Even if 2t9 is better then 2t8 you will not want to break 4t8 for it and...


if we are not going to use rupture at the point we go from 4t8 to t9 then 2t9 effect is worthless anyhow so really it doesn't matter if its better then 2t8 or not.

From what I've observed in the 1.3b2 sheet through various gear progressions is that as long as you have 4pc T8, Rupture will be a part of your rotation and you should always spec as such. As for gemming with 4pc T8, I've observed that until you can get to around ~400-450 passive ArP (depending on whether you have the GT or MR trinket) Agi is the better choice, after that ArP becomes just as good or better depending on how many sockets and/or what gear you have available to you.

Dropping the 4pc T8 bonus with a single piece of T9/245 gear (and one other 245 offpiece, ie no T9 2pc), you can most likely gem for ArP with or without Rupture. The difference I got between specing for and using Rupture and dropping Rupture and it's talents for Imp Evisc (4/5 Lethality) was only 10-20 DPS in favor of a Ruptureless cycle. I should say though that both of these numbers though were well below maintaining 4pc T8 and a Rupture cycle.

Dropping 4pc T8 with 2 pieces of T9/245 gear pushed the Rupture spec/cycle back over top of the Ruptureless cycle until somewhere just south of the soft ArP cap. It should be noted though that the total projected DPS at this point was only slightly more than what was present in 4pc T8 and some may find it less.

Actually for that matter, 2pc T9.245 is relatively worthless from a ruptureless cycle perspective.
There are superior alternatives to Gloves, Legs and Chest (10man normal/heroic gloves, Yogg1 Legs, Calamitous Fate or 10man heroic chest).
While T9.245 helm and shoulders are largely redundant if you have t8 chest+yogg1 belt. Not everyone does though, so if you're not expertise capped, I guess helm or shoulders might be a good option.

However the vendor bought helm and shoulders are actually quite good and at some points even superior to t9.245 due to the high ArP values on them.


For me, getting vendor helm/shoulder+normal10man gloves+normal25 or heroic10 chest show up superior to 4pc t8, when switching to macespec with Caress of Insanity+Bladetwister and a ruptureless cycle.

YMMV, but personally t9.245 tokens will on a very low priority.

I'm perfectly content to pass them off to other classes for the time being until such time that I need them. And until the 258 gear gets here, I'm not sure I will need them.

Besides the vendor bought items, I've found the crafted bracers (Swift Death) to be quite a large upgrade and depending on the cost of orbs in 3.2.2 they might prove to be a higher priority for those that have access to the pattern.

This is true; however, note that high rupture basically means 4/5 T8, which is mutually exclusive to 2/5 T9 meaning that you'll be running low rupture with 2/5 T9, which lowers its value somewhat.

In terms of the general discussion about breaking 4/5 T8: as a general rule it seems to not be worth be breaking the 4/5 without also breaking the 2/5 - that is, obtaining 3 pieces of gear good enough to justify using 2/5 T9 + 3 offset pieces just doesn't seem practical, and it's unclear whether it's possible even in theory (2/5 T9.258 *might* be enough, but I won't even swear to that). Thus, we're generally not going to be breaking 4/5 T8 until we have significant upgrades for all 5 slots. Check the sheet for your specific situation, of course, but I suspect most people will find this to be the case.

What this means in practice is that your first 4 (or so) major upgrades to set slots aren't really going to increase your DPS - they're going to be swapped in just to cover the cost of breaking 4/5 T8 without significantly increasing your DPS, at which point all subsequent upgrades have their usual value and directly increase your DPS.

In order to compensate the loss of the 4t8 you have to get at least 4 239+ items.

For instance this setup with late ulduar HM gear and early Coliseum this will make the trick and give you roughly a 50 dps increase :
Head : Hood of Lethal Intent
Spaulders : Garona's Pauldrons of Triumph
Chest : Embrace of the Gladiator
Gloves : Sunreaver Assassin's Gloves (232)
Legs : Legguard of Cunning Deception

No need to link to your Armory. We should be able to get it from your name.

Concerning your question, the spreadsheets (by default) model optimal raiding situations in a 25-man scenario. So if you're not reaching (or at least close to) the dps estimate in the spreadsheet, the usual standard questions apply. Were you receiving all the buffs that you enabled in the spreadsheet? Were those buffs up the entire time during fights or were they allowed to drop (i.e. DKs not renewing HoW, etc.)? If it was a multi-target fight, was there a full Sunder stack or an Expose Armor on your primary target? In a 10-man, there's a good chance that you are missing out on several buffs that would be assumed to be present in a 25-man, so make sure you model the 10-man scenario in your spreadsheet as closely as possible. Then try to check a WWS of the fights to see if the buffs you enabled were up the entire fight. If everybody else was doing their job, and your dps was still low, then the onus is on you to improve. Perhaps by managing or synching your cooldowns more effectively and maximizing your time on target.

Ah right, that makes sense, I forgot about the buffs part of le sheet -.-

But still, is there any reason that my DPS would go down when GT was put in place of Mirror of Truth even tho the spread sheets say it should be a decent dps increase?

