Welcome back to Double Killshot, as promised last week today we are going to talk about stat weights and itemization. On Friday or Saturday there will be a full article detailing itemization budgets, item level, and how stats are distributed on pieces of gear – but that’s a topic that deserves it own article, for us here and now – were going to discuss how to tell if a piece of gear is actually an upgrade.

What is a stat weight?

Stat weights are the value we assign to a particular stat. We usually use one stat (our best one) as a point to compare other stats to, but for our uses we are going to use how much dps a stat is worth to us.

What I’ve included below is a screencap of my current weights using the web-based spreadsheet. Instructions will follow at the end on how to use this spreadsheet to obtain your own weights.

So what we see here is that each point of agility I get adds roughly 2 dps. The second column there is the “Per Budget” value of each stat, which is based on blizzards itemization budgets – as you can see attack power gets 2 points per budget point – and is actually worth more than haste point for point. So how do we use these numbers to our advantage? Well lets see it in practice.

For the sake of this article, were going to assume you know how to balance your hit cap, and swapping between either of these weapons will not take you below that mark.

So you have got lucky and won the Archon Glaive from ToC 25, great weapon! Let’s see how much dps its actually contributing.

+128 Agility * 1.97 = 252.16 dps
+136 Stamina * 0 (Because I’m marksmen – if you are survival, this will be worth a little bit)
+90 Crit * 1.67 = 150.3
+165 AP  * 0.755 = 124.755
+90 ArP  * 1.788 = 160.92

So before we even look at the socket bonus, we see this weapon will give us +688 dps.
And lets see what we should gem it with, it’s a yellow socket that will give us +8 AP. Sounds nice but lets do the math:

20 Agility Gem = 20 * 1.97 = 39.4 dps / No bonus
10 Agility/10 Crit Gem (activates bonus) = (10 * 1.97) + (10*1.67) + ( 8 * 0.755) = 42.44 dps

So ultimately this weapon is worth 730 dps.

Now lets take a comparable item from the same raid: Lupine Longstaff .

+128 Agility = 252.16
+136 Stamina
+90 Haste * 1.38 = 124.2
+181 AP * 0.755 = 136.65
+82 ArP * 1.788 = 146.6

Overall: 660 dps + gem  = 686.6 dps

Now this item has a blue socket meaning the only thing we can put in there would be a Nightmare tear (+10 all stats) or a Shifting Dreadstone (+10 Agi/+15 stamina) to fulfill the socket bonus of +4 agility. Without doing the math, it should be apparent at this point that the Dreadstone is not worth our time, but it is a good candidate to put the nightmare tear in or just fill with a +20 Agility gem. So switching from either weapon is a difference of about 44 dps.

Comparing two one-handers to a two-hand weapon is exactly the same: multiply each stat by its weight and add them all together. The one that wins out is the better upgrade.

So now that you get it, lets briefly discuss the web-based spreadsheet. Head on over to femaledwarf.com. Click on the “load from armory” button.

Now click buffs, make sure to set the buffs and debuffs that your usual group will bring to the table. (If you pug a lot, just bring the most common class buffs as a testing point). Then click on the “Update DPS” button to get your theoretical dps, and your current stat weights.

Tools:

As a means of quickly comparing Items based on stats alone, I highly suggest the add-on Pawn. You give it your stat weights and it will give you a score in the tooltip for each piece of gear. The higher score is an upgrade (most likely – its important to look at the actual stats and how they affect you, but pawn is a great first look for those quick rolling situations.) You may have noticed that the spreadsheet will even give you a pawn string to use for this, with your custom weights!