vs. Mage set:

Hat: 83
Shoulder: 86(85) - fudge factor puts it bang between the two.
Robe: 88
Bracers: 98 (wtf?)
Gloves: 86
Belt: 91
Legs: 89
Boots: 79 (what's going on with consistently underallocated boots?)
Ring: 90

Supposedly the paladin set was floating around but I can't find it.

The set is full of stam/int/+healing/spell crit, i.e. a set you can spam Flash of Light forever if you have the Illumination talent.

Here it is:

Hmm, my calculcation shows a bit different resulsts

Hat - 87(8)
Legs - 91


But yeah, bracers and boots are major WTF ?

Wodin, does the ~13 DPS increase from the 4-piece set make up for the lower stats of Bonescythe, compared to DD/AQpieces? I can't figure it out. 92 AP is about ~7 DPS, right?

I'm sure a lot of these items are still up for tuning -- Blizzard basically itemized an entire raid zone with 18 bosses as well as, doubtless, trash drops, in one fell swoop. There are going to be some glitches. Once we see the finalized set pieces on the PTR, I think there would be a good deal of merit to compiling a table of estimated ilvls based on stats and pointing out the outliers and bringing them to Blizzard's attention.

Also, comparing DD shoulders to Bonescythe really isn't fair -- I mean, DD shoulders are perhaps the most overbudget item in the history of the game. You can't have it both ways. If they nerfed DD shoulders to really have a lv78 budget, I'm sure Bonescythe would look a lot better.

Or they could completely overnerf them down to like a 74 like the boots. :/

My theory about how to fix rogue scaling used to run something like, give 2 ap per strength. Obviously the BS set makes that much less likely. Giving us 2 ap per agility would be somewhat more likely though it would give us a pretty big unbuffed dps buff. When you look at full raid numbers I'm not sure the difference would be quite as big, especially if they went the direction of hunters and gave us 1 crit per say... 35 agil. It would increase the relative value of +crit and agil and decrease the relative value of +atk.

Raid buffed I think it would run about a 10% increase in damage to give us 2 ap per agil with Bonescythe. I don't think thats entirely unreasonable to hope for in our review, especially if we only got .5ap per strength or something like that. Maybe even no AP for strength.

After modifying Chalon's spreadsheet to model sword rogues (I'm fudging combo points still) it looks like there are some BS pieces that are worth using. The problem is the amount of upgrade per slot. Gaining .2 dps from an upgrade BEFORE mitigation... really isn't an upgrade imo. The funny part is if you assume good enough gear Bloodfang BP is the best rogue bp in the game due to 2% hit. Other funny quirks like BS boots are worse than Shadowflame for sword rogues etc.

Bascially from what I could see playing around with the calculator there are no upgrades larger than 1 dps from current gear and some are downgrades.

Another possible bright spot, with our 8 piece bonus being tied to Evisc its possible that they will be scaling that in our review. Is it out of line to hope a point evisc does your AP in damage? ;)

I guess I don't see why Rogues think they don't scale properly. As far as I can see, it's really in the same category as people saying "casters don't scale properly." Saying that Rogues need 2AP per Agi/Str or whatever just strikes me as silly when you consider the fact that Rogues regularly top the DMs regardless (no, not on Ouro). They can't -- and I sincerely doubt they would -- give you anything more than a 5% damage increase because even at that small % increase you'd be doing far and above better DPS than the alternatives, which just isn't very good for a variety of reasons.

Yes, DPS warriors can scale better... but DPS warriors are an issue in and of themselves. I'm still pretty confident that there will be some more "Great warrior changes" at some point in the not-too distant future. The only alternative as I can see it will be buffing DPS classes to ridiculous levels in the expansion, which will cause far more problems than it would solve.

What I see happening more with the Rogue review is that your talent trees and abilities are fixed to have more viable builds, both for raiding, and for PvP... which is pretty much what all the other talent reviews have tried to accomplish. You'll probably get a DPS boost of around 5% overall, but with new paths with which to get there. If you're hoping for a 10-25% damage buff across the board, I really wouldn't hold my breath.

