When does agility become valuable enough to gear for?

According to numerous guides and advice from the community, it would appear that agility is a desirable stat for retribution paladins. In-game, this is what I see highly geared rets do as well -- choosing agility gear for almost every slot except their main tier gear and some strength off-pieces.

I've been trying to follow these guidelines but I am somewhat underwhelmed by the dps i can put out on various bosses.

For context, I play on Lordaeron and these are my highest dps on 2 common bosses:

• Toravon, VOA25: 8.6k

• Halion, RS25 normal: 7.6k

My gs is about 5.7k.

The thing is -- I don't really know how much dps rets should be doing at certain gear scores but this feels underwhelming compared to my other 2 dps classes (mage & rogue) that do much more and equal or lower gear. For context, my rogue which is also about 5.7k gs does 9-10k on Toravon and 9k on Halion.

I was wondering if my subpar dps has anything to do with choosing agility gear too early. In a lot of the guides that I've seen, agility gearing is done at the BiS level. Do those stat weights still apply before BiS? Should I be gearing for strength instead until I get to a certain gear threshold? At what point does extra crit become more valuable than higher flat dmg? This always puts me in a dilemma during leather agility gear drops as I'm not sure if I should be rolling on them or not e.g. agility ring and bracers from RS25.

Also, I am currently at ~400 agility.

Looking forward to your views.

You can use rawr to make a simulation of your toon and it will list you the items which would be an upgrade for each slot based on your whole equipment set. It's not a question of whether agility gets better than strength, it's more like "Will this specific piece of agility gear be better than the strength gear equivalents of the same item level taking into account the rest of the gear I wear?".

EDIT: Mage and rogue are pure dps classes. You will get outdamaged by an equally geared mage/rogue and that is normal.

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Originally Posted by Aristocat

You can use rawr to make a simulation of your toon and it will list you the items which would be an upgrade for each slot based on your whole equipment set. It's not a question of whether agility gets better than strength, it's more like "Will this specific piece of agility gear be better than the strength gear equivalents of the same item level taking into account the rest of the gear I wear?".

EDIT: Mage and rogue are pure dps classes. You will get outdamaged by an equally geared mage/rogue and that is normal.

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Thanks @Aristocat. So I guess what you're saying is it's not as simple and just picking the highest weighted single stat point for rets as opposed to other classes like warr just plain stacking arpen to cap.

Are there any simpler rules of thumb for ret gearing though or do all rets use simulators every time they enter a higher lvl raid?

Regarding mages/rogues, I totally agree that they should do higher dps, I just didn't expect the discrepancy to be that high lol (2k dps diff!).

It really depends on the item. Not all items are created equal. Haste also has a higher value for BIS rets because they have more procs like Tiny Abom, Shadowmourne and T10 bonus. Without those, the value of haste is much lower. Armor pen is also not an ideal stat, but does have value - especially on cleave damage. Crit and AP are generally the universal stats, and are most valuable early on. STR is your best source of AP, and some agility items won't have enough AP to make for the STR vs AGI trade-off. It also depends on generally where you're at crit-wise. Getting some AGI items for more crit is useful, but you don't want to over-gear for it because you lose a lot of AP in doing so. But also it is good to have a couple AGI items.

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Originally Posted by Xxanarg

Thanks @Aristocat. So I guess what you're saying is it's not as simple and just picking the highest weighted single stat point for rets as opposed to other classes like warr just plain stacking arpen to cap.

Are there any simpler rules of thumb for ret gearing though or do all rets use simulators every time they enter a higher lvl raid?

Regarding mages/rogues, I totally agree that they should do higher dps, I just didn't expect the discrepancy to be that high lol (2k dps diff!).

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Just look up a ret guide and follow the stat weights. Play around with rawr just swapping out items with ones that are able to get to currently depending on your raid progress and focus on obtaining them. There are some variables like haste becoming a bit more desirable once you get TAJ/Shadowmourne and etc.

If you're pugging and not in a guild, an honest answer is to not overthink it and just use the highest item level piece that fits your character, boosting your gearscore because most pug leaders probably won't care whether you have agility or strength gear. As long as you're hit/exp capped at this point you can't go wrong with getting the highest item level strength piece until 277/284 items when you should start caring about building up to your BiS set.

Obviously raiding with a guild is more desirable and you would min-max a lot more with a group of people that are not some randoms.

Ret dps doesn't really scale much until you get shadowmourne and taj which is pretty much nearing best in slot. At that point you would diminish the dps gap between ret and say mage/rogue a bit but you would still be behind most of the time and depending on fights/luck - it's just how it is. It should not discourage you as you have quite a bit more utility in a raid setting along with fairly great dps (just not top dps most of the time).

*If you haven't done it yet - grab your set bonus asap as divine storm resets are invaluable.

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Originally Posted by Mercy

It really depends on the item. Not all items are created equal. Haste also has a higher value for BIS rets because they have more procs like Tiny Abom, Shadowmourne and T10 bonus. Without those, the value of haste is much lower. Armor pen is also not an ideal stat, but does have value - especially on cleave damage. Crit and AP are generally the universal stats, and are most valuable early on. STR is your best source of AP, and some agility items won't have enough AP to make for the STR vs AGI trade-off. It also depends on generally where you're at crit-wise. Getting some AGI items for more crit is useful, but you don't want to over-gear for it because you lose a lot of AP in doing so. But also it is good to have a couple AGI items.

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Thanks for your input, @Mercy. Your answer certainly resonates with me as I've noticed just how much AP I'm losing from choosing agility over strength (hence my conundrum), and how little arpen provides in additional dps compared to other melee dps stats.

