Modeling Flurry with DW and WF - Page 2

♦ Oggie · 11/30/06, 1:18 AM

Actually I somehow stupidly skipped over your post (I was messing around with some annoying alliance racking up DKs), but I'm looking it over right now and going to see if my fried brain can make it work.

My original post was to the OP, but thanks for this, I'll see what sort of numbers I can figure out.

• Vulajin · 11/30/06, 1:19 AM

Originally Posted by Skiace

is the newer one any easier to figure out? i added more borders to try to make things more clear. yellow cells are input cells, green cells are significant calculated values. i suppose i should make "userfriendly" the next thing i work on.

Ah...yes, it is. I see you've since incorporated all the talents and such, too. It looks pretty good, although I guess if you use Chalon/Pf/et al's Rogue DPS sheet as a standard, all other work pales in comparison. >_>

Seriously though, your sheet is quite good. Unfortunately, it lacks a bit of flexibility, in that it seems you've assumed the Shaman is using Windfury on both weapons. Part of my motivation in starting my spreadsheet was that I wanted to compare the effectiveness of all the weapon buffs, especially given the fact that some of them (Rockbiter and Windfury) suffer from the offhand damage penalty while some (Flametongue) don't.

By the way, might I ask what the "bugged WF" sheet in your spreadsheet is supposed to represent?

(edit) Another note, I observed that when I changed the number of "Total swings" in your sheet, the end DPS result was the same anyway. I don't think you necessarily need to include that swing count as an intermediate step; it's just an additional convolution that only serves to make your sheet a bit less understandable.

Skiace · 11/30/06, 1:43 AM

Originally Posted by Vulajin

Originally Posted by Skiace

is the newer one any easier to figure out? i added more borders to try to make things more clear. yellow cells are input cells, green cells are significant calculated values. i suppose i should make "userfriendly" the next thing i work on.

Ah...yes, it is. I see you've since incorporated all the talents and such, too. It looks pretty good, although I guess if you use Chalon/Pf/et al's Rogue DPS sheet as a standard, all other work pales in comparison. >_>

Seriously though, your sheet is quite good. Unfortunately, it lacks a bit of flexibility, in that it seems you've assumed the Shaman is using Windfury on both weapons. Part of my motivation in starting my spreadsheet was that I wanted to compare the effectiveness of all the weapon buffs, especially given the fact that some of them (Rockbiter and Windfury) suffer from the offhand damage penalty while some (Flametongue) don't.

By the way, might I ask what the "bugged WF" sheet in your spreadsheet is supposed to represent?

(edit) Another note, I observed that when I changed the number of "Total swings" in your sheet, the end DPS result was the same anyway. I don't think you necessarily need to include that swing count as an intermediate step; it's just an additional convolution that only serves to make your sheet a bit less understandable.

"bugged WF" was when off hand WF procs resulted in main hand swings. it's obsolete. i realize the "total swings" method of calculation makes it more convoluted, but it was the easiest way for me to approach the problem initialy, by calculating total damage and then quite separately calculating total time.

it was a simple matter to add windfury flexibility (1 weapon, both, neither) to the sheet, once i figure out the stuff i posted here earlier. that's in the version i'm dealing with now, just not the last version i uploaded. i agree with you that it would be useful to allow for all weapon buffs, and it is something i should work on. i think i don't have enough technical information to impliment the other weapon enchantments at the moment though. for example, i'd need the exact weaponspeed->flametounge damage conversion, the new rockbiter mechanics, the true proc-rate/proc-mechanics of frostbrand, etc. if you have this information do share!

originaly, i didn't know flametounge didn't suffer from the offhand penalty. thus dual WF seemed the hands-down best option due to best dps as well as getting you extra procs of shamanistic rage and unleashed rage.

in case you still have questions, here's a pic that hopefuly explains some of the sheet:

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/2595/guide1uu8.gif

• Vulajin · 11/30/06, 4:38 AM

Originally Posted by Skiace

"bugged WF" was when off hand WF procs resulted in main hand swings. it's obsolete. i realize the "total swings" method of calculation makes it more convoluted, but it was the easiest way for me to approach the problem initialy, by calculating total damage and then quite separately calculating total time.

it was a simple matter to add windfury flexibility (1 weapon, both, neither) to the sheet, once i figure out the stuff i posted here earlier. that's in the version i'm dealing with now, just not the last version i uploaded. i agree with you that it would be useful to allow for all weapon buffs, and it is something i should work on. i think i don't have enough technical information to impliment the other weapon enchantments at the moment though. for example, i'd need the exact weaponspeed->flametounge damage conversion, the new rockbiter mechanics, the true proc-rate/proc-mechanics of frostbrand, etc. if you have this information do share!

originaly, i didn't know flametounge didn't suffer from the offhand penalty. thus dual WF seemed the hands-down best option due to best dps as well as getting you extra procs of shamanistic rage and unleashed rage.

