Cat DPS Guide for Dummies - Page 18

Allev · 11/16/09, 4:23 PM

Originally Posted by Cluey

There is no reason whatsoever to think that it will have a greater uptime than the current trinkets in the game with internal cooldowns.

Except for how blatantly under-itemized this item is. The only way for it to be properly itemized right now is to have a fast ICD. The "on crit" proc won't change uptime much, since even at equal proc chance to "on hit" trinkets, the variance isn't more than a few seconds.

One of a few things is true:
- The ICD is lower than other trinkets.
- Blizzard failed at the tooltip on this item.
- Blizzard failed at itemizing this item.
- Blizzard failed at itemizing both [Grim Toll] and [Mjolnir Runestone], and possibly all melee trinkets.

Yes, it's all speculation as to which of the above is true. But it's pretty certain that one of them is true. And by speculating on how Blizzard does the "right" thing (implementing a lower ICD, fixing the proc/tooltip, nerfing GT/MR, etc) we can give good feedback. It's important to quantify how broken it is, even with the information we already know. If anything, just so that we can develop positive feedback for Blizzard so they can fix it for Live.

◊ Talanik · 11/16/09, 11:17 PM

Originally Posted by thorngrip

It's a neat chest item but the T10 chest has Crit and ArPen which we traditionally gem for over hit/expertise. If we weren't foreseeing crit cap problems we'd probably not consider choosing hit/exp over arp/crit.

Except, usually most of our hit/exp values came from our tier pieces. If you look how they itemized T10, not a single piece contains Hit/Expertise. I know they aren't the most important stats, but you don't want to not have any.

ramenchef · 11/17/09, 1:00 AM

You'll be gemming ArP in T10 gear as the crit softcap of 76% raidbuffed will be attained easily with just the agility on the gear assuming 277. You may need a few agi gems in 264 gear to reach that number. The biggest issue is that the crit cap drops by whatever your avoided attacks percentage is. For example, if 6% of your attacks are avoided due to being under the hit/expertise cap by whatever value that corresponds to, then your crit cap is only 70%, making hit and expertise extremely valuable in T10 gear.

• Cluey · 11/17/09, 1:59 AM

Originally Posted by Allev

Except for how blatantly under-itemized this item is. The only way for it to be properly itemized right now is to have a fast ICD. The "on crit" proc won't change uptime much, since even at equal proc chance to "on hit" trinkets, the variance isn't more than a few seconds.

One of a few things is true:
- The ICD is lower than other trinkets.
- Blizzard failed at the tooltip on this item.
- Blizzard failed at itemizing this item.
- Blizzard failed at itemizing both [Grim Toll] and [Mjolnir Runestone], and possibly all melee trinkets.

Yes, it's all speculation as to which of the above is true. But it's pretty certain that one of them is true. And by speculating on how Blizzard does the "right" thing (implementing a lower ICD, fixing the proc/tooltip, nerfing GT/MR, etc) we can give good feedback. It's important to quantify how broken it is, even with the information we already know. If anything, just so that we can develop positive feedback for Blizzard so they can fix it for Live.

Well it wouldn't be the first item on a PTR to have placeholder stats on it being under or over budget by large amounts.

I agree with you that providing them good feedback on the PTR will help the items turn out desirable but that isn't what was happening when this was brought up. You need data on something to provide good feedback, what we had going on initially was speculation on speculation. In the last twelve hours it looks like we have some data to actually work with, four days ago when it was brought up we had none.

Now based on the wowhead data confirming a 10% proc chance and the comments indicating a 30 second cool down I put it into Rawr 2.2.27 to see where it sits.
My cat gear isn't horrible but it also isn't BiS, until last night I was still using Grim Toll and 2pT8 which has me at hit cap (with squid) and three over expertise cap. Most of my gems are agility with recent pieces getting ArP, I haven't updated my Rawr profile yet so this is what I am comparing with.

Looking at the trinket slot I have Grim Toll in, [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] in the other slot, the three relevant trinkets are rated:

Trinket	DPS
[Mjolnir Runestone]	410.09
[Grim Toll]	363.70
Needle-Encrusted Scorpion	363.61

Keep in mind this is with my character so not a definite, this is how it is, rank. I have 416 ArP in this setup and 25 man raid I normally get setup in Rawr.
Just noting here that both versions of Death's Verdict are above the Runestone, the ilvl 245 one only by 13dps.

