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Armor Pen --- Kitty dps
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Post by
259449
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
pelf
http://www.wowhead.com/?forums&topic=99271.10#p1222379
@parra -- we need an agi/arp section in the FAQ, please.
Post by
Heckler
I agree, the post pelf links to functions as a summary of the ArPen function, but it doesn't really cover ArPen's relative worth to Agility (although the rest of the thread talks about it pretty thoroughly) (when it comes to gem slots, you shouldn't be wasting them on Expertise IMO -- A red socket should have 2 choices, Agi or ArPen).
Common advice is to replace all your Agi gems with ArPen once you clear ~200 passive ArPen, but I think this needs a little qualification: This is only true if you're using a warrior tank and you have an ArPen proc trinket. If either of these is untrue, ArPen's value won't surpass Agility as the "stat to gem" -- at least not at 200 (due both to the effectiveness cap and the opposite-of-diminishing returns -- how about... progressing returns -- effect of ArPen.)
My guild doesn't use a warrior tank, and I don't have an ArPen proc trinket, so even though I have 315 passive ArPen, I still gem for Agility.
Post by
windstrum
There you go. I had no idea that the "200-250 passive ArP" rule only applied if you had an ArP proc trinket and a warrior tank. I've been gemming wrong. :(
WTB sticky on ArP. :)
Post by
etrin
Stat Points DPS Value
Armor Pen 30.3 1.80
Agility 25.0 1.49
Strengh 23.8 1.41
Hit 22.7 1.35
Expertise 22.7 1.35
Haste 21.1 1.25
Crit 20.1 1.19
Feral AP 12.0 0.71
AP 10.0 0.59
this is all I know....which aint much :)
Post by
Heckler
Stat Points DPS Value
Armor Pen 30.3 1.80
Agility 25.0 1.49
...
this is all I know....which aint much :)
This scale was likely pulled from one of Nightcrowler's simulations using FeralByNight, which means its only truly valid in the gear and raid setup he used in the simulation. Usually this means a fully stacked raid with Best-In-Slot gear -- Meaning at least one ArPen trinket and Sunder+Shattering on the boss and quite a bit of passive ArP (at least soft-capped in the last sim I looked at).
I will freely admit that there is likely a breakpoint where ArP > Agility even without a warrior and without a ArP trinket, but its likely higher than 250. If I work up some motivation I'll try to modify FBN's simulator code again and see if I can get some weight scale numbers without a warrior / ArP trinket. I'm definitely not trying to tell everyone who gemmed ArP once they hit 250 to go and undo it, I'm just pointing out that the foundation behind the common ArP advice usually comes solely from Nightcrowler's work, which assumes quite a few things.
Since Toskk's calcultor is easier to manipulate, and accurate when not considering ArP procs, the scale I use (since I don't have a Runestone and likely never will, 314 passive ArP) scores Agi and ArP like this:
Agi - 0.7813
ArP - 0.6292
In order for ArP to overtake Agi (again, no runestone, no warrior), I would need closer to 800 passive ArP; with Sunder + Shattering, this drops to ~700. I can't speak intelligently about the true effect of the ArP trinket because Toskk's model doesn't handle it very well and FBN is tough to analyze, and I don't have one to toy with, but I will say this: There is a reason Grim Toll / Mjolnir Runestone are in one trinket slot of every Uber-Cat out there, the proc is absolutely incredible and alters your entire gear focus.
Edit: Spelling
Post by
andersonxpl
Common advice is to replace all your Agi gems with ArPen once you clear ~200 passive ArPen, but I think this needs a little qualification: This is only true if you're using a warrior tank and you have an ArPen proc trinket. If either of these is untrue, ArPen's value won't surpass Agility as the "stat to gem" -- at least not at 200 (due both to the effectiveness cap and the opposite-of-diminishing returns -- how about... progressing returns -- effect of ArPen.)
That's not accurate.
Having or not a procc'ing ArP trinket does not affect when you start gemming for it, It affects when you should stop as you would want to hit the soft cap for ArP and not the hard cap (hard cap is 1231.6).
Not having
a ArP procc'ing trinket:
If you have less than 200 ArP you gem for Agility ( x < 200 = Agi )
If you have between 200 and 1231.6 ArP you gem for Armor Penetration ( 200 < x < 1231.6 = ArP )
If you have more than 1231.6 ArP you gem for Agility ( 1231.6 < x = Agi )
Having
a ArP procc'ing trinket:
If you have less than 200 ArP you gem for Agility ( x < 200 = Agi )
If you have between 200 and 619.6 wih
Grim Toll
or 566.6 with
Mjolnir Runestone
(amount left to the ArP cap with trinket proc) you gem for Armor Penetration ( 200 < x < (619.6 or 566.6) = ArP )
If you have more than 619.6 or 566.6 ArP (depending on which trinket you have) you gem for Agility ( (619.6 or 566.6) < x = Agi )
Bottom line is:
if you have
200 or more ArP
you want to
gem ArP
at least
until you hit 566.6
Post by
Heckler
Do you have any backup for your data, or are you just repeating something you've heard? If you have any source I'd love to see it. I'm not saying you're wrong, nor am I trying to be combative, I'm truly interested in this information. All the research I've done shows that essentially, the ArPen trinket proc is the sole reason ArPen surpasses Agility.
