Thursday, February 28, 2008

Calculator, Round 2

Time to put a little more work into that Excel calculator of mine! Today, I've whipped up two new, interconnected toys. First, I've condensed all of the stat conversions a feral druid would ever want into one table, giving both base conversion values, and overal values based on talents and buffs. In addition to this, I've taken those values and used them to build a Gear Comparison calculator. Simply plug in how your stats (Base stats, combat ratings) will change with a particular change of gear/enchants/gems, and out pops how the values you really care about (Health pool, chance to dodge, Attack Power) will be affected!




To play around with my new toys, simply click on the Threat Calculator link on the sidebar. Eventually, I'll be renaming the calculator itself, as I plan to continue to expand it. I also plan to make it more intuitive to use, probably by creating pages for full talent specs and buff selection, but that will be for another day.

"Screenshots:"

Here we have the stat conversions table. Simply multiply a stat by the conversion value for the effect you're looking at to see how much that stat is really helping you. The overall multiplier column currently takes into consideration Survival of the Fittest, Heart of the Wild, Thick Hide, and if applicable Tauren health bonus and Blessing of Kings. The base multiplier, in turn, only considers what form you're in, and assumes you're unbuffed.



And here we have the gear comparison tool. Simply plug in the differences between the base stats of any two pieces, and see how changing between those two items will change your overall stats in the appropriate form. The comparison used for the example here is going from the Heavy Clefthoof Chest (Socketed with 12 stam and 6 stam, 4 defense gems) to T4 (Socketed with a 12 stam, a 6 stam/4 agi, and a 4 defense/6 stam). It tells me that I lose about 153 health and .47% crit reduction, but get over 1.75% additional avoidance, nearly 1,000 more armor, and a bunch of threat stats (including over 1/4% hit, which I forgot to factor in in this shot).

So, like before, I plan to make use of this new toy. Tomorrow, I'm going to look more closely at this particular chest upgrade, and then switch over to something you may or may not have heard about: upgraded Alchemist's Stones!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Statistically speaking...you're a beast!

Anonymous said...

This is an extremely useful tool! The threat simulator alone was nice, but the new features really take it to the next level. There is one suggestion I would offer to make the "Gear Comparison" portion a little more user friendly, though. You might consider adding a couple of columns that would allow users to input the item stats and let the spreadsheet calculate the changes. Again, this calculator is great-- I plan to use it often! :)

Anonymous said...

Hey Sura, I have a question for you. It is off-topic, but I need to ask.

Do you have different feral specs for DPS and Tanking?

I keep getting asked if I am Tank or Cat specced. I'm like... Uh, both? I use the same spec for both.

SuraBear said...

Hehe, funny thing, I was actually pondering doing a post about that. Despite my diehard tanking focus, I have a fairly standard hybrid cat-bear spec. Fairly standard, because really there aren't many separate talents that one would take over the other.

Tell you what, I'll postpone playing with the calculator over the weekend (Possibly to make a few improvements, though since I only have access to excel at work, probably not), and do a close look at feral talents :-)

 
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