AEP Values used:

AP: 1
Crit: 1.99
Hit: 1.8
Haste: 1.8
-Armor: 0.37
Strength: 2.2
Agility: 1.93
Expertise: 3.26

(including BoK ofcourse)

[Softstep Boots of Tracking] - 210.45 AEP
[Shadowmaster's Boots] + 2x[Bold Crimson Spinel] - 225.66 AEP

Bigger difference than last time I checked ;I. Have to rerun the sim a couple of times to get an average again though, only ran it once to check up on the new AEP values since I got a few upgrades since the last time I ran it.

Commit a changelog as a post at the end of this thread. So we can be lazy instead!

Concerning IV) Windfury mechanics there is following paragraph:

The attack power bonus from Windfury is not reduced by the 50% OH damage penalty from Dual Wielding.
StormStrike and Windfury are not normalized - their damage will increase with slower weapons.


-----------------------------------------------------------

SS is not normalised, WF is more complicated. Without 3 second cooldown WF itself would be normalised due to flat proc rate. Even then altough there would be small preference to slow weapons due to SS being able to proc WF. WF totem however is totally normalised as far as i know now that yellow attacks can't proc it anymore.


Also concerning the comparison to WF totem, it would be nice to note WF is 2 yellow attacks that do not have DW miss penalty and can not glance.

Strange I did the math again for Shadow masters boots :

30 x 1.93 = 57.9
17 x 1.99 = 33.83
76 x 1.00 = 76
20 x 2.2 = 44

Net Gain = 211.73 EP

However if you switch the yellow socket with a 5str/5crit you gain 3 Crit from the socket bonus so the math changes a bit :

Raw = 167.73 EP
15 x 2.2 = 33 EP
8 x 1.99 = 15.92 EP

Net gain = 216.65 EP.

Even thought they are a very slight upgrade over softstep boots... they provide 38 stamina over them which in my own opinion is an upgrade on it's own with all of the random AOE damge we are seeing in boss fights.

The "Stamina Question" is one I neatly sidestep by allowing for a user-defined Stam value (usually 1/4 of the primary stat, so 0.25 in this case) so that you can take that sort of difference into account.

Hm, I have wrong stats noted for Shadowmaster's, so that might explain the difference T_T.

Thanks, I figured out the 'problem', enhancer was using only Rare gems, when i'm certain i've changed it to use Epic quality gems a while ago.. must have reset in an update or something, so keep an eye out for that.

And yeah, it is a very minor upgrade and only with epic gems, Softstep for me are 219.70 while Shadowmaster's are 220.00 so a very tiny upgrade at the least.

How is [Shoulderpads of the Stranger](220.80) looking to people over [Shoulders of the Hidden Predator](211.60)? With a Spinel, they're slightly better for me as you can see, is this the case for everyone, are these random SSC shoulders our ultimate shoulder item? Shame my guild doesn't do SSC anymore ;(

Thanks again.

You completely missed the mark at what 'normalized' means. Warrior Arms/Fury instant attacks for example, are normalized. Various ranges of weapon speeds are all assigned a "default" speed for the basis of the attack. If you have a weapon that is way slower than the normalized value, it does *nothing* to increase the damage of the attack. If you have one that is slightly faster, you actually benefit a little on the instant attack.

Windfury and SS on the other hand are not tied to a default speed for calculation, they use exactly whatever speed your weapon is.

For my money, I tend to look at it like this: you can socket for more AP, more strength, more crit, more hit, more *. You can't socket expertise or armor pen (and a couple of other stats, as well). Shoulderpads of the Stranger are one of the few items that offer good DPS stats along with a hard-to-obtain stat.

Due to rounding problems, those expertise items one for one aren't that good as it seems on the first view.

[Shoulderpads of the Stranger]

35 agility
10 strength
16 critical strike rating
8 expertise rating (assuming 1 expertise rating = 0.2536 expertise)
60 attack power

[Belt of One-Hundred Deaths]
29 agility
20 strength
24 expertise rating
74 attack power

Using my following ep values
str 2,2 str
agi 1,86
stam 0
int 0
crit 1,92
hit 1,77
ap 1
haste 1,95
arp 0,3
er 3,39


So, hydross shoulderpads are only a 5 ep upgrade over the najentus ones. If you don't have them, don't worry about it. Most upgrades from good to superior items are in range of 15-25 ep (excluding illidan helmet, archimonde chest and vashj belt).

To the stamina question:
I'm actually playing around with about 11.000 hitpoints and i noticed the situations in our clears the last two ids when i was under 1.000 or .500 hitpoints and it happend "often". I won't really feel quite comfortable with only 10.000 hitpoints or even less.

