Ren

It annoys me that I don't actually know how to properly socket Arena gear, so I decided to make this rough guide for myself. This spreadsheet allows you to input your AP, Crit %, weapon DPS/speed, and your target's Resilience to get a (very) rough equivalence for a point Strength versus a point of Critical Strike Rating. The hit table, Flurry, Deep Wounds, WF totem, and procs are all not modeled. Rage generation is shown but I just assumed that there was enough rage to hit MS and WW every cooldown. 2/2 Impale is assumed, but you can change it under the "Special Crit Mod." section.

Effect of Resilience on Warrior DPS.xls
Download link

 

gia

Thanks for this.

I've been plugging in various numbers to see the effect of different buffs (battleshout, blessing of might, savagery, mongoose, leader of the pack, etc) and crit rating seems to be the winner except in odd situations where crit % is way too high, or AP is way too low.

Since this sheet is mainly about gems, any chance you could try modeling some metagems? I'm especially interested in the [Relentless Earthstorm Diamond] versus 12crit meta and 24ap meta.

 

soujeh

Thank you a lot for this, was exactly what I was looking. A very easy and rough spreadsheet where you could input the exact stats you included and nothing else Excellent.
I caught a discussion in some other thread about the +3% crit dmg meta, and as far as I could understand the way it works right now (bugged or intentionally, looks like a bug) is that it applies the bonus twice. I'm not too good at explaining, but if you have Impale and assuming 0 resilience (no idea how it scales with resi) you would end up with 129% crit dmg with the meta gem, compared to 120% crit dmg without it. But don't take this for good fish until you get a confirmation from someone else, haven't tested myself

 

• frmorrison

The bonus does apply twice, so you would get 3% on normal damage and 3% on the crit bonus, for a total damage bonus of 226.6% damage on crits, instead of just 220%.

 

soujeh

What he said! Either way it's a pretty darn nice upgrade to DPS, hands down sickest gem for PvE at least. Using the AP + runspeed one right now since I like that little extra speed and I'm really poor, emphasis on the poor part.

 

soujeh

Sorry to revive this old thread, but I was wondering how the changes in 2.2 would affect this spreadsheet. Would make crit even stronger for PVP, no ? But how much stronger ?

 

Darkmantle

Depending on whether the calculator implemented the bad way resilience and impale interacted the results of the spreadsheet might need to be updated.

Either way the answer is crit is better in pvp than before patch 2.2 if you have impale. You will get more damage on crits yellow crits how much will depend on your targets resilience.

Assuming 20% crit damage reduction previously it worked like 2*0.8=1.6 then 20% bonus from impale applied to the .6 giving you 1.72 crits. Now you should be getting 2.2*0.8=1.76 crits. So its a bit of a buff for yellow crits but not as massive as it was for casters.

 

Krandoth

Sorry, but your spreadsheet is wrong. I corrected it for you - here.

You forgot that when you higher chance to crit, you have a lower chance to not crit.

Rage Gen in the fixed version might be off, I didn't look at that.

 

soujeh

Sorry to revive an old thread, but can anyone confirm that Krandoth's spreadsheet looks about right ? Because I've recently gotten BT gems for every single gem slot, gemming for max crit since everything looked like crit was the way to go before. And now it seems I should probably regem again for AP :p So I'd rather not do this back and forth yet another time. This is for PvP btw.

 

rayijin

Well, to napkin math it out, lets look at what equivalent values of crit rating and strength give you.

22 crit rating = 44ap = 1% crit.

44 ap / 14ap/dps = 3.14dps

If we want 1% crit to equal a 1% increase in dps, then the amount of outgoing white damage would have to be 314dps. Below this number, AP is better, and above it, crit is better. Of course, it doesn't work exactly like this, so we look at the other factors. Lets look at some actual numbers first

A warrior with a 134 dps wep and 143 added dps from 2,000 ap only reaches 277 white dps. My full merciless geared warrior has about 257 unbuffed white dps with a vengeful weapon (socketed for crit based on the earlier spreadsheet). Even a blessing of might and battle shout won't bring it up high enough to reach the breaking point with the 1% crit = 1% dps assumption.

