Secondary Stat consideration

[deien]

I have read this post and still have a question. idk what this means

• Link to my character on AskMrRobot: Deienjane
• Link to my log (if relevant):

My question is:
All the sites to go to regarding how to increase your healing in-game tell you which secondary skills you want to focus on but it seems like Mr Robot is not aware of that information. This time I am hesitant to make any of the changes suggested simply because I am supposed to me working my way to 30% haste and then focusing on Mastery and, while so far I have only reached 26% haste, my BIB suggestions want me to cut almost 3% from my haste. It seems now, as in the past, you do tend to favor Crit but that has never been listed as one of my best stats for Restro Druid. Does the Mr Robot site take into consideration the weight of the secondary stats before making final suggestions on BIB changes? If so, which site/source do you use to calculate which secondary stats are best for any given character?

[Swol]

We do our own theorycraft, so the source is… Ask Mr. Robot!

Our brand of theorycraft is what we are calling “data-driven” theorycraft. We calculate the best gear to use by generating millions of data points using our simulator, and then applying various mathematical and statistical models to those results.

The Ask Mr. Robot simulator is the first (and only) simulation tool that actually has full support for useful healing simulations. The reason that you will see our suggestions for healers in particular differ from what you see “out there” is because we are the only people using this method. Other sources of information are basing their ideas off of (relatively)simplistic calculations and the feelings of skilled players. At AMR we don’t like feelings - we like cold, hard data.

For healers, an “optimal” set of gear can mean different things to different people as well. Our definition of optimal is a set of gear that can be used to keep as many allies as possible alive in a given encounter, and then maximizes potential healing output for that encounter. There is a lot of ambiguity in gearing for healers. You can keep all your friends alive with a very large range of gear. You could have 8% haste and keep everyone alive. Telling every single druid that they have to get 30% haste is pretty ridiculous

Our suggested gear for healers WILL work well in-game. It’s not the ONLY set of gear that will work well, but I can tell you with 99% certainty that the suggestions are good and viable if you are making reasonable decisions while playing (generally prioritizing lowest health raid members and not wasting cooldowns). We are the only source that can really make that claim because we have by far the most complete model of the game with which we are doing our theorycraft.

[ddcorkum]

Suppose that in the next expansion, Blizzard removes secondary stats from all gear. Instead, the bonuses traditionally associated with secondary stats are now found on rings. You can equip the same ring twice, or wear two different rings.

You can choose between rings with the following text:

• Add 10% to your haste
• Add 9.5% to your critical strike chance

Lets assume critical heals are double normal ones – so 9.5% critical strike chance results in 9.5% more healing.

Question: Which rings should you equip?

At first glance, haste is the better of the two rings! If you can cast spells 10% faster, then you are doing 10% more healing! So a website might say your “ring priorities” are like this:

HASTE > CRIT

Well lets do the math for all three combinations:

Two haste rings: 1000 base * (1 + 20% casting speed) = 1200 hps

Two crit rings: 1000 base * (1 + 19% critical chance) = 1190 hps

One of each ring: 1000 base * (1 + 10% casting speed) * (1 + 9.5% critical chance) = 1204 hps

What happened? Wasn’t haste the top priority? Why isn’t it best to go all haste?

Individually the haste ring was better than the critical strike ring. However, multiplying the different effects together is more powerful than simply adding either type alone.

Now lets return to the current expansion. We don’t wear fancy rings, we use secondary stats. But the same principle applies! Sometimes its a combination of secondary stats that is the best, which you cannot portray by a single priority.

Now lets add in tier set bonuses, legendary bonuses, trinket bonuses, and fancy necklace enchant bonuses. All of these might behave totally different than secondary stats – so how do you account for them too?

Also, different boss fights are, well, different! Sometimes you need to move around a lot and must use instant-casts to keep people alive. Sometimes you get the luxury of stacking on the boss and using powerful AoE heals during the worst moments of the fight. Should you have the same gear for every scenario?

Now read Swol’s post above, and it will come much more clear. Ask Mr Robot doesn’t even try to make a universal “priority” list. Instead, they simulate lots of different combinations for players using different types of gear, different talent choices, and, indeed, different boss fight scripts. The result is a far more tailored approach to gear suggestions.