[PvP] The BiS for the current content (updated for 1.8!)

[etternDS]

And no, I have not done any testing on beasts (Troll racial)

[sheepstickss]

I noticed there's theorycrafting going on here so I thought I could add in the guide I wrote a few months ago:

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How to calculate your CRIT value:

Your frost bolt does 456 avg dmg. (not the 446 its supposed to be, don't know why)
A solid preraid set of gear gives you spellpower of 400.
Full Raid consumes of +86 spellpower. (36 from Brilliant Wizard Oil and 35 Greater Arcane Elixir and 15 Elixir of Frost Power)
Frostbolt's spellpower coefficient is .814 (3/3.5 = .857 then .857*.95 = .814)
3/3.5 = cast time
5% reduction is because it has a slowing effect.
A few things we can ignore since we're trying to find equal values between crit and spellpower.

456 + (.814 coefficient * 486) = 852 dmg per frostbolt.
1% crit would over a long average be equal to 1% more damage per frost bolt. 852*.01 = 8.52 dmg.
8.52 / (spell coefficent = .814) = 10.46 Spellpower.

At this gear level 10.46 spellpower would be equal to 1% crit, and that would be the ratio you tradeoff your items for max theoretical DPS.

Now lets say you have better gear at a level of 450 Spellpower. +86 from Raid consumables.
1% crit = 10.96 SP

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How to value HIT:
You can't go above 16% hit (you get 6% from talents)

For spells, it is a 2 table roll. First the server rolls to see if you hit, then if you successfully landed your spell; it checks if you made a crit.

So 1 hit again, like crit adds 1% more damage per frostbolt in the long average, however this hit can cause a crit.
So a hit that would of missed, but this 1% hit changed it into successfully landing, this successful hit may now crit. So we need to take crit chance into calculation.

So 1 hit = [1% dmg of your frost bolt * your crit chance (5% base ~5% from gear 3% talents 10% WC = 23%)] / spell coefficient (.814)
OR 1 hit = [SP value of crit] * crit chance.

Gear: 400 SP +86 (from consumables) = 486.
852 dmg per frostbolt.
[8.52/.814 = 10.46] * 1.23 = 12.86 SP

At this gear level 12.86 spellpower would be equal to 1% hit, and that would be the ratio you tradeoff your items for max theoretical DPS.

Spellpower level: 450+86 = 536 SP
1% hit = 13.48 SP

The more spellpower you have, the more each crit and hit is worth.
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So you make tradeoffs on your items until you find your max DPS combination. If you want an item that is +15 sp OR 1% crit? You go with the 15 sp.
You want 8 sp OR 1 % hit? You go with the 1% hit.

Good luck!

I'm a huge theorycrafter so I was pretty excited by all this and looked through everything in this post

Now to look at some points i've seen through the thread:
Average frostbolt damage is 456. Not the 446 it is supposed to be - something server side they will fix eventually I'd guess. (Theorycraft says 486 but that is wrong)
Frostbolt coefficient is indeed ~.814

Looking through sumail's post I see that he varies his crit and hit ratio depending on how much he already has? For example .84/.83 (1% vs 0% hit) and .99/.98 ( 16 vs 15 hit), same for crit. When looking at equivalencies it doesn't work like that, you aren't looking to see by how much % it improves by, but by absolute #'s. A 1% hit increase from 1->2 is the same as 15->16. Getting more and more crit or hit shouldn't devalue the next one.
You put alot of work into it and took me a while to go through it (thankfully you put in end equations so I was able to skip some parts I didn't understand) I actually was able to fix one of my guide's problems by looking through yours
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Edit: Thanks guys for the explanations! I'll be looking to fixup my stuff.

[Lazermon]

getting more hit (or crit) devalues the next one in the sense that other stats become more and more valuable. It's a very tiny difference, but in the end it does matter. Since we like to compare hit with spellpower, we say that 1 hit is worth a tiny bit less spellpower the more hit you get, but whats in reality happening, ofcourse, is that all of your spellpower is worth a tiny bit more the more hit you get (which is the same thing).

