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Old 07/30/07, 3:07 PM   #1
Lodi
Piston Honda
 
Night Elf Hunter
 
Draenor
downranking + empowered XXX = ?

Do the empowered XXX talents that add a percent of your spelldamage apply before or after the downranking penalty?

What exactly is the downranking penalty for damage spells? I've heard two things:

A. scaled by (level at which spell is trainable + 6)/(player level) or 1.0, whichever is smaller

B. scaled by (level at which next highest rank is trainable + 5)/(player level) or 1.0, whichever is smaller

Perhaps B. only applies to healing spells whose amount healed increases with level.

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Old 07/30/07, 3:57 PM   #2
Maliva
Von Kaiser
 
Undead Priest
 
Lightninghoof
Why would anyone but a healer want to downrank?

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Old 07/30/07, 4:11 PM   #3
GokieKS
Mostly Harmless.
 
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Citania
Undead Warlock
 
No WoW Account
Originally Posted by Maliva View Post
Why would anyone but a healer want to downrank?
The same reason a healer would want to downrank - better efficiency (DPM/HPM) for better sustainability, at the cost of pure throughput (DPS/HPS).

It's not an issue that comes up often, but there are cases where it's viable to downrank and let the DPM gains outweigh the DPS losses (a warlock doing Patchwerk back when Life Tap gained nothing from +spell damage, for example).

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Old 07/30/07, 4:24 PM   #4
Maliva
Von Kaiser
 
Undead Priest
 
Lightninghoof
Originally Posted by GokieKS View Post
The same reason a healer would want to downrank - better efficiency (DPM/HPM) for better sustainability, at the cost of pure throughput (DPS/HPS).

It's not an issue that comes up often, but there are cases where it's viable to downrank and let the DPM gains outweigh the DPS losses (a warlock doing Patchwerk back when Life Tap gained nothing from +spell damage, for example).
Isn't that what mana pots are for?

j/k, I just had never heard any mana using DPS class talk about downranking to save mana....our hunters for instance generally carry super mana pots and usually only need 1 on a long fight. Our locks never run OOM and our Mages with evo + mana pots never rum OOM either.....but, we haven't gone beyond gruul so that could change.

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Old 07/30/07, 5:13 PM   #5
caladein
Homer at the Bat
 
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Goblin Hunter
 
Wildhammer
Empowered Healing adds to the coefficient after the downranking penalty so it's a constant +Heal over all ranks (Holy Priest 2pc T5 discussion).

It should be easy enough to test for the offensive talents if they function the same way.

Last edited by caladein : 07/30/07 at 5:17 PM. Reason: Removed conjecture.

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Old 07/30/07, 5:18 PM   #6
Donzig
Glass Joe
 
Troll Mage
 
Hyjal
There really isn't any reason for any DPS to downgrade. If you're worried about mana efficiency as a DPS class, then you need to GTFO and reroll. On most fights, i'll end with about half my full mana(as a mage), and that is without having a shadow priest or shaman.

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Old 07/30/07, 6:13 PM   #7
Tharas
Don Flamenco
 
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Human Warrior
 
Draenor
Originally Posted by Donzig View Post
There really isn't any reason for any DPS to downgrade. If you're worried about mana efficiency as a DPS class, then you need to GTFO and reroll. On most fights, i'll end with about half my full mana(as a mage), and that is without having a shadow priest or shaman.
Serious question (and possibly the inverse of the original question) -- I looked at your (Donzig's) spec and you are classic 10/48/3 like all of our guild's high-DPS mages right now -- but if you are ending a boss fight at half-mana, are there other options that have worse DPM but higher DPS than your current cycle (Arcane Blast is the only one I can think of offhand).

I have a mage alt who I am just learning to play now at level 70, and have been wondering about these situations. It seems like a mage's job is to burn his entire mana pool on a fight (ideally the killing blow is the one that makes you go OOM after evocation/pots/gems if you are truly going all out). However, I can imagine being threat-capped or otherwise limited in what you can do.

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Old 07/30/07, 10:50 PM   #8
Lazare
Piston Honda
 
Human Priest
 
Lightbringer
Originally Posted by caladein View Post
Empowered Healing adds to the coefficient after the downranking penalty so it's a constant +Heal over all ranks (Holy Priest 2pc T5 discussion).

It should be easy enough to test for the offensive talents if they function the same way.
Incorrect. Data from that thread showed fairly clearly that the Empowered Healing coefficient is applied before the downranking penalty. The testing methodology was to calculate the effective coefficient being applied to GHeal 1 with 5/5 Empowered Healing, which was shown to be in the range 76.55% - 77.03%.

