The reason why Haste is so good to TtW/FB spec then it is for FFB spec is that FB spec doesn't have the crit modifiers that FFB does. FFB thrives on high crit chance to get the big crit numbers it loves. However, it hase a lower base damage. TtW/FB on the other hand has a high base damage but lower upper crit values. In order for it to make up the damage difference, you need to cast faster Fireballs. Hence the reason for haste > crit for TtW/FB spec.
Due to socket bonuses, using [Purified Twilight Opal] over [Runed Scarlet Ruby] in items that previously were using [Runed Dragon's Eye] is preferred, even for Fireball builds. However, depending on glyphs chosen, this is a bit more complicated. If you're replacing Glyph of Molten Armor with Glyph of Improved Scorch, then Runed Scarlet Ruby is the better choice, but only if the socket bonus, as PeaceMaker7 mentioned, is 5 spell power or less (or 6 crit). In the case of something like [Sash of Ancient Power], Purified Twilight Opal is better. There are not too many blue socket items that have socket bonuses higher than 5 spell power though -- Starshard Edge would be an example though.
Note, there's some cases, like with [Conqueror's Kirin Tor Tunic], where it was never beneficial to equip Runed Dragon's Eye in the first place (due to the yellow socket). There are other items, such as [Staff of Endless Winter], in which using two Runed Scarlet Ruby is better than two Purified Twilight Opal, despite the high socket bonus.
With this in mind, it was fairly easy to set up the gemmings. Three Runed Scarlet Ruby get replaced with Runed Dragon's Eye, which basically makes it a straight 39 Spell Power gain (which makes JCing a 39 SP gain, Enchanting/BSing a 38 SP gain, and Leatherworking/Inscription a 37 SP gain).
The actual loss, using 19.52.0 Hard Mode list, was 26.81 DPS. The set went from 7719.08 to 7692.27. This brings Jewelcrafting much in line with other professions.
The reason why Haste is so good to TtW/FB spec then it is for FFB spec is that FB spec doesn't have the crit modifiers that FFB does. FFB thrives on high crit chance to get the big crit numbers it loves. However, it hase a lower base damage. TtW/FB on the other hand has a high base damage but lower upper crit values. In order for it to make up the damage difference, you need to cast faster Fireballs. Hence the reason for haste > crit for TtW/FB spec.
Well certainly part of it this is not the reason that haste is rated so highly in the top BiS list. The reason is much more simple.
In full BiS you will only have 376 haste which is relatively low compared to the other dmg stats making points in haste more valuable. To most people upgrading right now haste is worse then crit once you get 4pc T8 because you still have a fair amount of haste held over from your non-optimal gear and 4pc T8 slightly boosts the weighting of crit. Take my current gear for instance where crit is weighted significantly higher than haste. As you approach full BiS though you lose alot of haste and gain alot of crit and spellpower making haste more valuable in the end.
The vast difference between the 2 is most of why non-ffb builds tend to eschew crit rating -- because its too expansive.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
There is a 39 Spell Power gain when using three Runed Scarlet Rubies but if you swap one of the Rubies for a [Runed Stormjewel] doesn't Jewelcrafting go down to a mere 35 Spell Power gained? Or does the Stormjewel not count because you can only socket one.
What makes you think JC's can't use 3 runed dragon eyes and a runed stormjewel?
The bulk of the itemization has gone into stamina/intellect, which means from a DPS perspective, the gear from Algalon is itemized extremely well. The boots that drop, Starlight Treads, are, again, the best ilevel 226 items available. They're ~20 DPS ahead of [Spellslinger's Slippers] (I say about all the time because it's going to vary depending on your own gear).
In Ensidia's last kill of 10-man Algalon, Pulsar Gloves were discovered. If you only run 10-man, it's most likely that these will be the offset piece. In fact, these are quite competitive as the off-set piece even against 4-piece T8.5 set (head, shoulders, chest, legs). None of this affects the front page, because I don't have a separate list for only 10-man Hard Mode, though I feel like putting one together, so I probably will sometime.
