Another important thing is a short list of items that are not easily replaceable going into Ulduar. The ones that people talked about so far in this and other threads:

[Signet of Manifested Pain]
[Illustration of the Dragon Soul]
[Pennant Cloak]

Are there any other items that you are very likely to hold onto for a good while after 3.1 hits live servers?

Sorry, the point of this thread was never meant to be a compilation of transitional items. Inscribed Signet just happens to be one of those transitional items, and as such, it will never see itself in any list in the first post. Once 3.1 is released and Rawr is updated to reflect the concrete changes (any number of changes after 3.1 could still occur), then I will update the main page with a reflection of all gear plugged into Rawr.

My post here, the one to which you are commenting on, was only made to garner a discussion, as I've seen a few other posts saying the same thing (like the one above this post) that the changes to spirit/molten armor have only warranted a few item switches, and that a few items are worth holding onto. Those posts are scattered about in various threads, and this is probably a more appropriate thread for such things. It's not out of line to not include something that isn't available, regardless of the fact that we are looking at 3.1 changes.

For the person who never goes to Ulduar, would the Signet in question be invaluable? Of course. So would Sash of Ancient Power, but I've not included that either. I realize what you are saying, that right out of the door, anyone with 1000 gold to spare is probably going to upgrade, and, without actually testing it, it probably is a step up, but that is completely beside, well, everything. And I'm quite perplexed as to why there is any argument here in the first place. It's just one ring. It's not game-changing and no one is being lead down the wrong path, without the knowledge that it could be better than anything in 3.0.8, but not the best from 3.1.

[Dying Curse] seems likely to remain good for a while (Living Flame - Item - World of Warcraft may or may not end up better depending on how much hit rating you need). Have to wait for Rawr to implement set bonuses to be sure, but two pieces of T7 (probably shoulders and one of gloves or legs) are likely to remain good for a while. [The Turning Tide] as well (especially if you can pick up an Ulduar off hand), since the Ulduar weapons will only be 8 ilevels higher and the one we've seen has spirit.

With the abundance of hit on many items I've seen in Ulduar, I don't see Dying Curse staying for a long while but you might be right about the turning tide. However, with the new 2h staff enchant + spirit to crit conversion due to molten armor, some very high ilevel staves might beat MH+OH combos. I'm not entirely sure on this either, though.

I imported upgrades into Rawr finally. There is an option to allow it to use PTR items. This works for a lot of the items, but it only looks for upgrades, so it's pretty touchy it seems. To load helms, for instance, I had to uncheck Enforce Gem Requirements, otherwise it doesn't think anything is an upgrade.

Second, I unchecked all of the T7.5 items, but did check all of the T8.5 items. The reason being, T8 set bonuses aren't implemented, so it would be biased towards T7. I then manually added all the trinkets. This is all for 20.51.0. The ilevel of the item is in brackets. Ilevel 226 items drop from Ulduar 25-man. Anything above that likely drops from a hard mode encounter and/or an end boss (presumably). Ilevel 219 items are from 10-man Ulduar.

Fight length is 8 minutes.

Collar of the Wyrmhunter [226]
Pendant of Fiery Havoc [239]
Conqueror's Kirin'dor Shoulderpads [226]
Drape of Mortal Downfall [239]
Robes of the Umbral Brute [226]
Bracers of Unleashed Magic [226]
Handwraps of the Vigilant [239]
Sash of Ancient Power [226]
Conqueror's Kirin'dor Leggings [226]
Sandals of Rash Temperament [226]
Signet of Manifested Pain [226]
Pyrelight Circle [226]
Flare of the Heavens [239] (Actual stats: 120 crit, 850 spell power/10sec)
Scale of Fates [226] (on longer fights, Illustration appears to be better)
Staff of Endless Winter [239]
Scepter of Lost Souls [232]

Rawr version is 2.1.5b. Because of this, the list above should be taken lightly. Several things are not implemente such as Improved Scorch's 3% crit to Scorch/Fireball/Frostfire Bolt, Molten Armor+Glyph's 0.55 conversion rate (up from 0.4), Glyph of Scorch's 5 application change, Lightweave Embroidery's 3.1 change, Glyph of Living Bomb's DoT crit multiplier, and T8 bonuses.

The length of the fight is another thing to be taken into question, whether the standard 300 sec (5 min) duration should be used, or a duration upwards of 8 minutes.

What was the projected dps from rawr with that set?

Rawr models Illustration of the Dragon Soul as a straight 200 spell power. It doesn't take into account the gradual increase in spell power, in its increments of 20. As such, Scale of Fates is showing as a 10 DPS increase over Illustration, and it would probably be even further ahead if Illustration was modeled according to how it procs.

When I increase the fight to 10 minutes, Illustration pulls ahead of Scale of Fates by 20 DPS. The difference is so minimal that it may actually be neck and neck, and on any fight where you may lose your stack, Scale of Fates is easily superior.

I'm not sure how your rawr came to show it above IDS, the issue with ramping up was never modeled (even if it was, it's effect is very minor). That said, for the Scales to be better then IDS it's on use effect should be at least 75 spellpower, however it's on use effect is 72 haste rating which isn't 75 spellpower even if you're using it perfectly.

With best in slot known Ulduar gear, 1 haste rating is worth roughly 1.3 dps increase while 1 spellpower is 1.55.

Maje, this is why you need to manually import items and double check things. If you load Scale of Fates directly from wowhead PTR, it will incorrectly list 72 haste, when in actuality, it is Equip: 125 Spell Power and On Use: Increases Haste by 432 for 20 seconds on a 2 minute CD.