Here are the mechanics I've uncovered for each of the weapon buffs on the PTR...

Rockbiter
If the tooltip states "deals X to Y damage," then the base DPS of the buff is Y/4 (the slowest weapon speed in existence -- you can verify that value is correct by then multiplying it by 1.3, the fastest weapon; you'll find that X = Y*1.3/4). Thus, a weapon of speed S gets a base proc damage of S*Y/4. Every time you land a swing with a weapon enchanted with Rockbiter, the proc goes off. It can crit (for double damage), and it seems to do so at a rate equal to your melee crit rate (I have no data for this, it's merely how it feels). Thus, for melee crit and hit rates of C and H respectively, I would assume Rockbiter damage for any given swing to be:

(S*Y/4)*(C+H)*(1+C)

Offhand Rockbiter procs deal half damage. (edit) Also, Rockbiter proc damage is mitigated by armor. However, Rockbiter procs cannot be blocked, dodged, or parried, nor can they glance.

Flametongue
Same as for Rockbiter, if the tooltip states "deals X to Y damage," then the base DPS of the buff is Y/4. However, Flametongue's damage on a given swing is based only on the main hand's speed, for either the main hand or the offhand. Thus, if your main hand's speed is S, and your offhand's speed is T, either weapon will proc Flametongue for S*Y/4 damage. There's no indication as to whether or not this is intentional. Everything else about Flametongue is the same as it is now, i.e. it can crit for 150% damage (at a rate equal to your spell crit rate) and be resisted. Thus, for melee crit and hit rates of C and H respectively and spell crit rate of R, I would assume Flametongue damage for any given swing to be:

(S*Y/4)*(C+H)*(1+0.5*R)

Offhand Flametongue procs deal full damage.

Windfury
You seem to have all the information about Windfury. However, it bears repeating that Windfury proc swings seem to be considered special attacks both in that they don't suffer the Dual Wield miss penalty and in that they don't glance. They can proc Flurry and Unleashed Rage. They don't seem to be able to proc Shamanistic Rage (but I'm not 100% on this).

Frostbrand
Frostbrand sucks and I don't know very much about it. I do know that its functionality is very similar to Flametongue, except that it has a proc rate below 100%.

Stormstrike
Stormstrike is weird. It doesn't seem to proc Windfury anymore. It does properly cause a Rockbiter proc for each weapon enchanted with that spell. However, when it comes to Flametongue and Frostbrand, it seems to be very odd. If either weapon has one of those enchants, it seems that there are up to three proc chances: one for each weapon with those enchants, and an extra one that just seems to magically come with Stormstrike itself. That is, if you have Flametongue on one of your weapons and use Stormstrike, you get two Flametongue procs. If you have Flametongue on both and Stormstrike, you get three procs. If you have Frostbrand on both weapons and Stormstrike, you can get up to three procs. It's very strange, and I really couldn't figure out why it was happening.

Hope this information is of use to you. If not, at least writing it all down in one place has helped me to collect my observations before I forgot them all. >_>

Scregle · 11/30/06, 6:43 AM

Theoretically (that is, if flurry works the way it should), you should be able to model each weapon's flurry (and resulting dps) independently. Instant attacks effect on flurry can also be modeled (with a bit more complications)

That said, I played around with a shaman who had melee stats equivalent to a warrior with naxx-gear... and if offhand swings procced the MH, and Rockbiter as a flat AP buff, was doing over 1100 unmitigated dps, so not too bad

Currently their dps is much, much lower

berg · 11/30/06, 9:51 AM

I am not sure that I see how you can model the weapons independently. Flurry hastes both weapons. The roundoff is always in the players favor when the buff fades so modeling them separately seems to cheat your dps.

Scregle · 11/30/06, 10:30 AM

Originally Posted by berg

I am not sure that I see how you can model the weapons independently. Flurry hastes both weapons. The roundoff is always in the players favor when the buff fades so modeling them separately seems to cheat your dps.

flurry's tooltip says it increases attack speed by 30% for 3 swings
if that works out to 3 attacks at 30% increase in attack speed, each weapon can be modeled independently.
I did test with /combatlog and it appeared as though it worked that way. I did not do enough testing to verify this, however.

