maxi

A small considertation about Spellsurge (and all mp5 effects in general ) becoming better when stacked. Because it does actually become better.

Suppose you have M amount of mana, consume C amount of mana per second and run out in M/C seconds.

If you get regeneration of R mana per second, your mana consumption rate drops to C-R, and you last M/(C-R) seconds before going OOM. So you get a total casting time benefit of (M/(C-R)-M/C)=MR/(C*(C-R))

Now, if you stack R N number of times the overall benefite becomes MNR/(C*(C-NR), which is more than N times better than benefit from a single application of R

So, if i didn't make any mistakes (which i am quite prone to :P) this should prove that every extra Spellsurge in the group makes it's impact on caster longevity more and more profound, scaling better than linearly.

 

Irise

Your math is faulty.

Given the variables you have supplied, you go OOM in M/(C-R) seconds. You have already taken mana regen into account.

I think what you meant was this: At rate of C mana per second consumption you will take M/C time to go through your mana pool hence you will regen MR/C mana during that time. However, again you will take (MR/C)/C = MR/(C^2) seconds to go through the mana you have regened. So you have an infinite sum here where each term is the amount of time needed to consume the man you have regened in the previous term.

Total time take to go OOM = M/C + (M/C)x(R/C) + (M/C)x(R/C)^2 + ... = (M/C)x( 1 + (R/C) + (R/C)^2 + ... ) = (M/C)x( 1/(1 - R/C)) = M/(C - R)

If you stack regen N times then the time to OOM becomes M/(C - NR) .

 

maxi

Erm you seem to have missed the point.

First of all, there are no infinite sums. C includes both mana consumption and regeneration. So for instance if some priests spends 200mana/sec casting and then gets back 40mana/sec from m5s effects, his C is 160.

Second of all, i was talking not about time to OOM, but rather about casting time, gained from a regeneration effect. I claim that if we stack more regeneration effects together, their individual cast-time contributions increase.

Let me illustrate it with a more real-world example.

Suppose we got a priest, working with 25k mana pool, including potions. The encounter requires him to continuously spam gheals and instants, so he consumes 300mana per second. However, the raid composition, buffs and consumables allow him to get 200 mana per second back.

Therefore
M = 25000
C = 300-200 = 100
Time till oom is 250 seconds.

Now suppose he gets 100 mana every 50 seconds from a single spellsurge effect and is lucky enough to have it refreshed every time it expires. This is additional 2 mana per second. Thus R = 2

Therefore
M = 25000
C-R = 98
Time till oom is ~255.1 seconds.
Meaning that a single spellsurge gave the priest a ~5.1 extra seconds of casting time.

Now suppose the same priest is in a full-spellsurge team, with 5 procs goind around. He gets an additional 10 mana/second regen rate (assuming all spellsurges refresh the instant they expire).

Therefore
M = 25000
C-5R = 90
Time till oom is ~277.8 seconds. A ~27.8 second benefit, with each spellsurge effect accounting for ~5.5 seconds (rounded down). This clearly shows us that with more spellsurges stacked together, each of them gives priest more casting time than if they are not stacked.

The same reasoning applies to all mana-regeneration effects.

 

Irise

You can plug your numbers into my equation and see that you will get the same answer.

My point is that you have gone about doing some really simple in a very convoluted way. The reason you are seeing a increase from 5.1 to 5.5 seconds on increased casting time is exactly the tail end of the infinite series I posted. The linear approximation (first two terms) for your casting time is M/(C-NR) ~ M/C + (M/C^2)xNR

Plugging this into your third example we get (25000/100)(1 + (5x2/100)) = 250 + 25 seconds.

If we use the first three terms we get (25000/100)(1 + (5x2/100) + (5x2/100)^2) = 250 + 27.5 seconds

If you add up the entire series we get 250 + 27.78 seconds.

Edit: If anything these calculations show that as the mana consumption rate goes up the extended cast time you get goes down. So in some sense Spellsurge does not scale well then content.

