Anaxie's Totally Revolutionary SoO Retribution T16 BiS & Theorycraft

[Meiffert]

As for the aoe "guy" he needs to understand that if he is avoiding haste HE likely wont get that final storm off or build up to another fast enough before they are all dead.

Or he might get his DS just in time before they die while you have a few extra seconds which you spend on weak HP builders and the adds die just before YOU get your next DS in. Now you both have the same amount of strong attacks except his are hiting for a lot more with all that extra mastery and criting more often.
Both scenarios are equally likely and that's why we have stat weights for average situations. Those lucky/unlucky situations even out over a longer fight unless the adds die extremly fast every time in which case mastery/crit would actually be better.

And hey if ur in Max BiS levels where i think you have like 2500 ish crit rating total. Thats like what. Roughly 25% raid buffed? Think of any and every crit you do as entirely free. Stack 20k crit rating, you prolly woulda crit that attack with only 5k.

I might have misunderstood you here, are you saying that crit is worse than what its sim value is because you might get unlucky and not crit more with higher crit rating?
What sort of argument is that? That's like saying that t15 4set bonus was useless because you might get unlucky and not have it proc at all.

Unless the class has procs / damage / abilities that rely on crit I see absolutely zero reason to stack it. Well unless they would of done a 4th tier and we got 50% haste 90% mastery then ya boom crit. This expansions scaling is retarded as fuck.

Squish please.

Frost DKs with 2hander are stacking crit. They have no extra mechanic depending on crit, on the contrary they actually have a Killing Machine proc that devalues crit rating because it gives them a guaranteed crit on their next Obliterate or Frost Strike.
Why do they do it? Because it gives the highest damage on average. Haste, mastery and half a strength are simply even weaker.

You should go for stats which perform better on average and not think too much about arbitrary situations where you might get extremly lucky/unlucky unless there are some VERY specific situations on some encounters.

I don't think that item level squish would solve the problems you are talking about, but I do expect and hope for some tweaks in the combat ratings system for next expansion as well.


Just as an interesting sidenote, the stat weights for haste, mastery and crit differ by less then 0.1 for me personally.
Now napkin math says that I would need to gem/reforge about 30k of rating incorrectly to lower my dps by 1 %. As my haste/mastery would go down and crit up, the difference between the values would increase so in reality a little bit less rating would be needed, but you get the point.
Things such as killing a boss a bit faster (as your raid gets better geared and knows the fight better) which will give you higher uptime on pots/lust, higher or lower uptime on CDs depending on the exact length, slight changes in your tactics or simply RNG will have much higher impact on your DPS on a single attempt than reforging. You would need to test different gear setups many times in the same situation to find out which is better.
Therefore saying that some good player X from guild Y reforged this or that way and ranked well on WoL doesn't really mean that much.

[Deleted]

The stat scaling posted on EJ's paladin thread. At the same time it was recognized that no fight had a consistant 5 adds that would allow you to utilize these stat priorities.

This plot image from EJ is simulated for BIS-gear with maximum haste gems. The point, where the haste graph falls under the graphs of crit and mastery is at ~50% haste. I see no reason why mastery should be better for aoe than haste (if you are under 50%).
I did a simulation for my gear (t16-4p, 46% haste) and for single target a week ago:

And again, the graph for haste falls at ~50% under crit and mastery. In my opinion, there is no reason to stop stacking haste at 40% (but it shouldn't be a great loss, if you do it).

[Maegor]

Well unless they would of done a 4th tier and we got 50% haste 90% mastery then ya boom crit. This expansions scaling is retarded as fuck.

Squish please.

I don't think it's an issue of needing a squish, it's almost like they didn't realize how ridiculous the scaling would be with every tier having three modes and then the last tier having four. Adding flex in this last tier basically bumped up normal and heroic gear ilvls by 13-14. I wonder how far along they were with the development of flex before the xpac released and intended for it to be released this tier. Seems like if releasing flex this tier was always the plan then they kind of flubbed the stat scaling formula for a lvl 90 toon.

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I might have misunderstood you here, are you saying that crit is worse than what its sim value is because you might get unlucky and not crit more with higher crit rating?
What sort of argument is that? That's like saying that t15 4set bonus was useless because you might get unlucky and not have it proc at all.

To me, crit is worse because its sims have a larger std dev than mastery builds. I would rather know I'm going to do 250-260k on a boss than knowing that depending on procs I could be anywhere from 210-300k, especially on progression, where consistency is key. And it's different from the t15 4p, because the t15 4p proccing didn't take away from anything else where stacking crit would take away from mastery.

