Beta release number 2. Still quite a bit of polish missing, but all reported bugs, plus the cycle issues I found myself, should now be fixed. Answers are thus somewhat less likely to be wrong. All previous caveats still apply; let me know if you find anything wierd.

Edit: Download removed; see post 1224 for latest beta.

[Armbands of the Wary Lookout] haven't been included in any of these spreadsheets so far. Not sure why, but if you have been using them (and using the spreadsheet) you should be well accustomed to simply adding them in yourself.

The Agility and ArP are the same EP because you have the option to equal them checked. To uncheck this go to the Settings tab and on line two change the value to 0. I don't remember the exact purpose of this new option, but I *think* it was to better calculate ArP when you are above cap. I could be wrong though. There is a post earlier from Aldriana better explaining it.

Edit: Aldriana, maybe I am completely blanking on something but why is my MH crit cap different from my OH crit cap if I am Undead? I could understand this to be the case with Orcs using Fist/Dagger, but not Undead.

On a side note I arrived at about the same DPS as the previous 1.3 beta (2.7 dps higher actually).

Edit 2: The biggest change I notice though is something was changed with either how [Banner of Victory] is calculated, or how [Darkmoon Card: Greatness] was calculated. In the first beta BoV was giving me a small boost in DPS over DMC:G (4+), whereas in this new beta it is showing a DPS loss in the same gear.

Great work, appreciate it.

I do have a quick question, between the latest sheet and the previous one before that, I noticed a dps increase (10dps) by going from rune-etched knightblade to Remorse ( yeah, I"m still rocking some oldies), wherease before the rune-etched blade was a clear winner. My gear is the same, nothing new. Any new mechanics that would account for this?

So, my initial theory to both of the last two questions/bug reports is that beta one had some poorly thought-out sections of the cycle model that were leading to discontinuities - that is, there were places where a small improvement of gear would create a large improvement of DPS due to moving to a cycle with significantly superior properties - for instance, in one case I changed a Fractured Cardinal Ruby to a Deadly Ametrine to get a set bonus, and my DPS improved by ~30 DPS. So I'm guessing that the items were previously on either sides of such a breakpoint, meaning that the new continuous model adjusts their relative quality.

However, to be sure, I'd need to see the settings you had in your sheet - if you'd like to send a copy to my EJ email account (again, it is what you think it is, but PM me if you want confirmation), I'll take a closer look.

Hello i would like to know how the t9 first bonus has been taken into account in the sheet. do you have a proc rate ? AFAIK it's very small , and i wonder how you calculated it .

2T8 is to the best of my knowledge implemented as a flat 1energy/3secs.
2T9 is calculated in cell AR670 as the product of Rupture duration, Rupture applications per second (which depending on gear setup works out to one every 22seconds or so) and the 2% proc chance per 2 seconds denoted as 0.01 in the sheet.
This works out to a proc every 108 seconds, which, judging by more or less ill informed threads on the wow-forums, is mirrored by empirical findings.
With the high Rupture cycle, this means 2T9 is slightly superior to 2T8.

Thanks for the explanation. 2t9 can be better than 2t8 , but 4t8.25 are still better than 4t9 (232 ). I will spreadsheet to see it 2xt9.25+ 2xt8,25 are worth instead of 4xt8.25 , but i think another dude 3 pages ago made all the math and noted t8 bonuses doesn't justify the change.

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.

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.