That is in fact 12,586 Attack Power. (And just shy of 74% crit, but let’s chalk that down to master tactician and be on our merry way!)

But still, 12,586 ap. I think I capped at 8kish on Elam. For Darwinism (as survival for Putricide!), though, I had your very generic buffs:

• 5592 Base Attack Power. (Not a buff, but I threw it out there because there’s no where else to put it.)
• 300 from Dhawk
• Gift of the Wild
• Kings
• Imp. Blessing of Might, 655 ap yeeea.
• Arcane Brilliance
• Fish Feast.
• Horn of Winter
• Trueshot Aura. Just because I find SV works better for me on Putricide does not mean our other hunters get similar results.

More important than the buffs though, I managed to stack a significant number of procs into one teeny space of time:

• 320 AP from Furious Howl
• 480 AP from Ashen Verdict ring
• Around 615 AP from Expose Weakness (assuming it was going by the agility on my character sheet at that time)
• 10% AP from Call of the Wild
• 1200 Attack Power from Death Bringer’s Will. Not going to lie, I cannot get over how incredibly cool this trinket is. I’ll rave about it tomorrow when I have more time.

I also prepotted the pull and had Rapid Fire going, which was pretty fun. SV definitely has less burst than MM, but getting Lock and Load procs (that giant red Power Aura is telling me I have one, while the small orange power aura is my ring proc and the timer is my Deathbringer’s Will proc) at 12,586 ap is not something I’m going to sneeze at!

Unfortunately, despite my 5-10 seconds of godly attack power, we were not able to down Putricide tonight. Our closest attempt had him at 25k hit points. 25k. As in, a good kill shot. Next week we’ll one shot, totally! Until then, though, he’s perfected a plague that will destroy all life on Azeroth! Gird your loins.

(Alsoreadmyarppostbecauseitssmarterthanthisonethatwaspostedsimplyforfunandnotforpracticalapplication)

1. How Does Armor Work?
2. Why is understanding Armor Important for DPS?
3. Ghostcrawler quote explaining ArP.
4. Calculating Armor Penetration- How much of an 83 bosses Damage Reduction is removed.
5. Steady Shot, ArP, and you.
6. How to gear with Armor Penetration.

1. How does Armor itself work?

To first understand Armor Penetration, we have to understand the way armor works in World of Warcraft. To assist me with this, I hired the help of a cow named Grazeless, who will demonstrate the way armor scales. (Honestly, I’m just glad to be able to use my least-played character in some useful fashion! )

This is Grazeless dressed for success in her Onyxia 25 helm, which has a total of 2058 armor, factoring in the meta gem that I just remembered I was using. :3 Prior to equipping the helm, Grazeless’ base naked %Damage Reduction from physical damage was 1.40%, meaning that the 2058 armor given by the helm added 12.34% possible reduction. After this screenshot, I then equipped all of Grazeless’ tank gear except the helm, resulting in this screenshot.

I then reequipped the helm, and this is what I found.

As you can see from these screenshots, adding the helm back in after the rest of her armor was on shows a 3.82% increase in %DR, rather than the 12.34% we saw earlier. This is because Armor works on diminishing returns: the more armor you have, the more armor you need to attain the same %DR.

2. Why is this important for DPS?

First, use your brain! If we’re talking about Armor Penetration, it makes sense that you want to understand the stat it interacts with. Understanding Armor is important for ArP because it works in the reverse way as armor, as the more Armor Penetration you have the more %DR you’re removing from your target. To give an example, assume Grazeless again. Grazeless is running around with a 53% DR from armor, not taking into account things such as Blood Presence. If we were to then have an amount of Armor Penetration that would remove as much armor as her helm provides, we would remove 3.82% of her Damage Reduction. If instead we stacked armor penetration that removed armor equivalent to the rest of her gear, and then got an upgrade that gave us enough armor penetration to remove her helmet’s armor, we would see her lose 12.34% Damage Reduction. (I’m going to note here that armor does not go by items or anything of the sort, but that I am just trying to illustrate a picture that helps the stat’s function be illustrated cleanly.)

