If AB is the best part of your rotation, is it better to start the fast/cheap AB at the very last second (squeezing in an extra scorch) or at the earliest possible instant...so it casts immediately after the debuff wears off? My guess is the latter.
I agree it's BS that we have to go to such great lengths to overcome something an optional 1 spell queue would totally wipe away.
Is the Shiffar's Nexus Horn being modeled on the old 15 seconds duration, or the newly fixed 10 second duration on the proc?
It uses the old, broke-ass 15 seconds =p.
3x frostbolt is easy, the trick is you need a stopcast for arcane blast coming in too. That will shave off the last fraction of a second you need to comfortably do frostboltx3 in the cycle.
Theoretically doing less interlude and more arcane blast is always good. However what's missing from that is that increasing your overall cast speed is a much more dramatic effect than just increasing your AB to interlude ratio. If you can cram more spells in the interlude you probably should, as it usually just means you're casting more spells overall.
Sorry I forgot about the T6. Remember that the trinket effects menu is only modeling the proc/use effects, it does NOT include passive stats. Mark of Defiance wasn't modeled because its proc is fairly ineffectual, and almost any of those listed trinkets would be a better use of the slot.
Also, apologies for the gear selector not being updated, I didn't make that section (Kalman did =p and he doesn't play a mage anymore). If someone would like to do the honors and update it, send that to me and I will happily include it in an immediate release and credit you for it.
Theoretically doing less interlude and more arcane blast is always good. However what's missing from that is that increasing your overall cast speed is a much more dramatic effect than just increasing your AB to interlude ratio. If you can cram more spells in the interlude you probably should, as it usually just means you're casting more spells overall.
Interlude has a minimum of 1.5s of flex (more if you're doing fewer AB). Imo, you're better served flexing down to 6s rather than up to 7.5
clearly something like one AM in 7.5s is a bad idea.
Interlude has a minimum of 1.5s of flex (more if you're doing fewer AB). Imo, you're better served flexing down to 6s rather than up to 7.5
clearly something like one AM in 7.5s is a bad idea.
Right, but due to casting times being the same or longer, doing anything but the maximum possible number of spells will force you to reduce your casting speed, which is always bad.
I just went over all possible cycles that are at least 6.5 seconds and are less than 8 seconds:
3Xfrostbolt
AM+scorch
2Xfireball+scorch
AM+frostbolt
Since AM is kinda gimp (and if you spec for AM scorch gets really gimp too, not like it's not gimp enough with full fire or 33/28 specs), and fireball>frostbolt and scorch is not really weaker (I hadn't really done the straight comparison but I remember frost with WE being a little better than scorch spamming, when WE is a noticeablte part of its DPS), it is clear which rotation is best.
If 7.5s doesn't work for you, the ONLY possible rotation is AM+scorch (or 2Xfrostbolt+scorch but let's be serious here ). I'll run it for AM too when I get the chance but AM and scorch are just too weak.
The thing about when you have to move that actually helps the AB spec is that when you move for a short time, it'll either not change anything to your rotation (if it's in-between AB casts) or it'll replace casting fireball/scorch, which isn't the bigger part of your DPS. So if one has to cast for 5.5-6s and then move for 5-6 seconds, the AB spec suddently gained a lot of strength. Thing is movement isn't something fixed, if a fight requires any more significant moving/stopping DPS the AB debuff can wear off screwing up your entire rotation making you similar (and slightly lower) DPS than 10/48/3 (I actually calculated the DPS if you add an extra second to the rotation because your AB is 2.5s instead of 1.5).
