[Ret-PvE] Losing Crit with Steelbreakers

[Dragonzbane]

I picked up [Steelbreaker's Embrace] last night to replace my [Breastplate of Frozen Pain].
In order to stay above the "Heroic Presence" Hit Cap I had to switch out my [Melancholy Sabatons] for [Iron-Spring Jumpers].
Of course none of these are big problems and I always plan on switching gear around.

Here's my question:
How bad is the DR on Crit Rating?

My Character screen was showing a loss in Crit going from Frozen(64 Rating) to Steelbreakers(82 Rating) while all other gear remained the unchanged.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Khadgar&n=Dragonzbane
^Haven't gemmed yet.

[Dorvan]

There is no DR on crit, and even if there was....you could never see an increase in crit % by decreasing your crit rating. My guess is that you deactivated your meta gem when you switched pieces. If not, maybe you had a buff wear off that you didn't notice.

edit -- yep, just checked your armory and you are no longer meeting the meta requirements. Throw a purple Str/Stam gem in your chest and the problem will be fixed.

[majiben]

You also lost 54 rating from your feet.

[d503]

You're pretty high on Expertise...likely you can fix this when you drop your Jawbone.

If you put your better boots on, you could always make sure they have Icewalker, and eat Hit Food for an extra 52 hit. That'll take you to 226 hit, which is pretty damn close...

[Dragonzbane]

edit -- yep, just checked your armory and you are no longer meeting the meta requirements. Throw a purple Str/Stam gem in your chest and the problem will be fixed.

Yes sir, pretty fail on my part.
With no JCs online after raid and no decent gems on the AH, I focused on messin around with RAWR and never got back around to throwing a gem in there.

Sorry folks.

You also lost 54 rating from your feet.

I took that into account actually.
I switched up everything then compared numbers on the chest switch.

[Dragonzbane]

You're pretty high on Expertise...likely you can fix this when you drop your Jawbone.

If you put your better boots on, you could always make sure they have Icewalker, and eat Hit Food for an extra 52 hit. That'll take you to 226 hit, which is pretty damn close...

Hmm...
So do you think I'd be better off, throwing the Melancolys back on, putting Icewalker on them and then using Hit food over Fish Feast?

Unfortunately, I can't fire up RAWR here at work.


For you guys that use RAWR what settings are you using?
I mainly set it up using what they have on the EJ BiS post minus the raid buffs but using Heroic Pressence.

Do you guys use RAWR with full raid buffs?
If so which buffs? (Yes, this would depend onour usual raid make-up)

[Dorvan]

You should definitely use whatever raid buffs you typically have....generally they significantly increase your AP, which boosts the value of a number of other stats.

I'm at work so I can't look at my settings atm, but I believe I have almost every raid buff enabled, plus a flask, plus food, plus haste pot. Now, that won't always be the case (especially the haste pot), but it will be when I'm in a really progression-pressing run, which is what I want to be optimized for anyway. If something is *slightly* sub-optimal for casual or farming runs, I don't really care.