Oprahwinfury

Does anyone know if this wowhead description is up to date or not? http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=39957

I'm using the meta gem now but I can't say if it did anything to improve my DPS (as Elemental), I did get a couple of new crit records with Fubar_Topscore once I first raided with it, without changing anything else (gear wise) but that's hardly any conclusive evidence.

If the gem does increase all types of crits with 3% how should we weight spell crit rating vs. spell damage on Lootzor.com now?

 

Roywyn

I'm pretty clueless about shaman, but I'm interested in how that gem works for casters.

I checked thottbot, and you have "Flame Shock", which deal a fixed amount of damage - 377 (+spell damage stuff) on impact, and some DoT. And I assume that it can crit, right?

Now you go out and flame shock stuff. Make sure you have no sily proc trinkets, get no buffs, drop no totems.
Then all your Flame Shocks should deal a certain amount of damage, something like 600 and 601 (it should be 2 numbers due to rounding, X and X+1).
Some of them will be crits, those crits should also be a certain amount of damage, like 1200 and 1201 (Y and Y+1).

You go and kill stuff and tell me what your X and Y are, and I'll figure out how the gem works for caster, and how it changes your value of crit.

As for TCing the gem: Assuming you hit for 600, you crit bonus is 300, and you have a talent that increases the crit bonus by 100%. So you crit for ( 600 + 300 * (1+100%) ) = 1200.
Now the gem could make you crit for ( 600 + 300 * (1+100%+3%) ) = 1209,
or could make you crit for ( 600 + (300 * (1+100%) + 3%) ) = 1218,
or it could work as ( 600 + 300 * (1+100%) ) + 3% = 1236.

I need your numbers to find that out really

 

Totemologist

Elemental Shaman here as well. I raid buff out at just over 40% crit to LB, I did see the patch notes for this gem and was immediatly interested in it. Have two quick questions. (I read through some of the TC but did not see the definitive answer).

Does it actually effect my spells?

Does it modify total damage or just the critical damage?
(3k LB crit become 3090 or 3045?)

 

Suggestive

I just ran a test with immolate.

Base damage at rank 9 is 447-448, ignoring the DoT component. At 982 damage, without any proc trinkets or items, i pretty consistently got this.

Immolate hits - 712 - 713
Immolate crits - 1488 - 1489

The crits were quite a bit higher than i expected.

 

galzohar

IF it would work for my fire mage, it would result in 1-1.1% DPS increase, which is 20-22 worth of spell damage. Not bad but not as good as the 5% chance for next spell to be 1/2 cast. Not good enough to make T5 or any other helm with a meta socket worth using. And that's with fire mage where the 1.5X crits become 1.53 before they're multiplied by 1.4 due to ignite, so the effect for any other caster will be even lower. That's with crit rates at the area of 32-38% or so. Other gear doesn't matter (except for the amount of spell damage needed for 1% DPS increase).

 

Suggestive

However, the requirement on the mystical skyfire gem makes it unsavory, at least until a stage is reached where it is possible to hit cap without using +hit gems. Which means the only other gem it really compares to right now is either the +12, or the +14 damage meta.

 

galzohar

Actually I calculated how much I'll lose if I match the silly requirements on it, and the damage lost isn't even close to the damage of that meta. For fireballs 5% chance for next spell to cast 1/2 time is like 2.5% cast speed increase, which is worth over 50 spell damage in terms of DPS. And when you really look into it you don't even lose 10 spell damage when you swap gems around. Problem is when you're not hit capped from gear you do lose a little more, but still not even close to make the meta weak - at least not for fireballs/frostbolts.

 

Oprahwinfury

Ok, I killed a bunch of Worg's in Terokkar with +857 Fire Damage spamming Flame Shock only, this is what I got:

588-589 Non Crit
1229-1230 Crit

This is what wowwiki says about the spell that Elemental Shaman's use ~99% of the time in raids, max rank has a 2 second cast time with talents and gets 85% of our Spell Damage bonus so this gem seems to be very good, for Shamans at least http://www.wowwiki.com/index.php/Lightning_Bolt

@galzohar, the 5% half cast time gem would cut LB into a 1 sec cast but because of the GCD I'm not sure it's worth it for a Elemental Shaman using the Engineering goggles for example.

