Has anyone run the numbers on Sextant of Unstable Currents vs. Serpent-Coil Braid vs. Darkmoon Card: Crusade (vs. Icon of the Silver Crescent and/or The Lightning Capacitor, if any of those are still relevant)? A bunch of new trinkets just became more widely available and I don't have any hard numbers yet.

Offhand, Braid seems to outdo previous timered trinkets. 225 for 15/120 seconds is a stronger use than the 153 for 15/90 from Icon, and the passive is about the same. Seems like a minor upgrade overall, but does anyone have experience with the inconvenience of having your trinket activiation tied to your managem?

What's the procrate of Sextant, and how does it line up?

Crusade is slightly better average DPS than any timered trinket do far, but has the disadvantages of the ramp-up and the fact that it's not activated.

Anyone have a definite preference of two?

I've just been calculating the value of all highlevel mage trinkets for use in my own item spreadsheet, based on the proc rates etc given on wowhead. (And also assuming the generally accepted 10/48/3 spec of course)

I'll dig up some hard numbers for you when I get home from work, but right now I recall well that The Lightning Capacitor is far and away the best possible trinket. With about 35% practical fireball critrate (which is easy enough in mid-Karazhan) it's equal to about +100 dmg. Serpent-Coil Braid looks very attractive (fun?) but falls abit short in the end (the mana bonus works out to approx 11 mana/5 IIRC). Sextant is basically an improved Shiffar's (still among the very best) since it shares the exact same procrate/internal CD (20% and 45s). As for the Crusade card, well, it approaches +80 dmg on longer fights and is very weak in a "trash-clearing" situation.

I seem to recall the six best in my calcs were TLC then (not in correct order!) Sextant, Quagmirran's, Shiffar, Icon and Braid. As I said, I'll update

Icon is 155 for 20/120. Which is ~+26 passive. The Serpent-Coil Braid is still better, though at ~+28.

Each of these comes pretty close to the +80 from Crusade. I've found the +80 is fairly easy to maintain even during fights where your casting is forcibly interrupted such as Magtheridon, using ice Lance or Fireblast you can keep the buff from falling off while you are otherwise unable to cast.

That said, it still does take some effort in many encounters, and of course I think it's just flat out bad on Trash where I've tried it but it often does not spend much time fully stacked.

If you take a 33% crit rate, it takes about 27 seconds for Lightning Capicitor to go off for Fireball and about 13.5 seconds for Scorch spam. Clearly the DPS is doubled for Scorch spam, and that's without counting the +4% from Incinerate into it going off more often. If you take the average bolt coming out of the Capacitor (unfairly not counting crits) at 750, you get ~28 DPS for Fireball spam, or 56 for Scorch.

If you count Icon as a total passive of +69, that comes out stronger than Lightning Capacitor. As would, then, Serpent-Coil Braid and Dark Moon: Crusade.

An exception to this is Capacitor + Crusade being ideal for AEing such as Morogrim, as they both trigger off each individual crit and hit respectively. You end up with the Card stacking very fast and the Capacitor firing off a lot of bolts.

edit:

Asherett, I would be interested to see your math as I do not believe there is any way the Capacitor approaches +100 damage for Fireball spam. For Scorch spam, it definitely could. Scorch does not benefit nearly as much in terms of DPS from +damage as Fireball, and obviously benefits a lot more from the Capacitor. For this reason on trash with low maximum health I tend to use the Capacitor and Scorch.

Let's see. I'll take the average TLC bolt at 900 damage (assuming 20% base spell crit rate, which is quite conservative I think). Let's simplify things a bit and say it fires every 10 fireballs - that's 90 damage to each fireball. I can't recall my practical coefficients right now, but ok, 80 +dmg shouldn't be stretching it at least?

As you point out it would be a proportionally much higher +dam equivalent for Scorch - this is why I put it at ~100 +dmg in all (sorry if I implied fireballs only in my first post).

If I'm not mistaken, you seem to be mixing up DPS and +damage in your comparison of TLC to other trinkets

DO feel free to point out any errors I make, I don't have my spreadsheet and I admit I'm out on thin ice.

i think my capacitator's average procc is more around 750, maybe a bit higher

I will go on and post my numbers. First a note about stat weights: when comparing different stats, I take +dmg (or +fire) to be the baseline (weight 100), which leads to 1 crit rating = weight 63 and 1 hit rating = weight 51. The certainty of these numbers are totally dependent on the certainty of the DrDamage addon, otherwise they are correct for my character. Furthermore, I have (from experience/personal preference) set weights of 60 for mana/5 and 50 for spell haste. The rating for spell haste is completely speculative, I have no real info about how spell haste affects DPS. I assume 1 crit per 10 seconds for the sake of critbased procs.

