Piercing the Veil, or something

As a semi-segue from my post earlier today, I wanted to throw this little tidbit out there.

Say you have 4 available sockets to put some gems in, and you have 2 Great Dawnstones (+8 Spell Hit Rating), 2 Runed Living Rubies (+9 Spell Damage), and 4 Veiled Noble Topaz (+4 Spell Hit/+5 Spell Damage).  Also suppose that the socket bonuses on the items in question are all terrible and you’d wish they’d die so you wouldn’t have to look at them.  Or you just don’t care about them.  Either way:

Gemming the Dawnstones and Rubies: total +16 spell hit, +18 spell damage.

Gemming the Topazes: +16 spell hit, +20 spell damage.

One of those little rounding things that happens with item budgets that can work in your favor.  Very minor difference of course, but hey!  It’s there!

A similar thing happens with mana per 5.  On 2 Brilliant Dawnstones (+8 Intellect) and 2 Lustrous Stars of Elune (+3 Mana per 5) vs. 4 Dazzling Talasites (+4 Int/+2 Mp5):

Gemming the Dawnstones and Stars: +16 intellect, +6 mana per 5.

Gemming the Talasites: +16 intellect, +8 mana per 5.

As such, the value of the Lustrous Star of Elune is pretty low, given that where you normally get a 100% increase from multicolor to main color, you only get a 50% in this case.

Hit Rating for Casters

Just echoing the thought so it’s out there on the internet in yet another place.

And no, not melee hit rating.  Inner Fire no longer adds attack power.  Silly geese.

Spell Hit Rating!  The general sentiment you will get for casters looking to increase their dps in raids is thus:  get hit capped, then stack spell damage.  Yet, I see many casters still ignoring spell hit on gear drops and gemming spell crit.  This is not as efficient!  By far!

Again, just echoing information you could read in any number of places on the internet, just hoping that having it in yet another spot will allow yet more folks out there to be illuminated.

So, say you have a spell.  Let’s assume for now that you have 0% spell crit and 0% additional spell hit.  Say that spell hits for exactly 1000 per hit, and we’re going to cast it at a boss 100 times.  Assuming no resists, no crits, etc, you will deal 100,000 damage.  But, thanks to the resist system, it is not that simple.

A boss is equivalent to a level 73 mob.  As such, this boss will have a 16% chance to resist your spells.  Completely.  Zero damage.  A little “Resist” message shoots up instead of a damage number.

So then, let’s factor that in.  Over 100 casts, 17% of those (wait, didn’t I say 16%?  read more in the next paragraph) will be resisted.  100 casts, 17 resists, 83 hits.  83 x 1000 = 83000.  That’s significantly less damage!

Let’s now throw in some talents and intellect-based spell crit chance.  Let’s go with an easy 15%.  Crits replace hits, so now we have 100 casts: 17 resists, 68 hits, 15 crits.

A little bit on the mechanics of spells first:  by default, when a spell crits, it deals one and a half times as much damage.  Our 1000 hits will become 1500 crits.  (There are talents that change this but we will look at those later.)  Also, there appears to be (after much testing by other players) a 1% chance for a mob to resist your spells, no matter how much spell hit you have.  So that 16% I mentioned before is actually 17%, but there’s just nothing you can do about that final 1% except maybe grumble loudly.  And then I’m not sure what that would do for you, but feel free.

Continuing from there then, 17 resists for 0 damage.  68 hits for 1000 damage each (68,000 total) and 15 crits for 1500 damage each (22,500 total).  90,500 total.  Working our way back up there!  All right, well.  Ignoring talents that increase spell hit for now, and lets take away our spell crit talents as well as they’ve served their purpose for now.  Back to 83000 damage total, 17 resists and 83 hits.

All right.  On this test caster guy who’s casting some random damage spell hitting for 1000, let’s give him a blank piece of loot, say some pants so he’s not completely naked, and it has but one gem slot.  No socket bonus or anything to complicate matters, just a gem slot.  And also suppose that Blizzard decided that all gems except the Gleaming Dawnstone (8 spell crit) and Great Dawnstone (8 spell hit) were overpowered.  So that’s all we have.

Which one should Mr. or Mrs. Caster use for fighting our boss? Let’s assume a base 1% increased chance to hit and crit, so that we don’t end up critting less than 1% of the time.

At level 70, 12.6 spell hit rating is 1% spell hit.  22.1 (or something close) spell crit rating is 1% spell crit.  If we use 8 spell hit, we get 8/12.6 = 0.635% less chance for our spells to be resisted, which would lower it from 16% to 15.365%.  (The math will start to get ugly, but bear with me.)  If we choose the Gleaming Dawnstone instead for 8 spell crit, we will increase our spell crit chance by 0.362%, from our fabled 1% to 1.362%.  Let’s take those numbers and compare!

