Expertise as Assassination?

[hihu]

Shadowcraft is telling me to reforge out of exp and INTO crit...

I really don't see how it would unless you are capped..

[Kael]

If anyone's getting really weird results, post your character/realm so someone can try to duplicate the issue please, rather than making blanket statements about how wrong it is. I haven't seen any problems with SC since it was last updated. Mastery is ahead of expertise on a patchwerk fight, and theoretically, other stats are capable of pulling ahead (although I doubt they would; see what stat weightings it's providing you when you're reforged out of expertise).

Personally, for the *relatively minor* theoretical loss, I cap expertise because I use almost the same gear for combat, and because I occasionally play with 2-3 FPS and don't want to risk making a stupid mistake under lust/haste procs.

[Ishidan]

Until this point, I was reforging to at least 7.5% hit & expertise. I checked Shadowcraft a little while ago and it made me reforge a lot of my expertise off and into crit. Initially I disregarded this suggestion and continued to be spell hit capped. However, I decided I would test them in raid finder and on a dummy to compare. I did significantly more dps with less expertise. You will still want to retain the 7.5% Hit (duh). Give it a try. I was doing ~6k more dps on average.

[huth]

Please give the timeframe you tested that over, Ishidan.

[Ishidan]

I'm going to assume you're asking about the dummy tests. On the dummy I did 5x10min intervals with each reforge.

[Stoobins]

I just ran reforges through Shadowcraft for my rogue.

Expertise cap is lower than pure mastery....by 29 dps. I don't like being dodged, so I'm gonna go with expertise.

[Isoge]

Im joining the shadowcraft told me to forge out... they had me at 3%exp. Im waiting to see how I do in HOF tonight but it is odd.

It's not really that odd... Expertise has never been an assassination spec prio stat (except for with the legendaries) and that won't change anytime soon. You can go against shadowcraft and other sources (like the peeps above) and specc for the cap for the free blindside (as if it really proccs that much) and risk loosing dps in any other form or go with it and stop wasting another thought about it, unless they bring a change in 5.2.

[Ishidan]

Until this point, I was reforging to at least 7.5% hit & expertise. I checked Shadowcraft a little while ago and it made me reforge a lot of my expertise off and into crit. Initially I disregarded this suggestion and continued to be spell hit capped. However, I decided I would test them in raid finder and on a dummy to compare. I did significantly more dps with less expertise. You will still want to retain the 7.5% Hit (duh). Give it a try. I was doing ~6k more dps on average.

Did some more "dummy" testing. Now I'm getting the opposite in terms of results. Definitely seeing more blindside procs with 7.5% expertise, or is it pure RNG? Not really sure what to think. However. The amount of dodges are negligible with less expertise and the potential for more damage is obviously greater with crit. That saying, I was only gaining little more than 2% crit by reforging while sitting at 5.2% expertise.

I'm sure the developers of Shadowcraft have run the numbers enough to know better than I. So I would tend to agree with them. I don't really see the benefit of soft capping it.

This is my bias as it stands:
Hit >= 7.5%
Exp <= 7.5%

I would say though that going below 5% expertise is probably a bad idea.

[Kael]

It's RNG. Reforging won't add 6k either way; possibly at the most extreme possible, but I really doubt short of 0% hit and reforging out of mastery you'd see a 6k gap consistently.

You'd still need to post your profile for us to check why SC could be telling you to reforge crit > expertise, but that still sounds odd, and in any case, it wouldn't be +/- 6k DPS.

[Helbrecht]

If anyone's getting really weird results, post your character/realm so someone can try to duplicate the issue please, rather than making blanket statements about how wrong it is. I haven't seen any problems with SC since it was last updated. Mastery is ahead of expertise on a patchwerk fight, and theoretically, other stats are capable of pulling ahead (although I doubt they would; see what stat weightings it's providing you when you're reforged out of expertise).

Personally, for the *relatively minor* theoretical loss, I cap expertise because I use almost the same gear for combat, and because I occasionally play with 2-3 FPS and don't want to risk making a stupid mistake under lust/haste procs.

http://shadowcraft.mmo-mumble.com/us...EumdcoVZb9Ag==

There is my Shadowcraft, my Realm is Arthas (us) and my character is Monolith

Hell now when i click "Auto reforge" it puts me at 642 Exp rating..

[Kael]

Hum, crit is over expertise at most values for you according to SC. It's possible I've been mentally overvaluing expertise, although personally I twitch when my attacks don't land. I'll try running this in SimC when I've got some free time to see if they agree, and if not, why.

My profile still has expertise over crit, if only slightly. Also worth noting, selecting reforge twice on yours puts you at 1489 expertise, and the expertise/crit listings swap (causing it drop them in return).

[Squirl]

http://shadowcraft.mmo-mumble.com/us...EumdcoVZb9Ag==

There is my Shadowcraft, my Realm is Arthas (us) and my character is Monolith

Hell now when i click "Auto reforge" it puts me at 642 Exp rating..

You're at a pretty low gear level. Weird things happen in that area, but I would still trust ShadowC. You're also at a specific gear level where reforging makes exp and crit values fluctuate ahead/behind each other. I hit a similar point awhile ago with crit and haste; it had me going between then for ~30 DPS difference.

