Weapon swaps are not good. To amplify beyond the frequently ignored fact that Gur has no ICD: swapping weapons incurs a GCD and resets your swing timer.

I'd be extremely surprised if anyone was able to math a DPS gain for a single weapon swap, much less double swap (A to B to A), even for extra Str/Weapon damage during a CD window.

On average Gur beats everything else in its difficulty bracket (LFR > LFR weapons, Norm > Norm weapons, Heroic > H weapons). In specific it's up to the RNG - sometimes it'll suck, sometimes it'll be rock-star-magic-godlike-awesomesauce. If you want stable reliable damage every single fight then don't use a proc weapon.

No point. 410 Slicer is better than 403 Gurth, according to the numbers I saw after they "hotfixed" our Gurth proc chance. So you wouldn't be swapping during CDs to Slicer anyway. I did consider that, I should have probably pointed that out. I just wanted to come up with the numbers to support the "no swap" answer, so maybe it would die easier than just arguing against swapping on principle.

I finally got a model going for that (and no, it wasn't easy), and it comes down to pure RNG.

As Exemplar said, RNG is RNG, and since Gurth has no ICD...well....there's absolutely no reason to swap. If you want to rank, you hedge your bets on good RNG and maybe, at some point, hit favorable and blow the DPS charts away.

For the rest of us, 78% of the time, H Slicer pulls ahead. 62% of the time, H Atar pulls ahead. At no point does N Gurth consistently beat any heroic weapon, in actuality, it falls below the median. Even H Gurth I find to be on par with H Slicer, completely dependent on proc rate alone. I've found enough variance to call it a wash, with your choice between consistency or extremes.

Any and all weapon swaps, even from LFG Gurth to H Gurth and vice versa, I've found to be a monumental DPS loss, unless any great string of luck favors you.

Hopefully this puts the weapon swap debate to rest.

Hello guys!

I have a question regarding seal swapping "SoT to SoR" during fights and I hope this is the right thread. The article says:

My question is: Do you think it is better to swap seals during the forgotten ones at "Yor'sahj" for example? Would swapping be better for the blood at "Madness of Deathwing" too?
The difference between the two fights is also that the forgotten ones are way more longer alive than the blood. So maybe it is only useful against Yor'sahj? We also have to consider that we lose 2 GCDs during the swap.

In general: Is it only useful to switch to SoR if we can use it for a minimum number of enemies AND a certain minimum time?

Greetz

It's stupid question, I know, but where I can see my own stat weigths in Exemplar spreadsheet without STR to put values in wowreforge and do most effective reforge? I can't find it. Thanks.

You can use the AutoEnchant/gem/reforge tool included in the spreadsheet (in the Character tab) .
It gives very satisfying results.

It depends a lot on your guild progress on the encounter. Sometimes you have to stop DPS to coordinate the fragments', terrors' and bloods' pop. If you talk about maximizing DPS with no stop time during the encounter, then the swap is not efficient. You also have to know if your raid is killing the bloods quite fast, or not. If the DPS on the bloods is kinda low, even if you lose one GCD, it's better to swap to SoR in order to provide more damage on them. But if you're short on the enrage timer and the bloods die really fast, then no need to swap, and you'll gain 2 GCD to DPS the head (or the other adds).

Edit : I realize you were maybe not talking about the bloods in last phase (Heroic).. you don't need to swap for the "regular" Regenerative Bloods, as they die quickly.

Hit is trivially easy to cap by reforging a weaker stat to hit on a piece that has mastery on already though. By enchanting hit on boots you'll be left with 50 of crit or haste elsewhere on your gear that you wouldn't have had otherwise, and the net result will be that either way you will be hit capped, but with the hit enchant on your boots you will have less mastery overall and more haste or crit.

For example, you could reforge the haste on your belt to hit and gain 76 hit there, switch your boot enchant to mastery, and overall you'd be up 50 mastery, 26 hit, and down 76 haste from your current setup.

I suggest running your character through something like wowreforge though, you're below expertise cap and over hit cap by quite a large margin when you could have 962 hit, 481 exp (caps are 961, 481), gaining expertise cap at the cost of 9 mastery rating.

Thanks for the answers. But I still have one question:

Can we compute a time limit x (time of the adds while they are active), which tells us: If the adds are x seconds available we switch to SoR? Or is the swap to SoR just like a "subjective" inspiration?

Of course you can.

(DPS of SoR on # of targets * X number of seconds on targets) vs (DPS of SoT on # of targets * (X number of seconds on target + ~2.8 seconds))

The 'about 2.8' extra seconds for the SoT calc are because the Seal Swap costs you 3 seconds, but autoattack keeps running. Solve for X until the first beats the second.

There is no cut and dried perfect answer because everyone's gearing and often raid buffs varies, thus DPS winds up different.

If you are looking for meter padding - swap for Yor adds. If you are looking to help the raid, stay SoT and use DS while otherwise single-targeting Yor. As long as the adds die before new slimes spawn then the goal is utmost DPS to the boss.

For Madness, I strongly suspect seal swap for Hemorrhage-slimes (Regenerative Blood) is uniformly a loss. The double seal swap time is a huge DPS loss for slimes that should survive for only a few GCD. A few hundred extra DPS per slime is unlikely to be the difference between killing slime or it healing to full, which makes that DPS 100% wasted anyway.

Using Wowreforge
If you want to use stats directly from the spreadsheet - I don't understand the problem. Ignore Str and just input the other values provided. Leave hit and expertise unchanged - if you set wowreforge to zero it's likely to give you bad results as it could reforge you way under cap. Pay attention to hit/exp cap values - wowreforge does not appear to adjust for racial bonuses, though it picks up the 10 Exp from GoSoT.

If you want to test a specific stat order with wowreforge - use any values you want where hit/exp > stat #1 > stat #2 > stat #3. Values are just for it to calculate an imaginary total sum. For the actual reforging what's important is greater or less than another stat.

I have a question about Inquisition that me and my guildies have been discussing lately.
Mark that i usually tank on my paladin, but has recently found retri to be great fun.

The rule of thumb is to use Inquisition at 3HP to gain a 36 sec buff. However i have noticed when i am in dungeons and raids that i almost never have a ready 3HP when the buff is about to expire.

And here is the question, do i loose anything by using Inquisition with only 2 HP?
From my personal view that will make my up time of the buff even greater without having to re-apply when the buff still has 8-12 sec left. I have not run any really simulations on this, but my basic calculations in my head tells me that it will be an overall gain.

This might mean i use more 2HP Inq during a fight then a 3HP, but all over i have longer uptime and fell like i get out more 3HP Templars this way. And the tool tip on Inq strictly says that you gain a 30% buff to holy spells for 12 seconds per HP.

Has anyone ever done any math on this or tested it out?