While most of the hunter kite does not mesh with spell damage, there are a few quirks in the game that are massively beneficial to help make Spell Damage Hunter a nearly viable pvp spec. They are:
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A Hunter can dual wield Spell Damage weapons. Meaning that using Midnight Haze + Claw of Chromaggus both with spell damage enchant and brilliant wizard oil grants an absurd 280 spell damage from weapon slots.
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Arcane Infused Gem scales 100% with spell damage and is off the GCD. This means that with a single GCD you can use an instant cast spell that baseline is dealing around 400 + 140% of your spell damage, not counting talent points, and most of that damage is AOE.
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Each tick of serpent sting benefits more from spell damage than most other dots. Most Dots have a base duration of 18 seconds, but a dot only needs a 15 sec duration to receive full benefit from spell damage. Serpent Stings duration is 15 secs. Meaning that the bonus damage that would be distributed across 6 ticks is instead spread across 5.
It is very reasonable to be able to get to about 800 spell damage with buffs. Here are some theorycrafted numbers assume that 800 damage.
Arcane Shot: 183 base + 343 Spell Dmage = 525 damage. Critical Strike = roughly 1200.
Serpent Sting: 555 base + 800 Spell Damage = 1355 and with talents that goes to 1490. divided by 5 is 298 damage per tick.
Arcane Infused Gem: roughly 200 + 800 = 1k.
HIGHEST POSSIBLE DAMAGE BURST: Arcane Shot Crit + Arcane Infused Gem crit= 1200 + 1.5k = 2.7k lmao. With zerking = 3500. I am not joking, this means that a full bis spell damage hunter has a button that is as powerful as AP POM Pyro.
Things that would make Spell Damage Hunter a lot better:
Trap Scaling.
Being Horde (one major disadvantage is how much armor you lose as a spell damage hunter, picking up some shaman gear could help mitigate that)
Hurricane Bow Scaling with Spell Damage (this thing regularly proc multiple times on the same enemy. There are some items in the game that scale 100% with spell damage. Spell Damage Hunter would legit be OP with this weapon in full bis. Chance on hit to deal 800 damage lol. even at 25% spell powerscale it would be the weapon of choice for spell damage hunter.
Thanks for reading.
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Thank you for posting this.
Im interested in playing fringe builds in the wow. I ran moonkin all of classic for example and dabbled in the ret paladin world as well.
I am considering attempting a spell power hunter since ive already been playing a hunter now for a bit. Only level 30, but with duel wield at a hunters disposal there is a good sp option in the mid levels for a 1 hand weapon. The hypnotic blade from the SM.
My goal is to get 2, enchant 30 sp on both. That would be 76 sp factoring the daggers 8 sp each. Then combine with a few other pieces and perhaps push 100 sp in the mid levels without sacrificing too much agility.
Hell yah nice. My Hunter is lvl 60 and in my spell damage set I have about 225 spell damage. Last night I took a flask of supreme power in arathi.
Highest damage:
Zhc + zerking serpent sting for 360 a tick.
Zhc arcane shot on a warrior in zerking stance was a 1200 critical.
Spell damage Hunter is actually a lot better than I assumed
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I love that you can experiment with stuff like this in Classic and it can actually do stuff. The hard part is competing with a raid full of spell casters so you can play with this.
I’m interested to know how it goes!
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I’ve got like 4 raid items so far from gdkps. It honestly feel kinda bad buying caster items lol. But in general ppl just find it kinda cool that your are doing something different
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I feel like I am in the matrix, I was just playing with this. Lesser wizard oil (+16) added 6 damage to my arcane shot. which makes sense as it is supposed to be I think 42% and it probably rounds down.
I should point out also this can only take lesser wizard oil because of its item level, you cannot apply brilliant.
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Are you in the AQ set? I remember a couple hunters playing with a spell damage set through classic.
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Nah just in random cloth gear. The best item I have is mantle of black wing cabal.
I do actually have 2 tier 2.5 tokens, but don’t have rep yet. Tho tbh for running spell power id kinda prefer bis spell power gear over strikers I think
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I mean strikers has sp on it and as a hunter you still want agi that also benefits arcane and that. Hunters are always wonky with that kind of stuff because of some spell and some physical abilities.
Just a thought to try it out i think chest and and legs has the most SP. I know in classic i wore the chest during aq phase.
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You should also consider wyvern sting. Apparently it benefits from 100% of you spell damage over its 12 second duration.
Too bad you can’t use serpent sting with it, but it would be marginally better since it would do slightly more damage over a shorter duration.
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I’m fairly certain the talent applies only to the base damage so it would actually be:
(555 * 1.1) + 800 = 1410
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Only problem is you lose scatter shot for that.
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You also lose at least 3 points in improve stings. I would consider wyvern sting if it could be used in combat, but as it is I’m not sure it’s worth it.
The other spec I’m considering is scatter shot intimidation
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