1. #1

    Feral dps help: ArP Hardcap vs Rake crit +DBW trinket, ArP softcap

    Hello all, I am looking for a little bit of help here. I use rawr, read these forums a lot and sometimes go to elitist jerks, and other websites for my information and well I have a question. l find this community is a bit more friendly when it comes to none regular posters and will be more helpful in educating me then some other forums which is why I am posting here.

    I am planning on getting 4 piece t10 asap and notice all the t10 gear has armor pen which is amazing, but should I continue to stay ArP softcapped and start using more agi gems to increase my ap/crit for the set bonus, or try to go for the hardcap ArP? Also I have deathbringers will, which already has a 1 out of 3 chance of being a armor pen trinket so I am kind of torn as to which way to go. I was thinking that because of deathbringers will that going for the hardcap would greatly reduce the effectiveness of this trinket's ArP proc when it does go off. Should I just try to farm up needle encrusted scorpion to replace my grim toll and stay ArP softcapped and go to agi stacking because of rake also being able to crit now?

    Also another thing I was wondering does agility ever get on such diminishing returns that we should maybe switch to Str at a certain point? I notice when my agility proc from DBW goes off and such I am right around 72-76% crit which I do love but is there a point when str overtakes agi because of diminishing returns? I assume agi is still better because no one ever mentions str anymore but was just wondering. One str still equals 2AP+(due to talents cant recall the exact 2.6 or whatever # it is) or was this changed a while back and I just happened to miss it ^_^'?

    Anyway thanks for the help on these questions and letting me ramble about all these thoughts that have been going through my mind.

  2. #2
    Miss Doctor Lady Bear Sunshine's Avatar
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    Re: Feral dps help: ArP Hardcap vs Rake crit +DBW trinket, ArP softcap

    Quote Originally Posted by Ruox
    should I continue to stay ArP softcapped and start using more agi gems to increase my ap/crit for the set bonus, or try to go for the hardcap ArP? Also I have deathbringers will, which already has a 1 out of 3 chance of being a armor pen trinket so I am kind of torn as to which way to go. I was thinking that because of deathbringers will that going for the hardcap would greatly reduce the effectiveness of this trinket's ArP proc when it does go off. Should I just try to farm up needle encrusted scorpion to replace my grim toll and stay ArP softcapped and go to agi stacking because of rake also being able to crit now?
    Speaking pre-4T10, armor pen hardcap is much better than armor pen softcap + trinket. As far as GT vs NES, the problem with NES is that it procs on crits instead of on hits, leading to substantially less uptime. But, maybe it's still better for the amount of armor pen on the proc or the static crit on the trinket, depending on your gear.

    That said, I'm not sure how 4T10 will change things, since it should increase the value of crit, nor how we should treat DW. It's a random proc between several, right? I suspect the higher expected time between procs should mean it's treated differently than GT (maybe go towards hard cap, and this trinket will fill in the remaining gap), but I could be wrong.

    Quote Originally Posted by Ruox
    Also another thing I was wondering does agility ever get on such diminishing returns that we should maybe switch to Str at a certain point? I notice when my agility proc from DBW goes off and such I am right around 72-76% crit which I do love but is there a point when str overtakes agi because of diminishing returns?
    With lots of procs, it's easy to get over the white crit cap (76%, due to glancing blows) and the FB crit cap (75%, due to R&T), but our special attacks always benefit from more crit. So there may be diminishing returns at those points... but the benefit to specials still makes it worth stacking, especially with the 4T10 bonus.

  3. #3

    Re: Feral dps help: ArP Hardcap vs Rake crit +DBW trinket, ArP softcap

    The proc from DBW is one of the following for druids
    600 ArP
    600 agility
    600 Strength

    The duration is 30 seconds long w/ roughly around a 110 second cooldown it seems. And thanks for replyin sunshine, I know I am asking questions about new stuff that has tons and tons of variables but sadly it has been plaguing my mind since I have seen the trinket and gear and such.

  4. #4
    Miss Doctor Lady Bear Sunshine's Avatar
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    Re: Feral dps help: ArP Hardcap vs Rake crit +DBW trinket, ArP softcap

    So if it's 30 second duration and 110 second cooldown, and evenly split among those three stats (1/3 probability for each)... Expected uptime of proc is 30/140 (~21%). Expected uptime of armor pen is 30/420 seconds (7%). So if you treat the trinket as an armor pen trinket and try to softcap against it (up to 800 armor pen), you're losing out on 600 armor pen for 93% of the time.

    Intuitively, I'll stick with my other guess that it will be better to go past that soft cap and let the 600 armor pen just "fill in" whatever gap you end up with... but again, this is just an educated guess.

    Edit: See correct math below.

