Hi. I was hoping I could get advice as to which faction to choose as a rogue: Aldor or Scryers, in terms of dps for end game raid pve. For me, the choice will probably come down to the better shoulder enchantment because that is the one award that seem least likely to be replaced soon through raiding or pvp rewards.

(I apologize in advance if these questions have been answered before. I tired looking for what I needed but could not find it.)

To preface, I am a combat swords build and will be 19/42/0 in a few levels. My main focus is end game raid encounter dps and not so much pvp.

Looking at the melee dps exalted shoulder enchantments for the two factions, we have:
Aldor: +10 crit, +30 ap
Scryers: +15crit, + 10 ap

So my questions then are:

1. Which shoulder enchantment is best for rogue dps for lvl 70 end game raid pve?

2. I know crit rating scales so that at higher levels the same crit rating gives less percentage increase in crit than at lower levels, but is the same true for attack power? Example, will 2000 ap at lvl 70 give less dps increase than 2000 ap at lvl 60?

3. Do stats such as crit rating, attack power, hit rating, etc have diminishing returns? For example, will having a base crit rating of 200 and then gaining 25 more crit rating give less of an increase in crit percent than having a base of 100 crit rating and gaining the same 25 crit rating? For example, does each point of attack power gained if you are at 2000 ap give less dps increase than a point of attack power gained when you have 1000 ap?

4. What is the reason behind "balancing stats"? Is it due to diminishing returns?

5. I have heard many say that + crit seem to be less and less seem on end game gear. Is that, along with trying to balance stats, a reason for going Scryers?

I hope some seasoned players with intimate knowledge of rogue dps mechanics can shed some light on this matter for me. Thanks in advanced.


PS. I tried to find the rogue mechanics thread but could not. Where is it located?

1) That highly depends on your gear before adding the enchant. I would guess that most rogue builds are going to benefit more from 20 AP than 5 crit rating (~0.23% crit), but they're both so small relative to the total stats you're likely to have at 70 that it's really tough to say. Use the rogue DPS spreadsheet and find out for yourself.

2) The effect of AP does not scale as you level, because even without scaling, 143 DPS is not worth as much at level 70 as it is at level 60 (since mob HP scales up).

3) No. There are no explicit diminishing returns on any of those stats, nor on any other stats.

4) It is due to the fact that effects of one stat scale with your other stats. The more crit you have, the more your AP is worth. The more AP you have, the more your crit is worth. To look at it a different way, let's say you have a small number like 10 and a large number like 50...when you multiply them together, you get 500. Now, on the other hand, let's say you have two medium numbers, like 30 and 30. When you multiply those together, you get 900. Obviously, balancing your stats is not 100% analogous to this idea, but it's the best I could think of on short notice. :-P

5) I don't know enough about rogue end-game itemization now to comment one way or the other. I'll leave it to someone who still plays his or her rogue. :-P

Thanks for the reply.

I think I follow your example of why stat balancing is important. I understand that when you multiply damage together that, given a fixed total value of points, multiplying values closer together result in a higher number. What I don't understand yet is why they are multiplied in the first place. Or rather, why does ap affect crit and crit affect ap?

What he is trying to say (since the multiplication doesn't work that way) is that if you have high AP but lowish crit, adding crit will have a more noticable impact than adding yet more AP. If you're sitting on 2k attack power but can only manage 20% crit, adding crit is your better option.

Personally, I checked the recipies when deciding. The difference in the enchants is tiny. But the difference of crafting arcane resist items (for blacksmithing skill ups) compared to fire resist is rather large. I gather prices of shards have risen a bit lately, but when I was grinding BS I could do it much much cheaper through Scryer than through Aldor.

Not to mention that Aldors are space-goats and no friends of mine...

But the billygoats!

In all seriousness though, I'm still confused on the crit and ap working together. What you are saying Pane, that if you have a high ap but low crit that you would benefit more from crit implies that ap has a ceiling or diminishing returns. But if that isn't the case, as Vulajin stated, I'm just lost, hehe. If you have a huge ap and low crit, wouldn't either an ap increase or crit increase bring about the same benefit - assuming you are getting relative amounts of each?

Anyway, do any other rogues have some thoughts on my questions in the first post?

Well let's see...

Basically what I'm trying to get across is the idea that working on your weakest spot has the biggest potential to improve the overall result.

If you're a great tennis player with amazing skills but play with a wooden racket with half the strings gone, your game will improve most if you buy a decent racket.