These are difficult numbers to work with, again. Over 100 casts we will crit 1.362% of the time, which seems silly since it’s a binary system (either you crit or you don’t…there aren’t any fractional crits). But over many successive casts (more than 100, really) this will be how they average out.

Gem	Dmg per Cast	Spell Casts	Resists	Hits	Hit Dmg	Crits	Crit Dmg	Total Dmg
Neither	1000	100	16	83	83,000	1	1500	84,500
+8 Spell Hit	1000	100	15.365	83.635	83,635	1	1500	86,135
+8 Spell Crit	1000	100	16	82.638	82,638	1.362	2043	84,681

In our example here then, we can see that increasing your spell hit rating by 8 will bring Mr. or Mrs. Caster’s total damage done up to 86,135, while 8 spell crit rating will only bring it to 84,681. That’s a difference of 1454!

Now as I mentioned before though, there are talents in many dps caster trees that will increase the critical strike damage bonus of your spells. Most notably, Ruin, in the Destruction Warlock tree, and Ice Shards, in the Mage Frost tree, will both increase the critical strike damage bonus from a 50% increase to a 100% increase. An obvious increase to the value of spell crit! Will these affect our numbers at all? Let’s find out!

Gem	Dmg per Cast	Spell Casts	Resists	Hits	Hit Dmg	Crits	Crit Dmg	Total Dmg
Neither	1000	100	16	83	83,000	1	2000	85,000
+8 Spell Hit	1000	100	15.365	83.635	83,635	1	2000	86,635
+8 Spell Crit	1000	100	16	82.638	82,638	1.362	2724	85,362

Spell hit still wins out! 86,635 compared to 85,362. The crit damage increase closed the gap a bit, but did not overcome spell hit in effectiveness.

Now, there are other values to consider in favor of spell crit. Destruction Warlocks, for instance, have a talent called Improved Shadow Bolt that increases shadow damage dealt to the target for a time after a Shadow Bolt crits, from all sources that deal shadow damage. Fire Mages have one called Master of Elements, which refunds some mana when their spells crit, and Ignite, which causes a Damage over Time effect to occur on their target for a percentage of the damage done after a spell critical strike.

However, from a pure damage per second standpoint, spell hit is the winner.

I’ve linked to this post of Coriel’s before, but I continually reference it personally, and would advise others to do the same for additional information! Hit Caps for Bosses.

In short, capping your spell hit at 16% is highly advisable for casters, because of how “cheap” it is (ie, 12.6 rating per 1% hit vs. 22.1 per 1% crit). Those talents you have that increase your chance to hit with spells are very effective at both increasing your DPS and helping you reach that cap. Past 16% though, the stat will not help, as you cannot remove that final 1%, and it will do nothing additional for you. It is at this point that you stack spell damage, for most casters.

Image courtesy of some guy named “Boeotian.” Found the image on imageshack.us.

Hi BRK!

Linked!

Gearing Towards Uncrushability (I’m so broke)

Yet another project, and another money sink. Gearing my paladin has been like trying to gear five different characters at once. Two sets for Holy (PvE/PvP), two sets for Prot (Threat/Mitigation), and one set for Retribution.

There was a time when both healing sets and both prot sets were the same gear.  But to be serious about this stuff you have to pick up everything.  And forsake so much bag space.  I can’t carry my Ret set around anymore.

As well, this has run me broke!  Doing dailies most days and I’m just hovering around 100g.  In addition to repairs and consumables I spend money on actually using the gear.

Anyway!  The set I wanted to talk about was my Mitigation Tanking set, the one I would ideally use to tank bosses.  I’ve been mulling over the idea of building this set up for a while and have gone through some of the preliminaries.

Prot paladins are, in my opinion, the toughest tank class to gear.  Since Holy Shield only gives you 35% (or 40.5%, with the badge libram) chance to block, you need very high base avoidance in order to bring yourself up to that 102.4% magic number of combined avoidance (miss chance + parry + dodge + block).  This means weighing these avoidance stats very heavily as you gear your paladin to tank.

See, the thing is, you have these numbers to reach to be “uncrushable”:

1) 490 Defense.  This will make you impossible to Crit for boss-level mobs.

2) 102.4% Combined Avoidance.  This is (Boss’ Chance to Miss You) + Parry + Dodge + Block.  You should factor Holy Shield’s block % chance into your Block chance for this calculation.  This will make you uncrushable.

