6 months ago, I remember reading about strength being as good as agi as a dps stat (actually it was more like "you have to keep a balance between str and agi and not over-stack one over the other"). What happened to str nowadays ? It seems like it has become a sub par dps stat, is that the change of ArP that make str inferior now ?
It was never better than agi in terms of gearing, and with the buffs and availability of arpen it became not a particularly good stat to stack - until now. Thanks to the crit cap being approached along with the cap for arpen easily reached via procs, strength is pretty decent. There have been some studies that show it's better than agi when you hit around 70% crit before random procs.
Strengths value has for the most part not been significantly worse than Agility or Armor Pen, but there wasn't any model in which Strength actually overtook Agility or Armor Pen. At least not until the realization that we may cap or de-value through softcaps both Agility and Armor Pen. And since there existed no situation in which we could apply Strength where it wasn't in direct competition with Agility (and to a lesser extent Armor Pen) then it simply wasn't mentioned.
Savage Roar originally buffed our AP so people were gemming for strength to get the biggest benefit from it. Once it was changed to be a straight damage buff people switched back to gemming agility.
Hi. I was lucky enough to pick up Deathbringers Will last night. It brings me up to 900+ static armour pen. With the soft cap around 730'ish with a trinket, but deathbringers only having a 1/4 chance to proc the 600 armour pen stat, is it viable to regem agi and see more dps increases?
4 pages of discussion about how it's a pain in the ass to model and calculate. Looks like the big issues are if people want to hit the armour pen hard cap, crit cap, or both, and how much over to people are willing to go. And someone mentioned haste gemming. I'd be interested in anyones oppinion who has the trinket and their findings. I'm going to log my findings on sourfang next week using armour pen, and regem the week after agi or haste.
Last edited by afatgoat : 12/23/09 at 8:46 PM.
Reason: grammer
Single tests each week will be sufficiently RNG-skewed to not give you a real answer.
I can give you a quick evaluation with your gear relative to your caps: right now, you're way under the agility cap. The ArP proc has little enough uptime to not diminish the value of static ArP significantly (you'll get 90% of the value of each point of ArP, which is roughly the margin of difference from Agi). Keep your ArP gemming for now, you have higher priorities for your gold. Buy some ilvl 245 crafted wrists instead and you'll see a much larger DPS increase.
I've been using Rawr for comparing feral dps upgrades. With the 4-piece T8 bonus of extra time to SR that I've got, Rawr is scoring that so high that even T10 25-man gear is coming in lower rating. Is this really the case?
I'm guessing the 2-piece T10 bonus will overcome the 4-piece T8. Or I'm hoping, anyway.
Chip, I'm going to go out on a limb and state that you're not optimizing it properly, and are only comparing on a per-slot basis. 4pT8 should not really be close to an issue compared to any T10; the itemization level is ridiculously different. Regardless, you're not going to want to keep 4pT8 any longer than you must.
I have played around with gear sets and at this point will be using Geistlord's Punishment Sack from the Blood Princes as my non-tier piece since hit seems to be difficult to find in ICC. Using only 264 gear and two pieces of 258 gear (heroic Icewalker Treads and heroic Twins Pact), I have been able to put together a gear set with 261 hit, armor pen hard capped (assuming hearty rhino), and close to expertise capped. The profile is here if anyone wants to look it over and make a few suggestions or additions.
This profile includes no heroic ICC gear at this point and would obviously be tweaked once I decided to include those items but I think this gear set is a good one for ferals to shoot for initially, especially those that are not in guilds good enough to take down heroic bosses early.
You don't need to use the subpar ring to get hit capped (or close to it); you can instead use [Band of the Bone Colossus] and get closer. That allows you to use a better head if you choose, and instead go for the glove slot as your non-tier item.
I do agree that [Icewalker Treads] are a good choice before getting anything else; the difference between them and the other options is not huge, and that hit is hard to come by. Still, it's not a requirement that you are hit capped at all. It might simply be better to go for the arp cap and deal with not being hit capped instead of taking subpar itemized gear and/or gems.
Well first, the ring you linked is a heroic ICC ring and as I stated I intentionally did not include any heroic ICC pieces of gear in this gear set. The set I linked is sort of a "starter" gear set for ferals to aim for and then upgrade to heroic ICC gear if they are in a guild that allows them access to those items.
I am also confused by which ring you consider to be subpar to get hit capped. The only ring I use with hit on it is the Ashen Verdict 277 ring, which I certainly don't consider to be subpar. The other ring is an armor pen ring with no hit on it. Also this profile does allow you to reach the armor pen hard cap so I didn't sacrifice anything to become hit capped.
Lastly, that profile when run with simulationcraft rates hit and expertise higher than agility and strength so I think the goal for T10 ferals will be to get as close to the hit and expertise cap as possible once the armor pen hard cap is achieved.
