Ask Mr. Robot and you!

[Jenaye 9]

Recently, my guild has been having gear/heal/dps woes, so we all decided to take a spin on Mr. Robot, and see what it could do for us. I was destro/demo at the time, and the other lock in our group had been steadily making progress towards my dps, as mine to have hit a plateau at the time (I was ~511, she was 506 and gaining). She had been using and doing about equal to my dps on most fights, other than the ones i just had down and blew everyone out of the water for. So I reforged, and i ended up HEAVILY in crit, and not so much in haste or mastery, at all. For a week, it seemed ok, but after i was browsing around IV, as i do daily, i noticed that not one, not two, but all three specs suggested either haste or mastery first, and crit dead last (in most circumstances). I have the LFR Unending (freshly upgraded, yay!), so i decided to push for the 25% soft haste cap, and throw everything else to the wind (in other words, mastery). I was also growing bored with destro, so i decided to main demo, and take the pledge woodcleaner to the affliction spec i used dominantly in 5.1.

Lo and behold, absolute destruction on all of the fights (Zagam, I had 17 imps up at the end of council). Still gotta work out kinks on when to use affliction, but overall, i'm much happier with my output, and i'm not staring at my embers bar waiting to spam out CB anymore.

Moral of the story? The elder 'locks around here have said it, but I know a lot of us tend to not listen and forge our own way, but it seems to be truth. ASM may help to give you an idea of where your secondary stats need to be, but you need to mainly base them on your gameplay and your personal likings.

All that being said, here she is, my demon lock: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/barthilas/Jenaye/simple

Anything changes or improvements you see, please let me know!

[Zoopercat 22]

Jenaye, I'm from Ask Mr. Robot. The icy-veins weights you see are best with RPPM items and/or the legendary meta gem. Since you have 2 RPPM trinkets and the LMG you should definitely weight Haste higher. We're actually updating the site tonight with additional stat weight presets for people who have the RPPM stuff that warrants higher Haste. We estimate about 15% of people qualify, which is definitely a large enough group to start getting that option out to people :)

Happy raiding - glad you're doing crazy dps :)

[Jenaye 9]

holy shit, was not expecting this. Well, I'll make sure to let all of my casters know. Thanks for the prompt response! They don't all have LMG or the trinks, so a lot of them will fit the basic weights just fine.

[Zoopercat 22]

Jenyane, we're about 30 minutes away from updating the site with the new preset weights :) You'll see them in that drop down menu right above your gear.

One thing you can tell your friends: we have an easy export to SimC. Let's say someone has 1 RPPM trinket but nothing else - it's possible the Haste preset is good, but possibly not. The best way is to test out DPS with both stat weight presets. Here's a blog post on how to do it. I know SimC seems like a complicated tool that only hard core people use, but it's actually quite easy. Hope this all helps :)

[areanu 16]

It is weird how many players take AMR preset values as an absolute truth. Preset values are there to more or less generally suit everyone, and "everyone" is a vast group by definition.

Running a series of SimC test for different fight styles and number of enemies will only take half an hour at most (say, 25k iterations with 4-8 threads), and you get what's best for your toon.

For my mage AMR default values dont produce the optimal reforging / gemming either. Well, that's exactly why you can input custom values :)

[Zagam 1,982]

The thing people forget mostly is that Simcraft and AMR focus their stat weights primarily around single target DPS because it's the easiest to model around. There are some 2 target cleave and 8 target AoE models, but none of those three situations are predominant in our current raid models. Many of the top theorycrafting and performing Warlocks have suggested, performed, and proven that Haste is not king at higher levels because RNG plays into Haste while Mastery is more consistent. RNG can produce higher maximums with great proc rates, but it also can produce lower minimums by the same reason.

There is also the fact that Haste > Mastery is a general belief in pure single target, but there really aren't any single target fights aside from Jin'rohk. Considering how accessible that fight is in normal and heroic, gearing specifically for that fight seems like a waste. For nearly every other fight, there are additional targets, periods of AoE, lots of movement, target switching, demand for high burst, and other types of mechanics that don't favor as well into Haste as one might think. While Simcraft and AMR are great tools for a lot of things, players must remember to think logically about a fight as well as their unique role before following Simcraft and AMR blindly. I'm never going to go full Haste because my primary roles in 10 man heroic runs include many instances where higher Mastery and Grimoire of Supremacy end up performing better than the customary beliefs that Grim of Serv/Sac and higher Haste are better.

People who have read my posts will know what I'm about to say. It's not your secondary stats that are making you awesome. It's your proper execution of your class and raid mechanics that will push your numbers to the elite status. Players often think switching their reforge will make them better when in reality, they need to manage their CDs better, observer and react to procs better, increase uptimes of abilities, and make proper use of their talents and abilities.

[Omaric 246]

People who have read my posts will know what I'm about to say. It's not your secondary stats that are making you awesome. It's your proper execution of your class and raid mechanics that will push your numbers to the elite status. Players often think switching their reforge will make them better when in reality, they need to manage their CDs better, observer and react to procs better, increase uptimes of abilities, and make proper use of their talents and abilities.

I mean that's all well and good, but how am I supposed to go on the Blizz forums and complain about how I can't play my class right? Nobody will take me seriously. If I say, "Blizz your stats are making me bad and everything is too confusing", then I've got something the people want. :P

[Vladamyr 169]

It's not your secondary stats that are making you awesome. It's your proper execution of your class and raid mechanics that will push your numbers to the elite status. Players often think switching their reforge will make them better when in reality, they need to manage their CDs better, observer and react to procs better, increase uptimes of abilities, and make proper use of their talents and abilities.

^^^THIS^^^ Uptime, CD's, & proper rotation. It's all you need to be epic!