My co-author Valar has actually been working on making a Combat Swords version of the Spreadsheet, which basically assumes a 5 snd/5 evis/3 snd/repeat cycle. He has it sort of working, but still I think he wants to do some stuff before releasing it.

I don't expect to see 2 ap / agi or 2 ap / str or any such change in the Rogue review to be honest :(.

I don't know if it'd be just pure AP -> Evis damage, but I certainly hope they do something of the sort. But it seems like a difficult scenario. Either SnD will always be worth it over Evis, or they'll make Evis so powerful that you'll never SnD, I dunno, it doesn't seem like there can really exist a middle-ground where all builds, even Combat Daggers use some combination of SnD/Evis in their CP cycle.

I was orignally thinking something like an AP scaling / based evis but that doesnt work out well when raid buffs come into play where it the scale is then broken or atleast to anything I came up with. Basing it on AP also only looks at it from a raiding pov a levelling player would have significantly less AP. Stacking Agi as 2AP also makes BoK worth even more, though you may argue GoA counters it, several horde here have stated GoA is'nt currently viable in group setups. I wouldnt think they'd be too eager to decrease our current crit rates, since we're fairly reliant on our current crit ratings.

Praetorian has hit the nail on the head. Items are still subject to changes, both before and during the PTR stages. I suspect current values / distribution may have been rushed forward to get some workable values to test Naxxramas with, and ofcourse to show off at E3.

**offtopic somewhat**
Originally I was thinking something for Evis along the lines of (5 point evis) 700+(AP*0.40) while a 1 point would be say 150+(AP*0.40)
ie. Variabledamagecontribution+(AP*staticmultiplier) where the variable damage contribution being based upon the combo points used. This is also before talent contribution. Values I used seem abit unrealistic though.

Edit. The main things that dont scale for us are Rupture / evis since we cant increase their damage from the time we get their top ranks with the exception of talent points. I cant think of any static caster damage moves which cant actually be increased via equipping.

my understanding of how rogues getting 1 AP per stat vs 2 per stat for other classes scales similarly is that rogues get much more of a benefit from their AP based on instant attacks. hunters have exactly one instant attack that scales with AP (of two total non-autoattack shots), and it's on a ten second cooldown. as a result, rogues receive comparably higher benefit from the same amount of attack power, and they're also getting a better return on their agi as far as crit % is concerned, as well as getting more efficient itemization from items that give raw +AP rather than +stats, while hunters cry and wish those items had 3/4 as much agi (or whatever the translation is) instead.

rogues also scale much better with weapons than hunters do for the same reason - instant attacks let them use their weapon damage far more, while hunter damage output (post-normalization) is almost entirely based on attack power. i've seen lots of people complaining about the obviously-not-intended-for-a-hunter gun from E3, but realistically i'm not sure what they expect. post-normalization there WON'T be any big upgrades for hunter weapons, going by the basic metric of progession we've seen, simply because the mechanics of the game no longer provide for weapons having a huge impact on hunter damage output.

Not really. If you keep the same ratios but scale them down to 78, DD shoulders look like thus: 14str 24agility 21sta 1hit. The BS shoulders would certainly look better - your delta would be -13AP +1.03% crit +3sta instead of -20AP -1STA +.94%crit. The current version is technically an upgrade, it's just a one of the smaller ones(for my gear, 1crit == 26AP, so the BS shoulders are the equivalent of +4AP even over DD). I agree that losing only 85AP instead of 92 isn't as intimidating, but it's still a net loss.

The shoulders being a fairly small upgrade doesn't help the overall perception of the set, yes. The boots are the worst culprit. If the belt isn't intended to be better than the C'thun belt that's fine, though it doesn't jive with the other classes we've got belt stats on having significantly better ones(mage and paladin are 91 and 90 respectively). The legs are weird and I need to do the math - it's one of the biggest asset shifts in the entire set.