Swapping my gear around to accommodate [Mjolnir Runestone], [Gloves of the Silver Assassin] and [Leggings of the Broken Beast] the trinket ranks change to:

Trinket	Agi gems	ArP gems
[Mjolnir Runestone]	418.62	431.79
Needle-Encrusted Scorpion	371.80	380.86
[Grim Toll] (hit wasted)	262.68	272.49

The two columns are only changing the gems in the two new pieces, not all of my gear.
In this setup the ilvl 245 [Death's Verdict] is only seven ahead with agility gems and two behind with ArP gems. The ilvl 258 [Death's Verdict] is ahead by another 55ish dps and is what I would ideally like to replace my [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] with.

Looking at that it appears they have done rather well with the new ArP proc trinket.
As others have noted we will have a lot more ArP on the new gear so this trinket will become an upgrade for Runestone users as we get better gear and go over the soft cap. Personally I like the shorter internal cool down as your DPS won't fluctuate as much with and without the proc.

Allev · 11/17/09, 2:36 AM

Being almost 1000 under the ArP cap and given that the ICDs aren't synced, you shouldn't have any problem (in the short term) adding this trinket. You'll either be getting the very last points of ArP (which are more valuable than the first) with a little overflow, or you'll be getting independent procs.

I'd definitely want to look at a simulator instead of Rawr for checking the combinational results, though.

• Cluey · 11/17/09, 4:53 AM

Yes a simulator run over them will be more accurate for sure.

I am only a couple of pieces of gear away from changing my gems to ArP, getting a Runestone was holding me back as the TotC/GC legs have such a large amount of hit so dropping Grim Toll was hard to balance.
I was playing around with gear setups and I can get to the soft cap with food soon.

thorngrip · 11/17/09, 5:13 AM

Originally Posted by Talanik

Except, usually most of our hit/exp values came from our tier pieces. If you look how they itemized T10, not a single piece contains Hit/Expertise. I know they aren't the most important stats, but you don't want to not have any.

What I meant was that given a straight choice between arp and either hit/exp, we'd traditionally take the arp regardless of being below hit caps, i.e. even with 0 hit and only the 10 exp from talents.

In reality we have of course ended up with a decent chunk of those stats anyway because of having them on set pieces whose set bonuses we value or because of not really having the choice anyway. With T10 gear this is sort of changing because arp-gear is the norm and hit/exp are exceptional to the degree that having them reflects a conscious choice comparable to actually gemming for them.

My point about it was that I expect hit/exp will become top value stats when you pass the crit soft cap, since they will then (among other things) start converting white misses/dodges into crits... such that gearing/gemming/eating for those stats will become the right thing to do provided you're gaining white crits by doing so.

Originally Posted by ramenchef

You'll be gemming ArP in T10 gear as the crit softcap of 76% raidbuffed will be attained easily with just the agility on the gear assuming 277. You may need a few agi gems in 264 gear to reach that number. The biggest issue is that the crit cap drops by whatever your avoided attacks percentage is. For example, if 6% of your attacks are avoided due to being under the hit/expertise cap by whatever value that corresponds to, then your crit cap is only 70%, making hit and expertise extremely valuable in T10 gear.

Wait... I thought testing in this thread and further discussions in that thread were concluding that there's a fixed 4.8-5% normal hit on the combat table that can't be pushed off by crits? Meaning that with 24% glancing blows and then a further 4.8% "untouchable hit", the crit soft cap would be 71.8% instead of 76%? Please correct me if I've misunderstood this.

Murna · 11/17/09, 6:03 AM

Crit Caps:

If you are full hit- and expertise capped:

68.72% - White Crit Softcap with [Death's Verdict] proccing (+ 7,28% from Procc + 24% Glancing Blows = 100%)
69,58% = White Crit Softcap with [Death's Verdict] proccing (+ 6.42% from Procc + 24% Glancing Blows = 100%)
76% - White crit cap (+ 24% Glancing Blows = 100%)
79.8% - Ferocious Bite Crit Cap (+ 25% Crit from Talent - 4.8% Crit Suppression = 100%)
97.52% - Yellow Crit Softcap with [Death's Verdict] proccing (+ 7,28% from Procc - 4.8% Crit Suppression = 100%)
98.38% - Yellow Crit Softcap with [Death's Verdict] proccing (+ 6.42% from Procc - 4.8% Crit Suppression = 100%)
104.8% - Yellow Crit Cap (- 4.8% Crit Suppression = 100%)

If you're below Hit and/or Expertise Cap, your Crit caps will be lower accordingly.

thorngrip · 11/17/09, 8:45 AM

Practically speaking it seems most helpful to me to account for everything that affects my crit soft cap which does not show up on the character pane, then sum that up into a percentage which I can use for quick calculations while keeping an eye on my crit% as presented in-game (during a raid).