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Frost DKs with 2hander are stacking crit. They have no extra mechanic depending on crit, on the contrary they actually have a Killing Machine proc that devalues crit rating because it gives them a guaranteed crit on their next Obliterate or Frost Strike.
Why do they do it? Because it gives the highest damage on average. Haste, mastery and half a strength are simply even weaker.

From what I've read, this is due to their tier bonus (2p basically gives a fuckton of haste) and the cdr trink more than anything. Plus they have 30% haste baked into them with icy talens passive, which makes getting to their 70% haste soft cap super fucking easy in heroic gear (just like heroic geared pallys don't have to struggle to get 40% haste).

[anaxie]

Lets not compare ourselves to dks now. Nevermind we have one of the best scaling masterys in the entire game.

Also what Maegore said, the issue is dks have more haste from procs / passives then they know what to do with. So the two aren't even comparable.

[Runewrath]

If anyone has something theg want asked at the q&a at blizzcon then pm me your question. I'll pick the best one just before.

[pedrodelrey]

Anaxie what trinket its better to combo with the evil eye of galakras.The feather of jin kun or the paragons crit trinket?
I dont have the thok trinket yet

[Ianus]

Anaxie what trinket its better to combo with the evil eye of galakras.The feather of jin kun or the paragons crit trinket?
I dont have the thok trinket yet

paragons..hit is wasted stat how much you get it from gear.. esp after tot trinkrets got nerfed

[Bonkura]

paragons..hit is wasted stat how much you get it from gear.. esp after tot trinkrets got nerfed

You don't know how much hit he has and the trinkets didn't really get nerfed. Double amount of procs with half the durations. No big difference in the long run because same uptime. Feather is still an amazing trinket.

[Ianus]

You don't know how much hit he has and the trinkets didn't really get nerfed. Double amount of procs with half the durations. No big difference in the long run because same uptime. Feather is still an amazing trinket.

and what would u use eye with feather or horridon still no thok normal versions feather thunderforged.. i'm asking for myself now

[Nero412]

Hey guys I've been following this thread for a long time, I understand the idea of Exp/Mastery gemming and the value of haste past 17k, however, I am partially confused at the moment about my toon. I'm sitting on 18.4k haste at the moment, only mastery gems are Exp/Mastery ones. Should I swap out a few haste gems for straight mastery gems and drop some haste for more mastery?

Would it be more beneficial than the extra haste I got?

Armory link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Neró/advanced

[Deleted]

I'm sitting on 18.4k haste at the moment, only mastery gems are Exp/Mastery ones. Should I swap out a few haste gems for straight mastery gems and drop some haste for more mastery?

That's the idea, yes.

[Aceshigh]

and what would u use eye with feather or horridon still no thok normal versions feather thunderforged.. i'm asking for myself now

Still not enough information. What are the item levels of each trinket.

[Deleted]

Please bear with me for a few quick questions. Apologies if I missed these answers somewhere.

What's the deal with 40% haste now? Why do we stop there? And is that our unbuffed target?

Why exp/mastery gems? I didn't quite get that part.

Heard a few different opinions regarding weapons rankings. 561 polearm vs. 561 heirloom? (human)

Which lv 75 talent? (no T16 4p) I find the first sentence of the OP confusing.

Finally, how strong is the "only swap 4 set for 4 set" guideline? Should I actually go back to T15 4p from my current gear? (see signature) I have normal gloves, rest heroic. No T16 yet.

Thanks

[Deleted]

Your cooldowns are reduced by the SAME amount like your GCD. There is no difference for your rotation between 0% and 50% haste. The only reason to stop stacking haste could be scaling. But my results (I posted them on the last page) show that the scaling of haste doesn't drop under mastery and crit until 50%. But if you have 40-50% haste, the 3 stats are almost equal. So the "cap" is at 50% haste.

[pedrodelrey]

Still not enough information. What are the item levels of each trinket.

Heroic Feather
Normal Skeer

[Deleted]

Thanks again. I was thinking the attack speed raid buffs would affect it but it actually won't, will it? So only character sheet stats count, barring trinket procs.

[ScorpioRGc1]

I just got LFR Thok's Tail Tip. My current trinkets are Fabled Feather of Ji-Kun (LFR upgraded to 510) and Spark of Zandalar (also LFR upgraded to 510). Which do I replace?

[Meiffert]

To me, crit is worse because its sims have a larger std dev than mastery builds. I would rather know I'm going to do 250-260k on a boss than knowing that depending on procs I could be anywhere from 210-300k, especially on progression, where consistency is key.

