[Warlock] Explaining curse of recklessness

Optikalusion · 04/29/07, 10:24 PM

Hi there

Our guild had the misfortune to lose our oldest and most talented locks in the expansion, and I'm getting alot of resistance from the newer locks about using CoR on bossfights. They will of course keep it up if asked by the raidleaders but I wish them to understand why we ask it. I had seen and quoted a page before about hard data regarding the effects of this curse, and for the life of me can't seem to find it again. The last data I came across boasted a physical dps increase of ~11% (with the old rank 4), and an unknown amount of boss dps increase (usually negligable). The general consensus was: use this on all bosses that do not involve a high hitting instant attack or are unually hard to outheal.
So I've searched the forums here, and I'm 100% sure the answer in in there somewhere, but haven't found anything to quote our newer locks. Can any of you direct me to some data, or list your own experiences with this curse and how it effects your raid?

for reference: Curses the target with recklessness, increasing attack power by 135 but reducing armor by 800 for 2 min.

Thanks in advance.

Bahkauv · 04/30/07, 3:26 AM

I asked our Melees, if they want CoR on the mob. They are using an addon called "MobMitigation" that calculates the armor value. The answer was, that with the new ranks of Sunder Armor (5x520=2580) and Faerie Fire (610), there usually is not enough armor left for CoR to make sense.

I don't know how MobMitigation works and if the numbers are correct. But no matter which class your MT belongs to, there should always be Sunder Armor and Faerie Fire on the mob. So the mob has to have more than 3190 AC before CoR will do anything to melee dps.

Optikalusion · 04/30/07, 6:14 AM

mmm... The way I understand armor is, it's a value of diminishing returns. If the mob has a high armor amount, CoR will do less for melee attackers. If his amor is already reduced to a low amount, the effect of -armor increases. So unless a mob's amor can be brought to 0 using sunders and faerie fire, I'd say CoR would be well worth it still.

SchLing · 04/30/07, 6:42 AM

We started using CoR more and more right before BC was released and never had a problem with it unless the boss had powerful instant attacks. The issue these days is more that we don't have enough warlocks to cover all curse lines on raids these days. And for us CoR comes rather low on the list. I would love to see some math on it though. Since I am not a physical class I don't really have an impression on how CoR effects hunters, rogues and warriors.

Brista · 04/30/07, 7:22 AM

In raid encounters you can increase melee DPS by 6-12% for a nominal increase in damage on the main tank. Use this Curse on any boss who does not use abilities modified by Attack Power (ie Mortal Strike or Enrage).

http://www.wowwiki.com/Curse_of_Recklessness

I have read, although I cannot recall where, that most TBC raid bosses don't have resists so all Curse of Elements and Curse of Shadows do is boost damage by 10% for the affected schools. Depending on your raid composition 6-12% to physical might be more overall damage than 10% to certain spell schools

Qrmu · 04/30/07, 7:31 AM

It's totally worth it for dps. Just avoid using CoR on mobs who clearly have no armor anyway (Aran), or mobs who can pretty much instagib your tank.

And no, armor does not diminish. As long as armor stays between the boundaries of 75% reduction and 0% reduction, the effect for x amount of armor is the same.

800 armor against level 70 player means that the mob can take 7.58% more physical damage.

Edit: I don't have any numbers how much 135 AP is. Judging from how effective demo shout is, I would expect roughly 8% more damage to tank.

Athinira · 04/30/07, 8:03 AM

Originally Posted by Qrmu

And no, armor does not diminish. As long as armor stays between the boundaries of 75% reduction and 0% reduction, the effect for x amount of armor is the same.

Wrong, survivability has no diminishing returns and is linear, damage intake is not.

A level 73 mob going from 6800 armor to 6000 will take 4.45% more damage from melee attacks.

A level 73 mob going from 3800 armor to 3000 will take 5.34% more damage from melee attacks.

A level 73 mob going from 800 armor to 0 armor will take 6.69% more damage from melee attacks.

Also, this is increasing more.

Say the melee damage that is mitigated by armor done to a boss is 1000 DPS before armor. Lets say the boss has 9000 armor = 42.94% damage reduction = Each melee DPSer does 570.6 DPS

Now lets say you remove 600 armor, 8.4k armor. Melee DPS now does 587.42 DPS, an increase of 16.81 DPS (2.94% increase).

Now you remove 600 more armor, 7.8k armor now. Melee DPS now does 605.25 DPS, an increase of 17.83 DPS.

