Hello everyone,
I playing ret pala on patch 3.3.5 wrath of the lich king. I can see many paladins here are using some agility items on the gear to improve their crit rather than plat and strength items.
I just wanted to ask you, what is your opinion about this action? Does it work?
Please share your experience with me.
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Member
Agility for Ret Pala PVE
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Member
I was condescending of this choice a while back but experience proved me wrong. The reason is that the strength pieces either have no crit on them, have armor pen or expertise and hit while you are caped on them. Also 1% more crit is more than 60 more attack power from strength when you are close to bis.
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Member
Pretty much what Greedman said. It's just a matter of Agi items having better (or more of) stats and paladins really loving high crit due to Righteous Vengeance and TAIJ procs. So it's worth it for some items.
Going full agi everywhere isn't the best way either, but some agi items (ring, wrists, waist, cloak) are just better than plate alternatives that it's worth it.
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Forum Veteran
There is some "cap" on agil where it loses too much scaling, was around 800 agility, go find the number.
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Member
The idea behind GearScore is that everyitem has a given set of "points" an item with a gearscore of "264" has "264 points" spent into it's various attributes. Strenght items will always spend more of those points on Stamina. which means that if you ignore stamina completely, there's always more dmg stats on an agility item compared to a strenght equivalent.
Now strenght have nothing of the likes of a diminishing return, which means the more you have the better it is, no question about it. However, paladins have an amazing agility to crit scaling, i'll ignore DR to illustrate how an agility item can be better than a STR item.
45crit rating = 1% crit = ~52 Agility
And given that 1str = ~2.15 attack power (talent)
Let's take the Ashen Verdict rings for example :
STR : +99 strenght +107 stamina +59 crit rating +59 hit rating
AGI ring gives: +88 Agility +84 Stamina +135 attack power +59 crit rating +59 hit rating
if we convert the STR to attack power and AGI + crit rating to crit % we get
STR: +107 stamina 1.3% crit (59crit )+212.85AP
AGI: +84 stamina +3% crit (135.15crit) +135AP
Equipping the AGI ring would give : -23stamina +1.7% crit -77.85 AP (And that's why you always go for that ring instead of the STR one)
You sacrifice 78 attack power for 1.7% chances to do double your damage (which is naturally high due to your good scaling with STR and the STR gear/weapon). The same logic applies on all agility items wanted by rets.
Rets should never, under no circumstances favor raw agility over raw strenght on equal terms. Agility items always have 1 more secondary stat (Attack power) and less stamina, which means that there are actually more offensive stats on agility items compared to strenght items which makes them (given you have the right gear to optimize the value they give) an overall dps boost despite not having your main stat.
Fake numbers in the following to illustrate, let's say :
100str = +50dps
100agi + 100AP = +60dps
You take the agi + ap item.
Items should be regarded not simply for the stats they show (STR or AGI) but for the value they bring to your dps.
TL;DR:
STR is the best stat on paladins.
AGI items can still bring more dps than STR items tho.
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Member
STR = more AP = more BASE dmg (taleents )
AGI = more crit = more RANDOM dmg
make simple couting , CONSIDERING some assumption :
STR = more AP = more BASE dmg (taleents )
AGI = more crit = more RANDOM dmg
let's assume that we will calculate the differences for 5 items including proportions as in the quote. So we get :
STR : 6.5% crit + 1065 AP
AGI: 15% crit + 675 AP
on my "testing" gear (t10 + weapon + 1 str ring + str boots str hands ) i have 31% crit unbuffed rouding up :
STR : 38 Crits 62 normal
AGI : 46 Crits 54 normal
we get (lest say 1 AP = 1 DMG ) :
STR : (1065x2.03x38)+(1065x1x62 ) = 148 190 ~~ 150k dmg
AGI : (675x2.03x46)+(675x1x54) = 99 451 ~~ 100k dmg
So for me to much agi = to much lost dmg .
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Member
Those assumptions are too inaccurate to get any kind of relevant result.
With higher crit you get more consistent dps. With more str you get bigger variance. (if you get lucky on crits with str gear you will get higher dps, if you dont - and thats more likely - you will do less)
Abilities have some base dmg that is also multiplied by crit. By ommiting this you get wildly inaccurate result. +50% dmg on str gear is incredibly wrong. Regular agi and str set sim few hundred of dps apart in favor of agi.
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Member
There is so much wrong stuff in this calculations.
Your first mistake -> "let's assume that we will calculate the differences for 5 items including proportions as in the quote".
You can't do this and expect right results. You have to calculate on base whole gear not by just 5 items.
Your second mistake -> "i have 31% crit unbuffed rouding up"
Unbuffed without proper multipliers... well you never will get again right results. Don't you know that compering items on dummy is bad idea?
Your third mistake: -> "(lest say 1 AP = 1 DMG )"
Every spell and ability has different AP or SP multiplier so you cant just type 1 AP = 1 DMG or 2 AP = 1 DMG or whatever. Completely wrong stuff.
Your fourth mistake: A lot of additional procs and stuffs are missing into your calculations.
Only single or only AOE damage or both???
Downtime and uptime of the damage - disable by boss mechanic.? - during trinkets proc or not? Who knows?
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Member
using EJ's numbers for EP value
Assuming pala is already hit & exp capped so I've not counted them
1.Strength(100)
2.Crit(60)
3.Agility(58)
4.Attack Power(39.5)
5.Haste(38)
6.Armor Pen(27)
7.Spell Power(11)
8.Everything else(0)
so for example agi ring vs str ring, both with a 20str gem:
http://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/item=52572 vs http://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/item=50402
http://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/item=52572 is worth 15440 points
while
http://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/item=50402 is worth 15976.5 points , so agi ring is technically better.
Nevertheless other benefits from agility items can include more reliable DPS (you get less "bad fights" since you have less RNG involved) and in some cases a better manapool, which is a slight DPS increase (since more mana = less divine plea = more GCDs used to do damage) ex: anubar gloves or festergut's mail belt
Obviously those numbers aren't absolute, arpen gets a little bit better in BiS gear and haste gets better with 2t10 and later with smourne, but they are still a good starting point.
Your best bet would be to use a sim thoughEdited: June 7, 2020
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Member
TL;DR is that Agility is worse than Strength if you look at those 2 stats alone. But Agility items come with extra Attack Power that tends not to exist on Strength items.
So, for example, http://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/item=52572 vs http://wotlk.cavernoftime.com/item=50402 We're actually comparing
1)88 Agility + 135 Attack power
2)99 strength
In this case, the 88 agility is worth roughly 51 strength, and the 135 attack power is worth roughly 53 strength, meaning we're comparing approx 104 strength worth of Agi/AP vs 99 raw strength.
As you can see the numbers are extremely close, but ever so slightly in favor of agility which is why dps simulators favor agility setups by just small margins. And note that this only applies to certain items, the majority of a Ret paladin's armor should still favor strength, just keep in mind a few CERTAIN agility items can be slightly better than strength.
Like others said though, Agility sets are more consistant due to high crit chance, whereas Strength sets are less consistant due to lower crit chance, meaning that Strength set's DPS will likely vary more from one test to the next, but on average will be lower dps than agility.
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