Chip, I'm going to go out on a limb and state that you're not optimizing it properly, and are only comparing on a per-slot basis. 4pT8 should not really be close to an issue compared to any T10; the itemization level is ridiculously different. Regardless, you're not going to want to keep 4pT8 any longer than you must.
Hi, Kal, thanks for replying. I honestly don't think I've got rawr set up improperly. Consider the 4T8 bonus is to SR duration. That bonus saves me multiple combo points. Itemization level alone wouldn't make up for that. But 2T10 saves 10 energy on Rip, which is comparable.
Rawr is definitely not comparing on a per-slot basis, because if I remove one of my T8 items in rawr, it greatly devalues the remaining three T8 I have equipped. Which means it must be taking the 4T8 bonus into account, right? On a per-item basis, T10 would easily win.
I'm betting that in the above link you'll find the reason why this behaviour is occurring. Once you've read all that, re-check your Rawr setup, gear available (click the little diamonds), glyphs, spec, buffs, debuffs, professions, gems etc etc - if 4t8 is still competitive with t10 level gear then post an issue in the Issue Tracker AFTER searching the discussions and the Issue Tracker, since if this isn't an operator-error issue (I'll bet you $10 it is, no offense) then Astrylian and the like really should get a load of this.
I'm not at my home computer, so I can't check my settings there, but here I downloaded a fresh copy of Rawr and scanned my armory profile. And now I am indeed getting the results that T10 single pieces are indeed upgrades over T8 even if breaking the 4T8 bonus. I'll have to wait til I get home to see what the problem is with my Rawr settings there, but I'm glad to know that I can go ahead and upgrade instead of waiting for enough Emblems of Frost to equip 2 pieces at once. Now the (fun) question of which piece will benefit me the most, and the (not quite as fun) task of getting used to higher CP SR's again.
Well first, the ring you linked is a heroic ICC ring and as I stated I intentionally did not include any heroic ICC pieces of gear in this gear set. The set I linked is sort of a "starter" gear set for ferals to aim for and then upgrade to heroic ICC gear if they are in a guild that allows them access to those items.
I am also confused by which ring you consider to be subpar to get hit capped. The only ring I use with hit on it is the Ashen Verdict 277 ring, which I certainly don't consider to be subpar. The other ring is an armor pen ring with no hit on it. Also this profile does allow you to reach the armor pen hard cap so I didn't sacrifice anything to become hit capped.
Lastly, that profile when run with simulationcraft rates hit and expertise higher than agility and strength so I think the goal for T10 ferals will be to get as close to the hit and expertise cap as possible once the armor pen hard cap is achieved.
Sorry, psuman - the code here automatically links to the heroic version. There's a nonheroic version of that ring that is quite good, and comes from Marrowgar25 - so it should be fairly quickly obtained given how many times he's going to die.
I'd consider the Saurfang ring to be subpar, personally. And while I realize that the simulation craft indicates hit and expertise are better than strength and agi on a per point basis, that doesn't mean that it makes up for 13 ilvls of itemization by itself. In general it's always going to be better to get higher ilvls of gear unless there's a huge itemization snafu. Capping by itself isn't important or required; it's just that hit becomes pretty valuable. That isn't the same thing as 'sacrifice everything to get it'.
You don't need to use the subpar ring to get hit capped (or close to it); you can instead use [Band of the Bone Colossus] and get closer. That allows you to use a better head if you choose, and instead go for the glove slot as your non-tier item.
I do agree that [Icewalker Treads] are a good choice before getting anything else; the difference between them and the other options is not huge, and that hit is hard to come by. Still, it's not a requirement that you are hit capped at all. It might simply be better to go for the arp cap and deal with not being hit capped instead of taking subpar itemized gear and/or gems.
I've seen the gloves being mentioned as the best off-set piece a few times now and they are but not by much. Let's look at the stats:
So the difference between the set and off-set gloves of the same item level is eight agility and haste for a yellow socket. If you put a [Deft Ametrine] in the socket this makes the off-set gloves only two agility and haste better than the set ones.
I think the reason people keep coming up with the gloves is due to the options we have in the other slots.
The 4pT10 bonus is SO good that we will use it. Given the known loot from the Armory the ilvl 277 off-set pieces are:
We are caught out by Expertise coming in such large chunks, if you try to use [Ikfirus's Sack of Wonder] as the non-set piece to get the 4pT10 bonus you end up with two pieces of gear with 106 expertise rating, while this is only four rating short of being capped without Primal Precision the freed talent points can't be put anywhere to gain a significant amounts of damage.
If you go for the [Gangrenous Leggings] you get some handy hit but lose expertise, to pick it up elsewhere you start looking and find [Seal of Many Mouths] and [Ikfirus's Sack of Wonder] as the only desirable ilvl 277 pieces with expertise on them, the ring isn't enough and the chest put's us in two off-set pieces land again.
As I pointed out at the start of this post the gloves are almost identical, using the shoulders drops ArP and gains you crit rating which is more likely to take you past the crit cap. The hat gains you hit rating but has crit too and no ArP.
