SV hunter and 2pc

[Okacz]

Hello fellow hunters,

I recently came to own 2 pieces of LFR gear, head and shoulders. Those are both item level 483. However, my current gear in those slots has 489 item level. Therefore, What is a better option: to keep current gear, or to use the pieces for 2pc and 5% extra Explosive Shot damage?

[Canidomini]

In my own experience, the 2 pc bonus with LFR 483 gear did NOT outweigh my 496 Tier pants and the 496 chest from Imperial Vizier Zor'lok. However, you should run your own 'experiments' with your own gear, since the difference between your 489 and my 496 is just different enough between your 483 - 489 conundrum. 8-10 minutes on a target dummy with the same buffs, one time with the 2 pc and one time with your 489 pieces should give you enough of a sample.

That being said, hang on to the 2 tier pieces in case you get another 2 pieces, since the 4 pc bonus might be worth it.

[Zeherah]

It's probably best to run some sims and see what comes out higher (you can go the dummy route but that involves a lot of RNG and can't reflect the value of raid buffs). In my gear the 2pc bonus is worth about 1k dps. It was worth downgrading items with lower itemization (like shoulders and gloves) to get the bonus. However when I checked on whether it was worth replacing my chest and pants to get 4pc that showed as a dps loss, probably because the 4pc is less dps than the 2pc and the chest and pants have higher itemization.

In your case the helm is a high itemization piece, so it's a tougher call.

[ihatepeople]

As Zeherah said, if you're gonna replace pieces make sure it's the gloves and the shoulders. Anything other than those two pieces and it would be a stat waste for the 2pc.

[TheTrueM4gg0t]

As Zeherah said, if you're gonna replace pieces make sure it's the gloves and the shoulders. Anything other than those two pieces and it would be a stat waste for the 2pc.

it's not alone the amount of stats you lose by replacing one item, but also what is on the item itself.
for example the hands are crit+hit, which is a perfect combo (rather than haste+hit that trousers have). also depends what you can replace it with.
change the crit+hit hands for a haste+mastery replacement? hell no! (this is just an example, don't know if such hands exist^^)
depends on how you gear, but replacing items with your worst valued 2nd stat is also a good idea (in my case I would try to replace shoulders+legs with something that has crit on)

[Deleted]

As Zeherah said, just run sims.
For SV it's a very small chance that LFR tier items for the bonus will be better than 496items in those slots. And if it's better, it will be <1000dps difference. The pieces are awesome for BM but for SV they don't do much.
My ES does 25-27% of my damage on pure single target and buffing 1/4 of damage with 5% results in only 1,25% extra dps. If you're then going to move away agi due to lower ilvl (and possibly better secondaries), it's not very likely it'll end up very positive. On fights like wind lord my ES only does 18% of damage making it even worse.

In MM CS seems to do around 12% of damage in player logs. So their 15% buff will also be more valuable.

[skitz0129]

I recommend running your own tests on dummies to see what you're actually pulling yourself.

Every sim I've used so far this expansion gives me wildly incorrect data...like FD telling me that my DPS is 30k lower than what I'm really doing, even after triple checking all options to make sure things are all set right.

[ihatepeople]

it's not alone the amount of stats you lose by replacing one item, but also what is on the item itself.
for example the hands are crit+hit, which is a perfect combo (rather than haste+hit that trousers have). also depends what you can replace it with.
change the crit+hit hands for a haste+mastery replacement? hell no! (this is just an example, don't know if such hands exist^^)
depends on how you gear, but replacing items with your worst valued 2nd stat is also a good idea (in my case I would try to replace shoulders+legs with something that has crit on)

Tier gloves have hit and crit and the tier shoulders have expertise and haste. Replacing whatever 489 gloves he has with the tier gloves is inconsequential because the tier gloves have the perfect stats and gloves have the lower stat budge of any tier piece. Tier shoulders have haste and expertise on them which is not a bad pairing of stats, so replacing whatever 489 he has for tier shoulders would not be bad either. Going from 489 to 483 is drop in the bucket as far as item level drop.

[Zeherah]

I recommend running your own tests on dummies to see what you're actually pulling yourself.

Every sim I've used so far this expansion gives me wildly incorrect data...like FD telling me that my DPS is 30k lower than what I'm really doing, even after triple checking all options to make sure things are all set right.

If the dps is off by that much, I'd like to see your log of the damage and a saved setting link which matches the gear and buffs you had when creating the log so I can identify what the problem might be. 30k is a pretty substantial gap and not something I've seen in the testing I've done. Sims aren't perfect by any means, but a 30k gap makes no sense without some context.

[Deleted]

Increasing your top damage ability with 5%. I would go for it.