crit vs ap.

Lately ive been stacking alot of AP to get better dps, atm my guild is 2/6 SSC 1/4 TK after 2weeks of raiding.

atm i have around 1900ap unbuffed but only 20crit.

so my question is, how much ap is 1 crit rating worth? Should i swap some of my ap gems for crit or keep stacking ap?

my gear isnt great but it gets the job done.

Thnx in advance.

EDIT: And yes i know "go use the spreadsheat and see what u get" i use it everyday to tweak my gear etc but i want some live opinions.

Please enlighten me. I was under the assumption that stacking haste effects was more effective than spacing them out. In fact, I've been drinking Haste pots in conjunction with multiple effects (flurry, snd, double mongoose).

Am I just spinning my wheels trying to reach insane levels of hasted swings? I must admit to being a junky and trying to get my mainhand speed as fast as possible.

I would agree that this is generally correct for 25-man raiding, but I will say that for Karazhan rogues this rule of thumb needn't apply; in order for agility to hold a clear edge over AP, one needs to have Kings, which, while fairly ubiquitous in 25 man raids, is not always (or even often) available in 10-man content, as in many cases there will only be one paladin in the group, and salvation is usually the more important buff. And, for that matter, in many cases where you do have salv, rogues would rather have Might than Kings.

Moreover, in Karazhan, you will not always have the massive AP buffs that benefit AP and Hit so greatly; you may or may not have might (and you certainly don't have both might and kings), you may or may not have a DPS warrior in the raid for battle shout, and so on.

So, while it's true that, as a rogue in 25-man raids, you are generally better off with agility gems than AP gems, it is by no means a universal truth of the universe that this is the case.

Again, a severe oversimplification. The rule of thumb I'd give for socketing is that any item that has only red and yellow sockets should be socketed for the bonus as long as the socket bonus does *anything* (Like, I can see the argument for not bothering with the socket bonus on WW Gloves, but even that one is debatable). If an item has a blue socket, almost no matter what the socket bonus is, it's probably not worth getting except for the fact that you need 2 blue gems for metagem activation. So put two blue gems in whichever sockets are going to activate the most powerful socket bonuses, and everything else should (usually) be yellow or red.

In terms of socketing yellow and red sockets: agi and hit are both perfectly good choices, such that Delicate, Glinting, and Rigid are all valid prefixes. While it's true that in a purely sustained boss fight, hit does outpace agility slightly, it's also the case that there are very few purely sustained fights in the game, and that agility performs better relative to hit in more interrupted fights. Additionally, agility gives some avoidance and mitigation, which, while in an ideal world might be unnecessary, in practice will usually save your bacon at least every once in a while.

Moreover, most rogues need to pay at least some attention to the hit cap, and if you are near it, swapping hit for agi is one of the most efficient solutions to this issue. Additionally, it might be noted that while the hit cap is 307.5 against boss-level mobs, many boss encounters in the expansion involve at least some time killing mobs that are other than level 73; consider SSC and TK as an example; Lurker, Karathress, Vashj, and Astromancer all have significant add-killing phases, and, depending on your exact strategy, Kael, Hydross, and Al'ar might also have rogues dpsing non-73 targets for nontrivial portions of the fight. Hence, in practice, on many fights, hit over 284 is somewhat wasted.

Hence, between hit not being as good for interrupted fights and a reasonable case for wanting to stay away from the hit cap, I would say there is a strong argument to find yourself using delicate gems in at least some of your red slots, and glinting gems in some of your yellow slots.

And, even setting all that aside for a moment, these rules only apply when comparing gems of comparable quality, which is not a valid assumption; if you consider, for instance, a SSC/TK or earlier rogue, your options for gemming are either blue AH gems or unique-equipped epics; and while it is true that you probably want your blue gems to all be Delicate Living Ruby, Glinting Noble Topaz, Rigid Dawnstone, or Shifting Nightseye, there are any number of Unique-Equipped gems of different stats that are potentially worth using due to having a larger quantity of the stat in question; Pristine Fire Opal, Bold Ornate Ruby, Brutal Tanzanite, and Pulsing Amethyst come to mind.

And of course, at the other end of the spectrum, when using BT/MH gems, the fact that there is no pattern for Rigid Lionseye and the fact that the casters and healers will be putting a high demand on the Crimson Spinel supply means that, as a general rule, you will be filling every socket with Glinting Pyrestones except for the two that have Shifting Shadowsong Amethysts (and, after next patch, the slots where you have your Delicate Fire Ruby and your Rigid Bladestone, if you happen to be a Jewelcrafter).

And *then*, of course, there's the whole can of worms about wanting to maintain some PvP viability without gimping your PvE stats too badly, which changes the dynamic yet again.

In brief: the situation is, as always, more complicated than can be easily summarized in one sentence.