(First post here.)

I'm a bit conflicted on how to approach balancing my current set bonuses with some higher level gear I've picked up. As you can see, I'm currently using 2T8 (Head/Chest) and 2T9 (Gloves/Pants). I recently picked up [Legwraps of the Broken Beast] and will probably get [Knightbane Carapace] soon. Both are superior in every respect to my gear but will break both set bonuses; I could recover the 2T9 by replacing my shoulders with the T9 shoulders, but that seems like not very much upgrade for that many badges (going from get 232 to T9 232), especially since I could spend a few more badges on 245 shoulders.

What do you think, is it even worth it trying to use these pants I've picked up? I hate to "waste" some 245 gear but it almost seems my set bonuses now make my lower ilvl stuff superior. The OP here seems to rave about the 2T8 bonus, but is it worth THAT much, sacrificing 245 gear?

You also cannot judge the difference in simply a few weeks of parses. The variability of the final DPS is going to differ by hundreds.

Also, ToGC is hard to use as a baseline. You get big variations on Gormok depending on if you're obligated to attack adds, and if so, if they don't deter you from keeping bleeds up. Similarly, if you refresh Rip as the Jormungars tunnel underground, you're losing lots of DPS. You'll do a lot more DPS on Twins if you save your Berserks for empowered light/dark portions of the fight instead of damage shields (and your contribution to killing the shield doesn't count towards your DPS). Whether you get enough orbs, how many shields you need to DPS, and other factors can fluctuate your DPS. Jaraxxus has variable amounts of AOE week-to-week, depending on volcano and portal placement and the attention spans of DPS; more AOE can mean a DPS increase or decrease; and running out of fire can make things more uncertain.

Hardcapping ArP is the favorite amongst spreadsheet results. However, it is also the more difficult strategy to accomplish depending on the loot tables you are seeing in your raids. With the rollout of Icecrown, it'll become much easier to hardcap as with a certain gearset you are able to reach 1270 ArP -before- gemming. Rather than post a lengthy explanation here, I'll provide the link to a knowledgeable Feral that maintains an already well-known blog.
ThinkTank

*edit* please delete.

1) No. You don't have an ArP proc trinket, so unless you can pursue 1000+ ArP, it's not going to help much.

2) It's a slight improvement, exactly as described. ArP isn't the "god stat" of WoW. It can be beaten. Note that if you take loot, you might be depriving others of loot.

3) It might be situationally useful, but it's not better than what you're using in the general-case unless you really want the expertise (i.e. at soft crit cap). Since you'll get full proc 3 seconds in (that's 5 autoattacks for most raid-buffed), you can consider it to have roughly 18.5 seconds of full-stack uptime every 120 seconds, or roughly 192 AP at all times. DMC:G Averages 15 every 50 (roughly), or slightly less than 100 Agi at all times.

Considering the differences in the proc rate for the new 5 man ArP trinket and the Runestone, Im wondering how decent they'll be together. Rawr is telling me using a second ArP trinket is going to be better than using my greatness card even though Im very close to soft capped (ie a double ArP proc will have significant wasted stats). Anyone know a good way to determine what a rough % overlap rate would be?

It'll depend on the fight. Say you have a mechanic that resets your trinket state every minute-- a 20 second period where you can't attack the boss every minute. Hello, Marrowgar! Your trinkets will overlap a lot more on that than the rest.

Rawr has done some work on this scenario-- which was involved with the feature to delay equipping a trinket to offset its proc. I give no guarantees on how accurate that handling is, though, or whether it's offsetting them at the beginning for you already.

While it won't give you the precise "MR and Scorpion are up together X% of the time" like you might be looking for, SimulationCraft should give you accurate results for DPS differences.

Tkain, I've thrown that gear together in Rawr, quickly, and the socket numbers don't seem to match. You forgot about the belt buckle : ) (That being said, Rawr is adding an extra blue socket to the weapon :s)

I changed the gemming slightly, using 2x 20 haste gems in the chest/legs for the socket bonus, and throwing an agi/hit gem into the ring for the socket bonus (and an arp gem into the belt buckle), giving me 2 surplus hit rating and 4 surplus expertise rating.

I was unsure of how to model the proc for Deathbringer's Will, so I set it to proc 233.33 Str, Agi and Arp for 30 seconds on a 105 second ICD.

