Balancing Stats when Phat Lewtz Drop

You know, as I write this (I'm nearly done, but writing at the top now :-P ) I realize I'm trying to theory craft! Be forewarned, and please, take nothing you read here as gospel. This is probably the casual players version of theorycrafting to answer the question..."WTF do I do? Equip the shiny new purple, or hang onto my ugly dull blue?"

Short version of the story: Mmmmmm, shiny new purplez. Gotta be better than my stupid blue normal-mode Slave Pens necklace. Put it on, no doubt!

Another short version of the story: New purple necklace provides 0.03% increase in DPS. Put it on, I guess.

Medium verion of the story: When you take the hit rating and hit cap into mind, determining whether a piece of gear is truely an upgrade or not. When you also combine being near the hit cap already, along with some food choices and some gem choices, the situation can get really fuzzy.

Perhaps Amava should play at some theorycrafting? Put it on, maybe.

Long version of the story:

While taking horseback riding lessons with Midnight and Attumen, Worgen Claw Necklace dropped.

I'm more or less satisfied with my damage output, and would rather spread the love to the team, so I suggested the Rogue take it. He said he already had it. Ok, cool, ding, new necklace.

I was wearing Trators Noose at the time.

Looking at these two puppies side by side, my jury is sorta out on which to take.

	Agility	Stamina	Attack Power	Crit Rating	Hit Rating
Worgen Claw Necklace	+20	+21	+42	0	+17
Traitor's Noose	0	+18	+38	+18	+12

So, give up some crit and gain a little attack power and hit. Gain a little stamina, which is nice as I'm still playing battlegrounds a little bit.

On the surface, I'd prefer the crit over the attack power, thus leading me to choose to keep my Noose. As a Beast Master, I love the crit, providing more kill commands and focus for my pet, plus also more frenzies which allow my pet to crit more often, keeping ferocious inspiration up to buff my party's damage. Crit is my best friend.

BUT, Agility's buff to crit chance is nicer than raw crit rating, as Agility scales with Blessing of Kings and it also provides increased Attack Power, Armor, and Dodge (for those moments when you decide to kill a boss melee style and need to avoid a hit or two, lol). Using this criterion, the Worgen Claw is better, because even though it provides for less critical hit percentage, its crit comes from agility rather than raw rating.

Then you've got the hit rating.

Walking in the door, I was at 131 hit. This allows me to eat Warp Burgers for +20 agility during trash, and Spicy Hot Talbuk for +20 hit rating on boss fights.

I don't really like sitting at 131, because then with food buff, I'm at 151, which basically wastes 9 hit rating.

With the Worgen Claw Necklace, I'm at 136 hit rating.

Here's my quandry....

If I continue my dietary habits of +agi for trash and +hit for bosses, I'll be wasting 14 points of hit during boss fights.

I do not have any gems that provide +hit, so its not like I can just swap some of those out for +agi gems to re-gain the 14 hit rating points.

But here's what I'm thinking.....

Why not go the other way. At 136, I'm 8 points away from being hit capped, WITHOUT eating any talbuk.

If I were to replace some gems with gems that provide +hit, I could become inherently hit capped, and then eat a +agi food during boss fights.

So the question is....how can I fiddle with my gems to (A) gain 8 hit rating, and (B) NOT lose the equivalent of +20 agility. If I can pull that off, then I will gain an overall improvemnt for boss fights.

Make sense?

Kinda makes me go crosseyed, but I think its the right logic.

So, how to properly fiddle with gems?

For yellow slots, my normal gem of choice is the Smooth Dawnstone and its +8 critical strike rating (and I haven't yet gotten around to replace them with Smooth Ornate Dawnstones for two extra crit points from Battlegrounds vendor).

I could replace one of these puppies with a Rigid Dawnstone for +8 hit rating.

That would do the trick.

Now recall, that by becoming hit capped without the need to eat special food, I'll essentially be gaining +20 agi on boss fights.

For the sake of argument, lets pretend that I had the Smooth Ornate Dawnstones and their +10 crit, as I plan to get those from PvP over the next week or two, since my other PvP gear needs have been met for the moment.

In essence, the gem change would mean the Worgen Claw gives me an additional +20 agi on top of the other stats and a negative -10 crit.

Still making sense?

Going back to the original gear choices, adding in the potential gem swap and food changes, with an added DPS column that I hopefully got right......

	Agility	Stamina	Attack Power	Crit Rating	Hit Rating
Worgen Claw Necklace	+40	+21	+42	-10	+17
Traitor's Noose	0	+18	+38	+18	+12

So, this means that after re-gemming and food switch takes place, Worgen provides an additional +44 attack power over the Noose.

Now to analyze the crit part...Worgen essentially will provide -28 crit rating, but add +40 agility. How does this impact my overall damage?

Well, 20 agi equates to .5% crit, so worgen will give me 1% crit boost via the agility.

According to WoW Wiki's combat ratings page, 22.08 crit rating points equates to 1% crit chance.

So that means the -28 crit rating will mean a 1.3% reduction in crit chance. Combine that with the agi, and you only lose 0.3% crit chance.

Converting these numbers to DPS.....

The 0.3% crit chance reduction is a direct 0.3% DPS reduction.

Converting AP:DPS at a 14:1 ratio....gaining 44ap means a corresponding 3.1 DPS increase.

So, now we're in the sticky situation of needing to know our base personal DPS. This is where I pretty much lose my ability to theorycraft, assuming I've been doing it even vaguely right up to this point.

On the surface, I could use a number between 850-1050, as that's sort of the average I've been doing on boss fights according to WWS lately.

BUT, those numbers include all sorts of stuff like my pet's damage, kill commands, random melee crits that kill bosses (lol, that's a statistical anomaly that can be discarded). So, lacking any other good ideas, I'll just split the difference and pretend that its a good comparison.

So my base DPS is 950.

Decrease the base by 0.3% from the crit loss, means I'll be at 947.2 DPS

Increase that by 3.1 from the attack power means I'll be at 950.3 DPS

Net increase....0.3 DPS or 0.03% additional DPS.

LOL !!!

I could re-do these numbers to take into account the Blessing of Kings that I normally raid with, but I'm nearly exhausted from trying to figure this out up to this point. Well, actually, BoK would buff the agi increase from 40 to 44, which would make the AP increase by 48 rather than 44, and the change to crit chance would be .125% less. Soooo, with BoK, the overall additional DPS would be 1.77 (or 0.18%) additional DPS.

Net effect of equipping Worgen Claw Necklace, regemming, and new food choice:

• lose: net 0.3% crit chance


• lose: regularly farming for Talbuk Steak


• lose: roughly 40 gold for the new gem


• gain: +44ap


• gain: +40agi


• gain: +3sta


• gain: 0.3 DPS


• gain: one or two bag slots, as I'll no longer be carrying the Spicy Hot Talbuk


• gain: some armor and dodge from agility, but blah, this is as far as I go with the theorycrafting

So you see, a simple drop of a new necklace leads to some twisty thought process leading to a miniscule DPS increase.

I hope I did this right :-)

And the single most important thing that trumps all of this analysis....I want my shiny new purplez and throw away my ugly bluie blues.

Put it on, no doubt!!!