Since we're on the subject of Illustration of the Dragonsoul and healers, the vast majority of the healers in my guild think there's nothing wrong with them rolling against a DPS for it. Am I wrong in thinking they're being loot whores? Or am I the one being a loot whore? Obviously it's BIS for most healers and all caster DPS, but assuming I'm right, I'd like proof from someone smarter than me saying it's better for DPS than heals.

Deleted: miss read the post.

I think it depends on alot of factors, if you take our guild for example we have had 2 dying curse and 2 illustrations in 3 months while we get the healing trinket from naxx on a weekly basis so it always goes to a dps partly because of that. The 2nd point, please correct me if Im wrong, is that there are more options for healers then dps when it comes to trinkets from 25 man raiding.

As you said, it is the BiS trinket for every single caster and healer. Healers benefit from spellpower just like casters do, and there is nothing wrong with them for wanting that trinket.

Deleted.

DPS will have a noticable DPS upgrade from that extra 100 spellpower that this trinket provides, and while i'm sure healers would get bigger greater healers or whatever with this, they have quite a few more options that DPS do, and their alternatives drop quite a bit more often than IOTD

It appears that Illustration of the Dragon Soul is still better than the known trinkets from Ulduar. Thoughts?

New Items in Patch 3.1 - World of Warcraft

I totally agree. The reason is that a healer can somewhat waste spellpower in overheal, whereas a dps cannot actually overdps. I'd be happy go into details but it seems that long posts are not possible.

Well on my alt disc healer, I've found that I want a balance of spell power, crit, mana regen, and haste so I wouldn't roll against a caster DPS as it would be more of a situational trinket. For casters, it won't ever leave your trinket slot.

I wouldn't say this. Quite frankly I am not a fan of the stacking trinkets. On movement fights (like sapph) you need to LT to keep them up which with the glyph is nice, but typically the reason you have to do this is because you are avoiding damage. Which kinda makes it like playing chicken. Andon Ignis if you get hit by his flame jet (which you shouldn't) and eat an 8 second silence you are going to lose your stack.

While the new trinkets might not have the same DPS value weighting, they come damn close. Now use trinkets have their own draw back of sometimes you get CC'd or taken out of DPS right when you blow them. But they do work nicer when you can chain them with other abilities or need to save them for a burn phase.

Living Flame is particularly choice, but I suspect it will be replacing Dying Curse since I don't know what I would do with that much hit in the trinket slots. Although, if glyph of LT is the beast that is to be in all warlock specs having 2/3rds of my hit in my trinket row does give me a lot of options for picking up spirit/haste/crit in other slots.

I will probably be hanging on to IotDS for the duration of Ulduar, but I think it will be swapped out for some fights where in current content there was no reason to.

I think one of the interesting thing about Ulduar's trinkets is that it gives a little more flexibility than we saw previously. Using Affliction's gear scale values I'll do some really cheap math and see what values come up - this is my first post here so hopefully I don't make some glaring errors.

Assuming the procs of Flare of the Heavens/Elemental Focus Stone are the same as Dying Curse (20% proc, 45 sec ICD) it'll take roughly 5 seconds to proc (minimum of 2.5 maximum of 7.5 in combat), 10 seconds for the proc (sometimes you'll get down to 8.5 seconds, depending on your GCD, so in my math I'll put it as 9.25 seconds worth of the benefit), and then 35 seconds for ICD to finish, so the time from start to finish is 50 seconds.

Dying Curse - 71 Hit Rating + 765 Spell Power for 10 seconds
71*(1.85) + [(765*9.25)/50]*(1.45) = 336.56125

Flare of the Heavens - 120 Critical Strike + 850 Spell Power for 10 seconds
120*(.85) + [(850*9.25)/50]*(1.45) = 330.0125

Illustration of the Dragon Soul - 200 Spell Power
200*(1.45) = 290

Living Flame - 107 Hit Rating + 550 Spell Power for 20 seconds
107*(1.85) + [(550*20)/120]*(1.45) = 289.617

Elemental Focus Stone - 108 Hit Rating + 522 Haste Rating for 10 seconds
108*(1.85) + [(522*9.25)/50]*(.93) = 268.0101

Eye of Broodmother - 87 Critical Strike + 125 Spell Power
87*(.85) + 125*(1.45) = 255.2

Scale of Fates - 125 Spell Power + 432 Haste Rating for 20 seconds
125*(1.45) + [(432*20)/120]*(.93) = 248.21

Then again - use procs are very useful for burning phases, and for controlled burst (and reapplication of DoTs). There is something to be said for them that doesn't quite fit into my cheap math, just like having a mini heroism on Scale of Fates is pretty useful.

I was saying 2.5 seconds would be the minimum on average to return a proc - if someone were to spam curse of agony with the improved curse talent it would be 2.5 seconds for 5 casts of it, or 7.5 seconds for 5 shadow bolts to proc it. In general it will vary depending on the situation and modeling because of priority rotations. But maybe I'm going by 3.09 when I was casting Shadow Bolt to open as Affliction and then Haunt right before my DoTs. Sorry if my attempt was wrong then.

