Noxxic and dps stats

After being busy with other stuff for a while, I thought it is time to come back and make some new posts here.
The next few texts are going to focus Noxxic's guides on some dps specs and point out some of the more obvious stupid errors in those.

Before we start going into actual class guides in this post I will look into what Noxxic says about secondary stats for dps.

First of all a typical stat priority list Noxxic has:

I took this one from their guide for the Madness Assassin, which is one I will go to look into next, but Noxxic has exactly the same stat priority for every dps spec of every class (with the only difference being replace Willpower with whatever is the primary stat of any given class) and that is pretty bad, especially when it comes to the part that says 25% crit for every spec of every class.

Also their explanations on how each of these stats work, are pretty bad and in many cases just plain wrong
Here we go:

Let's look into each of these stats.

Willpower: This explanation with the statement "increases the damage and healing done by your abilities" would be generally correct for a Sorcerer but as I mentioned above, I took this from the guide for the Madness Assassin, and for them Willpower only increases damage done, not healing.

Well you could say that Assassins don't really have proper healing abilities, but I could also say that especially in Madness spec Assassins actually do have several abilities that do cause self-healing, but those generally heal based on percentage of your maximum health. So they do have abilities that do healing, but Willpower does not increase the amount of healing done.
Unlike the other errors here, this is a point of minor importance, but can still be misleading to some people.

Accuracy Rating: This is actually isn't as bad as it has been in the past. Some of the past versions of Noxxic have had the explanation on how accuracy works much more horribly wrong but now they have removed some of the false claims there.

You do indeed want 100% M/R accuracy and 110% F/T accuracy for every dps spec now. However their claim that the optimal accuracy is gained at 395 accuracy rating is just plain wrong.

With few exceptions most specs of any class to go from the baseline 90%/100% to the 100%/110% will need to get 3% from their skill trees + 1% from the companion legacy buff + remaining 6% from accuracy rating on gear (and would need more from gear if you don't have all these)

To get that 6% from gear, you will need 435 accuracy rating. 395 is not enough, but will give you only about 5.52% or something like that.
(One exception worth mentioning is the Carnage Marauder who gets another 3% accuracy from Ataru Form and therefore needs only 3% accuracy from gear, only half as much as most other specs, but in their inability to recognize the differences between specs Noxxic has the same 395 even on the Carnage Marauder guide even though it is way too much for them.)

So where does that 395 come from? There are other websites with good (at least at the time when they were written) guides that tell you to have 395 accuracy rating. The catch is that those guides were written back when the Underworld (72) gear was the best you could have. Even then 435 would have been the actual optimal amount, but you can't get that exact amount so they had to settle for getting as close as they can. With 7 items with enhancement slot + implants and earpiece you have 10 items in total that can have accuracy or surge. With 79 of these stats per item if you went with 5 pieces of gear with accuracy and 5 with surge, you would get 395 each, putting your accuracy slightly below the optimal 435. With 6 items with accuracy and 4 with surge, you would get 474 accuracy, giving you slightly too much accuracy. At that stat budget getting that last half a percent was not considered worth loosing 79 surge for.

So 395 accuracy would be your goal if and only if you had only underworld 72 gear and nothing at all from any other gear tier. If you have higher tier (75 or 78) or lower tier (66 or 69) items at all, then 395 is definitely not your goal. And Noxxic says (at this moment in time) that their guides are for someone with Dread Forged (78) gear.

Of course if whoever made the Noxxic guide would have actually bothered to read whatever guide they copied the number 395 from, instead of just taking that number and skipping the rest of the text, they would know all this already.

Critical Rating: As I mentioned earlier, Noxxic telling every spec of every class to get 25% is what is most wrong in their guides when it comes to stat priority.

For several reasons:

1. Different specs of different classes will benefit from crit in different ways. 

Some specs get some additional benefits from crit (such as Lethality Sniper getting energy back when their dots crit) and therefore will want a bit more crit than most other classes in general.

Some specs have talents that make some abilities guaranteed crit and therefore will benefit less from critical rating than other classes in general as the autocrits will always crit no matter how much you have and so one of their hardest hitting ability does not benefit from crit.

Different specs of different classes want very different amounts of critical rating.

2. Some classes have different buffs and talents that affect your critical chance. One class getting less critical chance from other sources does not mean they necessarily want more from critical rating stat.

Now everyone has 5% base crit chance and you get 5% from a buff and probably biggest part of your total crit chance from your main stat and different amounts from skill trees and then what you get from any critical rating you might have.

Now for example a Sniper has a 3% critical chance talent in their skill trees as well as 9% main stat talent (which means also more crit from main stat) so with amounts of main stat in 78 gear they get pretty close to the 25% critical chance with literally 0 critical rating stat.

A Marauder does not have either of those kinds of talents in their skill trees so they would need a lot more critical rating stat on their gear, like 300 or more, to reach the same percentage.

So if someone followed the guides from Noxxic which tells to get 25% for every spec of every class, they would end up putting a lot more critical rating on their Marauder's gear than on their Sniper's gear, but this is doing it completely wrong. 

In reality if you look at any guides from theorycrafters who know what they are doing then it is actually the Sniper that is one of those classes that depending on spec, may want more critical rating (up to 300 or more) than most other classes, while Marauder in most specs is one of those that want less critical rating than others (usually none at all). So following Noxxic guides would make you do the exact opposite of what you should be doing.

3. Listing your total critical chance in percentage is completely useless way to tell someone how much critical rating you need. Even if you take all the skills and talents into account (which Noxxic does not take into account even those) then even then there would be other variables like how much mains stat you have in there.

In short: How much critical rating you want, does not depend on how much main stat you have. Your total critical chance percentage does however depend on how much main stat you have.

Conclusion: Therefore you should not even look at the percentage of your total crit chance, but only watch for raw amounts of critical rating stat and have your guide tell you that.

Surge Rating: Another one that is just partially true. Yes surge increases your critical multiplier.

First of all, this 200% that Noxxic mentions is complete and utter nonsense. It does not exist.

At 0 surge rating your critical multiplier is 50% (or actually 51% with the 1% from legacy companion buff). So critical hits do 51% more damage, so if we count normal hit as 100% then critical hit would be 151%. There is no 200% in there anywhere.
With Surge Rating on your gear, the critical multiplier goes up.
Neither the 70% crit multiplier nor the 395 surge rating are not any kind of goals you should have in mind. I already explained above with accuracy, where this 395 came from. With any gear higher than 72 level, you will end up with more than that for most specs.

Basically there is no need to give specific numbers for surge. For most specs of most classes, take accuracy until you reach the cap and then put surge rating in all the rest of your items that can have these stats.
(Assuming you need the accuracy as close as you can get to 435 and that you're not playing one of those few specs that may want a little bit of alacrity too, you will with 78 gear most likely end up closer to 74% crit multiplier.)

Power/Force Power: I see no problem with their explanations of these stats.