The Retribution Concordance - 4.3, Voice of the DPS - Page 71

Calefax · 06/21/11, 3:54 PM

Originally Posted by Daeluin

Further calculations will be needed to verify my figuring with certainty, but it's definitely a safe bet to start out getting legs first and gloves thereafter.

I disagree. I have been playing around with numbers looking at the various gear available, and I would argue that the best option is actually use the offset gloves. Yes, the tier gloves are itemized quite well, but the offset gloves are actually better. Based on the numbers currently available on wowhead/mmo-champion, the gloves from Lord Rhyolith (which are also hit/mastery) actually have the same strength and 18 extra secondary stats on them, not to mention a red socket which gives you another 10 hit for free (as opposed to the blue socket on tier gloves). Don't assume that tier is the best choice just because it's itemized well.

Looking at the other 4 pieces:
Legs
Pretty close to a no-brainer, as the socket bonus of T12 legs gives you an extra 20 strength when compared to the offset legs, although the offset legs are itemized slightly better.

Shoulders
I disagree that Prot T12 shoulders are an option because the Ret shoulders have 86 more strength on them than the prot shoulders. That's more than enough to make up for the worse secondary stats, and there is no offset ret shoulder option on the current Firelands loot tables.

Chest
The tier chest and offset chest are roughly equivalent, with T12 having expertise and the offset having mastery. However, there are 6 extra rating points (not sure why) on the T12 chest, which when combined with the fact that we will actually need all 269 expertise makes the chest a good bet.

Helm
The two helms are roughly equivalent, but the tier helm has a red socket instead of a blue one. 20 strength is much more valuable than 20 hit.

Disclaimer: All of the numbers I have been looking at are for 378 versions. It's possible things could change slightly for heroic gear.

Daeluin · 06/21/11, 4:33 PM

I was looking primarily at the heroic items.

Good point on the shoulders. That was oversight about the strength on my part.

Legs and chest I think we can both agree (in addition now to shoulders) are going to be part of the set we use, though I disagree that the offset legs are itemized better, that's simply untrue. Then it comes down to helm and gloves.

I didn't say 20 hit was equivalent to 20 str, I said it offsets the loss, which would be in order to gain an item with perfect secondary stat itemization otherwise. Reforging reduces the value of an individual item's itemization, but it doesn't negate it. The offset gloves give a good bit more hit at the cost of mastery on that individual item. This would be instead of dropping the set helm which also has hit. This may or may not allow you to gain more as a whole, as you definitely can't judge these hit reforging situations in a vacuum.

I'll concede that the gloves may be the best offset choice, but I'm still surmising the helm to fill that role. With that said, I'll also say that if the gloves are close, even if inferior, I might go with them just for sake of getting to use the set helm.

Calefax · 06/21/11, 5:26 PM

As for your comment about the legs, I don't want to start an argument, but at the very least whether they are itemized better or not is open for debate. Personally I prefer hit/mastery to crit/mastery, especially now that we have the Apparatus issue to contend with.

I never said that you said that 20 str and 20 hit were equivalent. I was merely pointing out that I would much rather have the 20 str than the 20 hit, all other things being equal. Sure, 20 hit is better than nothing, but why would you ever accept any dps loss at all if you don't have to? You argue that the secondary stats on the offset helm are better, and also argue that I am ignoring the different itemization values because of reforging. This is not true at all. I know it's not necessarily a fair comparison to do this, but IF you can utilize all of the hit on the tier helm, then the hit/crit wins out over the crit/mastery. Before you assume that this can't happen, I will tell you that I have already put together a set of 378/384 gear where the total value of hit rating on all pieces combined was 861. It's not like we have a huge excess of it like we did expertise in T11. I view the secondary itemization of the two helms as roughly equivalent or at least close enough that it won't significantly matter either way...but the tier helm has that extra 20 str on it that I just can't ignore.

I understand that you can't judge a single item on its own when it comes to hit. However, I went through all of T11 where 100% of the time I was able to reforge to exactly 961 hit, no matter what piece of gear I replaced. It's not like T11 expertise where you end up with so much that you literally can't reforge it all away. As long as this continues to be true, I will treat hit as the superior secondary stat that it is.

In the end I suppose this is a pointless debate as we're both going to end up using the offset gloves anyway. I just prefer to make gear choices based on math and not looks :-P

Daeluin · 06/22/11, 12:33 AM

I don't take you as argumentative. We're both after the most efficient performance and hashing it out is good. I'm being facetious about the appearance thing, but I'll just be annoyed to find that our ideal helm isn't the awesome looking pally one but the ugly DK one instead.