The above is only looking at currently known ilvl 277 gear, if other non-set loot turns up it could be more interesting for us but as it currently stands most of us will be aiming for 4pT10 without the gloves and I wouldn't be surprised to see 5pT10 given how close the gloves are. I am expecting the socket bonus to be the same on the off-set gloves, the only other likely bonus would be 8 AP but the rogue set bonuses have been agility.
If you don't expect to get ilvl 277 gear the choices are a lot more varied in the ilvl 264 bracket with many of the ten man heroic pieces being nicely itemised for DPS although they are lower in stamina.
The gloves aren't a huge increase over the T10, but they are an increase - which is more than I can say for the rest of the sets, all being equal.
Now, what we might end up seeing (and psuman99 illustrated this nicely) are people hitting the arpen cap easily with simply 264 gear - which would mean that having arpen in most of the slots (like the gloves) would be a bad choice if you can trade it for hit or expertise or haste instead. The [Geistlord's Punishment Sack] would then be better simply because all that other arpen would be wasted. I kind of doubt that'll be the case though, as I don't see people being able to get enough arpen on gear without gems, and gems could easily be swapped around to accomplish that change.
The big advantage of having the head as your offtier piece is that it costs 35 emblems less to get your 4pT10, which might be worth it. This is the sort of thing I'd imagine that people would have to choose rather quickly though, as a wasted buy means a possible wasted token drop from 264 and 277, and that's a big cost.
I also doubt very seriously that Arthas will drop any armor - or if he does, it'll be something like a head. There are plenty of leg pieces, chest pieces, gloves and offtier shoulders. I would bet that as the last boss he'll drop pieces of gear that are more universally desired, such as weapons, jewelry and cloaks.
Sorry, psuman - the code here automatically links to the heroic version. There's a nonheroic version of that ring that is quite good, and comes from Marrowgar25 - so it should be fairly quickly obtained given how many times he's going to die.
I'd consider the Saurfang ring to be subpar, personally. And while I realize that the simulation craft indicates hit and expertise are better than strength and agi on a per point basis, that doesn't mean that it makes up for 13 ilvls of itemization by itself. In general it's always going to be better to get higher ilvls of gear unless there's a huge itemization snafu. Capping by itself isn't important or required; it's just that hit becomes pretty valuable. That isn't the same thing as 'sacrifice everything to get it'.
Kalbear, now I understand what you meant. I took your advice and revised my profile slightly based on your suggestion of the ring and tier head. This is the link to the new profile Profiler - Wowhead
The same rules apply as the profile I mentioned in post #836: This is a basic "starter" gear setup for ferals assuming no heroic ICC gear and therefore should be easy to obtain for the most part. As you can see, this new profile is hard armor pen capped, hit capped, and expertise capped (assuming BSing as one of the professions). I ran this profile and the profile from post #836 through simulationcraft and this updated profile generates an additional 100 dps. So it appears based on this that ferals should use the gloves as the offset tier piece and use the Ashen Verdict ring and 264 ring from Marrowgar 25.
Is there a particular reason you are using Twin's Pact in your profile over other 264 (non-heroic) options such as Distant Land? I know you mentioned the 258 gear in your OP, but it appears even though this would knock you off the cap it would be a non-trivial DPS increase simply due to how feral AP scales. Saying you are at the hard cap is nice, however if it's less DPS then it probably isn't worth it. Accessibility can't be the reason since if you can amass enough badges to buy that stuff (and kill Sindragosa) I am sure you'll kill Festergut a few times along the way.
On a more general note, gearing options are particularly interesting since they are based on what you have available from the previous tier along with what you can obtain first in ICC/badges. For example, picking up the T10 gloves even though they are non-optimal (very slightly) may make a lot of sense if you can get your 4-pc quicker as mentioned. One nice thing about that is that you can still utilize it in a tanking set later on (since you'll most likely want to use Ikfiru's as the off-set here), which is not as big a waste if you do end up doing some tanking.
Has anyone done any math on when specifically to fit swipe into cat rotations for optimal dps? Obviously with one target the single target rotation priority will be best and swipe rotation will be best with many mobs, but what about the grey area where there is perhaps two or three targets, specifically fights like twin valkyrs but also kologarn or aoe situations where some have died already? Are there situations where swiping on OOC procs is better than the appropriate single target spell? Are there times where swiping is a better use of excess energy than fitting in a ferocious bite?
As to the offset pieces so far the best numbers I've been able to get through rawr are with the gloves as the offset. This is what I believe should be our bis till we actually see some loot from Arthas (I'm guessing a polearm and probably cloak). This set is gonna put us at just 9 under the hard cap for armor pen, and just 1 expertise and 4 hit rating off those caps. No blacksmithing was use just leatherworking and jewelcrafting. Anyway here's what I came up with Profiler - Wowhead
12/18/09, 11:59 AM
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