3) Then, stack Stamina for more health and survivability.  Threat generation will be a backseat stat, one you pick up because it’s there rather than one you aim to acquire a certain amount of…but try not to go below 150 spell damage early on.  This means you’ll want at least some“paladin” tank gear*.

What does it mean to be uncrushable?  When a mob (and only a mob, players are unable to land crushing blows) has a higher level than you and attacks you, there is a calculation made to see if the attack will critically strike or “crush”.  A critical strike is double (2x) damage, a crush is 1.5x damage.  This may not sound like much when you have a tank with 14,000+ health!  But when you have a heavy-hitting boss like, say, Nightbane in Karazhan bearing down on you for 3.5-4.5k damage per hit, allowing that damage to be increased to ~7k is going to result in a dead tank if it happens more than once.  And then you have Prince Malchezaar, who stymied our guild’s attempts on him for a good long while as he was sneaking Crushing Blows in on his Thrash attacks, wasting our tank’s Shield Block charges.

So, to make it so these Crushing Blows cannot land on you, you have to do what’s called “pushing them off the table.”  This means combining your avoidance such that it is impossible for the mob to land any sort of hit on you without it being a miss, dodge, parry, or block (an attack that is blocked cannot crush).  The combined magic number is 102.4% because mobs that are of a higher level than you (bosses are considered level 73) have a higher chance to hit you than mobs of equal or lower level.

So anyway!  For paladins, you’ll notice that Holy Shield only adds 30% (or 35.something% with the libram).  Contrast this with warriors, who get +5% chance to block from talents, and their Shield Block ability, which adds 75% chance to block.  This frees warriors up to gear for other stats, like Stamina for more health, because they’re pretty much uncrushable without even trying very hard as far as gearing goes.  (For the record, druids, lacking the ability to parry and block in bear form, are not concerned with crushing blows so much.)

Paladins however are stuck gearing and gemming for more avoidance.  In order of preference just for this task, you’ll want to look at block rating first, followed by dodge, and then parry.  In terms of item budgeting this will get you the most bang for your buck.  However, there is no block gem, so make sure you pick up Subtle Living Rubies for that task.

For me, what this has all meant is re-examining the set and seeing what needs to be changed.  The necklace needs to go, going to re-buy the Strength of the Untamed for more dodge, run Arcatraz so I can get a Elementium Band of the Sentry for yet more dodge, and craft a Dawnstone Crab to replace my Violet Eye arcane resist/stam trinket.

To replace my Breastplate of the Righteous I spent 75 badges on a Chestguard of the Stoic Guardian. Big upgrade in terms of Stamina and avoidance, especially when loaded up with some high-quality gems (red: 8 dodge; yellow: 4 def/6 stam; blue: 18 stam (epic BoP JC gem cut)). This brings my (holy spec) avoidance up to 19% dodge + 11.4% parry + 22.3% block + 5.9% miss, or about 58.6% total. +40.5 35.3% from my libram’d Holy Shield + 5% from Deflection in the Ret tree + about 1.5% more from 20 more defense = 105.6 100.4%.

…wait, really? I’m there? Ha! Okay! Nevermind, I’m all set. In fact I can probably forgo the full points in Anticipation I was…anticipating…having to put in there. Time to see if I can squeeze in more hit points!

Looking to pick up 2% more. Should not be too difficult with the aforementioned neck and trinket upgrades.

* Paladin tank gear:  In a nutshell, plate gear with defense and intellect, spell damage, and/or mana per 5.

Image courtesy of wowinsider.com.

Whoops! -.-

Editted the trinket post I wrote recently. I was a noob and Was dividing the 44 +healing on the Eye of Gruul by 8 instead of 18. It’s fixed now, and the Seaspray looks like the better choice.

Image courtesy of edinburghsucks.com.

Warrior DPS - Comparison of Epic Leg Items, Heroics -> Tier 5

It’s not very elegant to do, but using the dps spreadsheet I’ve had for warriors, I’ve been able to make some item comparisons.

See, Luth might be spec’d to tank, but I’m still gearing her for DPS.  My quiet outcry against being unable to play her the way I want.  <_<

Anyway, I was looking at the two dps leg items available for purchase via Badges of Justice: the Bloodthirster’s Wargreaves, available for 75 badges of justice, and the Legplates of Unending Fury, available for 100. The latter clearly wins out in terms of having the cooler name, and I lament heavily at the lack of crit on both, but how do they compare for dps?

I went from comparing just these two to wanting to compare them to other items as well. So here we are, everything (that I could think of off the top of my head) from the Vanquisher’s Legplates up to the Destroyer Greaves.

