What are Ep values exactly?

[SolSphere]

Would someone please explain to me what EP values are? Please don't link me to EJ threads, be there read that. Don't tell me they are stat weights, duh. What I want to know is, how are they derived. It has become quite apparent that for the majority of individuals EP = what EJ threads tell me to do. And that's as far as many of you care to venture.

I do have a small grasp on EP values, and I know enough to know not to blindly follow them. EP values change every single time you change a stat on your gear, your personal EP value will change. Many of you do not realize this and it's quite frustrating reading through forums and seeing the same advise being given out. Yes your values could match up to the same order as the list on EJ, but having the same exact numbers they have would be harder to do.

I know enough to realize the list on EJ was made from heroic teir 11 gear. How do I know this withought completely understanding how EP is created? I read the post where it clearly states "heroic teir 11 gear"

So anyway back to what I'm trying to do... I want to be able to create my own snapshots of my EP value when I change my gear around. Does anyone who hangs around these forums actually know how it's done?

[GuyWithFace]

Think of it this way, in it's simplest form: 1 AP/SP = 1 EP. All of the other stats are based around their DPS increase in respect to 1 point of your respective "general stat".

Edit: Missed your last line somehow. It's incredibly hard to evaluate EP manually without an immense knowledge of every abilities coefficient, how each stat affects each ability, length of a fight, etc etc. Some sims can calculate EP for you with whatever gear you input. (Thank goodness Kahories DK sim can calculate EP.)

[SolSphere]

Well that's just crappy (the whole difficult to figure out thing). We're theorically extracting numbers about stats that are not atk and comparing them to atk power. And stating this is how much atk power they are worth. This also frustrate me even more about people blindly throwing around stat weights. The list was derived from heroic t 11 gear meaning you are already in gear. You are not starting at base stats to figure out what we should be aiming for to get to heroic t 11 you are starting there. Seems sort of backwards to me.

So that just leads me back to trial and error. It also doesn't answer I was really trying to get at from behind the scenes. which is why is expertise regarded so low on the list. If our attack is dodged (which is what expertise takes care of) doesn't matter if we have 589265892368976289375829356029 attack power, that swing will do precisely 0 damage. Guess I'll just have to work up this heroic t11 gear and see what my expertise would be and aim for that.

[Grindfreak]

the ep values on the ej guide are estimates in certain gear, dont follow them blindly, check out their new "spreadsheet" thingy for something a tad bit more accurate.

[rabbimojo]

In general, the way EP values are calculated (I think this is what you're asking) is as follows.

A) First, suppose we have an Evaluator of some sort. It could be a spreadsheet, or it could be a simulator. You could even use time on a dummy, though your values would be really chaotic.
B) Next, you establish some base stat value. In your case, this would be what you currently have. How it's expressed (is it just delta from gear, is it including raid buffs, etc.) depends on what your Evaluator supports.
C) You pass that stat baseline to the Evaluator and get a DPS value.
D) Next, for each stat you're interested in:

• Add some small amount of it to the baseline (like 100 AP) (How small the value has to be to get a useful result depends on the Evaluator).
• Run the new stat set through the Evaluator
• Calculate the difference in DPS
• Divide that by the amount of the stat you added (by 100, if you added 100 AP)
• Repeat for each stat

This will give you individual stat weights. To convert those into EP, you normalize with respect to whatever the equivalence is to (e.g., relative to AP if you want AP-style EP).

That's basically it. EP are actually not as dependent on individual gear as you might think, since on average your gear will have a similar distribution to that of whatever baseline EJ has used to calculate theirs. If you have done something to your gearing that deviates significantly from the given baseline, e.g. reforged all your haste to mastery or something of that sort, then you simply raise the EP of what you've removed, and lower the EP of what you've added. (Assuming the stat scales linearly) It's of course just a rule of thumb, since it's hard to guess how much to raise/lower each by, but it's good for day-to-day use.

[Stymie]

Keep in mind EP values are really not there for the sake of trying to equate every statistic directly to Attack Power; basically it's an attempt to give a system of relativity to stats in WoW. The goal of EP numbers are to measure how much your DPS increases by gaining a specific stat, and to know how the gains for that stat are relative to others.

