Warlock reforgings

[Veox 0]

Do i just go default by Ask mr robot? It's telling me to go into haste>Crit? 

 

http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/eu/arathor/vikt%C3%B8r

[Lockybalboa 618]

1) Reforging and secondary stats do not make up a large part of your DPS

2) AMR is a very bad tool. Even though you have your weights set for mastery>crit>haste, it is still telling you to go full Mastery>haste. Just one of the many reasons why I do not like AMR, I do not use AMR, I do not respect AMR.

3) ReforgeLite is the addon that I use, simply priority of stats makes it easy. Reforging by hand is also rather easily done.

 

Haste Vs. crit is mostly a wash, H>C, C>H, C=H, all three will result in roughly the same DPS. Most warlocks in high gear (570+) go for crit over haste because of how easy it is to GCD cap with the LMG and backdraft, it's even worse for trolls, during Blood Lust, etc. More haste does make AoE a *little* smoother and AoE DPS a *little* higher. These gains are very small though.

 

Haste also makes it easier to change back and forth between Destro and Aff, if you play Aff at all.

 

Personally I go for as little haste as I can get, I hate GCD capping and as a troll I run in to the problem a lot if I have much haste. 

 

In the end it comes down to play style and personal preference. 

[Liquidsteel 279]

Come on, stop the hate on AMR.

It's exactly the same as any other TOOL you can use. If you blindly follow it then you will get bad results, but this is why you tailor it to what you need. Increase the stat weight on crit if you want crit higher. Same as in reforgelite you move the priority up and down. Stat weights mean fuck all these days anyway.

Ive used both tools and like both. AMR has the added benefit of including gems if you want and can speed up the process. You can also use it to generate different combinations of gear and see how those compare in sims etc.

Anecdotally, Reforgelite was telling me to go for crit as Demonology which if followed would have been bad. If you are too ignorant to use the tool properly then don't complain when it gives you poor results.

[JvChequer 43]

1) Reforging and secondary stats do not make up a large part of your DPS

2) AMR is a very bad tool. Even though you have your weights set for mastery>crit>haste, it is still telling you to go full Mastery>haste. Just one of the many reasons why I do not like AMR, I do not use AMR, I do not respect AMR.

3) ReforgeLite is the addon that I use, simply priority of stats makes it easy. Reforging by hand is also rather easily done.

 

Haste Vs. crit is mostly a wash, H>C, C>H, C=H, all three will result in roughly the same DPS. Most warlocks in high gear (570+) go for crit over haste because of how easy it is to GCD cap with the LMG and backdraft, it's even worse for trolls, during Blood Lust, etc. More haste does make AoE a *little* smoother and AoE DPS a *little* higher. These gains are very small though.

 

Haste also makes it easier to change back and forth between Destro and Aff, if you play Aff at all.

 

Personally I go for as little haste as I can get, I hate GCD capping and as a troll I run in to the problem a lot if I have much haste. 

 

In the end it comes down to play style and personal preference. 

 

 

If u like Reforlite and say that AMR sucks it's because u don't know how to proper use it.

 

Both are the same thing, merely calculators.

 

Btw, most great warlocks are going for M > H > C nowadays because it's quite equal at single target and a tiny dps gain in aoe/cleave.

Edited February 22, 2014 by JvChequer

[Kazistrasz 216]

AskMrRobot can frequently give you suboptimal set-ups. It's not "don't know how to use it" thing. It's a "not a perfect program and can make mistakes" thing. I know how to set my own weights, set thresholds, etc.  But, even when I do this, I've still had many occasions where I then went back by hand and got an even better reforge that was close to hit cap, or closer to a haste cap. The simple fact of the matter is that AMR is a faulty tool.

 

From the same point, however, I have frequently found ReforgeLite to be ineffective, particularly with my resto druid. If I tell it 12k Spirit > 13163 Haste > Mastery > Crit > Haste > Mastery, it frequently puts me at 13-13.5k spirit, 14-14.5k haste, etc. I do much better simply reforging the pieces by hand.