(Note: This is unfortunately with my stats, a standard 17/44/0 spec, and my gear in all the other slots. The outcome of the numbers might differ for anyone else.)

Item			Str	AP	Hit	Crit
Vanquisher’s Legplates	592	1766	114	28.76
Bloodthirster’s Wargreaves	602	1786	148	27.9
Warbringer Greaves		587	1756	110	29.39
Legplates of Unending Fury	599	1780	135	27.9
Greaves of the Bloodwarder	602	1792	110	29.3
Destroyer Greaves		596	1774	132	29.25

Argh these tables are annoying.  The LoUF also have 43 haste.

Item				DPS1	DPS2

Vanquisher’s Legplates		699.08	831.00
Bloodthirster’s Wargreaves		698.17	832.15
Warbringer Greaves			706.36	838.08
Legplates of Unending Fury		707.26	842.96
Greaves of the Bloodwarder		713.07	847.16
Destroyer Greaves			714.32	848.19

(Note #2: DPS1 is without Kings or being in Berserker Stance. DPS2 is including both, with 5/5 Imp Berserker Stance. Neither value includes Rampage. Both values are against level 73 mobs (bosses) with 4490 armor (factoring in my warrior’s 252 armor penetration). In gem slots, I matched color using the standard DPS warrior gem setup (8 Str in red, 4 Str/4 Crit in yellow, 4 Str/6 Stam in blue). I included the differentiation to note just how much % increases affect different stats. Notice that the Bloodthirster’s Wargreaves appear to be marginally worse than the Vanquisher’s before Kings and Imp. Berserker Stance have their effects.)

I also decided to try something else.  16 Haste Rating = 1% haste, 22 Crit Rating = 1% crit, a conversion value of about 72.7%.  Multiplying that by 43 haste, you see that it’s equivalent to about 31.2 Crit Rating.  On the spreadsheet, I switched those around, giving the Unending Fury legs 31 Crit Rating instead of 43 Haste Rating, and came out with the following:

		Crit	Haste	DPS1	DPS2
Unending Fury	27.90	43	707.26	842.96
Unhasted Fury	29.32	0	717.75	852.25

Haste > Crit? I think not.  Stinkin’ badge rewards…

/edit: I should also note item levels.

Vanquisher’s: 110
Bloodthirster’s: 128
Warbringer: 125
Unending Fury: 141
Bloodwarder: 128
Destroyer: 133

See how the added badge rewards are out of sync, and that the pre-badge gear items follow a progression from worse to better? And note also that the LoUF would be in its rightful place above Tier 5 if it just had crit instead of haste?

Master Blogging?

Ha, me? Master? Not likely. There are far better bloggers out there doing this way better than I ever could. For serious, yo. (No offense at all to anyone unmentioned, I can only do so many words, and inserting a bunch of links like that isn’t exactly fun!)

This will be my 301st post. This last bout of posts most prominently featured the switch from Blogger to WordPress, a decision I remain happy with. The switch has allowed me to organize the site much more in the way I like. I still have to get around to adding pictures, but I have a surprise of sorts that should amend that situation before too long.

Um, lesee…I’ve definitely slowed down in posting I think over the months. I haven’t commented very much altogether, especially of late, something I apologize to my fellow bloggers for.

Mostly, I’ve just been playing! For news on that, check out the recent posts!

Otherwise, look forward to more gear analysis! I have plans to write up something to the effect of “Gearing your new level 70 paladin” in the works, potentially one for each spec! The SSO rep grind, new gear from that instance, as well as the blue battlegear items, will be examined and lined up and posted here…when I get time!

All in all, still writing, still playing, still having a fun time. Take care!

Eye of Gruul vs. Pendant of the Violet Eye vs. Seaspray Albatross

I hit revered with the SSO folks recently and picked up the recipe for a pretty nice-looking mp5 trinket.  Is it better than either of mine though?  I decided to take a look…

Eye of Gruul

Pendant of the Violet Eye

Seaspray Albatross

Passives

EoG: 44 +healing

PotVE: +40 Intellect

SA: 18 mp5

Extras

EoG: Equip: 2% chance on heal spell cast to reduce the mana cost of next heal spell by 450 (note: does not work for healing with Holy Shock, near as I can tell).

PotVE: Use: Each spell cast within 20 seconds stacks a 21 mp5 buff.  2-minute cooldown.

SA: Use: Restores 900 mana over 12 seconds.  3-minute cooldown.