Yours and @Aristocat's comments has helped clarify things for me. I've tried to calculated the expected dps myself and used WoW Sims (https://wowsims.github.io/wotlk/) but I'm not sure how accurate either of these are.

My guess is agility gear stays useful up to crit cap (which I am nowhere close to) but must be weighed against any comparable strength gear before being prioritized.

I have not used wowsims so I am unable to vouch for it. The sim tool I have used and is the staple so to say for wotlk (not wotlk classic) is rawr.

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Originally Posted by Xxanarg

My guess is agility gear stays useful up to crit cap (which I am nowhere close to) but must be weighed against any comparable strength gear before being prioritized.

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You will never realistically reach the crit cap as a Ret. Nor should you try. AP is VERY strong for a Ret, which is why the balance of STR vs AGI/Crit items usually stays in the range of 2 (at the low end) to 5 (at the high end) AGI items.

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Originally Posted by Aristocat

Just look up a ret guide and follow the stat weights. Play around with rawr just swapping out items with ones that are able to get to currently depending on your raid progress and focus on obtaining them. There are some variables like haste becoming a bit more desirable once you get TAJ/Shadowmourne and etc.

If you're pugging and not in a guild, an honest answer is to not overthink it and just use the highest item level piece that fits your character, boosting your gearscore because most pug leaders probably won't care whether you have agility or strength gear. As long as you're hit/exp capped at this point you can't go wrong with getting the highest item level strength piece until 277/284 items when you should start caring about building up to your BiS set.

Obviously raiding with a guild is more desirable and you would min-max a lot more with a group of people that are not some randoms.

Ret dps doesn't really scale much until you get shadowmourne and taj which is pretty much nearing best in slot. At that point you would diminish the dps gap between ret and say mage/rogue a bit but you would still be behind most of the time and depending on fights/luck - it's just how it is. It should not discourage you as you have quite a bit more utility in a raid setting along with fairly great dps (just not top dps most of the time).

*If you haven't done it yet - grab your set bonus asap as divine storm resets are invaluable.

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I just tested my current gear set on a TOC raid yesterday and am relieved to say I'm not falling behind other rets at the very least. But as you said @Aristocat, rets are not brought just for their dps, but their utility too. Will definitely reference what you said here when thinking about my gearing moving forward. Thanks!

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Originally Posted by Mercy

You will never realistically reach the crit cap as a Ret. Nor should you try. AP is VERY strong for a Ret, which is why the balance of STR vs AGI/Crit items usually stays in the range of 2 (at the low end) to 5 (at the high end) AGI items.

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Really appreciate giving me some solid numbers to work with @Mercy. The way my gear is set up right now, I have slightly higher crit than other rets of equivalent gs so I might be leaning too far into the agility gear at the expense of flat strength dmg. I will think of ways to replace existing gear with realistic replacements where I can.

Thank you for your help!

Hi! There are many things to say in order to answer your request... but out of 10 years of playing retri I can roughly tell you this:

1) You should start to care more about reaching the agility sweet spot only if you manage to win Tiny Abomination in a Jar. Yes, haste gives a good boost to tiny abomination, but in fact, its the agility/crit strike that makes it activate more indirect damage on retri.

2) Another robust recommendation I can give you as pre-bis geared paladin is that in early gearing process, Whispering Fanged Skull trinket can be the equivalent of 3 agility offsets, so you can build two paths pre bis: one with Tiny Abo + WFS and more str offset or one with Tiny Abo + <non crit trinket as DBW, Death Verdict, etc) with more agility offsets.

3) You want to reach around 600 agility (with crit strike trinket this needs to be around 450) by playing with the right offsets. The normal bis setup goes plate hands + leather belt, but if your offset items are mostly strength you can push and use mail/leather hands + leather belt. Other than that, from offset point of view, you can always play around with agi/plate version of items like (Gunship agi cloak vs Winding sheet, ashen ring agi vs str, etc), the goal is to reach around 600 agi at bis.

4) Strength gives consistent dmg increase, while agility is more about averaging burst spikes due to crit RNG. It is when a retri gains Tiny Abomination in a Jar that agility gives a more consistent damage increase, rather than temporary spikes.

Hope this gives you some guidance!

@Mercy

Agility give more proc to TaJ trinket than haste is, even if you would not consider the haste diminishing returns as a stat. At near gearing levels between two paladins, what pushes a retri dps more than another, its his ability to proc TaJ more. Haste mainly affects white swings, has a DR effect, while agility even with its RNG mechanic can output more stacks on TaJ than haste will ever do. This is due to the fact that Righteous Vengeance application+refresh (which we know happens after criticals of Divine Storms - that can be spammed with good T10 rng / Crusader Strike / Judgement) procs TaJ motes, and I`m really happy to see it work on Warmane too.

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Originally Posted by Justicelights

@Mercy

Agility give more proc to TaJ trinket than haste is, even if you would not consider the haste diminishing returns as a stat. At near gearing levels between two paladins, what pushes a retri dps more than another, its his ability to proc TaJ more. Haste mainly affects white swings, has a DR effect, while agility even with its RNG mechanic can output more stacks on TaJ than haste will ever do. This is due to the fact that Righteous Vengeance application+refresh (which we know happens after criticals of Divine Storms - that can be spammed with good T10 rng / Crusader Strike / Judgement) procs TaJ motes, and I`m really happy to see it work on Warmane too.

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It may, but agility and haste aren't mutually exclusive, except pure gems (not that you'd want to gem agility anyway) and certain enchants of course. Also, I was speaking in general about all proc related things that a bis ret has access to.