Which leads me to an interesting question. I run DoTimer and Demon and without fail we reach the debuff limit on every boss, but I very rarely (if ever) notice DoTimer telling me that my DoTs have expired prematurely. Does it simply not update with that information if they are pushed off on account of the debuff limit or are they prioritized so highly that they just rarely fall off?
On my Warlock, DoTimer used to show me dots being up after the mobs had died. So it seems somewhat suspect as a tool to make sure your debuffs aren't being pushed off. (Either that, or mob death doesn't update the debuff list in the same way as debuffs being pushed off.)
I didn't list debuffs like that because well, they are crap. There are other comparable pets for hunters that do very similar dps without consuming a debuff slot.
Making such a misinformed statement without understand the hunter class is a terrible mistake.
Both of the pets dots deal damage comparable to warlock dots and should not be so quickly dismissed. At present, there are also no viable alternatives to cat and scorpid pets without speccing 51+ points into BM (which is not obtainable as a non-BM spec). I'm unsure of where you are under the impression that there is another pet that is viable.
That said, it'd be just as viable to have a warlock drop their weakest dot as it would for a hunter to tame a weaker pet that does not debuff the target.
It's called Bloodlust, not Heroism. What kind of pansy name is Heroism, anyway?
<Bad> Dragonmaw US www.damnwesuck.com
12/13 [25] Heroic - Recruiting exceptional players.
I didn't list debuffs like that because well, they are crap. There are other comparable pets for hunters that do very similar dps without consuming a debuff slot.
Considering that Cats and Scorpids are the top DPS pets for BM, and the significant problems with using the only other comparable pet, a Devilsaur (massive hit box leading to frequent pet deaths and obscured vision for melee, the need to spec into the 51 point BM talent and lose Readiness), your assertion that these debuffs are "crap" is specious. Rake and Scorpid poison make up 10-20% of a BM Hunter's DPS at the moment, and should be listed up there along with all of the other significant debuffs so that raid leaders can make the appropriate cuts/decisions when necessary.
Edit: Makoblade beat me to it!
Also, one thing for raid leaders to watch out for is that glyphed and unglyphed Hunter's Marks take up two slots (but don't stack), so they need to make sure that only one Hunter is keeping it up.
I didn't list debuffs like that because well, they are crap. There are other comparable pets for hunters that do very similar dps without consuming a debuff slot.
According to my current dps spreadsheet, the difference between a scorpid pet and a (non-debuff using dps pet) wolf is 800 dps (for a BM hunter). I don't think 800 dps is inconsequential.
That said, it'd be just as viable to have a warlock drop their weakest dot as it would for a hunter to tame a weaker pet that does not debuff the target.
Numbers please. Not just "My DoTs are more imprtant than yours."
That's the point of the thread, more or less.
So, a decent estimate for 51BM-Devilsaur vs. 50BM-Cat in DPS percentage would be helpful.
You're never going to arrive at numbers that serve any real purpose, because they are all going to vary greatly from individual to individual. In order to spreadsheet the ideal setup you'd have to have a spreadsheet that you could input every single member of your raid, along with their relative dps. Perhaps someone could make a tool that would analyze a combatlog and tell you which dots were the least useful, but that would be a significant programming task.
Basic rules and most importantly coordination and communication are the biggest things that are going to help. For example, make sure your hunters know who is keeping hunter's mark up (as mentioned above). Limit the number of affliction warlocks, shadow priests, and other debuff heavy classes if you are having issues. Ban items that add dots with minimal benefit (things like [Syphon of the Nathrezim] and Black Magic). Tell your lowest raid dpsers to stop casting their least effective dots or debuffs. Make sure people aren't putting up redundant buffs. Most raids probably aren't pushing far above the debuff limit unless they are running with really unusual comps, being aware of the situation and playing intelligently is going to solve most of the conflicts. It's unfortunate for some classes, but it isn't something that is easily compared.
So, a decent estimate for 51BM-Devilsaur vs. 50BM-Cat in DPS percentage would be helpful.
The DPS number, as noted, varies heavily based on gear, and further, being forced to go 51 into BM locks you out of Readiness but allows you to take some combination of Invigoration/Longevity/Cobra Strikes that will cause DPS to shift significantly depending on the fight profile (fight duration, mana regeneration sources, pet survival issues, etc). There is thus no consensus on the "best" spec outside of 50/21 that takes the 51 point talent.
I think Sydane's suggestion - setting out some basic rules while keeping a list of the debuffs and allowing raid leaders to prioritize based on individual performance - is the only reasonable way to solve the problem outside of a 25-person spreadsheet that models every individual in the raid.
Using the hunter spreadsheet the differences between a devilsaur, cat, or wolf never went over 300dps even with the best gear available in game currently and a BM spec. Maybe a 300dps dot is better than some other options, but I expect it to be one of the weakest options to maximize raid performance. The scorpid's dps is through the roof though so point taken there.
The estimates for cat, devilsaur, and wolf dps ranged from 5400-5700 dps (cat > devilsaur > wolf), but the scorpid sent the dps up to 6440 with all other factors remaining constant. (For simplicity I used a 50-21-0 spec for nonexotics, and 51-20-0 for exotics...it could have been cleaner but it makes the point).
