Depending on rotation/build you can switch out and not run 4set depending since some can argue some other slots have better pieces

Thanks for that Graalz. Can you confirm that you used both the buffed Aesir's and the buffed HoCW in the comparison and didn't accidentally use the old versions as they are on Wowhead. If so I'll update the OP accordingly.

Yeah i changed the stats in the Zeracks sheet to the values posted earlier:

Post #205

Post #212

Source
That was posted today by Bornakk
Wondering if this changes the overall stat values of BiS gear.

Probably. If you look at this thread where that was posted (World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Upcoming Jewelcrafting Change) there's nothing but pages and pages already of complaints from all across the board. It's a very serious nerf, and depending on the gear and gem slots, a lot of stats will likely be lost out of it. I've yet to calculate what I'd lose, but I imagine it's at least 35-50 STR (if not more), since I'll be forced to gem blue sockets for the meta gem, let alone the losses from socket bonuses. The bonuses isn't even the biggest loss, but the meta requirement-filling aspect of it is huge.

JC nerf is pretty rough, if you're going to hold onto your socket bonuses - on your blue slots, as im presuming thats where you use them - thats where i do, you're looking at the 8str/12sta for those slots, 3 of them doesnt even equal 1 of the prismatic gems, so right from the off its a 55str loss. then using the new red slot dragons eye str gems in your red slots you can scrape back a 33str gain - only one more stat value than BS per say. totalling a 22str loss. thats quite a lot.
let alone the issues you face once you start factoring in other armor sets you might swap between - example here is between pve/pve gear... as i personally use a couple of pve slots in pvp for the 2 set bonus, making up the resiliance with dragons eyes... but thats just a choice thing, shouldnt really factor in the arguement i guess.

Still, although JC will still potentially net you a 1stat gain over BS, is it really the profession to go for anymore?

What could be suggested as another TS route to go i wonder...?



Oh, and Hi! First post! Shame its not on a better subject :p

Nice find dude! Also Relentless Earthsiege Diamond might actually be a viable meta for some specs now that Dragon's Eyes are no longer prismatic not to mention paired with the Enchanted Tear might actually be quite nice.

For the time being, JC should still be the best profession even after the nerfs, for two reasons:

- You gain 33 str by being a JC. This scales with talents / raid buffs whereas the AP bonus provided by other professions does not, so you still end up with more AP raid buffed than you would with any other profession right now.
- JC is more flexible than other professions in letting you use gems which give unusual stats like arp, agi etc. In future minor patches, changes may be made which render stacking of these stats viable - stacking arp right now has limited viability in some situations as-is.

When epic gems become available JC will suck unless it gets buffs, but for the time being it's still the best profession, just not as good as it was before.

Assuming the pre-heroic hard mode BiS frost gear as an example, the JC net loss amounts to:
- 1 6 STR socket bonus (OP needs to be updated to put a JC gem in the sword rather than bracers)
- 8 STR x 2 by using two 8/16 gems instead of two 16s. A tiny bit of stat weight is made up by using a siren's tear.

That's only 22 STR which isn't a crushing loss to us until Icecrown. The loss is less in pure BiS gear because the socket bonuses gained there weren't as good. So the nerf sucks but it's not really going to be felt in a raid. Until we know what benefits other profs get in Icecrown compared to what JCs get, I'd just keep JC/BS as the top professions to minmax DPS and use alts for the other profs / farming / whatever.

The reason people are running IT heavy builds isn't for the damage that IT does, it's for the large amounts of RP that it generates allowing you to be heavy on F-Strike spam, which is the biggest source of DPS contribution.

Yes it pretty much squanders Rime as you're using 2 Obliterates at best across two rounds of rune rotation, but it also makes little use of the 4pc Bonus, and the extra F-Strikes are currently overcompensating for more than the lost damage using IT and not Oblits, as shown in various raid parses, not dummy tests. There are pieces (Legs and Shoulders) not on the BiS list that can be happily switched in if 4pc isn't a requirement, hence the question if the BiS list for Frost is basing itself on a rotation that may no longer be the most efficient.

Shoulderplates of the Celestial Watch is Bis for blood spec and gauntlets of wretched for hands. grim toll as trinket instead of darkmoon.

Didn't see any other information about this except the post above, so just adding to it.

They are a drop of 10 man Algalon. I'm sure most of, if not all the builds for blood/frost here have been built around there not being a pair of them in Ulduar or hoping they had just not been found, so I am curious as to how things will change around for some builds. Here are the stats.

Re: Algalon shoulders -- I suspect it might now be worth breaking 4pc T8 for Blood in order to incorporate those, in which case you could also add in new gloves and so on as well.

@ Nrv: The arena weapons were extremely competitive due to their DPS and slow speed, but now that Aesir's Edge & Hammer of Crushing Whispers have been changed to 3.6 speed they're quite a lot better.

Taking the new shoulders into account, I fiddled around with a set of blood gear to keep as close to hit cap and exp cap as I could.

