AM with and without judgement will cost the same with haste as it would with no haste. It doesn't get cheaper with more haste, the mana spent per second scales up with haste on AM just like any other spell that gets a benefit from haste.
All specs have something that haste doesn't work on - frost has water elemental, fire has scorch and arcane has AB spamming. The real question is how big is that portion of those specs and how good is spell damage/crit for them so you can compare it to haste.
I see. However, for my own playing style, I would place Icon below Crusade. This is because I won't always get to use Icon exactly every 2 minutes. There are often situations where I tend to wait a while longer just so I can stack Icon + other effects, or simply because I anticipate that I will need to move or hold dps to handle some boss abilities.
This is exactly why the icon (or any other "on use" trinket) is always at LEAST as good as its theoretical value. The theoretical value is assuming that statistically the % of the trinket uptime you lose is the same as the % DPS time you lose when the trinket is inactive. When a fight has any mechanic that makes it worth it to not pop the trinket on-cooldown, you're actually gaining MORE than the theoretical value. If you want an intuitive approach, think about it as "using it when it matters and letting it cool down when it doesn't matter". That's why on-use trinkets will always have at LEAST their theoretical damage*time/coodlown, and in general will get slightly more.
Wether the "getting more out of on-use trinkets" is enough to make the icon better than the card or not is harder to tell, especially when the card isn't a flat 80 damage either at least on some of the fights. The more "tank&spank" the fight is, the better the card, and the more predictable dps downtimes there are in a fight, the better the "on-use" trinkets, especially if they're long enough to make your card buff fall off.
Of course on top of that the shorter the fight is the more benefit the icon will get from combustion and heroism. On a 10 minutes fight for example, the icon will get 1/5 heroism per use on average, resulting in the 153/6=25.5 damage getting a 0.45/5=0.09 bonus resulting in it being worth almost 2.3 damage more just due to heroism (assuming neglicible haste rating on gear).
In reply to haste-bashers. Regardless of what other stats the items have on them, Spell Haste is still better point for point than crit and dmg.
Having to compare one item versus another isn't anything new just because there is a new stat, you could easily find many items that are better than items with a lot of haste but that does not change the fact that the stat is simply better than anything else point-for-point when hit capped.
The main problem seems to be that people are entirely underrating haste just because they don't have enough of it yet to virtually see a vast improvement. You add 30 spell damage and your fireballs will hit ~50+ harder.... that is easy to see. You add 30 crit rating, YAY my crit rating went up ~1.3% on my stat page, hooray. However, you add 30 spell haste and all you get is your fireball tooltip reading 2.94 seconds instead of 3.00 and no virtual cast time reduction (despite the fact that there is an actual cast time reduction and it is very valuable).
This is exactly why the icon (or any other "on use" trinket) is always at LEAST as good as its theoretical value. The theoretical value is assuming that statistically the % of the trinket uptime you lose is the same as the % DPS time you lose when the trinket is inactive. When a fight has any mechanic that makes it worth it to not pop the trinket on-cooldown, you're actually gaining MORE than the theoretical value. If you want an intuitive approach, think about it as "using it when it matters and letting it cool down when it doesn't matter". That's why on-use trinkets will always have at LEAST their theoretical damage*time/coodlown, and in general will get slightly more.
This assessment (as a response to the OP) is invalid. On use trinkets (OUTs) are definitely NOT at least as good as their theoretical values.
If not provably untrue, it is at least too complicated for me to picture mentally that the strictness of your statement (as implied by your use of caps.) exists. I think what you are implying is that improvements on the theoretical maximum value of OUTs exist when atypical damage multipliers exist (e.g. Curator Evocation, casting combustion, gaining bloodlust, etc.) In that regard, your assessment is true.
The problem is that the simple model for OUTs is based on popping the trinket on every cooldown. The poster that you are responding to, however, is saying that he values OUTs less because he is not generally capable of this (whether because of distraction, encounter mechanics, etc.)
In summary, its very clear that an OUT can behave worse than its theoretical value: just don't pop the trinket. But the OP and your response to it are talking about two different ideas. The maximization of these things requires BOTH a plan for when the best time to activate the OUT is (what you talk about) and the mindfulness (not entirely sure that is a word) of the player to activate it (what the OP talks about.)
Postscript - In the future, thinking that something is "at least as good as its theoretical value" should generally set off warning lights in your head. Something is likely amiss in your assessment, as theoretical values are generally maximum values by definition. The only constraint, of course, is the precision of the model used to find it.
Disclaimer: This post is based on top-of-the-head observation. I.E. I could easily be proven wrong on this.