What I’m getting at here is something that I’m sure most people reading have heard before: Armor Pen scales exponentially. When you have a very small percent of armor penetration the amount of armor you’re removing a very small amount of armor, and as we read earlier the more armor a character/mob has the more armor it needs per %DR.  In laymens terms, and conjuring arbitrary values out of my ass, 0-100 Armor Pen might remove 1% DR from the boss, whereas 800-900 might remove 30%. Again, those are arbitrary number, simply assigned to show how the stat scales exponentially, not linearly.

3) Ghostcrawler and Armor Pen.

In order to vastly confuse all of you, to take this discussion further here is a quote from Ghostcrawler explaining Armor Penetration.

Okay, here is a fairly technical explanation we put together for how armor pen works.

We didn’t want Armor Penetration Rating to be too powerful against low armor targets, like it had been in BC. We also didn’t want Armor Penetration Rating to be too powerful against high armor targets.

So, we decided on a system where there is a cap on how much armor the Armor Penetration Rating can be applied to. So, the first X armor on the target is reduced by the percentage listed in the Armor Penetration Rating tooltip, and all armor past that X is unaffected. Another way of understanding that is we multiply the percentage in the tooltip times the minimum of the two values: the cap, and the amount of armor on the target after all other modifiers.

Computing the cap is a little tricky unless you are already familiar with how World of Warcraft armor works. There is an armor constant we’ll call C. C is derived as follows (in some pseudocode):

If (level<60)
   C=400+85*targetlevel
Else
   C=400+85*targetlevel+4.5*85*(targetlevel-59);

For a level 80 target, C=15232.5. For a level 83, C=16635.

The cap for Armor Penetration then is: (armor + C)/3.

A level 80 warrior creature has 9729 armor. C=15232.5. So, the cap is (9729+15232.5)/3=8320.5. Let’s say a player has 30% armor penetration from armor penetration rating and no other modifiers that complicate the calculation (talents, Battle Stance, Sunder Armor, etc.). The game chooses the minimum of 8320.5 and 9729, so 8320.5. That is multiplied by 30% = 2496.15, and so that much armor is ignored. The effective armor on the target is 7232.85 (9729-2496.15). From a player point of view, the armor penetration rating didn’t ignore the full 30%, but instead ignored 25.66%. (85.5% as effective as expected).

These equations should help you be able to test and verify that Armor Penetration Rating is working correctly and as we designed. The tooltip is not actually inaccurate, as it states: “Enemy armor reduced by up to 30.00%.” That “up to” is key.

4) Calculating maximum Armor Penetration on an 83 boss mob.

In a rare show of formula, something Blizzard tends to let their players figure out for themselves, Ghostcrawler gave us the tools to work on figuring our Armor Penetration for ourselves. As he explains in his post, the armor penetration displayed on a player’s character sheet is not the armor penetration actual amount of Armor Penetration we’ll see in action against a mob.

Now, to see how Armor Penetration helps out, we’re going to get a little mathtastic. Some discussion on Elitist Jerks puts WoTLK boss armor at 10,643. For all intents and purposes, I’m going to use that number. I’ll change my math if someone has found more relevant numbers. First off, I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that boss armor works exactly as player armor does- in the same strain as my last sentence, if anyone has information to the contrary, I’d love to hear it. Using EJ’s 10,643 armor value, we can use Ghostcrawler’s formula. (10,643+16,635)/3, giving us a value of 9,092.6. This means that against an undebuffed boss, even with 100%armor penetration, you will be sitting at 1550.4 armor on the boss. Percent Damage Reduction is calculated using this formula: DR% = Armor / (Armor + (467.5 * AttackerLevel - 22167.5)). Assuming this formula is correct, we can plug in the numbers to come up with(DR%=10,643/[10,643+{467.5X80-22167.5}]), which puts a bosses %DR at 41%, assuming absolutely no Armor Penetration. This means that at 100% armor penetration with no debuffs, the bosses physical DR%=1550.4/(1550.4+{467.5*80-22167.5})=9% damage reduction from physical damage. This means that your 1400 Armor Penetration from gear equates for a 32% physical damage increase. Since Marksmanship damage isn’t entirely physical (Serpent Sting/Chimera Shot’s bloom effect/Arcane Shot while on the run don’t get anything from ArP), this isn’t a 32% damage increase, but it’s substantial.