On my Warlock, DoTimer used to show me dots being up after the mobs had died. So it seems somewhat suspect as a tool to make sure your debuffs aren't being pushed off. (Either that, or mob death doesn't update the debuff list in the same way as debuffs being pushed off.)
I personally prefer the debuff timers that come with Quartz to DoTimer. DoTimer has always been buggy for me, and if a dot gets pushed off the mob, Quartz immediately removes it from the list.
Numbers please. Not just "My DoTs are more imprtant than yours."
That's the point of the thread, more or less.
So, a decent estimate for 51BM-Devilsaur vs. 50BM-Cat in DPS percentage would be helpful.
Here's the last parse I have from my own guild. I'll dig up some from other guilds if you desire. Cat Patchwerk WWS
Scorpid Poison ticks every 2 seconds (instead of 3 like rake), and deals considerably more damage. Unfortunately I don't have the WWS with my own scorpid yet, but this should give you an idea of it's effectiveness: Scorpid Patchwerk WWS
Using the spreadsheet to compare a 51/20/0 with devilsaur, and 50/21/0 with cat, the overall spec on a 4 min patchwerk (I am assuming this length is fairly average) with full raid buffs/consumables, the pet difference comes to around 300 dps. The difference in loss of readiness in this length fight, however, leads to a loss of 500-1000 dps, per the spreadsheet.
I believe going into more detail on this topic would be better served for the hunter-forums or private messages.
Looking at dots from other classes, you can see the pet damage is comparable. (The scorpid averaged 1700/2sec, while the warlock's corruption was just shy of 900/3sec, and the mage's living bombs were going for around 900 as well).
Last edited by mako : 12/03/08 at 2:52 PM.
Reason: fixed formatting
It's called Bloodlust, not Heroism. What kind of pansy name is Heroism, anyway?
<Bad> Dragonmaw US www.damnwesuck.com
12/13 [25] Heroic - Recruiting exceptional players.
It sounds like their solution was to raise the limit server side, probably capping with one of the standard numbers like 256 or 1024 or even higher. To solve the traffic issue, it may only transmits to you your own debuffs plus a chunk of others (possibly arbitrary) up to the previous limit of 40. Net result is no more debuff or DoT loss, but probably more innaccurate information in regards to if you want to know if someone else's debuffs are up on the target. A possible solution to that would be a mod that transmits between all raid members all available buff information and then displays what it gets, or displays what you request.
It does seem a bit odd that they didn't release information about this until now, as it was a significant change. But it definitely makes this thread moot and means people can use their highest damaging specs and abilities to their heart's content for the first time ever, which is a great thing.
It appears this will no longer be an issue. Source
We changed how the game handles debuffs (ie negative state effects on targets) on creatures with Wrath of the Lich King. The old hard cap of 40 debuffs on a target no longer effectively exists. You can now apply way more debuffs to a target without them dropping off before their duration expires. The default WoW UI will not normally display all these debuffs, but they really are still there!
Saying they won't be displayed in the default UI doesn't really make any statements one way or the other about whether the information is sent to the client or not. Remember that when it was originally increased to 40, the default UI still only displayed 8 debuffs for several patches, but mods could display all of them.
Well, the combat log message that the debuff has been applied to the target is being sent to you anyways. They probably just changed it so that when you're in range, rather than having the server tell you what debuffs are and aren't on the target, the client just guesstimates based on what it sees in the combat log on whether or not a debuff is on the target.
Then server-side it can have an arbitrarily high limit and it won't really effect bandwidth.
That doesn't really work very well either for cases like Sartharion's drakes where people will very commonly miss a lot of "debuff applied" messages due to phasing.
That's true. There would probably still have to be some mechanism where it transmits debuff information to player based on how important it was, I'd suppose.
Great, then this thread can be locked. Can't wait to let our locks know the good news lol.
What our friend meant to say here is that Blizzard just announced that they've increased the debuff slots again. They don't give a specific number (and they don't flat out say that it's infinite) but they give the impression that it's an unreachable total.
There still is the issue of raid leaders not having any way to properly check for debuffs doing the same job twice or seeing what debuffs people slack with applying if there is no way for a client to properly display them all. That is unless combat log properly tracks everything and you can check it after the raid.
Well luckily only one of those is a problem. Doubling up debuffs is not a problem if the extra debuff slots are not a concern. As far as checking that no one's slacking, yes we do need to find out the exact functionality of this thing, but in terms of the default UI and the actual info floating around that mods have access to. This may entail some of the more common debuff mods being rebuilt.
Well luckily only one of those is a problem. Doubling up debuffs is not a problem if the extra debuff slots are not a concern. As far as checking that no one's slacking, yes we do need to find out the exact functionality of this thing, but in terms of the default UI and the actual info floating around that mods have access to. This may entail some of the more common debuff mods being rebuilt.
My thoughts exactly. One concern is class-related things, and while I'd imagine Mages would see if Scorch/Winter'sChill is applied, Warlocks would see important DoTs, and other such it kind of puts us back to square one for 'ok, we can see OUR stuff, but can't gurantee what we see if it's important or to make sure everyone is pulling their own slack'. With this news, I'm hoping the mods will be rebuilt. No, wait, I'm hoping they'll be rebuilt so that Blizzard in their jealousy will once more figure out that we'd like to SEE this stuff without a mod and enable the functionality into the base UI. Like they did last time.
12/02/08, 4:17 PM
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