If you're a great tennis player with amazing skills with a great racket but you can't run for more than 5 meters without collapsing out of breath, you improve most if you go jogging every morning.

If your attack power is really good, but your crit is sub-par, you can keep stacking AP till the cows come home, but adding crit will just 'do more' for you.

I feel the need to ask, have you played your class at all before now? Half of your questions are things you should know just from leveling up. The other half can be answered on other threads here:
Rogue emo thread.
Rogue DPS Spreadsheet

Without going into a lot of details, the answer is "it depends on how much AP you have". According to my estimates, the crossover point is somewhere over 3k AP... which is pretty much what you have with full raid buffs + flask + consumables in good 5man/Karazhan gear. So, in current gear, since you will rarely have more AP than that, Aldor is better. In the long term, Aldor will remain better at low levels of buff, but when fully cracked out on consumables (i.e. new content fights, where dps is most critical) Scryer's will take over. All in all? Sort of a wash.

14 AP is always equivalent to +1 to weapon dps. So, no, there is no explicit diminishing returns as you increase in level.

There is no explicit diminishing returns on any stat, although it is possible to hit implicit limits. For instance, if you have up around 300 hit rating you can reduce your miss chance to zero, causing further hit rating to be useless.

In general, the more AP you have, the more you benefit from crit and hit. Similarly, the more crit and hit you have, the more you tend to benefit from AP. So there is some implicit balancing going on there. However, I've never made any explicit effort to balance my gear; rather, I make an estimate using an AEP-like system to figure out what's going to be the highest dps piece for each slot, and then go for the best option for each slot. In practice, this leads to a reasonably balanced stat distribution, since there are very few really good pieces of gear that only have one stat on them.

There's not a whole lot of gear with +crit on it, but there's plenty of good gear with +agi on it, which boosts your crit rating nicely. This is particularly true if you, like me, believe in socketing stuff with Delicate Living Rubies as much as possible. In general: Scryer's and Aldor's are actually pretty well balanced against each other - I ended up going Aldor because the Aldor sword is a lot more useful in general than the Scryer's dagger more than any other reason.

All special attacks use the full damage range of the weapon; hence, the average damage of a SS or BS is based on the average damage of the weapon, while the maximum damage a SS or BS can do is based on the maximum damage of the weapon. Basically: two weapons of equal speed and dps will, on average, yield the same yellow damage. However, the one with the larger range will have the potential for both larger and smaller attacks - but on the average, it works out to be the same total damage.

Balancing.
Here we go...

Say you have a 1.0 speed weapon, with a damage range 0-0.
Now, the damage you do with that weapon comes entirely from AP.

Let's say you have 1400 AP. You do 100 damage per strike.
Your crit rate is 20%.
Thus your average damage is 120. (A)

Lets add 10% crit.
Average damage is 130. (B)

Now lets add 1400 AP, staying at 20% crit. Base strike is 200.
Average damage is 240. (C)

Add 10% crit.
Average damage is 260. (D)

Comparing A->B with C->D shows you that the same increase in crit (10%) means more the more AP you have. In this case, 10 more average damage.
Comparing A->C with B->D shows you that the same increase in AP (1400) means more the more crit you have. In this case, again, 10 more damage.

That's the basis of stat balancing. All the extra stuff such as weapon dps, speed, talents, abilities - it changes the relative weighting but does not change the fundamental concpet that min-maxing doesn't work and that at any given time there's a dynamic equilibrium between your main stats (yes, hit% also displays this kind of balancing).

To reiterate Boevis, it utterly beggars belief that any rogue serious about his raiding has got to 70 without finding this out before.

If you're Horde, go Aldor. If you're Alliance, go Scryer. For the simple reason (from my experience) Alliance wishes to ally more with the Draeni as it's their factions race and Horde with the Scryer/Bloodelves. Which, will drive reputation prices up on either side of your server. It costs twice as much to rep up with the scryer than Aldor, Blackhand Horde side. And on my Paladin on another server I've seen the same trend, twice as much for Aldor Alliance side.

Like it's been said, it's a wash in terms of dps gains, and if you're going to raid you'll be upgrading the reputation bought gear fast. The only thing that can really sway you is the recipes available to either faction, or how much you are wanting to farm to get exalted (or pay out the ass).

Go scryer for the simple fact that Aldor can't ever get this quest which rewards you with one of the best if not the best belt known right now: http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?wquest=10507

http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.ht...ve;witem=29247 is better, but it's a heroic only drop from Aeonus in Black Morass.