I'll also update the front page with the recent jewelcrafting changes, even though it hasn't been implemented yet. A lot of very competitive gear drops from 10-man Hard Modes -- Fusion Blade, Petrified Ivy Sprig, and all of the Algalon items discovered thus far.
Have you taken in the new stats to Icecore Staff in to effect? I know it's a 10 man hardmode, but I was wondering how it compares to Runescribe/Ironmender
I'm running all of this assuming gear is best in slot. This is a bit silly for some items, because it assumes that you have access to everything but a weapon upgrade. Obviously this could really happen, but it's highly unlikely that someone in best in slot in every category will be running around with Turning Tide still. This makes it slightly less accurate, since, for instance, the hit on Fusion Blade may go unused for Frostfire, simply because there is too much hit in all the other gear. This wouldn't be the case in less than best-in-slot. Items with spirit on them may also be over-inflated if you don't use Glyph of Molten Armor (and instead use Glyph of Fireball/Frostfire + Glyph of Improved Scorch).
All Main Hand weapons use [Ironmender] as Off-Hand. The hit is so abundant on other items that there isn't a single combination that uses any other Off-Hand. Hit becomes especially problematic for Frostfire sets, due to 3% hit from Elemental Precision. That's 78.69 less hit that needs to be made up. Unfortunately, many best-in-slot items have unavoidable hit on them. As such, to accommodate for the hit on some weapons (since we're forcing them to be equipped), worse than best-in-slot items have to be equipped in other slots. This is why Intensity staff is ranked so low on Frostfire - [Pendant of Fiery Havoc] is swapped out for [Pendant of the Shallow Grave], and [Drape of Mortal Downfall] is swapped out for Sunglimmer Cloak.
Column 1: DPS returned after running Optimize forcing that weapon to be equipped.
Column 2: DPS gain of that weapon over the next lowest
Column 3: DPS gain of that weapon versus Turning Tide
Note: All of these values will be a bit inaccurate for a while. The DPS order of them hasn't changed though.
The hit is so abundant on other items that there isn't a single combination that uses any other Off-Hand. Hit becomes especially problematic for Frostfire sets, due to 3% hit from Elemental Precision. That's 78.69 less hit that needs to be made up. Unfortunately, many best-in-slot items have unavoidable hit on them.
Well there is always the option of dropping Elemental Precision. But after having a look at the talents, there is unfortunately no real alternative:
Frostbite: Should be 0 dps increase in a raid setting.
Improved Frostbolt: 0 dps.
Permafrost: Gimmick ability that might help in some rare encounters. Meh.
The only things that might come close to becoming useful would be:
Frost Warding: Might restore mana and increase survivability in fire/frost fights.
Improved Blizzard (max 1 point): Chill effect for blizzard could have it's advantages in some fights.
Then again you would loose the mana cost reduction from precision, making it still the best choice, even after beeing over the hit cap.
At least you have some backup hit in case the shadow priest dies and you loose misery.
I'm not sure how you got those numbers, could you have forgotten to enable the 81 spellpower enchant for staves? Thing is Icecore staff is better then Turning Tide + Ironmender. Or perhaps you're mana limited so haste gets undervalued.
EDIT: Actually looking at the FFB list Icecore staff is listed below Lifebinder which is also wrong, so I'm guessing your rawr still has the old Icecore stats. They were updated (in 3.1.2?).
EDIT2: We (mages) have our lives made easy for us since Rawr.Mage is such a good and comprehensive module (thanks to Kavan). To compare hit items to items without hit is to compare how much do you pay per slot for the hit on an item relative to the other items for the same slot.
eg. I'll use those values spp=1.65,haste=1.55,crit=1.62,spirit=0.92,int=0.51 (those vary depending on the current gear set)
For example I'll compare [Pendant of the Shallow Grave] to [Pendant of Fiery Havoc]:
Shalow Grave: 74*1.65 + 41*1.62 + 31*1.55 + 43*0.51 + (9*1.65 + (8 + 4) * 1.62) = 292.79
Fiery Havoc: 75*1.65 + 41*1.55 + 51*0.51 + ((9+5)*1.65 + 8*1.62) = 249.37
Now 292.79 - 249.37 = 43.42 that's the DPS difference between the two ignoring hit, 43.42/46 = 0.944 and that number is how much you 'pay' in terms of 'dps' to gain hit. 0.944 doesn't mean much it has relevance only when comparing other slots and which items you should use to remain hitcapped, the less you 'pay' the better the swap would be (note that due to the nature of hit and availability of items some items with alot of hit might not be used since they have 'too much' hit).
