Warrior DPS – Crit vs. Hit vs. AP vs. Haste vs. ArmorPen vs. Expertise
amg, all these stats…
/EDIT: For more on my take on haste, check out my comparison of dps plate leg items.
Stop the Warrior just posted an excerpt from a post at EJ detailing some of the math behind haste and how it differs for crit for warriors.
From my point of view, Haste is much like Hit, only it works differently.
For a warrior, your first and foremost goal when gearing up is to get your special attacks hit capped. This means 9% hit is needed, and the 3% from the Fury talent precision can indeed be counted in to this. Either 142 (9%) or 95 (6%) hit rating, then. This is the cheapest way to increase your dps, but beyond that, hit rating stops being as effective. Because your special attacks (mortal strike, bloodthirst, heroic strike, what-have-you) are all now incapable of missing, and you are only increasing the chance for your auto-attacks to land. Unless you’re not dual-wielding, in which case your 142 is all you need and hit rating is wasted (your regular attacks and special attacks are incapable of missing because you don’t suffer the 19% dual-wield miss penalty).
Anyway, for many warriors in dps roles, white (auto-attack) damage is approximately 50% of your overall, while yellow (special, non-auto-attack) damage is the rest. Up to that 9%, for every 1% hit you obtain, that is 1% extra damage you do. At 15.7 rating per 1%, it’s also cheap compared to alternatives. After that, again, you’re either wasting it (if you’re using a 2-handed weapon) or you’re only increasing 50% of your damage (if you’re dual-wielding).
So, you get that done. Now, a vast plethora of stats may be available for you to choose from.
From here, things are a bit more vague than “acquire x of y stat”. The vague idea is to keep your crit high (around 30%) without sacrificing any hit that puts you below your needed 9%, and stack attack power as high as it will go through strength wherever possible (usually gems).
This is because crit and attack power increase the damage of all of your abilities, not just your white damage. This is why crit is more expensive (22.1 per 1%) and why attack power scales a bit more slowly. Also, thanks to Flurry (+25% attack speed for 3 swings after a crit), Rampage (an ability which can only be activated and kept active by achieving critical hits), and Impale (+20% crit damage on abilities), crit is even more valuable.
However, as you start collecting badges and/or higher levels of gear, you start to find even more stats…some more than others. The more common ones right now are Armor Penetration and Haste.
Haste, again, only affects your white damage. Unlike hit, though, it has no cap at which it becomes less useful (well there might be a haste cap, but I’m sure it’s really hard to obtain). However, it costs the same amount as hit, budget wise, while overall having the same effect (1% extra white damage). The one benefit haste might have over hit has to do with rage generation. Sometimes haste will provide more on-demand rage for the warrior because the attacks are landing sooner…however, because those attacks will be subject to the same rules as your other white attacks, they will miss at the same rate, and thus it probably evens out in the end with hit on that end as well. [/edit: If you're using a 2h weapon though and your hit is capped, haste is potentially more valuable to you because of rage generation.] Again, because it only increases your white damage, that’s only (approximately) 50% of your damage being affected.
Armor penetration is more difficult to qualify. The more armor your target has, the less benefit a static amount of armor penetration has due to the diminishing returns on the damage reduction provided by armor*. However, against targets with lower amounts of armor, armor pen wreaks havoc, providing much greater returns. This means that, interestingly enough, armor penetration stacks well with itself as well as other stats like crit and ap. In other words, the more armor penetration you have, the more you get out of it per point. This stat will increase the damage of all attacks, white and yellow.
Expertise is an interesting stat, and as mentioned in the article there isn’t much of it to be found currently on most warrior gear. It’s a decent stat, working similarly to hit rating, but instead affecting your opponent’s chance to parry and dodge your attacks. This makes it more of a valuable stat for tanks, or warriors in pvp, as they’re the ones whose attacks are being parried the most often. In pve, melee dps stands behind the mobs in order to reduce the number of parries (both increasing their own dps and lessening the amount of damage dealt to the tank**).
/EDIT: Looks like Expertise is a very handy stat to cap out for all melee dps classes, making the Shard of Contempt one of the best dps trinkets in the game despite the relative low item level.
Looking at item budget and effectiveness, it seems like strength and crit are still the way to go after getting that magical 9% hit due to its greater availability.
* Damage reduction from armor scales on a curve. At lower amounts, armor provides large amount of damage reduction per point (relatively). Up past 7000, you get less and less from it. The cap is 75% damage reduction, somewhere above 30000.
** When you parry, your next attack has its speed increased by 60% if I remember right.
Image from http://www.warcrafter.net.
April 18, 2008 at 7:51 pm
[...] Stats for warrior dps also include armor penetration and expertise, but as of this writing these are unavailable in gems and enchants. [...]