Random Question Thread

[Jodwahh]

Multi (or aimed if you're specced into it) comes before Steady Shot.



Kill Shot is better than both Steady and Serpent. Personally i'd use Serpent/Explosive/Kill.

Yeah multi/aimed does come before steady I was kinda drunk from the festivities when I wrote that. I don't know if it's my gear level or the 2pt9 but according to the latest spreadsheet, the serpent glpyh gives a couple of hundred more dps than Kill shot glpyh'd and steady beats kill shot for me also. Using Shandaras latest spreadsheet.

[[Cookies]]

Considering the main damage of MM is auto shot/physical.. the more Armor pen the more you'd be doing though... you'd probably pull an extra 2-3K+ dps ontop of that "5K+ in 10mans" if you got to around 30-40% armor pen and some trinket that procs armor pen to get you near the 90-100% range

Oh definitely, I know my arpen is a little low (we do have Sunder in raids which helps) but with my gear MM is slightly ahead of SV so you don't need to have a load of arpen to do good dps.

Yeah multi/aimed does come before steady I was kinda drunk from the festivities when I wrote that. I don't know if it's my gear level or the 2pt9 but according to the latest spreadsheet, the serpent glpyh gives a couple of hundred more dps than Kill shot glpyh'd and steady beats kill shot for me also. Using Shandaras latest spreadsheet.

It's most likely gear/spec dependant. I just rechecked and Serpent is ahead of Kill Shot by about 26 dps with Kill Shot beating Steady Shot by around 60 or so.

Izzy you're probably best off using Femaledwarf.com, just load your armory and enable a common shot priority. Make sure you have your pet set up properly too as that counts for a good 600~ dps.

[Tricen]

What? Everything in ICC thus far hits like a bitch, the hardest hitting stuff so far is little enough of a death threat that armor is no question superior.

So you gem for what then, dodge/parry? At least for DKs, gemming/stacking stam is pretty much what you do. At least according to Ensidia.

[Eaglestrike]

You almost always gem for stamina, but I like to keep socket bonus' since just about every stat is useful as a tank. Yellow sockets are hit/stam or def/stam, red are str/stam, blue is just stam.

[Plow]

So you gem for what then, dodge/parry? At least for DKs, gemming/stacking stam is pretty much what you do. At least according to Ensidia.

Not sure how that applies, seeing how there's no armor gems and we're talking about trinkets, where there's an armor trinket extremely easily available that reduces actual incoming damage by about 3-5%.


oh and if you're going for a red socket bonus it should be agi, or possibly parry or dodge depending where you're at in dr

[Correction]

Can a not-supergeared Warlock solo telestra for a winter hat?

[Tricen]

Not sure how that applies, seeing how there's no armor gems and we're talking about trinkets, where there's an armor trinket extremely easily available that reduces actual incoming damage by about 3-5%.


oh and if you're going for a red socket bonus it should be agi, or possibly parry or dodge depending where you're at in dr

more HP gives your healers more room to fuck up with, from my experiences at least.

[Eaglestrike]

Not sure how that applies, seeing how there's no armor gems and we're talking about trinkets, where there's an armor trinket extremely easily available that reduces actual incoming damage by about 3-5%.


oh and if you're going for a red socket bonus it should be agi, or possibly parry or dodge depending where you're at in dr

Agi is just like gemming for dodge, the crit you get from it is quite minor for threat and the armor makes no big deal (10 agi is 22 armor with kings...we have almost 30k...) whereas STR will reduce each hit by 8 damage (at least for prot paladins) and produce more threat.

[Plow]

Agi is just like gemming for dodge,

Agi isn't affected by dr, most of us are WAY into dodge dr.

the crit you get from it is quite minor for threat and the armor makes no big deal (10 agi is 22 armor with kings...we have almost 30k...)

In WoW, the difference between 0 armor and 22 armor is the exact same as the difference between 30,000 armor and 30,022 armor.

hereas STR will reduce each hit by 8 damage (at least for prot paladins) and produce more threat.

Nobody is running unhitable with CotT.

Agi is chosen for the dodge without dr putting it right on par with dodge or parry gems, but with the addition of armor.


Seriously, armor in WoW is easily the most perfectly implemented stat in any mmo, ever.

And the really amazing thing is it's *exactly* the same as it has been from the start, basically the one thing in WoW that has never, and will never change.

[Plow]

more HP gives your healers more room to fuck up with, from my experiences at least.

Armor does the exact same thing, leaves you with more hp after being hit, as long as it's physical.

Armor and hp are chosen over dodge and parry (which also do the same thing, when they proc) because they will *always* do it, dodge and parry can fail.

Armor can't fail to leave you with more hp after a swing any more than hp can, provided we're talking physical.

edit to avoid triple posting:

Can a not-supergeared Warlock solo telestra for a winter hat?

Should be np on normal, if all else fails just go afflic and there's about a billion places to los in there.

I'm pretty sure you can just funnel tank it easily tho.