The reason that spell haste and spell hit ratings are so valuable is because of the nature of the DPS formula:
DPS = Hit% x Spell Damage*
Net Cast Time**
It should be obvious, when looking at this formula, that a 1% increase to Hit or a 1% decrease in Net Cast Time will always yield a 1% increase in DPS. Because Hit% is hard capped at 99% and Net Cast Time is theoretically asymptotally approaching 0, a 1% increase in the two major inputs into Spell Damage is strictly less than 1%. (Hint: order of operations)
I feel like I am not saying something that I wanted to say when I started writing this post, and generally I try not to post incomplete thoughts, but what I have here should be sufficient on its own) if for nothing else, to generate discussion).
Activable trinkets are better for a totally different reason. If the fight lasts 20 seconds, you get 100% uptime from icon. If the fight lasts 2 min, you get the expected 1/6 uptime. However, since most fights durations aren't multipliers of 2 min, you often end up with increased uptime. This is not to mention cooldown stacking, which also come into play. For us most fight lasts 3 min, so I get 1 combustion, 1 bloodlust, 1 flamecap and 2 trinket activations. In this case I'm far and away much better with icon over crusade. Stacking combustion, bloodlust, execute range/molten fury, flamecap, skull and icon gives a good dps increase.
The problem is that for the most part people estimate activable trinkets over an infinite duration. Usually icon is modelled as 43 + 155 / 6 = 43 + 25.83 = 68.83 passive damage. But then, ignoring cooldown stacking, if the fight duration is 3 min, then your uptime is in fact 40 seconds out of 180 seconds, which gives: 43 + 155 * (40/180) = 43 + 34.44 = 77.44 dmg.
This is essentially the same as frost dps from WE. The closer the fight matches the cooldowns of the spec your playing, the better the dps. For a 20 seconds fight, AP / icon will give a totally absurd dps increase. The same principle applies when comparing specs - fight duration will have a big impact due to cooldowns differing from spec to spec.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
The theoretical maximum is 100% uptime, and I don't think that's really useful. Average uptime is dependent on average encounter duration, the shorter that average is, the higher the average uptime on the trinket will be.
Lets say we gather up 174.4 haste rating or 11.1111111% haste. My fireballs drop from 3.0 seconds to 2.7 seconds. So I "save" .3 seconds per cast.
In a 10 minute fight with zero lag and standing still casting nothing but fireball I could fit in an extra 22 fireballs. That is a very significant increase in damage.
However, I never see it working that way. I have yet to see myself get caught with AoE/re-position and thought to myself "If only this fireball were 2.7 seconds I would have gotten it off, instead of canceling."
What I'm saying is that when I am able to enter fireball spam mode this might help me get off 1 extra fireball during that time, hasted as opposed to unhasted. We are given blocks of time where we can plant our feet and spam fireball. Those times when AoE/Postion force us to move are not going to allow us significantly more fireballs.
Fire 10 fireballs in a row and get your 11th free. (assuming 0 latency) Chaincast 10 fireballs in a row and the 11th will count towards extra damage due to haste. If your opportunity to cast comes in blocks that are under this, than you gain no extra damage. (but you do increase dps)
Is it more damage? I'm sure it is. However, 11.11111% haste is more than likely not a 11.11111% increase in damage done.
This why I don't see myself picking up much haste unless I can "trade" it for a more undesirable stat.
Lets say we gather up 157.7 haste rating or 10% haste. My fireballs drop from 3.0 seconds to 2.7 seconds.
Nope. This is an erroneous belief about Haste that almost everyone has, so don't feel bad.
Haste actually allows you to cast your spell 10% more often, it doesn't take 10% off your cast time. The same is true for melee, it allows you to swing 10% more often.
The easiest way to explain this is using 50% as an example. If you have 50% haste on Fireball you can cast Fireball 50% more often, not twice as often. So whereas previously you could cast 1 Fireball in 3.0 seconds, you will now be able to cast 1.5 Fireballs in 3.0 seconds. In other words it will reduce your cast time to 2.0 seconds, not 1.5.
Note that this is different from the MSD proc which specifically states it reduces cast time by 50% (this is equivallent to 100% haste.)
This is what the recent Troll Berserking fix/nerf was about. It was still taking 10-30% off of the cast time, rather than giving 10-30% haste (or allowing you to cast a given spell 10-30% more often.)
157 haste rating gives roughly 10% haste.