Now, Sunder Armor/Expose Armor’s 20% Armor Reduction and Faerie Fire’s 5% Armor Reduction are calculated before Ghostcrawler’s formula, according to wowwiki. To clarify, this means that Armor Reducing debuffs stack multiplicativly with Armor Penetration, rather than additively. 75%Armor Penetration+Sunder/Faerie Fire does not equal 100% Armor Penetration. After applying debuffs, you still need 100% armor penetration to reduce the opponent’s armor to 0. Without debuffs, it’s impossible to reduce their armor to 0.

Assuming a properly stacked raid, your boss should have (10,643-(10,643*.25)=about 7982 armor. Using our Armor equation from earlier, our boss now has DR%=7982/(7982+(467.5*80-22167.5)=34% Damage Reduction. Since Marksmanship damage isn’t entirely reliant on physical damage (serpent sting/chimera bloom effect are spell damage), this isn’t quite a 7% damage increase, but it certainly proves how necessary these debuffs are for physical damage classes.

Moving on, we’re now applying the bossses fully debuffed armor to Ghostcrawler’s formula. He told us the constant for an 83 boss is 16635, so our formula will be (7982+16635)/3, equaling 8205.6. As per GC’s instructions, we take the minimum of these two values, so 7,982. This is where I worry about wowwiki’s validity. The way GC explains the formula, the number we should get from dividing armor+constant by three should be less than the bosses current armor, so that 100% armor penetration=/= 100% of the bosses armor being stripped. However, it seems that with a sundered/faerie fired boss, the armor value is lower than the number given through the formula. Since ArP is then applied to the minimum number of the two, we can apply 100% armor penetration to that 7,982 armor, bringing the boss to 0 armor and increasing physical damage done to it by 41%.

In conclusion: assuming Wowwiki is right, it is possible to bring a boss to 0% armor, but only if debuffs (or static ArP buffs, such as a warrior’s battlestance buff), are present. Armor Penetration alone will not bring a boss to 0% Physical Damage Reduction, but it can tear chunks in your opponents armor.

5) Armor Penetration, Steady Shot, and You.

It’s common knowledge now that at a certain amount of Armor Penetration, a Marksman hunter drops Arcane Shot from their rotation in favor of fitting in another steady shot. However, most hunters approaching this cutoff point (generally around 400 ArP, check www.femaledwarf.com’s rotation test to be sure) tend to be confused by this, as their Arcane Shot still does more damage than their Steady Shot. To clear things up, Arcane Shot at those ArP values should still be hitting harder than Steady Shot, but that’s not the point. The point comes in the Marksman talent Piercing Shots, which causes your target of a Chimera, Aimed, or Steady Shot crit to bleed for 30% of the shot’s damage. What this means is that while your arcane shot might be critting for 4500 while your steady crits for 4000, the bleed from steady shot adds another 1,333 damage, making it far outclass Arcane Shot.

6) Gearing for Armor Penetration

Armor Penetration, as demonstrated, is a great stat, and one that you should desire to have on your gear as a hunter. However, the important thing to remember about Armor Penetration is to not be stupid about it, as a lot of people are prone to be. Here are a few guidelines for armor penetration:

A. Don’t pass on an upgrade simply because it doesn’t have Armor Penetration on it. I understand that you really like your Spire of Withering Dreams off 10man Kologarn, but don’t pass on a Distant Land off 10 Kologarn simply because it doesn’t have Armor Penetration on it. Check the spreadsheet to be sure, but it’s most likely an upgrade. More importantly, unless you have 4pct10, DO NOT BREAK YOUR 2PCT9 SIMPLY TO EQUIP A PIECE OF GEAR WITH MORE ARMOR PENETRATION. Or anything for that matter, really. Don’t do it, it’s a trap!

B. As a general rule, only Gem for Armor Penetration if you’re approaching a soft-cap with a trinket. The Armor Penetration cap is 1400, which means that with my Needle Encrusted Scorpion procced I need 722 Armor Penetration to cap. Gemming a single Armor Penetration gem at 700 ArP isn’t a terrible idea, since we saw earlier that the closer you near the cap the more %DR you’re removing per point of Armor Penetration. Once again, check the Spreadsheet, but this is generally a worthwhile time to gem a small amount of ArP.

