Anaxie's Totally Revolutionary SoO Retribution T16 BiS & Theorycraft

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Only the new WoD gear changes. MoP gear don't

And there was me looking forward to taking those warforged haste/mastery boots from Spoils heroic that none of the holy pallies will be wanting :/

[CyborgGrandpa]

This is a good week so far, Got a heroic thok trinket today, coined a heroic WF Ring off him, and got rank 5 for that fight in the process. Hurray for not being chased. I do dislike however that this tier, good damage depends on getting 4set in a specific window on many fights. At least in cataclysm, divine purpose RNG usually evened out over the course of an entire boss fight.

It's really, really fucking dumb how much my damage wildly swings, depending on if I get good 4pc procs or not.

I mean, it's awesome when I get lucky, but... yeah. That doesn't happen as much as I wish it would. >.>

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

It's really, really fucking dumb how much my damage wildly swings, depending on if I get good 4pc procs or not.

I mean, it's awesome when I get lucky, but... yeah. That doesn't happen as much as I wish it would. >.>

That's pretty much the reason why I value mastery over crit, even if simcraft does say that they about as good as each other. I won't be playing a fight 50,000 times, so mastery is the stat that will give me less variance in my damage done, and thus I can identify more reliably when I did "well" in a fight.

[Bonkura]

Meh, crit doesn't affect your damage that much. You guys greatly exaggerate its RNG. Just look at the amount of actions you have for each fight.

[Maegor]

That's why simc outputs a histogram. The number it spits out is an average of that histogram. The flatter a histogram is, the more variation you can expect in fight to fight. Having more abilities, trinks, talents that proc something, will cause greater variation. Since our 4pc is a powerful proc, well, I think you get the picture.

[CyborgGrandpa]

I value mastery over crit as well, but really it depends on if I get any set bonus procs at the start of a fight or not. Those opening seconds can wildly swing my damage one way or another, and that's kinda frustrating since it's something I have no control over (cause it's the set bonus).

[Deleted]

Meh, crit doesn't affect your damage that much. You guys greatly exaggerate its RNG. Just look at the amount of actions you have for each fight.

Just checked my latest Iron Juggernaut kill, 1049 total hits, crit will easily average out over that amount.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

RNG in general is something I hate, crit among them.
Sure it CAN be good but honestly? If I'm gonna progress with my guild and the job I'm set to do (nuking a mob for example) and I get 5 crits one try and it melts and the next try I don't crit at all and it gets a cast off? Fuck if that's fun... "sorry guys I didn't crit, just wipe".
A bit overdramatic, sure, but let's take it to the extreme.
Thok 25hc, If you get RNG lucky when the bats spawn you're gonna fucking MELT them. I've peaked at 3m + dps on them with good rng (not aoe specced or cheesed) and the next try I've done 1m dps on them because 4set didn't chain proc like a retard. IT IS NOT GOOD GAME DESIGN IMO!

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Just checked my latest Iron Juggernaut kill, 1049 total hits, crit will easily average out over that amount.

Yeah, but then you are on Siegecrafter belt duty, and none of your Templar's Verdicts crit in that 20 second window.

[Deleted]

Yeah, but then you are on Siegecrafter belt duty, and none of your Templar's Verdicts crit in that 20 second window.

That is true. Though the Siegecrafter belt is a very unique situation and I can't see that happening elsewhere.

[Calimon-ZJ]

like i said before, most of the fights this tier have small windows where getting procs will grant extreme damage (heroic immerseus adds, thok bats, malkorok blobs, start of dark shamans etc...). Not getting 4pc procs during those times will result in extreme fluxuation in dps. There's pretty much a window like that on almost every fight except for Juggernaut.

[Deleted]

like i said before, most of the fights this tier have small windows where getting procs will grant extreme damage (heroic immerseus adds, thok bats, malkorok blobs, start of dark shamans etc...). Not getting 4pc procs during those times will result in extreme fluxuation in dps. There's pretty much a window like that on almost every fight except for Juggernaut.

I was talking strictly about going crit over mastery because crit is too unreliable.

[Bonkura]

Yeah, but then you are on Siegecrafter belt duty, and none of your Templar's Verdicts crit in that 20 second window.

Which is still an exaggeration. You have a point but it's an extreme situation. We're talking about the two secondary stats that we value the least out of all we're using as Ret. The differences between them are going to be fairly small, meaning the values you're playing around with won't show that high differences.

[Deleted]

That feeling, when you get 15 chainprocs of 4p / dp at the pull of Galakras and even leave arms warriors behind you.
Or not a single proc when you need to cleave malkorok adds, but always get procs when no adds are around...
On Galakras it evens out over the course of the fight, but on fights where you need the cleave right NOW, in that small window,
my dps varies at least around 40 - 60k (Malkorok e.g.). Watching one log - top 3 dps, watching another log - last dps is really frustrating...
and bad for continued progress and fail analysis

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Exactly, over let's say 10 pulls it will average out but from one pull to another it will most of the time not. Crit isn't that big for us but as some said 4set procs (and in ToT) would determine how you did one pull and the next, anyone remember the big retarded bird in ToT or the first boss? If you got a mass of 4set (tot tier) procs when you had the damage buff or stood in pool you'd do insane damage, if you then also critted??? I don't expect RNG to ever go away as some types of RNG are a bit of awareness to use (like the 4set bonuses we had in ToT and SoO) but for them to be as strong as they've been AND how critical (no pun.. ah fuck it, it was nice) it is to get them at a certain point in a fight? "Skill" with using the ToT and SoO 4set can be discussed inn and out but if 2 rets raid together (like I do) the damage between the two can vary WAY TOO MUCH from pull to pull just because of how many procs one happened to get at the correct time, the next pull it can be flipped on the head...

As for crit vs mastery? I prefer limiting the rng in my damage to the set bonus and instead just buff the damage it does (through mastery) every time it happens instead of crit which only buffs your damage once in a while, or every hit for 20sec, or not a single attack for 20sec... whatever it feels like.

[Deleted]

As for crit vs mastery? I prefer limiting the rng in my damage to the set bonus and instead just buff the damage it does (through mastery) every time it happens instead of crit which only buffs your damage once in a while, or every hit for 20sec, or not a single attack for 20sec... whatever it feels like.

That's a very uncertain way to decide stat priority.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

On simc after a point crit and mastery is roughly equal over 25k.
On 2 pulls the difference might be huge, you decide if you want to go with the build that gives more stable numbers or the build that can give incredible numbers if you're super lucky.

[Deleted]

On 2 pulls the difference might be huge, you decide if you want to go with the build that gives more stable numbers or the build that can give incredible numbers if you're super lucky.

Why not go with what is best on average?

[Defender]

You don't argue with the logic of Zardox.

[Deleted]

You don't argue with the logic of Zardox.

Perhaps I should clarify.

Compare two specs over five kills of the same boss.

Spec A: 190k on first kill, 210k on second kill, 195k on third kill, 200k on fourth kill, 205k on fifth kill, 200k average DPS.
Spec B: 130k on first kill, 230k on second kill, 270k on third kill, 170k on fourth kill, 260k on fifth kill, 212k average DPS.

While spec A is more reliable, it does 6% less average DPS than spec B does. Why is it important that your damage is the same every try (outside of stuff like Siegecrafter belt)? On the kill where Spec B is doing less than its average DPS, someone else in the raid will be having the time of their life doing much more than their average DPS, thus equalizing the raid DPS.