All this was explained to get to the point of compairing dropping hit talents and using hit gear etc. for FFB there are no good talents in terms of pure dps to use, you could place a value on utility talents and say I'm willing to pay X dps to gain the ability to snare etc. but these are mostly subjective statements.
Maje, all of those numbers all came from Rawr. I did nothing but run Optimize, forcing it to take specific Main-Hand (plus its choice of three offhands) and Two-Hand weapons. All the gear surrounding the weapon, as I explained, is the available best in slot. Optimize would occasionally swap out gems, or a minor item switch (bracers, wand, etc.), but for the most part it's all straight weapon swaps (especially amongst weapons with similar stats, ie, any of them that don't have hit).
Unless I made a typographical error (entirely possible) all of the posted numbers are accurate. There were a few errors here and there, but I tried to correct as many as possible before I posted it.
Concerning relative stat values, it's not entirely accurate to take them and reverse the DPS out of items. The relative stat value chart in Rawr is derived from your character. It's not exactly a way to measure the value of an item, especially when comparing an item that has hit to an item that doesn't have hit (since you're either under the hit cap, or over the hit cap, depending on which one you start with).
The question this list was answering was where each item ranks compared to each other. To get that, I didn't take the relative stat values from each spec and just plug in the weapon stats. I actually ran Optimize (multiple times) on every weapon.
The stats on Icecore Staff (and others) are accurate, and Greater Spellpower and Mighty Spellpower are both enabled. For a comparison, look at the top of the chart for Fireball. Starshard Edge is 3.79 DPS ahead of Staff of Endless Winter. I did a comparison almost a month ago on the difference between these two items and it came out that Starshard Edge was 4.26 DPS ahead of the staff. It's the very same setup now (with more items available).
I will verify each weapon's corresponding DPS, as it's possible some items are listed next to the wrong DPS, but as for the method used, I don't need explanations on how to use Rawr and how to compare hit. I'm not really sure how you're arriving at such definitive statements, "This is wrong," "That's wrong," as you haven't actually compared these items using the same setup (which is the setup posted on the first page, so that should be easy). You're not exactly in a position to say, "Those three look wrong," without explaining why you think it is. More specifically, you didn't provide any numbers from Rawr yourself. While it's entirely possible I made a typographical error, if that's not the case, all numbers are as accurate as Rawr is.
Edit: I will say that I don't entirely like the setup used to compare weapons here, but then, I already said that right from the start. If you wanted to determine the realistic value of something like Turning Tide, you should value it amongst best in slot pre-Ulduar gear, for instance. And if you wanted to get the value of Icecore Staff and Fusion Blade, they should be looked at in best-in-slot from 10-man Ulduar. But we're not entirely concerned with the value of these weapons, only the value compared to each other.
If you have a better method for comparing weapons, I am completely open to ideas. I threw this together just to get an answer though in the quickest way I could think of. Aside from the described problems, it should still be quite useful as a general list.
Maje, all of those numbers all came from Rawr. I did nothing but run Optimize...
Unless I made a typographical error (entirely possible, I corrected as many as I could find), all of those numbers are accurate.
A gain of 35 spellpower and 12 spirit is worth the loss of 27 haste and 9 int. I doubt rawr would say differntly even under the most convoluted conditions.
Even if I gem suboptimally just to prove a point and place 2 16 haste gems and ignore the socket bonus, I gain 5 haste and 4 spirit and lose 9 int and each of haste/spirit points is stronger for a fire mage then int.
