Wow_Ladies: Girl Gamers of World of Warcraft

I had a long, elaborate post here going into a lot of detail and crap. But it's pretty extraneous, so I'm cutting back to the tl;dr version.

I no longer raid, but helped found a raid group. I've seen something in the WWS (I still keep an eye on them, I'm nosey and want them to do well) which is wrong in the "plz lrn2play kthxbai" way. It's not troublesome currently, but will become a problem as they progress through T5 and T6 content.

Being uncertain how to deal with it, I posted a "this is a problem, this is why, this is what can be done about it" to the raid leader's forum (which I still have access to) but... gah. Part of me says "this isn't your business anymore, you're not participating in the group" and part of me wants to have long talks and educate the masses.

(Yes, I'm a pushy, bossy, opinionated know-it-all, why do you ask? >.>)


So, should I be reading? Should I be examining the WWS reports? Should I be pointing this stuff out to the current leadership? Should I be pulling people aside and telling them how to play?

plz halp...

Imagine my surprise when, after leaving a PvE guild to spend more time RPing and less time being frustrated by the game itself, my shiny new RP guild pulls me and the requisite boyfriend into Kara pretty much immediately! And then tanking plate drops off like everything!

( Now comes the fun part. Time to gem it all. )

tl;dr: What stats should a tanking warrior with her first few Kara epics gem for?

Sorry for all the questions, my first 70 was a mage and stats are a little more straightforward for her. I'm reasonably good at tanking, but I'm still getting used to the theorycrafting. :)

I've raided as a retribution paladin since a couple months into BC. Yes, I'm horde. :P

As of late I have been really concerned with choosing the right gear. There are only so many complex calculations that I can do in my head. For example, when the option comes for a bit more haste or a bit more crit or strength I really have trouble deciding which is my best option for a DPS increase.

My guild is currently 4/9 Black Temple and 4/5 Mount Hyjal. I am not posting my armory at the moment as I am respecced prot for Kara. (Haha, who respecs prot on weekends and for Kara lawl usually it's the other way around!)

Anyway, I'm looking for theorycraft on ret paladins. Any spreadsheets, any amazing forums posts you might have, etc.

As for my stats, currently I have:
134.0 weapon dps
3.5 weapon speed
About 3000 AP raid buffed
9% to hit with talents (theoretical cap)
39% crit raid buffed
About 150 haste rating
301 ArP

Any other suggestions as to what I should be looking for would be incredible.

Okay, so my fella and I have rolled a couple of characters that we can just level up together on those rare occasions when we're not raiding and actually have the time to play together :) So we have a little hunter/shaman team currently at level 16 and it's loads of fun :)

I've decided to go elemental with my shaman, which is cool and froody.. but I'm suffering somewhat by not really understanding the best stat choices to make. I just have no clue. It seems apparant to me that intellect should probably be my primary stat, +spell dam and spell crit are clearly going to be good for me too. I use Ratings Buster, but it frankly doesn't help me - I just don't know what I'm comparing! If I get an item that would reduce my mana by 30 and spell crit by 0.13%, but increase my +spell damage by 1 - is it an upgrade, a downgrade or a sidegrade?

Any advice or links to threads that may be of use in increasing my understanding of this would be appreciated :)

Can anyone who's far better at theorycrafting than I am explain how to determine the usefulness of the "Your attacks ignore (xx) of your opponent's armor" that is appearing on some of the new badge rewards (like, for example, this one)? I'm asking, specifically, for how it applies to a hunter, but any explanation is more than I've got now :)

Is not being able to check Elitist Jerks for info about how much +spell hit a Holy or Holy/Disc priest needs to make hit cap. I'm also wanting to know how much the 4% of Focused Power (25 deep into Disc) applies into that. I'm not a theorycrafter by any means, but I have a sudden urge to know, and if that means that I do start dabbling into theorycraft, so be it. :)Also be interesting to see the damage boosted from a retribution paladin's Sanctity Aura.

Yes, I'm a healer in raids, but I don't have another true high lvl character to farm for me, and I do enjoy the challenge of killing things on my priest.

Anyone have any really good links for theorycrafting that's not on EJ (blocked by proxy at work. boo)?