3 seconds fireball with 10% haste final cast time =
3 / (1 + 0.10) = 3 / 1.1 = 2.7272s
10% haste doesn't makes your fireball 2.7s cast time.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
My reasoning is that if you're not popping the trinket on-cooldown (assuming you're at your top game and not just being lazy, of course), you probably have a reason, which generally has something to do with you not being able to deal damage for the whole 20 seconds.
If you would randomly pop the trinket every time it came up without thinking about it, you would, on average, get the theoretical value. If you put any thinking to it and not pop it when you can do better popping it later, you're getting *more* than the theoretical value.
The only way you would get lower than the theoretical value is if you:
A. Get unlucky with random fight elements. But then again the *average* is still the same, as just as you got unlucky you could've gotten lucky and had the random elements happen when the trinket is inactive, thus increasing your trinket uptime, keeping the average at the theoretical value.
B. Pop it stupidly when you know you'll be losing the effect. This again is an invalid argument as I assume skillful play.
To illustrate with an example:
Every 2 minutes boss silences for 20s.
Idioticly mashing it on-cooldown:
20s uptime no matter how long the fight is.
Of course we can be smarter and:
Popping it at the start and then after every silence:
-First 2 minutes of the fight get the theoretical value
-Every other 2-minute-segment of the fight the trinket will be up for 20s/100s=1/5 uptime, higher than the theoretical value. If the fight ends with a segment shorter than 2 minutes you're (in most cases) getting an even *higher* value than the theoretical value.
My bottom line is that if "damage interrupts" are perfectly unpredictible, you will on average get the theoretical value. If they are predictible on any kind of level you will get an additional benefit from the trinket since you use it when you can actually deal damage and let it cool down when you can't. Which is why I claim that the theoretical value is the MINIMUM value for "on-use" trinkets. Of course if you play dumb you can screw yourself over and end up with less than theoretical, but even then if assuming dumb play happens randomly, on *average* you're still getting the theoretical value, at least. So the only thing that actually reduces it from the theoretical value, on average, is simply forgetting to use it.
This is why the claim "but on so and so fight I don't use it on-cooldown" doesn't mean the trinket is less useful. You're not using it on-cooldown because it'll cause you to gain more than its theoretical value.
I did a few searches of this massive thread and haven't found much talk of 33/28 builds in regards to the changes we've seen in 2.3, and historically I've never seen many proponents of it in general. Combined with the new caster meta gem, it seems like the absurdly large scaling of crits that a mage can achieve with this build places it in a unique position, and can easily rival or surpass the traditional deep fire nuke spamming build when a certain level of crit % is achieved.
I decided to give this build a shot last night through the first 6 bosses of BT, and found our WWS parses for the evening showing my dps was equal to or greater than it had been in any prior raid (I had been AM spamming with MSD and TLC prior to 2.3). While I haven't theorycrafted the exact cutoff point myself, it seems logical that at some crit percentage 33/28 has to come out on top over a traditional deep fire setup. In my case I had a 46% crit rate with fireball over the course of the evening thanks to having an elemental shaman most of the time and a ret pally doing their thing.
Has anyone else experimented with this build in Hyjal/BT? At least for me it seems to be comparable to how I was able to perform with the pre-nerf AM spamming setup.
You have no armory link but I remember estimating the breakpoint between 33/28 and 10/48/3 for fireball spamming being at around where your crit chance was. However such crit chances are pretty unrealistic to have with any gear level I've been playing with unless you're gearing towards crit more than needed, which will actually reduce your DPS as both a 33/28 and a 10/48/3 spec (both specs gain more DPS from spell damage than from crit, with 33/28 having them closer together obviously, so if you overgear for crit to make 33/28 better than 10/48/3 you actually reduce your overall DPS with both specs).
Bottom line is that yes, with enough crit 33/28 is better fireball spamming spec than 10/48/3. I can't be bothered to check ATM wether for T6 geared those levels of crits are reachable or not (without actually losing DPS by over-evaluating crit of course), but it shouldn't be too hard of a math since you're using a very simple rotation.
I did a few searches of this massive thread and haven't found much talk of 33/28 builds in regards to the changes we've seen in 2.3, and historically I've never seen many proponents of it in general. Combined with the new caster meta gem, it seems like the absurdly large scaling of crits that a mage can achieve with this build places it in a unique position, and can easily rival or surpass the traditional deep fire nuke spamming build when a certain level of crit % is achieved.
I decided to give this build a shot last night through the first 6 bosses of BT, and found our WWS parses for the evening showing my dps was equal to or greater than it had been in any prior raid (I had been AM spamming with MSD and TLC prior to 2.3). While I haven't theorycrafted the exact cutoff point myself, it seems logical that at some crit percentage 33/28 has to come out on top over a traditional deep fire setup. In my case I had a 46% crit rate with fireball over the course of the evening thanks to having an elemental shaman most of the time and a ret pally doing their thing.