 

• Shocktar

Irise is correct. (And he's on Khadgar! What the heck?!)
Spellsurge is a completely linear scaling enchant, meaning for each additional user, you get slightly less than 10 mp/5 per group user. Each enchant does not provide more mana as more group members have it, the confusion arises when we take into account that each member gets added benefit for spellsurge, but does not get more benefit out of each enchant, only more benefit as the number of group enchants increase. This is still a linear function, the simple proof is as follows:

For a function to be nonlinear, a line cannot be fit to it.
1 enchant: 10 mp/5 per user
2 enchants: 20 mp/5 per user.
3 enchants: 30 mp/5 Page Ranking user
And that's enough data. People derive more benefit as the number of enchants goes up, but not more benefit from each enchant.

However! If a person switches from spellsurge only to spellsurge and dmg/healing, that is a nonlinear function, as the raid gets less of the benfits of both, but more total benefit derived per person.

Edit: Nice to see another priest with a brain on Khadgar Irise... oh it's frickin' Edown. Duh. (Crap, I hope I'm right or math boy's going to rip my head off.)

Gear is how hard you hit. Skill is how often you hit.

 

• Althor

No, it is a non-linear increase in casting time before OOM, and it's best demonstrated at the extremes.

First, it needs to be realized that what really matters in terms of mana regeneration is how much longer it lets you cast. Nothing else is important. It's all about how much longer you can cast before you have to stop casting because you don't have enough mana for your next spell.

Which means as, as previously mentioned it's all about increasing the time to OOM which is given by M/C. Increasing M is one way to increase this as is decreasing C.

Now I'll show via 2 examples how the benefit of adding a constant amount of regen can give vastly different benefits in terms of increasing your time until you're OOM (which again is the only important thing in terms of regen).

Example 1:

M = Mana Pool = 10000.
C = ((cost of spells cast per seconds) - (base regen + mana pots averaged over cooldowns + every other regen source apart from Spellsurge)) = 200.

So T1 (time to OOM) = M/C = 10000 mana/200 mana/sec = 50 seconds.

Now let's add in a Spellsurge (or some other form of regen) that we'll call R and let's say it gives us 10 mana/sec.

So we get T2 = M/(C - R) = 10000/(200-10) = 52.63 seconds. So we gain 2.63 seconds when C is 200 and R is 10 (and M is 10000).

In terms of T2/T1 that's a 5.3% improvement.


Example 2:

M = 10000.
C = 11. (We've stuck a bunch of Shadow Priests in the group ;P)

T3 = 10000/11 = 909.09 seconds.

Now adding in R,

T4 = 10000/(11-10) = 10000 seconds.

T4 - T3 = +9090.91 seconds.

T4/T3 = 11.

Here's an example of how adding a fixed amount of mana regen leads to a definitely non-linear increase in effectiveness, based upon what your net mana consumption already was (and as your casting mana/second is assumed to be constant, that means the more regen you've stacked).

As you increase your +regen, the net benefit of it increases in a non-linear fashion.

Up until the point of course where (C-R) is 0 at which point adding any more regen is totally wasted (unless it let's you use less pots ;P)

 

Irise

I believe that Shocktar meant that Spellsurge is linear in scaling as per the number of people in your group using it. The rest of your post is a regurgitation of what I wrote before. Yes, its is a non linear increase but you can model it as a linear increase since the in Taylor expansion the higher order terms become irrelevant quickly. If you really want to be fussy about it you can model it as a quadratic. The cubic term and beyond won't even contribute 1 mana over a 10 min fight.

 

Dodo

Cool Math here. I believe you're doing it in almost the same way (as numbers prove!) but Irise does it in a more natural way. It is almost like the things in school where you put money in your bank account and get 5% on it. And then 5% on the 5% you gained and so on...

...it's not money here, but mana!

 

• Althor

But that's just it....The more people using spell surge, the more extra regen there is, the higher the value R is, and thus the lower (C - R) is. Which leads to a larger T.