AM+scorch actually fits the rotation best for obvious reasons (no need for extreme perfection on /stopcasting yet if you do get the /stopcasting with 99.999% perfection you don't have to wait at all). This is I have to come up with a totally new spec and add another calculation to my sheet which I didn't have the time to do yet. All in all empowered arcane missiles requires that someone else keeps up your scorches for you or living without imp scorch or dropping 2 from elemental precision. Not to mention that's a much weaker scorch than the 33/28's scorch already. Again it's nothing certain and I'll have to look at it. This also means you might not even want to mess with hit rating and just let scorch miss as it's such a small part of your DPS resulting in more spell damage, but I'm not even sure if you can really get back even 0.7 worth of spell damage per point of lost hit rating in high-end gear - picking up the best from SSC/TK when trying to NOT have hit rating resulted in almost capped hit without elemental precision...
If in doubt, stack 4 shadow priests in your part, get a destructino warlock to keep imp SB up and an affliction warlock to keep improved CoS up and spam AB that'll definitely top damage meters, but I think other than you and the 4 shadow priests the other casters in your raid will feel pretty useless ;p
I sent one version to Kalman recently. It still missed updates to weapon and trinket slots, but had other stuff mostly updated. To my understanding they both have their hands full even without taking care of the spreadsheet atm...
I also did the same 33/28 vs 10/48/3 comparison only if you have some latency even after you use /stopcasting.
I added different values of latency and changed the 3XAB-2Xfireball-scorch rotation to 3XAB-2Xfireball only, assuming your latency is big enough for you to lose at least 0.5s between the last AB of the rotation to the first AB of the next rotation (so you get more than 3+3+0.5=6.5). Added same delay between fireballs (I actually had 1 cell where I enter latency and it "fixes" the sheet, again with the assumption the rotation is working and you're not getting less than 0.5s lost total between ABs).
Results were 33/28 still wins by roughly the same amount (actually by a little more but it's a meaningless difference), so 33/28 with 2/5 T5 you win with either 0 latency and getting your 3XAB-2Xfireball-scorch rotation going or having some latency and having latency to the point where you can't get the scorch off but removing scorch won't get you using AB too early.
Then I went on and compared if you do have exactly the same amount of latency as I estimate that I get when I barely miss the scorch/AB, and still be too early on the scorch, and if I assume I wait just enough for the AB debuff to have 1.5s left 33/28 still comes on top. Now if you start reducing the latency all the way to 0 while still using the rotation in which you wait for the AB debuff, meaning you wait up to 1.5s per rotation, 33/28 still comes on top but the difference is only a little more than 1/2 of what it was in all other calculations. So even in the worst case scenario where you use a rotation that fits latency and you have no latency in reality (which is REALLY a "worst case" scenario that'll never really happen, meaning it'll always be better than this), 33/28 still does 2.6% more DPS.
So in the end AB spam spec with 2/5 T5 will pretty much always be the superior DPS and superior threat reduction while having reduced range and a little reduced mana efficiency, with an ability to put a lot of lot of pain in those rare short fights where you can AB spam or in those fights where AP PoM pyro AB spam makes even more of a difference.
got my shoulders, can't wait until we get more into SSC for the pants, but we're moving so slow... And I do also need the headpiece from void reaver (as vashj is still far) for the T5 pants to not be a spell damage decrease due to losing the spellstrike set bonus.
fixed numbers to correct base spell damage and included 2/3 playing with fire for AB with the 33/28 spec.
Added latency calculations considering you might never use /stopcast perfectly in a real battle where you look at stuff other than your castbar and your lack of perfection is exactly enough so that ABX3-fireballX2-scorch is impossible but if you drop the scorch you'll have to wait a fraction of a second (which gives 10/48/3 the edge just to be sure).
Remember I added an AP PoM pyro every 3 minutes that replaces a scorch and for the rest
of the spells a flat 2.5% increase from AP (not counted AP AB spamming just in case you don't have the mana for it even though it should probably be useable in most fights, again giving fire the edge).
2/5 T5 is a must of course.
So the DPS increase from 33/28 to 10/48/3 is 8.2% with no latency and 8.3% with latency compared to fireball spamming. That's if the fight isn't extremely mana intensive so that the ~25% more DPM of 10/48/3 won't matter, but also not taking into account fights where you have more than enough mana and can spam AB and do even more damage than what's calculated.
