I wouldn't say an average between 1.8 and 2.04 would be that big of a deal, it would certainly be more accurate than just ignoring the stat or treating it as some mysterious voodoo that can't be quantified.

I understand that the windfury totem is still the best totem to use for melee groups BUT my group recently has been shaman, rogue,druid, hunter and usually an OT protection warrior. This particular rogue usually is the highest dps'r in the guild and I drop windfury for him. I was wondering if the dps of the singular rogue outweighs the rights of the others in the group. I usually twist the totems in the raid anyway but I want to know if windfury or agility should be the totem to drop in this type of group if i am unable to twist for a few seconds.

Also if i do get a fury warrior in the group how can i educate them on the windfury change. I've looked at the totem change page and I get lost in the details of rogues and warriors and conflicting information.

In the group you described I'd probably say GoA unless that prot warrior is particularly rage/threat starved. If you're getting a fury warrior he won't need to change too much, I believe the totem change thread mentioned using heroic strike a lot more.

I have a question as far as crafted weapons go.

I currently have t3 Mainhand axe, i was wondering if its worth the effort to switch over to the tier3 mace.

My guild is working on kael'thas with SSc on farm. So theres an idea on loot available to me.

Not sure if the t3 mace with the haste proc is worth getting when there are things like syphon in my sorta-near future.

Any other gear advice would be greatly appreciated (besides getting merc offhand lol)

from a raiding stand-point, the mace's proc makes it much better than the stun from the axe, not to mention looking better.

I think if you'll read up on previous posts in here or just do a search, you'll nab some answers.

I'm not sure, but I reckon that that decision is up to you.

If you have all the cash in the world I'd say that you should go for it since that weapon will last quite a while.


No

I've been doing some reading but no clear answers really.

i dont have all the money in the world but if it will improve my performance and last well into BT then I will put forth the farming effort to get it.

and I'm actually planning on getting rod of the sun king for my offhand.

Just not sure how often the mace procs and if it's often enough to make it worth my while to farm up the mats.

It's not replaceable in current end game.

Info taken down, based on skewed data

Has anyone got to exalted with The Scale of the Sands yet?

I was thinking that maybe the people who have been clearing Hyjal for a few weeks more than I have might already, the reason I ask is.

Band of the Eternal Champion - Items - World of Warcraft

Just wondering what sort of proc rate is on this ring, I think im still about 8 full clears from getting it, due to slackness in hyjal over the last few weeks.

Hey everyone, im new here to EJ forums but I've been browsing them for a few weeks now. My guild isn't very progressed(Only downed Mag a few days ago >.<) so I only have limited resources, but here is my gear / stats:

Cowl of Defiance - 34 AP / 16 HR Enchant

Necklace of Trophies

Cyclone Shoulderpads - +8 Str / +4 Str +4 Crit gems - 26 AP Enchant

Scaled Breastplate of Carnage - +6 Stats Enchant (This is until I can grab the leather one or t4 if I get lucky)

Stalker's War Bands - 24 AP Enchant (Getting the Enchant changed to 12 Str soon)

Gloves of Centering - +4 Str +6 Stam / +20 AP Gems - 15 Str Enchant

Archery Belt of the Broken

Skulker's Greaves - +8 Str x2 / +4 Str +4 Crit Gems - Soon to have 50 AP / 12 Crit Leg enchant

Veteren's Linked Sabatons - Boar's Speed Enchant

Kaylaan's Signet

Band of Ursol

Core of Ar'kelos

Hourglass of the Unraveler

The Decapitator - 20 Str (Im getting mongoose when I can get back on WoW, I also intend on replacing this with Dragonstrike when I get my blacksmithing up, hopefully within the next few weeks.

Runic Hammer - 20 Str (Until I get my Merc Gladiator Axe in 2 weeks, Axe will have mongoose on it)

With that gear my AP / Crit / HR is around 1500+ / 24 or 25 / 125 HR

Im not on a computer able to run WoW atm so I couldn't tell you my exact stats but they are somewhere around there spec'd enhancement. I just wanted some of your guys input on how good or bad my stats are before I actually do respec.

Thanks in advance to all that do respond, I do intend on checking back here later on in the day.

EDIT: I could also swap my Violet Ring of the Grand Restorer for of the Master Assassin gaining some hit that I don't need from what I've seen and a few AP, while losing some crit.

This is dps/AP not (Dps/HIT)/(Dps/AP) wich is local AEP value.
Dividing something with a trend by something with another trend will yield you interesting result

Good, but how it is making static AEP good? This model can be used to calculate AEP values at different stat combos and that result should be evaluated. Furthermore, this graph shows (which is logical) that the more AP one has, the more important hit becomes, not static ratio hr= 1.3 ap. In other words, at every given AP value the worth of adding Hit instead of further adding AP is different.

