Mojofabulous

just screwin with the spreadsheet, adjusting boss armor to 4000 instead of 5000 puts it more in line with where I was.

 

• Aldriana

Re: Shoulders. Thanks

Re: Belts. Don Alejandro's and Belt of One-Hundred Deaths are extremely close in terms of rating by the spreadsheet (in the current version I'm using, which has about half of the changes for 0.7.8 in it, they score within .2 AP of each other assuming late-BT quality gearing). So, ultimately, it's a matter of personal preference - subject to a couple of assumptions.

First off, it should be noted that the exact behavior of weapon skill on dodge has not been finalized. As such, it's entirely possible that the Vashj belt is under- (or over-) valued in the current incarnation of the sheet. So when and if an answer is ultimately reached for that issue, the answer may change here.

But, for the sake of argument, lets assume, for the moment, that Weapon Skill is modeled correctly. At this point, the decision - for me at least - comes down to two things. Interrupted combat, and rounding.

1) Interrupted combat. The sheet, as has been noted, assumes endless uninterrupted combat. In practice, very few boss fights exhibit uninterrupted combat; for instance, in all of SSC/TK, there are really only two fights that have even the potential for uninterrupted sustained DPS: Tidewalker (assuming no graves) and Void Reaver (depending on your strategy). And, looking through Hyjal/BT, they're not really any better; you have Gorefiend, Bloodboil, Anetheron, Kaz'rogal... and that's about it. Moreover, you'll note that many of *those* fights are fairly short, and thus are poorly modeled by "endless". So when you add it all up, most fights shorter and/or more interrupted than the spreadsheet models.

The question, then, is what effect this has an actual DPS. Well, interrupted fights have a number of effects; the major one, of course, is that your cycles necessarily change. Additionally, it increases the value of effects with cooldowns. But the other fairly fundamental thing it does is that it change the ratio of white to yellow damage; whenever you're in a situation where your energy is regenerating but you're not autoattacking, you're going to do more yellow damage relative to the amount of white damage. This will thus relatively decrease the value of hit, which only affects white damage; hence, between two otherwise comparable items, it is generally superior to wear the one that has less hit on it.

With regards to the specific belt situation:

Don Alejandro's has no inherent hit on it, so will gain only what it gets from gems - most likely 5 or 10 hit rating.

Belt of One-Hundred Deaths has 25 weapons skill rating = 6 weapon skill = .6% hit = ~9.5 hit rating on it inherently, plus whatever additional you gain from socketing (which is almost certainly nonzero). Additionally, some of it's benefit is also from -enemy dodge, which also helps white damage more than yellow.

Hence, Belt of One-Hundred Deaths is more of a white-damage-friendly belt, while Don Alejandro's is more of a yellow-damage-friendly belt; hence, in interrupted scenarios, the advantage tends to go more toward Don Alejandro's.

It might be noted, however, that Heroism - particularly multiple Heroisms per fight - can tip the balance more towards white damage, as can haste pots. As such, there is a reasonable argument to be made for favoring white damage more than yellow. And in case you were wondering, yes, I am planning to add "drink a haste pot every 2 minutes" and "give me N heroisms every 10 minutes" as options to the buff sheet at some point; I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

So, to summarize this point: there is a reasonable case to be made that Don Alejandro's will perform somewhat better in interrupted-damage scenarios than Belt of One-Hundred Deaths. The real answer here, of course, would be to have both belts and rotate depending on the fight. But that's not always possible.

2) Rounding. For reasons of continuity, the sheet doesn't quantize to integers like the game does. As such, for fine-level decisions like comparing these two belts, it may be worth considering your position relative to various roundoff cutoffs. As an example: 25 weapon skill rating is modeled in the sheet as 6.34... weapon skill, when in reality, it's only 6. As such, In terms of actual performance in real-world scenarios, the Vashj belt is overvalued by the spreadsheet by roughly 1/3 of a point of weapon skill, or about 2.3 AP. Throw in the fact that, with end-game optimal gear, Don Alejandro's puts you better positioned relative to the roundoff points of Vitality for both Agi and Sta (trust me, it does), and you'll find that in a real world scenario, Don Alejandro's gains a couple of AP relative to the Vashj belt due to these roundoffs. Again, not a major deal, but for two belts as closely spaced as these, every little bit matters.

In conclusion: it really is a matter of personal preference. For the reasons above (and some other, even more vague ones, like how hard it may or may not be to convince your guild leadership to let you socket a Vashj drop with BT gems relative to a Hyjal drop), I do have a slight inclination towards Don Alejandro's. However, I could easily see someone having the reverse preference; there's really no wrong answer between these two.

 

• Aldriana

Odd; I did an ungraved Tidewalker attempt a month or two ago and found my damage to be within 5 DPS of what the spreadsheet predicted. I will take a look at your data set and the spreadsheet and see what I can come up with.

