5.4, is Afflic really better than Destro?

[Zagam 1,982]

Yeah, it's personalized.  I'll be picking up a bit more Haste when I go back Demo (7432 I believe), but I still won't slap Expertise in. 

 

Then again, this is a moot point since it goes away after this tier.

[Omaric 246]

I look at it like this:

 

Why is mastery such a highly sought after stat?  Because it increases the damage of your bread and butter abilities for each spec based off of your spell power.

 

What does INT do?  Increases the damage of all your spells by adding spell power (and a little crit).

 

Expertise doesn't gain any value as long as you stay around hit cap, but as your item level rises, the actual value of INT increases as well.

[Liquidsteel 279]

 

 

Expertise doesn't gain any value as long as you stay around hit cap, but as your item level rises, the actual value of INT increases as well.

I'm not saying that expertise gains value, but rather that reaching hit cap via expertise gems allows me to reforge hit on my current pieces into more worthwhile stats, or prevent me having to reforge those stats into hit.

 

If I gem INT + Mastery then I gain 600 INT but also lose 1200 crit, which I have to convert into hit to reach the cap.

 

Secondary stats continue to scale with gear just like intellect, and if 2 crit remains better than 1 INT I'd rather go with that.

[Omaric 246]

Sorry I didn't mean to suggest that you thought expertise or hit have fluctuating values, that wasn't my intent.  But still, losing 1200 crit to gain 600 INT (which still gives crit) provides you with more reliable DPS output.  In the current incarnation of World of RNGcraft I like to take any possible chance to remove variables from my DPS.  Again I mention that mastery is such a top contender because all it does is increase our damage straight up.  Pretty boring stat honestly, but we all get it because it's reliable.  Same thing with INT gems.  I get INT/Mastery gems because they are a more reliable DPS increase than anything else I could put in that socket.

[Liquidsteel 279]

I guess that's a pretty sensible response, hadn't considered that.

 

True that on progression at least you want each pull to be consistent.

[Zagam 1,982]

Consistent pulls are also why I stick with Destruction.  I always get 4 Chaos Bolts off in the first 20 seconds, always.  The damage is always consistent, with it varying from 800k to 1.1M.  With Demonology, who the hell knows.  Doom crits, Soul Fire proccing 2pc, and whatever else can royally vary your DPS.  I loathe RNG.  Destruction has the least RNG of them all.  Demo has some, Affliction a lot.  That's why UVLS was so good for Demo...it removed one aspect of RNG and made it constant. 

 

And it's as Omaric lead to which I omitted...I tend to go towards Intellect because it boosts everything.  Crit boosts Chaos Bolt always and puts RNG in other things.  Haste speeds up casts that sometimes isn't even needed (GCD capping).  Mastery is always a gain, so there's no argument there.  If you're reforging Hit to Mastery, then sure, but there is Mastery available on every gear slot this tier, so it's hard for me to get anything but Intellect when possible.  It's also nice to have over 51k spell power without procs and hit 100k spell power with procs.

[Soulzar 42]

I'm not arguing that math either.  I'm arguing that Intellect is better than Expertise because with the gear you get, even after reforging completely out of Hit, you're still at the cap.  Using Expertise in place of Intellect here doesn't make sense because you're already at a cap.  You're not technically trading 600 Int for 1200 Crit or any other stat.  You're still shuffling points around. 

 

 

 

That is exactly what you are doing.  Quoting you, but more a general reply.  I am a bit late to the thread but it seems like a lot of people still think Exp gems have to do with how much hit you have and that is 100% false at the gear levels we are talking about.  You will never need to gem Exp to hit cap.  Gemming Exp is all about exchanging 1 int for 2 secondary. 

 

As for the argument on what scales better, I think its really minor similar to haste vs crit for destro.  I think it is more than fair to ask yourself if some extra crit rating is worth your int scaling, since Exp gems will never yield higher mastery... always extra crit//haste

 

As Zag mentioned, you look at top parses and you will see everything.  You see top locks like Spark with Exp gems . then go look at Brusalk and he uses pures, not even hybrids.

 

Especially given how strong we know int procs to be for destro, not trading Int for more secondaries obviously is not going to cripple your dps.

 

Last thought for this thread... I suffer the opposite of Locky.  I am SO FUCKING OCD about my gems.. I will replace them all for one piece of gear every time haha.  That said, I've also done enough pre-nerf potion of luck farming to have more ore/gems than I will be able to use this expac, so there is no buying gems.. just cutting them.