Recommended Posts

Does anyone here have a weekly 10 mac ICC 10 that runs on Thursday or Friday nights after 9pm ET? I am looking for a group. I am willing to server change/faction change my Mage Awesomosaus on Cenarion Circle if the group is serious about weekly progression.

Does anyone here have a weekly 10 mac ICC 10 that runs on Thursday or Friday nights after 9pm ET? I am looking for a group. I am willing to server change/faction change my Mage Awesomosaus on Cenarion Circle if the group is serious about weekly progression.

You might wanna put which in which part of the world the servers you play on are

<Samurai Warriors> of Maelstrom, US runs 10 and 25 mans once a week, 10's on Tuesday, 25's on Thursday at 10:30 EST, 9:30 CST (server time). We're up to Dreamwalker.

On another note; Here's a picture I took tonight of my favorite place in Northrend, The Emerald Dragonshrine;

favoriteplace2.jpg

With all this ranting and Raving of How BM is the same if not better than SV i thought i would try it out. Much to my suprise my DPS is almost the same as SV in BM Spec however not as good as MM.

My pet seems to be doing around 2k dps consistantly on boss fights in icc and im doing around the 4k-5k mark as BM... As MM my pet would do around 800 dps and i would do around 6000 ish. Burst at the start of fights is pretty sick with TBW and RF etc the only downside of BM is the cooldown RF has, just wish it was lower (i know its a talent thing :( )

I do not see any mention on elitistjerks about BMs relation to ArP... might just be that I have not looked hard enough however on another site I read

BM and Armor Pen

BM hunters get a larger percentage of their hunter dps from physical damage than any other hunter spec — more than even MM. That means they get more benefit from armor pen than any other spec. And the larger percentage of damage that comes from the hunter (rather than the pet) the more important that stat becomes.

The value of armor pen, like all of our stats, depends on our other stats. Ranged weapon dps plays a big role as well as our overall attack power, our crit rating, and everything else. But now that a brand new hunter can be in ilvl 232 gear within weeks of hitting 80 and without setting foot in a raid… well, it’s a very different gear spread than it was back in the naxx days.

Much like with MM specs, BM eventually prefers armor pen to all other stats, and also like MM, BM eventually wants to drop arcane shot from their rotation. However BM does this at very different armor pen ratings than MM.

Again, as always, these crossover points vary depending on what gear you have — not just your armor pen, but your crit, ap, raid buffs, and ranged weapon dps. However almost no hunter has these stats as low as they were back in Naxx days, so these estimates should be pretty close for you.

Gemming Armor Pen

Like MM, BM eventually wants to gem for armor pen. As soon as one point of armor pen rating is going to give us more dps than a point of agility, or two points of attack power, then we want to gem for armor pen instead.

Where MM needs very high armor pen levels, with current gear BM needs surprisingly low levels before it’s the way to go. With only around 400 armor pen rating, a point of armor pen is better than a point of agility or 2 points of attack power.

This means that BM will want to start gemming for armor pen rating very early and should start considering it at around the 400 armor pen mark.

Note that this only applies is you have decent gear levels (around ilvl 230) and a good ranged weapon and again, the exact crossover point depends heavily on the rest of your gear. With very good gear, armor pen could be better for your significantly below the 400 arp mark.

http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/

Can anyone comment on that if its true. As things stand I have around 600ish (about 44%) arp without Gemming for it. I was thinking of Gemming Arp but only once I had around 900-1000 passive from gear alone.

With all this ranting and Raving of How BM is the same if not better than SV i thought i would try it out. Much to my suprise my DPS is almost the same as SV in BM Spec however not as good as MM.

My pet seems to be doing around 2k dps consistantly on boss fights in icc and im doing around the 4k-5k mark as BM... As MM my pet would do around 800 dps and i would do around 6000 ish. Burst at the start of fights is pretty sick with TBW and RF etc the only downside of BM is the cooldown RF has, just wish it was lower (i know its a talent thing :( )

I do not see any mention on elitistjerks about BMs relation to ArP... might just be that I have not looked hard enough however on another site I read

http://www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/

Can anyone comment on that if its true. As things stand I have around 600ish (about 44%) arp without Gemming for it. I was thinking of Gemming Arp but only once I had around 900-1000 passive from gear alone.

Seems to make sense. Although, it seems with t10 (264) and up ilevel 277 ect. hunters are becoming more haste driven, with Cataclysms changes to Armor Pen (removing it as a passive stat..) I'll bet theorycrafting about armorpen will cease.