Originally Posted by Enthorn
Conversely, it's not entirely accurate to take the relative stat values and reverse the DPS out of items from those values. The relative stat value chart in Rawr is derived from your character. It's not exactly a grand way to measure the value of an item, especially when comparing an item that has hit to an item that doesn't have hit (since now you're either under the hit cap, or over the hit cap).
Exactly as I wrote, the DPS values are character specific and are only valid if gear doesn't change. That said they do represent the actual 'worth' of an item to you because of the nature of hit, hit doesn't have any value, items are just compared one to the other and hit is how much you 'pay'. I agree in edge scenarious an item with a lot of crit may shift the value of crit downwards and other stats up (for example) but the change or the relative cost of a slot in terms of hit doesn't change.
That actually is also why almost no-one gems for hit (except when in the set of items you have can only be over or under the cap by enough where hit gems become viable) eg. the value of a Runed Scarlet Ruby is 19*1.65 = 31.35 the value of Rigid Autumn Glow is 0 (16 hit) so the cost of gemming Rigid is 31.35/16 = 1.959375 which is very very high compared to available items. Again I'm not trying to place value on Spellpower I'm only defining 'how expensive' hit for the specific slot is compared to others. The values I used are the ones under Rawr: Relative Stat Values and the big red warning is correct and still stands.
As I said, if there is an error within Rawr, or if I copied something down wrong, I will correct it later (I can't now). There are known issues with optimize returning sub-optimal equipment setups, of which I paid next to no attention to (the ticket and Kavan's reply), nor looked for.
I realize what you are arguing, and it's understandable. When you take relative stat values for best in slot, Icecore should be 25.49 DPS ahead of Lifebinder for Fireball, and yet in my list Lifebinder is 18.96 DPS ahead of Icecore. And I do have the correct stats entered for Icecore Staff. If I didn't, instead of a 25 DPS difference, it would be 266. (And if you look at it from the other way around, 18.96+25.49 = 44.45, which isn't anywhere near 266).
Edit: I've been considering different ways for the DPS to be off, and one of the ways is the haste value. The old Icecore Staff had 61 haste, which is 32 less than the current 93. If I use 1.75 value for haste for both comparisons, this is 56 DPS. However, when you take -19 and add 56, you get 37 ahead of Lifebinder, which is much greater than it should be (using the same 1.75 value for Lifebinder, which would give us 25 DPS as mentioned above).
Edit: 3.1.1 Icecore Staff had 61 Haste. 3.1.2 increased it to 93. For whatever reason, haste value was listed at 67 in my Rawr file. Intellect, Spirit, and Spell Power were all correctly at 3.1.2 levels. I'm going to double check other things as well.
In both Fireball and Frostfire lists, Lifebinder comes out ahead of Icecore Staff by a difference of 18.96 and 21.71, respectfully. It seems highly unlikely that I would copy the results down incorrectly in four different areas.
I should also note that I have Jewelcrafting disabled (since JCing works out to a straight 39 spell power gain, I removed and disabled prismatic gems and just added in Enchanting). It doesn't really have any implications as far as Icecore Staff is concerned, but just for future reference, weapons with socket bonuses aren't being inflated because of prismatic gems.
Didn't you forget to include the socket bonus for Scarlet ruby as well?
Nope, the belt has 1 Red slot, 1 Blue slot, and 1 Grey slot from a belt buckle. To get the socket bonus you have to fill the red and blue slots with a red and blue gem.
With the changes to jewelcrafting coming, a runed dragons eye will no longer be prismatic, but red - if i am understanding this change correctly.
Keeping 3 "red" gems - 2 scarlet rubys and 1 dragons eye wont give you the socket bonus, therefore you would be loosing the 7 spellpower.
By moving the Dragons eye to either the red or grey slot, and keeping the scarlet ruby in either the red or grey slot (where ever the dragons eye isnt) and putting in a twilight opal to the blue slot, we are really only loosing 3 spellpower, while gaining 8 spirit.
