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Comment by 749936

Hunter's use spell penetration for their magical shots, not their traps as many people think.

Whenever using a shot that hits as magic, it is affected by a targets resistances just as a caster's attacks would be. In order to negate this effect, you have to gem for spell pen. Most serious hunter's gem for about 170 Spell Penetration in order to remove Kings/Motw + Racials. You can continue to gem beyond this, but there are only a few times when it's neccesary. The most common reason to gem beyond this is due to Fire Resistance Auras when playing as SV. This is a very bad thing because SV's main attack is Explosive Shot (Fire). You don't need to worry so much about Shadow Resists as Black Arrrow has low burst, is dispellable and generally isn't worth using over AS, ES, CoS, + SS.

The basic formula works like this:

A shot is either physical or magical. If physical it is affected by armor. If magical it is affected by resistances. Kings/Motw + Racials will generally amount to somewhere between 100-170. If your enemy had say "100" Fire Resistance and this reduced incoming fire damage by 10% in theory, you'd need to gem for 100 spell pen to negate that full 10%. Ignore the percentage and simply look at the highest your resistances can get with auras. If your main shots are fully covered, you're fine, if not you need more spell pen. (Do this is a raid that you you're sure you're seeing the highest resistances you can get.

As a general rule, gem for 170 spell pen.

Comment by slamdunk

To the contrary of how many would think, this gem is usable (and perhaps preferable) to many of the classes in the pvp world today. Besides casters, many melee classes use magic damage as physical to improve their damage output. For example:

-Hunters use it for their magical shots (Serpent Sting, Arcane Shot, Explosive Shot, etc.)

-Death Knights use it for their diseases and other moves (Frost Fever, Blood Plague, etc.)

-Shamans use it for all their shock spells

Warriors, Paladins, (Feral) Druids, and Rogues, however, will not find use in this gem. They have little to no magical damage output, and rely more on physical damage than anything. It could be argued that a rogue's poisons need spell penetration, but it is too little a difference than just putting on an agility or resilience gem.

Comment by 749936

One this I forgot to mention:

The main reason to gem/chant for spell penetration is to avoid having binary* spells resisted/fail. For example, as a DK having Death Grip resisted at the wrong time could be bad, as well as having Hungering Cold fail.

If you don't want your binary spells to fail and cause you to lose a game, gem spell pen. It may cost you the equivalent of about 100 of you main stat, but it's probably worth it in order to win more games.

In Cata: 170 Spell Penetration minimum, 220 max. (195 mid road) -- Requires: 1x Cloak Enchant, 2-3x Spell Pen gems, 1?x Spell Pen/Resil gem.

For 70 Twinks**: 70 Spell Pen minimum, ~97 max -- Requires: 1x Cloak Enchant, 1-2x Spell Pen gems, 1?x Spell Pen/Crit gem.

*: Binary spells are those which can either hit or be resisted completely. They have no chance to be resisted partially.
**: Twink Enchants/Gems are almost exclusively Wrath era items outside of a few exceptions. Keep in mind that MotW, Kings, etc give 35 and don't stack w/ racials. So most players might even be fine w/ 35. It depends on whether they're worried about mages (97 max), Shaman (70 max), or other classes which have racials or abilities which get them above 35. TBH, if you have binary spells that can be resisted and you rely on them often, go w/ 70 spell pen. Mages are the only ones that can beat this number consistently.

Comment by dieselh

cataclysm killed the sale of this gems with the introduction of neck and back for casters that overcap spellpenetration. only few class still buy this like dk, feral or enha, and not more than 1 or 2 considering the +70 spellp enchant on the cloack

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