Kralnor

Hello!

My guild killed Magtheridon for the first time recently and I was lucky enough to receive this trinket. So far, I love it. I know it's good, but I'm wondering just how good.

My question is this - is there some new +hit percentage I should be looking for with this trinket? Is it powerful enough to ignore +hit for the most part? Should I still aim to be capped at +16%? Or am I mistaken completely and should I ditch it for Quagmirran's Eye?

I'm currently Affliction (41/0/20), but plan on going Destruction (0/21/40) as soon as we start clearing SSC, where there's actually proper itemization for it.

 

lyquid

We did some of this math on our guild forums for a mage. Basically it's theoretically possible to drop all +hit gear and substitute it with crit and make the trinket effective. This is just a copy/paste of what one of our mages worked out:


If you have 16% chance to miss (1/6.25 spells resist) you would proc the trinket once every 6.25 spell casts. The buff would last 10 seconds, long enough to cast 3 fireballs. that means that 3 out of every 6.25 fireballs would have this +170 damage and 84% of those would hit, equating to about 68.544 +damage (170*.84*3/6.25). Now the question is whether or not this is worth the drop in +hit. I think if you understand the math, you will find that it is.

If you cap your +hit its equivalent to a 17.86% damage increase vs. having no +hit. (15/84 = .1786)

15% +hit is approx equal to 12.5% +crit (I compared items of equal item level value with different levels of +hit and crit rating to come up with this value. For example in 2 items with the same stats and same item level one would have 1.5% +hit and the other would have 1.25% +crit [after rating to % conversions])

So if crits do 210% damage (crits do 150% damage and ignites do an extra 40%. 1.5*1.4 = 2.1), 12.5% +crit is equal to about a 13.75% damage increase.

If you are going balls out and mana is an issue in the fight however, if you are a fire mage you must also factor in the 30% mana return on crits to find out how many bonus spells you would get from this. with 12.5% crit multiplied by 84% of your spells succeeding multiplied by 30% mana back on crits that gives you an extra 3.15% mana. 3.15% extra mana equates to 3.15% extra damage in a fight where all mana is consumed; so combined with the 13.75% straight damage from the crit, +crit totals to about 16.9% +damage output.

The trinket proc however is also equivalent to 68.544 +damage if you have 0% +hit as explained before.

Therefore in order for it to be worth it, this 68.544 +damage must make up for the different in damage amplification between full +crit and capped +hit gear. The difference between these is .96% damage. In order for it to be worth it, 68.544 must be more than .96% of your average spell damage.

68.544/.96% = 7140

Therefore unless your average fireball does more than 7140 damage (which is absolutely everybody) it is beneficial to convert all +hit to +crit and pick up a magtheridon's eye.

Also, the 68.544 +damage from the proc combined with the normal 54 +damage puts the eye of magtheridon at a value of +122.544 damage on a trinket.

--

This really wouldn't work out as nicely for affliction locks and shadow priests.

 

Searix

Say 3.15% extra mana = 3.15% damage is BS math, plz run it again when you don't go oom

 

dedmonwakeen

lyquid.....

At a 16% resist rate, there is a very reasonable chance that your 10sec buff will overlap, diluting its value.

At a 16% resist rate, you would need a 50% crit rate just to make up the lost mana from resists.

I like the Eye...... but it's not quite as good as you make it out to be.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Northerner

For Mages I can see the Eye shining for an arcane/fire build perhaps. It allows you to cap hit for arcane while leaving fire at a 7% miss rate without really taking a big penalty. Sadly, I really don't see the arc/fire build being too viable until 2 piece T5 so the item's placement is questionable.

I still don't really like the mechanic for the trinket but ah well.

 

Juggler

Your claim about mana loss is wrong.

You would not "lose" mana from missing. You're spending the same amount of mana if you are casting the same spells over the same period of time. What's relevant is how much damage that mana spent gives you.

Also, one should keep in mind that a lot of +hit that players have is not easily traded for +crit. The socketed portion of +hit, yes, but things like the damage/spell hit head enchant and +hit inherent on pieces of gear becomes relevant.

I think what the OP was looking for in any case was a number crunch on how much +hit was optimal for the Eye. I'm tempted to figure out just what sort of crunching is required and to make a graph, but that will take all day and I'm sleepy.

Whoever does, make sure to factor in that
1 - You always crit the same % of spells that hit, regardless of your hit %. So you can't doubly count a drop in hit % as a drop in crit %.
2 - Subsequent misses would refresh the buff to no benefit.

Example calc:
If you're casting a spell every 2.5 seconds (SB/Incinerate), then a 10% chance to miss would mean that on average, one would waste 10 seconds of the buff 10% of the time (miss twice in a row), 7.5 seconds of it (.1 * .9 =) 9% of the time (miss hit miss), 5 seconds of it (.9 * .9 * .1 = ) 8.1% of the time (miss hit hit miss), and 2.5 seconds of it (.9 * .9 * .9 * .1=) 7.29% of the time (miss hit hit hit miss). So, the waste totals to

(10% * 100% + 9% * 75% + 8.1% * 50% + 7.29% * 25%)
(10% + 6.75% + 4.05% + 1.8225%)
22.6225% of the buff's effect gets wasted due to the refresh rate. So the effective useful proc rate is (100% - 22.6225%) * (10%) = 7.73775%, not the 10% miss rate.
3 - More complications

So, then, you'd get (1/2.5 * 7.73775% * 10 * 170 * whatever scaling percentages apply to your spam from spec) DPS from the Eye's non-static at a 10% miss rate. You lose 10% of whatever your "non-miss" theorycrafted DPS is, however.