Of course I am just looking at numbers, I'm not going to change anything around until the change goes live.
Nope, the belt has 1 Red slot, 1 Blue slot, and 1 Grey slot from a belt buckle. To get the socket bonus you have to fill the red and blue slots with a red and blue gem.
With the changes to jewelcrafting coming, a runed dragons eye will no longer be prismatic, but red - if i am understanding this change correctly.
Keeping 3 "red" gems - 2 scarlet rubys and 1 dragons eye wont give you the socket bonus, therefore you would be loosing the 7 spellpower.
By moving the Dragons eye to either the red or grey slot, and keeping the scarlet ruby in either the red or grey slot (where ever the dragons eye isnt) and putting in a twilight opal to the blue slot, we are really only loosing 3 spellpower, while gaining 8 spirit.
Of course I am just looking at numbers, I'm not going to change anything around until the change goes live.
I understand what you are saying now and your math looks good. I'm still interested on confirmation of Dragon's eyes being related to colors i.e Runed is red and whatever the other colors are. If the haste gem would happen to be blue, it would be interesting to see how the math plays out for putting the Quick Dragon's eye into blue slot and keeping 2 scarlet rubies.
I dont think at this point theres any good reason to believe JC only gems wont follow the same colors as normal gems. I.E. Runed will be red, Rigid yellow, etc. So theorycrafting about what gem might fit what socket is a bit silly.
I just wanted to report some discrepancies when using your settings, gear and spec in Rawr 2.2.5 (could still be an error on my side though):
I have 2990 Spell Power in the normal and heroic 25 Man (aka "best-everything") list gear. You list it at 2999 Spell Power. Maybe it has something to do with the socket bonus of Starshard Edge that wasnt known until recently? I was also wondering why there isn't a Stormjewel in the list anymore and tried to use the topic search function to find out.
P.S.: Whoops. Rawr was missing the 5 Spell Power socket bonus on Conductive Seal. Just 4 more missing Spell Power to account for now.
Last edited by Korrigan : 05/28/09 at 6:43 AM.
Theorycrafting: "Which all sounds good, except that you're talking about playing excel and while I was playing world of warcraft I didn't see the results you got while playing excel."
regolith/Klaive
I've guessed Starshard Edge to be +9 Spell Power socket bonus. If you have it set at +5, there's your missing 4. The only place we have a picture of the dagger is from the official armory, and they don't display socket bonuses at the moment. Given that Staff of Endless Winter has a +9 socket bonus, it makes sense that Starshard Edge would as well (even though it's 2H to 1H, that shouldn't matter).
Like I said. The socket bonus wasn't known until *recently*. Have a look at this: The World of Warcraft Armory
Its 5 Spell Power and not 9.
Also, could you please still tell me why the Stormjewel was removed? I remember it being part of your set earlier.
Theorycrafting: "Which all sounds good, except that you're talking about playing excel and while I was playing world of warcraft I didn't see the results you got while playing excel."
regolith/Klaive
Like I said. The socket bonus wasn't known until *recently*. Have a look at this: The World of Warcraft Armory
Its 5 Spell Power and not 9.
Also, could you please still tell me why the Stormjewel was removed? I remember it being part of your set earlier.
Sorry, I forgot they redistributed Algalon's 25-man weapons to other mobs. That's why you have 4 less spell power then, because I have Starshard Edge manually set to 9 spell power. Wowhead doesn't have Starshard Edge listed, and Wowarmory doesn't list socket bonuses on individual item pages. Updating Rawr's item cache from wowarmory won't pull the socket bonus then. (It additionally doesn't help that Starshard Edge isn't listed on US wowarmory, and eu.wowarmory seems to be down at the moment.) I'll change it later.
And I don't include Stormjewel because it's just 4 spell power, once. If you happen to have one, then certainly include it in your own character file, but it doesn't have any implication on the lists here. This may be totally unrelated, but I feel like clearing it up regardless.
