Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

Last night, we cleared Naxxramas in record time and even pulled in a few new achievements. First up was the Arachnid Quarter, and even though the majority of us had already completed Arachnophobia, we did it again without an issue. We then moved on, completed Momma Said Knock You Out and then cleared the rest of the instance, including achieving The Hundred Club without an issue. Next up, we'll either start trying to have some fun 8-manning Naxx or going for some of the more difficult achievements.

We did have some interesting drops though. For the most part, leather, mail and plate dropped. Caster drops were few and far between. However, the Gown of Blaumeux, Cowl of Sheet Lightning, and Heroes' Frostfire Circlet dropped, leading me to have to run some numbers this morning. In the end, I won the Cowl of Sheet Lightning, the Tier 7 head piece went to our wonderful healy druid, Vetarra, and the Gown went to Matnocuido.

I knew the Gown was a slight upgrade, but it was a large upgrade for Matnocuido, so I passed my roll to him, especially after I had already gotten the Cowl of Sheet Lightning and I didn't know if I wanted to break my four piece Tier 7 bonus for the Gown. Which led me to wonder, if the Gown is better than the Tier 7 piece, and the Cowl is better than the Tier 7 piece, but I want to keep my Tier 7 four piece bonus, how do I do it? And that's where the numbers come in.

If you compare the Heroes' Frostfire Circlet and the Gown of Blaumeux to the Cowl of Sheet Lightning paired with the Heroes' Frostfire Robe, the Circlet and Gown come out ahead:

Circlet + Gown = +20 STA, +4 INT, +39 HIT, +11 HST, +11 DMG, -15 MP5, -2 Yellow Sockets.

Assigning values of 1.3 to Spellpower, 0.89 to Crit & Hit, and 0.95 to Haste via the Theorycraft-O-Matic (Hit actually receives a value of 0, but since I can swap Hit and Crit gems equally, I assign the same value to both), the Circlet + Gown give me 25 extra "points."

But in the mean time, the Cowl was a huge upgrade over the Hat of Wintry Doom, giving me 12 "points" though the Gown would have given me 30 "points" over my frostfire robe, but then I'd lose my 5% extra damage on crits via the 4 piece set bonus.

Given that I crit 48% of the time on bosses (from last night's full Naxxramas clear) and my average crit is 8,345, that means that my average four piece tier 7 bonus results in extra damage of 397. I crit 386 times last night, which equals 153,390 extra damage from frostfire bolts alone. Factoring in all my other offensive spells, my 5% extra crit gave me increased damage of 233,464. Considering I did 10,381,794 damage last night, overall, the 5% increased crit damage bonus increases my total damage output by 2.25%. The question now is, what additional combination of spellpower, crit, haste, and hit would allow me to up my damage by 2.25%?

In the end, upgrading to the Cowl of Sheet Lightning and the Gown of Blaumeux delivers: +46 STA, +12 INT, -120 SPI, -94 CRIT, +45 HIT, +107 HST, +16 DMG, +15 MP5, and 2 fewer yellow gems. Using TCOM point values, it's a gain of 35 "points." But is it 2.25% damage? I'm not sure. Throw out stamina, intellect, spirit and mp5. And I lose 94 crit for 45 hit, 107 haste and 16 damage. Given that 107 haste equals 3.2% faster casting, I'm inclined to say that the tradeoff is worth it. If you can cast 3.2% faster, you can do 3.2% more damage - right? Losing the 94 crit though really hurts, but at 1:1 with hit, it's really a loss of 49 crit. With crit at 0.89 and damage at 1.3, the gain of 16 damage offsets 21 crit, so I lose 28 crit total. Now obviously, 107 haste is better than 28 crit. But if 28 crit equates to 26 haste, we have a net gain of 80 haste, or 2.45% faster casting. So running the numbers, it looks as if the Gown + Cowl is better than the pieces of Tier 7.

So now that I have that information in the back of my head, next week when we run Naxx, if the Gown drops, I'm needing it and I'll be set. I'll take the Tier 7 head piece just to have the full set, but I won't use it, so it'd be a purely cosmetic roll, coming after any need or greed rolls.

Next up, tonight we have Malygos. Last night I was lucky enough to win the Key to the Focusing Iris which will turn into the Chain of the Frost Wyrm after completing the quest tonight. I didn't initially think the Chain was that much better than the Necklace, but it's about 28 "points" better with the following stats:

-1 STA, +7 INT, -41 CRIT, +30 HIT, +37 HST, +7 DMG, Blue instead of Red Gem (Boo), +Spellpower instead of +Intellect socket bonus (yay!). However, I'll probably throw a +19 damage red gem in it since the +5 spellpower bonus is outweighed by the +10 you get over a blue gem which only has +9 damage. So in the end, it's just a 4 intellect loss on the socket from the bonus.

But I'm hoping that the new Chain tonight, paired with my Cowl from last night will up my DPS a bit. Also, I haven't been casting Mirror Image at all while raiding. I thought it was a spell in the Arcane tree that I never spec'ed into. But all the time, it's just been sitting there, extra damage for the low cost of a global cooldown. It has now been added to my uber-damage macro and will be cast every time it is up during a boss fight (every 3 minutes).