Another thing if you don't have 2/5 T5 33/28 will do like 99.1-99.9% of the 10/48/3 but at that point the lack of range and DPM make it not worth considering even if you like the ability to AB spam on fights that allow it.
I know you assume 130ms lag time when using stopcasting, but have you tried going to dr boom and casting as many scorch/fireballs you could within 2 min (repeat many times) and make an average ? I am saying that because I have repeated the test many many times (gotta love having a g15....makes the process painless). And if I have learnt anything from those tests is that latency/ui lag can really turn 1.5s casts into 1.75s-1.8s casts in practice. With stopcasting it rarely got better than 1.65s (casting too earlier would result in sporadic spell cancelled too soon and no cast). And while totally anecdotal, I always had the feeling from those repeated tests that UI lag increases casts times, and given that my fps is quite bad during bossess, I can only imagine it is worse.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
I played with the latency, and it doesn't change much which spec is better when you play with a realistic range of latencies.
Since I did manage to pull off the 3XAB+2Xfireball+scorch when I was really really trying, it means I could pull off less than 0.125 latency. So worst cast where that rotation doesn't work is if your latency is bigger than 0.13. Once it's already bigger than 0.13 and you swap to 3XAB+2Xfireball+scorch as you add latency it actually favors 33/28 even more compared to 10/48/3, as it means you wait less fractions of a second waiting for the AB debuff (as removing scorch from the rotation with 0.13s means you still need to wait 0.11s on the AB debuff before you can cast AB with 1.5s cast and cheap mana cost). More than 0.13s means you don't have to wait at all making it go even more in the 33/28's favor as scorch is subpar DPS and is just a filler anyway.
So in every way I looked at it, 33/28 came out superior except for mana efficiency, range and 3s-burst AOE that happens more often than AP cooldown.
Just noticed wowiki states that the coefficient for fireball is (1+empowered)*0.9 meaning you get 1.035 coefficient instead of the expected 1.05. Any verification for this?
Also anyone knows exactly how frostbolt works? -5% due to snare additive or does it add a 0.95 multiplier to the end result?
These differences are small but not neglicible. It's a difference of ~1% of fireball's DPS so it's worth checking.
I just noticed your spreadsheet doesn't seem to allow to specify if totem of wrath totem is up, which makes a tremendous difference for a fire build. (keep in mind: totem of wrath stacks, so technically a mage could get +12% crit/+12% hit)
I guess i can always add 66.3 crit rating / 37.8 hit, but I wonder if its intended.
EDIT: I also have another suggestion. Since the cycle builder does not allow to enter arcane blasts, would it be possible to model it as if arcane blast was 3 different spells ? For example, there would be 'arcane blast(1)', 'arcane blast(2)', etc. each of which corresponds to the stacks. This way their individual DPS/DPM would be easy to model. It would also allow me to enter a casting cycle of:
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
I just noticed your spreadsheet doesn't seem to allow to specify if totem of wrath totem is up, which makes a tremendous difference for a fire build. (keep in mind: totem of wrath stacks, so technically a mage could get +12% crit/+12% hit)
I guess i can always add 66.3 crit rating / 37.8 hit, but I wonder if its intended.
EDIT: I also have another suggestion. Since the cycle builder does not allow to enter arcane blasts, would it be possible to model it as if arcane blast was 3 different spells ? For example, there would be 'arcane blast(1)', 'arcane blast(2)', etc. each of which corresponds to the stacks. This way their individual DPS/DPM would be easy to model. It would also allow me to enter a casting cycle of:
Also I've been reading that mana cost of arcane blast is actually base+%, so stuff that increase mana cost by a % add up instead of multiply, so as you stack AB the relative effects of 20% more mana cost from 2/5 T5 and arcane power get reduced, which means 2/5 T5 and AP actually increase AB's DPM. Of course it's not even close to the loss of DPM you get by stacking AB, but DPS>DPM doesn't it? ;p if we wanted DPM we'd roll rogue or use wands.