 

I don't know who "most great warlocks" are in your opinion, but the haste vs. crit decision, like Locky said, is generally due to the ability to use the same reforge for both destruction and affliction since it also gives the 9778 threshold for aff. The AoE increase isn't that big of a factor, especially given how little raw AoE there is in current content, and doesn't make really any difference in cleaving. Even if you do go for haste, going past 10124 as destro is completely pointless and should be avoided. 

Edited February 22, 2014 by Kazistrasz

[JvChequer 43]

AskMrRobot can frequently give you suboptimal set-ups. It's not "don't know how to use it" thing. It's a "not a perfect program and can make mistakes" thing. I know how to set my own weights, set thresholds, etc.  But, even when I do this, I've still had many occasions where I then went back by hand and got an even better reforge that was close to hit cap, or closer to a haste cap. The simple fact of the matter is that AMR is a faulty tool.

 

From the same point, however, I have frequently found ReforgeLite to be ineffective, particularly with my resto druid. If I tell it 12k Spirit > 13163 Haste > Mastery > Crit > Haste > Mastery, it frequently puts me at 13-13.5k spirit, 14-14.5k haste, etc. I do much better simply reforging the pieces by hand.

 

I don't know who "most great warlocks" are in your opinion, but the haste vs. crit decision, like Locky said, is generally due to the ability to use the same reforge for both destruction and affliction since it also gives the 9778 threshold for aff. The AoE increase isn't that big of a factor, especially given how little raw AoE there is in current content, and doesn't make really any difference in cleaving. Even if you do go for haste, going past 10124 as destro is completely pointless and should be avoided. 

 

Does not matter goes higher than 10k haste, the loss on incinerates is minimal, if u gain on chaos bolt or other incinerate with trinkets buffs thanks to it already worth it over crit.

 

With 4tp plus Dark Soul itself we have so much crit...that it makes crits underweighting mainly at aoe with 2tp.

 

But I do believe at least 10k it's optimal, does not matter if u go crit or haste after that.

 

Btw, whatever your preference, You should looking for most Keen gems as possible, only go for artful ones if u goes hit overcapped.

Edited February 22, 2014 by JvChequer

[SparkSovereign 61]

I looked into it, and what it's actually doing is attempting to auto-pick a haste cap for you and reforge to that.  Click "edit weights" and set haste caps to manual, then put it whatever haste cap you want.  Or "1" if you don't care (which will have it basically tell you your reforges are where they should be.)

 

As usual, it's doing what it's told, but that wasn't what you thought it was being told.  If you've ever heard the line "computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy", that's pretty much what's going on here.  They do what you tell them to do, which often differs from what you want them to do.

[Liquidsteel 279]

I think the issue with AMR is that it overvalues haste when you have the PBI equipped.

 

Like I said, if you favour crit over haste then just increase crit's stat weight by like half a point and you're golden.

[Kazistrasz 216]

I looked into it, and what it's actually doing is attempting to auto-pick a haste cap for you and reforge to that.  Click "edit weights" and set haste caps to manual, then put it whatever haste cap you want.  Or "1" if you don't care (which will have it basically tell you your reforges are where they should be.)

 

As usual, it's doing what it's told, but that wasn't what you thought it was being told.  If you've ever heard the line "computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy", that's pretty much what's going on here.  They do what you tell them to do, which often differs from what you want them to do.

 

We aren't just talking about just their default settings. They have problems even when you use the information you give them. 

 

Jv - regardless of spec, haste drastically loses its value after a threshold. Going beyond that 10k number isn't adding much of anything since you're not getting any extra ticks from anything and you're just increasing the amount you'll GCD cap.

 

In general, I do my reforging this way, starting from artful (int/mastery) gems in all red sockets, fractured (mastery) in all yellow sockets, and sensei's (mastery/hit) in all blue sockets:

 

Step one: take every piece with hit and reforge out of that hit into either mastery or into crit (if it's a hit/mastery itemization).

 

Step two: take every crit/haste piece and reforge the haste into mastery.

 

Step three: take every piece with mastery and haste and reforge the haste into crit.

 

At this point you have only crit/mastery pieces untouched, so don't reforge those.

 

Step four: one-by-one place keen (expertise/mastery) gems into your red sockets until you get to the hit cap.

