I love using Toskk's DPS analysis to optimize my cat DPS gear. But I really shot myself in the foot with it, blowing about 500g on enchants and gems only to find my new gear was a downgrade. I've been hunting the Grimgrin Faceguard for months; Toskk had put the upgrade at about 55 kitty points over my T4 helm. And I'd finally get to enchant my cat helm for DPS. The hat dropped last week and after my rogue friend said he didn't want it, I had my upgrade!
It was only when I went to gem it that I realized my mistake. The ZA hat has no meta gem socket (one of 25 of the 189 high level helms that don't). No meta-gem socket means no Relentless Earthstorm Diamond, no 3% bonus to crit damage. I crit 50% of the time, so losing that bonus hurts a lot.
It turns out I'd misused Toskk's tool when calculating the upgrade. I have the %26quot;Relentless Earthstorm Diamond%26quot; box clicked, so the gear value for helms I'm seeing is in some magical world where I'm wearing the Grimgrin Faceguard and have a meta-gem. But that's not possible. Unchecking the box gives more accurate numbers: the ZA hat is a 16 point downgrade from the T4 helm. It also doesn't help that the ZA hat has so much +hit; I'm too close to the 142 melee hit cap as it is.
So I'm back to the T4 helm. The good news is it's one of the better T4 options and wearing the T4 helm lets me wear better shoulders. And this little misadventure has broken my gear logjam.As part of my reworking the gear I switched to using T4 gloves which let me get the Trousers of the Scryers' Retainer for a significant improvement.
It's definitely hard for me to upgrade gear now. My bear suits are perfectly balanced for crit immunity and my cat set is pretty constrained in maximizing DPS while still wearing two pieces of T4. I'm sitting on two upgrades for my bear suits because it'll mean losing my PvP boots and my 4/5 T4 set bonus. Hopefully that upgrade will go better!