Seems to make sense. Although, it seems with t10 (264) and up ilevel 277 ect. hunters are becoming more haste driven, with Cataclysms changes to Armor Pen (removing it as a passive stat..) I'll bet theorycrafting about armorpen will cease.

My Haste is pretty sick as it is i think im at 1.86 as bm and <1.5 when hawk thing procs. So im haste capped for steadyshot, furthermore i think i have seen my casts around the 1 second mark or 0.9 seconds when i pop RF.

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Stormrage&cn=nav

I have the haste trinket but not wearing it just playing around with other trinkets at the moment. Haste trinket does take speed down to 1.86 i think.

Just another thing though. When 2PC Tier 10 bonus procs and you reapply Serpant Sting, when chimera shot refreshes it will it refresh the sting part of it with the 15% more damage even after buff has gone or will it revert back to a normal sting? Could not find any info on this anywhere either :(

just thinking out a loud here

7600 * 0.2 + 241

With 7600AP

8805 Every 3 Secs...

with 15% Damage increase...

10125.75 Every 3 Seconds

If specced MM it should do 30% more damage.

Now if Chrimera Refreshes the Sting instead of applying a new one that would be a bit OP no? or is this how it works anyways?

Just another thing though. When 2PC Tier 10 bonus procs and you reapply Serpant Sting, when chimera shot refreshes it will it refresh the sting part of it with the 15% more damage even after buff has gone or will it revert back to a normal sting? Could not find any info on this anywhere either :(

Wait for the bonus to proc (get tricks, use trinkets, etc, etc, etc, etc) and get your sting up. Damage will be calculated when the ability is cast and maintained until it is recast.

So long as you refresh the sting using chimera shot you'll retain the bonus damage. When you recast the ability (ie: it falls of during phase change or you switch targets) you'll lose the bonuses that have fallen off.

Early in the game shadow priests were pulling a similar trick with shadow word: pain. They'd stack cooldowns, apply the dot and then constantly refresh it with mind flay. They were able to maintain substantial increases to that dot (+800 damage, +40% haste) through many encounters, and that particular ability often made up > 25% of a priest's damage. Blizzard changed the mechanics to have shadow word pain calculate it's damage every time it ticked. Earlier than that was the concept of "rolling ignites", and it was the reason classic raiding was "stack mages"

Now if Chrimera Refreshes the Sting instead of applying a new one that would be a bit OP no?

Your math is off. Normally you do X damage, with your set bonus you do X * 1.15 damage.

The set bonus is active roughly 50% of the time - so you can estimate your damage as X * 1.075 or 107.5% higher than if you had the same stats without the set bonus. This is where the bulk of the damage increase is found. The benefit you gain from rolling a sting buffed by this bonus is repetitively small:


  • Auto shot deals X damage + Y% of serpent sting. If you've managed to roll a buffest serpent sting your autoshot will deal X damage + Y* 1.15
    Chimerashot deals X damage + Y% of serpent sting. If you've managed to roll a buffest serpent sting your autoshot will deal X damage + Y* 1.15
    I'm not going to simulate the numbers, but you can get an idea of their impact by rough guesses:
    Autoshot: 1000 damage + 100 from sting = 1100.
    With rolling AP buffest sting: 10000 damage + 115 from sting = 1115
    Chimera shot: 3200 damage based on sting damage (8000 total damage) * 0.4
    Chimera shot: 3680 damage based on sting damage (8000 total damage) * 1.15 * 0.4
    You'll also gain a small amount of DPS from the sting itself being buffed.
    In this example you gain about 1% damage on autoshot about half the time. You gain about 24 DPS from chimera shot (10 second cooldown, but it's buffed half the time anyway, so it's 480 * 3 shots / 60 seconds). If the gain from rolling serpent sting with this buff alone is a 5% DPS increase then it's on par with other set bonuses.

I picked numbers that were easy for me to work with, but you can see that when you don't consider it in a vacume that it's not terribly overpowered. Consider the mage 2 Piece bonus: 12% haste that is nearly always up (it's a 6 second buff granted by an ability a mage will use roughly every 6 seconds). Arcane Mages scale very linearly with haste so 12% haste = ~12% damage. Hunter gain a falt ~8% damage from the set bonus and might be able to squeak out 4% more maintaining buffed stings when the bonus isn't up. All totaled it's around 12% which is on par with other classes.

