Apparently that is the pro opinion and thus you see the hardcore raiders not using any Eye gems.
Understand my skepticism. Even if you choose your azerite traits and talents and everything accordingly, it seems very odd that a sec stat that Blizzard values at half of a pri stat could be that powerful.
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Itās because of the way things scale that secondary is more important than primary.
In order to reach 100% of a secondary stat you need a finite rating(letās say 3 k crit rating to reach 100%).
Yet the primray stat has no ceilling. So for ex with 2 k strength you deal 4 k dmg,with 4 k strength you deal 6 k dmg so now you just devalued strength and it keeps devaluing because of this. On top of this since everything is multiplicative the more strength you get the more secondary will start to shine even more.
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Itās not an area of personal belief. You can (and should) head over to https://www.raidbots.com/ and sim your character with the different enchant and gem options selected to see what is best for your character/spec based on the gear and traits you have (case in point, the 120 int gem in my pants still sims better than a 50 haste/crit/mastery gem does). This also depends on the activities you do, e.g. a Patchwork fight with full raid buffs is different from a M+ run.
Sometimes the various options are close to each other, so the differences arenāt always substantial and there is a little room for preference, but there is always a best set up if you strictly look at the numbers.
Gear is generally in a weird place right now, especially for raiding. Certain socketed Benthic pieces are better even at 410 (let alone at 425) already than some 445+ pieces, and that crafted 400 caster trinket leaves 445 trinkets in the dust.
So always sim your character.
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Here is an example and itās not fully like this mathematically but this is what happened in wotlk, classic and so on forth, plate users were wearing agility instead of strength because agility gave them crit while strength just gave them raw attack power.
At a certain point in the game you will see that secondary stats such as critical strike is better due to its rng to double the damage you do. This means that the attack power or spell power you gain from primary stats is already āenoughā to where you want to improve your RNG and get double of what you have. Increasing your crit will therefore make up for losing raw damage output.
This can be applied to any secondary stat. That is why at start of the expansion, you focus primarily on obtaining good ilvl upgrades in terms of primary stats. The further you go into an expansion then more secondary (and primary) stats items will give you, but the secondary will give you lets say āmoreā in % than primary stats.
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No thanks, never did and never will. Blizzard either fixes their game in 9.0 or Iām out. Iām very tired that I canāt see what piece of gear is better ingame. I completely ignore the sim websites and just equip whatever i want. In the end in retail classes are so bad that it barely makes for any difference anyway.
Iām completely aware that with simming you can do more dps. Iām just not doing it. The info about gear should be presented ingame, not through 3rd party websites. If they do this again in 9.0, Iām done forever. Actually itās a very low chance me and my friends buy 9.0, they have to fix the whole game, which they will not. Retail devs are clearly not capable of making basic systems work, like showing what gear is better INGAMEā¦
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Simming characters has been a thing for many years now, this is not new. A few things are less intuitive, but back when we had reforging, you also needed third party tools.
It doesnt on Heroic. Correct.
Anyone knew even without the sims that benthic gear is superior based on their effects. And main stats not being so strong anymore is a result of the past where certain classes (cough rogue cough mage cough) utterly dominated on the rest with main stats gear.
Also you dont HAVE to sim your character for stuff like heroic. It doesnt matter. If you want to raid mythic however you do your freaking homework, simple. Especially with it not taking any worth mentionabe amount of time.
Also WoW has been merged with fan sites and players strategies for ages. Like raid boss design is the result of us players evolving.
Thing is when the new (improved) gem first came out it was 200 agi/int/str which made having it just about viable now its been nerfed to 120 it means other 50 stats gems > them sad really as it killed off JC completely.
Sounds like another example of hidden unintuitive math. If anything, Iād expect sec stats to have diminishing returns, not the primary for raw overall damage output. I think it even used to be like this in the past, and undocumented, too, causing some people who reforged a lot to waste effort and potential.
I agree that the simming is a hassle and should not be necessary. Adjustments can be made on other levels, without potentially deceiving players.
BTW I recently found some old trinkets on one of my chars, from Pandaria, and there were actually detailed proc figured in the tooltip. One stated average procs per minute, the other went even further and stated proc chance per attack and timeout length. - Seems Blizzard considered that too much information for the fragile, easily confused little monkey brains of their customers. - Same reason why we need yet another addon to get back the informative character stats display that Blizzard removed.
If you want a short intuition as to why secondary stats are better i think i have a good way of explaining, but mind you itās a knob blizzard can turn.
Most specs have a proc or something that relies on crit or the sort, but the easiest to explain is the proc.
