Aldriana, I'm having trouble resolving these two facts on an intuitive level:

1. In a real world situation, switching from 3.x s/5r to 5s/5r amounts to a trivial amount of DPS lost.
2. In the model used in the spreadsheet, the 2pc T4 bonus is worth a substantial amount of AP (about 60 for me.)

If going from 3 sinister strikes to 5 isn't much of a loss, why is going from 3 sinister strikes to 1 a "noticeable" gain?

A couple reasons:

1) The difference between 1 and 3 is larger than the difference between 3 and 5.
2) The difference between 5s5r and Xs5r tends to be smaller at higher itemization levels; most of the people here who are talking about Ashtongue Talisman cycles and the like tend to have T5-T6 level gear, and thus gain less benefit from Xs5r than someone at a T4 level of gear.
3) Even a "significant" difference can make a surprisingly small DPS difference.

An illustrative example: you refer to 2/5 T4 being about 60 AP for you. In my current gear (T5-T6 level gear), it scores only 15 AP. At a somewhat lower level of gear - say, the default gear in the 0.8 sheet - it's worth about 42 AP. Notice how as gear improves, the value of the benefit decreases.

Next, with the default gear, how much difference does that 40 AP actually make? Well, my listed DPS for 5s5r is 1480.49; with the 2/5 T4 bonus but otherwise identical stats, 1s5r would do 1499.44; hence, that 40 AP increase works out to about 19 actual DPS, or about 1.3%. So even a reasonably larger (say, 40 AP) bonus converts to little more than 1% change in real DPS. The differences we're talking aren't as large as one might think.

Thirdly, Xs5r (which recommends 3.4s5r) with my base gear comes out to 1486.91; notice that the damage difference between 1 and 3.4 is almost twice the damage difference from 3.4 to 5. So there's a bit of nonlinearity here as well.

So, with T5/early T6 gear, the difference between Xs5r and 5s5r is about 6 DPS, or .4%. I think it's fair to say that this is a "reasonably small difference". However, with the lower gear levels where 2/5 T4 tends to be more relevant, the difference between 1s5r can still be fairly significant (60 AP, as you say) despite this fact.

The human racial for expertise is currently granting 10 expertise if you dual wield a sword and a mace. Doesn't really matter for most combat build but some what interesting for those that are 31/0/30 etc where you aren't really limited to your weps

Edit spelling...

I added Vengeful Gladiator's Leather Helm and Grimgrin Faceguard to the spreadsheet and noticed that even if S3 helm get a higher offensive score, the dps is higher with the ZA helm.

I used the 0.8 OpenOffice version, everything in the spread sheet is at default setting except that I use Offensive value stats, and of course added the 2 items.

Gems for S3 helm: Relentless Earthstorm Diamond, 8hit
(1485,97 dps)

Gems for ZA helm: 16AP, 8hit, +agi/4hit
(1500.7 dps)


How come?

RED is pretty imba that's why.

Yeah I know, but shoudn't that be considered in the 'OptOimal Offense' column in the 'Armor' table?

I have no possible ability to answer that question, since it sounds like a bug with the way one or both items were entered, and since neither is in the last version of the sheet I released, I couldn't tell you which it is. When I get around to releasing the next version, if it's still a problem, I will look into it. But short of that, you're pretty much on your own.

I have been studying the spreadsheet for the past few weeks, trying to learn the insides and outs to make my own changes for hemo/shadowstep/executioner/Items, etc for my own personal use.

I came across this error when I was comparing the Deathmantle Helm to the ZA helm. What's happening is even though you have selected the ZA helm that has no meta socket in it, it is still using the Meta Gem from the previous selection(i.e. RED).

To fix this, simply change the formula that is in cell F10 on the Talents_Equipment sheet from =IF(VLOOKUP(HelmEQ,ArmorStats,32,FALSE)>0,1,0) to =IF(VLOOKUP(HelmEQ,ArmorStats,31,FALSE)>0,1,0)

Hope that helps.

~Taru

That seems to do the trick.

Thanks a lot!

Hey, I have been stacking mass hit to try and get the most out of my lackluster gear. I was wondering about when I should stop going for so much hit and try to grab crit. I plan on going Fist/Sword spec come Season 3, as a reference.

A link to my armory: The World of Warcraft Armory

Thanks for any and all input! :]

The answer is in the spreadsheet, Gutshank.

Did you try wielding a mace AND a sword? Our dps warrior is the one that found this and it def works for me.

That's correct; for each buff you select either the regular version or the improved version, but not both. Ideally those would be linked checkboxes to make that explicit, but my Excel knowledge isn't good enough to know how to do that, and I haven't felt like taking the time to figure it out.

Quick question. Has the new mace crit-damage talent been incorporated in the spreadsheet? Seems I lose dps going from spiteblade to dragonstrike in my 11/27/23 build. I guess Im just a bit .. err .. surprised. The haste-proc combined with pretty a pretty heavy damage-boost lead me to believe that dragonstrike would be nifty, even if macespec still is down a bit on swordspec.

No, this sheet has not been updated for 2.3. I'm working on it this weekend; I may or may not finish. Hopefully it won't be more than another week or two either way.

Thats great to hear aldriana. And thanks for a kickass spreadsheet! Guess Im gonna check out dragonstrike. At least I`ll look badass.

Drop me a pm Aldriana if you want me to add items if it makes it easier for you.

Great news, this is a fantastic tool and most appreciated. Thanks for the great work. I'm looking forward to the 2.3 update.

Any chance of it having a page where it lists the current APEP point values, so we can add them to Pawn, etc.?

That information is already available (more or less) on the damage calcs page. In terms of putting it in a more user-friendly spot (and/or having something that displays it for weighted total instead of offense only): it's been on my list as a nice-to-have for a while, but at the moment it's classified under "UI features that are not essential and hence probably won't happen until I get a renewed burst of enthusiasm for maintaining the sheet".

Hey Aldriana, thanks, as always for all the hard work. Just to back up some of the previous posters, if you decided to keep the sheet the same and update it as necessary with gear and other patch note changes, you would still be doing the rogue community a huge favor!

One very small suggestion: perhaps you could as a brief descriptor after the version number informing people what the current version is up to in terms of wow patch notes.

Currently it is:

Version 0.8, 10/12/07:

My suggestion would be:

Version 0.8, 10/12/07, Current as of: Patch 2.2:

Or for the next one you put out:

Version 0.9, 11/??/07, Current as of: Patch 2.3, New ZA and Badge Gear

Obviously this isn't totally necessary, but I do see people asking questions about what is currently included and this might help cut those down. It might also just make things a little more clear in general, instead of replying on just the date and trying to remember when that last patch actually came out

Thanks again for all your work.

Is there a revised ETA on the next version of the sheet?