Using your expertise comment as an example -- the chance a boss has to dodge you is about 6%. Let's say you give up 500 expertise rating for 500 agility: Due to certain factors (like getting some energy back and not losing CPs after a dodge), the amount of DPS you lose by losing a GCD when 1-in-17 of your attacks being dodged may be less than the sum of the DPS you gained on the other 16 attacks due to having 500 more agility. In that case, even though having an attack dodged always sucks, you still saw a net DPS gain by taking the 500 agility.

EP values are an effort to quantify those scenarios. As others have said, they're not 100% set in stone, it's just meant to be a reference guide for how to value the value of stat gains/losses between items.

[Spoogles]

EP values are there as a reference just to tell you how much of one stat will equal another and which way to go with them.

Rather simple in my eyes :S

[SolSphere]

EP values are there as a reference just to tell you how much of one stat will equal another and which way to go with them.

Rather simple in my eyes :S

So if I'm 1 point under hit cap do you think hit is still worth the same as if I'm missing 500 hit?

That's the point I'm making. I cannot be sure how much of a difference these shifts would make, which is why I want to know how to do it. I used to use programs like rawr and enhsim to figure out what stats were the best for my level of gear, but I'm not a shaman atm, and rawr is not working correctly.

[Revengencer]

So if I'm 1 point under hit cap do you think hit is still worth the same as if I'm missing 500 hit?

That's the point I'm making. I cannot be sure how much of a difference these shifts would make, which is why I want to know how to do it. I used to use programs like rawr and enhsim to figure out what stats were the best for my level of gear, but I'm not a shaman atm, and rawr is not working correctly.

Honestly, its kind of silly. At 1 point under hit cap you'd have now way of adding more without wasting +90% of it.

EP values for some stats can shift more depending on how much of other stats you can have I think.

For example, if you have very low hit and thus are missing a lot of white damage, haste would be less valuable (not so much now that it contributes to energy regen but still) as opposed to if most of your white attacks were landing. The values are generally derived with the tier from that content but even less geared you can assume as a general rule the weights will be close to the same. Honestly I would worry less about specific EP values and more about rankings.

So instead of looking at

Agility X.xx
Yellow hit X.xx
Haste X.xx
Mastery X.xx

you just go by Agiligy>Yellow Hit>haste

For the record I just picked 4 random stats so don't flame me because my ordering is off =)

[Tziva]

So if I'm 1 point under hit cap do you think hit is still worth the same as if I'm missing 500 hit?

That's the point I'm making. I cannot be sure how much of a difference these shifts would make, which is why I want to know how to do it. I used to use programs like rawr and enhsim to figure out what stats were the best for my level of gear, but I'm not a shaman atm, and rawr is not working correctly.

So, I'm a bit confused? Are you trying to make a statement about people blindly following the math without knowing how its calculated, making your question rhetorical.... or are you genuinely asking these questions about EP? Between all your posts, I honestly can't tell which it is. On one hand, it sounds like you understand EP weights and are just belittling people for following them based on other people's math, but then you say something that sounds like you don't understand.

The EP list on EJ that has the stats in Tier 11 gear are just a general ranking to give you an idea when gearing up so one can quickly calculate whether that piece with 30 haste or 45 mastery is better for them. Although the numbers may change based on current gear, they usually do not change so drastically as to really change their priority any more. We no longer have stats like ArP that vary so extremely based on how much we already have. The times when they do, the difference is going to be extremely minimal anyway. And yes, things that have hard and soft caps do change dramatically after a certain point, which is why they are often separated out ("Under cap" / "Over cap" or specials/magic). However, your spreadsheet will give you EP weights based on your current gear if you really want custom tailored numbers.

If you're asking what the formula is to determine this, I don't know the actual calculations. I'm not a mathy person; my knowledge comes from the foundation built by those that are. However, I understand the bigger picture of why they are calculated and how to interpret them, and what they mean for me, which is the important part. I think that's plenty sufficient.

[nextormento]

You are grasping it allright =)
To get your exact EP weight for every stat you use a spreadsheet. Now, why do we use such a tool? well, derivation of the EP formula is not straightforward: as pointed out before, you simply run a simulator (in the rogue case its a formulator actually) add/substract a certain amount of a stat and run it again (in shadowcraft we add/substract 1agi, 1haste, 1hit, 1weapon dps, 1talent point, etc).

