In-Depth Arms DPS Discussion - Page 106

hellord · 08/24/09, 10:55 AM

Originally Posted by Paribus

This question is probably only answered through the spreadsheets, but I wanted to see if anyone had insight on this issue. It has been explained in great detail how it does not benefit to go above the 50.32% soft cap IF you have access to GT/MR. Its obvious that having 100% chance to waste the item budget of a proc is a bad idea.

What has not been explained (or I have missed due to my own negligence) is the breaking point at which passive ArP surpasses the need to use either of these trinkets. Given the limited uptime of these trinkets and the higher weight of ArP compared to STR at easily acquired levels of ArP, it stands to reason that the threshhold for making the transition to passve ArP with other trinket choices is not a massive leap from the 50.32% softcap that this thread is so focused on(if any has the actual math for the proposed 90% above).

My guess is that the breaking point is peronal in nature and depends on how much your gear choices sack overall item budget for ArP (ilvl 200/219 ToC ArP v. ilvl 226+ non-ArP items). Having said that, any insight at all is appreciated.

The problem in finding a clear answer is that is very dependant on your gear. ArP value is dependant on itself AND strength and once it's worth gemming for it, it should be worth more than STR up to the cap and if you only want to compare how much passive arp you'd need to replace an arp proc you have to consider its value: 20% uptime, 50% arp roughly.
Considering you would be at 50% arp, stepping to 100% would grant you 25% damage for 20% of the time, resulting in a 5% average damage done. To achieve the same passive increase you'd need around 62% arp.

However what makes the trinket much better than the equivalent passive arp is that you can stack cooldowns increasing its relative value and is very complex to estimate an exact number.

This is just napkin math, so feel free to correct me or try to play with the spreadsheet to check the passive ArP needed to replace a GT or MR in comparison to other trinkets.

BWarner · 08/24/09, 11:59 AM

Originally Posted by nothingtoxic

i have a question about the dps/outfitter program Rawr and about some of my stats, i recelntly remgemd all my gear with ArP and in wow it says i have 51.xx% with gear alone so its 61% with battle stance but in rawr it says i have 71% so i cant see where the other 10% is comeing from

It very likely does have to do with Rawr "averaging" the proc of Mjolnir and Grim Toll. This is a known issue, and should be fixed either in the next or the subsequent public build (v2.2.14 or v2.2.15). The plan is to make so that instead of implementing it the way it is now, Rawr will add the maximum amount of ArP value that would be utilized in any given proc situation.

For example, say you have 30% passive ArP. If the trinket procs, you would get the entire value out of it for the duration of the proc. However, if you start out with 70% ArP, the program would calculate 100% ArP effectiveness - 70% passive, and the program would only be "counting" 30% ArP as the proc of the trink for the duration. So, it's a sorta-trick, where the program will "modify", on the fly, the proc value of the trink, based on your ArP at the time.

jimmiejackso · 08/25/09, 6:02 AM

If you're a arms warrior and you're under expertise cap. Do you think we should gem for expertise till we get cap? and if you're not capped in expertise will u dps drop alot?

Shrakz · 08/25/09, 8:19 PM

This is just up on MMO:

Sword Specialization now gives you a 2/4/6/8/10% chance to get an extra attack on the same target after hitting your target with your Sword. (Up from 1/2/3/4/5%)

They are buffing sword spec, will be good to try this out on the ptr, but I doubt it's gonna be enough to compete with poleaxe spec.

Córin · 08/25/09, 9:32 PM

I guess i will give it a Try. What do you think, could Swords become competetive now? I really hope so.

tichphys · 08/25/09, 9:40 PM

Originally Posted by jimmiejackso

If you're a arms warrior and you're under expertise cap. Do you think we should gem for expertise till we get cap? and if you're not capped in expertise will u dps drop alot?

Expertise for arms has some strange effects, as compared to fury, due to the ability to convert dodged abilities into overpowers. While certainly it is always less desirable to have a swing (white or special) be dodged, the ability to recover some of the damage has a tendency to reduce the SEP of expertise. Unfortunately, "recover some of the damage" is a pretty amorphous thing to calculate, as it depends on a lot of things. For one thing, the rotation priority you use should influence expertise SEP to some degree. For example, if you prioritize OP below either MS or EXEC, except to avoid losing a TfB proc (I believe this is the commonly-accepted priority), then there is a higher likelihood that an overpower from dodge would proc while TfB were already active (this means it was wasted). OTOH, if for some reason you tend to use OP before, say EXEC, then you are clearing your TfB buff early in the cycle and a dodge-procced OP may not be lost.

That all being said, for now your best bet is to check your gear against the latest version of Landoul's spreadsheet you can find. I don't recall, but I think the most recent version (pre 3.2) did not count possible overpowers from dodges. This would mean a potentially inflated SEP of expertise. As a point of reference, I do remember my expertise SEP being below Armor Pen SEP (albiet both ~0.1 above 1.0 SEP), when I was arms; this was, however, with armor pen at something like 75% passive+10% b-stance=85% (no mace,no trinkets), and is likely an outlier case.

I recall reading from Landsoul's post that the new spreadsheet will attempt to calculate a more accurate expertise SEP based on possible additional overpowers from dodge; look to that thread for more information.

redvendl · 08/25/09, 9:44 PM

I still cant see swords beating out pole/axe. the 5% crit damage is just too powerful. Especially with more gear just making that more and more powerful. they need to make a real effort to change the overwhelming advantage using an axe has. I just dont see +5% on the proc chance doing it.

