AeroWow

Since 3.1’s buffing of the ArP rating conversion, a trend has been pushed on pretty much every physical DPS that values ArP highly – the “Armor Penetration soft-cap”. The only problem with this? It’s not the ultimate in gearing philosophy.

There are currently two trinkets that proc ArP:

Grim Toll
Mjolnir Runestone

And, with the introduction of patch 3.3:

Needle-Encrusted Scorpion

The concept of an “ArP soft-cap” is to build enough ArP from gear to create a situation where, when your Armor Pen trinket procs, you are just at the 100% Armor Pen effectiveness cap.

Before we go any further: An ArP trinket is absolutely NOT required to do competitive damage, by ANY class or spec.

The problem with the so-called “ArP soft-cap” is that the entire concept isn’t based around maximizing your DPS as a whole, but rather, about maximizing the benefit of your ArP-proccing trinket.

Now, as I make that bold statement, I’ll temper it with another: at a low-to-moderate level of gearing, using an ArP-proccing trinket can often be the optimal solution, due to the raw power of temporarily boosting you up to the ArP effectiveness cap. The determining factor is how much passive ArP you can obtain through gear and gemming. The breakpoint to look for is where gearing/gemming for a high level of passive ArP beats out the Str that would otherwise take the place of those red component sockets (a net loss when comparing to ArP), and the benefit of the ArP-proccing trinket (a net gain when comparing to other trinkets around the same item level). If that red component loss is more than made up for by the trinket-proccing gain, then the trinket is the way to go. However, as your gear level (and, accordingly, your total passive ArP from gear) increases, the potential value you lose by going ArP-trinket + Str grows and grows, eventually to the point of making it worthwhile to drop the trinket setup in favor of maximizing your passive ArP.

It might just be easier to demonstrate what I mean visually. I present you with my very own, Super-Magnificent Stupendous ArP Setup Comparison Diagram.

Now, inevitably, this declaration of a breakpoint in the gearing will lead to the inevitable question: At what point does maximizing your passive ArP beat out using an ArP trinket? The answer is dependent on your gear availability and your spec. The better the gear you have available that can contribute passive Armor Pen (between passive stat allocation, and sockets that can be filled with yummy red gems), the more attractive the high passive ArP option becomes. Also, the breakpoint is different between Arms and Fury, due to Fury garnering more from Str (and therefore, giving ArP slightly closer competition).

My response to “Which setup should I use”? Use Rawr or Landsoul’s spreadsheet. These tools take your passive ArP and the procs of the trinkets into account. In the spreadsheet, make liberal use of the “Manual Modification” section when comparing total gemming changes, or consider copying the entire sheet for side-to-side comparison. For Rawr, just mark everything relevant as available, and Optimize away!

If you’re absolutely dying for quick-and-dirty numbers, I’d say roughly 60-70% for Arms, and roughly 75-85% for Fury.

Kalroth’s Simple Armor Pen Calculator

Protip! It is possible to use two ArP trinkets. If the two trinkets proc at the same time, you’re obviously SoL, as you’re essentially wasting an entire trinket proc for the duration of the overlap. However, if you offset the trinkets by power-switching in one trinket shortly before entering combat, you will activate its internal cooldown, and effectively stagger the two procs. It can be a lot of maintenance, and I highly recommend against such a setup during any fight with long waiting phases (Mimiron) or movement phases (Yogg-Saron), as the downtime may push the two procs closer together, to the point of overlap.

Tags: 3.2.2, 3.3, Armor Pen, armor penetration, ArP, cap, gear, optimize, stat, Strength, theorycrafting

Dullahan Says:
January 9th, 2010 at 3:58 am

Question, I’m doing a lot of tinkering around with my warrior and his gemming. I just went from having all +20 strength gems, to mostly ArP, excluding my +10 Str and Crit Strike and my Nightmare Tear for my Meta, in order to hit the ArP soft cap with a grim toll. My dps has its ups and downs, depending on the fight, and I would like to find some solid groun, if not improve it. However, I digress. Is it wise to gem for ArP even though I’m 189 points under the soft cap? Or should I wait until my gear allows me to hit it?

Here is my armory:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Elune&n=Dullahan

If you have any other tips on play styles, or just how I should optimize my gear for better dps, I would greatly appreciate them.

Protip: I am Sariana’s brother, from Elune, and friends with Ragonbadger, if you remember them.

Thanks!