After reading the recent post by daenarys, I noticed in the comments many people where confused by the changes to downranking. I don't blame you. It's weird. But while it has suffered a slight nerf, this does *not* mean it is "next to worthless." Let's face it, if everything in this game that got nerfed became next to worthless, there'd be nothing left to use except Cloak of Shadows ;-)

Here's how it works. The amount of +healing applies to the spell is multiplied by this ratio to determine the actual effect:
((Level at which next higher rank of Spell is Learned) + 5) / (Player's Level)) = Penalty

I'm going to do some examples here. ( This is not for those faint of heart when it comes to math ;-) )

Now, why downrank? As we've seen it's more mana efficient, which is important. But the overall healing is, of course, reduced. Well, many times, you just don't need to heal that much. Also, if you have decent in-combat regen, you might get back a lot of the cost of a spell by the time you're done casting. For instance, you could chain-cast GHeal 3 on the tank and last a lot longer than waiting for her to be at half health and hitting GHeal 7 (you have Meditation and a lot of mp5 gear, right?). Also, if you let people get too low before casting heals, you run the risk of two crits or crushing blows landing rapidly, and BAM, dead player. Sometimes, Renew isn't fast enough, but Flash Heal will run you OOM before you can say "hopscotch" (and draw more aggro to boot).

I hope this has shed some light on the situation. Do the numbers for yourself, with your own gear, talents, and of course class-specific spells. You'll find that sweet spot where you just become one with the healing spells, everything slows down, and you're casting in a trance not realizing the fight is over until someone starts yelling on Vent that no rogues better be rolling on that sword... Or maybe that's just me >.>

This post is intended to demonstrate the math that goes into determining which mage spec will do the most damage in raids. I'm all for people playing and speccing how they like, but if you're interested in knowing why the cookie-cutter fire build will do more damage than a frost build *in raids*, this post is for you.

I'm not telling frost mages they suck and that they should respec (my husband plays a 70 frost mage and was the one who did the math for me, even) but rather providing information for those who are interested. Frost has a lot of other benefits (easier farming, more survivability, good PVP tools), but Fire does outdamage them when it comes to raid boss encounters (where the other benefits of Frost don't really matter since Fire mages survive and DPS just fine).

( Fire vs. Frost Math (long, skip down for summary) )

First question, because my own searches have proved thus far fruitless: Is there a website(s) out there where you can choose a hypothetical set of gear, and than compare it to another hypothetical set of gear? Or perhaps there might be a spreadsheet floating around that would let someone see this? I would like to compare lose/gain of stats in between sets of gear; I think there are addons that do this in-game, but I am searching for something out of game.

Alright. For those curious, Aphla's armory link. Now for my other questions.

(a) The talent "Elemental Precision" which outside of mana reduction, I understand works something like a blanket +3% hit if fully talented. This benefit IS or IS NOT shown in the character sheet in-game? (I am under the impression it is not, and said mage should just remember whether or not they have said talent)
(b) Spirit vs MP5: Which is better for a mage? I understand that evocation is based off of spirit, however my own feelings are that MP5 is more helpful during the duration of a boss fight, as you are both continually casting and regaining mana.
(c) +DMG vs +HIT vs +CRIT: Um? What I've found is that +hit until capped is more useful than +crit; and +dmg is just always a good thing. Personally, I prefer to have a consistent output of damage, so focusing on +hit before +crit is legitimate? This does not mean ignoring +crit completely.
(d) Intellect vs Stamina: Where is the give and take?

I'm just trying to understand the theory and practicality behind gear so that I can make an effort to get what is good for what I enjoy in-game. That being a slice of raiding, a good chunk of instancing and soloing, NO PVP. Many thanks in advance! :D

I've always been a button pusher, just finding it easier/faster since my hands were already on the keyboard, and of course, in my noobishness, assumed everyone played the same way.

Well, I go play WoW at a friend's house, and he's click-click-clicking away, and I ask him about it, and I get, "What, you don't click?"

So, now of course I realize that people play one, or the other, or a combination of both.  But are there advantages to clicking that I'm just not getting?  I tried out clicking tonight while I'm playing, and I don't get the "Spell is not ready" message nearly as much (I don't know if that's a coincidence or not) but I did find my eyes glued to my button bar, as opposed to my char and what/whoever she was fighting.  Which is bad, of course.  Which also made me think that maybe clicking might work well with casters, 'cause you have time to move your mouse to the right spell while you're casting?

Discuss.

Could someone explain spell penetration to me? The tooltip says basically nothing about it, other than it reduces resistance. I'm at 20 right now; what's good for a warlock? :)

My previous post on basic statistics can be found here. This post will look at combat ratings and other stats.

( Melee and Ranged Physical Damage )

Also, I checked the tags list and didn't see anything that would be appropriate for this. Any suggestions?

Okay, I had at least a couple people say they were interested in reading posts about WoW game mechanics and theorycrafting. So I'll start with the basics. If anyone has anything they're really curious about, please post and I can try and answer that in a comment or a new post.

( Stats and what they mean )
In the next post I'll talk about secondary stats and combat ratings.

Let me know if you have any questions, corrections, or suggestions!

(Also, is there a tag that would work well for these kinds of posts? If not, can I suggest a "theorycraft" tag or something similar?)