If the EP value of expertise falls under 2 AP, then you wouldn't want to gem to cap exp, the stat weights would advise against it.

I'm not going to do the math one way or the other; I'm at work right now. I'm just making the observation.

For leveling, the gear choice will be slightly different.

-Activated trinkets of similar EP will be better than the passive ones, as being able to control when the trinket effect peaks is much more important when you are moving from mob to mob, then when you are beating on a target for a period of time.

-Personally I still value Cat's Swiftness over the new Surefooted. Sure, the new surefooted is significantly higher in terms of EP, but moving at a higher speed is going to help in any movement fight, whether one has ghost wolf or not. This is going to be even more true with leveling.

As to the expertise issue: I agree with the sense that if EP drops under 2AP, 2AP gems should be used over expertise gems, but even with the decay Expertise should remain our best stat for a while, especially now that we have to deal with parries as well, which is usually not considered when we run the simluation.

While leveling, yes, but optimizing for a 1 week window where your level is constantly changing is... Difficult to say the least. I would worry about optimizing for entry level raiding at 80.

As far as the trinket thing goes, I'd be interested to see whether or not you're actually increasing your damage output with controllable trinkets; I tend to not use my BC when farming ever, whereas I use it every 2 min like clockwork on boss fights. Most longer CD's don't get used while farming. I don't ever lust to kill things, or pop an elemental down, except in rare instances where I'm fighting something that's too difficult to take on without those things. For effective EP weight, the activation of my BC is worth 0 points to me while leveling.

You thought wrong then. Armor - Items - World of Warcraft

Maybe he meant there is no mail gear with expertise on it.

There are rings and necks, and no doubt will be some greens.

We are the only mail wearing spec that uses expertise, just as we were the only mail that used strength in BC. We can't expect to have custom gear made for us.

However, "mail" offers next to nothing. If a piece is itemized poorly, don't take it and if leather is itemized well don't pass it up.

No mail with expertise on it? Guess again. Ok, it's not much, but considering you can also gem for expertise this is pretty much a non issue.

Issue? No. It's just itemization, man. If you can make a piece of gear very good for two classes, or make it excellent for one and crap for the other, you're better off to do the former (remember all the trouble WE had with hunter loot in 2.0? No need to invert the problem). We use expertise and hunters don't. There are lots of slots and you don't need the same stats in each. You've got neck, back, rings, trinkets, weapons, enchants and gems that are shared by all classes (more or less); these are the slots you're going to see a lot of expertise in, along with class specific sets.

Don't forget guys that you can enchant your gloves with Expertise. That's a big chunk right there.

It's definitely looking like we will be doing a lot of gem juggling like rogues do.
Get a new item of gear - Am I over the hit cap? Remove a hit gem. Am I under the expertise cap now? Add an expertise gem or change glove enchant.

I don't think anyone will enchant their gloves with Expertise.

The enchant gives 15 exp, the other options are 35 AP, 20 hit or 44 AP (very expensive enchant - probably rare).

For PvE gloves you would be better off enchanting them with the 20 hit since you can get the same amount of exp on gems as hit so you gain 5 stat points that way.

The only slots that we're unlikely to have expertise available on mail items are boots, belt, and wrists--in other words, non-set, armor-type-specific slots. I really think any worry over this is an overreaction, particularly given that our set pieces look pretty well-itemized so far. This is a non-issue.

I ran the sim on my gear, using WF/WF WF/FT with all the different glyph offerings.

Using WF/LL Glyphs and WF/FT, bumps my dps up by around 20-50 over all other options including the old SoE glyph. But i have yet to test this setup against a boss.

Also, I cracked well over 2400 dps on Brutallus last night on recount. (using WF/WF combo with only the WF glyph and using the castrandom/scroll macro.) I still need to review the WWS of the fight though for official numbers.

I think Rounced is saying that by replacing hit gems with expertise gems and then getting the hit glove enchant, you end up with a larger total (Hit + Expertise) than going with the expertise glove enchant.

