Ask Mr. Robot

Because of the recent FL-raid, I looked again at my gear, and where I maybe could improve even more. Now I had been aware of a site for sometimes, but really never used it that much. The site is Mr. Robot.

This site does about the same thing the now abonded be.imba.hu did, except for the whole guild-scan. It shows you where you maybe should use other enchants/gems/reforges. And as extra, also has a nice list of BiS-items. Here's the link my character:

Mr. Robot breaking down Mardah

Now there are some things to remember. Most Importantly: Do Not Leave Your Own Brains At The Door. There are a few problems with Mr. Robot, not that bad though.

If you look at the BiS-slot of some of the tier-slots (head/shoulder/chest/hands/legs), Mr. Robot has the tendency to place the resto-kit higher then balance-kit for Balance-druids. So, it doesn't take into account the set-bonus. Let's look at the legs, according to Mr. Robot, the Resto-legs should give a potential dps-increase over the balance-legs by 90dps. Which I should remember, if I ever get flooded with Valorpoints... then I should probably purchase them.

Through some testing, it also seems Mr. Robot favors gem-bonuses, in my link, you see a red square around the 2 red gems in my chest. If I optimize, Mr. Robot puts two Purified Demonseyes in there, lowering my Intellect with 30, but gaining 40 spirit. I myself don't consider that a good trade-off, so I kept the reds, and didn't reforge my Off Hand away from hit. Which also presents another problem of Mr. Robot.

In some of the set-ups I tried, Mr. Robot lets me reforge/gem towards 1740/1741 hitrating, while I need 1742 to be capped. Now you can speculate a lot about whether a 0.01 or 0.02% chance to miss will actually matter, but I just can't live with that. Murphy's Law clearly states that 'If something can go wrong, it will go wrong', so here my brains took over, and edited the result of Mr. Robot. So I am now at 1750 hitrating, which means I loose 8 stat-points, but at the same time, I know I will not miss for sure.

And last hiccup has to do with mastery. Now mastery works in a strange way. You only get an increase in bonus at every half-point percentage. so 13.51% mastery will give the same bonus as 13.99%. That is something Mr. Robot doesn't see, he thinks mastery is better then crit (which is true), and will want to reforge you to highest percentage mastery as possible. So if you find yourself close to such a breakpoint after reforging, consider to actually lowering your mastery, for some extra crit probably.

Now, I didn't only spot little mistakes my Mr. Robot. I also had some little surprises. First off, according to the BiS-list, the Darkmoon Card: Volcano is listed as the best for even T12. Now I wasn't tempted to buy it pre-patch 4.2. My Dps was high enough, but with the min/maxing state I was in.... and it only costed me 4.5k.

The other strange thing was that Mr. Robot favored the Helm of the Blind Seer over my T11-head (and the resto-head even higher). Now I don't have 4pcT11, and to be honest, the bonus was nerfed that hard, that I actually don't consider taking it even (not that I have the shoulders, but alas). But at first sight, I would say the Seer-helmet is worse then the T11-piece, because the latter has a lot more haste. The problem lies in the fact that it also has no spirit. If I equip the T11-piece, I should reforge my haste away on the DMC:Volcano, and some mastery on other sets, resulting in a 0.24% haste loss, and 1% mastery-loss. So the seer-head is better in my current-gear setup.

I also considered buying the resto-head, but next week I will buy my T12-gloves, and then the T11-head comes back for the bonus. The result of two days min/maxing and theorycrafting, and the fact that I got my T12-chest last night, is an increase of around 60 intellect, 2,4% Haste, 2% Mastery, and a loss 1.75% crit. Now don't think that comes mainly due to the T12-chest. That one is mostly responsible for the int-increase. After replacing the Scorched Wormling Vest with the T12 last night, the net gain was 0.34% Haste and 1% Mastery, so most of the Haste-increase came to smarter reforging.

TL;DR
1. Mr. Robot doesn't see Set-Bonuses
2. Mr. Robot tends to favor gem-bonuses
3. Mr. Robot doesn't always put you over hit-cap
4. Mr. Robot doesn't understand Mastery
but most importantly off course, I tend to get a bit confused after reforging every time, and Mr. Robot will clear that up for you. First time I checked, almost all my reforges where red. This comes mainly due to getting new gear, and not reforging all your gear, but only some to get over the hitcap again. Leaving you with a sub-optimal setup.
5. Mr. Robot will clear up your reforges
6. Don't leave your brains at the door.

[RED: due to the response I had, I re-read my article, and should state that I indeed not counted for the statweight-option although 'use brain' accounts for that a little, read the response :p]