Predicted coefficient if EH applied after downranking:
(3/3.5 * 51/70) + 0.2 = 82.4%

EH applied before downranking:
(3/3.5 + 0.2) * 51/70 = 77.02%

In other words, if EH applied after the downranking penalty, then some of the heals people reported in that thread would be inexplicably too small.

Last edited by Lazare : 07/31/07 at 7:19 AM. Reason: The words "before" and "after" are not synonyms.

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Old 07/31/07, 2:25 AM   #9
Kasonic
Don Flamenco
 
Orc Death Knight
 
Hyjal
I remember downranking to rank 4 Frostbolt during BWL on longer fights like Ebonroc, which I could cast forever. But that's back when mages using mana potions was unheard of, and before Vampiric Touch.

I think the cases where it'd be advantageous would be slim none, especially in the TBC world of constant looming enrage timers. Perhaps if your guild has no shadow priests.

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Old 07/31/07, 5:36 AM   #10
Lactose
Don Lactose
 
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Tauren Hunter
 
Talnivarr (EU)
Originally Posted by Lazare View Post
Originally Posted by caladein View Post
Empowered Healing adds to the coefficient after the downranking penalty...
Incorrect. Data from that thread showed fairly clearly that the Empowered Healing coefficient is applied after the downranking penalty.
I'm confused. Is this not the same thing?

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Old 07/31/07, 6:53 AM   #11
Xei
Don Flamenco
 
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Troll Monk
 
Mal'Ganis
Arcane Mages quite regularly downrank Arcane Missiles.

It can proc Clearcast which gives you a free spell plus higher crit chance.

Can proc trinkets/items like TLC or Spellstrike.

Gives mana back from JoW while still giving chance to proc the above.

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Old 07/31/07, 7:18 AM   #12
Lazare
Piston Honda
 
Human Priest
 
Lightbringer
Originally Posted by Lactose View Post
I'm confused. Is this not the same thing?
Typo; sorry. The formulas were correct, however.

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Old 07/31/07, 10:13 AM   #13
MacrosTheNaked
Glass Joe
 
Night Elf Druid
 
Hellscream (EU)
Originally Posted by Xei View Post
Arcane Mages quite regularly downrank Arcane Missiles.

It can proc Clearcast which gives you a free spell plus higher crit chance.

Can proc trinkets/items like TLC or Spellstrike.

Gives mana back from JoW while still giving chance to proc the above.


Correct, I use rank8 quite regularly on very long fights or when missing a spriest, with jow on a mob popping rank5 arcane missles means that I can do constant DPS even when oom, since all the jow procs + normal regen compensate the mana cost and giving me a chance to proc TLC/ insightful earthstorm diamond. Downranking to rank5 is obviously only in very extreme cases.

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Old 07/31/07, 4:06 PM   #14
Drundia
Piston Honda
 
Undead Warlock
 
Sylvanas (EU)
Here is what I remember as testing of Rank 1 Shadow Bolt with Shadow and Flame.

First, Shadow Bolt (Rank 1) is 1.7 sec cast spell giving it a coefficient of 1.7/3.5 = 0.4857...

Then, it is learned at level 1 (19 before 20) receiving a multiplicative modifier of (1-0.0375*(20-level)) which is 0.2875

This brings coefficient to 0.13964...

Then we add Shadow and Flame which is additive 0.2 resulting in 0.3396...

Shadow Bolt (Rank 1) base damage points increase up to level 6, making it count as level 6 for this purpose and the buffer (just as Blizzard stated) is extra 5 levels, this produces last multiplicative modifier of 11/70

This ends in coefficient of 0.05337... which quite well matches experimental results.

So as a conclusion
1. Base spell coefficient
2. Penalty for spells learned before level 20
3. Empowered talents
4. Downranking penalty.

Don't forget that downranking penalty usually starts 11+ levels after spell was learned (11 for most or even all spells that received ranks every 6 levels pre-tbc and some spells that received ranks every 8 levels pre-tbc). In most cases lower ranks have higher mana efficiency as long as they are learned after level 16-20 or so, however compared to pre-2.0 we are talking about small mana efficiency improvement for a huge effect loss, instead of a huge mana efficiency improvement for a small effect loss.

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Old 08/01/07, 8:01 AM   #15
galzohar
Bald Bull
 
Blood Elf Paladin
 
Darksorrow (EU)
I remember I ran a spreadsheet for the hell of it for priest heals seeing a very neglicible difference in efficiency when downrakning with +heal at the 1500-2000 ranges. The only efficiency you get in this case is less overhealing, not more raw HP/mana.

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