What Maje is trying to say is that the on use effect averages out to be 72 haste due to 432 * 20 / 120 = 72. Since its passive effect is 125, it requires 75 more spellpower to be equal to IDS but it has 72 haste which is less than 75 spellpower with available gear options.

If you play properly, prestack & keep your stacks up with Arcane Explosion it's always 200 +dmg. There's no reason the stacks should ever drop unless you lose control of your character.

Cooldown stacking is another factor, concidering it has a use effect. But it being haste can go both ways, if you hit the 1 sec Pyro/LB cap during heroism. But I'd prefer it for the on demand burst and I dislike the stacking of IDS, but that's a preference thing.

I understand how 72 is reached, but it's inaccurate nonetheless, and they aren't equal in Rawr. On a 3 minute fight, 432haste/20 sec every 2 minutes is 37 DPS ahead of 72 haste, and 19 DPS ahead of Illustration. As the fight duration increases, the difference between the two decreases, and Illustration gradually pulls ahead.

As Maje mentioned, if you set the duration of the fight to 140 seconds, the 432 haste/20 second model shows as 389.34 DPS. Illustration shows 337.95 DPS, and the 72 haste version of Scale shows as 314.30. So if you leave it at 72 haste, you'd be inclined to believe that Illustration is better, when in fact, it isn't.

Assuming Scale is better it would seem that speed pots would no longer be the best choice. In your model in rawr right now Enthorn which comes out higher with that setup, speed or wild magic?

Potion of Wild Magic always came out on top once they changed it to 200 spell power/200 crit. They came out marginally ahead before, about 2 DPS ahead, and now they seem to be about 5-7 DPS ahead of Speed potions.

Not sure what you are talking about, currently as 18/53/0 on live with your optimal gear setup on page 1 speed comes out ahead by a small margin (under 1 dps) and that doesn't even consider combustion cannibalizing the crit from wild magic so I definitely wouldn't say wild magic is better since the change to it, just much closer now for 18/53/0. For FFB wild magic does come out better by a few dps. Before the change to 200/200 wild magic was a joke and not even close to best for any spec. I can easily see wild magic surpassing speed with the new LB glyph in 3.1 but I'm not sure why you have it higher rated on live, regardless of fight length I always have it coming out on top.

Okay I am using 2.19 at the moment and seeing speed pot come out slightly ahead, apparently there are some changes to live in the new beta of rawr. Regardless it looks like down the road wild magic will be the way to go so thank you for answering my question! (an important one for those of us stocking up for ulduar)

This is one of the changes I am quite curious to see the result of. As I am currently considering dropping my tailoring for JC which seems at this point to be giving a 50ish dps in comparison to the current Tailoring buff. Have anyone calculated the worth of Tailoring in 3.1? Or seen anything that would hint for a good reason to keep tailoring in the future? Other than loosing all the trained patterns ofcoz

Or will the gain from the JC proffession compared to the new Lightweave Embroidery be to small or even less than optimal when / if blizzard implements the epic gems of WoTLK?

Don't forget that JC let's you get socket bonus much more easily.

Drape of Mortal Downfall with Greater Speed (23 haste) is ~385 DPS. If we remove Greater Speed, it drops to 351, a loss of 34 DPS. Next I add a "250 Spell Power for 15 seconds" proc to the item. That same cloak now shows as 458 DPS, a gain of 107.

Overall DPS went from 6962 (without Greater Speed) to 7068 (with Cloak Enchant). With Greater Speed, DPS is listed at 6997. Next we add in prismatic gems. Taking into consideration socket bonuses (5 spell power and 6 crit), our DPS increases to 7092. That's a 24 DPS increase over Lightweave Embroidery. Taking into account that Greater Speed (23 haste) was giving us 34 DPS, and the use of prismatic gems gives us socket bonuses that normally would be a DPS loss (that is, 9 spell power/8 spirit gems activating a 5 spell power socket bonus is worse than a straight up 19 spell power gem -- except when you use a prismatic gem), it's easy to see why Jewelcrafting pulls slightly ahead.

Now, a few things should be noted: first, I don't believe Glyph of Living Bomb is being calculated correctly here, so it's only getting 153% crits. It's not terrible huge, but Haste has a relative stat value of 1.51 to Crit's 1.44. Second, Spirit is still being calculated at a 0.4 conversion rate (0.25 + 0.15) instead of 0.55 (0.35 + 0.20). This makes gems that provide spirit slightly less attractive. Third, rare gems are still being used here, not epic gems. Epic gems don't decrease the DPS of sets with prismatic gems -- they increase the DPS of sets without prismatic gems, so that each prismatic gem is offering slightly less DPS, relative to other professions.

Last, the T8 set bonuses aren't in. The 4-piece set bonus will definitely increase the value of crit, probably over haste, even for Fireball builds, which in turn means spirit is more lucrative, which in turn decreases the difference in DPS of spirit/spell power gems vs prismatic gems (as far as blue sockets are concerned).

I know we've used Chaotic Skyflare Diamond for a while, but I was wondering what the DPS difference was between it and the 25 SP / 2% Int meta, at least for Arcane mages. I could see why SP meta could be used over the Crit meta for Arcane. Just curious if anyone knows the numbers Rawr put out as the difference. Mac computer FTL

On live (rawr 2.1.9) with a 3 minute fight i show a difference of about 187 dps from the Chaotic Skyflare meta and 53 dps from the Ember Skyflare meta (using well itemized but not optimal gear).