So the way it *probably* works (any testing will be appreciated as I have neither T5 nor AP):
no stack AB: base X (1+T5%+AP%)
1 AB stack: base X (1+T5%+AP%+75%)
2 AB stack: base X (1+T5%+AP%+150%)
3 AB stack: base X (1+T5%+AP%+150%)
base being the (slightly less than 200? don't remember off the top of my head) no stack mana cost of AB, without 2/5 T5 nor AP.
Also in my spreadsheet I accidently made pyroblast's dot capable of critting, after fixing it 33/28 still pwns 10/48/3 in DPS with 2/5 T5 and still does about equal damage (but not worth it due to less DPM and range) if you don't have 2/5 T5. The difference is ~9% DPS 10/48/3 does ~25% more DPM (minus the "extra DPM" from arcane meditation but it shouldn't be anywhere near 25%), and it stays about the same (~9%) with any latency using the appropriate rotation, as while latency makes you use a rotation with less spells, it also lowers 10/48/3 DPS, so the end result (after calculating actual DPS) is that you actually gain DPS in relation to 10/48/3 (although obviously lose overall DPS), even though it's a neglicible amount.
How exactly are you calculating your "maximum mana efficiency" cycle?
I've looked in calculations and you seem to be casting Scorch 80% of the time and AB 20%, 90% of the time, then AM 10% of the time (on clearcasts). Cursory examination of that tells me something is wrong since AM takes 3 times as long to cast as Scorch (so it should be more than 10%).
I modeled an AB, Scorch x4 cycle with AM on clearcasts, and tried to overlap AB.
This is what I got:
Lag Time 0.2
Stopcast Time 0.5
Scorch Scorch Scorch Scorch Scorch AM AM
Scorch Scorch Scorch Scorch AM Scorch Scorch
Scorch Scorch Scorch AM AB AB AM
Scorch Scorch AM AB AB
AB AM AB
AB
Scs 4 4 3 2 1 1 1
AMs 0 1 1 1 1 1 2
ABs 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Sc Time 6.8 6.8 5.1 3.4 1.7 1.7 1.7
AM Time 0 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.7 5.7 11.4
AB Time 2.37 2.7 2.7 2.7 2.37 2.37 2.7
Total 9.17 15.2 13.5 11.8 9.77 9.77 15.8
Prob 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.1 0.1
0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 0.1 1 1
0.9 0.9 0.9 0.1 1 0.9 0.1
0.9 0.9 0.1 1 1
0.9 0.1 1
1
59.049% 6.561% 7.290% 8.100% 9.000% 9.000% 1.000%
Average Scorch Time 5.43167 53%
Average AM Time 2.39120 23%
Average AB Time 2.44573 24%
Average Total Time 10.2686
IOW, the cycle you have modeled in the spreadsheet is waaaaay off. It's even more off if you use an ABx2, Scorchx3 cycle instead (the second AB could be more efficient in mana per second than scorch with certain builds).
Anyways, this would all be sort of fixable if the cycle builder allowed us to put Arcane Blast in, and also if there was a clearcast cycle builder specifically for modelling this sort of thing (like the mutilate cycle builder in the rogue sheet).
I needed to add some items to the database and fix others. Fixing them was easy, but updating the offhand is throwing me for a loop. If I add an item to the bottom of the list (The Saga of Terokk), I can't get the drop-down menu to see it. It seems to be only looking at items 2-17, not 2-18 automagically. If I add my item as item #3, the dropdown menu sees it, but them item 17 gets bumped off the bottom. I'm not great with Excel, how do I tell it to automagically see the last item in the list?
I'm on vacation - the latest version I was working on had the arcane blast update to the cycle builder and totem of wrath calculations, and trinket effects. Did I do the trinket effects already? If I didn't release, it's in there. It's all at work so no upload until I get home.
06/25/07, 7:43 PM
). I'll run it for AM too when I get the chance but AM and scorch are just too weak.
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