Celandro · 11/30/06, 12:22 PM

What the tooltip says doesn't really matter. What matters is how it is actually implemented in the game. The key test if you are willing to do it is take 2 slow weapons of the same speed, and see if they ever do not swing at the same time. If flurry lasted 3 swings, they should eventually not swing at the same time (MH hit, OH crit, mh hit, of hit, mh hit [flurry fades] oh hit). Current theory is that flurry will last 4 swings if neccessary (3.5 on average since it will last 3 if MH crits instead of OH) if weapon speed is exactly matched (eg flurry wont fade until after the OH hit.

Test #2 is you add windfury to the mix. If it is white damage, curent theory states it should eat flurry charges(1), generate rage(2) and glance(3). If it is yellow damage it should not do those 3 things but should be affected by impale(4). 2 and 3 are easily proven, 4 requires some damage meter math which is fairly easy as well (average damage of WF crit should be 2.1 * average damage of WF hit )
1 is a bit difficult as you need to look in the combat log and prove/disprove the following sequences:
- MH crit, OH hit, windfury hit, MH hit, OH hit (flurry fades)
- MH hit, OH crit, windfury hit, MH hit, OH hit (flurry fades)
- MH hit, OH crit, MH hit, OH hit, windfury hit (flurry fades) NOTE: this one is key

Of course modeling this gets a bit tricky to say the least. Feel free to correct me if you see anything wrong :) Ive been known to make mistakes.

berg · 11/30/06, 12:34 PM

my guess is that it would be implemented similar to this

pertinent values:
// mainhand
mh.Speed // weapon speed on tooltip effectively a constant.
mh.Delay // current time waited since last swing
// offhand
oh.Speed
oh.Delay
// flurry is a player buff not weapon it applies to both.
bFlurry
nFlurryCounter // number if swings left before flurry expiration

gameUpdate(float dt) //dt will be something like 0.05f 
{
	if(bFlurry)
	{
		mh.Delay += dt*1.3;
		oh.Delay += dt*1.3;
	}
	else
	{
		mh.Delay += dt;
		oh.Delay += dt;
	}

	if(mh.Delay >= mh.Speed)
	{
		nFlurryCounter--;
		mh.Swing(); // this will calc damage and reset delay timer and potentially reset flurry counter. 
	}

	if(oh.Delay >= oh.Speed)
	{
		nFlurryCounter--;
		oh.Swing(); // this will calc damage and reset delay timer and potentially reset flurry counter. 
	}

	if(nFlurryCounter <= 0)
		bFlurry = false;
}

The important thing to notice is that even if the offhand consumes a final charge of flurry that main hand will still have gained the haste for the duration of its downtime up until that final swing.

The other possible implementation is what you describe where flurry divides your weapon delay constants by 1.3 but programatically it seems nicer to have your target be a constant instead of a changing value.

oldmandennis · 12/01/06, 12:58 PM

Originally Posted by Vulajin

Stormstrike
Stormstrike is weird. It doesn't seem to proc Windfury anymore. However, when it comes to Flametongue and Frostbrand, it seems to be very odd. If either weapon has one of those enchants, it seems that there are up to three proc chances: one for each weapon with those enchants, and an extra one that just seems to magically come with Stormstrike itself. That is, if you have Flametongue on one of your weapons and use Stormstrike, you get two Flametongue procs. If you have Flametongue on both and Stormstrike, you get three procs. It's very strange, and I really couldn't figure out why it was happening.

I was testing a bit last night, and it was even weirder. FT OH was one proc (WF main) but FT MH was 3 (WF OH)??

quick edit: PTR, not beta

Skiace · 12/01/06, 9:10 PM

in regards to weapon enhancement mechanics, does flametongue only do damage on a melee hit/crit/glance? i would expect this to be the case, but i'm not sure.

edit: assuming it does damage on all hits, crits, and glances, i've implimented flametongue in my table according to Vulajin's post. I also added rockbiter, but according to thottbot/wowhead, the tootip now reads "Imbue the Shaman's weapon, increasing its damage per second by X" for each rank. if it's this simple, then it's very easy to just add that +dps at the same place where i add dps from AP.

edit2:

here's the link to the updated sheet with rockbiter and flametongue added. http://ieng9.ucsd.edu/~acrocker/shaman_statsDWv07.xls

here's a picture of the section i added.

the yellow section is where you specify which enchant on which weapon, with a 1 or 0.

below that is shown the damage done by each enchant. "proc dmg" and "crit dmg" are just shown for reference. the "dps" column will only display the enchant's overall dps contribution if that enchant has been selected in the yellow section above. the windfury calculations are done elsewhere in the sheet, where they were done originaly.

you can basicly turn on all the enchants, and compare the dps of each listed in this green section. the dps of whatever enchants are "turned on" is added to the overall dps under the heading "enchants" which is where "windfury" was previously. resists and armor are not taken into account at all.