  5. #5

    Re: Feral dps help: ArP Hardcap vs Rake crit +DBW trinket, ArP softcap

    Well if I decided to stick w/ the softcap I was goin to use another armor pen trinket, like grimtoll or needle encrusted scorp, so my uptime would be a bit more. Yes occassionally they do overlap but also sometimes I get the 600 agi + grim toll or 600 str + grim toll, which needless to say is mmmmmmmmmmm lol. I wouldn't use DBW as a solo ArP trinket it is way too unreliable for that I realize.

    If I decided to go for the hardcap tho then I will prob go for Heroic Deaths Choice or somethin.

  6. #6

    Re: Feral dps help: ArP Hardcap vs Rake crit +DBW trinket, ArP softcap

    Quote Originally Posted by Sunshine
    So if it's 30 second duration and 110 second cooldown, and evenly split among those three stats (1/3 probability for each)... Expected uptime of proc is 30/140 (~21%). Expected uptime of armor pen is 30/420 seconds (7%). So if you treat the trinket as an armor pen trinket and try to softcap against it (up to 800 armor pen), you're losing out on 600 armor pen for 93% of the time.
    It's actually a 30 second duration with a 110 sec CD, but the CD starts when the trinket procs so it ends up being about 80 seconds. The procs are pretty random; ie you can get say the strength one 2 or 3 times in a row followed by the agility proc and never actually see the arp proc or any number of combinations. On Saurfang 10 man last night I got 2 agility procs and an arp proc. 4 minute fight, agility was up for 60 seconds total, arp was up for 25 seconds (ended the fight as a dwarf). Figure on it proccing in the first 1-4 seconds of any given fight and you can time it from that.

  7. #7
    Miss Doctor Lady Bear Sunshine's Avatar
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    Re: Feral dps help: ArP Hardcap vs Rake crit +DBW trinket, ArP softcap

    Quote Originally Posted by Cheezee
    It's actually a 30 second duration with a 110 sec CD, but the CD starts when the trinket procs so it ends up being about 80 seconds. The procs are pretty random; ie you can get say the strength one 2 or 3 times in a row followed by the agility proc and never actually see the arp proc or any number of combinations.
    Oh, oops! I'll still assume 1/3 chance on all procs (random is random), so that changes it to: Expected uptime of proc is 30/110 (~27%). Expected uptime of armor pen is once per 3 procs, so 30/330 seconds (~9%). (This fits with Cheezee's empirical results, if you take into account the fact that there's an "extra" proc with no downtime due to the lucky length of the fight.)

    Compare this to GT/MR, at 10 sec uptime per 45 sec icd, which is 10/45 = ~22%. So the (expected) armor pen uptime is twice as much with GT than with this trinket.

  8. #8

    Re: Feral dps help: ArP Hardcap vs Rake crit +DBW trinket, ArP softcap

    aye this is one thing thats been tormenting my mind wether to go for more ARP or agy+crit (when NEC procs ive got ~100% arp) but still i think its best to keep going for more arp as the trinket buff will not be up all the time, and maybe in time you replace that one for more damage but its still a nice buff, but tbh you arp goes up and down its hard to get to 100% or close without a trinket, as for the moment ill keep stacking arp myself, and basically you need a feel for that yourself.

    also GT is only good when youre not hit capped imo, the NEC crit is extremely nice aswell as druids crit like hell so it basically doesnt matter if it only procs on crit or not as we have 50-70% crit chance wich is a good 20-40% more crit than other classes (assuming that some classes have 30% wich is quite usualy number)


    Thanks to Stanton Biston for the amazing sig!

  9. #9

    Re: Feral dps help: ArP Hardcap vs Rake crit +DBW trinket, ArP softcap

    Because Deathbringer's Will is so chancey I'd rather stay with death's verdict and runestone then stack agility

  10. #10
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    Re: Feral dps help: ArP Hardcap vs Rake crit +DBW trinket, ArP softcap

    Hmm, comparing procs of DV to DW, ignoring the armor pen proc (pretend you're hard-capped) and also ignoring the static value of the trinkets (256 ap vs 155 armor pen)...

    DV: 450 agi 15 sec / 45 sec icd (average of 150 agi)
    Averages out to 150 agi = 196 AP, 2.14% crit
    DW: 600 agi 30 sec / 330; 600 str 30 sec / 330 (assuming, again, equal chance of procs, 110 sec icd)
    Averages out to 54.5 agi, 54.5 str = 215 AP, 0.78% crit

    So unless something's wrong here, it seems like a fairly weak trinket *if* you're already hard-capped. However, the duration of the proc might mean that you have a chance to get several good moves off during the proc time (rips, fb) whereas for DV, you may not even have the opportunity to get up a rip (or you may overwrite a previous rip). And of course, if you're not hard-capped, then the armor pen portion of the proc holds value, so it would be much better.

    Okay, so that math was pretty pointless. But I felt like doing math, and maybe it will be useful to somebody.

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