: Arcane Mage Build.

Gearing Example

Frost Mage Gear Early Patch 3.3

Talent Build

Frost Mage Talents For Patch 3.3

Glyphs

Major

• Frostbolt
• Water Elemental
• Molten Armor

Minor

• Your choice – has no impact on DPS so suit yourself

Priorities

1. Flask = Frost Wyrm
2. Food = Fish Feast
3. Water Elemental
4. Arcane Brilliance
5. Focus Magic
6. Counterspell (Spell Interrupt)
7. Icy Veins
8. Mana Gem
9. Speed Potion
10. Deep Freeze
11. Frostbolt (when Target is frozen)
12. Fireball (when Brain Freeze is up)
13. Cold Snap
14. Mirror Image
15. Frostbolt
16. Evocation
17. Ice Lance (when Target is frozen)
18. Fire Blast (when moving)
19. Ice Lance (when moving)

Damage Sources

When you are leveling you might drop a few points into Frosbite, Imp. Blizzard and permafrost, but its not really necessary.  Once you get the perma pet you blow stuff up so fast that slowing them down is a little bit of overkill.  It’s about 1,00 DPS less than arcane, but should have more utility for trash pulls, and more buttons to push on Bosses, although using this for progression kills is hardly recommended.  But if you are looking for a change of pace from time to time as an off spec, this frost build is about as Dominating as it gets outside of Arcane.

Another class that gets the short end of the PvE stick because of how OP they can be in PvP is the priest.  One little change to keep these guys from melting every face in arenas and they get a little worthless for PvE – again.  But the interesting thing about 3.3 is that there doesn’t really seem to be any class that is just completely on the bottom of the pile.  Almost every class has at least one spec in the 10k range, and the priset is now no exception.

Gear

Shadow Priest Example Gear Setup

Talent Build

Shadow Spec DPS Build

Glyphs

Major

• Shadow Word: Pain
• Mind Flay
• Shadow

Minor

• Fortitude
• Fading
• Levitate

(As per usual; the minor glyphs are quite a matter of personal preference since they have little or nothing to do with DPS in most cases).

Priorities

1. Flask = Frost Wyrm
2. Food = Fish Feast
3. Fortitude
4. Divine Spirit
5. Inner Fire
6. Shadow Form
7. Vampiric Embrace
8. Potion of Speed
9. Shadow Fiend
10. Shadow Word: Pain
11. Vampiric Touch
12. Devouring Plague
13. Mind Blast
14. Mind Flay
15. Shadow Word: Death (if moving)
16. Dispersion

Damage Sources

Remember to run your own numbers to get your Pawn scales for your current toon.  Plus, re-run your scales in the engine every time you get a new piece of gear so that you are always completely up-to-date when it comes to making gear choices.  We show you how to do that in the Article Making Gear Choices For Your Character. It’s been so freakin’ long since Law did shadow (think leveling with Sherpaman before WotLK as in this article: The Solo Priest; You Can Do It! and The Lawbringer Rules ) that I won’t even attempt to give you insight into the priorities here, you’ll have to get that from the thread below.

But at least at this point the shadow priest is more than just a decent addition to a 25 man raid, they can actually be a big contributor on an individual basis in the form of some seriously massive, and quite Dominating, DPS of their own.

Perhaps no other class waxes and wanes more in overall DPS than the paladin.  A lot of it has to do with PvP.  Paladins get a PvP buff, then in a week there is one in almost every arena team pwning face.  That’s no kind of balance so they get a nerf, then they are worthless in PvE.

We’re not sure why Blizz has such a hard time keeping PvP and PvE separate for pallies, but at least for now, the Ret paladin can do more than just respectable damage in raids.  The following build and numbers bear that out.  Since all we’ve done on Paladins for quite a while has been about tanking, we thought it was high time to do a DPS build for them.

Remember that the following comes from the Simulationcraft Engine.  If you have any problems with the use of gear or glyphs, you can download the engine yourself and tinker with the simulated toon and rerun the numbers for yourself.  Be sure to save your output and post it below if you can beat the preset numbers.

Also, once you’re done retrofitting your toon with any new spec changes and glyphs, run the engine yourself to get a fresh set of Pawn scales – you can read how, and why you should do this, in the article: Making Gear Choices For Your Character.

Gear

Gear Suggestion Character For Ret Paladin Early Patch 3.3

Talent Build

Retribution Paladin Build For Patch 3.3

Glyphs

Major

• Judgement
• Seal of Vengeance
• Consecration

Minor

• Anything you like

Priorities

• Flask = Endless Rage
• Food = Dragonfin Filet
• Seal = Vengeance
• Hammer Of Justice
• Divine Plea
• Arcane Torrent – (Assuming You’re A Blood Elf)
• Avenging Wrath
• Judgement – (Your choice here depending on raid makeup and mana issues)
• Crusader Strike
• Divine Storm
• Consecration
• Hammer of Wrath
• Exorcism
• Potion of Speed

Damage Sources

Ret experts should help out the neophytes by giving tips on how to use the priorities above, and there will probably be some discussion about how gear choices might have changed a bit now that three wings of ICC are open and it is at least fairly likely you could have gotten one to three pieces of t10 or t10 equivalent gear by now.