[Eaglestrike]

The comment was meant that with a 30k armor total, 22 armor has a very minor effect, not that DR has anything to do with it, just that adding 0.06% more armor or whatever isn't going to do much of anything.

And I'm pretty sure AGI is on a DR, just not the same one as dodge rating, otherwise bear tanks would be pretty crazy on avoidance since they stack total AGI.

[Plow]

Er, yeah, dodge from gear agi is in dr pool. It's just base agi that's not, my mistake.

Still, the point is the armor, really.


The thing that makes armor so perfectly implemented is that while there are "diminishing returns," so you're not preventing 1% of incoming damage by adding 100 armor (bullshit numbers obv) to 0 armor but preventing 50% of all incoming damage by adding 100 armor to 9800 armor; it's still set up so that there is no "well you already have blah blah amount of armor, this little bit isn't going to matter."

It's exactly the same. If you have 0 armor and add 22, your survival time will increase by the exact same amount as if you have 30k and add 22.


Keeping that in mind, would you say that if you have 0 armor and add 22, it will have very little effect? Of course not. And I feel like a broken record here, but yeah, the effect at high armor levels is the exact same.

I just can't reiterate enough how well done armor is in WoW heh.

In the end, after a little more thought though: if I needed a new red gem atm I'd use expertise no question. There's no sign of anything having parry haste turned off in ICC.

[Norellicus]

What puzzles me about the armor mechanic in WoW is that if armor is equilaterally as good point for point at 30k as it is at 0, then why is armor pen more effective for dps as you get closer to the zero point?

[Jodwahh]

I think its because Arp has an easy to focus upon 100% limit, wheres as a 100% armour limit would be fucking retardedly massively huge like woah. To someone as drunk as me that makes sense.

[Plow]

I don't know how to explain that exactly, I'm not good enough at figuring out what the equations would be.

I think, though, that it's similar to haste in FFXI. Reducing 1% from 100% armor doesn't do so much, reducing 1% from what's already 10% armor is a 10% difference.

Which is funny, because that's exactly what the armor model is set up to avoid lol.

[Tricen]

What's up with rogues? I guess this is a random complaint more than a question, but on deathbringer saurfang(25), these two rogues did almost identical DPS as the same spec, but one has worse (not marginally, like gemmed poorly too) gear than the other. Did they just make mut rogues OP atm?

[Tifrece]

Odd question here about tailoring/engineer mounts. If I don't have the required profession, would I still be able to add the profession-required mounts to my collection (And get credit towards mount achievments)? Or do they require that you have the profession to add it AND use it?

If thats the case, what happens to the mount when you drop the profession?

[Onorgul]

You cannot use the mount to add it to your collection without the necessary skill. If you drop the profession after learning it, you won't be able to use it, but it'll stay in your collection.

[Meph]

while we're still talking about tanking, I got some minor questions about shield-tanking
(first Ill chime in with Plow that gemming with base stats isnt very good. always go with dodge/parry and stamina)

how useful is it to actually focus on shield? I made a loladin after I heard about the -20%dodge in ICC and felt my DK with get assraped all the time, so now Im running around gathering up as much shield-crap I can get on gear. so, at what rate is it not retarded to get shield over dodge/parry?

[Plow]

(first Ill chime in with Plow that gemming with base stats isnt very good. always go with dodge/parry and stamina)

no

I still, regardless of chill, will be gearing for effective health. Especially for heroic.

This means stamina and armor.

If I'm going to choose a red gem for defense, I'm going to choose the one and only one that gives effective health.

That's agi.

Although, as I stated, atm I'd gem expertise pretty hard. If I was a warrior or druid instead of a paladin, my goal would be expertise hard cap with the most effective health possible.


This may change a bit sometimes, as some of the 9 lives style "make the fight last forever then zerg right before enrage" stuff may require working on mana efficiency, at least for the metas if not for the hard modes.

But, yeah, in the time where EH reigns supreme, when there's a gem that gives a tiny bit less avoidance, but gives EH where no others do, the choice is really quite obvious.


The same is true of comparing avoidance to armor trinkets. Both give damage reduction, armor also functions as effective health, where avoidance does not.

This is why the ony trinket is not taken seriously despite crazy avoidance, while pretty much everyone is wearing the armor trinket once they have sufficient raw effective health from stamina to take the slight drop in eh for the huge gain in mitigation.

how useful is it to actually focus on shield? I made a loladin after I heard about the -20%dodge in ICC and felt my DK with get assraped all the time, so now Im running around gathering up as much shield-crap I can get on gear. so, at what rate is it not retarded to get shield over dodge/parry?

never* choose shield stats over, well, anything, really, as far as raid bosses are concerned

it's great for heroics, trash, and weak hitting boss adds, though


* If you reach unhittable in your basic set, i.e. every hit is at least blocked if not fully avoided, block value becomes effective health against melee mobs that don't stun. If you're very close to this threshold, using some block rating to reach it is perfectly acceptable.