Again - you are referring to the wrong data (dps/ap). This is not AEP.
30% is too much by my sense, I used it specially to show how many points are way off, not just off. Even 90% confidence is bad because it becomes (1 - 0.1^(attributes)) if used as an input of several weights, by for one by one comparisons 10% is ok with me.... almost

Exactly - which proves that static AEP value can not be used.

There is nothing wrong in taking small steps - you can always smooth them later. There were of course, some numbers that were negative, that should not happen at all. They occurred when AP was so small that increase of it by some percentage was providing not enough increase to dps to overcome random nature of the test. It did not happen at big numbers of AP and AP increase always resulted in dps increase (so if you are nude get big bad weapon first dont worry about gear with hit or crit). From the look at histogram you could see that there were about dozen of such negative points out of 600+.

Smoothing (increasing steps) is ok but too some extant, in order to calculate local AEP small steps are needed. Too much soothing resulted in creating static AEP that is evil.
Again, you are referring to the wrong data. AEP is NOT dps increse/per hit increase. It is "AP equivalence" and there is no AP at dps increse/per hit increase formula. You should use (dps increase from increasing hit/ by what number hit was incresed)/(dps increase from increasing AP/by what number AP was increased)

I am not saying theorycrafting is garbage in any way. I addressed very specific question "usefulness of static AEP values for gear choice" and showed that it is so limited that should be avoided because AEP is not static by it's nature - it is different for every possible combo.

I may have missed this somewhere... I just finished catching up on all of the posts, due to the recent change to the WF totem.

While raiding my typical group consists of 3 rogues and a feral druid (sometimes subbing a Rogue for a Hunter). Very recent developments actually allowed for 3 rogues and a dps war, but that is infrequent at best.

With these recent chanegs to the dps a Rogue and a Warrior recieves, what is better now? I saw one model earlier showing a Rogue with Poisons + GoA being very very close to a WF combo. And it seems that warriors gain nowhere near the benefit they once did. Which if you then add in my extra dps and the extra gained by a hunter or a druid...it may very well be possible it is no longer the correct answer to place a WF totem down.

I understand the basic mentailty to not using a WF totem is, "OMFG the world is ending!!!" but I'd like to be able to look past that and explain to my my GM and my melee dps'ers why I'm changing my totems up. And from some things I'm seeing, changing them up is the right way to go now. In the most recently posted model/example in this thread, it seems that if you have 2 class who do benefit from GoA, but cannot from WF, that GoA is now the superior totem in an Enhancement Shaman's party.
WF Totem or GoA? When to use in what combos?

1) 2 Rogue, 1 Fury War, 1 Feral Druid, 1 Sham
2) 3 Rogue, 1 Feral Druid, 1 Sham (this happens in my guild the most often)
3) 3 Rogue, 1 Fury War, 1 Sham
4) 2 Rogue, 1 Feral Druid, 1 Hunter, 1 Sham (this is the 2nd most common makeup in our raids)

Thanks!

The real answer would be for them to make flametongue totem's damage for the party scale in a reasonable way with the shaman's spell damage in conjunction with the upcoming changes to enhancement spell damage.

There would be a really nice synergy of another group buff that scales with the Shaman's gear there. Then you could do GoA+Flametongue totem and hopefully have comparable damage to windfury.

But then again, I've learned to stay away from "I wish" theorycraft because it's too painfull.

It would be nice if they provided an alternative outside of all windfury all the time for melee though.

Yo! can you please give us an example of some items that you think are being valued wrong across the board for all shaman? I'm just not understanding this - to me its like your saying that the Liar's Tongue gloves off Mag are only good if you're sitting at certain values of hit/crit/ap, and otherwise you should take item X - even though item X might be worse later on?

Maybe you just need to simplify what you're saying a bit.

I feel like I understand the gist of Yo!'s argument:
1) AP equivalencies are not 100% accurate.
2) Doing two simulations is theoretically a more accurate way to compare items.
3) Therefore, AP equivalencies should not ever be used.

I don't think he's getting disagreement on points #1 and #2. But point #3 is where he's getting disagreement from. Frankly, even though we are min-maxers, simulations still exhibit errors on individual runs. In fact, looking at the info Yo! referenced above, 2% (12/600) sims showed a decrease in DPS when increasing AP. Now, I'm far from an expert on statistics, but this would cause me to believe that there is a significant standard deviation on DPS when comparing multiple simulations at a single AP value. For comparison, Disquette's info showed a standard deviation of 9% for the DPS-value of AP. Unless we know that the comparison of any two sims will have a standard deviation of less than 9%, #3 is not supported; indeed, even if the standard deviation of those sims is far less than 9%, say 1%, AP equivalencies still are valuable for the sole fact that they make it very easy to compare two items.