4 - All of the above calcs have to be redone differently for each kind of spam. And it gets even more complicated if you're doing a rotation of spells.

Aw, man. There's the primary question of "what hit % makes the Eye most effective" and then there's "how much hit% should I trade for crit % to maximize the Eye when socketing stuff".

If there's some golden value for the primary question, the second becomes moot I suppose.

Anybody on EJ a math major? I'll try and revisit this when I have more sleep, but any help on the matter would be great.

 

galzohar

I've done some *rough* math on this trinket and here is what I got:
-While it increases in effect with +hit gear, more +hit will still increase your DPS significantly more than it will decrease your DPS.
-The value of +hit goes down by somewhere around 1/2 (that's where the *rough* comes in ;p). With my gear and quite accurate stat comparison I get 1 crit = 0.73 damage and 1 hit = 1.32 damage, so if you're not too far off of these values it brings hit rather close to crit in a 1 rating : 1 rating comparison (which is what you will see on items of same level such as gems). Of course this is again very rough as I did this for a fire mage with my gear, while this trinket may be more optimal for people geared with lower +hit (which often means lower gear quality too) and may give slightly different results.
-A frost mage in my guild reports that "miss" resists also proc this. The unverified value of 8 resistance per level gives bosses around 5% chance to fully resist you aside from your base miss chance, which is at minimum 1%. All in all with 4 frostbolts casted in the duration (which is possible due to it proccing when the spell misses rather than when the spell is cast so your next spell should already be in progress of casting when it procs), the proc is worth ~41 spell damage with capped +hit. Lowering your hit rating and trading it with spell damage can also up your DPS, but isn't always possible due to lots of good epics having +hit or needing to match a yellow socket making it only possible to trade that hit with crit which is closer to what hit would give with the eye equipped.

Of course you could go into deeper math than this, but the general result is that for a frost mage this is the best trinket you'll see in quite a while after you down mag, and for a fire mage it's quite decent but quite compareable to icon of the silver cresent. The value of 1% hit for me becomes X0.7 as effective with this trinket on which makes 1 hit rating nearly as good as 1 spell damage, and I'm already taking 1 hit as being equal to 1 spell damage due to being very close to the hit cap (and hitting it as soon as I optimize some gear).

Edit: forgot to mention this completely ignores overlapping procs, as calculating them is still something I'm trying to figure out, but I estimate it still being good for a frost mage as effect lost due to overlaps is a rather small % of the overall effect afaik.
Also I do not know of any hidden cooldown on this and got reports from people that it's capable of proccing back to back, so no item-destroying cooldown like the nexus horn or the similar trinket from SSC.

 

Kralnor

Alright, next question.

Here is my armory profile: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#c...alas&n=Kralnor

I think it's apparent why I wanted this trinket. My hit rating blows. I have a bunch of rare yellow and orange gems I'm looking to have cut into spell hit and damage, but I haven't found a Horde crafter yet.

Anyway, my other option for a trinket is Scryer's Bloodgem. Is it worth replacing Quagmirran's Eye, or is the Haste proc and the damage still valuable enough even after the spell haste nerf?

Any other suggestions for my gear would be welcome. I'd like to replace my wand and cloak with Tirisfal Wand of Ascendancy and Ruby Drape of the Mysticant, but no luck on drops so far.

 

galzohar

Quagmiran's eye is still extremely powerful. ~2.5% casting speed increase for fireballs and another 37 spell damage. 2.5% is converted into 2.5X20.5=51.25 damage with my gear (in terms of DPS, not DPM), which makes it very powerful.
However eye of magtheridon for a frost mage would be better than both trinkets, but for a fire mage you're very likely to get geared up a bit and have more than enough hit to make the eye of magtheridon too weak to equip, or at least too weak to spend DKP on to use instead of icon of the silver cresent. Of course if you prefer get raid loot and not spend time in heroics, then it may be different for you (scryer's bloodgem and the sha'tar revered trinekts are kinda weaker than all other trinkets I mentioned so far), but you need to do a lot of heroics anyway if you're into maximizing your ability (which is probably why you came here in the first place).

 

dedmonwakeen

For a Mage with Master of Elements a "miss" actually is a potential loss of mana.
If the spell hits AND crits, they get 30% of the mana cost back.

I've given up on mathematical formulation...... It is so dependent upon situation..... and so difficult to reuse.

At this point I'm a firm believer in exhaustive simulation. Just keep extending the codebase..... and then plug-and-chug. Call me a Neanderthal...... but that's just where I'm at these days.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

hacp

From what I understand, a miss, even if it was changed to a hit, was never meant to crit. Therefore, no mana will be lost to misses.