Comparison on a numbers level

1 Item Point: 18 +healing, 8 intellect, 3 mp5

Passives

Eye of Gruul passive: 2.444

PotVE passive: 5 points (default); 5.5 (5/5 Divine Intellect); 7.625 (5/5 Divine Intellect and 5/5 Holy Guidance)

Seaspray passive: 6 points

Extras

Eye of Gruul extra:  Depends on how often you’re casting spells, and how much they cost!  Difficult to quantify.  Especially considering that as a paladin, it makes a Flash of Light free, but reduces the cost of a max-rank Holy Light by a little more than half…and depends on what class you are, etc.  I rate this at about 10 points for me.  Would be more for a paladin that downranks and spams Holy Light instead of Flash of Light.  Or more still if I would notice when it was up and cast HL instead of FoL.

PotVE extra:  Depends entirely on how much you cast during that time.  This is a trinket for those casters that can and benefit from constantly casting spells.  Holy paladins, resto shaman, and dps casters in particular such as elemental shamans or balance druids.  Also difficult to quantify!  But I like this better than the Eye of Gruul.  If you use it in conjunction with Bloodlust (which now lowers your global cooldown) you can rack this up pretty high.  8-9 points for standard FoL spam with no haste buffs.

Seaspray Albatross extra:  Ah, finally something straightforward.  900 mana every 3 minutes.  25 mp5, 8.333 points.

Totals

Eye of Gruul: About 15.5 points About 13.05 points

PotVE: About 16-17 points

Seaspray Albatross: 14.33 points exactly

Old text:  So, I guess not!  Unless I’m weighing the EoG too heavily, which is a possibility.  I kinda guestimated how much mp5 it would equate to based on the percentages I think I cast FoL vs. HL.  And it ended up seeming like a lot, so I toned it down from 12 to 10.  It is only a minor difference, and the SA trinket is potentially more reliable as far as mana regen/conservation/efficiency goes.  Plus, I’d have to buy two Seaspray Emeralds with my precious badges.  I was hoping to save up for the 100-badge paladin tank chestpiece to replace that old piece of Righteousness that I’ve had for forever.

So, um, whoops.  I rescind that, I will be making a Seaspray Albatross.  Yay mana.

New Healing Spec

I’ve not been PvPing much on Zerei for the past couple weeks, haven’t even been getting my arena games in.  So, after being prot for most of last weekend, when raid time came around on Sunday I needed to get back into being Holy.  I changed up my 41/20/0 for the more PvE-friendly 43/18/0.

The differences are mostly in the Protection tree:

Did not take Stoicism or Improved Hammer of Justice. Took Improved Concentration Aura instead, and moved the two points from Stoicism over to Purifying Power in the Holy tree.

Not that much different! But I’ve not been making use of the talents I formerly had, so I figured it was time for a switch-up.

I’m surprised how much of a difference Improved Concentration Aura makes in the Gruul and Bear Avatar (ZA) fights during the zone-wide silence effects. 30% didn’t seem like it was worth it, but I take that back, it helps a lot!

Purifying Power was kind of a filler, but I use Cleanse a lot, and end up Consecrate-tanking things fairly often, so might as well. The increased crit chance on exorcism and holy wrath is pretty pointless though. Holy Wrath is such a limited ability, the only time I really use it is whenever I’m doing SL to help the AoE on those skeleton pile pulls. And really, I don’t run SL much anymore. XD

Moar ZA

We’ve gotten to the point where we’re one-shotting all of the avatars in ZA, and are working on Malacrass. I like that the Malacrass fight is decently straightforward, lacking in any significant gimmicks other than needing CC.

Best attempt last night, probably our 8th or 9th attempt overall, was 44%. Our healers were one Imp DS priest and two holy paladins. The groups were divided into the caster/healer group (shadow priest, ds priest, elem shaman, holy paladin x2) and the physical dps group (bear druid x2, marks hunter, sub rogue, ret paladin), so we were pretty low on the multi-target healing to compensate for the AoE shadow damage thing.

What we ended up doing was splitting our healing thus: healing priest in our group would cast Prayer of Healing (one or two of those would usually compensate), and the two paladins would keep the folks in the melee group alive.

It worked pretty well! The problems arose when our priest fell to his shackle target. In retrospect, probably a better idea to have the shadow priest do it. I’d say we’d work on that next time, but the group will probably be entirely different.

Also, we were about to make our first serious attempt at getting to three chests (we’ve pretty regularly gotten two, but gave up after that), but while I was tanking the eagles in the gauntlet I moved a bit too far forward and ended up pulling an extra pair of trolls. Wipe.

We still got that first chest, but were not left with enough time to get to the one from bear. Phooey. Maybe Thursday. There’s a nice healing rign with spell haste in the third chest that I’d take.