EDIT for Actual Date-

Testing to happen US/Alliance/PVP server Sunday October 28th, 1pm Central Time

I'd like to start getting a list of things to test, and people to test them. I'd like it to be after the 2.2 changes go live. What I'm getting at are issues like the following, which comes up often:

- How much does GoA totem benefit a rogue? How about a warrior? What about Wind Fury Totem?

I think we can have a fairly productive set of testing sessions if we can set of people who can agree on a time to do such tests.

The reason to start this thread now, beyond gauging interest, is to run testing ideas through the other people here.

For instance, in the example above - what mob do we test on? Will we need a healer? What specs should the participants be? What is the control against which we'll test? How much data collection is necessary to provide a high level of confidence in the results?

So...

Who all is interested, and what mechanics would you like to test. Please be detailed in your post regarding any possible tests, so that we can critique and improve upon any deficiencies.

Edit- we won't need a vent server since it will be built into the game by that time!

Update: Depending on the premade characters available, we might be better off using premade toons so that we can all be horde or all be alliance. That might greatly increase the chance of having enough people for the tests on the EU and US servers.

I will volunteer myself to help for a couple hours testing the above question. I would also like to get a number on how much GoA benefits a hunter and feral druid. If we have enough volunteers, we could even get an estimate of the TPS provided by Windfury.

Probably the best choice of target would be High Priest Venoxis, since he is a boss mob that heals himself.

I'd like to help out, I have the necessary totems I think hehe.

Most of the time I've done my testing on the mobs in blasted lands as you can keep damaging and you do not require much healing, but i am not sure if they are high enough level for it to be completely accurate.

Another point is that you'd probably want an enhancement shaman with 2/2 enhancing totems for the bonus to GOA and maybe improved weapon totems for the increases to the AP bonus from WF totem, but I am not sure how many raiding shamans spec into the second one.

The last issue is that we didn't not receive a new rank of GOA with TBC so the max rank is only 77 agility, or 88.55 (not sure how it rounds off) with improved weapon totems.

Hope this helps.

Make sure you get a paladin for Blessing of Kings when testing grace of air. And both tests will want a warrior for battle shout, I'm sure. Those buffs are both standard and meaningful.

Just another note:

Survival hunter gains another 15% from GoA so the increase you get to expose weakness goes pretty darn high boosting the raid damage a lot as well.

Ok, I'll give a shot at the type of submission we'd want for the test:

PURPOSE: Determine the affect of Grace of Air and Windfury Totem on Physical DPS Groups in a raid setting

Player requirements:
Group 1:
1) Warrior tank to apply sunders/devestates, and to keep aggro as s/he would in a raid environment so as to ensure the ability to attack the target from behind.
2) Paladin Healer for warrior with Kings
3) Paladin with Blessing of Might

Group 2:
1) Enhancement shaman for totems and UR, spec'd for raid dps (inc weapon totems)
2) Fury Warrior DPS with improved battle shout
3) Mutilate spec'd rogue
4) Combat Swords spec'd rogue
5) Feral druid for Leader of the Pack, Mangle, and their own DPS testing.

Discussion - This is what I believe is the *typical* group make up. I understand that hunters can also benefit, per the post above. If investigated, we would want another group for that, in my opinion, due to the fact that all 5 people in the enhance shaman's are the ones that discussion centers around, primarily.

Target Choice - To be decided
Options thus far are:
1) Halaani Guard.
- Pros: Lots of health, easy to get to
- Cons: Only level 65, if wrong faction controls halaa, could be problematic
2) High Priest Venoxis
- Pros: Boss level mob (counts as 73 for melee mechanics? Please confirm)
- Pro: Heals itself
- Con: I don't know that even with healing that it wouldn't be beaten down, causing a one week delay, accidentally.

Methodology:

Test 1
Tank pulls, builds threat
DPS goes all out, using standard abilities, except...
Shaman - does not use bloodlust/heroism
Shaman - does not use an air totem, just Strength of Earth, uses Earth Shock/Flame Shock.

Test 2
Tank pulls, builds threat
DPS goes all out, using standard abilities, except...
Shaman - uses Windfury (max rank) Totem, in addition to Strength of Earth, uses Earth Shock/Flame Shock.

Test 3
Tank pulls, builds threat
DPS goes all out, using standard abilities, except...
Shaman - uses Grace of Air (max rank) Totem, in addition to Strength of Earth, uses Earth Shock/Flame Shock.

Test 4
Tank pulls, builds threat
DPS goes all out, using standard abilities, except...
Shaman - twists Grace of Air (max rank) Totem and Windfury Totem (rank 2), in addition to Strength of Earth, uses no shocks.

Testing Duration: 20 minutes of combat for each test.
Discussion - this is arbitrary - any thoughts?

Data Collection: Combat Logs taken and uploaded to lossendil for WWS parse.

Good point, and Horde vs Alliance also, for that matter. The nice thing is, this post will collect the rosters, as it were, as well as tests. If we find that a Horde EU group is large enough and comprised well enough to do test x, and an alliance US group works for test y, we can divy up the workload.

I'm hoping that... dare I say it... We get enough tanks and healers!

PURPOSE: Confirm/Deny presence of one-roll system for casters

Discussion - While it's generally taken as a given that casters use a one-roll system, it hasn't actually been confirmed one way or another. Anecdotal evidence suggests that supressing hit chance via fighting a high-level target does not push normal hits off the combat table as one would expect; however, these experiments are not controlled against the possibility of massive level-based crit-chance supression that may also be occurring. I propose testing against even- or boss-level targets with innate hit-suppression abilities.

