I wonder if someone could point out a few pro's/con's of hardcap vs softcap on arpen.
Im still messing with aldriana's spread sheet but I havent found a good hardcap BIS set that is comparable.
I'm getting inconclusive answers from the spreadsheets regarding gemming. Aldriana's sheet indicates fractured gems are superior, whereas the rougecraft sheet indicates delicate gems are superior. My napkin math seems to suggest that agility is superior, even without using the 4piece T8, but only by a minuscule margin. Any feedback? Conflicting answers are making me doubt the accuracy of my napkin math.
Still puzzled with expertise, and if avoiding expertise while having the talent quick recovery is a viable strategy. Any chance you experimented with that? Anyone else have?
If not it seems t9head/shoulders are our only high ilvl pieces of loot with expertise!
Yes I've thought about this myself with dropping Blood spatter and picking up Quick Recovery using the
rupture-less cycle, seems logical to me at least. Leaves more room for ap/agil gems rather than a few expertise if needed.
Is there ever a minimum amount of expertise needed in Combat spec? Recently I went from 19 expertise to 13 expertise, and I notice that when I am pooling energy for Slice and Dice, the boss will dodge my sinister strike, and I will waste energy. Aldriana's spreadsheet shows my expertise rating EP as 2.0063, whereas I am used to it being lower. My main concern is that wasted energy due to pooling is something that isn't modeled in the spreadsheet, so its actual EP is higher. Is gemming expertise just not a good idea for combat, or should it be considered?
Would it be worth using Eviscerate over Envenom in a mutilate rotation, during a Mjolnir Runestone proc?
No, even if you have 3 points in improved eviscerate, eviscerate glyph, and 1400 armor penetration, 5 point eviscerate in BiS mutilate gear (with added 1089 armor pen to get to cap) does 10.4k damage on average. At the same time, an envenom does 12.3k damage on average and procs an envenom buff. So eviscerate is an inferior option for mutilate.
Is there ever a minimum amount of expertise needed in Combat spec? Recently I went from 19 expertise to 13 expertise, and I notice that when I am pooling energy for Slice and Dice, the boss will dodge my sinister strike, and I will waste energy. Aldriana's spreadsheet shows my expertise rating EP as 2.0063, whereas I am used to it being lower. My main concern is that wasted energy due to pooling is something that isn't modeled in the spreadsheet, so its actual EP is higher. Is gemming expertise just not a good idea for combat, or should it be considered?
I find it unusual that your expertise is so low. Are you specced into Weapon Expertise?
I think in this case, while gemming for expertise is generally not productive, if your sinister strikes are being dodged then you are missing out on a lot of dps (and combo points). Unfortunately, at 13 expertise, to get you to the cap of 26 it will take several pure expertise gems/enchants.
Expertise is just a stat like any other stat, it's purpose is to increase DPS and has no special value outside of that for combat. For mutilate, extremely low expertise can cause cycle instability which can result in a larger dps loss than modeled on the spreadsheet.
A dodged sinister strike does not cost 40 energy, a dodged combo move refunds almost all of its energy cost, only finishing moves fail to refund their energy cost when they don't land, Combat's finishing moves cannot be dodged because of the Surprise Attacks talent. Because of this, lacking expertise does not lead to cycle instability for a combat rogue and as such the value of expertise relative to other stats, such as Arpen, or agility, is actually quite low.
So no, there is no minimum amount of expertise for combat.
I find it unusual that your expertise is so low. Are you specced into Weapon Expertise?
I think in this case, while gemming for expertise is generally not productive, if your sinister strikes are being dodged then you are missing out on a lot of dps (and combo points). Unfortunately, at 13 expertise, to get you to the cap of 26 it will take several pure expertise gems/enchants.
Yes I am specced into Weapon Expertise. It just so happens that the best gear that I have now only contains one piece of gear with expertise rating, which is Crimson Star (has 28 expertise rating). Having your best gear according to spreadsheets be low in expertise is not too unheard-of.
To evoslayer: yes, your explanation makes sense. I suppose I need to just stop pooling so much energy until I have more expertise.
bdx, you will have to consult a high quality spreadsheet to determine the shift. Keep in mind that armor penetration gets better as you have more of it so the spreadsheet may not switch to recommending armor penetration until you've manually switched a few slots to the fractured variety. I personally switched to armor penetration yesterday and am seeing a statistically significant increase in overall DPS versus socketing pure agility.
> And is it still best option to gem 100% ArPen (combat 15/51/5) after nerf?
With enough passive ArP , and an ArP trinket, in most case i will answer yes. At least up to the soft cap.
After reaching the softcap, i'm not really sure (as you get no more benefit during Mjolnir procs, but still strong benefits for white damage), as i'm not sure of the value this stat should have. On Aldriana sheet i guess i should at least select de "Use Agi Value for ArPen" option.
Anyway , as always the best way to answer your question by yourself is to use a spreadsheet.
So essentially, you're saying that unless you have a ArP trinket, regemming to ArP to hit the softcap is largely pointless? This is very important to me at my current stage of gearing.
