Tuesday, October 19, 2010

[Cat] Current best in slot items for WotLK for cats

This was written by me over at EJ; figured it would be useful to folks here as well. Apologies for lack of linkages.

Since you can't gear for mastery, the only compromise you're making is whether or not you want haste, crit, expertise or hit. That's all. There is no other compromise to be made. The question then becomes what gear gives you the most potential mastery value while also giving you the most hit and expertise (up to the cap) and the most agility.

Doing something like this and evaluating 40% of the highest secondary stat as mastery (no matter what it was), I came up with the following values for gear. This was using 1.1 for agility, .6 for expertise and hit, .5 for haste and crit, 1.1 for mastery, 22 for each socket and assuming that the highest stat would always be converted to mastery.

shadowvault slayer's cloak back 228.12
sylvanas' cunning back 196.3

gloaming sark chest 416.28
ikfirus chest 431.86
T10277 chest 412.98

footpads of silence feet 289.6
frostbitten fur boots feet 297.6
taldaram's slippers feet 265.6

Endless Vengeance ring 209.66
bone colossus ring 232.5
frostbrood ring 228.12
saurfang ring 194.6
seal of many mouths ring 234.12
Signet of twilight ring 244.72

aldriana's hand 306.4
t10277 hand 297.2

discarded bag head 331.4
geistlord head 370.38
t10277 head 383.46

gangrenous legs 423.18
T10277 legs 423.58

sindragosa's cruel claw neck 228.12
baltharus' gift neck 216.56
precious neck 201.18
rimetooth neck 203.4

cultists shoulder 306.4
T10277 shoulder 297.2

Oathbinder weapon 434.58
Bloodfall weapon 422.18
distant land weapon 416.58
tainted twig weapon 380.86
hersir's weapon 328.32
shaft weapon 361.32

astrylian waist 297.6
soulthief waist 271.64
vengeful waist 283.2

umbrage wrist 247.02
toskk wrist 228.12
vambraces wrist 203.4


The highest non-tier piece is Ikfirus compared to any other. The gain is small but there. Another surprise is Seal of Many Mouths, which wins out over the other 277 rings due to the expertise. (note that this doesn't take into account the proc of Endless vengeance, but that shouldn't matter. Mouths, bone colossus, frostbrood, endless vengeance is the order for the 277s.

The head and legs for T10 were both superior to their non-offtier values. The shoulders are identical to the Aldriana's in terms of gain; you could use either T10 shoulders or hands as your offtier piece, if it suited you.

Based on this you would have the following gear set as a best in slot:
Cloak: Shadowvault's (40% of haste to mastery)
Chest: Ikfirus (40% of hit to mastery)
Feet: Frostbitten (40% of crit to mastery)
Rings: Signet of Twilight (40% of crit to mastery), Seal of many mouths (40% of crit to mastery)
Hand: T10 (40% of crit to mastery)
Head: T10 (40% of crit to mastery)
Legs: T10 (40% of crit to mastery)
Neck: Sindragosa (40% of crit to mastery)
Shoulder: T10 (40% of crit to mastery)
Weapon: Oathbinder (40% of haste to mastery)
Waist: Astrylian (40% of crit to mastery)
Wrist: Umbrage (40% of haste to mastery)

This naively would result in the following (including the idol slot)
agility: + 1799
crit: +753
expertise: +272
haste: +719
hit: +126
mastery: +482

This is clearly over the cap on expertise and under on hit, so you can simply reforge the ikfirus' expertise instead. Giving you 230 expertise and 171 hit. Not perfectly capped, but pretty close.

I believe this is the maximal value of mastery you could get currently. It also has 21 sockets.

25 comments:

Unknown said...

i have a question.
since they changed the 4 piece set bonus for cats, is it still mandatory ?
i mean, is 10% increased rake damage,better than gearing something else?

Anonymous said...

i head exp cap is now 177

tbot said...

-i head exp cap is now 177

Ya i've seen this pop up in a lot of placed. I think it has to be a bug though as the brand new UI still says you'd be getting dodged.

Anonymous said...

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I have to ask - The fact that you're gearing so aggressively for mastery means that mastery is currently, point for point, better for cats than haste or crit, right?

-Sol

Gurbl said...

Yea i would like to know what ano2 said as well. p.s. wth is up with the aggresive undertone in tangedyns posts on ej? :/

Anonymous said...

So you can convert 40% of a stat into another stat. You write:" This was using 1.1 for agility, .6 for expertise and hit, .5 for haste and crit, 1.1 for mastery..."

I might be wrong (well I know I am wrong:p) but 1.1*0.4 = 0.44 which is less than all other stats.
Why reforge if it is a dps loss?