Conq's Darkruned Helm
Frigid Strength of Hodir - Sovereign Twilight Opal
Shoulderplates of the Celestial Watch
Drape of the Faceless General
Conq's Darkruned Battleplate
Decimator's Armguards - 15 exp enchant
Gauntlets of the Wretched - 15 exp enchant
Belt of Colossal Rage
Clockwork Legplates - Sovereign Twilight Opal
Melancholy Sabatons
Bladebearer's Signet
Sif's Promise
Mjolnir Runestone
Darkmoon Card: Greatness

This ends up with 270 hit rating and 25 expertise. Not exactly optimal, but the best I could come up with. The only large change from the current set is a large chunk of armor pen (about 100 rating), which may be overkill depending on how you feel about going over 100% when the Runestone procs. Not really sure how much swapping things around would be worth it compared to the current hit/exp cap set in the OP.

I tried that set in Zerack's sheet (minus the expertise enchants) and it came back with a score of 11643.6. The set currently in the OP, which is the best available while maintaining 4 pieces of Tier 8, gets a score of 11567.3. The best set I could come up with was the following:

[Warhelm of the Champion]
[Frigid Strength of Hodir]
Shoulderplates of the Celestial Watch
[Drape of the Faceless General]
[Chestguard of the Recluse]
[Bitter Cold Armguards]
[Gauntlets of the Wretched]
[Girdle of Embers]
[Clockwork Legplates]
[Melancholy Sabatons]
Seal of the Betrayed King
[Strength of the Automaton]
[Darkmoon Card: Greatness]
[Mjolnir Runestone]
[Voldrethar, Dark Blade of Oblivion]

This set gets a score of 11717.6 -- also, you can swap the helm for [Conqueror's Darkruned Helmet] and the chest for [Chestplate of Titanic Fury] with only a very small drop in score.

I just updated my original DK Gear Optimizer post with a new version. The big new feature here is the ability to compare sets that use bonuses directly with those that don't. The caveat is that the only sets for which I have valid APE values are the Unholy ones. The values are easy to edit in the Weights tab, so feel free to link me supported values for Blood or Frost and I'll gladly add them, or you can add them yourself.

I also tried to update most of the items that were re-itemized (again) to the new values, and I've added both of the relevant known drops from Algalon 10 man.

As a note, if you're using an older version of the spreadsheet the values you are getting are not really comparable to the most current version, as the set bonus changes and the expertise change in the previous version will have broken the continuity of the score. For a full list of changes and a link to download it (Microsoft Office only - Sorry Open Office folks), head to my original post here.

Has anyone done any simulations to determine how to calculate dps from stats? Right now, we are basing optimal gearing off of stat weights, and these stat weights were derived by taking a set of gear and individually adding to each stat to determine how much each point would increase dps. This is a good first order approximation, but it assumes that dps is a linear combination of stats, which it isn't. With a greater number of simulated data points, we should be able to determine a regression equation (non linear) that more accurately predicts dps. If we have such an equation, it shouldn't be too difficult to plug that into Zerack's spreadsheet in place of the current APE calculation and derive a BiS set that way.

Nope, weapons have been normalized since patch 1.something Normalization - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft. The reason that slow weapons are better is they tend to have a higher base weapon damage, resulting is heavier hitting strikes.

Wait, first you said "Nope" and then "higher base weapon damage, resulting in heavier hitting strikes". Which one is it I'm wondering because I have both Aesir's Edge (3.6) and Worldcarver (3.4) so I was wondering how much of a difference does the weapon speed for various specs make.


And also, we got a new item to work work with for optimal sets:

That Algalon necklace is just a slightly upgraded version of [Insurmountable Fervor]. I guess it's BiS for Unholy prior to Frigid Strength but no better than that.

Zerack: is the new sheet now adding on the set bonus points automatically to the score? I suspect it is but just thought I should double check.

I miss the 15-Strength-Enchant on Gloves in the BiS-Enchants-Section. In comparison to the 44-AP-Enchant you get the following APE-Values:

Talent Spec	Strength APE	+44 AP	+15 Str
2H Unholy (0/10/61)	2.97	44	44.55
2H Unholy (12/0/59)	2.99	44	44.85
2H Blood (51/0/20)	2.89	44	43.35
2H Frost (17/51/3)	2.73	44	40.95

So for Unholy, the 15-Strength-Enchant would be slightly better.

I think what Darkside meant was that the actual speed of the weapon doesn't matter. If you have two weapons with the same DPS, a slower speed weapon will have a higher top end. When the game did the calculation for the normalization of a weapon, it use to take into account the swing speed of the weapon; now 2-H are given a flat coefficient regardless of the speed of the weapon.

Given the choice between Aesir's Edge and Worldcarver, I'd take Aesir's Edge.

Yes, it adds the bonuses automatically. The upshot is that you can just do a run with no set bonus forced and (provided accurate bonus weights) will find the best set over all combinations of items and Tier bonuses. Of course as I noted the only spec with any weights in it by default right now are the two Unholy specs.

Regarding weapon speed - I was under the impression that most of the weapons in PvE had been changed to 3.6 as of the last patch. As such I haven't thought much about pursuing any kind of weapon speed weight. Was this assumption incorrect? Are there still some 2H weapons that weren't put up to 3.6 in the patch? Just as an aside, DW is a completely different animal here, and I realize that not all of those weapons have the same speed. I'm asking about the 2H weapons right now.