C. Do not, and this is important, DO NOT gem Armor Penetration unless you know what you’re doing. Do not gem it because it’s in style, or because the hunter in your guild that does more dps told you to. (He could just be better at playing, believe it or not.) If you know what you’re doing, if you’ve checked the relevant sites, and if you’ve done the work to ensure it’s a dps increase, it MIGHT be worth considering, but don’t do it unless you’re absolutely positive.

D) Gearing for Armor Penetration over your soft ArP cap means that you’re wasting a lot of itemization, as any time your trinket procs the Armor Penetration over 1400 gives no benefit, much like hit. This means that if you have 800 passive Armor Penetration and your Needle Encrusted Scorpion procs for 678 ArP, you’ll be sitting at 1478 ArP. 78 of that Armor Penetration has absolutely no effect on increasing your dps. If you’re sitting at this point, you should consider two things:

1. If you reach that point because you gemmed ArP, you’ll want to remove Armor Penetration gems to bring you below the soft cap. Replace them with 20 Agility gems and go on with your life.
2. If you’ve reached that point through passive ArP from gear, and you know more upgrades are coming your way with added Armor Penetration, you might want to consider dropping your trinket for a trinker where the proc isn’t wasted, such as a Whispering Fanged Skull or Death’s Choice. (Assuming you have either. If you’re like <Surreality> and have only seen two Death’s Choice since ToC was released, it sucks to be you! )

As a closing comment, I hope this blog was informative and helpful. I would like to say, though, that the majority of my information comes from my own researching and reading, and if there are arguments or issues with the facts presented within that I would love to hear them, particularly pertaining to the ArP formulas. I’m capable of making mistakes, and I’m not proud enough to pretend there aren’t any within this.

A few days ago, post Professor Putricide attempts, I happened to catch the tail-end of a conversation happening in guild chat. Lungblender, a rogue/officer of ours who seems to have a genetic disease that makes him incapable of speaking on vent, was speaking to xxArthasxx, a Death Knight officer/co-raid leader. (I don’t know the events leading up to this as I had just logged back online. :3) “Xxarthasxx,” Lungblender said, “the day you outdps a spreadsheet is the day I learn to play a priest.” Now, I’m not positive what Lungblender’s problems with priests are, especially since he could than cite a vow of silence as his reason for not talking on vent, but the rest of that sentence filled me with a joy only achieved during sex or a really good piece of chocolate cake. Because it’s true, and I’m glad to see that our melee lead gets it.

As many of us know, there is a veritable wealth of spreadsheets out there. Enhancement Shaman have Enhsim, Hunters have Female Dwarf, Rogues have excel spreadsheets found at Elitist Jerks, and a gigantic number of classes have at least some sort of use for Rawr. What’s surprising to me is that, with all the spreadsheets available, there is still a gigantic part of the World of Warcraft playerbase that refuse to utilize them to their advantage. This is stupid. Don’t do it.

World of Warcraft combat is math. Every Kill Shot you cast requires the game to calculate your attack power and multiply it by Kill Shot’s coefficient, multiply by relevant %Damage multipliers, calculate mob armor, calculate your armor penetration, recalculate mob armor based on your armor penetration, and more. (Not necessarily in that order or anything.) These formulas are known, and they’re set in stone. What this means is that the creator of spreadsheets know the exact formula the game is going to use for each of your abilities, and calculates your dps doing the exact same thing the game will do when you’re in combat.

Math doesn’t lie. If the spreadsheet says that gemming armor penetration is a dps loss, gemming armor penetration is a dps loss. It doesn’t matter that a bunch of hunters who aren’t you are doing it, or that it’s become the vogue stat of Wrath of the Lich King, or that you think by trying rly rly hard it will be a dps upgrade. If the spreadsheet says it’s a dps loss, it’s a dps loss.

So, I’m going to move on to a few frequently used arguments against using the spreadsheet.

A) Gear and proper spec don’t matter, all that matters is how well I play. For lack of a better word, this is the most retarded argument I’ve seen in a while. Here are the facts: If you play well, you will do good dps. If you gear/spec well while playing well, you will do better dps. See how that works? The fact that you’re trying to bring back Beast Master DPS because all it takes is playing well is a fun concept, but  if you were playing that well as Marksmanship you’d be better. All offense.