As some of you know Paragon from EU-Lighting's Blade killed Heroic 25 man Lich King yesterday. I play on it's US counterpart, Lightning's Blade US. I'll leave this tell here I got by a level 1 do the rest:

[Ravenhorne] whispers: Hi is paragon on this realm ?

To [Ravenhorne]: The one that downed Heroic Lich King?

[Ravenhorne] whispers: Yeah

To [Ravenhorne]: Thats europe LB pal

To [Ravenhorne]: The europe Lightning's Blade

[Ravenhorne] whispers: Oh, how do i find that on the list, i didnt see it

New hobby: One of the mages in my guild has a warrior alt with a nasty revenge/cleave spam spec that he tanks with. He puts on DPS gear + sword n' board and I hop on my priest spec'd disc. and we queue for randoms. He gets smacked around like a naughty child but the reaction of pug DPS to a tank doing 10-20k DPS on trash (6-7k DPS overall) is hilarious. Even better because it's mostly Tier 9 gear that he's wearing to do it in.

I need to run a couple on my mac to make some videos of it.

New hobby: One of the mages in my guild has a warrior alt with a nasty revenge/cleave spam spec that he tanks with. He puts on DPS gear + sword n' board and I hop on my priest spec'd disc. and we queue for randoms. He gets smacked around like a naughty child but the reaction of pug DPS to a tank doing 10-20k DPS on trash (6-7k DPS overall) is hilarious. Even better because it's mostly Tier 9 gear that he's wearing to do it in.

I need to run a couple on my mac to make some videos of it.

I'd love to see this. I was talking to my brother in law about doing similar but the idea went no where

<Samurai Warriors> of Maelstrom, US runs 10 and 25 mans once a week, 10's on Tuesday, 25's on Thursday at 10:30 EST, 9:30 CST (server time). We're up to Dreamwalker.

On another note; Here's a picture I took tonight of my favorite place in Northrend, The Emerald Dragonshrine;

favoriteplace2.jpg

Did you send this to wow.com

Also what did you do to the picture to get it to look so dark and gritty?

@Adamb10: Gratz on protodrake.

A couple of screenshots from our alt-run heroic dailies, 5.8k boss/14.3k trash DPS from our tank.

There are no longer any instances we can't clear in 8-12 minutes (skipping optional bosses).

Spec is deep arms to get reduced cooldown revenge and then down prot for fairly typical tank talents.

Wearing a mix of 232,245,and 251 DPS/tank gear (sworn n board, 4 piece DPS Tier 4).

I wish there was a way to make attachments show up "old style" rather than getting inlined.

Epic lag that day, not sure what the problem was.

Time to continue my screenshot frenzy. Lich King 25 down, this time NOT a pug. :)

post-65970-12699982375124.jpg

Grats!!

My friends guild, <Illuminati> A - Shattered Hand-US is working on the Lich King this week. They just got to him on Monday night. She's the main tank and said it's a really fun fight!

Grats again, Adam.

Edit: waaiiiiiiit a second.. does "The Lich King Downed after 37 seconds" appear because of his reanimation or whatever he does after that dude knocks the sword from his hands?