Anecdotally, I've observed that in my current gear set, removing the grim toll results in the AEP for ArP dropping to the point that agility far exceeds it. If you do not have either of the trinkets (mjolnir or grim toll) it's probably best to ignore ArP.
A dodged sinister strike does not cost 40 energy, a dodged combo move refunds almost all of its energy cost, only finishing moves fail to refund their energy cost when they don't land, Combat's finishing moves cannot be dodged because of the Surprise Attacks talent. Because of this, lacking expertise does not lead to cycle instability for a combat rogue and as such the value of expertise relative to other stats, such as Arpen, or agility, is actually quite low.
Although this is true for most gear setups, for double wound setups expertise will often pass agility and arpen in value to the point where it is worth gemming for it (for example, in my current gear the EP values of expertise, agility, and arpen are 2.30, 2.08 and 2.07 respectively)
So essentially, you're saying that unless you have a ArP trinket, regemming to ArP to hit the softcap is largely pointless? This is very important to me at my current stage of gearing.
If you don't have an ArP trinket, then there is so 'soft-cap' to reach because the soft-cap refers to when you will have 100% ArP during one of the trinket procs.
Generally speaking, to get the most benefit of gemming ArP, you want an ArP trinket, otherwise agility is more likely a better option. Not always the case though if you have a lot of passive ArP gear.
Unless you use a spreadsheet on your own, no one is going to be able to tell you if agility/ArP is better. It is strictly a case by case basis, unique for each individual.
No, even if you have 3 points in improved eviscerate, eviscerate glyph, and 1400 armor penetration, 5 point eviscerate in BiS mutilate gear (with added 1089 armor pen to get to cap) does 10.4k damage on average. At the same time, an envenom does 12.3k damage on average and procs an envenom buff. So eviscerate is an inferior option for mutilate.
I was wondering about this as well I was running the spreadsheet and it came up with a eviscerate only cycle, so i tested it against a standard combat cycle and it was an average of 200 less dps on a target dummy for a fight duration of 300 seconds is the spreadsheat inncorrect?
Is gemming expertise just not a good idea for combat, or should it be considered?
I have expertise as my best stat, according to Aldriana spreadsheet. That happened when I moved to Evis only, hack&slash, Vile Poison with double WP - . So yes, I am gemming for expertise - I have almost none on my gear.
(I don't do weapon swapping)
Last edited by Wytryszek : 10/20/09 at 11:24 AM.
Reason: Vile Poisons may be what puts expertise above ArPen
I was wondering about this as well I was running the spreadsheet and it came up with a eviscerate only cycle, so i tested it against a standard combat cycle and it was an average of 200 less dps on a target dummy for a fight duration of 300 seconds is the spreadsheat inncorrect?
Honestly, on a target dummy, I've never been able to reach the DPS numbers the spreadsheet describes when all of the raid, food and flask related buffs are turned off. I'd suggest that there's a human element to it, latency and otherwise that negatively affects real world performance. That and it would require a lot of interations to get a relatively flat average that I'm unwilling to waste my time with.
So, instead of looking at that number of what you should be doing look at it as a gauge of overall performance in that if one build appears to be doing significantly more than another in the spreadsheet it is likely going to perform better in game. Even if you can't manage the number at the top of the sheet.
I am a 5/5 Mace Spec Combat Rogue with [Blackhorn Bludgeon] MH. While the pvp mace obviously lacks stats at first glance, I should be picking up a passive 15% Arp on all my offhand attacks, which I do not think the spreadsheet is taking into account.
Of these two, am I correct to assume the PvP item is the better option, given it will add 15% Arp to my offhand swings?
The spreadsheet is almost definitely taking the 15% armor penetration on the offhand into account.
Stats are very important, and your offhand melee swings, while important, do not compose that large a portion of your DPS, In addition the dagger is 1.4 speed as opposed to the mace's 1.5.
You should probably trust the spreadsheet and stick with the dagger.
My spreadsheet is telling me to gem for Armor Penetration (bringing me to a total of 561 passive). I noticed that there were supposed to be some problems with the sheet concerning the soft cap so I wanted to ask a few questions:
1) I messed around with the spreadsheet to see if it took into account the Evis spec cycle. Unless I did something wrong it doesn't look like it does. If I gem for armor pen does that mean I need to spec it or is it more gear dependent?
2) One of the guys in my guild said that ArP was a dps loss if you have to move around a lot. I see how this would be since you don't use rupture but would it matter since most of our dps is done in range of the boss?
1) Make sure while using the spreadsheet to spec 3/3 imp. evis and change out the rupture glyph for the evis glyph. That would usually ensure that the spreedsheet would switch you to an evis only cycle. Assuming of course you're using the latest beta of the spreadsheet.
I've been noticing a few variations on weapon enchants. For a long time I had both of mine with berserker, but more and more I've seen people telling me that berserker cannot proc on both weapons simultaneously. Thus, people are putting Mongoose on their MH and berserker on their OH - does this make any sense, or is it better to have berserker on both weapons?
Thanks in advance.
10/18/09, 4:17 PM
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