Gem changes.. new choices?...

[Slickrock]

Ok, here's a question.. with all those ARP gems changing to +crit, are you going to be changing your new Crit gems to Agi gems once 4.0.1 is upon us?..

[Lisaara]

Probably either agility or attack power.

[Shinryu Masaki]

Attack Power is getting converted into Agility though. ^^; Looks like we don't have much choice here.

[Kalliope]

This is why I didn't bother gemming arp. All agi, all the time!

[SgtMakkie]

One benefit of stay BM, I just went Agi it is my warr that makes me grr arp to crit

[Sarayana]

This is why I didn't bother gemming arp. All agi, all the time!

This, pretty much.

[Anansi]

Same here, I never made the change to ArPen so nothing is really different there. The gem choices I made for Wrath look to be even better for Cataclysm so I'm happy there.

[Slickrock]

Well, Arp was better if you had enough of it, and dropped Arcane from your rotation.

But the question is, if you have all these Crit gems in a few weeks, do you convert them to Agi, or leave them alone for now? Perhaps the real question is, do pets get our Crit with 4.0.1? If not, it's an easy choice.. back to Agi.

Which reminds me... there might be a small fortune to be made with selling gems that have changed... Arp probably being the biggest change.

[SgtMakkie]

I think there's a better chance of you replacing gear with greens to make the choice quite simple. I don't intend to change my warriors gems to Str for example.

[Slickrock]

I think there's a better chance of you replacing gear with greens to make the choice quite simple. I don't intend to change my warriors gems to Str for example.

Perhaps, but I suspect we won't see 264 gear replaced in the first zone by greens. When we see more of the quest rewards, then we'll have a better idea.

But I'll be ready to drop at least 20 or so Agi gems in the AH on patch day. With the cooldowns coming off of transmutes, I should be able to make a lot quickly.

[Shinryu Masaki]

But the question is, if you have all these Crit gems in a few weeks, do you convert them to Agi, or leave them alone for now? Perhaps the real question is, do pets get our Crit with 4.0.1? If not, it's an easy choice.. back to Agi.

Well it might take a month or so before cataclysm is released, maybe even two if they decide to puch it to december, so if you keep all your crit gems you'll be stuck ni wotlk content and hit like a wet toilet paper.

[Slickrock]

Well, looking at the gem changes, and the transmute cooldowns coming off, I'm playing the market and investing about 2k in mats for the heck of it, and will see what happens.. bored crafters ftw, lol.

[Kalliope]

Well, Arp was better if you had enough of it, and dropped Arcane from your rotation.

"Better" meaning that you hit harder when you weren't moving around a whole lot, but I liked the flexibility. And I dropped arcane from my rotation regardless.

But the question is, if you have all these Crit gems in a few weeks, do you convert them to Agi, or leave them alone for now? Perhaps the real question is, do pets get our Crit with 4.0.1? If not, it's an easy choice.. back to Agi.

I'd go agi now.

[TobiasX]

I'll probably switch to Agi if I'm MM / SV or AP if I'm BM. I can never remember the exact reason that AP is better for pets though.

[Kalliope]

AP won't be gemmable anymore either.

[Lisaara]

So i better gem agility then.

[Anansi]

Well, Arp was better if you had enough of it, and dropped Arcane from your rotation.

Yes, but these two elements do not happen at the same time, or anywhere near the same time, which is a mistake I see a lot of Marksmanship Hunters make. Arcane Shot is dropped from the rotation pretty early on but making the switch to ArPen gemming should not happen until at least an 800 passive ArPen, 900 more ideally.

[Kalliope]

Well, Arp was better if you had enough of it, and dropped Arcane from your rotation.

Yes, but these two elements do not happen at the same time, or anywhere near the same time, which is a mistake I see a lot of Marksmanship Hunters make. Arcane Shot is dropped from the rotation pretty early on but making the switch to ArPen gemming should not happen until at least an 800 passive ArPen, 900 more ideally.

^
This.

And I never had that much passive ArPen, so I didn't.

[Arnen]

This is a good point, actually! My main's right at the point where ArP gems are only the tiniest, tiniest fraction of a DPS increase over agi gems, so now I know not to bother switching out all my gems even when the difference gets to be greater.

[Anansi]

This is a good point, actually! My main's right at the point where ArP gems are only the tiniest, tiniest fraction of a DPS increase over agi gems, so now I know not to both switching out all my gems even when the difference gets to be greater.

Yeah, don't make the change until you're looking at *at least* a 100dps increase via regemming to ArPen (probably better closer to 150-200). The reason for this is that Agility is very all-purpose, it gives you AP and Crit which affects every damaging shot you execute and as such it doesn't really care if you've missed an Auto or Steady.

ArPen on the other hand affects only our physical damage, so Auto, Aimed and Steady, which means if we fail to fire one of those we lose all that ArPen benefit we just gemmed for, and Auto is our single largest collective source of damage, so we need to ensure that we can always stop in time to fire. Thus ArPen is very unforgiving where Agility is forgiving. So once you see a significant three-digit theoretical DPS increase from ArPen, there's a bit more leeway for missing the occasional shot as the much higher DPS granted by ArPen will still make up for the more forgiving Agility loss.