Because my dice were a little less cursed than everyone else's this weekend, I landed two upgrades in Naxx-25 this reset: Legplates of Double Strikes and Bandit's Insignia. The legplates I plan to replace as soon as I get my grubby hands on a t7 or t7.5 leg token, so they are inconsequential in my eyes. The trinket, however, requires some thinking.
The Bandit's Insignia is an always-active trinket - it provides a flat AP boost and every so often makes me lash out at my target with an extra bit of arcane damage. The arcane strike can crit.
Loatheb's Shadow, my former go-to trinket for that slot (yes, I got it this month sometime - I don't like to make a big fuss about gear upgrades), provides a flat crit boost and has a 2 minute use cooldown to boost my AP by 670.
Using Rawr, plugging in my current gear and spec, and checking off all raid buffs (flask, food, blessings, Heroism - the works), Loatheb's Shadow supposedly comes out to 20 more DPS on 3 minute fight. Why did I choose 3 minutes? I dunno, Patchwerk usually takes around 3 minutes, so it seemed logical to me at the time.
I'm not sure how Rawr models the up-time of Loatheb's Shadow or the internal cooldown of Bandit's Insignia, but 20 DPS isn't a ton of difference, I don't think. The Bandit's Insignia has the advantage that I don't have to activate it - it just zaps stuff with a jolt of arcane damage whenever, and the significant AP increase is always up. Loatheb's Shadow requires I monitor its cooldown and use it often.
On the other hand, I just macro Loatheb's Shadow to my Avenging Wrath (since they have the same cooldown and stacking buffs is good to do) and make sure I wings up a lot. And Bandit's Insignia isn't guaranteed to proc while I have my wings up, when it would be most effective.
I don't know what to use. I'm not going to sub out my Mirror of Truth, so I must choose one of these trinkets as my "other" trinket. What do you think, fair reader? Bandit's or Loatheb's?
On a related note, I saw how much of a DPS "boost" Darkmoon Card: Greatness would be through Rawr. Considering the current price of Nobles cards on Malfurion and the minute difference in DPS it would represent, I'll happily entertain this debate rather than engage in further farming shenanigans. Rawr put the card in between Loatheb's and Bandit's, which are all below the Mirror. I'll blow my gold on a motorcycle or something.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Bandit's Insignia vs. Loatheb's Shadow
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3 comments:
Rawr isn't the end all be all for gear rating. To say DMC: Greatness is weaker than Mirror of Truth is false. The card's proc is 35% on any hit/heal/action so it's uptime is only limited by its 45 sec internal CD. Therefore, it's up roughly 33% of the time. That works out to an extra passive 100 strength on top of the +90 str on it already, putting it past 400 AP passive. The mirror by contrast has 84 crit and the proc which on EJ is valued at 160-230 passive AP depending in your luck (the mirror's proc is also less reliable because it's based on crits too (I use both). There's no comparison!
@Anonymous
True, Rawr shouldn't be the judge and jury here. But, my aversion to gold farming does contribute to my decision. I've got 3 trinkets that are considered pretty effective and not enough gold or commitment to getting the DMC:G card.
Josh - I would love for you to consider that guy's comments, what I'm going to add, and then make a post about gearing and spreadsheets.
I've been meaning to start a thread on Maintankadin asking what spreadsheets people use. I used to use MaxDPS without putting in my stats. Then I put them in, and some pieces moved. Then I downloaded Rawr, had it Armory me, and checked off pretty much all the buffs (oh, and assigned gems as well).
Rawr has different answers than MaxDPS, sometimes wildly different. For me, it has Greatness 2nd only to Mirror, and it doesn't seem to know Fury of the 5 Flights exists (both spreadsheets are missing a piece or two, it seems).
Rawr seems especially wonky with trinkets, I suppose because of the procs and on-uses. I hate on-use, but I have macro'ed my Incisor Fragment to AW.
Btw for me, Rawr reports that double strikes are far better than T7.5 legs, though I assume that ignores the set bonuses.
So if you have any more thoughts about what information to trust, etc., I'd be very, VERY interested to hear them! =D
Fedaykin98
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