For my situation, "upgrading" from
[Nyn'jah's Tabi Boots] > [Softstep Boots of Tracking] -27 stam
[Merciless Gladiator's Cleaver] > [Syphon of the Nathrezim] -27 stam (maybe two!)
[Choker of Serrated Blades] > [Choker of Endless Nightmares] -37 stam
[Belt of Deep Shadow] > [Boneweave Girdle] -14 stam
[Band of the Eternal Champion] > [Signet of Primal Wrath] -13 stam

Over 1.000 hp difference even without kings.

Only way to wear all those non stamina items would be wearing 4 piece t6 for the huge amount of stamina on them. But with zero tier 6, i struggle.

I run at 10k health buffed and have no problems in T6 content. Keeping the S2 weapons over a Syphon just because of the stamina would be a pretty big mistake. Boneweave girdle is hunter gear, skip it and use something like the Shadow Walkers Cord.

For people asking about Lootzor, check out Lootrank. Same concept, but has current items, and a couple other little features. Matches gems by stats/slot bonus as well.

Although as I make this post, the site seems to be offline with an ASP error, hopefully it should be back soon.

"Normalized" has a very specific meaning in WoW. It does not mean that an ability's DPS does not scale with weapon speed -- MS is normalized, but it still does somewhat more damage with slower weapons. What it means is that the ability calculates the damage from AP based on a fixed weapon speed, rather than the speed of the actual weapon. This is not true for either WFW or WFT. For consistancy with other instant attacks SS probably should be normalized, but doing so would not have a meaningful effect on Enh Shaman gear choices or power level, so they've never bothered.

I know what Normalization is and how it handle and i guess i wanted to point out WF by design is equal to all weapon speeds, just that 3 sec cooldown makes slow weapon better for it. Nevermind it :P

And how much of this was this due to spot healers holding out until you were severely hurt before issuing heals? I think you'd see about the same affect with 13k or 9k health.

Everybody has to set their own limits...when I first started running Kara & Heroics I was successful with just over 6k health. Now I'm at 7500. I still take the same amount of damage, take the same amount of heals and need to be just as careful with threat to avoid being two-shot by a boss. All I've really added is the ability to pursue content where AOEs doing 7k damage are common. Outside of such content, if I could peel off 50 stamina and gain 10 AP, I'd do so in a heartbeat -- in fact, I have an 8k health suit that is more or less a 10 AP nerf and I never wear it.

Also, you're using the Greater Than symbol like an arrow. It doesn't do that. [Nyn'jah's Tabi Boots] > [Softstep Boots of Tracking] to me means "Nyn'jah's are better than the Softstep."

For almost a year, the 3s cooldown has been PART of the Windfury design, as is the 36% proc rate. If it wasn't, we would have a very different class -- we'd still be aiming for slow weapons, but it wouldn't be as important and would be more likely that the other stats on a weapon would offset its speed. We'd also be stacking Haste like it was going out of style.

Hey brothers and sisters, I've been trying to use Yo's sim at Crazy Shaman's DPS & AEP calculator (c) Yo for a few weeks now, but I simply cannot get it to load. I've tried three browsers (Mac Firefox 2, Mac Safari 3, and Windows IE 7) and get Java applet errors each time. (The exact error message is "load: class NewJApplet not found.") From the sounds of it, the site is working for most people, so I'm assuming it's something on my end. Suggestions on how to get the site working would be great. Thanks!

Grzzt -- you have encountered my only problem with Yo's sim, which is that it requires Java 1.6. (Seems silly to me; shouldn't take much effort to make it compatible with 1.5 but it's not my code).

Java 1.6 is available in beta for Mac, but I have yet to get it to work correctly under 10.5 (possibly because I haven't reboot since the 10.5.1 update). So I run it under Firefox for windows on a machine with more java runtimes than you can shake a stick at, including the latest 1.6.

The browser you run it on is of little consequence.

Is this because of the proc on Syphon? I rate S2 weapons higher than Syphon in both the MH and the OH despite them being less weapon DPS, but I don't give any value to the Syphon proc because I'm not sure how to rate it.

I really don´t think you have to rate the proc to see them being far superior, just run Yo´s Sim and you will see. It was no discussion for me at all and btw the stat changes aren´t that great anyway, you are gaining 20 AP per weapon with SON´s and are loosing 10 hit and 19 crit, which should be about 45 AEP so it´s 25 AEP more on the S2 wepons ... that should be easily surpassable with the greater damage and slower speed

The proc is just for kicks I guess. It did like 5,000 dmg over a full hyjal clear I think, its not a big deal. The syphons and rising tide have higher DPS though, raising the average damage done.

Yeah, I don't PvP much, but I picked up T6 for stam on fights like Council and such (and because the items I'm hoping for never drop).