Virtually everyone who arenas nowadays has at least 350 resilience. This changes the value of crit versus AP even more in AP's favor. According to the spreadsheet's resilience calculation, a 350 resilience target takes only 181% damage from a special crit and 164% damage from a white crit. Hence, even with impale factored in, AP loses even more ground to crit from a direct-damage perspective - it's definitely not a 1% increase in dps.

This only leaves flurry and deep wounds as possible factors. Deep wounds adds 60% of weapon damage over 12 seconds after a crit. However, this is affected by AP, and even with a low crit chance (~20% after resilience), the odds of it staying on continuously are very high. In addition, it will do more damage the more AP you have - hence my guess is that it will actually be improved by higher ap and less crit.

Lastly, flurry. Among top warriors, about half get flurry and half don't. It's only a 15% increase in white dps when it's up. However, after looking at how much worse crit currently is than AP, I don't see how very slightly higher flurry uptime can make up for other losses.


Conclusion: Even with basic calculations, AP is far and away better than crit for 2h warrior pvp dps. It's not what I wanted to hear since it means I need to regem, but the math puts AP ridiculously far ahead of crit as it stands right now. In addition, a high-AP warrior can potentially burst larger (albeit with less probability of getting several crits in a row).

 

◊ Rob

I know you considered some other things, and arrived at the conclusion that AP is better, but this assumption that you start with is only true if your crit rate is 0%. Of course, this makes crit rating even worse.

Keeping in mind that
DPS = Crit Rate*2*"Zero-Crit DPS" + (1-Crit Rate)*"Zero-Crit DPS"
DPS = (1+Crit Rate)*"Zero-Crit DPS"
We can see that with a 30% crit rate, 1% additional crit does not produce a 1% increase in DPS.
DPS1 = (1+.3)*"Zero-Crit DPS"
DPS2 = (1+.31)*"Zero-Crit DPS"
DPS2 - DPS1 = 0.01*"Zero-Crit DPS" = 0.01*DPS1/(1+.3)
Therefore, it produces a (1%/130%) = 0.769% increase in DPS.

 

Punscho

Spike damage from crit streaks is harder to heal, more sensitive to interrupts and often requires mana inefficient heals, draining healers' mana faster. What is your bracket and setup? Warrior/healer? Warrior/lock/druid? Depending on you playing many long games or short ones you might want to consider your choice of gems.

Burst is back baby, I'm gemming all crit.

 

Caesar

Several things are omitted in those calculations. I would even go as far as saying the calculations are pretty pointless.

Things that also should be considered:
Crits give much more rage. more rage = ?
High crit rating makes bursts more likely.
High AP will make burst heavier. (but less seldom)
Many classes have things that proc on crits (blessed resillience, enrage etc)
Warriors have things that proc on crits (flurry, deep wound)
etc etc

get a nice balance is my suggestion.

 

soujeh

Burst is worth ~shit in my setup. I play druid + warrior, any decent fight is 10mins+. It's all about winning in the mana race, higher steady DPS > some burst DPS for that shit tbh. A few crit % back and forth isn't gonna make a huge difference in crit streaks anyways.

 

Caesar

Socketing for ap or crit will have little impact overall on your rating. I just pointed out that comparing what gives the highest white dps does not equal highest damage in total = best for pvp. Critting gives more rage which makes you able to sue more abilities. And many other factors matters too, if one setup is about burst dps, burst dps is important, if it's about outlasting sustained damage is more important.

 

rayijin

1) More damage done = more rage. Strength gives more overall damage done, point for point, than crit rating does. While critting does give more rage, socketing/gearing for crit gives less rage overall. Hence your conclusion that crit gives "more rage for more abilities" vs strength is incorrect.

2) Even with basic napkin math, the bonuses from crit do not make up for the disparity in damage from strength. Actually, the list of abilities you posted (ie blessed resilience) actually make crit even worse than basic math suggests.

3) Higher AP means higher potential burst. If you want to have the highest possible burst, you will socket for strength.

With that said, I'm a season2 gladiator and had my gear socketed for crit. So obviously, you can do well stacking crit, but in terms of optimization, socketing/gearing for strength is the superior option. I previously stacked crit based on the math at the start of this spreadsheet which "showed" it to be superior. Now we know better.