The simulator is the core of the whole thing, and the way it works is given an amount of energy regen it queues the abilities we can use in an orderly fashion setting uptimes on things like procs, envenom buff, KsP, adrenaline rush, etc.; it's run multiple times (3 or 4 usually) to account for procs that change the queue (things that grant more energy regen as haste procs for instance) till it gets to a confidence threshold of 10E-7; it finaly queries the amount of abilities used (say, how many instant poison procs went through) and multiplies those by the average damage they do (for your current AP and/or weapon damage) and the raid modifiers such as master poisoner (crits are are taken care of too giving a crit chance to each ability and using the crit-damage or non-crit-damage accordingly).

The stat weights given are indeed for the closest to BiS gear setup we found (after gemming and reforge). But we've also (well, Aldriana did in this case) tried gear ranging from ilvl 333 up to heroic raid gear. EP doesn't jump all over the place now and the only one that does come up higher at certain thresholds of gear is haste (but not for a very high difference). Hit and expertise do change a lot, that's why they're given in caped/non caped EP weights. And yes, the value of 1hit point when close to caps is lower than one hit point when under 500 to the cap, but not by as much as you may imagine. We can query the value of undercapped hit even if the gear set of the input is over cap by the way.

If you want to delve deeperinto what's going on behind the scenes, you can go check the shadowcraft thread in EJ. We have a python2.6 library in development and already two applications that use it: one offline that can be downloaded from github, where we commit to the library and one online app at http://shadowcraft-test.appspot.com/ . Both of them are lacking a lot in front-end development (shadowcraft has a front-end too, but as of now only works with WoTLK gear while we wait for the devs to give us XML or JSON feeds) and are mainly proof of concept but they can be used to figure your exact EP weights given a gear setup input.

[SolSphere]

So, I'm a bit confused? Are you trying to make a statement about people blindly following the math without knowing how its calculated, making your question rhetorical.... or are you genuinely asking these questions about EP? Between all your posts, I honestly can't tell which it is. On one hand, it sounds like you understand EP weights and are just belittling people for following them based on other people's math, but then you say something that sounds like you don't understand.

The EP list on EJ that has the stats in Tier 11 gear are just a general ranking to give you an idea when gearing up so one can quickly calculate whether that piece with 30 haste or 45 mastery is better for them. Although the numbers may change based on current gear, they usually do not change so drastically as to really change their priority any more. We no longer have stats like ArP that vary so extremely based on how much we already have. The times when they do, the difference is going to be extremely minimal anyway. And yes, things that have hard and soft caps do change dramatically after a certain point, which is why they are often separated out ("Under cap" / "Over cap" or specials/magic). However, your spreadsheet will give you EP weights based on your current gear if you really want custom tailored numbers.

If you're asking what the formula is to determine this, I don't know the actual calculations. I'm not a mathy person; my knowledge comes from the foundation built by those that are. However, I understand the bigger picture of why they are calculated and how to interpret them, and what they mean for me, which is the important part. I think that's plenty sufficient.

You seem to be getting pretty close to understand what's going on here. While I'm not trying to belittle people, I am trying to get people understand that blindly following EP isn't always a good idea. At the same time I have a limited understanding of the EP system, which makes me skeptikal of certain things. Things like common sense tells me that if you are almost hit capped (1 point under) it can't be weighed the same as if you are 300 off from hit cap. That is of course assuming that my understanding of what EP is, is accurate.

What's making it confusing is that some of the answers I'm getting just do not fulfil the questions that I am asking and I am challenging them. But at this point I just don't think I'm going to get the understanding that I'm looking for without some serious study. I've got a feeling that I'm trying to break down a door of theorycrafting that I've never actually ventured to before.


also the example you gave the hast vs mastery. Those numbers are pretty close, and both affect important part of our DPS. I'm just alittle concerned that if I just always reforge based on the EP value list that I will end up under estimating that haste. Those numbers are prety close and those are more real world numbers.

My shaman in wrath was so much easier to gear.

Hit capped?
Expertise Capped?
Go haste, no no no stop talking gem more haste.