Maybe I missed your point, sorry if I did.

[sumail]

Yeah I agree with Lazermon's explanation.

Basically the more crit you have the more impact your spellpower can make since it is multiplied by 2 everytime you crit. Same argument with hit since you are getting less resists your spellpower can have more of an impact.

If you look at having 1% crit vs 99% crit assuming 100% chance to hit your damage will look something like:

DMG @ 1% crit:
DMG = 0.99*X + 0.01*2*X

DMG @ 99% crit:
DMG = 0.01*X + 0.99*2*X

To make things simple we'll say X just our spellpower. Simplifying the equation a bit we get:

DMG @ 1% crit:
DMG = 1.01X

DMG @ 99% crit:
DMG = 1.99X

So our damage scales by 1.01 with spellpower at 1% crit but 1.99 at 99% crit. Essentially you get a lot more by increasing spellpower at 99% crit than you do at 1% crit.

I think we agree that the more spellpower you have the more you get out of increasing crit/hit. It's the same way with increasing crit/hit. You get more out of your spellpower the higher your crit/hit becomes. That's why continuously increasing crit/hit has this diminishing values with spellpower in terms of equivalency. If we looked at an equivalency with spellpower -> crit we'd see that increasing our spellpower has a diminishing value with crit as well (ie if you keep increasing spellpower crit becomes worth more and more).

I hope this helps further explain my reasoning.

[wuvluv]

What's the best gear without PVP gear in those slots (both pre-raid and BIS)? I think it would be helpful to list those items.

[Lazermon]

This thread is for the Best in Slot, it is not a guide to what items you should farm before you jump into a raid, or what items to get when you are unable to get the best thing. I recommend asking your guild if you are unsure of what items you should be looking to acquire.

[furier]

I dont think wuvluv's suggestion is a bad one, some people may not want to PvP, I know you have listed honorable mentions tho, maybe that is enough.

[ejthemovie]

Just curious as to the Value of Warlord's Shoulders for Mages, according to Theorycraft on bosses with 140 Resistance to Fire/Frost - 75 from CoE, the 10 spell pen should be equivelant to approx 27 spellpower in my gear. Wondering how the values work @Lazermon or anybody else competent enough to answer this question.

[vinceyoung]

Just curious as to the Value of Warlord's Shoulders for Mages, according to Theorycraft on bosses with 140 Resistance to Fire/Frost - 75 from CoE, the 10 spell pen should be equivelant to approx 27 spellpower in my gear. Wondering how the values work @Lazermon or anybody else competent enough to answer this question.

Not sure if this is correct but according to this link 10 spell pen is worth roughly 2.5% increased damage provided that the mob has resistance to penetrate.

http://vanillagaming.org/forum/index.php?topic=15951.0

I think right now spell pen is not useful since I can't recall ever getting a partial resist on bosses in MC/BWL. However I am not sure what amount of resistances these bosses have, it must be that their resistance does not exceed 85 (total resistance penetrated by coe + arcane subtly). I am not sure about bosses in Naxx and AQ40 but I imagine that some bosses will have 85+ resist in which case spell pen would be extremely valuable if it does infact add 2.5% increased damage per 10 resistances penetrated.

[Lazermon]

Without doublechecking things, you either hit or miss a spell. If you do hit and the spell isn't binary, resistance comes into play. Frostbolt is binary so it's irrelevant right now. Even if it IS relevant, the bosses I've checked has had 0 frost resistance.

When we begin using fireball (which isn't binary), spell pen might be within our interests if CoE and arcane subtetly is not enough to bring mob resistances to 0. I know there's a macro to check mob resistances but I can't recall the code off the top of my head, it should be used on the bosses to check.

As always, we aren't playing on an authentic wow server, don't expect things to work the way internet says it should work. Check the resistances on every boss, and if relevant, make sure the additional spell pen on gear makes the difference it mathematically should. The relevant information should come trickling in to us when they open a test for AQ40, so we should be prepared for it before it hits live.

Assume spell pen will continue to be absolutely worthless in PVE.