Unbearably HoT

For the past two weeks I’ve essentially been MIA as I finished up a series of massive projects at work and took a high-fiving trip to Chicago. During that time, of course, we’ve learned that in 3.2.2., the value of Armor Penetration will decrease to 110%, down from 125%. Has the so-called stat-of-the-gods fallen from its golden pedestal? Hardly. What we’re seeing is approximately a 12% nerf, if the old ArP hard cap was 1,230 and the new hard cap will be 1,399.57. Druids everywhere have bemoaned their long ride on the ever-changing stat train—from stacking STR to AGI to ArP and now to, what? Agility again? Sure, that’s probably the easy way out.

Me? I’m here to represent obsessive re-itemization. Lately I’ve seen “min/maxing” demonized, deplored as the paragon of all that’s not fun in WoW. A time waster. An exercise for elitists. A means to a picky, allegedly uninteresting and not-altogether useful end. Say it isn’t so! In a game where there’s little character progression beyond gear, tending to the fiddly-bits for even minor upgrades still feels to me like progress. Although there’s been much paw-wringing, it is still very possible to reach the Armor Penetration soft-cap if you’re a Druid with decent gear.

What’s decent gear? Without being too vague, most gear from Ulduar (iLevel 219) and upwards. Consider the following before proceeding:

• What’s my critical strike chance, unbuffed, in Cat form? If you’re rocking over 50% critical strike chance, you’re definitely on the right path. Without enough critical strike, which feeds you combo points via 2/2 Primal Fury, your already complex rotation will fall apart.
• How much Hit Rating do I have? When stacking AGI, you can gloss over a few misses here and there because you have combo points coming out of your ears. When using a heavy ArP armor set, the penalty for a miss is much higher. You can get by with approximately 245 (or greater.)
• How much Expertise do I have? The Expertise soft-cap is 6.5%, which is equivalent to 213.135 Expertise Rating. Primal Precision automatically gives you 10 Expertise (81.975), which brings the aforementioned number down to 131.16. Although I place a much higher emphasis on Hit Rating rather than Expertise Rating (for DPS purposes), it’s still important.
• Do these pants make me look fat? Yes, you’re a cow.

If you’ve ascertained that the previous numbers check out and you’re willing to do some work, read on. Have some basic math, too. In 3.2, 15.39529991 ArP Rating = 1% ArP. In 3.2.2, 13.99572719 ArP Rating = 1% ArP. Thus, to now reach an ArP soft-cap with trinkets, you need the following:

Grim Toll = 612 ArP Rating (~43.72%). To reach soft-cap, you need 787.57 ArP (~56.27%).

Mjolnir Runestone = 665 ArP Rating (~47.51%). To reach soft-cap, you need 734.57 ArP.
To reduce an enemy’s armor by 50%, you need approximately 700 ArP rating.

Let’s look at a relatively easy list of gear that you could acquire, right now, to get yourself on track for 3.2.2.

Option 1 – Includes easy weapon and two-piece T8 and T9.

If you socket straight Fractured Cardinal Rubies and one Nightmare Tear, your total base ArP = 764. This places you squarely in the range of the ArP soft-cap, assuming you’re using either Grim Toll or the Mjolnir Runestone. Even without those two trinkets, you’re still reducing your target’s armor by ~54.58% (60.58%, if you have the Banner of Victory.) You’re also utilizing two-piece T8.5 and T9.232 and gear that can be entirely farmed from normal raids. Assuming the appropriate Cat talents, ~24% critical strike chance becomes 40% in Cat Form, and with the usual enchants, accidental socket bonuses (excluding profession bonuses) and various trinkets, you can expect to pick up another ~12% or so. This brings you to ~52% critical strike chance, unbuffed. Not bad, eh? This shit gets even easier if you have access to better gear. What happens if you have access to some of the best gear in the game?

Option 2 – ALL PENETRATION, NO WAITING! Includes Heroic Loot.

If you notice, even with some incredibly ridiculous gear, your critical strike chance will end up approximately the same unbuffed. The obvious difference is that you can get over 2,000 more AP from the crazy-go-nuts gear, and 934 ArP through gear and gemming alone. Here, I’d recommend dropping Grim Toll (obviously—have you seen how much Hit Rating this set boasts?) and the Mjolnir Runestone in favor of the Banner of Victory (giving you 1,081 ArP) and some other shiny trinket (even a Greatness card!) At this point, you could also use an Elixir of Armor Piercing (45 ArP) and Hearty Rhino (40 ArP) to lower the gap between your gear and the ArP hard cap to 233.37 ArP. You’ll even notice that three pieces of gear don’t even have ArP. Theoretically, if you went fishing for pieces of semi-inferior gear with ArP, you could hit the hard cap without using any special foods or elixirs.