Those are:

24% glancing blows
4.8% constant hit
3% crit raid debuff (Heart of the Crusader etc)

New feral idol = 220 Agility -> 220 * 1.18932 (Kings + talents) = 262 Agi -> 262 / 83.3 = 3.15% crit

100 - 24 - 4.8 - 3 - 3.22 = 65.05%

Leader of the Pack 5% should be included in the character pane crit AFAIK, so I ignore that.

Then I need to account for avoided attacks by summing up my hit and expertise percentages. If I had no hit/exp on my gear and only 10 exp from Primal Precision I would have 12.5% avoided attacks total, resulting in 52.55% crit soft cap.

And then there are various common procs I (or anyone) might have from gear:

Mongoose 120 Agi: 120 * 1.18932 / 83.3 = 1.71% crit
Death's Verdict (258) 510 Agi: 7.28%
Death's Verdict (245) 450 Agi: 6.42%
DMC:G 300 Agi: 4.28%

Those aren't constant of course so they're a degree less relevant but still worth considering.

All of the above only applies to white damage, which is important to keep in mind. Hence the "soft cap". The Ferocious Bite crit cap would be close by because of the 25% extra crit from Rend & Tear... however I get the impression that testing on the "crit suppression" phenomenon isn't conclusive yet when it comes to special attacks? At least I prefer to avoid that subject until it's clearer how it works.

Even if the FB crit cap were the same as the white dmg one, it's still just 40% of our damage (at most). Enough to significantly shift the stat values but not enough that crit past those values can be considered "wasted".

Tiffara · 11/17/09, 1:46 PM

Unless I'm horribly mistaken, the stat multipliers from the two talents and kings are multiplicative, rather than additive. So, 1.1*1.06*1.02=1.18932, rather than the 1.18 multiplier you're using above.

ramenchef · 11/17/09, 2:06 PM

Your math is slightly off Murna. You need 76% crit to cap white crits. It's not that there is a guaranteed 4.8% chance to hit, but instead 4.8% of your crit chance chance is converted to hits. Going only to 71.2% crit chance would leave you at 24% glancing, 9.6% hit, and 66.4% crit on a boss level mob. Bear in mind that when I say 76% crit chance, I mean your character sheet crit chance fully raid buffed in addition to whatever relevant debuffs, namely the 3% crit chance taken debuff.

In regards to the yellow crit cap, yellow attacks are on a 2 roll system, so hit and expertise are more valuable below the crit cap compared to white attacks which only use a 1 roll table. Basically, the game rolls to see if your attack lands or not. It does a second roll if it does land to see if it crits, meaning crit chance is devaluated for yellow attacks when hit hit/exp capped relative to being hit/exp capped. Also, Yellow attacks face a 4.8% actual crit depression, so your crit rate with them is merely lowered by 4.8% crit chance instead of being converted to white hits permanently. I speculate that this is probably due to how the code for crit depression interacts with the 1 vs 2 roll combat table system, but I need to do some more testing to prove that.

EDIT: Also, the idol provides 220 agility fully stacked, not 225.

thorngrip · 11/17/09, 2:07 PM

Thanks for the correction Tiffara... remembering which WoW mechanics are additive and which are multiplicative is one of those obscure things that I tend to mix up a bit

I was wondering why all my percentages were different from yours by a few fractions.

Murna · 11/17/09, 2:09 PM

I posted the formula in the guide (very first post):

1 Agi = 0.0129744% Crit (0.01427184% with BoK)

So the idol gives 220 Agi -> 3.1398048% Critchance

and thanks ramenchef for the correction. I didn't know that. I will include the Crit cap formulas in my guide.

For better understanding:

Against Bosses, 4.8% of our Crit Rating is suppressed and will be converted into normal hits.
We can't do anything against this on white hits. We will always have at least 4.8% white hits.
We CAN add more Crit to completely push off normal hits off the table for yellow attacks.