If you had your Paladin DPS spec on the sidelines for whatever reason, it might just be time to dust that bad boy off and give him (or her) a whirl.  One thing is certain, a decently geared Ret paladin can pump out some seriously dominating DPS in patch 3.3.

You know that guy – he’s probably one of the dudes, maybe even the Fonz himself.  Always knows exactly what a particular piece of gear means to his current set, and probably every other spec for not only his toon but everyone in the raid.  The fellow who seems to be able to see the game code in his head and actually understand how it all works together.

You may actually be that guy, if so you probably won’t use this tool at all.  But for everyone who ever wondered whether to take the Staff with a bit more haste over the main hand/off hand with spirit, this little gem will make processing those decisions a matter of about three seconds worth of work.  If you can look at two numbers and tell which one is higher than the other one – you’re set.

The Tool is the Simcraft Engine from Wowwikki.  Over the last couple of months we’ve been posting builds and specs from the engine for different classes and talent trees, but never really used the engine ourselves until last week.  The reason behind this is that trying to figure out all the possible parameters and commands just makes my teeth hurt to even think about, but there are some interesting things you can do with the engine that applies to your own toon, and not some made up best-in-slot mega toon.

First you’ll need to download Simcraft to your computer – Simcracft Engine Downloads – and install the thing on your hard drive.  (no there isn’t going to be a big long explanation of this – f you can’t figure it out on your own, you’ll never be able to use it anyway, so tech challenged folks will have to go to the wikki forums for the engine itself for help, this isn’t going to turn into product support for someone else’s stuff).

There are versions for both Mac and PC, so no matter what you’re platform, you should be good to go.  Launch the engine and set your options in the first tab.  I prefer to use Helter-Skelter and Player Skill = good.  Those settings seem to most realistically mirror what I can expect out of my toons in a real life boss encounter.

Next, just import your toon from the armory.  Find your toon in the armory interface and click Import at the bottom right, once the import is done, the same button will then read “Simulate!”  Hit the simulate button and you will end up with a wealth of information about your toon.

The engine will run your toon through a simulated boss fight 1,000 times and then generate a LOT of numbers.  It will tell you almost everything you need to know about how to get more out of your DPS.  It will show you how to maximize your priorities, what buffs to use and most importantly, how stats scale for you with your current gear.

You see, stats are never quite static.  Almost everything suffers from diminishing returns.  You can only get so much out of stacking Haste, for example, before more Haste is not worth as much as more Spell power or something else.  Unfortunately, trying to figure all that out as a human being is the realm of the uber geekoids and those blessed with some sort of freakishly natural ability to do so.

I ain’t that guy, but I know a good machine when I see it.  I don’t have to build the dang thing myself, but if it makes my life easier and gets me something 99.5% as good without having to re-invent the wheel, I’m all over it.  The Simcraft scales are my kind of machine.

Near the top you will see the custom generated scale factors for your toon based on your current gear.  I did this for my mother’s poor little shadow priest and got the numbers you see below:

OK, so you cant read the pawn scales all that well in that format, but there they are.  All I have to do is drop those suckers into Pawn for her and when the very next piece of gear drops, she can tell in two seconds just how much better it is than what she’s got.

Now here is the really slick part.  All of that took me about 2 minutes.  The next time you get a piece of gear, you just reload your toon into the engine and then run it through the simulator again to re-balance your scales.  Every new piece of gear will affect all future pieces of gear.  With up-to-date scales, you never have to wonder if you are giving enough weight to Crit or Spirit or whatever, you can just pop in a new Pawn scale and go one with your day.

Basically what this means is that now you can theory-craft and min/max every single piece of gear you ever get on the fly and then update your entire set of scales with every new piece of gear you get.  And you can do it without having to scratch your head and look at five web sites and threads all over the internet, all you have to do is read a couple of number, and that is very Dominating.

Although all three trees for Warlocks have good DPS builds (over 10k DPS) the following Affliction build is between 250-500 higher than the rest in patch 3.3.  As with all of these builds, remember that they come from the Wowikki Simulationcraft engine, so any anger can be taken out on the engine itself – we are just the messenger.  With that being said, you might find that this build definately helps your DPS.

Gear

Best In Slot Affliction Warlock

Remember, at this point in patch 3.3 we have yet to see all of ICC and there are no heroic modes open yet.  So best-in-slot is still a mix of ToC, T9 and T10 gear.  Once ICC opens completely and heroic modes are available, you can expect plenty of changes to the gear you see above.