So as you see, removing a fixed amount of armor becomes more valuable the lower the armor of the mob is already (unless it takes it into the negative of course since negative armor values doesn't exist).

Duskmourn · 04/30/07, 10:02 AM

In TBC the majority of boss mobs have high enough armor that applying CoR will be beneficial the majority of the time. You have to base using it off how many melee dps there are(relative to casters), how many locks there are to use other dps curses, whether or not it could be detrimental to the Main Tanks surviving bursts, and also depending on whether or not it is a more melee friendly fight or caster friendly.

Bahkauv · 04/30/07, 1:03 PM

Originally Posted by Duskmourn

In TBC the majority of boss mobs have high enough armor that applying CoR will be beneficial the majority of the time.

This contradicts what the rogues/shammies in my raid told me. Do you have any numbers? How much armor does e.g. Gruul have?

Athinira · 04/30/07, 1:23 PM

Originally Posted by Bahkauv

This contradicts what the rogues/shammies in my raid told me. Do you have any numbers? How much armor does e.g. Gruul have?

Its standard for most bosses to have around 30-40% base damage mitigation. This is approx 5-8k armor.

Stopokingme · 04/30/07, 9:05 PM

Originally Posted by Bahkauv

This contradicts what the rogues/shammies in my raid told me. Do you have any numbers? How much armor does e.g. Gruul have?

Don't forget this though, +ap on mobs seems to have a way bigger effect on their damage output then it'd do on a player. You might want to switch it out when Gruul gets bigger.

• Cluey · 04/30/07, 9:25 PM

Originally Posted by Bahkauv

This contradicts what the rogues/shammies in my raid told me. Do you have any numbers? How much armor does e.g. Gruul have?

You also said they are using a mod to tell them the armour the mob has.
Just because its a mod doesn't mean its right, the mod has to calculate how much armour there is, it can't just ask the mob "hey, how much armour do you have?"
I haven't looked at the mod but just blindly assuming it is right is rather stupid.

Optikalusion · 04/30/07, 10:20 PM

Would be interesting to see which bosses people forbid the use this curse on. We figured not to use it on Gruul or Hydross so far, for obvious reasons. Using it on Mogrim without a problem so far, guess we'll see about the rest!

TheOnly · 04/30/07, 11:19 PM

Originally Posted by Athinira

Wrong, survivability has no diminishing returns and is linear, damage intake is not.

A level 73 mob going from 6800 armor to 6000 will take 4.45% more damage from melee attacks.

A level 73 mob going from 3800 armor to 3000 will take 5.34% more damage from melee attacks.

A level 73 mob going from 800 armor to 0 armor will take 6.69% more damage from melee attacks.

Also, this is increasing more.

Say the melee damage that is mitigated by armor done to a boss is 1000 DPS before armor. Lets say the boss has 9000 armor = 42.94% damage reduction = Each melee DPSer does 570.6 DPS

Now lets say you remove 600 armor, 8.4k armor. Melee DPS now does 587.42 DPS, an increase of 16.81 DPS (2.94% increase).

Now you remove 600 more armor, 7.8k armor now. Melee DPS now does 605.25 DPS, an increase of 17.83 DPS.

So as you see, removing a fixed amount of armor becomes more valuable the lower the armor of the mob is already (unless it takes it into the negative of course since negative armor values doesn't exist).

Yes, but if you assume that a fixed percentage of damage on the boss is physical, each fixed amount of AC removed decreases the time he is alive by the same amount.

Using melee as 100% dps, and your 9000AC versus 8400AC versus 7800AC example:
Boss has 570,600 HP.
Lives for 1000 seconds with 9000AC and 1000 non-mitigated dps.

At 8400AC, dps on boss is 587.42, he lives for 971.37 seconds (28.6 seconds shorter)

At 7800AC, dps on boss is 605.25, he lives for 942.75 seconds (57.2 seconds shorter)

etc etc.

Every 600AC less is 28.6 seconds shorter fight in the example above.

If 50% of the raid dps is melee, it would be half the effect, but still -- every bit of AC is equivalent in this effect, until AC = 0.

Bahkauv · 05/01/07, 12:59 AM

Originally Posted by Cluey

I haven't looked at the mod but just blindly assuming it is right is rather stupid.

You haven´t read my posting Cluey, and blindly assuming it is false is rather stupid

Originally Posted by Bahkauv

I don't know how MobMitigation works and if the numbers are correct.