Thus:

TLC: 11667 value: (((1/0.9)*(750*1.2)*(0.35/3))*100

Magtheridon's Eye: 9650 value: (54+(170*(10/40)))*100

Shiffar's: 8640 value: (225*(15(10/0.2)))*100 + 30*63

Sextant: 8220 value: (190*(15/(10/0.2)))*100 + 40*63

Icon: 6883 value: (43+(155*(20/120)))*100

Quagmirran's Eye: 6367 value: 37*100 + (320*(6/(30+6)))*50


I hope this is at least slightly readable/understandable. We often have the usual (staticdmg +) dmg*(timeeffect/totaltime) calc.

For TLC I assume 1 +dmg = 0.9 actual damage, trying to find a balance between Scorch and Fireball coefficients. I'm also assuming a 35% fire critrate and 20% nature critrate.

For Mag's Eye I am assuming 1 "miss" every 40 seconds.

Shiffar's is currently better than the Sextant, since it's effect lasts 15 seconds (tooltip says 10). For both of these I assume 20% procrate (from wowhead)

For Quag's I assume fireball spam and 10% proc (wowhead), so it will proc every 30 seconds, then last 6 (I'm assuming it can't stack or overlap, info about internal CD is unavailable).

Serpent-Coil Braid is a bit more complex so I'll take it by itself here:

(225*(15/120))*100 + 30*63 + 12*51 + ((1067*0.25)/120)*5)*60

1067 is the average mana value of the three best mana gems.

This gives an overall value for the Braid of 5981, which is unfortunately less than even The Restrained Essence of Sapphiron (6167).


A lot of numbers here Let me be clear that my stat weights (expecially except for hit and crit) are highly subjective and based greatly on my own character. I do think most firemages at my item level have reasonably similar relationships for +dmg/crit and +dmg/hit though.

You are mistaken, I simply didn't list the DPS figures for the other trinkets as it's complicated and I didn't feel like going into it. I have to leave right this moment but I'll look into your figures in more detail when I get back.

I noticed an enchancement shaman in that group. The lightning capaciter does get the 20% benefit off of stormstrike. Maybe that's why the average seems high?

That's a good point! However, the only assumption I'm making is that the bolt CAN crit, which I think there's ample evidence for

sorry forgot about crit, and the gear on armory is my pvp gear, i have 372 crit rating in damage gear

Your math is unnecessarily obfuscated and complicated, IMHO.

Even if you factor in a 20% crit rating, you have to remember that the Capacitor only crits for 150% not 200%, so that boosts its damage to 825 average, not 900. So even at 825 over 27 seconds it's adding 30.5 DPS. That's not insignificant.

However, if we value Icon as a passive +69 (given the Use is done every opportunity), that adds 70 damage to an Improved Empowered Fireball (105%). That's 23 DPS before we even begin to add in all the other factors which cannot affect the Lightning Capacitor. 210% crits, Fire Vulnerability, Curse of Elements, et cetera.

OTOH, Lightning Capacitor adds 61 DPS when Scorch spamming. This is incredibly difficult to match with any other trinket.

edit:

In case anyone doubts that the Icon can make the climb from 23 DPS to over 30.5, here's things that affect its damage which do not affect the Capacitor:

- Fire Power +10%
- Fire Vulnerability +15%
- Curse of Elements +13%

(Total, +38%, now at 30.7 DPS)

- Critical Mass +6% crit
- Pyromaniac +3% crit
- Ignite (210% crit damage)

(+10% damage, now at 34 DPS)

- Molten Fury
- Combustion

Harder to calculate in, but not insignificant.

Maybe I left something out? I don't know. Anyway, my point was not that the Lightning Capacitor is not good. Simply that it is not optimal for Fireball spamming.

Stein, why do you have separate rankings for Shiffar's & Sextant but not for the Capacitor?

The Capacitor benefits from Scorch even more than those trinkets. Those 2 trinkets have crit and damage which scale with the larger Fireball, whereas the Capacitor does not. Of any trinket it is the one which most begs to have separate rankings.