Talent Build

Tier 9 Tier 10 Affliction Lock

Glyphs

Major

• Curse of Agony
• Haunt
• Life Tap

Minor

• Whatever floats your boat

Priorities

• Flask = Frost Wyrm
• Food = Fish Feast
• Spell Stone
• Fel Armor
• Pet = Felhunter
• Life Tap
• Potion = Wild Magic
• Haunt
• Corruption
• Curse of Agony
• Unstable Affliction
• Drain Soul (when target health less than 25%)
• Shadow Bolt
• Life Tap (When Mana is under 20%)

Remember, the list above is NOT a rotation, it is a priority list, which means that you will use whatever is the highest on the list whenever it is available (not on cool-down) with certain conditionals, of course.  Master affliction locks will help you out in the thread below for more insight into rotations.

Damage Sources

You may also have noticed that the best-in-slot gear is min/maxxed with Tailoring and Enchanting.  That combo of professions is almost impossible to beat for caster DPS toons.  You will also note that while you may never see most of the gear from 25 heroic ToC (until it is not best-in-slot any longer) you can get a good idea about which pieces of Tier set pieces to use and what should be off set.  In the case of this lock, you can feel comfortable using all five set pieces.

We’re not really sure why Blizz does this from time to time.  Back in tBC Marksmanship hunters were all the rage, with the odd BM hunter holding on to his leveling days until they finally gave up and joined the Marks crowd at some point.  At the beginning of WotLK it was the BM guys who had their Devilsaurs stomping around shaking screens in everyone’s face.  Then, finally, Survival hunters have been the flavor of the last six months or so (a spec I always wanted to play in tBC – when I was still allowed to play a DPS toon).

That all changed in the last patch, and we’re back to Marksmanship as the top DPS spec again.  The Wikki Simulationcraft engine lists four builds for DPS potential:

• Beast Mastery at 9725 DPS
• Survival at 10920 DPS
• Marksmanship at 10964 DPS
• Marksmanship at 11084 DPS

So BM has definitely been relegated to leveling duty once again, which may be because everyone else simply hates the BM pets in a raid.  The other builds are separated by by just 164 DPS, so it certainly doesn’t man Survival is dead by any means, but if all you care about is beating everyone in a raid in DPS, you’re probably going to want that 11k DPS build giving you every possible advantage.

Remember that this build is based on the Simcraft engine, but what what we’ve been able to tell from testing in multiple classes and specs – the engine just doesn’t lie.  My Shaman now hardly ever uses Chain Lightning, and my Mage pushes like 2 buttons.  And it works better than just making things up as you go along.  But, there will always be subtleties in every priority list that our readers will point out in the thread below the post, so ask questions if you have them and the experts will come to you.  And yes, we’ll try to make sure they are nice to the nubs.

Gear

Here is the best in slot hunter gear for T9T10 in Patch 3.3; at least it’s best in slot based on current content and what someone could possibly have at this point.  That doesn’t mean you could run out and get all this gear in a week, or even a month, but it should give you an idea what you should be (cough) shooting for.

Tier 9 Tier 10 Hunter

Talent Build

Patch 3.3 Marksmanship Hunter Spec Build

Glyphs

Major

• Glyph of Serpent Sting
• Glyph of Aimed Shot
• Glyph of Steady Shot

Minor

• Mend Pet
• Feign Death

Priorities

• Flask = Endless Rage
• Food = Hearty Rhino
• Hunter’s Mark
• Pet (Wolf)
• Trueshot Aura
• Aspect of the Hawk
• Serpent Sting
• Rapid Fire
• Kill Command
• Aimed Shot
• (wait for Chimera Shot if Cooldown on Chimera is less than .25 sec.)
• Chimera Shot
• Kill Shot
• Readiness
• Steady Shot

That’s all there is to it.  Kill command when you can, and then Aimed Shot at the top of the list.  Follow Aimed with Chimera and Kill Shot when it becomes available.  If not, pop readiness and then do steady shot.  So it’s really just Aimed shot, Chimera Shot, Steady Shot – Aimed Shot (Chimera Shot if cool-down is up), Steady Shot – Aimed Shot, Chimera Shot, Kill Shot, Steady Shot.  And you pop cooldowns for rapid fire and readiness when they are available, although you’ll want to wait on the readiness cool-down until after you’ve used both Chimera and Kill shot so they refresh for the next run through the list.

Damage Sources

Pawn Scales

This pawn scale is a little rough, since the engine didn’t spit this out and we had to build it manually, but it should be as close as you could hope for without the programming help.

( Pawn: v1: “Marksmanship”: Intellect=0.519, CritRating=0.893, Agility=1.444, HitRating=0.236, ArmorPenetration=1.116, HasteRating=0.124, Ap=2.837, GemQualityLevel=81 )

So for those of you who played Marks back in the tBC days, now is your chance to go back to your roots.  For everyone else, there at least is a very viable option to Survival builds, although BM is a good 1,300 DPS behind.  I was a big fan of Survival being the top spec, not that the guild will ever let me play a hunter, but it gave me a warm and squishy feeling deep down.  But no matter if a hunter was your first toon, or just another in a long line, this Marksmanship spec will help you Dominate.