 

Step five: if you're completely out of sockets and you're still not at the hit cap, look at your pieces with hit on them and see if any of them are reforged by an amount that will get you to the cap without going very far over (add your expertise rating, under melee section of character stats, to your spell hit to figure out how far you are). Your next option is to see if there's a piece that gets you just over 160 past the cap so that you can reforge back into hit there and change one red socket back to artful. Another option is if you can get to just over 220 past the cap wearing Toxic Tornado Treads so you can drop the socket bonus and go with a fractured gem.

 

Things change a little if you're going for haste, but I still use the same strategy.

[Belloc 6]

We aren't just talking about just their default settings. They have problems even when you use the information you give them. 

 

Except, in the OP's example, we are, in fact, talking about their default settings. OP has enough haste on his gear that it makes him eligible for one the destro haste plateaus and that's the only reason AMR was giving him problems. If the OP were wearing less haste gear, AMR would've worked perfectly for him.

 

AMR has always worked perfectly for me. Indeed, when I use it, it pretty much follows your four steps exactly. I'm not buying the claim that it's a "faulty tool".

 

TL;DR: OP's problem was the haste smart picker in the weights section. Turning it to manual (1) gave exactly the reforging and gemming that we would suggest.

Edited February 22, 2014 by Belloc

[Lockybalboa 618]

My issue with ARM in this case has nothing to do with their default stat weights, nor did I say that ReforgeLite's default weights were good. I am perfectly versed in how to use both, I've even spent a good bit of time discussing AMR with the creators of the site. Ignorance isn't the problem.  

 

The problem with AMR is when it devalues something without telling me that it is going to do so, when it ignores the weights I put in and tells me to do something totally different or the one that pisses me off the most is when I set a hard cap to not go under and it happily tells me to go .05% under the cap making the cap useless. 

 

The main problem with AMR right now is that it is to complex and with complexity comes bugs. It's like trying to use a jet engine to light a cigar. It doesn't matter how well the engine is made, the sheer complexity of the system will inherently have problems.

 

 

Also it should be noted that crit>haste is more popular in North America where as haste over crit is seen more often in the EU servers. I'm not totally sure why this is but part of it I suspect is that Aff is also far more popular on the EU side then it is NA, more haste on destro gear makes the switch back and forth much easier. Both gearing stances can be found in both areas, just one is more popular then the other.

 

Again, in the end secondary stats do NOT make up much DPS at all. It is far more useful to look at game play then it is stats.

[JvChequer 43]

We aren't just talking about just their default settings. They have problems even when you use the information you give them. 

 

Jv - regardless of spec, haste drastically loses its value after a threshold. Going beyond that 10k number isn't adding much of anything since you're not getting any extra ticks from anything and you're just increasing the amount you'll GCD cap.

 

In general, I do my reforging this way, starting from artful (int/mastery) gems in all red sockets, fractured (mastery) in all yellow sockets, and sensei's (mastery/hit) in all blue sockets:

 

Step one: take every piece with hit and reforge out of that hit into either mastery or into crit (if it's a hit/mastery itemization).

 

Step two: take every crit/haste piece and reforge the haste into mastery.

 

Step three: take every piece with mastery and haste and reforge the haste into crit.

 

At this point you have only crit/mastery pieces untouched, so don't reforge those.

 

Step four: one-by-one place keen (expertise/mastery) gems into your red sockets until you get to the hit cap.

 

Step five: if you're completely out of sockets and you're still not at the hit cap, look at your pieces with hit on them and see if any of them are reforged by an amount that will get you to the cap without going very far over (add your expertise rating, under melee section of character stats, to your spell hit to figure out how far you are). Your next option is to see if there's a piece that gets you just over 160 past the cap so that you can reforge back into hit there and change one red socket back to artful. Another option is if you can get to just over 220 past the cap wearing Toxic Tornado Treads so you can drop the socket bonus and go with a fractured gem.

 

Things change a little if you're going for haste, but I still use the same strategy.

I do exactly like thus but with AMR, but w/e, what's important it's if fits well in your playstyle.

Peace brotha.

[SparkSovereign 61]

My issue with ARM in this case has nothing to do with their default stat weights, nor did I say that ReforgeLite's default weights were good. I am perfectly versed in how to use both, I've even spent a good bit of time discussing AMR with the creators of the site. Ignorance isn't the problem.  