Or, you could choose to socket Delicate Cardinal Rubies in that gear set and run with Banner of Victory and either Grim Toll or the Mjolnir Runestone. You’d be working just below the ArP soft-cap, but you’d gain ~4.93% critical strike. Blessing of Kings brings this to ~5.42%. Which is the better option? If you plug all the appropriate numbers (and raid buffs) into Tossk’s Cat DPS Calculator for 3.2.2 for both of those scenarios (feel free to use the Cat DPS Gear Spreadsheet and try out some numbers yourself), you’ll notice that you get very similar DPS numbers, with ArP only slightly edging out AGI (by a couple hundred DPS or so). However, the closer you move to the ArP hard cap (i.e. if you took that 940 ArP and added Elixir of Armor Piercing and Hearty Rhino, bringing you to 1,166), the gap widens even more.

Ultimately, it comes down to playstyle, as Kalon recently discussed. But my take on ArP? I’m going to be milking it for as long as I can.

I realize that the tables are so big that they break in the browser window. If you’d like to download these tables, along with the rest of the article, click here.

As promised, I’ve gone through the 3.2 DPS Gear Spreadsheet and updated it with all the new Coliseum items, including the crafted Leatherworking pieces. You’ll also find that some of the numbers look a little different than before—that’s because some of the stat values changed. Remember:

• Please to brain. Although gear is first sorted by the number of sockets, the number of sockets do not necessarily guarantee the best piece of gear.
• Armor Penetration is currently the best stat to stack at higher gear levels, so long as you have at least 50% Critical Strike chance and approximately 230 ArP. Generally speaking, your goal is to pick up ~600 ArP via gear and gemming and then pair that with Grim Toll, Mjolnir Runestone or the Banner of Victory.
• Because ArP requires varying quantities to hit the soft-cap (based on what trinket you have, for example), the spreadsheet prioritizes AGI over ArP. ArP is still awesome, so make sure you’re paying attention to that column.
• There may be errors. If you find any (or have another suggestion), please shoot me an e-mail via my Contact page so that I can fix the spreadsheet as soon as possible.

In the near future, I’ll also be providing four different gearing options (with and without tier gear and/or heroic loot) which prioritize ArP without sacrificing the rest of your stats. I’m holding this up until I can make a proper suggestion for 3.2.2. as well. For now, here are a number of other posts from around the blogosphere detailing different takes on ArP in 3.2.2. Please note that I am not of the “Fuck it, gem AGI” camp.

• The Fluid Druid’s ArP FAQ Part 1 and 2. This has a very accurate depiction of how ArP performs at varying gear levels and is generally where I’m leaning.
• Vallen’s “3.2.2. ArP Nerf & You.“
• Kalon’s “Cat’s 3.2. Coliseum Loot Ranking.” No, it’s not really about ArP, but it’s a similar loot ranking list. Relevant, I swear.

Although it seems to have slipped beneath WoW.com and MMO-Champion’s noses (at the time of the post, anyway), Faction Transfers are now live.

If you’re interested in undertaking this change, make sure you read up on the FAQ and log out of the character you wish to transfer; you need to be offline for 20 minutes. In addition, please note that although it’s not clear on the FAQ (because there are apparently two FAQs about this that conflict), you will lose all of your Silver Covenant/Sunreaver reptutation and associated achievements. All of them. This means that you need to start over on any and all Argent Tournament dailies, and some of your faction pets may have converted, despite the FAQ detailing that they won’t.

Coming up:

• DPS gear spreadsheet update
• Maximizing raid buffs
• Primer on boosting DPS in five mans versus raids
• Comics

Does the prospect of clearing Ulduar multiple times a week get you hot? Are you desperate for gear, emblems, or Fragments of Val’nyr? Do you enjoy your high-population realm but crave the vanity satisfaction of realm-first achievements? Are you a real-life Gevlon? Does your guild share your vision? If you answered “yes” to any of the above, Blizzard now affords you the ultimate opportunity to min/max your raid-time: three-day realm transfers.

In the wake of all the Blizzcon hoopla, this little feature seems to have been tacitly accepted or conveniently unnoticed. The immediate benefit is obvious: if you make a poor transfer choice and/or fail a guild application, you don’t have to wait a full month to leave. The obvious drawback? Your “mistake” costs you $25. For Blizzard, this is a fantastic way to boost revenue while supposedly catering to the public “good.” Why isn’t there any outrage? For many players, WoW is an investment in the same fashion that golf or SCUBA diving may be to another individual. If WoW is your hobby-of-choice, why not take advantage of the little things that could lend to your own virtual happiness?