I can think of a few reasons why people may refer to these lists:
- It creates a standard for settings in Rawr, so you can easily compare your own character to 'optimal' conditions. You may say, "4 more spell power from Stormjewel would truly be optimal." Yes, that's true, but that's taking things a bit extreme. If you really wanted to get 'optimal' you'd also look at DPS time and movement in fights and model haste/crit around it.
- It helps show where you might fall in line in DPS. Although these settings are "optimal" as mentioned above, they still create somewhat of an upper limit of DPS, hence why it's often called max theoretical DPS. No one is ever really going to sustain it, and it's not accurate anywhere outside of a Patchwerk style fight, but you could find a list that most closely resembles your character's gear and see where Rawr puts your DPS (mark which buffs you have, etc. - so if this list says you should be doing 6600, and with your buffs and gear you're doing 6200, and WWS says you did 5700, you're probably doing okay).
- It shows progression and tiers of equipment, from ilevel 213 (Naxxramas, OS, badge gear) to 219 (10-man Ulduar) to 226 (Kel'Thuzad, 25-man Ulduar, Malygos, Hard Mode 10-man Ulduar, badge gear, crafted) to 239 (Hard Mode 25-man Ulduar). And of course there's the 232 weapons from 10-man Hard Mode Ulduar and from 25-man Ulduar.
- It provides quick links to ideal gear. When an item drops and you want to know it's worth, you can easily just go to a list and see if it's on there. For instance, you may be using one item now and another drops and Rawr says it's not an upgrade. You may have a few seconds to decide if you want it and there isn't time to run Optimize and play around with it to see how it's going to work in to your set. Having a list that shows whether or not it's included amongst other 'best-in-slot' items helps narrow down that decision for you. That's not to say if it's on here you should take it necessarily... it just means that it's itemized quite well in line with other equipment.
What this thread isn't...
- A ranking of gear, unless specified, such as that list of weapons I threw together (which now I have to change due to socket bonus on Starshard Edge, hrm...) I may actually put together another list for offset pieces: wrists, neck, waist, feet. I will definitely be putting together a list for trinkets and rings. I'm not sure an offhand list is needed or relevant, since there's basically three offhands worthwhile: Surplus Limb, Leviathan Fueling Manual, Ironmender. There's other offhands of course, like Overcharged Fuel Rod and Igniter Rod, but they aren't really used by any sets. They aren't bad, per say, they just aren't used.
I guess that kind of contradicts what I just said about it not being a ranking of gear. What I mean is that I'm not trying to just say, "You should take item A, unless you can get item B, but only if you can't get item C." That creates the wrong idea behind this thread. It creates a fire-and-forget mode of playing when it comes to choosing equipment, instead of actually looking at what's really available to you. No, you shouldn't always take an item that drops just because you'll use it in four weeks after you get five other upgrades to make it worthwhile. Someone else could use it this week. (I always cringe when everyone passes up on some great item because everyone is saving DKP for items that never drop.)
- This thread isn't setting any kind of target. Just because Rawr says DPS is 7700 doesn't mean anyone should actually be doing 7700 DPS. There are far too many factors at play that drop it down considerably: interrupts, school lockouts, movement, fight duration, mana drains, adds, mitigation, resistances, consumables, temporary buffs, buff stacking, and so forth. Furthermore, how do you really place DPS on something like Glyph of Improved Scorch? How do you (metaphorically) place DPS on hard-mode specs for General Vezax? Or on raid utility (Improved Amp/Dampen Magic, Improved Blizzard, etc.)
Anyway, I just thought I'd throw those points out there.
I'm pretty sure that regardless of the amount of points in Student of the Mind, the Runed Ruby is going to give higher DPS. Sure, Student of the Mind gives you more spirit, but its not going to make enough of a difference.
The only caveat would be that you probably need two blue gems to activate your Meta gem. I believe it is generally accepted that the Purified Twilight Opal is the best blue choice as it gives 2 (although the spirit is a round-about fashion) DPS stats vs all the other blues which give only one. The dps sacrifice of 2 reds to get the meta gem is totally worth it as the meta is quite a bit more DPS than the gems.
05/23/09, 2:27 PM
