Locked and Loaded: Overpowered Timewalking gear for Hunters

I think the best thing about Timewalking is it allows you to use fun tier set bonuses and trinkets from the past. These are either things you haven’t used in years, or things you never had the opportunity to use because you weren’t playing a Hunter at the time. Yeah, you can walk into Timewalking with whatever is on your back and clear it, but if you’re intent on grinding out the rewards or going for the recently-announced Infinite Timereaver mount, being able to annihilate things by taking advantage of old set bonuses or scaling oddities will get you there faster.

In patch 6.2.3, Blizzard will also be adding a Cataclysm Timewalking event, which takes a few items out of contention (remember, Timewalking gear doesn’t scale upwards) but there are still plenty of items and sets from the recent past that can shine in Timewalking.

The Legendaries

Let’s get the obvious ones out of the way first. The legendary bow, Thori’dal, the Stars’ Fury, is only worth using for Burning Crusade timewalking. Due to the lack of a socket, there’s not a whole lot of benefit to using it over other weapons, beyond the coolness factor of equipping a legendary weapon on your Hunter.

The Capactive Primal Diamond (meta gem) from the Mists of Pandaria legendary questline works in Timewalking and will give you a nice little damage boost. You just have to make sure you’re using a helm with a meta gem socket that is at least ilvl 502. Can be purchased from the Blacktalon Quartermaster.

Fen-Yu, Fury of Xuen is usable in all three forms of Timewalking (and in the future for Mists of Pandaria Timewalking if/when they add it) and is worth using over every other cloak if you completed the quest back in Mists of Pandaria.

Maalus, the Blood Drinker is not really worth using in Timewalking dungeons. For some reason, Blizzard decided to scale down the proc to a 1% damage increase. You’re actually much better off wearing the previous incarnation of the ring, the Spellbound Runic Band of Unrelenting Slaughter. Its proc isn’t scaled down in Timewalking. If you got rid of it, you can pick it up again from Zooti Fizzlefury in Zanagarra for 1600g.

Weapons

All weapons will get scaled down to the same DPS in Timewalking (assuming they match or exceed the base item level of that particular Timewalking dungeon). This is why the legendary bow isn’t that special in terms of power. The main way to differentiate weapons are sockets and procs.

• Taoren, the Soul Burner is a great choice if you completed the Mists of Pandaria legendary quest, as you can socket a Crystallized Dread into it.
• Hellscream’s Warbow (now unobtainable) has two sockets for two 10 agility gems, making it the next best choice.
• If you can’t do either of the above, then use any raid weapon from Throne of Thunder or Siege of Orgrimmar. These all have sockets which you can drop a 10 agility gem into.
• Zod’s Repeating Longbow (Heroic) has both a socket, and a proc which does a little bit of damage. Can only used for Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King Timewalking.

For scopes, your best bet is the Gnomish X-Ray Scope or Flintlocke’s Woodchucker. Since these scopes can’t be used on items above ilvl 600, your only option for a scope on the Hellscream’s Warbow is one of the Warlords of Draenor scopes.

Tier Sets

There are a lot of options for this and I encourage you to experiment, but here are some of my favorite tier combinations for Timewalking.

• 2-piece T14 + 2-piece T16: Especially great for Marksmanship and not too shabby for the other specs either. Tons of extra damage.
• 2-piece T13 + 2-piece T16: You’ll be a Focus regenerating machine.
• 4-piece T10: Great bonuses for Burning Crusade and Wrath Timewalking, but not worth it for Cataclysm. Huge damage potential, but you can get unlucky with the low proc chance.

Part of the power for these old sets is all of the sockets (more on that later). For current set bonuses, I would go T17 for Beast Mastery and T18 for Marksmanship. If you’re looking to solo for some of these older sets, check out the previous post on Hunter soloing.

Mirror of the Blademaster in action

Trinkets

There’s a huge back catalog of trinkets to choose from, but here’s a few of my favorites.

• Mirror of the Blademaster: This is the current best-in-slot trinket for Hunters also happens to be the best trinket for Timewalking. You just can’t beat the AoE damage this thing puts out.
• Touch of the Void: Another on use AoE trinket. Deals quite a bit of damage, but the tentacles are placed near where you stand so you need to get in melee range to use it. Comes from a rare Garrison mission.
• Assurance of Consequence: The cooldown reduction is scaled down to the 10% range, but it also has a decent agility proc. Not really useful to Survival, as the big cooldowns it affects are Bestial Wrath and Rapid Fire.
• Deathbringer’s Will: Probably my favorite trinket of all time (mostly nostalgia talking here), so it’s fun to use again in Burning Crusade and Wrath Timewalking. Blizzard even made a toy out of it because of how iconic it was.
• Bad Juju: Nothing particularly exceptional about this one except for the fact that it summons voodoo gnomes. Yep, that’s really the main selling point for me. Careful though, because these gnomes like to get into trouble by pulling random things.

Gems and enchants

Being able to use old enchants and gems is probably your biggest overall power boost. The more sockets you can get, the better. Take for example a tier chest piece from Mists of Pandaria with 3 sockets on it: When you scale this item down to Burning Crusade Timewalking, the item itself has 15 agility on it, but those 3 sockets give you an additional 30 agility. So if you were to wear whatever you have on now without sockets, you’re only getting a third of the potential agility you could have! This is massive once you apply it to multiple slots of gear.

For all sockets you want to drop in epic-quality 10 agility gems such as Delicate Crimson Spinel or Delicate Cardinal Ruby. For your meta gem, you can use the Capactive Primal Diamond if you earned it in Mists of Pandaria and are using it on a ilvl 502+ helm. Aside from that, you can use the Agile Primal Diamond (Mists helms), Agile Shadowspirit Diamond (Cataclysm helms), or Relentless Earthsiege Diamond (everything else).

Using old enchants can give you a boost as well. In Warlords they significantly reduced the number of slots that can be enchanted, but old enchants can still be applied to older gear. In addition to current enchants (rings, neck, cloak), you can utilize the following:

• Shoulders: Greater Tigerclaw Inscription
• Chest: Glorious Stats
• Wrists: Greater Agility
• Gloves: Major Agility
• Legs: Shadowleather Leg Armor
• Boots: Blurred Speed

Why even bother?

I guess you have to be a min-maxer at heart to fully appreciate this, but even if you’re not, you can’t deny how cool it is that you can easily double your Timewalking DPS by using some of this gear. Also, if you’re chain running these dungeons to get your badges or get lucky with the Infinite Timereaver mount, this will make things go a lot faster. It’s not for everyone, but if you enjoy Timewalking I think it’s worth it.