 

Roywyn

Okay, quick and dirty maths before falling asleep!

Suggestive's data: Immolate hits - 712 - 713, Immolate crits - 1488 - 1489
1488/713 = 2.086956, 1489/712 = 2.091292

Oprahwinfury's data: 588-589 Non Crit, 1229-1230 Crit
1229/589 = 2.086587, 1230/588 = 2.091836

[top]> It makes your crits go from 200% to 209% crits, the bonus goes from 100% to 109%.
This makes crit 9% more useful than it is right now for damage, so if you had 1 crit rating

0.8 dmg before, you now have 1 crit rating = 0.8*1.09 = 0.872.

How does that work formula wise when a spell that hits for 100 damage crits?
Perhaps (100 + 50*critmod_talents+1.03)*1.03?
It would be 209.09, which is between our upper and lower borders from your numbers.
Isn't exactly the same how the hunter numbers work, sadly.

So, anyone with numbers how it affects spells that crit for 150%?

 

galzohar

Yeah I already mentioned I did the numbers for frostbolt and fireball. Granted for lightning bolt it'll be less:
1 in every 20 spells is 1.5s instead of 2s - you get 20 spells in 39.5s instead of 40s - 1.2% cast speed increase. Still more DPS than the extra crit damage trinket probably, but you'll have to math it out, and for lightning bolt it's actually close enough to not bother with its requirements of more blue than yellow and the fact it doesn't give any efficiency.

 

Sven

Wow, I really didn't expect that 209% increase in damage there. Good stuff!

 

galzohar

Yep interesting you're not supposed to get 209% damage crits even if the meta is working. I'd look into any error that could've cauased that (such as - did you average your damage over time or just looked at how much it hit for)?
If you really crit for 209% I'd really appreciate it if someone can post a reasonable explanation for this ;p

 

Oprahwinfury

Suggestive's tests suggest (sorry) that it is 209% as well. I'd say it's probably bugged in it's current form, enjoy it while it lasts.

 

• RK

I already had a Relentless made and ready to test with, but having the minor problem at the moment of not being able to get my t4 helm token to drop to actually plug it in to. If it's 209%, that's insane... will definitely wish harder for the token next week's Prince. Even at 203% it would be the best metagem as per my maths above (because reducing LB to 1 second is defeated by the global cooldown anyway). At 209% it's 5-6 times better than the 14 spell damage metagem.

 

madpeon

My testing with melee crits showed a 206% increase. I used unarmed attacks against a target with no armor/resilience.

2.0 even for crits without the gem, and 2.574 with the gem.

 

Roywyn

Test from a guildy with untalented Arcane Missiles (no crit modifiers):
598-599 hits. 924-925 crits
924/599 = 1.54257, 925/598 = 1.54682

Looks exactly like 150%*1.03, a flat 3% increase of the final crit damage.
We had the same result with fire (Molten Armour 89 hits, 138 crits, but the damage is too low for exact predictions).

So, we have a normal effect on spells without crit damage modifiers, but an increased effect on spells with crit talents.

Looks like the resilience issue to me, that the crit talents apply to a pretty odd number for the crit bonus damage:

C := {(150%*1.03) - 100%} is the difference between a normal hit (100%) and a crit with the crit gem and no crit modifier talents (150%*1.03).
(( Resilience works the same way, with the resilience modifier (0.9 for 10% crit damage reduction) instead of the listed number 1.03 (crit gem). ))

The final damage for a crit seems to be (it fits all test results and fits the resilience problem)
100% + C*(100% + crit_talents).


So, for spells without crit talents we get 154.5% crits, for spells with a +100% crit talent (elemental shaman, balance druids, destruction warlocks, frost mages) we get 209% crits.
Arcane mages get 181.75% crits, arcane/frost mages get 236.25% crits, fire mages (Ignite is no crit modifier but just multiplies the total damage done by 1.4) get 216.3%, arcane/fire mages get 254.45% crits including ignites.