 

Seventity

The fact is, crit rating in PvP does not serve dps purpose. More to it, sacrificing attack power for crit rating may very well result in receiving similar burst potential (due to lower crit damage) while nerfing your own dps. If you are looking for balance, you will not find it because it depends on situation. For me, aiming for 20% crit chance after resilience is what I consider decent. This will offer acceptable burst chance with high burst damage and high dps. This of course depends on gear, but getting 32,5% crit in full S3 gear is very easy and this is the decent level vs 500 resilience opponents. Everything else goes for AP and some hit rating to get 5% (missing pummel on key heal interrupt is unacceptable).

About flurry, some people are under impression this is dps skill, which in fact is a burst skill. You crit which is burst and you get bursted with more white dmg and more rage for even more burst potential. This is true power of flurry and under such approach does not need the usual PvE 32% crit for sustainability.

Last thing, well geared PvP player will be tough enough to reduce any crit burst into virtually nothing. The only way to kill a healer is to outdps his healing while locking it as much as possible.

Conclusion: AP is the way. At least for my gnome. ;-)

 

• Jokal

The spreadsheet doesn't take into acccount the fact that more crits = less hits.

Non-crit dps goes down everytime you add crit.

The outcome? AP gets MUCH more value.


Moreover, with 1600 ap, 28% crit, S2 weapon and 350 resil target, 1 strength ~ 1.9 crit with regards to DPS.

 

Sernius

Lots of warrior abilities are triggered off crits...True but lots of other abilities counter off crits which make them undesirable in some situations.. Most priests dont get it anymore but blessed resilience was a big one, and then of course crit hamstringing that warrior in a mirror match is never particularly great

I initially gemmed for crit, but have since switched to all str/crit gems, since it's impossible to get the epic reds

 

Caesar

no you are incorrect. Rage is normalized and not linear with damage while (almost) linear with crit. doing 1% more crits is very close to 1% more rage, while 1% more damage will give you about 0.67% more rage. I'd be happy to show you the math if you want. The rest of your points is just repeating what I posted.

I too am a gladiator from previous seasons and I socketed AP myself. Bottom line is that as long as one keep a somewhat balance between the two stats you'll be good. Gimping yourself to say 25% crit your effective critrate will be about 7% vs pvp targets making flurry and deep wound procs rare. having 35 % will give you 17%% critrate. making flurryprocs and deep wounds proc fairly often.

 

Punscho

The practical issue is when in full pvp gear, should you gem for crit or for str? We have 5 yellow sockets and 3 red ones in our gear yielding the following when socketed with blue gems (as a reference).

Gemming for AP:
red: 3*8 str
yellow: 5*4 str + 5*4 crit
str: 44, 88 ap
crit: 20, 0.9%

Gemming for crit:
red: 3*4crit + 3*4 str
yellow: 5*8 crit
str: 12, 24 ap
crit: 52, 2.35%

The difference is not that huge actually according to my own sheet, which for reasons unknown I feel is more accurate.

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Krandoth

How would you go around gimping yourself to 25% crit in arena gear? Even without any crit gems or enchants, you should still have about 30% in battle stance.

 

Krandoth

The difference is very small relative to your total dps, but if you took the difference in increase given by strength and crit, it is actually somewhat significant. Overall it really doesn't matter all that much, but strength IS better.

 

Punscho

Meaning that strength gives you more overall damage per stat point yes. For all reasonable gear (and levels of crit/ap) it has almost always been that way. At 60 and at 70, certainly with resilience present.

I just say that the practical difference isn't that big when it really comes down to it (0.5%-1%) and I favor crit because the more often I get those multiple crits in a row, the more often my teammates gets a chance to lay down their burst at the same time so we can get a kill or a bubble or a bop or a PS... yada yada yada. Of course a difference in 1.5% crit isn't that much either but hey, it's just that a small difference that is probably doesn't matter what you socket.

Slightly more damage overall or slightly more crit streaks. But in short, kinda insignificant what you chose in full PvP gear.

 

◊ Kasi