Ask Mr. Robot - What are you doing?

I love Ask Mr. Robot.  I really do.  It doesn’t matter that I’ve spent thousands in reforgeing my gear, or that I’ve swapped out gems/chants just to please that little optimize button.  No, where I scratch my head is how the stat weights actually are computed.  Now normally I have one simple rule for doing my reforge.  Hit to 17% > Haste > Mastery > Crit.  That’s it.  It’s really similar to my standard Paladin reforging.  Haste > Mastery > Crit.  Sure, I’ve played with heavy Mastery builds, or looked at high crit builds, but once I find something that works, I usually stick with it.

Mr. Robot throws that right into the frigging blender.

Now I will admit that it’s a bit more of a challenge with a DPS than the Pally.  Keeping that 17% hit mark is a fine dancing game, and I’ve probably reforged my Darkmoon card two dozen times since starting in Firelands.  It’s just so much mastery that can be swapped out, it’s a big bump.  With the Pally it’s generally look at a piece of gear.  If Haste = 0, reforge something to haste, otherwise, leave it alone. 

Here’s where I run into the /headbang moments with my lock. 

See, I regularly raid with two specs, Demo and Affliction.  Personally I like the feel of Affliction better, but some fights (H-Rhy and Rag right now) require that I be Demo for one reason or another.  For Rhy it’s the awesome AoE, and for Rag it’s the fact that without being Demo, I have exactly zero stuns for the sons.  OK, so that’s fine, but where Mr. Robot throws me a wrench is that even though both builds value Haste > Mastery > Crit (according to Mr. Robot), they value them at different rates.  So in one build I might be told to reforge 3 pieces, then I’ll log out as Demo and be told that 9 pieces need to be swapped.  I “KNOW” that the plus/minus is minimal at best between the two, but I often forget that I’m logged out as Demo instead of Aff.  It’s just mind boggling that there is such a difference, when ranking wise the stats are the same – they just have different values.

After more than one trip to the loan sharks to pay for my reforge, I pay a bit closer attention to how I’m logged out before getting the Robot’s opinion.  Personally I find the tool to be invaluable for getting me as close to the hit cap without going over – and completely irritating when I’m not paying 100% attention.