Ok, this has been bugging me for a while now, so as a last resort I guess I'm asking for someone with a bit of free time to check my sheets and spot what I'm missing. My current gearset is with 2PT9 and can be found on this sheet:
Current. After picking up two more trophies to make my 4P bonus (and swapping boots, as I will explain) my sheet looks like this:
New.
First thing to note is that swapping chests (
Vest of Shifting Shadows (Heroic) for
Garona's Breasplate of Triumph) trades an allotment of 67 arp for 82 hit (over poison cap atm) but trading helms (
Mask of Lethal Intent for
Garona's Helmet of Triumph) trades 82 hit for 74 expertise (at exp cap). So right off the bat the net effect is trading an arp allotment for an entirely useless expertise allotment, this in itself should be a dps loss. To offset this I swapped my current boots:
Acidmaw Treads (Heroic) for a set without an expertise allotment:
Icewalker Treads. Note that this swap traded 51 expertise for 59 arp. So the net effect of swapping to 4PT9 from 2PT9 and swapping boots to avoid being largely over the expertise cap is approximately 8 arp for 15 expertise. Now this is slightly misleading because 10-man HM gear tends to have an extra socket as it's reward, and other stats are off by a couple points here and there, but the global effect is a small bit of arp for some expertise (which is entirely wasted). My problem then is thus: the sheet representing my current setup is about 35dps ahead of the setup that swaps to 4PT9. So for sake of simplicity, lets just say I'm losing 8 arp in the end, I don't think it takes a genius to realize that 5% crit on sinister strike is worth far more than 8 arp rating.
To help you find my error, here are some things to consider: buffs should be identical, the "New" sheet was a copy of the current. Specs should be identical (and shouldn't change, because weapons aren't changing). As I pointed out, 10-man HM gear tends to be better than 25-man normal gear by a socket, so there could be a built in difference of two sockets that the current setup is "ahead" by, via virtue of 10-man HM gear being better than 25-man normal mode gear, but that's at the very most, and again, isn't worth the 110+ EP points that the 4P bonus is worth. The "current" sheet is sitting at 735 passive arp and the "new" sheet was slightly regemmed to bring it to 733 passive arp, so it's not a matter of forgetting to get back to the softcap. The two new tier pieces do have inferior socket colors, which does slightly matter, but again, that shouldn't trump the value of the 4P bonus. The "new" gear does however have a better blue socket bonus (by 2 agility) so that's a small factor in it's favor.
Those were essentially all the things that came to my mind to try and figure this out. I can see them being close, that makes total sense. Picking up a few points by virtue of 10-man HM gear being better and swapping a small handful of arp points for (entirely wasted) expertise is definitely worth something, but my gut tells me the bonus is worth more than that, and shouldn't be losing at all, especially by 35 dps. I appreciate any help anyone has to offer here. I've been over and over this and I can't figure it out. I even redownladed the current sheet and filled it in from scratch to rule out any settings bugs that may have gotten saved. Again, if you have the time to help me with this, you have my thanks.