[Aeriel]

I think Spaceshuttle's point is that EP values do not work as well in Cata's system as they have previously. Hit is an example where the value rapidly crashes the closer you get to the cap (though less so for rogues since white cap is meant to be unattainable, however there are still discrete drops), which has always been the case. Another stat where EP does not apply as readily is Expertise, since only integers count, so there are discrete thresholds. This also applies to Mastery, but Mastery lacks the cap, so it's a bit more continuous. The biggest change that is difficult to Sim is the change to over time abilities, since they can now gain an extra tick. This creates certain inflection points where you gain an extra tick, and those ratings are more subsequently more value. This makes situations where the EP values for two stats can swap (for a simple example haste and crit exchange values past threshold 1, and reverse again as threshold 2 is neared). However Agi/Str/Int will always count as ~2 with the new stat system, and will therefore be the most powerful stats as opposed to WotLK where some specs preferred straight AP or straight Agi or a particular mix of both.

[boomcan]

To put it very very simply for you, EP is a unified system. Throw away everything you know, and imagine that this is absolute. Do not try to insert any opinions of any kind, and take this purely at face value.

Spell/Attack Power are the base. 1 point in either of these stats will ALWAYS = 1 EP.

Crit, Haste, and Mastery will always be worth less than 1 EP. 1 point in these secondary stats will never be as powerful as 1 point in spell power or attack power.

If you are below the Hit cap or the Expertise cap, they will be worth more than 1 EP until you reach your cap, and then they drop to 0 EP.

This is a simplified system that puts thing in respective order so you know which stats will benefit you in the greatest way.

[nextormento]

The point usualy is that you are better off following blindly the EP weights than randomly swaping stats (or taking them by a hunch of your heart).

That said, you can tune your toon to whatever you feel more confortable with: haste is one of those that change your gamestyle by giving you more energy, so if you feel energy starved, well, stack haste. Expertise goes in the same box: if you don't like being dodged, cap it. Your stat's won't change that much either way: whatever you do, you will be stacking agi/int/str and using some flavor stats as a filler.

As for the value of caped stats: the way they are computed is not as clear cut as take one hit rating point out and see what happens. What shadowcraft is doing now is substracting hit chances where they need to be substracted: say your toon is over spell hit cap, shadowcraft will substract the exact amount of spell hit chance 1 hit rating would give; if your toon is under the spell hit cap it will do the same although in this case substracting 1 hit rating would end up in the same place.

Now, the gear set that EJ is providing EP for is spell hit capped, stacks agi and reforges to mastery (in the case of the assassination EPs). But that doesn't change the fact that hit under the spell hit cap has that value: EP never provides the value of hit rating per se, it gives a weight for hit under and over the caps. And, as I said, hit rating is more valuable the further you are from the cap but not by a significant amount. In fact every stat is more valuable the less you have from it: prime example being AP/haste in 3.x when the more AP you had the less valuable it was (and hence haste creeping and surpasing over it in value).
Long story short, hit far from the cap is more valuabe but not for being far from it, simply because the less you have the better it is. The EP given is not the value of the stat but rather the value of reaching the cap or not.

The extra ticks on dots don't apply to melee classes: the resource game set in place is for melees to cap on energy/rage/focus/gcd while the resource for casters is actually the cast time and haste (mana being simply your fuell that marks how long can you last a battle). For that reason haste does not give extra ticks to say rupture or deadly poison: they stilll tick at 2 and 3 seconds intervals no matter how much haste you have. What haste does interfere with for rogues is the energy regen and the amount of melee swings (and hence the amount of instant poison procs through deadly poison applications).

[Aeriel]

To put it very very simply for you, EP is a unified system. Throw away everything you know, and imagine that this is absolute. Do not try to insert any opinions of any kind, and take this purely at face value.

Spell/Attack Power are the base. 1 point in either of these stats will ALWAYS = 1 EP.

Crit, Haste, and Mastery will always be worth less than 1 EP. 1 point in these secondary stats will never be as powerful as 1 point in spell power or attack power.

If you are below the Hit cap or the Expertise cap, they will be worth more than 1 EP until you reach your cap, and then they drop to 0 EP.

This is a simplified system that puts thing in respective order so you know which stats will benefit you in the greatest way.