I remember seeing numbers from people doing full naxx runs with swords and it came out to be around 2-3% of your damage at most? so double that to 4-6% essentially? i think the 5% crit and 5% crit damage if you did the math would be much more then 4-6% of your damage. I think it will be like mace is now. Where if you have insanely low crit levels having a sword would be beneficial. (maybe use all that bad plate with haste instead of crit on it??) but i just cant see that happening with tier9 being out.

tentfox · 08/25/09, 9:48 PM

I edited Landsoul's spreadsheet to take into account the change to Sword Spec. The result I got was that Aesir's Edge, and of course Voldrethar, coming out ahead of Lotrafen (which I have at the moment). The later by a significant margin. However I am a Human with quite low Expertise so the racial for swords certainly pushed things in favour of the swords.

I then however tested with a different race and Aesir's Edge still held out in front of Lotrafen, this certainly looks like it will mean that arms warriors can look at more weapons than just axe's in the future.

Eliminate2 · 08/25/09, 9:57 PM

Anyone know if 2p t9 > 4o t8.5? Or is it better to switch to t9 when you have 4 pieces?

redvendl · 08/25/09, 10:04 PM

Originally Posted by tentfox

I edited Landsoul's spreadsheet to take into account the change to Sword Spec. The result I got was that Aesir's Edge, and of course Voldrethar, coming out ahead of Lotrafen (which I have at the moment). The later by a significant margin. However I am a Human with quite low Expertise so the racial for swords certainly pushed things in favour of the swords.

I then however tested with a different race and Aesir's Edge still held out in front of Lotrafen, this certainly looks like it will mean that arms warriors can look at more weapons than just axe's in the future.

you also have to take into account that Lotrafen is 3.4 speed where as aesirs is 3.6. that alone when compared individually without a spec makes aesirs much better. the new ToC axe is 3.6 which would be a more comparable axe to put up against a sword. But certainly that means sword might be viable again. we'll have to see when landsoul's new spreadsheet comes out.

tentfox · 08/25/09, 10:10 PM

Originally Posted by redvendl

you also have to take into account that Lotrafen is 3.4 speed where as aesirs is 3.6. that alone when compared individually without a spec makes aesirs much better. the new ToC axe is 3.6 which would be a more comparable axe to put up against a sword. But certainly that means sword might be viable again. we'll have to see when landsoul's new spreadsheet comes out.

However before this change, even with Aesir's vastly superior speed, Lotrafen won out against it. I was simply pointing out that this is no longer the case. However in trial the best weapon is Justicebringer so the changing to a usable sword spec seems a little inconsequential now. However it is good to see that we no longer have to turn down better itemised weapons in the future purely because they are swords.

redvendl · 08/25/09, 10:42 PM

Originally Posted by tentfox

However before this change, even with Aesir's vastly superior speed, Lotrafen won out against it. I was simply pointing out that this is no longer the case. However in trial the best weapon is Justicebringer so the changing to a usable sword spec seems a little inconsequential now. However it is good to see that we no longer have to turn down better itemised weapons in the future purely because they are swords.

i was saying aesirs won out if you only compared the two weapons individually. when you factored in specs then ya, lotrafen became better.

Anduryondon · 08/26/09, 6:23 AM

Originally Posted by Eliminate2

Anyone know if 2p t9 > 4o t8.5? Or is it better to switch to t9 when you have 4 pieces?

In the Spreadsheet 4t8,5 gives me ~100dps while 6% ARP gives me ~90 DPS, so i would go with 2 t9, because of the stat difference on the gear.

Madarb · 08/26/09, 7:31 AM

Something to remember, though, that everyone who played with Sword spec / Windfury in TBC probably knows; the more spike rage you gain with Sword Spec, the more dps you can output with Heroic Strikes and Cleaves. With sword spec and a 55/8/8 spec, you gain a huge number more opportunities for heroic strike, since you have a rage-gaining proc attached to 10% of all your swings, allowing you to queue heroic strike without fear of a rage drought.

I wish I had the weapon access to charcopy over and get hard numbers; this could be of huge synergistic benefit to an incite / heroic strike glyph / sword build.

Allport · 08/26/09, 10:33 AM

I've been through these pages a few times now and although there is a lot of discussion on it, it seems there hasn't been a conclusion just yet to this question. While using Rawr last night, i used the optimizer option and it told me to switch most of my gems out to Inscribed Ametrines. Now i finally got the Plated greaves of providence last night after weeks of never seeing them drop. I'm thinking i finally broke a threshold of armor pen because i now when i use optimizer it says instead of the Inscribed Ametrines i have switch out for, it tells me to use all Fractured Cardinal Rubies. I've also added all the equipment i've gotten in this patch to Landsouls old spreadsheet. It also now says to switch out all my gems for armor pen, but remove Grim Toll and use the banner instead now. This would give me about 80% passive armor pen, but according to a lot of posts here, you guys suggest to use Grim toll instead of Banner until you can have 100% passive armor pen with the banner. So my question is why are the spreadsheets telling me to use Banner instead of Grim Toll even though it would only give me 80% Armor Pen. Then on top of that, using the Banner instead of Grim toll would drop my hit to about 200, which i always regardless of the controversy about how some people believe you can be under cap, am between 263-300 hit.

I know on the rules you say multiple times to not ask to have your "hand-held" and ask how not to suck. I believe this is more of a question about passive armor pen of 80% being better than 51% passive armor pen and Grim Toll, with a definite answer instead of the maybe's.