I feel like I should qualify my claims a bit as well, so here goes a brief attempt. (This is all my work, not from an outside source, and if its wrong, please point out where and why).
Without a warrior, the base armor of a raid boss is affected by Faerie Fire only (5%):
10643 * 0.95 = 10110.85
The effectiveness cap for this value is 8447.78.
This means with 100% ArPen, the boss would still have 1663.07 Armor (about 10% damage reduction).
With a warrior tank, 100% ArPen = 100% Armor reduction.
Without a warrior tank, 100% ArPen = ~84.4% Armor reduction.
So clearly the lack of Sunder+Shattering affects ArPen. This means in the very least it should be considered in when you switch to gemming for it. In your "Bottom line" above, you make no mention of it.
============
As far as the Trinket proc, let's assume we have a warrior tank, so 50% ArPen = 50% Armor reduction, 100% = 100% etc. Sitting at the soft cap with a trinket means you'll be spending at least some time at the 0% mark, which is a drastic jump in damage; that is to say 30 seconds at 100% + 30 seconds at 50% is
way
more damage than 60 seconds at 75%, since armor does not scale linearly.
Knowing this, if you don't have a trinket to put you into the near-cap range for ArPen, it loses a lot of its strength, and it becomes less important to have at all. The main reason you stack it with a trinket is to increase the amount of time you spend near the cap, without the trinket, you're just adding passive constant ArP, which can be shown mathematically to be less effective per point than Agility. The trinket makes all the difference.
Post by
pelf
All the research I've done shows that essentially, the ArPen trinket proc is the sole reason ArPen surpasses Agility.
Hmm, I think there might be a causal link issue here. Having an armor penetration trinket makes it easy to achieve some uptime of a situation where you're at 100% penetration of the effective armor of your target. Before the T9-level gear, it wasn't feasible (possible?) to achieve a passive 100% penetration rating. So, it was
feasible
to gear for ArP
because
of the trinkets. That doesn't have anything really to do with why or when ArP surpasses Agility.
The nature of the formula means that (I know you know this) the
more
ArP you have, the better ArP is. So, when the cap is ~1200, having under half that is significantly less than half as good as having all ~1200 of that. Without the proccing trinkets, because there would be
no
situation where you have all ~1200, it would be better, instead, to have your Agility there the whole time.
I think that explains it...
EDIT
: I hate it when people edit their posts when I'm responding :).
Even with Shattering Throw, Sunder Armor and Faerie Fire up, you still aren't reducing the boss's armor to zero. You said it yourself in the thread I linked, and said it correctly. What you just said above is either assuming that knowledge and is misleading or is incorrect.
Post by
Heckler
EDIT
: I hate it when people edit their posts when I'm responding :).
Even with Shattering Throw, Sunder Armor and Faerie Fire up, you still aren't reducing the boss's armor to zero. You said it yourself in the thread I linked, and said it correctly. What you just said above is either assuming that knowledge and is misleading or is incorrect.
My bad about the edit, I thought I was being a bit hypocritical in asking for a source when I did not provide one myself. As far as I understood Shattering Throw, it is possible under certain circumstances to get it to 0. (I don't understand Shattering Throw all that well, but here's what I mean)
Shattering Throw
(20%)
Sunder Armor
(x5 = 20%)
Faerie Fire (5%)
So unless I'm reading it wrong (or if Shattering Throw does not stack with Sunder and is instead only meant to get the 5-stack effect up while the tank spams Devastate), for the 10 seconds Shattering Throw is up, assuming there are no 'invulnerabilities' then boss armor looks like:
10643 * 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.95 = 6470.944
Effectiveness cap then is ~7234. Since this is higher, it becomes possible for those 10 seconds to get Boss Armor to 0.
Now I've never had a warrior tank, and I've never seen a warrior DPS tossing Shattering Throws (requires Battle Stance?) every 10 seconds (I don't have much warrior experience at all).