Lightning cap seems best to me in a couple situations

Scorch (short cast - increased crit rate from incinerate)
Arcane missiles (can proc each wave and interesting interaction from arcane potency)
Arcane Blast (short cast - boosted crit rate from arcane impact)
PvP (coupled with molten armor. )

laziness again the +58 dam estimation was from someone else's math in some post somewhere on these boards. I'll try to redo the math myself accounting for fireball, scorch & ab.

based on the following formulas for TLC:

Damage per proc: (750*(1+(BaseCrit%/2))) * BaseHit%
Time to proc: CastTime/(SpellCrit%*SpellHit%)*3

TLC seems to add 24 dps on the low end (fireball spam) and 50ish DPS on the high end (scorch spam & ABx3+AM/Scorch cycles).

Sextant with moonkin and ele shaman gives me 20% X 37% chance to proc meaning 2.4666% chance to proc per second or 1 proc every 40.5 seconds. Then you add the 45s cooldown for 85.5 seconds, or 0.01169 procs/second. With 15s duration it's up 17.54% of the time or gives 33.06 average damage over time. 40 crit rating is worth 29.2 spell damage in terms of DPS making it sum up for 62.26 damage. Nothing amazing for a SSC item, but not bad at all. (edit: thought sextant was 225 damage while in fact it's only 190).

Icon of the silver cresent is 43+153X20/120=68.5... But it can also be used on times where you know it'll be used to full effect. So while in theory if you randomly spam it you'll get 68.5 average damage, smart usage will always yield more than that. Of course you can get screwed with bad luck but on average you'll get more than 68.5 damage from it if you use it wisely. How much more depends on the fight - usually not much more at all, so 68.5 is close enough of a vaule to treat it.

Shiffar's nexus horn is the exact same calculation as the sextant, so I won't repeat it...

Qua'g's eye is 320 haste rating which is 15.24% haste. 10% chance per fireball means 3.333% chacne per second or a proc every 30 seconds. 18 seconds cooldown makes it once every 48 seconds, 2.08% chance per second or 6.25% chance to proc per fireball. Getting 3 fireballs off with it means you spent 7.8s doing the DPS of 9 seconds. Add the 1.2/3 fireball remaining and you casted 3.4 fireballs in the time of 3 fireballs, means your DPS was increased by 13.33% for 9 seconds. 13.33% is equivalent, with my gear and full buffs/consumeables, to 273.65 damage. So 273.65 damage for 9 seconds every 48 seconds equals 51 damage. Add the 37 damage and you end up with 88 damage - pretty uber for a blue trinket, however it only gives mana efficiency as if it had 37 damage plus a very little from casting faster (oom faster = more mana to spend, but really nothing significant). Of course most fights mana isn't an issue (I lasted through mag with shadow priest, judgement and combat pots with molten armor up (and extremely rare few seconds of wanding on judgement) and only clicking cube once the whole fight, and that fight is rediculessly long). So mana is really not an issue.

All other use trinkets are easy to figure out like the icon of the silver cresent and they all suck compared to the other trinkets in this post, but better than other trinkets not in this post.

Not having a TLC, my TLC theory crafting is pure theory. I was assuming it benefited from our +crit & +hit gear. Do you think that is not the case?

serpent coil: 225X15/120=28.125 damage but in very long fights you'll go out of gems, which is when you really need the extra mana from it it loses damage in return which sucks. When mana isn't an issue, it prevents use of healthstones and flame caps. In short fight ignoring the fact you could use stuff instead of mana gems, it gives 12X1.32=15.84 damage from hit, 21.9 damage from the 30 crit so adds up to average 65.865 damage in best case scenario for it with a bit of added mana which isn't even needed in the best case scenario for this trinket. It's far from a bad trinket though, but with icon of the silver cresent and quag's eye I wouldn't bother.

Do you always have a moonkin, ele shaman & shadow priest? If so, I'm jealous.

Your time to proc is off. It should be the average amount of time it takes to score three critical hits. I think you are currently calculating the time to have a single critical hit, unless I'm missing something obvious.

thanks

So then would that make TLC 24dps on Fireball spam and 50dps on Scorch? That seems pretty terrible.

I'm confused -- how is hit rating worth less than crit for a Fire mage? Every calculation I've ever seen has 1 hit rating being worth MORE than 1 damage on Bosses, let alone being as bad as crit is. It seems outright impossible for hit to have such a low value, since it's so ridiculously cheaper per 1% than crit.