Is this correct?

thorngrip · 11/17/09, 2:13 PM

The 225 Agi number was my mistake, it stacks 5 * 44 Agi = 220 Agi just as ramenchef is saying. Pure mix up of numbers on my part. Edited my math above to make it 220.

Grond · 11/17/09, 5:19 PM

Originally Posted by Cluey

Well it wouldn't be the first item on a PTR to have placeholder stats on it being under or over budget by large amounts.

I agree with you that providing them good feedback on the PTR will help the items turn out desirable but that isn't what was happening when this was brought up. You need data on something to provide good feedback, what we had going on initially was speculation on speculation. In the last twelve hours it looks like we have some data to actually work with, four days ago when it was brought up we had none.

Now based on the wowhead data confirming a 10% proc chance and the comments indicating a 30 second cool down I put it into Rawr 2.2.27 to see where it sits.
My cat gear isn't horrible but it also isn't BiS, until last night I was still using Grim Toll and 2pT8 which has me at hit cap (with squid) and three over expertise cap. Most of my gems are agility with recent pieces getting ArP, I haven't updated my Rawr profile yet so this is what I am comparing with.

Looking at the trinket slot I have Grim Toll in, [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] in the other slot, the three relevant trinkets are rated:

Trinket	DPS
[Mjolnir Runestone]	410.09
[Grim Toll]	363.70
Needle-Encrusted Scorpion	363.61

Keep in mind this is with my character so not a definite, this is how it is, rank. I have 416 ArP in this setup and 25 man raid I normally get setup in Rawr.
Just noting here that both versions of Death's Verdict are above the Runestone, the ilvl 245 one only by 13dps.

Swapping my gear around to accommodate [Mjolnir Runestone], [Gloves of the Silver Assassin] and [Leggings of the Broken Beast] the trinket ranks change to:

Trinket	Agi gems	ArP gems
[Mjolnir Runestone]	418.62	431.79
Needle-Encrusted Scorpion	371.80	380.86
[Grim Toll] (hit wasted)	262.68	272.49

The two columns are only changing the gems in the two new pieces, not all of my gear.
In this setup the ilvl 245 [Death's Verdict] is only seven ahead with agility gems and two behind with ArP gems. The ilvl 258 [Death's Verdict] is ahead by another 55ish dps and is what I would ideally like to replace my [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] with.

Looking at that it appears they have done rather well with the new ArP proc trinket.
As others have noted we will have a lot more ArP on the new gear so this trinket will become an upgrade for Runestone users as we get better gear and go over the soft cap. Personally I like the shorter internal cool down as your DPS won't fluctuate as much with and without the proc.

I did 90 minutes of auto attacks on a lvl 70 target dummy and the uptime for Fatal Flaws was 15%.
On Wowhead they are theorizing a 33% uptime.
I think the jury is very much still out on this one.

Allev · 11/17/09, 5:52 PM

Originally Posted by Grond

I did 90 minutes of auto attacks on a lvl 70 target dummy and the uptime for Fatal Flaws was 15%.
On Wowhead they are theorizing a 33% uptime.
I think the jury is very much still out on this one.

Raid buffed or no? While you might have made up for the crit by attacking the lower-level dummy (I don't know the full mechanics there), you certainly didn't make up for the haste raid-buffed, which impacts the uptime pretty significantly. Your lack of regular attacks would also lead to more downtime. You probably extended the time-to-proc after cooldown to twice as long as it usually is.

From SimulationCraft, ferals are doing something on 40% of cooldowns-- let's say 3/4 of those are attacks, being generous. So that's an extra .3 attacks every second. Add in raid haste, and you get more attacks. With a .9 second swing timer, 10% proc on crit, and 50% crit, you'd expect a proc on the 10th crit, or every 20th attack, which happens in 18 seconds. So you should get 10/48, or roughly 20%. Raid-buffed, your swing timer is closer to .7 seconds with 60% crit. Your 10th crit happens on your 17th attack, which happens in roughly 8-9 seconds; so more like 10/39, or about 26%.

So that takes care of some bias in your numbers; but there's clearly more than just raid buffs affecting uptimes. Any chance you have a copy of the log for us to look at? What other trinket were you using? 15% instead of 26% might mean its proc is being lost when some other proc is already up.