So take frost mage for example. If you had the choice of of your frostbolt hitting for 10% more or cast 10% faster, you would quite likely take the faster cast as you get procs from that and more casts means more damage, so even though the amount of damage increase on the ability in a vaccum is the same, the secondary adds something extra.
There are tons of examples of this, but point is that secondary stats increase both directly and indirectly, whereas primary only increases directly.
This is just something blizzard can change, so in the example earlier it could be 10% increased damage vs 5% faster cast, which is why we have simming, to figure out which of those is better.
Something someone else mentioned was also how primary is uncapped, but other stats are not.
At the start of the expansion, primary stats was BiS for a lot of classes, but as people got better gear and a bigger stat budget, leading to it eventually outscale.
Monk tanks use 2*agi gems ! But AFAIK monk tanks are only ones, who do use double main stat gems (both 120 and 80 agi ones). Even when I sim around my alts, the main stat is not even near the top list. However for monks it is best defensive and offensive stat. Which is also why in most cases monk tanks are one of few who can gear based on ilevel (more agility meaning it is likely better item) more than others.
What is better depends of what you are doing. Raid best and dungeon best are entirely two different things.
If you donāt aim at the top you donāt have to.
Tbh it was always like that mid tier. In Wrath for example Paladins would wear leather agility items because Crit scaled better than STR. Warriors would prioritize Armor pen and Crit over primary stat. Casters would prioritize Hasteā¦
Yes, sec stats can work with special traits. But I prefer to pick those to match my play style, and also, even if sec stat gives a good bit better results, if 50 crit is better than 120(!) agility, then the pri stat diminishing returns must be severe at high item levels.
And this ever-tweaking, ever-changing math behind the stats is further incentive to not drive oneself nuts with it.
But it is correct that hardcore raiders will of course consider it homework. Some might even like all the number obsession, but others will probably with the system was just sane, predictable and reliable, because for those who love numbers so much, EVE Online might be more fun, hah.
The whole system is kinda meh, blizzard always trying with āI lvl matters more than the statsā, and in the end, secondary stats better. Also say hi to benthic gears.
Dunno why blizz keep doing thisā¦
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Benthic stats nice if you focus on Naz content. (If you like soggy places and arrogant bored-stupid snake royalty.)
But some of them are outright dangerous, because Blizzard still has trouble with accurate tooltips and a piece of gear might make you add lots of yellow bystanding mobs because Blizzard calls them āenemiesā.
But as for the ilvl-over-stats thing ā¦ yeah, sockets thoroughly mess that up. And make gear choices so much more complicated.
I also wish azerite armor would save its traits per-spec so that we donāt still need to carry extra sets in our bags. Same for weapons. Multi-pri-stat weapons exist, but they are the exception. - With trinkets its has gotten better. - But obviously Blizzard has full intention in shaking things up with some gear being more flexible than other.
Oh and then if you do use pri stat for sockets, you need separate gear for that reason, too. ā¦ I might actually put versatility in all my sockets then.
I.e. the meta isnāt meta. Itās all part of the design.
No. This is just flat wrong. I never needed third party tools for reforging. I didnāt need them to know whether an item was an upgrade, and I didnāt even need them to calculate the optimal reforge - though I grant they were handy for that, like using a calculator instead of pen and paper.
Once I knew my prio and soft caps, I was set.
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I needed the tools to keep track on caps because I found tabing out or random trying to reforge items was waste of both time and money.
Well thatās the sad part, by investing some time into simming my char I ended up increasing my DPS by a good 30-50% based on the situation I am in. (Peak damage went up from ~60k in burst to over 100kā¦ itās stupid).
I would also prefer to be able to have a clearer way to tell what items to pick by ingame means, the problem is and thatās the other side: How?
This game has become very complex and thus itās not a simple āoh 5 str more I take thisā.
Once people started to understand the math behind everything things changed alot and I donāt think they will ever go back. Even if Blizzard simples down the stat system (like putting crit % instead of rating on items and stuff like that) there will be breakpoints when a certain stats starts becoming worth less than anotherā¦
If you are not min/maxing for Mythic raiding, just donāt care about whats better and go for the best item level/stat combination, that will be just fine for everything HC and up to ~+10 (maybe even 12) for sure 
Your main stat defines your car.
Secondary stat are the benzin and improvements to the car, like how fast can you go from 0 to 100 km/h etc.
SO at some point, youāll go faster with a trash car with benzin in it rather than a lambo you forgot to fill up.
As for a more math approach, if you hit once every 5 second for 2000 damage (here, low haste high main stat) youāll do less than someone hitting for 500 every second -500*5=2500- (here, high haste and low main stat). So itās all about balancing your character. You donāt need a sim, and you will probably not be at your peak if you do so, but it gives you a rough idea about how to plan your gearing.