 

The problem with AMR is when it devalues something without telling me that it is going to do so, when it ignores the weights I put in and tells me to do something totally different or the one that pisses me off the most is when I set a hard cap to not go under and it happily tells me to go .05% under the cap making the cap useless. 

 

The main problem with AMR right now is that it is to complex and with complexity comes bugs. It's like trying to use a jet engine to light a cigar. It doesn't matter how well the engine is made, the sheer complexity of the system will inherently have problems.

Yeah, it's not perfect.  (It's a deterministic operations research problem, perfect is a PITA.)  They don't do "hard" haste/hit caps with actual constraints, they do them with gratuitous weighting.  The thing is, while being a teensy bit under hit cap in exchange for another 300 stats is probably okay, the same is not true of haste breakpoints; you get essentially nothing until you hit the breakpoint.  I do find it weird that you can force hit cap to be a constraint and not a weighting breakpoint, but not with haste breakpoints where they matter more.  The way to use it the way you want to is, I think, to set the "haste to breakpoint" stat weight to something obscene like 1000 (compared to the "4" "6" and whatnot of other stats).

 

I definitely agree that the default behavior (even the buried defaults like haste-to-cap weight) is... problematic, but I do believe it's actually giving the "correct" answer given the weights provided.  In the vein of "trust but verify", however, I'd like to propose an experiment; I, too, have gotten closer to hit cap than AMR now and again, but don't have a toon with that property right now.  Can one of you who isn't doing what AMR suggests (in order to get closer to hit cap, for example, although I think "not meeting haste breakpoint" would be better to look at) link your toon so I can fiddle with the weights and see if I can get it to come up with what you're doing?

 

FYI one of my degrees is in math and I have interest in human-computer interaction, so both the actual stat manipulation and your reactions to the tool are fascinating to me.  Sorry if I make you feel experimented upon :P  If I come up with something useful, I'll see if I can direct the guys who run AMR to the results and perhaps they'll make the tool behave better about caps/breakpoints.

[Lockybalboa 618]

You can pull my armory from my sig if it will help, I do my own gems and then run my reforging through a simply priority. 

[JvChequer 43]

You can pull my armory from my sig if it will help, I do my own gems and then run my reforging through a simply priority.

As I said I prefer - and think it's kinda better - Keen gems than Artful, in your case, I easily trade around 750 int for 1,1% more haste and 1,45% more crit.

[Lockybalboa 618]

As I said I prefer - and think it's kinda better - Keen gems than Artful, in your case, I easily trade around 750 int for 1,1% more haste and 1,45% more crit.

 

 

Good for you. I'm going to ignore that advice and carry on my way.

 

Haste means nothing to me, less then 1 and a half crit rating isn't nearly as valuable as 750 int. 

 

In the end these numbers are so small that there will be zero effect on overall DPS.

[SparkSovereign 61]

You can pull my armory from my sig if it will help, I do my own gems and then run my reforging through a simply priority. 

By telling it to aim for a really low haste cap (4192, which is +3 ticks of immolate with raid buff and LMG proc) and increasing the weight on intellect to 9.3 (aka just over 2x highest secondary weight) I got almost exactly the same setup you have.  Got it first try, took me about 20 seconds.  If you change 4 reforges, you can move that 0.02% excess hit to 0.01% crit, though!  (I wouldn't bother.)  Out of curiosity, how long did you spend making your gem/reforge decisions?

 

If you can add 3-digit numbers in your head and know what breakpoints you're going for, you can usually eyeball something very close to optimal, maybe 0.1% shy or something like that.  It's what I do for my elemental spec, just fiddle with my reforges until I get close to exact spell hit (or exact minus a gem).  No reason to bother loading up AMR for that, and if I want to see if a flex haste/mastery piece beats a warforged spirit/crit piece I'll do that in simcraft anyway.  For my enhancement spec, though... nope, I don't really feel like balancing hit and expertise in my head, nor maximizing today's idea for haste/mastery priority without dropping below my preferred crit threshold to keep Flurry up.  AMR is fantastic for that, especially the "best in bags" option.