The thought process here is that you will ideally get your capped stats while maximizing your best secondary stats. This should mean, for us, targeting items with high amounts of pure mastery and pure crit, and then cultivating our hit and expertise from our subpar stats, namely haste and then crit, hopefully leaving our mastery intact. Your method will cut yourself down from your maximum amount of superior secondary stats. Though not the perfect analog, this is part of the reason why we have favored [Pauldrons of the Great Ettin] as opposed to something like [Helm of Maddening Whispers] for T11.

You mention wanting 20 str over 20 hit if all else is equal, but my point is that all other things in that situation aren't equal. Fully utilizing the hit of an item does not automatically make it superior if it translates into sacrificing mastery for crit or haste in other slots. This does mean that the situation will require you to gain a fair bit in order to offset the loss, since you're swapping out non-zero gains like haste. Losing 20 str here will make you need to gain something to the tune of 100 mastery as opposed to haste to start making it worth it, but that's not unreasonable or unlikely. It may make the overall gain smaller, but a gain is a gain.

Minor point here, but just to avoid confusion, heroic items are 391 for T12. Additionally addressing an essentially moot point is that the set leg itemization has a strength socket bonus which give their value a boost, and that's besides my belief their secondary stat spread is better due to the above stated mentality.

Malleus · 06/22/11, 12:17 PM

Originally Posted by Exemplar

I virtually guarantee the Apparatus will pull from stats at time of proc (otherwise it requires excessive additional programming to decide what to include/exclude - gear? enchants? gems? raid buff A? raid buff B? Ad nauseum).

Why would additional programming be required? This is exactly how Mana Tide Totem works right now - it counts everything except procs and on-use buffs.

Exemplar · 06/22/11, 12:29 PM

Finally updated my spreadsheet for 4.2 mechanic changes and tier bonus. As I have not yet added any 4.2 gear, it is not presently release ready. I hope to have that by end of week. Definitely before Tuesday's anticipated patch day.

Armed with the mechanics changes, I've reassessed single vs multitarget damage. Namely of import are the change to how SoC tweaks SoR and that the SoT Glyph expertise is active for SoR.

The breakpoint is 4 targets. On 1, 2, or 3 targets it is still superior to use SoT and CS. As soon as you add the 4th target you replace CS with DS (since 4 targets generates HP). You also swap to using SoR at this number - there are enough extra jumps to beat out the Censure ticks (and the double procs, since application/refresh of Censure procs a SoC). DPS scales rapidly with every target beyond the 4th.

That said, opportunity costs of seal changes (GCD and mana) incline me to suggest swapping only for prolonged phases (a minute or more of constant multitarget damage) or a shorter burst of extremely high quantity of targets. Naturally CS changes to DS as soon as you hit the magic number 4, regardless of seal, since there is no loss in doing so. Recall that DS gains no benefit from Ascetic Crusader Glyph, so even without a seal swap your mana usage increases.

4 seems a reasonable number for swapping to intentional AOE. I am unsure whether AOE caps still exist on spells (a maximum total damage possible, regardless of quantity of targets - enough targets and the spell does less per target to stay below the cap). If they do, our AOE suffers no such limitation - the more targets the better.

In Wrath we were somewhat uncontrollable and extremely powerful automatic cleave monsters. 4.0-4.1 hamstrung most of our AOE but made us very controllable (skipping HW or Cons doesn't hurt too bad). 4.2 seems to hold a reasonable balance of on-demand or situational AOE.

Overall not a huge change for Ret, but the AOE buffs qualify as a pleasant quality of life tweak.

Regarding the Apparatus proc - Malleus, they would then have to copy/paste that code to a trinket (or multiple trinkets, if they want to go that route). While copy/paste is simple (if they do it properly - WoW has seen bugs from things that clearly at least should have been copy/paste), it is still extra programming just for an item. Also, Mana Tide Totem expressly states it excludes short-term buffs. Apparatus has no such disclaimer.

Since Mana Tide multiplies your value, a short-term buff of hundreds to thousands makes a huge swing. Apparatus provides a flat value (per charge). Whether the base stat is presently artificially enhanced or not does not impact the end rating increase provided (though as noted, it could impact which stat is selected).

Calefax · 06/22/11, 1:10 PM

Daeluin, I get what you are saying, and I agree with it. However, your T11 example does not seem to prove your point. I don't think it's the same comparison when comparing a crit/haste offset piece to a crit/mastery one. Additionally, this tier is much different than the last one because so many fewer pieces have hit and/or expertise on them this time around.

I also think you are underestimating the value that 20 strength can bring. I just made two gear sets in an excel sheet, so that I could play with reforging a bit to try and optimize them. I probably should have switched to 391 versions of everything, but I stuck with 378/384 since that's what I already had numbers for. I can post an exact list if someone finds it necessary, but really, beyond tier most of the choices are pretty obvious with the exception of trinkets which are the same in both sets.