Just hit auto reforge a few times, click the highest point in the graph, reforge off the character sheet (that is, ignore the log).

[Sesshou]

It's not really that odd... Expertise has never been an assassination spec prio stat (except for with the legendaries) and that won't change anytime soon. You can go against shadowcraft and other sources (like the peeps above) and specc for the cap for the free blindside (as if it really proccs that much) and risk loosing dps in any other form or go with it and stop wasting another thought about it, unless they bring a change in 5.2.

Don't be a sheep that follows without thinking. Certain things while they may produce a higher expected value will also produce a higher variance. For example there was the question of spell hit for non assassination specs in cata. The expected value wasn't all that high, but especially early in cata, it was entirely possible for your deadly poison to actually fall off causing a rather large dps loss.

I'm not saying you are wrong to agree with SC. But you shouldn't entirely ignore variance. An extreme example, would you rather do 100k dps on a fight every single pull or have a 50% chance of doing 51k dps and a 50% chance of doing 150k dps? The latter has the higher expected dps overall. Personally, I'd take the former because that way whenever the other 24 people in my raid also did the fight properly, I would have performed adequately.

So unless you have your own model showing how expertise capping effects the variance of your dps, stop just blindly following and pointing to the work others have done as if no one has seen it. Think of it like an investment. You wouldn't seriously consider investing in something only knowing the expected return and nothing about the variance (which gives you information on the risk involved) would you? So you probably shouldn't be telling people to just pick whatever has the highest expected value.

Personally, I'm only reforging it so I have cap as combat. If I'm not capped as assassination that is fine with me.

Edit: not to mention, there are at least two bosses this tier where you are potentially dpsing from in front for part of the time.

Completely irrelevant to this conversation unless you are suggesting getting over 7.5% expertise which I'd say is clearly dumb... The first 7.5% expertise does nothing to parry no matter how you stand and I haven't seen anyone asking about if they should exceed 7.5%

[whathump]

Btw, here are the stat weighs from EJ:

Agi 2.72
Yellow Hit 1.80
Mastery 1.15
Expertise 1.08
Haste 1.02
Crit 0.99
White Hit 0.64

Nitpicking a little, but as for haste/crit, they are very close in value with crit edging out haste unless you are using Terror as a trinket, since the massive amounts of crit on its proc devalues crit enough to make it slightly below haste.

[Sesshou]

Nitpicking a little, but as for haste/crit, they are very close in value with crit edging out haste unless you are using Terror as a trinket, since the massive amounts of crit on its proc devalues crit enough to make it slightly below haste.

Nitpicking you back. Completely irrelevant. Those weights on EJ are assumed (and stated as such) for a particular set of gear. If you change the gear they are not guaranteed to hold (in fact the odds they are completely unchanged if you extend the significant digits is probably damn near 0).

Crit also doesn't devalue crit (until you reach some kind of cap). So that is an incorrect statement. Additional crit increases the relative value of other stats. To say something is "devalued" means the value is lower. Caps aside, the first 1% crit is worth the same as the second 1% crit (the actual value of all of these stats are dps/expected damage). There was another similar thread if you want to see the marginal return argument so I won't bother here.

[Deleted]

Shadowcraft told me yesterday to reforge out of the expertise cap, so I did. It's currently rating crit higher than exp and haste lower. I would post a link to the page but I don't have enough post count, if you'd like to check the character is on Anachronos-EU and is called Bucano. I have my main hand dagger upgraded twice but that doesn't make a difference to the optimizing as it doesn't tell me to reforge back into expertise when you press it twice whether the dagger has the extra stats or not.

I didn't really check my DPS before and after other than on a target dummy which was a difference of about +2k but that could come down to more blindsides / poison procs or even a streak of crits. I did raid last night with 3.19% under the exp cap and on a 7 minute fight dodges were 3 melee attacks, 1 dispatch, 1 envenom and 1 shadowblade mainhand attack.

I don't know if it's a DPS increase to be under or on the cap but I personally am going to follow Shadowcraft for the little increase in crit chance and mastery

[Ryme]

The dps increase from reforging out of expertise and into some extra mastery is quite small (only offers me ~200dps), this gap gets smaller still when you play a boss with lower uptime on your abilities since you're duelling with RNG gods - you risk even going down in dps with particularly obtuse fights.

I would say it's almost always not worth doing this.

[Deleted]

To contradict my previous post I am inclined to agree with Ryme. The stats weights which are being provided by Shadowcraft have crit and expertise so close (0.002 difference and haste is 0.001 behind, these are of course for me personally) that the gain in damage is probably not worth the loss of an attack being dodged and reforging out crit / haste for expertise is not advisable but obviously it's up to the player if they want to play dice with the RNG Gods.

[Roach]

Haha, just checked mine after viewing this post. It has me dropping a lot of expertise for haste for a 4.9 dps loss..

(2xupgrade on mh.) Guess I'll stick with my exp forges for now.

[mongoose6]

I think its worth mentioning that expertise only increases damage done when you are on target while mastery will increase damage done both on and off target due to harder DP ticks. As such, if you do a dummy test, you should include set periods of time off target to simulate boss mechanics and look at your damage done as opposed to your dps.