Rawr is showing improved DPS if I use a similar setup to you, but use [Astrylian's Sutured Cinch], [Band of the Bone Colossus], [Distant Land], and [Herkuml War Token] (instead of [Soulthief's Braided Belt], [Frostbrood Sapphire Ring], [Cryptmaker], and [Deathbringer's Will], respectively). I also used all ArP gems except for one Tear. I suspect this may in part be how I'm modelling DW - or it may be an issue where there are too many missed attacks and thus the projected damage output is unreliable (or, with the feral model in rawr). But it was a significant difference (ignoring how inflated rawr reports feral dps) of ~400.

I am hoping it is an issue with the modelling, because it seems intuitively better to have hit/expertise/arp capped, and possibly crit too.

According to playing with RAWR, I found an interesting gear set -> soft cap + grim toll. Due to the lack of hit we are forced to equip [Cryptmaker] or both hit rings, [Soulthief's Braided Belt] or one of the hit trinkets purchased for triumph badges or just gem over 10 sockets with hit. If there will be no hit/ArP (or both ideally) weapon from Arthas loot, we'll miss too much ArP and hit to the caps and these we'll have to gem.

Common badge ferals in 264 ilvls without BS+JWC will be forced to equip [Deathbringer's Will] + [Mark of Supremacy]/[Shard of the Crystal Heart].


Back to soft cap "top" gear (Im using BS+JWC profile):

4xT10 (except shoulders)
[Sanctified Lasherweave Headguard]
[Sanctified Lasherweave Handgrips]
[Sanctified Lasherweave Raiment]
[Sanctified Lasherweave Raiment]

ArP, hit, exp less one
[Cultist's Bloodsoaked Spaulders]

offsets
[Toskk's Maximized Wristguards]
[Astrylian's Sutured Cinch]
[Frostbitten Fur Boots]

jewelery
[Band of the Bone Colossus]
[Ashen Band of Endless Vengeance]
[Sindragosa's Cruel Claw]
[Shadowvault Slayer's Cloak]
[Herkuml War Token]
[Grim Toll]

weapon
[Distant Land]
+ IDOL

gems
- I tryed to save socket bonuses. It ll be possible to swich some 10 str 10 haste for pure str in future, if bonuses will be unvalued.
1x 10 stats
2x 20 ArP
2x 10 hit 10 exp
2x 20 hit
3x 34 str
7x 10 str 10 haste
5x 20 str

- 788 ArP (exactly with food)
- 264 hit
- 126 exp (6 under cap)


There is also almost 70% buffed crit without any agi procs (no idol). I tryed to compose gear for ideal ArP hit and exp numbers. There are plenty of gem variations about STR/AGI/haste - it depends on crit value. Idealy, you should gem some AGI to get 76% soft crit cap with idol proc/stack. RAWR shows decent DPS compared to previous sets (100-200 DPS loss). Grim Toll solved hit + ArP caps smoothly. This trinket will be great advantage at the start of collecting equip in IC. The 4pc of T10 is priority number one, and it will cost a lot of hit.

And yes, sorry for my english horror :\

yes I did not use a belt buckle and nether did I use entchants

if we change the weapon and the trinket what do you guys think of the [Tiny Abomination in a Jar]

I find it quite interessting the hit would be nice to have but for the arp hardcap it might be quite hard to reach without these two items
Has anyone seen anything about the proc and sprecially for us feral I couldn't find anything but with an quite fast attackspeed thanks to cat form and an weapon with high min / max dmg this could be an nice trinket


And why did you model it as 233.33 ? it is a 600 proc of one of them right ? so it would be 200 of each in a model ? which would not quite be correct it might be better to model it as 600 of one straight and then change the stat to get better results for all three cases which the arp procc would be always wastet in this case

I know this trinket right know is like dancing with the devil but if the jar is not good there might not be any opportunity
and I must say I really don't see us wearing the war token as it is "just" haste and ap so no bonus through blessing of kings or talents which makes it quite weak in comparrison to a second death demise

Averaging STR and AGI for this trinket can work, but I don't think averaging ArP will work because it scales better the more you have. So, a 700 proc once in 315 seconds would be better than 3x233 procs in the same timeframe. Thats assuming you can benefit from the whole 700 proc(soft capped).