If they don't stack, then my as my post states, 2% is still much better than 10%, and the 8% difference is due solely to the lack of Sunders. Regardless, the larger issue at hand is the trinket proc... I think you're right, I'm not explaining myself correctly. Ignoring the proc for a moment, there is a clear breakpoint where ArPen starts being better than Agi (It's not 200, and I think we all agree on this -- I'm going to trust Toskk and pin it at around 700). In my gear, this breakpoint is NOT achievable via gemming at 200 passive ArPen, and I don't have a trinket that allows me to spend at least some time in the magical happy-zone, therefore Agility is better for me.
So while I'm not necessarily saying the trinket makes ArPen better, the trinket makes it possible to reach that breakpoint at all, and since its a proc, it allows you to spend enough time far-enough-over that breakpoint to make the time you spend below it worthwhile. This is why you can define a 'new' breakpoint at around ~350 ArPen if you have a trinket, because thats about where you start spending a decent percentage of your time-on-target in the happy-zone. In order to acheive this, you go grab 7 or 8 +20 ArPen trinkets once you hit 200 ArPen and you're set. If you don't have the trinket, you can't reach 700 ArPen without a trinket until you get closer to 500 on your gear, so that should be the time to switch.
So many words, I feel like I'm just repeating myself, hopefully I'm making a little sense. My "bottom line" is that the time to switch all your Agi gems to ArPen is not a solid-rule thing at 200.
Edit: I looked at that Shattering Throw tooltip for a solid 15 minutes before I saw "5 minute cooldown" -- 10 seconds of 0 armor hardly matters, so I concede all information I've been spewing about Shattering Throw is incorrect. But what that changes in my analysis is that "With Sunders" is 2% reduction, "No Sunders" is 10% reduction, so a warrior tank still has an impact on the ArPen / Agi breakpoint. -- Sorry to anyone who is replying as I'm writing this =)
Post by
Nijiax
EDIT
: I hate it when people edit their posts when I'm responding :).
Even with Shattering Throw, Sunder Armor and Faerie Fire up, you still aren't reducing the boss's armor to zero. You said it yourself in the thread I linked, and said it correctly. What you just said above is either assuming that knowledge and is misleading or is incorrect.
My bad about the edit, I thought I was being a bit hypocritical in asking for a source when I did not provide one myself. As far as I understood Shattering Throw, it is possible under certain circumstances to get it to 0. (I don't understand Shattering Throw all that well, but here's what I mean)
Shattering Throw
(20%)
Sunder Armor
(x5 = 20%)
Faerie Fire (5%)
So unless I'm reading it wrong (or if Shattering Throw does not stack with Sunder and is instead only meant to get the 5-stack effect up while the tank spams Devastate), for the 10 seconds Shattering Throw is up, assuming there are no 'invulnerabilities' then boss armor looks like:
10643 * 0.8 * 0.8 * 0.95 = 6470.944
Effectiveness cap then is ~7234. Since this is higher, it becomes possible for those 10 seconds to get Boss Armor to 0.
Now I've never had a warrior tank, and I've never seen a warrior DPS tossing Shattering Throws (requires Battle Stance?) every 10 seconds (I don't have much warrior experience at all).
If they don't stack, then my as my post states, 2% is still much better than 10%, and the 8% difference is due solely to the lack of Sunders. Regardless, the larger issue at hand is the trinket proc... I think you're right, I'm not explaining myself correctly. Ignoring the proc for a moment, there is a clear breakpoint where ArPen starts being better than Agi (It's not 200, and I think we all agree on this -- I'm going to trust Toskk and pin it at around 700). In my gear, this breakpoint is NOT achievable via gemming at 200 passive ArPen, and I don't have a trinket that allows me to spend at least some time in the magical happy-zone, therefore Agility is better for me.
So while I'm not necessarily saying the trinket makes ArPen better, the trinket makes it possible to reach that breakpoint at all, and since its a proc, it allows you to spend enough time far-enough-over that breakpoint to make the time you spend below it worthwhile. This is why you can define a 'new' breakpoint at around ~350 ArPen if you have a trinket, because thats about where you start spending a decent percentage of your time-on-target in the happy-zone. In order to acheive this, you go grab 7 or 8 +20 ArPen trinkets once you hit 200 ArPen and you're set. If you don't have the trinket, you can't reach 700 ArPen without a trinket until you get closer to 500 on your gear, so that should be the time to switch.
So many words, I feel like I'm just repeating myself, hopefully I'm making a little sense. My "bottom line" is that the time to switch all your Agi gems to ArPen is not a solid-rule thing at 200.
According to research on EJ, ArP is a better stat than AGI once you have over 950 ArP passive. Obviously at this point you drop mjolnir.
Post by
pelf
But what that changes in my analysis is that "With Sunders" is 2% reduction, "No Sunders" is 10% reduction, so a warrior tank still has an impact on the ArPen / Agi breakpoint.