 

Dontmindme

Are any of the 2.2 changes modeled in the sheet yet? I know the DPS sheet has had the new effects of Windfury, haste and such modeled for awhile (still awaiting the patch). This could certainly account for that much difference in dps given that these effects have not actually gone live yet.

 

• Aldriana

Well, detailed analysis from a screenshot is hard, but here's my take on the matter:

1) I may be a bit off in terms of what Tidewalker's armor is. This comes back to my desire for a more systematic study of how much armor various bosses have.

2) There will always be a certain amount of variance in these things anyway.

3) As the fight was not endless, it is likely that some of your cooldowns and whatever were able to be used more than is modeled by this sheet (in particular: AR is a 5 min cool, so if you're able to use it, for instance, twice in 7 minutes, that's going to make something of a difference).

4) A member of your group mentions in chat that he missed the heroism. Presumably this means heroism was used, and, as you were never graved, you probably did benefit from it, which would increase your DPS by a nontrivial amount.

Fundamentally, though, even given 1-3 above, I am somewhat concerned about this discrepancy, as it does seem overlarge. However, there's not a lot I can do to debug it just from a screenshot; a combatlog, or WWS, or even a Recap, would be more useful to me.

 

Mojofabulous

yea sorry, when I screenshot a good fight's dps, I usually include the dmg breakdown from my recount, not sure why I didn't this time. I should get in the habit of combatlogging my stuff more often.

 

• Aldriana

A quick followup on the topic of heroism (and Blood Lust, but since I'm alliance, I'm going to use the term "Heroism" throughout), which relates both to my previous post and the earlier discourse on belts:

I have performed some rough estimates on the effects of heroism, and here is what I've concluded:

a) Heroism is a reasonable source of damage output; in particular, each heroism increases the dps estimate by around 20-25 DPS, depending on your gear level. So if, for instance, you got a one heroism in an 8 minute fight, that by itself would account for nearly 1/3 of the difference between the sheet and your actual measurement.

b) However, despite the contributions to DPS, Heroism and Haste Pots do not overwhelmingly increase the value of hit; in particular, even with drinking a Haste Pot every 2 minutes, and getting 3 heroisms in a 5 minute fight (which is about the upper limit on reasonable number of heroism to include), Belt of One Hundred Deaths pulls ahead of Don Alejandro's by less than 2 AP, although it does put Glinting gems back ahead of Delicate ones. Hence, I'm of the opinion that the earlier analysis regarding interrupted fights and roundoff threshholds still stands, and that the benefits of Heroism is insufficient to outweigh them. Your mileage may vary, of course, but, personally, barring significant new findings in the realm of weapon skill behavior, I'm inclined to say that I would rather have Don Alejandro's than the Vashj belt as my endgame belt.

 

Grunge

Don Alejandro's? Are you using weighted?

Edit: Must be it. Using weighted shows Don Alejandro's somewhat behind of Vashj belt, while using offensive Vashj belt leaves Don Alejandro's in the dust. I'd go with either Vashj, Deep Shadows or Shadow-walker's for my endgame gear choices at least.
Stamina counts for that much with Don Alejandro's & weighted I guess?

I'd love Alejandro's for pvp though.

Fans glory to the Gladiators,
Gods glory to the Heroes.

 

• Aldriana

There's enough fights where there's general AoE damage that I think it's a mistake to discount stamina entirely - while DPS is certainly more important, there clearly exist some amount of DPS that's worth trading for stamina (as a simple example: given the choice betwen 1 AP or 100 sta, which would you take?). And, personally, given a choice between 2.5 DPS and 120 HP, it seems to me that there's a reasonable case to be made for the 120 HP. Again: some of you will certainly disagree, and that's fine. But I'll just say: the weighted total option is in the sheet (and is the default) for a reason. And that reason is that I believe there is some value in that stamina.

 

• koaschten

Aldriana, dont over-estimate Stamina in endgame, i easily run ~10k unbuffed and i should get another 1k once i get rid of my kara boots and cape and get a decent non-t5 belt . At that point i plainly ignore stamina on gear running the pure dps variant of your sheet.

 

• Aldriana

It's true, though I would note that the amount of sta you have in end SSC/TK gear is not really adequate for much of MH/BT... and the point of gearing in end-BT gear is to get ready for Sunwell Plateau, which is an unknown entity at this stage - it could very well be that 10k unbuffed HP (which is about what my ideal gear winds up with) is only marginally adequate for Sunwell.

But, yeah, you have a valid point in that MH/BT do tend to be somewhat more sta-heavy than gear in previous instances, and running up around 10k by the end of it is pretty straightforward. But I still maintain that 2.5 DPS (or less) for 120 stamina is not exactly an unreasonable tradeoff even if you already have quite a bit of sta already.