And finally, Malan and I have requested an example of a case where an item is an "upgrade" by AP-equivalency metrics but a "downgrade" by either simulated or in-game testing. Such an example has not yet been produced, so until it is, I will continue to support AP equivalency evaluation.

Assuming dagger rogues I'm guessing.


Everwatch, you may want to look into totem twisting if your group is that much into goa. All in all the WF nerf cries have been a little exaggerated. I see two combat fist/sword rogues in your guild, so for them WF would certainly still be worth it.

according to the rogues I normally group with, poisonx2 and GoA out damages WF now.

Well, I was actually assuming Combat Swords...
Rogue = 1% crit/40 AGI, 1 AP/AGI -> 2.3% crit, 92 AP, can apply Instant Poison. Probably less than the benefit of WF. But:

Hunter = 1% crit/25 AGI, 1 AP/AGI -> 2.3% crit, 92 AP, ~2% more Kill Commands and Feral Inspiration or Expose Weakness applications (unknown to me: crit/AGI and AP/AGI for pet; I here assume it scales consistently with the Hunter's)
Cat = 1% crit/25 AGI, 1 AP/AGI -> 3.68% crit, 92 AP
Shaman = 1% crit/25 AGI, 0 AP/AGI -> 3.68% crit, increased Flurry uptime by roughly 3.68% * 25% Flurry downtime = ~1% increased damage? (WF and white should both scale with Flurry uptime.)

If hunter DPS = 1x rogue DPS, cat DPS = 0.75x rogue DPS, and shaman DPS = 0.75x rogue DPS, then we have 2.3% + 2.76% + 2.76% = 7.82% rogue DPS (crit contributions) + some constant DPS from aforementioned AP contributions + some intangible DPS from increased Kill Commands and Ferocious Inspiration or Expose Weakness applications... if we estimate this as 2.18% (yes, chosen for convenience, but on the surface seems reasonable supposing the power of FI and EW) then Rogue DPS with Windfury must be at least 5% greater than Rogue DPS with GoA and Instant Poison.

Any testing with the new WF to show that still holds true? From the anecdotes I have seen on these boards, GoA/IP is nearly a wash with WF now for rogues. The other thread is mostly focusing on the fact that it's a huge nerf to 2H 33/28, and a reasonable nerf to DW... which are true but not useful for this particular investigation.

Btw speaking of AEP, can someone verify that I'm not crazy, lootzor keeps saying a pair of blue crafted gloves are some of the best available. Agree/Disagree? [Fel Leather Gloves]

Sure. Lets look at a guy with 5 empty gem slots, 2400 AP, 12% + hit, 18% crit.
Such guy performed 776 DPS that was recorded in big_test.xls
He is given an option to choose between 2 gems: +20 AP and +10 Hit rating assuming that color bonus does not matter for him (+1mana/5 sec). "Average AEP" says that 5*20 AP is much more favorable: 100 points against 70 points assigned to 5*10 hit rating. However, in a big_test.xls this guy with 2400+100 AP, 12% hit, 18% crit scored 790 DPS (3% increase), while the same guy with 2400 AP, 12% hit + 50 hit rating, 18% crit scored 813 DPS (4,7% increase). So, by choosing what average AEP suggested, he lost 1,7% of his initial total dps on gems alone.

So, yes, "the Liar's Tongue gloves off Mag are only good if you're sitting at certain values of hit/crit/ap, and otherwise you should take item X - even though item X might be worse later on".

@ Malan:
Seems reasonable because those gloves don't have any item budget invested in STA or INT so they have a comparatively large pool of points for AP, Crit, and Hit; additionally, the stat allocation is spread out between these three statistics and a red and yellow socket, so they aren't penalized as much by the rule that raises statvalues to the power of 1.5. (Item Values on WoWWiki for the uninitiated.)

@ Yo!:
OK, but what's the margin of error for each of those tests? Maybe the one at 2500 AP, 12% hit was under by 5% while the one at 2400 AP, 14% hit was over by 5%. Then the 20 AP gems would still be better. Focusing on the error in AEP while ignoring the error in simulations strikes me as odd.

I will also note that your example considered a person with high AP (2400) and very low hit rating (12% = only 47 hit rating), which is far from what the majority of shamans operate at. Does resocketing to hit gems still make sense at 100 hit rating? 125 hit rating? 150 hit rating? These are values more commensurate with a value of 2400 AP (even raid buffed -- and remember that you should not include UR when figuring how much base AP is needed to obtain 2400 raid AP since UR was modeled as a proc in Disquette's sims).