B) I tried out X spec on a dummy and it did less damage than Y spec, even though X spec is supposedly better. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Not all specs are created equal, and dummies are missing relevant raid debuffs that can make or break a spec. (For example, Enhancement Shaman scale with nearly every buff/debuff in the game, while Elemental scales with only the caster debuffs. This means that on a dummy with no debuffs, Elemental will likely pull ahead…if it wasn’t in a crappy state right now.) More important than debuffs, 5 minute dummy tests are not statistically accurate. Just because you have a 50% crit rate does not mean that in a 5minute test you’ll crit 50% of the time, and the fact that you got really lucky RNG when testing your Frostfire Bolt spec does not mean that it’s better for you than Arcane. Enhsim, for example, simulates dps over multiple hours of gameplay, meaning that nearly all RNG is hammered out of the equation, resulting in a more accurate simulated dps.

C) I tried X spec that the spreadsheet said was better, but I’m more comfortable in Y spec. This is actually a fine argument, but one you need to get over. Change is hard, and we’re resistant to it, but in the end that change will end up being better for you. If you’re worried about underperforming on Putricide attempts as Marksmanship because you’ve been Survival since you hit 80, that’s fine. Don’t spec MM for Putricide yet. Instead, run VoA10s/25s, pug ToCs, raid the test dummy, and practice on unconsequential first bosses of ICC as Marksmanship to familiarize yourself with playing the spec in raids that don’t matter. And, in a week or two when you’re feeling confident in your ability, then make the change.

There are more arguments, and I’m sure I’ll see a few in comments if people read this. However, I have to leave for work now, so I’ll save those for later and add them in.

I like this UI, mainly because I designed it all myself. There are a number of UIs I like more, but I play on a rather shitty computer with a not-huge monitor, so a lot of the more complex addon packages that people put up tend to be rather alien to me. Criticism is always welcome (and needed!) provided it’s respectful. I’m also quite aware that my keybinds are not as optimal as they possibly could be, but I’ve been hesitant to change them A)Because when I was playing Darwinism as an alt, it wasn’t necessary, and B) I have a Logitech G15 coming in the mail as a late Christmas present soon, and when that arrives I’ll be totally retooling my keybinds to make liberal use of the macro buttons.

Without further blathering, here’s the UI:

Click the picture to make it not tiny.

I approached my ui with two big concepts in mind. A) I like symmetry. While specific things are not mirrored on both sides of the screen, both sides have a similar amount of information on them- one side isn’t bogged down while the other is free of stuff. B) Relevant information needs to be in the center. Cooldowns, Procs, Health, Who I’m targeting, Cast Bar, and (not pictured) Deadly Boss Mods bars are centered in the middle and bottom/middle of my screen. Why? Because that’s where my character is standing, allowing me to watch what I’m standing in while paying attention to the most vital information I need to continue DPSing. Going out from there is omen, which is just a short glance to the side. On the left side is TipTac, which is a detailed ToolTip addon which allows me to see a variety of information on mouseover- my favorite functionality of it is that it shows me who in the raid is targeting the same mob I’m moused over. Great for watching out for dastardly tunnel-visioning hunters and other unsavory sports. The farthest corners of my screen are: Bottom left is my chat, as it’s rarely needed while in combat. Bottom right is recount, which is useful for evaluating personal performance but not needed to be focused on in fight. Top left has Grid and (not pictured) my /range10 box, as Grid is mainly used for me to see who is dead and who isn’t, and my range finder is only needed in specific fights where I know to check it often. Top right is buffs, because I’m generally not staring to make sure I have blessing of might midfight, and I have powerauras set up for needed procs.