You're probably not standing behind the target or attacking the target when GT procs for the full duration of the proc. The spreadsheet assumes that you are stationary and behind the target at all times, if you're not able to do so, you're not really getting the full benefit of the armor pen proc and the additional 83 hit that GT would provide would add little value when you are already at 330 hit. Therefore, having mirror of truth may work out for you more so if you find it difficult to stick to the target as the crit stat may provide a more immediate benefit. This is all speculation as I have no idea how you play. But based on your gear, on XT (one of the better fights to measure your dps as you should be stationary at all times given that you CLOS the bombs) you should see your numbers in range of the spreadsheet if you have the right raid composition and buffs. The spreadsheet is a guide and not law as mentioned several times in this thread as the spreadsheet cannot measure the skill of the player but do not doubt that the spreadsheet is modeling the DPS correctly.

I for one like to gem for expertise at times when my expertise numbers get too low as it makes it easier on my rotation maintenance. It's a personal choice and it does increase my DPS as it just works for me (i.e. rotation drops really messes me up)

In some cases, the damage increase has been eye-popping.

Again, this is all anecdotal and I realize I was probably too hasty in my switch to a rupture-less mace spec based on the gear at the time I posted here. I just wanted to get a feel for it in terms of mechanics and stay ahead of the curve a little.

I switched it all back to a CQC build with Agi stacked the other night -- but after three big upgrades from 25man Trial of the Crusader last night, I am at 609 ArP passive with 5/5 mace spec -- so I'm going back to Aldriana's experimental rupture0-less mace spec for the next few raids.

ArP gets a nerf in 3.2.2 and you need 1400 rating to cap it. Does it have an impact to your best in slot and to the ruptureless cycle Aldriana?

Pretty sure the nerf is still unconfirmed. It may be intended, it may also be a bug, and I think people have been reserving statements until we know more.

That said, I'm sure it does have an impact - how much of one, I'll leave to Ald to answer.

Welp.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Armor pen nerf in 3.2.2

Time to start adjusting BIS lists. Looks like it's axes all around.

If you want to see the effect in the combat spreadsheet, in the Calcs sheet (in excel: right click Equipment at the bottom, Unhide..., Calcs) change 1.25 in B359 and B370 to be 1.1, and fill right across those respective rows.

At my moderate level of ArPen (594) it looks like I'm going to have to regem Agility at the very least.

Um, you need to change more than those two rows. Specifically, in the 1.2 sheet, you need to change all of 359-362 and 370-373. In 1.3 beta 2, it's 96, 846-849, and 857-860.

Some changes to be observed relative to the previously suggested BiS list. Changing the neck from Collar to Charge of the Eredar (258 Horde)/Charge of the Demon Lord (258 Alliance) is a dps upgrade and gems now need to be evaluated taking the socket bonus into account, sometimes making 10agi+crit superior to 20arp.
Axes are naturally superior to the dagger+mace combination now albeit only with some 65dps, abit less using Eviscerates alone. That's the most interresting change I guess; axe based setups keeps Rupture in the cycle (although not with as high uptime as previously), but mace+dagger performs best using Ruptureless cycles.

The "Use Agi Value for ArPen?" in the settings sheet is enabled by default.

So looking at the Armor Pen changes in 3.2.2, I did some spreadsheet trials and figured having this info where everyone can see it, instead of asking over and over might help.

Old Armor Pen Cap: 1232
New Armor Pen Cap: 1400

Old Armor Pen Cap with Mjolnir: 567
New Armor Pen Cap with Mjolnir: 735

Then using the 1.2 version of the spreadsheet, the number I come up with look like this:
Best 245 setup using Mjolnir and gemming Armor Pen: 8549.1
Best 245 setup not using Mjolnir and gemming Armor Pen: 8528.2
Best 245 setup gemming Agi: 8443.8

Best 258 setup using Mjolnir and gemming Armor Pen: 9629.2
Best 258 setup not using Mjolnir and gemming Armor Pen: 9582.2
Best 258 setup gemming Agi: 9554.0

With all these setups, I personally found (though someone might correct me) that it was always best to use Hack and Slash, and get 4pc T9.

So overall the gear methodology changes only a little. It seems overall more just a nerf to our maximum potential. We still want the high Armor Pen pieces, and we are still gemming it until the cap as much as we can.

Lokar: Those DPS numbers you listed are still using rupture cycles (since you couldn't do rupture-less in the 1.2 sheet). I think it is widely agreed upon that by those gear levels you will want to switch to rupture-less. I can't check right now since you did not link the gear setup you used, but you should download the beta sheet and plug it in yourself.

For the record, I've played with the numbers in my working copy of the 1.3 beta (updated for 3.2.2), and the best setups I've found are around 9550 DPS; in particular, all the best setups are double-axe, and all permutations of rupture cycles vs evis cycles and softcap+mjolnir vs hardcap are within 10 dps of each other. My personal preference is for softcap + mjolnir w/eviscerate, which weighs in at 9551.7, but there are other reasonable options.

Mace/dagger setups come in about 20-25 DPS behind - still quite respectable and worth using if you can't get the best axes, but clearly inferior with access to everything.

Just looking at the 1.3 sheet for the first time and the biggest thing I notice is that even though I am about 150 points below the arpen soft cap attack power is showing as the recommended gems, Attack power is also showing as superior to agility, Is this a glitch or did the new calculations from the new sheet reveal this? It seems impossible to me.

Edit: looking now I see I had the use agi for arpen setting on, that still doesn't explain why agi is being valued under attack power however. especially considering I do have the 4 pc t8 still.

The implication of this is that it may be worthwhile to gem wicked instead of deadly in yellow slots with usable socket bonuses, but I'm not going to do anything until I confirm that this is in fact accurate.

Dark matter is causing you to crit cap, which is holding down the value of agility. Once you're no longer crit capped, agility is better.