My final thoughts - it's much better than the spirit shard gem, not as good as the half cast time gem. The latter one has a stupid gemming requirement and can mess with spell timing (I have it on my T4 hat and it's really really fun!), so I'll probably have +12 agility on my next hat :o

 

galzohar

Doesn't arcane/fire (spell power + ignite) get 1.75X1.4=2.45 crits? How come it's 2.4545 with the gem? did you mean 254.45? Fits your theory much better looked like you just swapped 2 digits ;p
So for a 33/28 mage this would be the same DPS increase as increasing crit chance by 3.591 if you have 38% crit in full buffs, which is equivalent to 79.3 crit rating or 58 spell damage.
Same math for 10/48/3 makes it worth 38.7 spell damage. For comparison the 5% chance to 1/2 cast time is worth 2.5% haste which is equal in terms of DPS (but not DPM) to 51 spell damage with my gear (~1250-1300 spell damage with full buffs/pots/etc). Not to mention the extra damage you can get by not matching the requirements brings the crit gem to the top of the list of mage gems.

 

galzohar

What I really wonder if the effect on spells is intended or not (seeing the 12 agi on it...)
Don't really want to get that gem just for it to be "fixed" the patch after...

 

sp00n

Well they fixed it because it wasn't working for hunter's arcane shot, so that it now works for all spells.
Maybe it was only a quick fix for the developers to make it work and they will change it later on, but it would be quite stupid if they do so without prior announcement.

Item Ranking Rogue [horribly outdated]

 

kadgar

Tested with a few hundred frostbolts ageinst lvl 1-3 mobs around northshire:
Non Crit dmg from 1518 to 1568.
Crit dmg from 3173 to 3275 wich is clearly 209%.

 

JasonX

Anyone tested with Ice Lance? I wonder what kind of results will it yield.

 

Ascoline

I guess, you meant:
321.5 + [(321.5 * 1.30 * (1+0.03 + 0.03)] * [1+0.03 + 0.03]

[top] 791.1


Somehow Blizzard seems to incorporate the base damage modifier two times. Nice for us. For Clarification:

BD

Base Damage (without slaying talents)
NDM = normal damage modifier, i.e. 0,03 for humanoid slaying
CDM1 = crit dmg modifier 1, i.e. 0,03 for humanoid slaying
CDM2 = crit dmg modifier 2, i.e. 0,03 for relentless earthstrom

The overall crit damage than is:

CritDmg = BD*(1+NDM) + BD(1+NDM)*(1+0,3)*(1+CDM1+CDM2)*(1+CDM1+CDM2)
or
CritDmg = BD* 2,534 (this fits to Eej's Results)

So, Blizz's formula has two "errors" in favor of us by factoring in the relentless earth diamond in the base dmg for the crit part of the formula and by appyling the normal dmg modifier two times.

Now, what happens with the BM's inspiration Buff? Let's call it NDM2, i.e. 0,03

Formula suggests something like that:

CritDmg = BD*(1+NDM+NDM2) + BD(1+NDM+NDM2)*(1+0,3)*(1+CDM1+CDM2+NDM2)*(1+CDM1+CDM2)

or

CritDmg = BD*2,652

Can someone confirm this? This is quite a massive multiplicator for a hunter's crit.

 

Zurgat

I can't say whether it's intended, or whether it'll be reverted in a future patch, but currently thottbot shows the same as wowhead :
Increase Critical Damage 3%
- Increases your physical critical strike damage by 3.

Strange enough the sub-tooptip is:
http://www.thottbot.net/s39957
Apply Aura: Mod Crit Damage Bonus (Physical, Holy, Fire, Nature, Frost, Shadow, Arcane)

Due to the 12 agi, i'm tempted to think it's a gem blizzard intended for physical classes only.
So they "might" change it at some point to stop working with spells.

-= Random Ravings - RSS Feed =- Rogue and Hunter stuff here. As well as guides to get you trough your spare time.

 

sp00n

It *was* already only Physical Damage, i.e. Apply Aura: Mod Crit Damage Bonus (Physical).
They easily could have just added Arcane to the list, but instead they chose Holy, Fire, Nature, Frost, Shadow, Arcane.

Item Ranking Rogue [horribly outdated]

 

sal