What few players realize is that all of your raids and dungeons reset when you transfer realms. This means that, theoretically, you can clear every dungeon twice within one normal lockout period. If, then, you could clear the 10 and 25 versions of every dungeon within each transfer lockout (3-days), you could gain the following from each transfer (discounting hard modes or Algalon:)

• Obsidian Sanctum – 8 Emblems of Conquest
• Eye of Eternity – 2 Emblems of Conquest
• Vault of Archavon – 8 Emblems of Conquest
• Naxxramas – 32 Emblems of Conquest
• Ulduar – 26 Emblems of Conquest
• Trial of the Crusader (up to the Twin Valkyrs) – 24 Emblems of Triumph
• Total: 76 Emblems of Conquest and 24 Emblems of Triumph
• Total per week: 152 Emblems of Conquest and 48 Emblems of Triumph

That, of course, isn’t including any sort of gear upgrades you might come across or any achievements you might receive. If you’re especially industrious and had a lot of time on your hands, you could also complete every Heroic dungeon each day, which would net you a total of 53 Emblems of Conquest and 2 Emblems of Triumph. Your new weekly total (again, assuming you’re insane and do everything) is:

• 523 Emblems of Conquest and 62 Emblems of Triumph

There’s also potential to do two rounds of Heroic dungeons per day on the days that you transfer your character (including the daily), which would give you an extra 53 Emblems of Conquest and 2 Emblems of Triumph on that day. Because of the time required to do all of those dungeons (especially if you’re pugging them all), this is probably an unlikely situation.

So let’s assume a few things:

1. You’re not interested in finding a “new” home; you’re going on a whirlwind tour to acquire gear and emblems.
2. You have the time necessary to fully exploit said adventure.
3. You’re not a terrible player and have a useful dual-spec. It will obviously be easier to get into runs if you’ve got a tanking or healing offspec. Just saying.
4. You’re confident that your target realms will yield a group capable of clearing your dungeons of choice. Safe bets generally include realms with a High or Full population. Conversely, if you’re looking to bring an entire guild along and earn some realm-first achievements, look for Low population realms.
5. You have a considerable amount of disposable income.

Got all that? To prepare, you’ll probably want to do a few things. First, make sure that you have a reasonable amount of gold on your character to purchase anything you might need along the way. Second, because the economy on each realm may be dramatically different, consider bringing raid consumables with you. Do a little research and see if there are any regular pick-up-groups running on your target realms that you may be able to finesse your way into in advance. Finally, as you initiate your first transfer, make sure you save a slot on your original realm with your character’s name. Before you make your final transfer back, delete the level 1 alt and resume your name. If, however, you’re looking to change your character’s name, leave the level 1 alt and you’ll be forced to rename your character when you return.

Here’s how the basic schedule goes:

September 2009

Total dollars spent: $250.00
Theoretical earnings (minus heroic dungeons): 1,900 Emblems of Conquest & 624 Emblems of Triumph
Including each heroic dungeon, daily: 3,490 Emblems of Conquest & 684 Emblems of Triumph

$250 could get you a late night “escort” in Las Vegas, a plane ticket from Detroit to Chicago, an iPhone 3GS, an XBOX 360 Pro, or dinner with your friends at NINJA New York. Is it worth it? If you’ve got the time, money, and play a hybrid class who wants a lot of gear, sure. The success of the entire plan, however, rests on your own ability to get yourself into successful raid groups within a three day window. What’s interesting isn’t so much that you should try this to maximize your play, but that you can. So if you’re the kind of person who tells your spouse to consider splitting savings into four separate checking accounts at a new credit union to min/max a gimmick interest rate—this plan’s for you. Start saving.

In a shocking turn of events, Blizzard has already posted details regarding the next patch—three months in advance. How does this affect us Druids? Unless you’re super pumped about Onyxia (and presumably didn’t farm her for eight thousand years in vanilla), there isn’t much on our horizon save this:

What’s great about this change is the fact that it will be baked into a fairly essential Feral talent: you won’t need to spend extra points to take something gimmicky. Now, although this is seemingly designed to give Ferals a PVP utility boost, how helpful is it really?

Say, for example, you’re participating in an arena match. You’ve managed to get five combo points on a Mage (without having to switch targets), and you hit him with a Maim. Your pocket healer is busy kiting an Enhance Shaman. At that point, you have a few choices. You can pop out of Cat form and hit yourself or your teammates with a cast-free Regrowth, Healing Touch or Nourish. You could also use that instant cast for a Cyclone or Entangling Roots—note that the blue post specifies “Nature spells.” It’s essentially Nature’s Swiftness. So fully talented, you’ve got a 20%/40%/60%/80%/100% chance to get an instant cast per combo point.

Is this useful in a PVE scenario? Situationally. If you’re going through a normal rotation, find yourself with five combo points and realize you’re about to die, you’ve got nothing to lose giving yourself (or anyone else, including the tank) a cheap, instant heal. It does, however, require that you’re paying attention to your combo points and thinking ahead. Bottom line? It’s a gimmick you’ll seldom pointedly use in PVE but may actively pursue in PVP.

Just three more months.