Shocktar's post just shows that yes, as you add more people the mana eregen scales in a linear fashion. But it says nothing about the *value* of that mana regen.

The value of a small amount of extra mana regen when you're at a high C already is small. The value of that small amount of extra mana regen when you're at a lower C is a lot higher.

And of course the more people using Spellsurge the lower (C - R) is.

The amount of +mana regen is totally irrelevant. What's important is how much longer you can continue casting.

I won't try to argue over Taylor expansions and the like. It's been too long since I've studied math (though I feel decently confident on the basics ;P). However given that there's a definite cap on the value of regen, I'm not sure how a simple quadratic could be used to properly model it.

 

Anedris

To summarize without math:

- I expend a certain amount of mana while keeping a tank or raid alive
- I regen a certain amount of mana while doing the same
- As my regen rate approaches my expenditure rate the time I am able to keep this up approaches infinity. When I regen as much mana as I use I can heal forever.

Personally, I find that in almost all encounters I can already heal forever by using potions so regen basically just saves me money. Therefore I am inclined to prefer +heal (although using both via weapon swapping is obviously the best solution).

 

dvenohy

whats the name of the addon, which alows you to swap the weapons?

 

Khazam

CasterWeaponSwapper

 

Belenos

Here is a link: WoWInterface Downloads : CasterWeaponSwapper

Someone contacted me with some additional ideas for the mod, and was going to release a version tweaked for mages called ArcanistWeaponSwapper on Curse.com, but I don't think it's out yet.

Let me say that I added Spellsurge support to CasterWeaponSwapper based on some of the math done by this community, and so far I'm very happy with it. Looking forward to more math and theories.

 

Faxmonkey

Pardon me if this is already tested somewhere in the thread, I don't recall seeing it confirmed by any sort of testing:

Are we positive the cooldown was increased from 30 seconds to 50 seconds Spell Surge procs?
It seems you set your mod up under the assumption that it was a 50 second cooldown but I was under the impression that it was still 30 seconds.

I see where someone says they suspect it was increased to 50 seconds. And then after that, it's like everyone just accepts that's the case. Surely someone must have done some more substantive testing somewhere to confirm this but I cannot find it. Anyone care to help me out?

Edit: I reread page 2 of this thread more carefully and it does look like the poster did do some testing. I'm not really sure I find that to be 'sufficient' testing however. 15 minutes with something that has a cooldown of AT LEAST 30 seconds means at most 30 procs. It doesn't seem horribly unlikely that with a small sample size like that it could have simply been bad luck on procs to only get 15-16 in that duration. Even if the cooldown was increased, it's easily conceivable that it could be something more like 45 seconds instead of 50. You simply can't know for sure after only 15 procs with the 2 "Furthest apart" being 50.5 seconds.

If I had a spellsurged weapon I'd test it on PTR myself, since the new arcane missiles on PTR is a absolute proc-machine -- it's a great way to test internal cooldowns.

Edit #2: My bad, I reread another page of this thread and did find the link to more extensive testing that does confirm it for me. Sorry to have asked a stupid question.

 

Belenos

No problem... I hadn't done any of the testing myself but I did wait until someone had tested a few theories about Spellsurge before I implemented it.

One remaining theory (that I'm not sure was tested) was whether the Spellsurge cooldown was tied to a specific weapon, ie, could you swap among 3 or more weapons with Spellsurge enchanted, to get Spellsurge procs every 5-10 seconds or so?

 

Paksenarion

With CasterWeaponSwapper, I have a couple questions. It seems to work about half the time for me with spellsurge. Specifically it seems to keep my casting weapon equipped for the first bit of the fight before popping on the SpellSurge weapon. Is this intentional or do I have something set wrong?

Second I tend to raid with someone who also uses spellsurge. Does this have any impact on CWS?

I'm probably just a retard, but I was unable to find anything to clarify this elsewhere. Thanks.