And you got into an icc25 for just that fight? baller! :D

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Posts

    • Nope. That lack of surround sound capability (analog) won't fly with me. Sure, I use headphones most of the time, but still.
    • Creative Sound Blaster AE-X PCIe review: your headphones will love it by Steven Parker If you have been reading Neowin for any length of time, you may remember that I reviewed the Sound Blaster Audigy FX Pro back in April. I found it to be an excellent budget sound card, even though it lacked support for formats such as DTS over the included SPDIF port. Anyway, Creative reached out to me again asking if I was interested in reviewing the Sound Blaster AE-X. It is a card mainly targeted at headphone wearers, which I'll get into a bit later. Before we get underway, here is a disclaimer: Creative Labs provided a free sample without any review pre-approval. Here are the full specs of it: Creative Sound Blaster AE-X Dimensions: 179 x 126 x 18 mm Weight: 263g / 9.28 oz Platform: PCI-e DAC: ESS ES9039Q2M Connectivity Options Side: Rear: 1 x HD Audio Front Panel Connector, 1 x ⅛“ Headphone port, 1 x RCA Line-out (Left) port, 1 x RCA Line-out (Right) port, 1 x Coaxial SPDIF-out port, 1 x ⅛“ Mic in/Line-in port, 1 x TOSLINK SPDIF-in port Surround: No DNR / SNR: THD+N: 0.0001% Dynamic Range 130 dB Recording Resolution: PCM up to 32-bit / 192kHz (Stereo) Direct Mode: Line Out (Stereo): PCM up to 32-bit  384 kHz Coaxial SPDIF Out: PCM up to 24-bit 192.0 kHz Headphone Amp: PCM up to 32-bit / 384kHz (Stereo) Native DSD: DSD64, DSD128, DSD256 Output Impedance: 1Ω, Supported Headphone Impedance: 8–600Ω, IEM: 0.5Vrms, Low: 1.5Vrms, Mid: 3Vrms, High: 6Vrms, Maximum output power: 350mW @ 32Ω (High), Maximum output voltage: 6Vrms (High) Front Panel Headphone Amp: PCM up to 32-bit / 192kHz (Stereo) Native DSD: DSD64, DSD128 Output Impedance: 10Ω, Supported Headphone Impedance: 32–300Ω, Maximum output power: 40mW @ 32Ω, Maximum output voltage: 1.9Vrms ASIO: ASIO 2.3 Total Harmonic Distortion: THD+N: 0.0006% Dynamic Range: 114 dB Scout Mode: Yes EMI shielding: No (but it passed all the FCC emission tests) Operating temperature: 0–45°C Input Power: 12V⎓0.5A Warranty: 1 Year (MSRP) Price: $179.99 / £169.99 The Sound Blaster AE-X was announced at the end of May, and it becomes clear that it is mainly for headphone wearers. I should also note that the card does not support DDL/DTS encoding technology, but it is said to support decoding through the coaxial SPDIF port. I was able to test this working with the classic Windows Sound properties, but I could not get a DTS (decode) signal through my Logitech Z906, it defaulted to 3D sound whenever I played DTS content through Plex or Emby. In addition, this card only supports two channels (stereo) over the speakers. The surround support is limited to the Headphone Amp, so before I get underway, what we have here is a card mostly intended for headphone use, especially with its SPDIF In (Toslink) port where you could connect another device like a console. So what about the highlights of this card? The AE-X is powered by the ESS SABRE DAC (ES9039Q2M), which is capable of a 130 dB dynamic range. In addition, it supports 32-bit/384 kHz playback for deeper detail and clarity. The headphone amplifier delivers up to 350 mW @ 32Ω, which admittedly far surpasses standard onboard audio, offering support for studio-grade headphones. DSD256 and ASIO 2.3 are also supported. What doesn't it have? No support for What-U-Hear, Super X-Fi, or the SmartComms Kit No EMI shielding, but it passed all the FCC emission tests (from the FAQ) I also want to make it clear that I am no audiophile. For me, it's purely subjective and it should just "work" out of the box. First impressions As I said in the introduction, I was a bit sad to see that the AE-X only supports stereo output, meaning it would not be on par with my ALC1220 over my speakers, as I mentioned it seems like this card is marketed toward headphone users. Since I am not an avid gamer that would rule me out as a potential customer, but I can still test its capabilities! The card arrived in a nice-looking box, as shown above. It's quite a bit larger than the Audify FX Pro that I reviewed back in April, and at first I thought the covering meant that it was EMI shielded, but it isn't as mentioned above in the highlights section. What's in the box: 1 x Sound Blaster AE-X PCIe card 1 x 3.5 mm CTIA TRRS to Dual TRS Headset Splitter Cable 1 x Quick Start Guide Aside from the Quick Start Guide, which someone at my age (I guess) needs a magnifying glass to read thanks to the tiny fonts, Creative Labs also has the manual online, which first requires you to prove that you're human in order to access it (so I can't direct link it). Anyway, the box is mostly made up of cardboard, and the only plastic in it is the anti-static bag for the card itself. Design Top Bottom The card itself looks pretty cool and actually wouldn't look out of place in an all-white build. There's only one connector, and for some reason it is awkwardly placed on the side (front-facing) that is for the front panel audio connector, which will let you use the headphones through the front PC audio jack. Since the front panel Headphone Amp has fewer capabilities than the rear headphone port, I decided not to use it. Rear of card PCI-e interface The rear of the card is completely open and is normally where you would find the front panel connector. The PCIe interface side is completely covered, which initially made me think it was EMI shielded. I/O