But yeah, going Scryer does give you access to a top-tier belt (so far) and some more crit on your enchant but really -- going one or the other isn't going to make or break your stats.

or even: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27911

This message is for adriana

In regards to your reply to tok3n’s first question, I have a few questions.

First of all, do you consider the shoulder enchantment for aldor and scryer to give equal amounts of dps increase, given that your base stats for ap and crit are currently balanced? In other words, when I say balanced base stats for ap and crit, I mean we are comparing the increase in stats from the shoulder enchantment on a level playing field, so that the increase in dps is reflective of their true value and not skewed by an extremely high or low base value. Or do you think one enchantment is better than the other given balanced ap and crit?

Secondly, you said that the tipping point in which crit will give more dps than additional ap is when your ap is about at 3000. When you say this, are you implying at that tipping point the stats are skewed toward ap and crit is lower than the ideal balanced amount and therefore increasing crit has a greater affect on dps thnn increasing ap?

Are you assuming the above cinereo are in raid situations because raidbuffs and consumables generally give much higher increase in ap than crit? Does this mean that even in five-man/karazhan gear, without raidbuffs and consumables, increases in ap will give more dps than the relative increase in crit because the stats at this point are skewed toward crit, and you have not reached that tipping point?

These figures are actually wrong. Scryer is 20 AP 15 crit, Aldor is 30 AP 10 crit.

So the choice is 5 crit rating vs 10 attack power (not 20 as discussed above).

For what it's worth, I took scryer. I feel that crit rating scales better point for point with buffs and all the +AP procs I can get between Bladefist's, orc racial and hourglass of the unraveller. The aldor sword would have done wonders for my dps in the short term though, and the aldor also has a ring that is very competitive until you get into Kara.

Well, "balanced" is sort of a nebulous term - most people don't stack AP to the exclusion of crit, or crit to the exclusion of AP, but rather lie somewhere in between. Where in that continuum "balanced" lies is something of a matter of opinion - hence I don't think it makes sense to ask about things being true when stats are "balanced".

That said: it's honestly pretty hard to avoid having stats that are somewhat balanced right now, since basically all blue and epic gear has multiple stats on it, so almost no matter what you pick you're going to have some agi, some hit, some AP, etc. on your gear.

Anyway: the answer I gave assumes one is wearing reasonably good blue and purple gear gotten from 5-mans, Karazhan, high-end crafting/rep rewards, and/or heroics. I didn't have any raid gear yet when I ran those estimates. As I recall the numbers listed assume unbuffed stats on the order of 1500 AP and 24% crit as sword spec, or 29% crit as dagger spec.

What I mean by that is that if you have less than 3k-ish AP, 10 AP is more damage than 5 crit rating. If you have more than that amount of AP, 5 crit rating is more damage than 10 AP

It should be noted, however, that when you're right around 3k, they're pretty comperable. You need to have significantly more or less AP than that to see a large difference between the two enchants.

Yes. They are balanced at the aformentioned level of gear assuming full raid buffs and consumables. I balance on these terms because it's generally new content fights where the guild has the most need of dps, and thus I optomize to be performing my best in new content fights, with the consumables to match. On a fight that is farmed content and you are less heavily potted, or in Karazhan where there are fewer raid buffs, it is generally true that AP will be superior. As itemization improves, this may change, but given the current level of available gear, I find that to be the case.

Ald

We're assuming buffs on the order of: Fort, Paw, Battle Shout, BoMight, BoKings, Imp Hunter's Mark, Windfury, Unleashed Rage, Str of Earth Totem, Elixir of Major Agi, Elixir of Mastery, Fel Str Elixir, Flask of Relentless Assault, DP on OH, and Warp Burger. ALl of which adds like 1500-2k AP and maybe 4% crit. So, yes, a lot more AP than crit.

Assuming the best possible gear that anyone has right now and all those buffs, you will find yourself right at the breakpoint. Meaning, in current gear, fully buffed out, right now, it doesn't matter. Less than fully buffed, Aldor is better. Given another 3-6 months of gear improvements, Scryer's will be a bit better fully buffed, and it won't matter much either way with less buffs. Pretty much what I said in my first post:

I originally went scryers because of the lack of crit itemization upon entering Burning Crusade, and the scryers enchant having more crit. I was happy to find out that scryers rep items are much cheaper (1/3 the cost) of the Aldor ones, and I dont look at space tauren in the bank, and the Rise seems much more regal than the aldor one. Being an art guy in real life, aesthetics count!