Edit: I found your log over at Toskk's. Run your test without Death's Choice/Death's Verdict. It looks like every time Paragon expires, the cooldown for the Scorpion is resetting to whenever DC/DV should be off of cooldown, which causes you to lose procs strangely like here (click on the "buffs gained" tab and highlight both Paragon and Fatal Flaws). And this is also making the ICD look like 45 seconds instead of 30.

And report this on the official test forum bugs list.

Edit2: Fail. I said 5 procs parroting a wowhead post without thinking it through. Of course, it's 10. And, your Paragon uptime is unusually high too, to the point where you're probably getting a few extra percent of that proc in exchange for your Scorpion procs.

Hoofhearted · 11/17/09, 6:14 PM

I think the average amount of tries to make a 10% chance happen is about 10. Grond's test should have ended up at 20% uptime and your example would end up at 24%.

Litte · 11/17/09, 6:47 PM

At this point anything, even hard data is specualtion, but it is appropriate to come out with proper logical assumptions for gear and the progression of armor pen from the current softcap with runestone to an eventual hardcap, and its is logical to assume you wont just use a better trinket for its extra crit, when it gives less armor pen as if we should ive less just because you need less, with no benifit from that decrease.

Litte · 11/17/09, 6:48 PM

Originally Posted by Cluey

Well it wouldn't be the first item on a PTR to have placeholder stats on it being under or over budget by large amounts.

I agree with you that providing them good feedback on the PTR will help the items turn out desirable but that isn't what was happening when this was brought up. You need data on something to provide good feedback, what we had going on initially was speculation on speculation. In the last twelve hours it looks like we have some data to actually work with, four days ago when it was brought up we had none.

Now based on the wowhead data confirming a 10% proc chance and the comments indicating a 30 second cool down I put it into Rawr 2.2.27 to see where it sits.
My cat gear isn't horrible but it also isn't BiS, until last night I was still using Grim Toll and 2pT8 which has me at hit cap (with squid) and three over expertise cap. Most of my gems are agility with recent pieces getting ArP, I haven't updated my Rawr profile yet so this is what I am comparing with.

Looking at the trinket slot I have Grim Toll in, [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] in the other slot, the three relevant trinkets are rated:

Trinket	DPS
[Mjolnir Runestone]	410.09
[Grim Toll]	363.70
Needle-Encrusted Scorpion	363.61

Keep in mind this is with my character so not a definite, this is how it is, rank. I have 416 ArP in this setup and 25 man raid I normally get setup in Rawr.
Just noting here that both versions of Death's Verdict are above the Runestone, the ilvl 245 one only by 13dps.

Swapping my gear around to accommodate [Mjolnir Runestone], [Gloves of the Silver Assassin] and [Leggings of the Broken Beast] the trinket ranks change to:

Trinket	Agi gems	ArP gems
[Mjolnir Runestone]	418.62	431.79
Needle-Encrusted Scorpion	371.80	380.86
[Grim Toll] (hit wasted)	262.68	272.49

The two columns are only changing the gems in the two new pieces, not all of my gear.
In this setup the ilvl 245 [Death's Verdict] is only seven ahead with agility gems and two behind with ArP gems. The ilvl 258 [Death's Verdict] is ahead by another 55ish dps and is what I would ideally like to replace my [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] with.

Looking at that it appears they have done rather well with the new ArP proc trinket.
As others have noted we will have a lot more ArP on the new gear so this trinket will become an upgrade for Runestone users as we get better gear and go over the soft cap. Personally I like the shorter internal cool down as your DPS won't fluctuate as much with and without the proc.

My post was not about facts, but like most posts, about the what are the implications of this trinket. TY for the 30 second post, which is what I was saying was mostly likely, just from playing the game and actually understanding gear. But the point is, now you are introducing numbers that are not even in the context of where this trinket will fit in, for an unbetween armor pen current soft cap and later hardcap. It will be obviously better than runestone, when you actually get your softcap to the point where this trinket needs, not runestone. If you run numbers with 948 armor pen, and a crit of 65+% as a minimum, this trinket is designed for this, and its where the lesser amount and higher proc comes into play, its not a higher item level because item levels are random, its a trinket that serves the same purpose as the runestone and is balanced accordingly.

Leviathon · 11/17/09, 8:24 PM

The Needle-Encrusted Scorpion had it's stats finished in today's PTR build and gives 678 Armor Penetration.