To answer Digo's question - the overall effect of the 4 and 6-piece bonuses is going to be a net positive. But relative to the improvement other classes are getting from their armor, it's going to be a much smaller net positive, which was part of the reason I created this thread. Hashing out exactly what we get will hopefully be useful for everyone in terms of evaluating gear, if nothing else. But most of the rogue DPS upgrades from the zone, as the set currently stands, will be from that bonus and the various other non-set items(weapons, Slayer's Mark, the 2%crit 28AP neck).

Honestly, I think we just get shafted because our Tier 2.5 set is basically for our primary role as well, whereas for many classes this isn't the case. I wonder how the Tier 2.5 > Tier 3 comparisons work out for Mages and Locks, 'cause they're in a similar boat.

I certainly hope they cave and tweak the stats upward. Relying upon a set bonus to make tier 3 armor -- in what is supposed to be the hardest zone in the game -- marginally superior does not sit well with me. I realize that most of our dps upgrades come from weapons, but this is getting a bit silly. At risk of sounding like a general forums troll, how am I supposed to motivate people to raid when the rewards for their efforts are lackluster? Am I off-base here?

yeah, AQ sets seem to cater largely to hybrid roles for a lot of classes. rogues, hunters, mages, and warlocks are about as 'pure' as you can get, so there's not too much variation you can give in terms of putting funtional stats on pieces. look at strikers - 42 spell damage lawls. being a pvp junkie, i still love strikers for the huge stamina upgrade over dragonstalker, and the 3 minute rapid fire is downright awesome, but it was an attempt to go in a different direction that failed miserably. priests get +dmg sets, warriors/paladins get DPS stats instead of just tanking/healing, and druids get an actual hybrid feral set. the pure DPS classes don't really have many other directions to go in.

i really don't think anyone except math-savvy rogues and feral druids are going to complain the naxx rewards are 'lackluster'. everything else we've seen out of the zone is insane.

For the 5 comparable spots (helm/shoulders/chest/pants/boots)-

Frostfire = 185 +dmg, 3 hit, 4 crit.
Enigma = 164 +dmg, 2 hit, 3 crit, 13 mp5, -30 target's resist.

Difference of 21 +dm, 1 hit, 1 crit, -13 mp5, +30 target's resist.

Statwise -

Frostfire = 102 stam, 112 int, 41 spi
Enigma = 95 stam, 100, 37 spi

Difference of 7 stam, 12 int, 4 spi

Looks like Mages will likely be going for it for set bonuses, which are admittedly quite sexy, but the stats are not particularly godlike improvements. We haven't seen enough of the lock set to compare those.

Ok, so from those numbers I'd say the Mage set is a "clear" upgrade, though definitely not a big one. It's not like the rogue scenario where it's like "wait I'm losing this much AP, but gaining a little hit/crit, does that work out better or worse?!"

i'm not an expert on rogue math, so i'll stand corrected. :) whether from specials or from dual weilding, my point is more that rogues benefit more from AP than hunters do on a 1:1 basis, so getting it at a rate of at 1:1 per stat rather than 2:1 per stat doesn't mean they scale worse. rogues also benefit much more from their actual weapon DPS than hunters do, or at least from the dps upgrades on their weapons, since hunters seem to be stuck in an incredibly narrow DPS range on our weapons, plus the way our attacks work we're more dependant on AP than damage range anyway. rogues look at something like kingsfall and drool, while hunters see a new weapon and have to run it through spreadsheets to see if it's even worth using over the weapon we got two instances ago, and quite often the answer is no :-P

Everyone else's sets are pretty much pimped out. Ours is still an upgrade, and that should definitely be emphasized - it's just not quite the upgrade that the other sets seem to be. I named the thread Bonescythe Appreciation Station because it's still very nice, and quite honestly looks utterly amazing.

Paladin ilvls, so this post isn't content-free!

Helm: 85
Shoulders: 82
Chest: 91
Bracer: 85 ( I mistyped 11INT as 21 last time)
Gloves: 91
Ring: 95
Belt: 90
Legs: 85
Boots: 83 (Paladins escape the knife!)

Some of the Frostfire set is acctualy a downgrade from loot around AQ40/BWL; Some VERY small upgrades.

Frostfire belt isnt a DPS upgrade over C'thun belt either.