I would like to know how this affects frost mages, because frost bolt has a base 7% chance to miss a raid boss no matter what, because of the binary nature of the spell.

 

Copernicus

Frost doesn't have an inherent miss-rate any higher than fire. It's a 17% miss rate on bosses with 1% of that being impossible to overcome.

My quick math for Eye of Magtheridon, when I first worked it out, was +5 damage/miss percent for Fire and +6 damage/miss percent for frost (2.5 cast time vs 3.0 cast time). You still want a reasonably high hit rate because the Eye won't double-stack... any misses during the proc are a very bad thing. Honestly, I use the trinket and like it a great deal, but I'm not bothering trying to find a sweet spot of hit rating vs damage. I just have about 14% hit and am not overly concerned with hitting the hit cap and the Eye plays like an Icon of the Silver Crescent that I can't control.


Currently, the best trinket option is Darkmoon Card: Crusader and Icon of the Silver Crescent. I'm still gathering the Blessing cards, but that combination is clearly the best for general use until post-SSC/TK trinkets are available.

 

Bahkauv

From a Warrlock point of view, there is no alternative to getting +hit to the cap. A resisted Soulshatter is equivalent to such a huge loss in dps, no trinket can compensate this.

 

◊ Kyth

I'm having success swapping in +hit gear before soulshatter (as long as it's planned.) I have Staff of Polarities and the Tirisfal Wand from Kara.

Lifetap, then do your gear swap immediately so the GCD'd overlap.

Soulshatter, then do your gear swap immediately for the same reason.


For a lock, +dmg is additional dps since your lifetaps/dark pacts become more mana efficient. Plus there's the (possibly minor) point that many events include sub-73 adds.

 

hacp

Frost has a max of 93% hit, even if it maxes out on +hit rating, since it is a binary spell. Binary spells go through one check, hit or miss. This check is affected by both resistances and +hit. Since boss mobs have an unavoidable 24 resist all, the lowest miss rate frost can get is 7%.

 

galzohar

Yes it's the 24 unmitigateable (and untested) resistances that makes this trinket better than anything for a frost mage even if you have hit capped.
Also in the sheet I made for myself I already sort of took into account the average time you spend fighting non-boss mobs on boss fights (based on estimated HPs of bosses VS their adds on fights in SSC/the eye/mag's lair that have enough info available). If I took into account pure boss DPS with no adds on boss 1 hit rating would be quite better than 1.33. More in the area of 1.6-1.7 spell damage per hit rating.

Spells also don't work like melee afaik, it first rolls a miss, then if it hits it rolls a crit. Still the effect on MoE when you add hit chance is very very small compared to the other effects of +hit. MoE giving 10% mana back with 1% more chance to miss is roughly 9.99% mana back.

 

Copernicus

You're wrong.

The "glancing blow" mechanic for spells only happens on partial resists of non-binary spells. Binary spells don't suffer from it.

 

hacp

Nice to know

 

galzohar

That's very interesting and wierd if it's true. Frost not getting the 5% dps reduction from boss resistance makes it a lot better than it's mathed out to be, and much closer to a fire spec. I really wonder where you get that information though, as everything I've seen so far claims otherwise, but I also never saw anything truely reliable on the 24 resistance thing.

 

Ghando

Does the trinket proc on partial resists or on complete resists only? As Elemental I don't have a problem getting to the hit cap (even without Nature's Guidance) but partial resists really chap my ass all over. Without a Curse of Elements/Shadow (why doesn't Elements affect nature? *grumble*) and Spell Penetration itemized rarely/poorly, I get a lot of partial resists. If Eye of Mag procs on those it'd be absolutely worth my while.

And spell partial resists are checked very differently from melee, seeing as glancing blows can't crit and partial resists can. "Your Lightning Bolt crits Void Reaver for 773."

 

Copernicus

It only procs on misses.

Nonbinary spells have two checks, at least when it comes to hits and resists. A check to hit which incorporates spell hit percentage and the miss rate on the target. Then there's the check for resists, which includes spell penetration, the target's resistances, and the "glancing blow" mechanic of partial resists on higher level targets. I don't know if a partial resist can result in a 100% resist for damage, and if it can, how that would interact with Eye of Magtheridon.

 

galzohar

I've been getting reports from a frost mage I know that it procs on all full resists, but that's not first hand information so I hope someone will post some verified info. And again if frostbolt (binary) doesn't get the 24 resistance for bosses then the trinket is again useless.

Spell penetration does nothing for the base 24 resistance (which is also a non-verified number afaik but everything seems to agree on it and I don't see how it would be any different for binary spells. Also my experience seems to agree with the 24 resistance but not tested to the point of saying if it's accurate or not).

 

• Efejel

AFAIK "glancing blow" resists are resist-based and not level-based. Pre 2.0 I seem to recall being level 60 in Sunken Temple and getting frequent partial resists of my Wrath against the high-NR Dragonkin.

 

galzohar

While there are mobs in the game with resistance, 99.9% of them don't. Yet bosses keep resisting (partials for non-binary, untested for binary) due to their inherent 24 resistance due to level, regardless of curses and spell penetration.