Player requirements:
Method one:
A Kara+ group, with lots of casters (other dps optional, pally tank prefered)
Method two:
Lots of casters, lots of rogues. Casters with high crit rates are preferable (scorch mages, 40/18 searing pain warlocks, elemental shamans).

Target Choice
Method One: Attumen
Pros: he's not really that hard
Cons: kinda far away, takes 10 players, trash clearing, please don't kill him
Method Two: A Rogue using Cloak of Shadows
Pros: rogues on a test realm are easy to find
Cons: cooldown, short window of opportunity

Methodology:
Method One:
Clear to attumen, dps down midnight, and then casters sit around and wait for Attumen to Curse the raid, at which point they spam dps (preferably fast-casting spells) until the debuff wears out. Repeat. Wipe/run out when he gets to low health.

Method Two:
Coordination via vent/VOIP probably necessary to get a large enough sample in any reasonable ammount of time. More casters and more rogues are preferably, up to 30 rogues.
Go to a FFA PVP zone (nagrand/BEM/Gurubashi/DM arenas). Have a rogue pop CloS, nuke him repeatedly for the four seconds or until he dies. Move on to next rogue.

Testing Duration:
Method One: As long as healer mana and boss health permits
Method Two: Four seconds at a time -_-.

Data Collection: Combat Logs taken and uploaded to lossendil for WWS parse.

Re: Venoxis ... it's fairly trivial to reset. When he triggers into the 50% "Imma snake, imma pwn j00" ... just run him through the doorway and reset. Bam.

I think he wanted to use Attumen for this:

Intangible Presence - Spells - World of Warcraft

Thanks much for that information. The only other issue i'd have with venoxis is total health. From High Priest Venoxis - NPCs - World of Warcraft , it shows that he has 210K health. With that much health, and each dps class doing roughly 1k dps, that's raid aggregate 5k dps. Assuming we leave him at 20%, that gives us 160k health to burn through.

160/5 = 32.

Does 32 second bits seem like an appropriate length of combat segments to get good data? I worry that it's so short that even things like rogues all starting with 100% energy would throw it off.

On the other hand, it's nice to know that he's resettable. Rogues, what do you think - is a 40 unit set of 30 second chunks (to make 20 minutes total) representative enough of a 20 minute sustained fight that observed dps increases would be meaningful?

If so, I think that Venoxis would indeed be a good target.

<possible stupid suggestion>

I read that the first boss of ZA will be right when you get in the door. I have no idea if the fight is at all set up in a way which would be easy to use for test data, or not. It could be a quick 73 boss mob.

IIRC you're going to have to get through several waves of bear mobs, so no telling how quick that will be.

This test is akin to your method 2 (on a smaller scale) and seems to indicate that its a two-roll system.

PURPOSE:
Determine whether or not Hunter attacks are 1-roll or 2-roll.


TEST CONDITIONS:
AQ20 - Kurinnaxx
Some Hunters (more = better, 20% crit minimum), and tanks (2x?)/healers as needed.


TEST METHOD:
Have Hunters get affected by Sand Trap. Fire at boss, specials (direct damage, e.g. Steady Shot spamming) and auto shots, noting outcome of attacks.


RESULTS:
While under the affect of Sand Trap, against a boss, the Hunter's miss chance will be 84% before +Hit gear --> 16% chance to hit.
Under these conditions, the Hunter will have a higher chance to crit than to hit (keep in mind +Hit gear!).
If a HIT is observed, this is proof of a 2-roll system for Hunter attacks. This is due to a 1-roll system would only leave room for MISS and CRIT


ADDITIONAL INFO:
Auto Shot and specials should be seperated in the testing, as they may be treated differently.

I'm curious as to why Twisting GoA (max) and only rank2 of WF totem? Why not max rank WF totem (rank5)?

If it was a mana issue, with no shocking the twisting shaman should have no mana issues at all.

Yeah, Vulajin has it exactly right - maybe Rank 5 totem would be possible without running out of mana with well behaving shamanistic rage procs, but it cuts it so close (in my experience). At least, with my attack power it does.

I like always having a teeny bit of mana in reserve at least. Rank 2 gives the best bang for the buck imo - It's considerably less mana than rank 5, and considerably higher AP bonus than rank one. Having enough mana to flameshock is rather nice as well.

Also, after reading Vulajin's PM, I've added this to the initial post:
Update: Depending on the premade characters available, we might be better off using premade toons so that we can all be horde or all be alliance. That might greatly increase the chance of having enough people for the tests on the EU and US servers.

Duly noted. While the sample size is small, the presence of non-crit hits is convincing.

Nonetheless, I would like to run the test on Attumen anyways, just in case there's a mechanical difference between a target buff (CloS) and a caster debuff (attumen). It's entirely possible that the CloS buff ignores 90% of casts, after combat resolution, but the curse would not since it affects internal hit chance.

It will also provide a very nice control set on gear.

The problem with premade gear is, for PvE the rogue gear, excuse my words... SUCKS BALLS.
IIRC i managed to barely break 240 hit rating in t6 equivalent gear. If i had a rogue applicant in that gear apply to our guild with that kind of gear i would tell him to L2P.

Unless we're looking at maximum potential dps, it's doesn't really matter. The important thing is that it's all standardized. For testing 1-roll vs 2-roll you would want a lower hit chance anyways =P.

Might I suggest that, if this is coordinated, it happens on the PvE test realm? It just makes a more controlled environment to test things in.

I'd be willing to provide a warrior for the WF testing (EU PTR) both for the DPS gain WF vs GoA and the TPS gain.

Same goes for the warrior dps gear, and I'm pretty sure the 2.2 PTR didn't even have tank gear for warriors. Tho that might have changed later on I'm not sure.