as for observations, it takes some extreme-ish stats to make off-hand flametongue put out better dps than windfury. with a 2.8 speed main hand, 1.3 speed off hand, and 10% spell crit, i'm seeing for example 73dps from FTOH, and 69dps from WFOH. change the off-hand speed to 1.4, and you get WF dps unchanged, but the FTOH dps drops to 68. at higher AP levels, WF continues to scale. at higher spell-damage levels flametongue would scale a bit also, but that's another mechanic that i have yet to implement.

with 2.6/1.4 MH/OH at level 60, i had to drop the AP down to about 500 (unbuffed) to get flametongue to come out as the better dps option. at level 70, this threshold was about 1000AP unbuffed. I'd like to add spell damage to the calculations though, to make it easier for people to compare gear.

• Vulajin · 12/01/06, 9:54 PM

Originally Posted by Skiace

in regards to weapon enhancement mechanics, does flametongue only do damage on a melee hit/crit/glance? i would expect this to be the case, but i'm not sure.

edit: assuming it does damage on all hits, crits, and glances, i've implimented flametongue in my table according to Vulajin's post. I also added rockbiter, but according to thottbot/wowhead, the tootip now reads "Imbue the Shaman's weapon, increasing its damage per second by X" for each rank. if it's this simple, then it's very easy to just add that +dps at the same place where i add dps from AP.

Thottbot's not entirely accurate anymore. Rockbiter now says "each attack deals X to Y damage. Slower weapons deal more damage per swing." Both Rockbiter and Flametongue proc only on glances, hits, and crits. Rockbiter and Flametongue also each have independent chances to crit (i.e. Rockbiter doesn't necessarily crit if your weapon crits, and a Rockbiter crit may occur on a weapon hit/glance).

Originally Posted by Skiace

below that is shown the damage done by each enchant. "proc dmg" and "crit dmg" are just shown for reference. the "dps" column will only display the enchant's overall dps contribution if that enchant has been selected in the yellow section above. the windfury calculations are done elsewhere in the sheet, where they were done originaly.

you can basicly turn on all the enchants, and compare the dps of each listed in this green section. the dps of whatever enchants are "turned on" is added to the overall dps under the heading "enchants" which is where "windfury" was previously. resists and armor are not taken into account at all.

My spreadsheet does things similarly, and I've implemented armor (assuming a typical mob has 20% reduction), but I don't yet have a good understanding of spell mechanics, so I can't quite implement the proper mechanics for Flametongue. Also, I have no idea what the proc rate on Frostbrand is. If you don't mind, I'll probably rely heavily on your spreadsheet to figure out some of the mana regeneration and usage stuff to implement the spell components of total DPS.

Skiace · 12/01/06, 10:07 PM

another issue i just noticed, the raw dps comparison numbers for the enchants don't take into account the effect of windfury on flurry. thus the true dps contribution of windfury is higher than what's displayed in that section. regardless, when you actualy compare the total dps output between dual WF and WF/FT, the flurry contributions are taken into account and you can see which one comes out on top.

also, do you have the currently accurate high/low numbers for rockbiter?

does anyone know the scaling factor of flametongue with regards to spell damage gear?

• Vulajin · 12/01/06, 10:17 PM

Originally Posted by Skiace

another issue i just noticed, the raw dps comparison numbers for the enchants don't take into account the effect of windfury on flurry. thus the true dps contribution of windfury is higher than what's displayed in that section. regardless, when you actualy compare the total dps output between dual WF and WF/FT, the flurry contributions are taken into account and you can see which one comes out on top.

also, do you have the currently accurate high/low numbers for rockbiter?

does anyone know the scaling factor of flametongue with regards to spell damage gear?

Here's how I handled that Flurry thing. The very first thing I calculate is the overall effective speed of both weapons (i.e. how much they get accelerated by Flurry, based on the user's crit rate and which -- if either, or both -- of their weapons has Windfury). Then, I use the base stats of each weapon to determine the "per swing" effects of the various procs, including Windfury, and divide those by the effective speeds to determine the actual DPS. The same thing is done for Unleashed Rage. Thus, the effect of the crits taking place is taken into account before the damage of the crits is actually calculated.

Regarding your other two questions, I'm afraid I don't have answers to either of those. I'm basically waiting on the patch next Tuesday, because I don't have time usually to get on the PTR (I also don't have my own level 60 shaman...mine's still 39).

Skiace · 12/01/06, 11:05 PM

I forgot to apply Elemental Weapons to flametongue and rockbiter calculations. that makes a big difference. it looks like off-hand flametongue may be dps-competitive after all. hmmmmm.