In a hotfix this week, Blizzard will be increasing all BRF items by 5 levels. How will that affect your raid? We have the data to tell you via our boss wipe rate and dps graphs.
Overview:
We have actual DPS data for every class and spec at every item level. And to take it one step further, we can separate that by your performance – are you in the 50th percentile, 75th, or 95th? Put all of that together and we can give you a pretty good estimate of how much your DPS will increase with the BRF iLevel boost this week.
Remember, only BRF items (and top level crafted & apexis items) get a 5 iLevel boost, and if some of your items are from Highmaul, those won’t get a boost. So you might get a 2 iLevel boost, instead of a full 5. We have the updated items on our site (including trinket procs), so you can find out exactly how much of an increase you get. Towards the end of this post, we have instructions to find our your own estimated increases.
Item Level Boost: How Does it Affect Teams?
Average Raid Team: Let’s say your raid team is at a 670 iLevel and you perform in the 50th percentile. Let’s assume your team increases your overall iLevel by 2 (since at 670, about half of your items will be from BRF). Your team’s DPS will go up by about 3%, tanks will require about 1 – 2% less healing, and healers will do 2.5 – 3% more healing.
Above Average Raid Team: Let’s say your team is at a 675 iLevel, performing in the 75th percentile. Assume you gain 3 iLevels from the BRF boost. Your DPS would increase by about 5%, tanks will require about 1 – 3% less healing, and healers will be doing about 4% more healing.
Awesome Raid Team: It’s rare to find an entire team whose players all perform in the 95th percentile in heroic, unless they are already a Mythic team. And that might be the case. Let’s assume this group has an iLevel of 678 that will increase to 682 (4 iLevels). DPS will increase between 7 – 11%, tanks will require 3 – 7% less healing, and healers will do roughly 5 – 7 % more healing.
There is one caveat, as iLevels increase naturally (no boosting) there is a higher chance you have set bonuses. But this iLevel boost can’t magically give you set bonuses, so the increases will probably be a smidge less than data shows.
Here’s a spreadsheet with the data from the above examples. I also made a worksheet to do this for your own character, which you can use with the instructions found later in this post. You can do this for your whole team if you’re into data like me 😉 Have fun.
Finding our YOUR estimated increase:
1. Find iLevel change: Load your character from the armory (or in-game) to get your current iLevel. Then load your character on our site to get the updated iLevel.
2. Find your percentile ranking: Go to one of your combat logs on our site (shown in the picture above or search for your character here). Choose the boss your interested in. Look for your percentile performance on either the infographic view OR the data view. Both options are shown below.
3. Calculate increase: Go to our DPS / HPS / HRPS graphs. Select the boss & difficulty you’re interested in. Select your old iLevel on the slider scale. Note the damage for the percentile closest to you. Slide the bar up to your boosted iLevel. Then note the damage for the percentile closest to you again. Then take the difference, and divide it by the original number. For example, if the original DPS is 20,000, and the new DPS is 22,000, the different is 2,000. So I take 2,000 / 20,000 and get 10%. So your DPS (etc) would go up by 10%.
The formula is (Original iLevel DPS – New iLevel DPS) / Original iLevel DPS.
4. Just apply the calculated % increase to your current DPS on various bosses. And you’re all set. And if you’re crazy, you can use this worksheet to do it for your whole team.
Team Optimizer
Now is a great time to try out the team optimizer, which ranks the % upgrade a drop is for each player in your raid. You can also see everyone’s iLevel, % BiS, and % optimal. We have more info about it here.