List of Addons pictured:

1. Dominos for bars
2. Prat is my chat addon.
3. Omen
4. Recount (Btw, don’t think the dps shown their is normal. I was hitting buttons trying to get procs and etc. to show off my power auras, not concentrating on priority and such. )
5. TipTac for Tooltips
6. Coolline and OmniCC. OmniCC provides large numbers down to the tenths of seconds for cooldowns, while CoolLine provides a visual reminder that the ability is coming off CD. I love them both.
7. Grid, and GridStatusRaidDebuff
8. Mik’s Scrolling Battle Text
9. Deadly Boss Mods
10. Pitbull. I had been using xperl until yesterday, but since 3.3 I’ve been plagued by critical errors while using it and gave up. Pitbull has me impressed so far.
11. Quartz for cast bars. Provides me with a small GCD spark, an autoshot timer, and a Steady Shot cast bar that shows me when I can start casting my next ability due to latency. Excellent addon.
12. PowerAuras. I can’t stress this addon enough. The auras I have set up are green semicircles that tell me the mob doesn’t have serpent sting on it, while the yellow one on the bottom tells me my ArP trinket has procced. Learn to love this addon.

That’s pretty much it. Hope you all enjoyed! I know my guild leader hates my ui, but hopefully she’ll see the rationale now.

My name is Darwinism, and I’m a female orc hunter from Durotar.

Actually, that’s a total lie. My name is Josh, and I’m a male human video game addict-turned college graduate-turned non-profit Teen Coordinator-turned-Creative Writing Instructor from the most wretched hive of scum and villianry the United States of America has to offer: Northern New Jersey, where we hold the records for air-pollution related cancer cases and the worst show on television. Ever.

More relevant to this blog than my state is my interest in a little video game known as “World of Warcraft,” where I play the orc Marksmanship-specced hunter Darwinism, whose name made infinitely more sense when she was Survival. Before Darwinism, I played Elam, the female orc (I know, it’s a trend. >.< Fuck good racials) Enhancement Shaman. As Elam, I was known for a number of things, such as writing the 3.1/3.2/(soon 3.3) Enhancement Raiding DPS Sticky, A Totem Eclipse of the Heart. Beyond that, I blogged regularly on my self-hosted website, Shaman On Ramen, as well as contributing to Big Hit Box, “The Definitive Melee Blog.”

However, as might be indicated from my use of the past tense, that’s all behind me (except for edits to the 3.3 sticky, which I do need to do!) You see, unfortunately, I’ve always been a hunter at heart. Be it 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons Scout and Rangers, Dragon Age: Origins Archery-specced rogues, and Elder Scroll’s: Oblivion’s Assassin, I’ve had an affinity for agile archers who prefer hit-and-run tactics to standing still and hurting things. World of Warcraft proved no different, with my first three attempts at characters all being hunters who eventually fell prey to my delete character button. For some reason (I’ll attribute it to ghost wolf at level 20, to be quite honest), my boyfriend’s suggestion of playing a shaman managed to stick, and the peculiar mix of spell damage and melee damage was enough to keep me interested.

Unfortunately for Elam’s case, the advent of faction transfers allowed me to make my forgotten 80 Draenei shaman a (I swear it’s for the racials!) female orc, and since then I’ve not really looked back. Elam was a fun character, and I really enjoyed my time spent on her struggling through low fps, unfortunately moving bosses, and being lost amid a torrent of other brawl fighters, but over the past few months I’ve become quite apathetic to even logging on her, whereas I looked forward to time spent on Darwin, even if it was just spent afk in cities. It’s very much a feeling of returning to my roots, and coming back to something I know.

With all of this terrible expositionary text out of the way, there is one thing I really want to make clear about this blog.

This is not a hunter blog. At least, not by itself.

To be quite honest, while the past 5 months were awesome, Shaman on Ramen was a bit of a failed experiment. While I failed at it, my intent for SoR was to try to keep almost every post Shaman related. For the most part, I was blogging simply to be a source of information and not to be a person, and that takes away from the fun of blogging. Darwinism is my main now, and will most likely be the focus of a large number of posts. However, I don’t want to restrict myself to posting about Darwinism. For that matter, I don’t want to restrict myself to posting about World of Warcraft- in fact, expect a few Dragon Age: Origins posts!) And, beyond both of those, I have a life. I have a boyfriend, a job, an adorable dog, and interests in Creative Writing and gender studies. (I throw these together because they have to do with what I studied in college: English major, gender studies/sociology minors.)

This lengthy about me/intro post done, I hope you enjoy the read. I’ll enjoy the writing!