It seems to one of the large questions in the air right now is some kind of stat equivalency formula. I recently hit 70 on my new paladin (raided with a paladin pre-TBC) after raiding with a hunter up to SSC. I'm playing catchup on gear and occasionally I get the chance at a pretty big +spell dmg item which might be an upgrade over my current blue. After some extensive reading an number crunching, I'm almost entirely outfitted in melee plate.

My big question is what amount of +spell dmg would be equivalent to AP or STR? It's not a matter of "don't take it at all" but rather of finding it's relative value. Do I avoid all paladin Tier 4 gear in favor of melee plate? Probably not, but I have limited information for making those judgements.

What I'd really like to do is figure out some type of equivalency chart or table to compare stats to one another. What I'd love to do is figure out how much STR/AP a point of spell damage is worth and translate that into my comparisons.

Using the numbers from this site http://www.91nine.com/dps/paladin.php (I'm not sure how accurate they are) based off my current level of gear, adding the 30 spell damage from my Oathkeeper (oh so close to crafting my Thunder, stupid primals) over a baseline of no spell damage adds 3 DPS for 30 spell damage, or 1 DPS per 10 spell damage. That means each point of spell damage adds .1 DPS.

Using bellator's gear presets from his spreadsheet, the Tier 4 gear (including all the default buffs and with the sword replaced with a Hammer of the Naaru, since the above site doesn't model haste rating) I saw a pretty big variance when adding an additional 30 spell damage. The difference in DPS was 36.16, which meant that 1.2 DPS was added per point of spell damage. That means that at that level of gear spell damage is worth twelve times as much as it is in blues. That doesn't quite make sense to me.

I realized part of my mistake was that I was relying on one run through of the simulator. It turns out my tier 4 run through was a little high. The average with the additional 30 spell damage was more like 1260 instead of 1273. That's still a 23 DSP increase of the minor 3 DPS increase I saw at the blue level. Rerunning those numbers, I saw a shift when I ran the simulation six times and took the average. There was a 7 DPS difference at that point, which meant spell damage was worth .23 DPS a point. That's in sharp contrast to the .7 DPS that the averaged numbers give for the tier 4 set number, still.

I only got more confused when I tried the tier 5 gear numbers. This time the spell damage added .17 DPS per point, averaged over 6 simulations. This was less than the original blue numbers. /headasplode

Aside from simple needing to run these simulation more than 6 times (each which represents 5000 seconds of combat, which is 83 minutes) why the big difference in DPS added per point of spell damge? These numbers make it sound like there might be a bell curve in there somewhere.

Since I ran into this confusion, I never got around to testing how adding AP would work at each level, and thus don't have a ratio of how much Spell damage is worth compared to STR or AP.

Although I have yet to test this for multiple hours, the small test I did do showed [Libram of Avengement] to fall behind the new libram by somewhere around 20 dps, with a judge every 8 seconds.

There is also a bug with the Libram of Avengement that makes it refresh itself whenever you would refresh Vengeance, which is quite an odd bug, that is quite in favor of this libram, but it still falls behind =\

Also, as I said I am still somewhat new to this whole Retribution thing, what exact cycle do most people use in actual raids, I understand that during a raid I would have a few buffs to improve my efficiency, but at a full burn with only Judgements / Crusader Strikes I was still going completely dry in 97(SOB) - 140 seconds(R1 SOC), and that doesnt include anything like Concecrates / Exorcisms.

Do most people not judge until their seal is about to fall off? Or is it usually accepted that it is worth it to keep up a libram buff?

About Str (and pure "warrior gear") vs Spelldamage ("ret gear"):

I'm sure it's beyond a doubt that if you compare point to point, STR is far superior, however:


This is exactly it, technically you could go for full out warrior gear, but you'll end up with a horribly small mana pool, which will be a big problem in most fights.



Bellator's spreadsheet:

I really appreciate the work in Bellator's spreadsheet, but I have to question the validity of some of the suggested "best DPS" items vs equivalent item value "ret gear" like Tier 6.

If you follow the above, I think the spreadsheet currently seems to miss any weight for int and/or mana regen that I can see.

Loading up v15 of the spreadsheet, SoC dps is 1412 DPS and 159 int for the "Tier 6" set and 1473 DPS and 85 int for the "Best of Best" profile.

Is a calculated ~60 DPS worth losing 74 int = 1221 mana (with BoK)? (And even more mana if you opt out for different bracers/belt than in the "Tier 6" profile for example).

In addition, items like the T6 pants have 9mp5 and the 2 set bonus (chance to gain 50 mana on melee hit) further add more mana efficiency, which is a hidden bonus which I'm not sure is considered in the spreadsheet.

I guess what I'm saying is: As an experiment of theoretical numbers, yes, this set offers more dps than that set. But in a realistic environment, which set would perform better?

The spreadsheet is definitely going the right way, but I think some weight should be added to int/mana regen, since I don't think it's possible to go all out warrior gear and not be completely mana starved.


Also, is there any way to check for an increase in the worth of spelldamage, depending on how much armor the boss/mob has?

Guys remember that the max mana # is quite insiginificant compared to the mana regened in combat by all other factors, which makes int really not all that exciting as you're making it to be. I do agree at least an estimated conversion rate of spell damage->str should be made until we have a good spreadsheet where you can put your own gear and see exactly how much it converts to for you.