I see what you're saying. I don't think anyone who cares will be in a raid that doesn't configure itself so as to have someone sundering or exposing. Not to say the point is philosophically moot, just practically :).
I figured you knew it had a cooldown, or I would've said something. Oops.
Post by
Heckler
I see what you're saying. I don't think anyone who cares will be in a raid that doesn't configure itself so as to have someone sundering or exposing. Not to say the point is philosophically moot, just practically :).
I'm in a guild that is... let's say "casual" (I don't want to sound insulting, I like my guild -- it just feels like I'm the only one who takes things 'seriously;' and that is something of which I should be ashamed, not proud.) We do sometimes use an arms warrior though (<3 trauma), I'm going to ask if she'll keep up sunders, because none of our leaders even addresses debuffs in our raids (we don't use a rogue either o.o).
In the end, it won't matter much, the odds of me pulling a Grim Toll away from the 18 other people who roll simply because its higher iLvl than their trinket (or even seeing a Runestone) are so low, I'm just gonna stick with my Agi gems (as I would suggest others do as well). Thanks for your feedback though, it can be very difficult to research and analyze things that I rarely get to actually experience.
So what's the bottom line to give a "standard response" to people who want to know when to switch to ArPen? ~250ish if you have a Runestone, ~700ish if you don't?
Post by
144872
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
curlymon
Rogues get lowered by a lot and Hunters much less but if you have no Warrior then this definitely is needing to happen. Especially with the fact that most non-hardcore guilds tend to be over stacked in terms of melee anyway.
Post by
144872
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Heckler
We use a ton of hunters, I never knew about Acid Spit, thanks foley! I'm going to see if I can convince one of them to bring a worm next raid.
Post by
Bairforem
The question is not how much ArP you need, its How can you get more.
Post by
Timmeh
There is some fundamental misunderstanding of how ArP works here.
Having a warrior sundering does NOT mean that you now suddenly need 20% less ArP. I'll give a numerical example to explain how it works:
A boss mob has 10,000 armour. A warrior sunders this mob 5 times, this boss now has 8,000 armour.
A player hitting the mob has 50% ArP. This ArP is applied AFTER the sunders counting the post-sundered amount as 100%. Thus this player is hitting the boss as if it had 4,000 armour.
That is to say that you do not add the 20% to your existing ArP score - 30% ArP + Grim Toll proc is 80% armour penetration regardless of if sunders are up or not.
I wrote a quick guide to ArP for my guild forums a few weeks back, I'll paste the pertinent bits in.
So, how does ArP work? Well, quite simply, for every 12.31 armour penetration rating you have, you will ignore 1% of your enemy’s armour. Seems fairly simple. Armour, however, unlike ArP does not scale in a linear fashion, suffering from diminishing returns. The formula for calculating armour is:
Damage reduction% = Armour / (Armour + (467.5 * AttackerLevel - 22167.5))
So, some examples:
clicky for table
As you can see, despite the larger and larger gaps, the amounts increased are getting smaller (the increase from 0 and 5000 is a 25% increase while 5000 to 10000 is only a 15% increase). ArP, of course will start reducing armour from the top end, which means it suffers from armour’s diminishing returns in the inverse.
So, for example, you have 10% ArP, a boss creature has 13,000 armour. That 13,000 reduces damage taken by 46.04%. You reduce this armour by 10%, this brings the armour to 11,700. This brings the damage reduction to 43.44%. 10% ArP for a 2.6% increase in damage; simply not worthwhile.
So, simply put, ArP is only worthwhile if you have a lot of it. The more you have, the more inverse diminishing returns work in your favour. If you’re going to use ArP seriously, you want to have it at a point where you hit patches of the enemy being at a 100% reduction. This can be achieved passively, but that means sacrificing a great deal of other stats at current gearing levels, it’s more likely that you’ll achieve it through use of one of two trinkets:
Grim Toll
from multiple Naxx 25 bosses or
Mjolnir Runestone
from Thorim 10 man hard mode. With these trinkets, you’ll need around 50% ArP from gear (Grim Toll) or 46% (Mjolnir Runestone) to reach a 100% reduction when they proc. The closer you get to 100%, the more inverse diminishing returns work in your favour, however as soon as you go over it, it’s suddenly less worthwhile. Since 3.1, ArP has been capped at 100% reduction, meaning it is not worthwhile to ever have more than this.
The exact numbers required are:
619 (using Grim Toll)
566 (using Mjolnir Runestone)
Hope that helps.
Post by
Heckler
@Timmeh -- You're missing any reference to the "Effectiveness Cap" -- Peruse the thread pelf linked above for a full explanation of what that is.
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