Two Plus Two Equals Potato

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s patch day! 5.2 is loading. Check out MMO Champ for a tidy list of changes.

OK, I admit it, the title is a little misleading.

(Because we all know 2+2=pistachio, derrrr.)

The title implies that I may have had a problem with math.

But I really didn’t.

The math was just fine – great, even! I conclusively proved that a weapon drop was not, in fact, an upgrade for me.

No, the problem wasn’t with the math at all.

My blunder fell squarely in the realm of “garbage in, garbage out.”

You see, I’ve been using the adorable inscription staff, the one with the cute little paint brush tip. I even went as far as to force two alts to grind for valor so that I could have it upgraded without Arioch having to pay for it.

Then one day, just the other week, the sha-touched caster sword, Loshan, Terror Incarnate, dropped.

Of course, using the sword would necessitate finding an offhand, but with max inscription, that was easy.

I didn’t have access to the gem yet, but I knew I was close.

But before I went making fans and swapping weapons about all willy nilly, I wanted to do the math and see just what sort of an upgrade I was looking at.

Pull out the scratch paper and jot down:

Staff:

• 1904 Int
• 729 Hit
• 6265 Spellpower
• 729 Mastery

Then I grabbed the stats for Loshan and the Inscribed Jade Fan.

Math happened.

Results:

• Enchant of Jade Spirit on both will be a wash.
• Lose 352 Hit. I’m a tad over hit anyway, I can make it up.
• Lose 352 Mastery, but gain 302 Haste. I know, I know, I’m supposed to favor mastery, but I loves me some haste.
• Loss of 59 Spellpower, I can make that up when I upgrade the weapon, after all, the staff has been upgraded twice.
• And finally, I lose 874 Int.

Hold the phone.

Even with the gem boosting me by +500, that would still be a 374 deficit of Intellect.

I get that it’s just the raid finder sword, but still. Not acceptable.

(Yes, at the time I totally forgot about the offhand enchant, but that’s still only an additional 165 Int.)

So with a heavy heart (but secretly a little happy because this staff is just so damned cute), I tucked the sword away in my bag and forgot about it.

I completed the gem quest and had a happy little +500 Int gem sitting in my bag.

Sudden thought, maybe I could try for the sha-touched staff and that would be an upgrade!

Ran ToES again and was disappointed.

Slowly dawning thought… what if I upgraded Loshan and/or the offhand? Would that ever make up the Int loss?

Off to WoWhead to get upgrade values for those items. Since I wasn’t in game, I pulled myself up on the armory to get my weapon stats.

And since I’m lazy, I decided to enter all the values in Excel so I could just move columns of numbers around for instant addition.

Huh.

Now I’m coming up with the Loshan/Gem/Fan combination as a POSITIVE increase in Int, by over 400.

WTH?

Dig around to find the original scratch paper. (The kitties help me file everything in scattered drifts of paper.)

I wrote down 1904 Intellect.

The staff only has 1094 Intellect.

I transposed digits and gave myself 900 Intellect that I (obviously) don’t have.

Oops!

So yes, I had to part with my adorable staff and equip the sha-touched sword.

I ran over and upgraded the sword twice but passed on the offhand. I’m not sure if there is another in my grasp outside of 5.1 LFR, but I did want to save some valor for today.

Why today?

Because valor gear goes on sale!

I’ll run LFR one more time this week and burn my remaining coins in an attempt to get my tier helm and shoulders. (My shoulders aren’t too bad, but I’m still rocking a blue 442 helm.) If that fails, I’ll give in and buy the valor pieces.

Anyways, thankfully it only took me a couple days after getting my gem to figure out my blunder in gear selection. Anyone else have a “durrr” gear moment?