Well I guess that depends. First of all having a bit more crit won't make you suddenly do 90k more or less damage on a 5+ minutes fight and also in your example it isn't even stronger on average. If 2 stats had the same weights, I would choose the more consistent as well.
That being said I think you overvalue this consistency thing a bit. Just imagine a fight where the difficult part is a dps check where you have to do 261k+. Now you consistently fail it every time while you could have succeded over 40 % of the time with the more proc based setup.

And it's different from the t15 4p, because the t15 4p proccing didn't take away from anything else where stacking crit would take away from mastery.

But of course it did. You could have used thunderforged gear with higher itemlvl for more stats, or different pieces of gear with better secondary stats. Instead you picked the tier items even though they can't be thunderforged and don't have ideal stats because that random luck based proc was doing 10 % of our damage.

From what I've read, this is due to their tier bonus (2p basically gives a fuckton of haste) and the cdr trink more than anything. Plus they have 30% haste baked into them with icy talens passive, which makes getting to their 70% haste soft cap super fucking easy in heroic gear (just like heroic geared pallys don't have to struggle to get 40% haste).

So? You could still go for more haste and replace weaker abilities in your rotation with more Obliterates. Or you could go for more mastery which has no cap and hit harder with HB and FS.
The point is that even though Crit is bad because of Killing Machine and sims only slightly higher than mastery, everyone is still going for it, because slightly higher is still higher.

You're pretty much GCD capped at 40%, so taking more won't affect you as much (This is with divine purpose and/or 4set)

Can you elaborate on this a bit, please? Everyone keeps throwing around this GCD cap, but as far as I can tell, haste shouldn't affect it too much until you reach 50 %. You get more abilities to use (shorter cooldowns on HoW, CS, J, more Exo procs from more autoattacks etc.), but you also get more GCDs to fill as they are shortened by the same ratio.

Heirloom is better

In your guide you rank Polearm of the same ilvl above the heirloom though.
Seems very close without doing the math, polearm has slightly better secondary stats and yellow socket, but heirloom has an extra socket and therefore 60 free strength from the socket bonus.

Please bear with me for a few quick questions. Apologies if I missed these answers somewhere.

What's the deal with 40% haste now? Why do we stop there? And is that our unbuffed target?

As you get more haste, it makes other stats (strength, mastery and crit) better. Also as you get close to 50 %, more and more of your haste is wasted during heroism/bloodlust, since it will put you a lot above 50 %, which is a softcap (after 50 % haste no longer lowers your GCD, which makes it a lot weaker).
Therefore there is a point somwhere between 30-50 % haste where mastery becomes stronger. Where exactly that point is depends on a lot of factors including your exact gear and length of the fight.
40 % is a guess where that point could be for your typical gear set and fight. You can sim your character with the correct fight length to get a more accurate number.

Why exp/mastery gems? I didn't quite get that part.

The stats that ret paladins could consider gemming are:
Red - strength, expertise
Yellow - haste, mastery, crit
Blue - hit, stamina

Half of the gem has to be the correct color to match the socket bonus, the other half should always be your strongest stat.
Since multiple secondary stats are better than 1/2 of strength, we try to avoid gemming strength as long as we can reforge the extra expertise. Similarly we don't socket stamina if we can reforge to the hit cap.
Depending on what is the best secondary stat (see above), you either gem exp/haste in red, haste in yellow and prismatic, haste/hit in blue; or exp/mastery in red, mastery in yellow/prismatic and mastery/hit in blue.

Which lv 75 talent? (no T16 4p) I find the first sentence of the OP confusing.

You should use SW in most situations.

Finally, how strong is the "only swap 4 set for 4 set" guideline? Should I actually go back to T15 4p from my current gear? (see signature) I have normal gloves, rest heroic. No T16 yet.

The t15 4set gives about 10 % extra damage on single target fights. Easiest way is to sim your character with both gear sets and compare the numbers.

[Deleted]

Ah yes, that makes sense now. Expertise over strength for the same reason as why haste over strength. Thanks! And the mastery is just for when you're approaching the haste "cap", I assume. Guess I'll get to simming. Just feels so bad to drop some 20 levels for a set bonus, if that's the case.

[Montoyal]

Are you guys taking into account thok's tail tip for the 40% haste "cap"? The haste we get through the trinket does affect our GCD/CD right?

If that's the case with a normal mode thok's tail tip 2/2 (7.5% amp) the 17,000 haste (40%) would roughly translate to 18,275 haste (43%).

If the 40% haste cap is already taking into account the haste we get from thok we would want something around 15,814 haste (37.21%).

If for some reason we wanted to achieve 21,250 (50%) we would want something around 19,767 haste (46.51%).

This would obviously change with higher ilvl's of thok's tip.

Sorry about the ninja edit