With the changes that have been made to spirit and how warlocks use it I was trying to figure out if Illustration of the Dragon Soul - Item - World of Warcraft and Majestic Dragon Figurine - Item - World of Warcraft combined with 4pc T7 bonus and life tap glyph would be better for me than Illustration of the Dragon Soul - Item - World of Warcraft and Sundial of the Exiled - Item - World of Warcraft as a 53-0-18 build.

I have had no luck with winning dying curse yet. Any help would be great. I am still in awe of the math and work that people put into figuring this out. I am slowly trying to understand how it all works.

Needing a bit of help on this, because I am so very torn on what to use...I have a boatload of hit on my gear just through itemization. The World of Warcraft Armory I have been using Dying Curse and IotDS, mainly because I believe that they are best in slot based on everything that I have been reading here. But I wonder if I should be replacing Dying Curse with something that is a bit more static and has an additional benefit that I can acually use. Here are my choices available in my bag:

Elemental Focus Stone (obviously not, but I thought I should mention it.)
Embrace of the Spider
Extract of Necromantic Power
Sundial of the Exiled

Thanks for the tips and I am looking forward to your input.

In the best case, demonic aegis/life tap glyph/fel armor + fully stacked, the majestic dragon figuring is ~106 spell damage. Run your comparison figures from there with your stat weightings. For me it's worse than the sundial, in this best case, so it's not worth modeling more precisely (which would only reduce the value of the dragon figurine).

Using the same formula & numbers you posted Living Flame actually comes out to 330.86666...

It was stated in earlier posts, that the patch was going to change the Death card's haste to crit and lower its ICD. I see that the haste has been changed to crit and it's damage on proc has been increased, but have heard nothing of the ICD. Can anyone confirm the ICD reduction on 3.1 live? I would test myself, but don't know anyone with the card at this time. I currently run with DC and EoNP-due to the lack of IotDS drops-but if the Death card has in fact had it's ICD reduced, I feel it would be a good upgrade to the EoNP. (depending if the new ICD is 15 or 30 secs) Only losing 10 crit but having near double the damage on proc as that of the Extract. If anyone has any info or has done any testing on this, your results would be greatly appreciated. Thank You.

It is wrong to use a scale factor like 1.85 for hit rating- it simply wont hold up in the real world.
Sure, that may be how much dps you gain per hit rating- but in the real world someone with anywhere near half decent gear will not be incapable of hitcapping themselves.

Worst case scenario: You trade 19 spellpower for 16 hit rating. Meaning that the maximum real world value of hit rating is 19/16*[Spell power scale factor=1.45]=1.72

Truthfully though, since a lot of best in slot gear has plenty of hit on it- you will go well beyond the hit cap if you assume the 1.72 scale factor. Realistically you should assume a scale factor even lower than that.

That's absolutely true - but usually what I end up doing is comparing the additional gain of "points" on a hit item vs the amount of hit it gives and then see how the value ratio stacks up with the other comparisons between BiS with hit and BiS without hit. So for instance Conqueror's Deathbringer Robe gets a score of 456.03 with 97 hit rating on it - next best non-hit item is Robes of the Umbral Brute, with a score of 351.24 which is roughly 105 points below the T8 for 97 points of hit, meaning we're gaining more than 1 point per hit rating. I follow that pattern til I get as close as possible to hit cap. This gives me the ability to still maintain the "raw" value of these items with their hit - then maximize the amount of value I get in my "hit" items. In general so far from Ulduar gear I've pretty much stayed close to the philosophy if I'm getting more than 1 point per point of hit I gain it's worth keeping.

The best way (I think) is to simply use he known stat weights enter them into wowhead, and decrease the value of hit rating until all the "best in slot" items total to the hit cap. Something like this:

(This is for 0/41/30, scale factors taken from the simulationcraft on 3.1 thread)
Hit = Items - World of Warcraft
36+41+73+46+42+65+51+70+46+27+52+108+107+53=817

Now lets drop the value of hit to a more sensible level:
hit = Items - World of Warcraft
36+41+73+46+42+51+70+46+27+52+108+43=635

Wow, with a scaler of 1.3 on hit we still get way too much, lets go even lower:
Hit = Items - World of Warcraft
36+41+46+42+51+70+46+27+43=402

Note that value's of trinkets is going way out of whack due to not considering the /use or /proc effects it has. For a *really* good comparison that will have to get compensated for, however what we can see is that even if we value 1 hit rating as low as 1 dps- we still end up with over 400 hit in best in slot gear. I'm guessing that if you lowered it to about 0.9 you'd end up with about the right amount of hit.

LT rank 1 perhaps?

Has anyone been able to find out the value of a /use trinket yet?

I keep seeing /equip trinkets passive proc’s out valuing /use trinkets, which seems incorrect.

Fact is under optimal conditions /equip trinkets like [Flare of the Heavens] & [Dying Curse] are BiS but the chance that optimal conditions arise are very slim. While a trinket like [Living Flame] would be vastly superior not only cause of its /use but cause there is a major lack of hit on Ulduar 25/Hard gear.

Most calculations for current trinkets are not factoring in the value of /use, and I would like to know if anyone has been able to put a value on this cause I do not see anything on these forums. (I am sure there are quite a few people trying to get this value as well, and it would be nice to get this info and post it into the 3.1 compendium.)