Again: DPS is certainly more important. Which is why Sta isn't weighted very heavily (1 sta = .6 AP, meaning something like 1 dps = 3-4 sta). And while a case could probably be made to lower that further, I'm not sure I buy that it should go to zero.

 

Mojofabulous

I think you should change the phrasing "weighted" to "less-stressfull". I think that would be more accurate :-p

An argument can be made for both sides which is why the option is up to the user to choose weighted, offensive, or defensive. Up until a week or so ago I was rockin 8300 hp while another rogue in the raid had like 10,500hp. I'd sure as heck be more comfortable at 10,500. I just run in to a lot more: "OH SHIZ!" situations and as such have to be super carefull about the places I put myself in.

I'm dying to get more stamina though, wtb some actual tier pieces, kara loot in hyjal/bt ftl.

 

• koaschten

The only place where you really need HP is, if your pitcher at Naj'Entus doesnt stay in a perfect 60 seconds cycle so you can cloak every shield explosion. Thats where you need hp. To be exact, enough to survive 8k instant damage.

edit: But we are getting badly off-topic.... no Patch this week i'd say....

 

• Aldriana

Naj'entus is the only place where you strictly *need* HP, to be sure (other than Mother, where you're in half SR gear which changes the equation dramatically anyway). But there are a fair number of fights where having more HP gives you a nice cushion and makes life easier on your healers - Azgalor, instance. Odds are you're gonna get a Rain of Fire you can't cloak at some point, and every HP you have makes your healer's job that much easier. Is it strictly necessary? No. But it's a nice cushion. And, as I say, who knows what Sunwell Plateau will bring.

Regarding patch: there was a blue post on US forums this afternoon that confirmed no patch.

 

• koaschten

uuh well depends on Azgalor Tactics i guess, we have a strict NO melee on Azgalor but on the Doomguards rule.... topic the meters anyway

 

Conq[SUN]

Very nice sheet!
Have one request though.
I'm trying to put in the items I currently have and find that I need more sockets on some slots.
Thought it would be a good idea to have at least 2 sockets for all slots.

Right now i'm only in need of 2 for necks though.

 

• koaschten

Only Item i can think off that has 2 sockets on a neck slot is "Necklage of the Deep". And that in particular is a bad dps item itself. Get the "Worgen Claw Necklace" or the one for heroic tokens.
Letting us know the items you have issues with would help though, as i doubt you try to run your retribution paladin through this spreadsheet.

 

Conq[SUN]

hehe. No I'm not trying to tailor it for my Protection paladin (in my super attackpower primal grinding gear).

But on to the question. I have an old rogue I dug up and is trying to level (Armory) so I try and modify the sheet to lower level gear and so. I know it's not quite aqurate on anything other than level 70, but I like to try and optimize and do the calculation.

Necklace of the Deep as you guessed seems quite superb especially at level 65 and would like to see just how superb.

The reason I ask for the other slots was that it might be easier to just add some extra once and for all.

 

• koaschten

Have a look at this LIST for necklaces.

And considering the socket number question on items, i _believe_ they are limited on an item slot base and Ald is matching those limits already. at least i havent seen bracer with 3 sockets yet :X

 

Conq[SUN]

Nice list. Never thought of filtering by excluding stats.

The socket thing. I just remember there was the same situation when [Vengeance Wrap] got a socket.

Another question. Shouldn't I be able to use row 11 from the DamageCalcs sheet as kind of comparison values? I was thinking of plotting them into the mod Pawn for fast comparison of items.

 

Sarlunas

I'm glad the stam weighting value is available now, I personally crank it up to 1.0 and tbh thinking of going higher. The value of stam is not for farm bosses like Najentus, it's for learning new encounters. Once you know a fight stam becomes a lot less valuable but at this point dps has lost its value as well. Damage meters for farm bosses are purely academic, the only thing that really matters is the first kill. While dps is obviously our main focus (and I enjoy pwning the WWS as much as the next guy) stamina is certainly not to be ignored.

As for trying to use the sheet for a lower lvl rogue, this is pointless. You would need to change all the ratings, armour, skills, etc etc. And you would still not get any useful values since the sheet is about sustained dps which you never see while levelling. You're better off doing your own napkinmath.

 

• koaschten

what class are you playing again? o.O

 

Punkrocker

Off topic, but:

Save the Kara shoulders, they make great shadow resist shoulders with sr gems equipped for Mother.

Also, in regards to the rounding done in game vs. non-rounding done on the sheet...I guess that would explain why the sheet puts me at 213 hit and the character sheet in game puts me at 211. I must have spent at least an hour just double checking my gear, gems, and enchants and it was driving me nuts. I'm sure you mentioned it elsewhere in this thread, but that fact seems to have slipped my mind.

 

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