Another question: Approximately how large a dps gain (how many %dps increase) do you expect by reforging all that gear into mastery? Is it worth it?

Goodmongo said...

Agility is king and mastery is second but way ahead of any other stat. in fact many cats are not going the hit/expertise route at all. They use whatever appears on their gear and never gem for it. And they always reforge the top stat into mastery.

Bearmount said...

Anon3, what you are saying would be correct if you traded all of a stat in for 40% of another stat. However, reforging only takes away 40%, leaves the other 60%, and converts that 40% into something else so there is no loss of stats.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for clearing that up Bearmount. Reforging is much more attactive to me now:P

However, how much dps do we gain by reforging?
One "point" of mastery increases bleed damage by 3.1% or 1.55% (3.1% * 0.5 (app. 50% of all damage)).
1% of crit increases our damage by 0.75% ((0,5+(0,5*2,2))/(0,49+(0,51*2,2)) at 50% crit.

Does this mean we increase all damage by approximately 0.8% (1.55-0.75) for every point of mastery?

And how many point of mastery is 400 mastery rating?

Goodmongo said...

I gained around 2K dps in reforging and regemming my gear.

Anonymous said...

Are you gemming pure agi or going for socket bonus'?

Kalon said...

pedro - while the 4pT10 isn't mandatory (10% more rake damage) it's still better than getting the non-offset pieces unless you can get all 277 over all 264 tier pieces.

Anon - the expertise cap is not 177; it's 199.9 (or 200). I don't know why others are saying as such, but they're wrong ;)

Anon2 - mastery is better, point for point, than crit, haste, or hit or expertise. It's about twice as good right now. Bleed damage is kind of insane, and they've buffed mastery a bit too.

Gurbi, I don't know; I suspect they really really care about not being hit/exp capped because, well, they're personally not.

Anon - on how much we gain by reforging, it depends. Each mastery rating point is about 4 DPS; each crit/haste/hit/expertise rating is about 2. So if you can reforge to 500 mastery rating, you'll gain about 1k dps just from that. It obviously depends a lot on your gear and other factors, but that's a rough estimate.

400 mastery rating is 8.7 mastery, which would increase your bleeds by 26.97%.

Anonymous said...

Kalon,
Some testing on EJ by Warrs, Rogues, and Ret paladins suggests the dodge soft cap for Exp is 5.6% and not 6.5%. I would link, but I'm at work. Check the Theorycrafting thread in the Rogue section, it's got the most complete workup.

Kalon said...

Anon - the only note I've seen about 177 comes from Aldriana, who states that the expertise cap is 177 for gnomes and 200 otherwise. Do you have a link to something that is more definite?

Anonymous said...

171 hit??

Isn't cap for hit 8%??
Depens on whether a shaman in your group or not for the extra 1%, else its 8% hit cap.

Goodmongo said...

From what I understand as we go toweard 85 in Cata hit/expertise will be very hard to cap. So while getting mastery may result in a miss this also prepares us for Cata where misses will be part of our rotation.

Anonymous said...

I'm looking for the same kind of list but for bears, been spending the last few nights pondering if some dps (agi/stam/crit/haste) offset pieces (rings, neck, cape) would be better than the usual tanking ones...

tbot said...

Kalon - Regarding expertise. It seems most of the people reporting this have been wacking away at a test dummy for 10-15 minutes and not experiencing any dodges.

I've seen tests done by warriors, rets and rogues.(I just used google when i came across mention of it) So far, I haven't seen someone put up numbers from a real raid boss but its possible it's bugged or people haven't looked at racials.

DrPete said...

Kalon,
I posted from work earlier.
Here's the post I was referring to in the rogue EJ forums. (see also a few posts up and down for more discussion)
http://elitistjerks.com/f78/t105429-cataclysm_mechanics_testing/p4/#post1774638

Anonymous said...

Happy birthday

Bear Pelt said...

Erm.. I'm very sorry if this is a silly question, Kalon and fellow readers, but I'm comparing the Seal of the Twilight Queen (264) and my current Frostbrood Sapphire Ring + Bone Colossus Ring (both 277) and am wondering why the Seal wins over them in the post listing. All the stats seem inferior to the 277 rings.

Am I looking at the wrong item? o_O

Kalon said...

Sorry, bearpelt - it's supposed to be Signet of Twilight. I'll correct it shortly.

Bear Pelt said...

Haha, that explains it :D Makes a lot more sense now.

Anonymous said...

you can also reforge trinkets

WoW Druid said...

Been thinking about the best way to go for Cata...still not sure which path to take. Thanks for the detailed breakdown!