More information about the addon can be found here: http://www.wowace.com/wiki/MobMitigation

Ignoring addons and their possibly false calculations, if you hit a mob ("white damage") with the max damage in your char screen, it has no mitigation, right? So... if you know the numbers of some players and search the combat log, a max dam hit would mean, that the armor value left is zero, right? Or am I missing something?

Bolche · 05/01/07, 5:44 AM

Bosses armor can be found easely using fixed damage abilities, such as kick or hamstring. Just check the bosses debuff (sunder, FF, CoR) when you use it.

Then you use the reduction->armor formula, wich is, according to wowwiki :
Armor = (467.5 * Enemy Level - 22167.5 ) / ( 100 / %Reduction - 1)

• Cluey · 05/01/07, 6:34 AM

Originally Posted by Bahkauv

You haven´t read my posting Cluey, and blindly assuming it is false is rather stupid

More information about the addon can be found here: http://www.wowace.com/wiki/MobMitigation

Ignoring addons and their possibly false calculations, if you hit a mob ("white damage") with the max damage in your char screen, it has no mitigation, right? So... if you know the numbers of some players and search the combat log, a max dam hit would mean, that the armor value left is zero, right? Or am I missing something?

Your post indicates that they don't think it makes any difference because a mod they are using tells them that.
Taken from the link you just provided:

It is very much a rough estimate.

It varies from mob to mob, as Bolche said it can be worked out by an attack with a set amount of damage.

From reading a lot of threads here I recall discussion about mob armour levels in the expansion being higher than pre-expansion, I am fairly sure the rogue DPS thread has a bit on it.

If the new ranks of Sunder and Faerie Fire took mobs to zero there wouldn't be much point to the new trinkets and armour bonuses which negate armour, it is of course possible that Blizzard hasn't noticed this

Use of the curse should come down to raid balance and mob abilities and will be depend on how many warlocks you have in a raid, if you have a lot of physical DPS classes in the raid it might be worth using.

dukes · 05/01/07, 6:42 AM

There are very few mobs that you may be able to bring armour to zero on - aran and solarian are the only two that spring to mind where melee damage is anywhere near as high as is possible, and even then the damage done to them isn't as high as the damage when we went back to naxx and had full sunders on those mobs, which leads me to believe that there isn't any mob at boss level that is reducable to 0 armour with currently methods (although stacking trinkets that reduce armour too may get close, such as rogue class trinket + BFHeroic trinket).

Athinira · 05/01/07, 7:12 AM

At 8400AC, dps on boss is 587.42, he lives for 971.37 seconds (28.6 seconds shorter)

At 7800AC, dps on boss is 605.25, he lives for 942.75 seconds (57.2 seconds shorter)

etc etc.

Every 600AC less is 28.6 seconds shorter fight in the example above.

If 50% of the raid dps is melee, it would be half the effect, but still -- every bit of AC is equivalent in this effect, until AC = 0.

No its not.

Boss lives for 942.75 seconds.

You remove 600 armor = 28.6 seconds of his lifespam. His lifespan is now 3.03% shorter.

You remove another 600 armor, same fixed amount of his lifespan. However this time you removed 3.12%

Another 600 armor removes the same fixed amount, but the percentage reduction is now 3.22%

Another 600 armor = 3.33% shorter lifespan.
Another 600 armor = 3.45% shorter lifespan
Another 600 armor = 3.57% shorter lifespan

Its the EXACT same principle as avoidance (dodge, parry, miss etc.).

Going from 0% avoidance to 10% avoidance (+10%) is a 10% reduction in damage.
Going from 80% avoidance to 90% avoidance (+10%) is a 50% reduction in damage, even though the fixed amount of avoidance added is the same.

You should never look at the fixed amount, you should look at the comparison percentage. Fixed amounts change value (like the avoidance example above, adding a fixed amount of avoidance have different outcome depending on the base value you are substracting from or adding to.

Theoretically, if armor/damage reduction could go negative you could continue removing 600 armor at a time until the bosses lifespan reduction reaches 100% = he gets one shotted ;)

Babe Bridou · 05/01/07, 9:22 AM

Well, you should still look at "time to live" as a fixed amount for all that concerns:
_mana management
_enrage timers
_timed phases

...where percentages are kind of irrelevant in my opinion.

Athinira · 05/01/07, 9:37 AM

Originally Posted by Babe Bridou

Well, you should still look at "time to live" as a fixed amount for all that concerns:
_mana management
_enrage timers
_timed phases

...where percentages are kind of irrelevant in my opinion.

Its the other way around. Larger percentage inreases become all that more important for all of these (especially mana management and enrage timers).