Except that...No. The point to EP is that Haste and Crit are worth more than 1 AP/SP, but Int and Agi are worth more than 2 AP due to more mana and crit, respectively. The EP base is 1AP/SP, but other stats scale MUCH differently than them. AP and SP are linearly additive, while all secondary stats are multiplicative. Your overly simplified explanation is, well, overly simplified. It does bring into account the real goal behind EP: should I get more Haste, Crit, or Mastery for gear and spec versus a different gear level/spec?

[lethargik]

i look at it like this... hit rating increases the chance to hit an enemy, so i can't hit with a reg attack, crit, or proc an ability if my attack is missed... thats why it is given an artificially high ep value at first, then after you hit the cap it will drop below 1. intellect for casters increases spell power, mana pool, and crit rating... so it is usually fairly high ep value.

[SolSphere]

[QUOTE=nextormento;9873597]The EP given is not the value of the stat but rather the value of reaching the cap or not.
QUOTE]

That right there stood out. I havent thought about the way the stat system changed. You're right I'm used to the system where haste could surpas Agility/atk power. That is no longer true and changes how we should even be looking at it. Knowing that and know that this EP list was derived from wearing T11 heroic gear it makes more sense.

Now I can just move on to wondering what exact gear was used and go from there.

[Aeriel]

The extra ticks on dots don't apply to melee classes: the resource game set in place is for melees to cap on energy/rage/focus/gcd while the resource for casters is actually the cast time and haste (mana being simply your fuell that marks how long can you last a battle). For that reason haste does not give extra ticks to say rupture or deadly poison: they stilll tick at 2 and 3 seconds intervals no matter how much haste you have. What haste does interfere with for rogues is the energy regen and the amount of melee swings (and hence the amount of instant poison procs through deadly poison applications).

I was using DoT ticks as a, now, common example. For this forum I probably should have said "additional energy generation", but the extra ticks is a little easier to visualize. Even if Deadly were to gain additional ticks, would anyone notice?

[Coldkil]

tons of good tips along with misinformation here.

pointed out that EP (equivalence points) is a system that converts every stat in the game pointing at 1 defined and simple stat. For rogue AP is choosen because a static amount of it is equal to 1dps. So there is direct conversion AP -> dps (don't remeber exact numbers, but you got the point).

So as for now we have 1ap = 1ep. And the other stats? It's kinda simple if you're used to crunch numbers^^ In a few words, we know the ratings of all the stats in game, and simply through various passages we convert them into AP. calculations are pretty complicated, there is no other way^^ But think about agi, having 2.8 EP: 1 point of agi gives 2 ap + a % of crit, which stands around .8 AP (not give randomly, just cutting the number crunching). so 2 + .8 means 2.8 EP for point of agi.

If you want better understanding, you cannot avoid EJ's explanation^^

And answering some questions:
- is following EP good? yes, always. why? cause maths proves them. calculations are not incorrect, if a stat is slighlty better than another, it will rest like this. ofc ep values can change over time, depending on how much of every stat we have.

- these two stats are really close, but i think they overvaluated/underestimated one of the two. no, again, maths proves it. even if it's a 0.000001 difference, one stat is better than another. the fact is that some differences are neglegible, so like as for mastery vs haste now. they're both pretty good with haste a little behind. having haste on gear won't hurt you, but you will be reforging your crit into mastery and not haste if you want to get the max bonus possible.

- how can be that 1 point of hit under cap is valuated the same as being 500 hit under? this is a little tricky one^^ the fact is that we are often misleaded by caps, and we think that having 1127 hit is a must. this is wrong. we don't have items which give 1 hit rating. we have gems (for example) which give 40 of a stat, and so on. I'll make an example: i need to choose to gem mastery or hit, and i see that EPs tell me hit is the best till the cap. gems are as said before 40hit or 40 mastery. if i have 1126 hit (1 hit under cap) what will be the gems EPs? for the hit one it will be 30.65 which is 1.4 for 1 hit under spell cap and 0.75*39 hit over spell cap; the mastery one will be 1.3*40 = 52 ep. mastery wins^^
but if i am at 1000 hit? mastery ep stays the same, but hit rating will go 1.4*40=56 so hit wins^^

EPs are a dynamic stat, you need to do these kind of calculations every time.
If you like numbers, you can crunch them^^ If you don't like them, just stick to charts. and in no way they are wrong sorry^^