No, he's saying that the 20 Hit glove enchant has 5 "stat points" more than 15 expertise when it comes to the enchants, but that on gems the amount of expertise on a gem is the same as the amount of hit rating on a gem.

If for arguments sake, your expertise EP value is 3, and Hit EP is 2, then the enchants are worth 45 and 40 EP respectively. On the gems you can get 20 Hit or 20 Expertise, which would produce a difference of 20 EP between the 2 gems.

It depends entirely on what you have on your gear. If you are close to the expertise cap, then getting the enchant might be a better route than gemming for expertise since it's a smaller overall chunk.

Actually that is exactly what I was saying.

Gems also offer more options as you can do a split gem with hit/ap or exp/ap or something of that nature and hit the cap easier then using the glove enchants.

Blizzard has made Exp=Hit on the gems but not on the enchants, probably because the exp enchant has more PvP implications then the hit enchant. So use the hit enchant on your PvE gloves and cap your exp with gems and you will be better off then going the other way. Also if you are hit capped with your gear but need expertise then use the gems and enchant the gloves with the 35 AP (44 if you can get it) enchant since 32 AP = 16 Exp with the gems so the AP enchant is better for your overall stat value then the Exp enchant.

edited to fix a double post


Is there really any need to report this?

Maybe if you were comparing 2 weeks worth of Brutallus with exactly the same gear and a perfect complement of buffs for each attempt and made 1 minor change and were reporting just that....but even then it's a sub 3 minute fight and how can that be applicable to really showing anything concrete at all since so much of the performance is dependent on the RNG.

(btw I did 2967 on my last Brut of TBC and I know Malan broke 3k, so really not that much worth crowing about there anyway)

double post, sorry

It's going to be close to impossible to set up a rule such as the rogues have (unless you're fine risking it being wildly inacurate) as ours depend on so many different things (hell, we can't even set up a fairly acurate EP table as everyone as so different EPs depending on gear). For rogues a faster weapon will always be better, so if they have 2 weapons that are exactly the same but one is 1.3 and one is 1.5 they will always choose the 1.3 weap. That's not the case for us, if we have two weapons exactly the same we will choose the slower one.

The old mantra of "You'll have to sim it" still applies here.

Since people are throwing Expertise values around and such, figured i'd chime in with potion options, not sure if someones said this already or not (i'm not keeping up with the thread really, so much bickering and people jabbing at other over matters of semantics).
Currently based off available flasks/potions, the flask runs at 180 AP, the best guardian elixir being 45 Int, and a wide spectrum of value 45 stat battle elixirs, of teh stats: agi, expertise, crit, hit, haste, and armor pen.
Little quick math shows that when the EP value of any of those stats is equal to 3, then battle/guardian combo is equal to the flask, with a higher ep value obviously making it better.
Comparing the mats, the potential prices arent that bad for the elixirs vs the flask, but it'll likely depend on how terrible your guild is, unless you're a dedicated min/maxer. Agi/Exp use the new terocone (herb mainly used for melee) and the new felweed (herb used for ALOT) and the Int uses mats from an herb that yeilds both types (though its limited to zuldrak to farm, that could suck). Compared to the flask using Lichbloom which is the new netherbloom, lotuses, and a rather annoying herb Fire Leaf, which is a 50/50 loot form one plant type with limited spawns in only 1 zone that is also useful as its own consumable for melee herbalists.

Well, whatever, we'll see how the economy plays out, but theres some interesting info if you didnt know, and if you did well ignore the post then.

You have to consider the item budget and caps here, not the inherent EP value of stats. Exp cap being X, hit cap being Y. If you can reach x+Y using gems, fine, go with the 44 AP enchant. If you need either the hit or exp enchant to reach the combined cap, use 20 hit. This nets you the overall most gain in EP and thus DPS. Pretty basic stuff. The EP values only comes into play when you can't reach the caps. Looking at epic gear at 80 I think we should be able to reach both.