 

I'll happily look at some other examples, but the takeaway I'm getting from this exercise is that AMR correctly does what you tell it, where "what you tell it" has a small heap of footnotes the average user doesn't know about.  Further, it's not worth the effort if you can do the math in your head.  Besides, if you want to get that extra 0.5% out of your gear you should be doing reforge plots with simcraft anyway.  It might be worth asking them to telegraph what exactly the defaults are a bit better (given how much these questions get asked), but I imagine they're working on a revised product for Warlords these days.

 

To summarize:

• Is it wrong?  No.  It's doing what it's told, which may be radically different from what you had in mind.  When it doubt, click "custom weights" and see what's going on.
• Is it necessary?  No.  If you know your breakpoints and can do head math, you can get sufficiently close by eyeballing it.
• Is it useful?  If you know what it's doing, absolutely.  Otherwise, it's a bit of a coin flip.  If nothing else, it's a time saver, especially for melee classes.

[Lockybalboa 618]

Posting from my phone, please forgive bad writing.

My gems are easy, I have enough hit from gear that I don't lose mastery from reforging.because if this I turned away from the use of keen gems a long time ago. the raw int gain is more valuable to me then a very small amount of haste or crit.

Reforging is done with ReforgeLite. I set it for 5100hit then just mastery>crit>haste.

I keep it simple, I don't like adding complexity to things that are simple. Secondary stats do so little to DPS that I can't find a reason to invest a large amount of time or effert in a <1% gain.

Few months and none of this will matter.

[Veox 0]

Thanks guys.. so in summary: Ask mr robot is not bad i just fucked up and did not say "1 haste", and i guess i should prio crit more in the stat weights..

 

 - Crit/haste does not matter to much as dps is to minimial to see?

 

 

Thanks guys <3 for all posts.

 

 

If anyone has enough time to link me a AMR profile that would be beautiful

 

Or I'll just use Reforgelite

Edited February 23, 2014 by Veox

[SparkSovereign 61]

If you give AMR a specific haste cap, it automatically de-values haste above that cap, no need to fiddle with the other stat weights.  Using the link you started the thread with, I just clicked "edit weights" -> manual haste cap -> "1" and it gives you what I think you're looking for.  (If you want to force it to stay above 15% hit, there's a checkbox for that.)  You could also select a specific soft cap from the list.  That's really all there is to it, no need to set up a profile or anything.

[Zagam 1,982]

I love all this emphasis on secondary stats.

 

/wrists

[EddyG17 2]

The choice of going haste or crit has very little effect on dps. However, the choice between int vs. secondary is a very valid concern.

Locky constantly says, a few points of crit/hate here and there do not matter. Well, ok. At what point would they matter to you? 2:1? 3:1? 5:1?

Fact is that there is a point at which gaining x amount of points of mastery, crit or haste for every one point of int is a greater dps gain.

[Zagam 1,982]

I use Int/Mastery gems.  Others use Expertise/Mastery gems.  Sometimes I beat them.  Sometimes they beat me.  The point is they don't matter now and they DEFINITELY won't matter when they are removed.

[Twinkielock 15]

WHat about spirit?

 

 

 

 

:)

[SparkSovereign 61]

The choice of going haste or crit has very little effect on dps. However, the choice between int vs. secondary is a very valid concern.

Locky constantly says, a few points of crit/hate here and there do not matter. Well, ok. At what point would they matter to you? 2:1? 3:1? 5:1?

Fact is that there is a point at which gaining x amount of points of mastery, crit or haste for every one point of int is a greater dps gain.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the point they're getting at is that your play matters so, so much more than where your stats are allocated.  Especially for warlocks, who have well-balanced stat weights and very high skill ceilings; it's not that it isn't a dps gain to fiddle with your gear, it's that it's only a tiny gain and you should really be spending your time working on your play rather than worrying about it.  I wouldn't be surprised if these pros here could randomly scramble all their non-hit stats and see very little change in dps.

 

By contrast, as an elemental shaman, I sidegraded one piece and shot up 20k dps because ele sham stat weights are that whacked.  There are classes and specs that really care about their stat distributions, and have much lower benefits from perfecting play.  As I understand, warlocks are not among them.

Edited February 24, 2014 by SparkSovereign