Simulating future gear choices using Rawr and EnhSim

Having scored a Blackhorn Bludgeon and Bracers of the Northern Stalker, and gotten enough Triumph for Thrall's Grips of Conquest, Kam's upgrade list is looking somewhat sparse. There are various contenders for raid drops, which I can nothing about except attend raids, then there are items available from Emblems of Triumph, which I can save up and spend.

The choices
So which of these items to grab first? They are as follows:

Thrall's Chestguard of Conquest - 50 Triumph
This scores merely 9.6 points more than my current chest, I think that's down to the lack of hit rating and it carries haste instead - even though Kam is over the soft hit cap, hit is still more valuable than haste. If I had 3 piece Tier 9 it may be worth getting to get the 4 piece bonus, although I suspect I'll be in Icecrown Citadel by the time I get near 3pcT9.

Thrall's War-Kilt of Conquest - 50 Triumph
This sits at 75 points higher than my current Emblems of Conquest legs and is actually a straight upgrade with all the same sort of stats.

Dexterous Brightstone Ring - 35 Triumph
95 points more than my weakest ring and again a straight upgrade with the same stats in greater quantities.

Mark of Supremacy - 50 Triumph
This trinket is 72 points more than my Mirror of Truth, but the scores lootrank assigns to trinkets have approximate values for the on proc component. It also scores 28 more than the Pyrite Infuser which is a better comparison, both have hit rating, PI has an internal cooldown of approx 50 seconds (according to wowhead) so thats about 10 seconds of +1234 AP every 50 seconds, whereas MoS is +1024 AP every 120 seconds (but you can control it for maximum fun in bonus DPS phases like the XT heart).

How to choose
So I could go for the ring first as it costs the least and seems to give the biggest upgrade. Unfortunately the "score" given to the trinket is approximate, and the scores given to various items are totally no guarantee that the item will increase your DPS by some given amount, relative to other scores. No, the best way I've found to tell is to go simulate what happens when each item is equipped in turn.

Using Rawr and Enhsim to simulate gear choices
The procedure is fairly similar to what is described in various posts except I turn to Rawr to get the stat values when Kam would be wearing a particular item.

From the menu I select File->Load from Armory... then enter toon details, click OK and wait.


Then I click onto the Buffs tab and select the ones I'd typically have - Rawr seems to default to most of them, so if you are 25 man raiding then you are probably set. Kam isn't so lucky and the raid makeup in 10 mans is somewhat random, so I end up turning most of the buffs off (sob).


Then I click onto the Options tab and a set of sub tabs will appear. I click on the Enhsim tab and the "Export Stats to EnhSim config file" and a load of stat values and buffs are copied into the clipboard, ready for importing into EnhSim.


I bring up the EnhSim GUI then hit the "Copy from Clipboard" button and those stats are imported into EnhSim, straight from Rawr. I then bump the "simulation time" up to something big like 20000 hours. I then save the EnhSim config, ideally to a new file, using File->Save As. Once saved, I hit the "Simulate" button and wait for the results. These are my baseline DPS results.


Now I can go into Rawr and start swapping gear in and out, export to EnhSim, run the simulation and note the DPS figures for each different piece of gear. Note when doing this I discovered an apparent bug in the EnhSim export - if you save the Rawr profile then reload it, after loading it the exported EnhSim config will have an invalid rotation which blows enhsim.exe up. For now the tip is not to Open a Rawr profile, but always start by Loading from Armory. This is fixed in Rawr 2.2.25 apparently.

The results

Scenario	DPS	DPS difference
Baseline	4374
Mark of Supremacy replacing Mirror of Truth	4399	+25
MoS replacing Pyrite Infuser	4382	+8
Dexterous Brightstone Ring replacing Band of Draconic Guile	4420	+46
Thrall's War-Kilt of Conquest (same gemming)	4403	+29
Thrall's Chestguard of Conquest* (same gems)	4524	+121

*once I have the War-Kilt, the DPS figures are the difference between the figure for the War-Kilt and the figure for the Chest and Kilt.

But what about the cost?
So the above seems to indicate the ring is best, then the Kilt then the Chest, then finally the trinket. But given these items cost different amounts, I then work out the overall DPS increase per Emblem.

Scenario	DPS	DPS difference	DPS per Emblem
Baseline	4374
Mark of Supremacy replacing Mirror of Truth	4399	+25	0.5
MoS replacing Pyrite Infuser	4382	+8	0.16
Dexterous Brightstone Ring replacing Band of Draconic Guile	4420	+46	1.3
Thrall's War-Kilt of Conquest (same gemming)	4403	+29	0.58
Thrall's Chestguard of Conquest* (same gems)	4524	+121	2.4
Thrall's Chestguard & War-Kilt of Conquest (same gems)	4524	150	1.5

So this also shows the ring is the best DPS per emblem available to me at the moment, it is also the cheapest so really a no-brainer. Then the War-Kilt appears to be slightly better than the trinket in terms of DPS gain, although this does not take into account the fact that the trinket can be popped at certain times to increase overall DPS, such as the Heart phase of XT, or when I know I won't be running around a lot. Still I think if Triumph will drop from heroics, I can wait until 3.3 to grab the trinket.

The Chest is good but only to activate the 4pcT9 bonus - however the last line shows that to upgrade both chest and kilt at the same time nets 1.5 DPS per emblem, so that is a better DPS upgrade for the cost than buying the trinket anyway. Just that it will take far longer, at 100 emblems, to afford.

So why did I bother working out DPS per emblem, when the gear order came out the same? Who can explain the workings of the obsessive mind - in the past certain "obvious" choices are actually worse than a cheaper item which yields less DPS, this time that wasn't the case. Ho hum.

So for me the upgrade path is likely to be Dexterous Brightstone Ring, Thrall's War-Kilt of Conquest, Thrall's Chestguard of Conquest then finally Mark of Supremacy. Some of which will happen in a rush if Triumph starts dropping in Heroics come patch 3.3!