Item comparison wow
All Sims in this post were done with the same set of gear used by Frosted for an 840 pre raid mage - Thus these rules are really only valid for the 840~ item level range.
Question: Approximately How many item levels is a socket worth on a piece of gear?
Answer: First lets divide gear into Four categories
A) Trinkets
B) Jewelry (Neck, Rings)
C) Main Pieces (Chest, Helm, Legs)
D) Small Pieces (Wrists, shoulders etc)
Of these sub categories, trinkets are to complicated to deal with so "sim yourself". Each trinket scales slightly differently with item level so a rule of thumb is impractical.
Of the remaining categories, of note is jewelry does not have any intellect thus we see that on a Neck, a socket is worth approx 25 Item levels.
Sim done on Sep 9th
For a Chest, a socket is worth approx 10 item levels
Sim done on Sep 9th
For Wrists, a socket is worth approx 15 item levels
Sim done on Sep 9th
Question: So if sockets are good, how good are the jewelcrafting crafted neck and ring?
Answer: good - below is for a Crit/Mastery crafted neck (which is probably not the best possible combo, which would likely be pure crit)
Sim done on Sep 9th
Question: How many item levels higher does a piece with no crit, or crit as the minor stat have to be in order to be worth using?
Answer: This is a very broad question, and likely needs to be simmed individually. To provide a rule of thumb, I again will break this question down into the same categories.
Presented is a comparison of a mastery/crit (minor crit) piece like ... bonus=1727" target="_blank and a mastery/haste piece like ... bonus=1727" target="_blank compared to a "correctly" itemized Crit/Mastery piece like ... bonus=1727" target="_blank
For Necks, a crit-minor piece may replace a crit neck at 30 or more item level increase. A non crit piece should never replace a crit neck (even at ilevel cap, 895).
Sim done on Aug 27th
For Chests, a crit-minor piece may replace a crit chest at 10 or more item level increase. A non crit piece may replace a crit chest at a 20 item level increase.
Sim done on Aug 27th
For Wrists, a crit-minor piece may replace a crit wrist at 10 or more item level increase. A non crit piece may replace a crit wrist at a 20 item level increase.
Sim done on Aug 27th
Question: Changing races is expensive, how do races look at higher item level, so I may make a decision for down the line as well as now?
Answer: The Following is a sim of races for fire, scaled to 875 with out tier bonuses. This is as far as I am okay going, knowing that blizzard changes things.
Off note here is the
A) the separation from the pack of troll and dwarf
Note: Due to the Aug 22 CM Hot Fix, Humans "scaling" looks much worse then before.
Question: Having 3x of the best relic (PB Damage), how much higher itemlevel
does a relic with another node need to be in order to be an upgrade?
Answer: Really you should sim yourself, as this example likely changes as the relative ilevel of each relic changes. However, I will attempt to create a rule of thumb based on the following two sims:
This shows, that for an artifact having 3x of the best relic @ 825 (PB damage) how many item levels each of the traits needs to be better: