Is Rowan’s Rifle of Silver Bullets Hunter loot?
Today I thought I'd touch on a semi-controversial topic, the use of Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets by Hunters. Let's get something straight, Rowan's Rifle is in no way itemised for Hunters. It carries strength, parry and dodge. Rowan's Rifle is clearly a 'stat stick' for Warrior tanks. A Hunter should never be rolling against a Tank for Rowan's Rifle. Never. Ever. However, Rowan's Rifle "binds when equipped", and as more people charge into ICC raids, more and more of these rifles are popping up in the Auction House. It is also an iLvl264 ranged weapon. For those Hunters unable to get into an ICC raid, and who are flushed with cash, it Rowan's Rifle a 'viable' option?
Post this question in any number of WoW forums and stand back and watch the fireworks. You'll no doubt receive a range of responses, a majority of which will end in you being labelled a 'Huntard'. Who would have thought that an imaginary/digital gun could inspire so much emotion? In any case, I thought I'd put emotion aside, and with the help of FemaleDwarf.com take a look at what effect equipping Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets would have on DPS.
For the modelling, I'm using a fairly standard level 80 Marksmanship 7 | 57 | 7 build.
I'm currently running two pieces of the tier 10 set which can be brought by grinding Emblems of Frost. The tier 10 two piece set bonus is:
"Your Auto Shots have a 5% chance to cause you and your pet to deal 15% additional damage for 10 sec."
Currently the best ranged weapon for Hunters that drops in the 5 man environment, is the Felglacier Bolter. With two pieces of T10 gear and the Felglacier Bolter equipped, my DPS, according to FemaleDwarf.com, is 4,772.44.
Now, if I do nothing else but swap the Felglacier Bolter for Rowan's Rifle, my hunters DPS, according to FemaleDwarf.com goes up to 4,967.32 . That's an increase of +194.88 .
That got me thinking. What if you are a Hunter and you are able to get into ICC 10 man raids? Njorndar Bone Bow is a ranged weapon more obviously suited to a hunter. It's got agility, attack power and critical strike. It makes the Hunter smile. Even though the normal 10 man version that drops is iLvl251, it'd have to be a better option DPS wise than Rowan's Rifle wouldn't it?
So, if I do nothing else but swap the Felglacier Bolter for Njorndar Bone Bow, my hunters DPS goes up by 4,963.82 . That's an increase of +191.38 . So the answer there is no, from a purely DPS perspective, in PvE gear my hunter would still be better off equipping Rowan's Rifle. I also looked at Stakethrower, another ranged weapon that drops in the ICC raid from Blood-Queen Lana'thel. With the iLvl251 Stakethrower equipped, my DPS is listed as 4944.55. That is 22.77 less than what I would have with Rowan's Rifle equipped.
In an order to take the Tier 10 bonus out of the equation, I equipped my current PvP set, which ranges from iLvl213 to iLvl264 gear, along with the Felglacier Bolter. According to FemaleDwarf.com my DPS is 3923.77. Replacing the Felglacier Bolter with Rowan's Rifle would see my DPS go up to 4019.39, an increase of +95.62. However, if I were to replace the Felglacier Bolter with the Njorndar Bone Bow my DPS would go up to 4081.64, or an increase of +157.87.
So where does that leave us? Well, from what I've seen, Rowan's Rifle will no doubt be a DPS upgrade for any Hunter unable to get into the ICC raids. For any Hunter with two pieces of T10 gear, Rowan's Rifle will actually out perform, by a slight margin, the most commonly seen ranged option from the normal 10 man raids, the Njorndar Bone Bow. It's not until equivalent iLvl264 ranged weapons are available to you that Rowan's Rifle becomes a less attractive DPS option.
Here's a table I put together showing the DPS increase by ranged weapon 'upgrade' (considering that two pieces of T10 gear are in use). The Felglacier Bolter was used as the baseline, so all increases are in relation to that.
Keep in mind that the Felglacier Bolter and Rowan's Rifle are the only two ranged weapons on the list available outside raids (via a 5 mans and the Auction House respectively).
So from the numbers I've seen, Rowan's Rifle is going to be a definite upgrade for any Hunter unable to get into raids, even with the T10 bonus taken out of the equation. With the T10 bonus in play, Rowan's Rifle will put out greater DPS than any range weapon available in any pre-ICC raid besides the Heroic version of Talonstrike. Even if you can only get into the occasional/casual ICC 10 man pick up group, depending on your gear, Rowan's Rifle may still be your best DPS option.
There is a downside however. Chances are, sooner or later, someone will inspect your gear, and when they do, there's a good chance you'll get called out for equipping a 'tanking' gun. No doubt you'll get called a 'Huntard'. It might get nasty. But here's how I look at it. When you take a Hunter in your group, they are there for one sole purpose, to kill things, and to kill them as quick as possible. If you can't get into an ICC 25 man raid, or any ICC heroic raid, then put simply, Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets is the weapon of choice if maximising your DPS is your aim. To put it another way, if you're putting together a raid group, would you prefer to take the Hunter that puts out 4.8K DPS or the Hunter that puts out 5K DPS? At the end of the day, as a pure DPS class, what's more important, the stats on your gear? or the DPS you can put out?
Here's my summary.
If you can't get into ICC raids and you have the gold to burn, Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets will be a definite DPS win for you, particularly if you are packing two pieces of T10.
If you can get into ICC 10 man raids, hope that the Njorndar Bone Bow drops. The DPS difference between it and Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets is not significant enough to warrant the headaches, bitching and name calling you'll get from others for equipping a 'tanking' weapon. While technically Rowan's Rifle of Silver Bullets is the best option DPS wise for Hunters until they have access to the other iLvl 264 ranged weapons from the heroic and 25 man raids, if you can, grab the Njorndar Bone Bow and minimise your chances of being labeled a 'Huntard'.
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Tagged: DPS, Hunters, Loot, Statistics
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6 Responses to “Is Rowan’s Rifle of Silver Bullets Hunter loot?”
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Another amazing post–though I’m not sure how the T10 bonus figures in here. Why is the T10 bonus more relavent to the question of Rowan’s? 15% more dmg is 15% more dmg for every weapon, right? I missed something there.
There is a slight problem with using a spreadsheet for this testing. I think the 2.1 speed on the Rowans would create issues in reality with your rotation. I’d like to see a dummy test with someone playing the toon or boss testing before I would buy into this post.
The speed matters since 2pc T10 is flat % to proc. Since its faster it procs the 15% buff more often.
I don’t believe that the faster weapon speed would have much of an impact upon any rotation. Like raicarter indicated, the faster weapon speed means that the 15% additional damage buff is up more often. +15% damage is a very good thing.
Extra auto shots might be beneficial to survival hunters to keep up Expose Weakness. This might actually be a practical concern in PvP vs. high resilience players.
I’ve actually started seeing quite a few hunters wielding Rowan’s Rifle in PvP battlegrounds.
It’s probably a trade off.
With Rowen’s Rifle you have auto shots occurring more frequently and you have the extra stamina, dodge etc that might be useful in terms of helping you survive. Keeping in mind that unless you retain two pieces of T10 (which may or may not be possible depending on how tough your battle group is for low resilience players) in the PvP environment you’ll lose the benefit from the set bonus.
On the other hand, your instant shots and special abilities are probably not going to be hitting as hard meaning less burst damage. Seeing as though a lot of battleground PvP is about burst damage I’m not sure whether the trade off is really worth it?
I can’t say that I’ve tested it personally so I can’t really say for sure, but given the option between Rowan’s Rifle and the Njorndar Bone Bow for PvP I think I’d stick to the Bow.