panel Side (front-facing) with Front panel connector On the outer rear bracket side we have the TOSLINK SPDIF in, Coaxial SPDIF out, RCA line out (Right), RCA line out (Left), Headphone out, and Mic/Line in ports. On the front facing portion of the card itself is the F-panel connector. Usage Test System Our test system consists of the following: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D Gigabyte X870E AORUS MASTER (BIOS F12) Corsair RM1000x (2024) Thermal Grizzly Kyronaut (33x33x0,2mm) 2x 32GB Kingston Fury Beast RGB DDR5 6000MT/s CL36-38-38-80 T-Force Z540 2TB (PCIe Gen5) NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition (NVIDIA) Creative Sound Blaster AE-X Windows 11 25H2 Pro I installed the card into the Gigabyte X870E AORUS MASTER which includes the RealTek ALC1220 onboard audio. For our subjective listening tests, I used the Coaxial SPDIF port to my Logitech Z906 speakers. For headphone tests I used the OneOdio Studio Max 2 Wireless DJ Headphones that I reviewed last month. After installing the audio driver, I installed Creative Nexus, which is a relatively new app designed for the latest Sound Blaster cards. Then I discovered the AE-X needed both a driver update from 1.00.15.0001 to 1.01.09.000 and a firmware update from 1.00.06.0000 to 1.00.06.0002, then I was set to go. It should be noted that the card did not work without the driver (not Plug and Play). As you can see above, you can manage the firmware, driver, and inputs via Advanced Settings on the Device tab. By default Nexus enabled "Direct Mode". Upon clicking on Acoustic Engine, the Equalizer can be enabled and set to four different presets, which are: Gaming Music Movies Footsteps Enhancer There's also a dedicated Scout Mode for gamers. I mainly used Tidal and Spotify in the past week to listen to some of my Liked Songs (which now total over 700) in Shuffle mode; there were no pops or interference that I could hear. I also found a 5.1 Surround Music playlist on Tidal that sounded really great over Studio Max 2 headphones. When I reviewed the Audigy FX Pro, I went out and purchased a Logitech Z906 set second-hand for €100 specifically to use with the card, but in this instance all I could get on the AE-X was the 3D output of surround sound through Coaxial SPDIF and although it still sounded great, it isn't quite as good as DTS Interactive via my onboard Realtek ALC1220. Conclusion So what have I learned? The AE-X lacks multi-channel support for 5.1/7.1 setups and drops support for modern surround technologies like Dolby or DTS, functioning strictly as a stereo output device. So to really benefit, you will need Studio-grade headphones to "hear" the benefits of this card. With that being said, I can imagine it will appeal to gamers who are switching between console and PC. By utilizing the SPDIF in port, you could just plug your headphones into the AE-X (front or rear port) and then switch between PC and Console without having to move the headphones to a different port. As I said in the Sound Blaster Audigy review, the EQ in the Creative Nexus app offers safe presets, which allows a user to further tweak the lows, mids, and highs for a personal listening experience. Of course it all depends on the headphones you hook up to it. Speaking of headphones, I kind of wish I had higher-quality Studio-grade headphones to really test this card with; I'm not usually wearing headphones in my day to day duties. The only time I will wear them is if I want to listen to music very late at night and I don't want to disturb my neighbors, so my rating (verdict) is based on this fact. Someone with a PC/Console setup and wears headphone religiously to game, and consume media will benefit much more than I from the high-quality Headphone Amps that are included in the AE-X. Once again, I do feel like Creative could have gone the extra mile to support the S/PDIF port a bit more. Why include it if you're not supporting the main popular digital formats? It seems like the decision was more of a legacy-based one, offering uncompressed 2-channel PCM audio, for users with high-fidelity audio systems and external DACs. Maybe I will be lucky enough to review a card that truly includes all these features in the future. I am sure readers with far more knowledge on audio systems than me will correct me in the comments below. I'll just say I am happy to learn what I don't know! Where to buy The Sound Blaster AE-X is available to purchase now in preorder for $179.99 on the U.S. Creative website, or for £169.99 on the Creative UK website and will start shipping to customers from June 25.
    • $80 or 90%, anything else would be financial suicide one way or another.
    • Or... just use Bitwarden. Free, and has on-prem option as well. Works both on desktop and mobile, wherever you are. The age of local password files is over.
    • Thanks
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      Supreme Spray LV earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      Genuinetonerink- Dubai earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Genuinetonerink- Dubai earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      hhgygy earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Week One Done
      AMV earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      513
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      164
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      88
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      74
    5. 5
      Michael Scrip
      73
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!