Well it happened. It was bound to happen sooner or later, but I was kind of hoping for later considering I just got the sword (see this post). Heroic Cryptmaker finally droped last night and i got it.
Now first off let me say this is awesome. It's a really nice dps upgrade for me, looks sweet (in my opinion, clearly) and is a great fit stat-wise for my gear. That being said, it means Glorenzelg, High-Blade of the Silver Hand will never be used in my ideal dps set (I wont be vendering it, it did come from the Litch King himself after all).
Now I am going to show what happened once I got cryptmaker, to illustrate again how stat balancing and management has gotten a bit out of hand at this point.
As with most warriors, my gear involves a balance of stats, so when I got Cryptmaker some switches had to be made. First off Cryptmaker put me too high on hit, so I swapped out Ahn'kahar Onyx Neckguard (Heroic) with Penumbra Pendant (not heroic). That's swapping a ilvl 277 neck for a 271, but because I am over the hit cap the armor pen on Penumbra just makes it better, since the +hit on Ahn'kahar isn't worth as much as it would be if I were below the cap.
The weapon also makes me a bit low on Expertise (due to not using Orc racial bonus) but still not enough to make Glorenzelg worth it, so I will be swapping Signet of Twilight with Skeleton Lord's Circle (Heroic). This was not a change I thought would be worth it, but spreadsheeting it shows that it clearly is (around 20 dps difference).
The additional Armor Pen from Cryptmaker pushed me over the hill so to speak, where armor pen is now worth significantly more than Str (used to be the other way around at lower gear levels, and until this upgrade they were basically equal) so now I have to regem my 5 or so remaining 20 strength gems to 20 arp. Each gem swap should be around a 4 dps increase fully raid buffed. While not huge this isn't negligable either.
These swapped out pieces won't be vendered. Not because they hold any sentimental value or anything, but because when I replace another piece of gear (come on new bracers) they may be needed again. My bank is full of this stuff.
I suppose I could have gotten away with guessing. I would have been mostly right, though I would be using Cryptmaker and Glorenzelg, which is over 100 dps lower than using Cryptmaker and Shadow's Edge, so not really. My rings wouldn't be ideal, but i would have a lot more gold from not changing around all my gems, chanting all my off gear, and perhaps be a bit more relaxed.
What do you think? Is this the price we pay for doing good damage, a personal choice where I could just care less and not do all this work, or mandatory with the way the game is currently structured and ripe for a change?
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