Gear set #1 uses Fireskin Gauntlets + 4pc T12. Gear set #2 uses Greathelm of the Voracious Maw + 4pc T12. Both sets are reforged as optimally as I could do on my own. It's possible wowreforge or another tool would be able to optimize either slightly better. Totals for each set come out to be:

	Strength	Hit	Mastery	Crit	Haste	Expertise
Offset Gloves	5245	971	1527	1439	729	488
Offset Helm	5225	963	1643	1321	729	488

At first glance, the offset helm set seems to be the superior choice given the higher mastery value. However, if you plug both sets into Redcape's latest DPS spreadsheet, the offset glove set actually comes out ahead by 56 DPS because of the strength difference. Obviously this difference is so small that really it will come down to personal preference or RNG. It's also possible that once the T12 trinkets are modeled properly, they could make the offset helm set the clear winner (e.g. Appartus of Khaz'goroth given the larger gap between mastery and crit). However, my point is that using the offset helm is not necessarily a clear-cut gain like you seem to assume that it is.

Daeluin · 06/22/11, 1:49 PM

I've never implied that it is a clear cut decision. I absolutely agree that T12 is a different beast (and a more favorable one at that), and that it is either the helm or the gloves. It appears the trinket modeling might play a large role indeed. I think we're close enough to agreement here that we will have see how Exemplar's sheet and Redcape's sheet shake out after some more optimized reforging setups. It might be close enough that difficulty of acquisition will play a big role for a lot of players. I can't recall where either the gloves or helm offset pieces drop or who has the set helm token.

As I said, the T11 offset piece wasn't a perfect analogy, but we did choose to replace the shoulder that had hit on them and get the rest of our hit from reforging other items, and this was instead of dropping our helm which had dreaded expertise on it. That was my reason for using that analogy.

Handled · 06/24/11, 9:26 PM

Originally Posted by Calefax

I disagree. I have been playing around with numbers looking at the various gear available, and I would argue that the best option is actually use the offset gloves. Yes, the tier gloves are itemized quite well, but the offset gloves are actually better.

I've been bouncing around all the T12 as well and have come to 2 different conclusions which is based entirely on Racial Bonuses. Dwarf/Human will most likely want offset chest to bring the Expertise value down if they are using a Mace. I'll definitely build a gear setup with the Gloves to see if you can get more out of them as well.

The images of the gear reforged is built here - T12 Gear options

I'll add a setup with the Gloves as well to see if they are a strong option but I think they will be better suited for Races that do not get an Expertise bonus based on Maces.

Malleus · 06/25/11, 9:37 AM

Originally Posted by Handled

I've been bouncing around all the T12 as well and have come to 2 different conclusions which is based entirely on Racial Bonuses. Dwarf/Human will most likely want offset chest to bring the Expertise value down if they are using a Mace. I'll definitely build a gear setup with the Gloves to see if you can get more out of them as well.

Have you considered the weapons available? BIS in 4.2 is of course Sulfuras, being 6 ilvls higher and having crit/mastery, but until that is available the second-best option is Zoid's Firelit Greatsword - it's got 20 Strength over Skullstealer and equivalent stats. As we're upgrading from a sword to a sword (Ashkandi to ZFG) Humans will have constant expertise levels, but Dwarfs will have to consider switching in the tier chest.

Artagnan · 06/25/11, 2:43 PM

Has the stats for Season 10 gear been published? I read alot of your are talking about gloves might be the best offset item. I was thinking that the 5% on the pvp gloves might hold up for that (least in normal content). Yet I don't know the stats for the gloves, which makes it hard to say.
Anyone?

fearsie · 06/25/11, 8:06 PM

S10 Ret -> Ruthless Gladiator's Vindication - Item Set - World of Warcraft

Pawpurr · 06/26/11, 3:59 AM

Considering the arena gloves (which are likely bis before heroic gear) and also the tier 2 set bonus, is glyph of crusader strike going to be better than glyph of exorcism?

Doogal · 06/27/11, 5:44 AM

Originally Posted by Pawpurr

Considering the arena gloves (which are likely bis before heroic gear) and also the tier 2 set bonus, is glyph of crusader strike going to be better than glyph of exorcism?

This would be quite interesting to work out as this would remove any decisions on what offset item to use, if the extra 5% translates directly to the 2 part bonus (and I can't see how it couldn't) that is quite a significant factor.

I realise that this would probably only be in relation to pre heroic tier items but well worth considering.

Handled · 06/27/11, 7:13 PM

Has anyone else that has been crunching numbers noticed an extreme drop in stat value for Haste? I'm noticing after 10 tests of 100K iterations it's down to nearly .50. While crit is now catching up to Mastery.

Either I'm missing something or Haste is seriously going to be lower than Agility?