359 epic with crummy stats over 346 with good stats?

[Baba]

With gear choices so limited, I am not sure what I should do for some slots for my fury war. For a number of slots, the very limited 359 choices have crummy stat distribution, haste and mastery on everything it seems! Where the 346 blues have good stats, particularly crit. Should I be replacing the blues regardless? The epics will always have more str at the very least, my primary stat.

e.g. rings. There are only 3 str based dps rings in game. Drop from BT 2nd boss (which I have), valour ring, and a random world boe epic. None of these 3 rings have good stats, a mixture of haste, expertise, mastery. For my 2nd ring, a solid 346 with 112 crit/hit, if I get the valour ring, I could reforge but I'd still be sacrificing 60 crit for 60 haste or something.

[Booi]

The baseline strength on the 359s will nearly always trump any combination of ratings you have. With the world of reforging, item level nearly always indicates more throughput. There are plenty of tools out there to help you compare items based on your current gear setup.

[Quinafoi]

This is going to be the general trend most of the time now when comparing one item to another. Trinkets will continue to be an exception to the rule because the effects vary greatly from item to item. But when comparing secondary stats (Haste, Crit, Mastery, Hit, Expertise, Spirit, Dodge, Parry) to primary stats (Intellect, Strength, Agility) the value of the primary stat will often be significantly higher point for point than the highest value secondary stat. And with the addition of reforging, the least valuable secondary stat can always be converted into something more valuable.

When it really comes down to it though you will have to actually run the numbers through a tool like a DPS spreadsheet or application like Rawr.

[MellvarTank]

Yeah, they have changed a lot of abilities and such since the gear was designed (look at the paladin tier set for example) and the best way to gear has changed. For Fury, I believe that you should still look at throughput (strength) over secondary stats which can be reforged.

[Loganisis]

Outside of an obvious case where you have too much expertise (which I'm not sure is possible to have so much you have more than 26 after reforging it away every time)...

If it's Hit/Haste and you're past 8% hit - versus crit/mastery at a lower level - and the crit is taking up a very large chunk of the itemization budget...

Okay, so you see how it is... trying to create a scenario where it would be true you'd want to stay with a lower-ilvl is going to be tough. I've seen valuations of strength as 2x as useful per point as even crit, and crit is the best of the rest, which gives you an idea of value from the raw strength you can add.

[feralminded]

Not only is crit near .5 x Strength, but haste and hit (over 8%) are both nearer to .7 x Crit ... meaning much closer so even if you trade crit for haste (which when going from 346 to 359 you will gain a fair amount to close that gap), the strength you gain plus the reforgable quantity of the lesser stat will easily give you more overall DPS. To put it simply a 346 with just crit as a secondary stat will end up being roughly the same amount of DPS boost as a 359 with haste reforged to crit, just due to the larger item budget and the nearness of the secondary stats to each other in value. The strength on top of that will just make it the clear winner. Again the only time a secondary stat can ever become worth 0x is expertise over 26 or I suppose hit over 26% (not likely). I've actually come close to that with my current items in my fury set but I believe I have every single expertise item around.