Please be aware that I apologize ahead of time if anything in this post has been repeated, I just don't have enough time in the day to read all the posts.

Previous to my testing I was in a toss up of choosing between the following:

Glyph of Lightning Bolt
Glyph of Water Mastery
Glyph of Earth Elemental Totem

Glyph of Windfury Weapon(Obvious at all levels)
Glyph of Stormstrike(Obvious at 80, but now we can have 3 majors)
Glyph of Earth Shock(Will need to be tested at 80)

I'm pulling in the ES because of what Talaus wrote on 10-28 about the GCD conflict.

I have run tests with LB, Water Mastery, and Earth Elemental glyphs to see which is more efficient by seeing which help my fights last longer. I choose to test manually rather than via sims for many reasons (user error and I feel it's a better calculator or what you're actually going to be doing). Anyway, I was fighting the level 70 dummys. See my gear and spec here or here if armory doesn't work. (I realize that my hit is far too high, I was gearing in hopes of maxing white hit, but now see that it's pointless(though I may continue and give it a shot later since ~45+% of my damage comes from white damage). Feel free to ask what my EP's are to choose the gear I did and how I got the EP's) Anyway, my tests included the following process:

I open with SS > ES after GCD > LL after GCD > wait for MW5 and LB > rinse/repeat always doing LB if I had MW5

I did not use SR in my tests. (If anyone has a better idea of how I should test, I'm open to suggestions)

My results (click here) did not show anything of what I thought they would be. I'm open for discussion on why they turned out like so.

Also, has anyone noticed that they've removed LvB from Maelstrom in the expansion?? So this mean that Maelstrom is strictly going to be for LB/CL (as far as damage goes. This also removes the need for possibly getting the FS glyph. So it looks like at 80 we're going to be doing the same thing we are now. LvB is going to be completely worthless since it's going to be a LONG cast. This is the reasoning for choosing the glyphs I have. So is anyone else pissed that they've done this?? I was looking forward to HUGE crits on LvB!!

Also, has anyone been able to prove that Static Shock is viable at 80??

Another option for testing is Guru's Elixir which gives +20 to all stats. With Kings, it's actually +22 to all stats which gives 67 AP depending on your level of Ancestral Knowledge (expected is 3/5).

The value of the guardian elixir also depends on your level of Ancestral Knowledge. With 3/5 AK expected, you get 52 Intellect with Kings up.

So is 22 str, 22 agl, 75 Int, 22 Sta, and 22 Spirit worth trading for 180 AP. Depends on your sim results. Yes, I know that stamina and spirit don't count toward damage but if the result is close, these extra stats do put this combination over the top.

Ancestral Knowledge is looking better as a talent. Arcane Intellect gives 60 Int and talented Mark gives 51. With the best guardian elixir granting 45 Int, if any battle elixir comes up viable, that means a minimum bonus of 156. With 350-380 available through gear, the value of those points has gone up.

Edit: grammar

Last night I was watching my stats change with imbues and totems and I noticed that flametounge weapon and flametounge totem are stacking in my spell bonus damage. Is this intended? Just wondering since the weapon imbues and related totems did not stack pre 3.0.2

This is not of any real importance but I thought was amusing, regarding the weapon imbue macro posted Ilmatar on page 144 post #3590.
I had just finished reallocating my talent points after doing some healing when I noticed the flametounge bonuses stacking. I still had the trainer selected and I am very sleep deprived having a newborn. The flametounge totem landed on the trainer and for some cloudy headed reason I tried to right click the totem to dismiss it instead of the timer. I play on satellite so I average 1500ms latency so nothing gives me instant feedback. It would seem that instead I right clicked on the trainer again though the window had yet to pop up when I activated my WF/FT macro, as I click the macro a second time to get my FT imbue the latency caught up and I heard the jingling of change and was spammed with "you have unlearned stormstrike" and all of the other talent point dependent enhancement skills then the final "you do not have enough gold".