 

constantius

1) CWS will only swap your weapons if you're casting. If the first bit of the fight involves you standing around, it's not going to switch your weapons for you. If the cooldown is up (which it will be, starting a new fight), and you want to get an initial proc, just switch them yourself before the fight begins.

2) Someone else getting a proc of Spellsurge can mess with the addon, although most of the time so long as you get your own at some point, it resets from there (because theirs is likely to go off during the 50 second interval when yours is cooling down).

We still haven't gotten a full party of Spellsurges going yet to test it out, but sometime soon our last couple of healers will replace their first epic TBC weapons (Kara drops) and we'll all have spare epic weapons to throw it on. Should be interesting.

 

Zure

I find this reasoning suspect. Of course as regen increases, and mana use remains constant, your time to oom increases at a non-linear rate. But to what end? The goal is to last until the boss is dead, not until infinity. Once you have sufficient regen to heal until the boss dies, additional regen is superfluous.

Two countervailing factors as well:

First, the more mana you regenerate, the more heals you can cast (more time to oom or more mana used per second), which makes +healing more valuable.

Second, once you reach the point where your regen ensures you have >0 mana until the fight ends, you should use your mana by casting more (or bigger) heals during the fight. Assuming you're rational, you are currently casting the most important heals, and mentally decided who/when it isn't worth it for you to heal (because someone will heal over you, because the prospective target can heal themselves, because the person will not take damage for the rest of the fight, etc.). So the value of each unit of mana gained is necessarily less valuable than the unit of mana that came before it.

 

Belenos

Just a little more clarification here. Once the mod swaps in your Spellsurge weapon, it will wait until it sees a Spellsurge proc, and then it will assume yours proced and swap back your main weapon. However there is no way in the API to tell whose Spellsurge it is. So the mod could really be depriving you of a proc, if it was actually someone else's Spellsurge. Given that there is no way to distinguish whose proc is whose, and that this will only happen if your Spellsurge swaps are in synch with your partymates (and you will probably drift apart anyway), I don't think it's too great a loss.

 

Dey

After reading most of this article, I went searching for spellsurge recipe on the AH.

Anyway, the only demonstration that I kinda find funny regarding spellsurge is how it procs almost off anything, even bandaging oneself and cooking. And the wide radius on the proc makes it very group friendly or maybe I hug my group members too much.

 

Paksenarion

So if I just kick on surge before hand it'll get the mod working properly? I've noticed where even when I begin a fight casting it won't always do something after the first swap to high mana item. If it matters I only have it swap weapons, shield/ranged stay the same. I've tried turning it off and on mid fight but that just seems to kill it. I'll have to keep checking WWS to see how it functions when I'm not babysitting it.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Thanks for the confirmation.

Looking forward to the added clarity this shall bring.

Edit: On VR tonight, I made sure to enable mod before entering combat. It gave me the high mana swap, then the fight began and I immediately went into FoL spam, didn't turn on at all. I manually swapped once but that was the only proc I got. The over 2 min report did appear as well. This seems to be a little more common than it just picking up swapping right off the bat. Not sure what I may be doing to cause this.

 

Amanit

In tonights raid we got a spellsurge group going. All using cws mod. It got really messed up. If anyone's spellsurge weapon proc'd it would switch all our spellsurge weapons. Thus basicly jibbing us out of the other spellsurges. It never got staggered so basically all night we were effectively using one spellsurge and wasting all the others. Caster weapon swap has great potential you just need to get your mod to determine if your spellsurge weapon proc'd or if it was another group members.



This is from when 2 spellsurges proc'd at the same time. To me it seems easy to determine the difference from mine and the other player. However im no mod maker, so maybe reading from combat logs won't work. If at all possible could you attempt to fix your mod. Kind of pointless to have a spellsurge group if all the others are getting wasted.

Other then that your mod works wonderfully when I'm the only spellsurge user in the group. If you could fix this your mod would be amazing. If you manage to fix your mod to work in a spellsurge group i'll personally <3 you forever.

 

heel