"The Don"

So I've been trolling various hunter forums looking for information on ranged weapons. Since my Steelhawk Crossbow dropped in Kara, I haven't really had a sniff of an upgrade. We're still not consistently getting to Prince, so the bow is not a given upgrade for me any time soon.

Mostly I've been poking around TKASomething and ElitistJerks. (Not gonna link 'em... feeling lazy today.)

Current wisdom for a Beast Master spec'd hunter seems to be that the gun from the Big Bad Wolf in Karazhan -- the [Wolfslayer Sniper Rifle] -- is the shizznit when it comes to weapons right now, outclassing the bow from the Prince and a few other weapons with higher reported "DPS" values. The problem? It's a low drop rate off a boss that only shows up once in three weeks of Kara runs -- if you're lucky. I haven't seen him in two months. (My guild dropped him this week when I wasn't available. No gun, though, thankfully.)

The issue with the reported DPS on weapons is apparently that faster weapons hit more often and therefore can be more effectively weaved into shot rotations. I tried a shot macro for a while, but it didn't work for me. I still try to use an Auto/Steady rotation for most boss fights, but throw in an Arcane every so often and multi when I can and think it'll do some good. I'm just not a min-max'er and can't be bothered worrying about that perfect rotation. I'm typically 2nd or 3rd on the DPS charts in Kara -- behind better geared rogues, usually -- and am often the top DPS'er when you look at just the boss fights. As it should be, I guess.

In my quest to find a new weapon that I have more control over getting, many of the forums talk about [Don Santos' Famous Hunting Rifle]. Really? The "paperdoll" DPS reported is only 73.7. My silly crossbow from Attumen -- at 79.1 -- beats that, right? Apparently not. "The Don" is apparently one of the best weapons until you start doing SSC and TK and my guild is nowhere close to those instances right now. Even then, the weapons that beat it are from the end bosses, primarily.

Based on all the various reports, the Don Santos' rife and the one from the Big Bad Wolf are neck-and-neck for DPS. The math still hurts my head. The big thing with the Don Santos' is that it has this nifty proc on it which increases RAP by 250 for 10 seconds. That 250 RAP is conservatively, about 17 DPS, which means that the 73 reported by the tooltip becomes more like 90... when the proc is active. Again... based on reports, that happens about 30% of the time, so the real up-time on the proc adds about 6 DPS, which puts it basically tied with the Wolfslayer if you just look at raw numbers.

I'm still not sure I'm even explaining this right, so I think I'll shut up now and leave it up to you to decide. The wonderful "Cheeky's Spreadsheet" can provide a wealth of information, and while it's telling me that the gun is better, I'm not sure the slight boost that it's reporting offsets the cost. I paid 1100g for the gun, but haven't yet soulbound it. WoWHead lists a typical buyout of 1700g, so I figure I got a bit of a deal. I don't spend gold in WoW easily. (I had nearly 6000g when I bought the gun and still don't have my epic flyer.) If you're a hunter out there in the know and can offer any advice about "The Don", please speak up.