Has anyone else experimented with this build in Hyjal/BT? At least for me it seems to be comparable to how I was able to perform with the pre-nerf AM spamming setup.
The question also comes about, are you resetting meters for boss fights? I always found arcane fire to be amazing on trash pulls and it fell behind on boss fights where sustained dps takes hold.
You have no armory link but I remember estimating the breakpoint between 33/28 and 10/48/3 for fireball spamming being at around where your crit chance was. However such crit chances are pretty unrealistic to have with any gear level I've been playing with unless you're gearing towards crit more than needed, which will actually reduce your DPS as both a 33/28 and a 10/48/3 spec (both specs gain more DPS from spell damage than from crit, with 33/28 having them closer together obviously, so if you overgear for crit to make 33/28 better than 10/48/3 you actually reduce your overall DPS with both specs).
Bottom line is that yes, with enough crit 33/28 is better fireball spamming spec than 10/48/3. I can't be bothered to check ATM wether for T6 geared those levels of crits are reachable or not (without actually losing DPS by over-evaluating crit of course), but it shouldn't be too hard of a math since you're using a very simple rotation.
Please excuse the gem in my mantle... I destroyed an old purple one to activate my meta. :-)
My gear has actually ended up pretty much straight down the middle as far as hit/crit/dmg is concerned, I've never heavily stacked any single one because I've switched my specs so much throughout my raiding career. If anything I'm a little crit heavy, but I've never consiously made any sacrifices to hit/dmg to get there.
As for the trash vs. boss dps argument, it seemed to make little difference, and we do seperate our WWS parses so bosses/trash are not intermingled. On bosses I was generally the top damage dealing caster unless I died early or was interfered with in some other way. Much like deep fire its impossible to run OOM, especially with a shadow priest.
Perhaps next week I'll run these same bosses with 10/48/3 and compare the two WWS reports, but I have a feeling the difference between the builds is more or less a wash. I'd recommend arc/fire for those who are currently returning to some elemental build from their recently nerfed AM spam, you might be pleasantly surprised.
I did extensive playing around with Vontre's and completed my gear setup for both specs.
This is what I came out with, (assuming both are hit capped (they were) and both have 300 ish spirit (they don't but whatever))
My haste AM spec 50/11/0
Unbuffed stats
954 Dmg
62 Crit
370 Haste
348 Int
410 Stam
Now I plugged this into Vontre's a few different ways and I was really excited about the results.
First off I assumed 0 pushback because AM doesn't suffer Pushback, then I assumed that JoW was up 100% of the time as well as receiving a shadow priest.
outside of a raid and no consumables this gives a theoretical 1184 DPS for 7.5 Minutes
INSIDE a raid with consumables and totems
Mage armor : 1370 DPS 30:31 Seconds
Molten Armor: 1406 DPS 12:46 Seconds
This confirmed a few things for me (crit? 3% only upped 30dps, I really don't think it benefits arcane hardly at all, at least not AM spam)
So it looks good, this spec would probably reflect VERY closely on it's theoretical because there's not much to go wrong with it aside from canceling a cast and running the fuck away. There's no resist fights, it's a very nice spec to be.
On to the no haste build! 10/48/3 Rawr fire!
1123 Dmg
302 Crit
317 Int
353 Stam
I assumed 20% pushback because of all the minor things and it makes up for scorch ramp up not being figured in here. Same everything as AM spec
Outside of a raid : 1502 DPS 7:52 seconds
With all the bells: 1711 DPS 17:24 seconds
Obviously fire pulls out ahead. A good 300 dps ahead.... but still, the hasted AM build isn't that bad, I still think it would be a viable spec for a few reasons.
1) Who likes respeccing for every other fight or staying fire and throwing gimp DPS on fire resistant or immune mobs?
2) AM spam is going to reflect more accurately to the theoretical more often.
3) Dude, with procs and beserking you're talking 60% haste rating... thats like... a 3 second AM. That's going to look cool as hell!
Anyway, yeah Fire is still top DPS and DMG king, but I like the idea of a hasted Arcane build and if Blizzard implements more Fire resist/Immune fights in Sunwell, and comes out with more haste gear, I think we all might want to take this build a bit more seriously.
Been reading EJ forums now for quite a while and decided to take the plunge to sign-up and start posting.
I was running with Deep Arcane in 2.2 because of MSD/TLC and was bummed out like everyone when 2.3 nerfed. I've decided to stay Deep Arcane post 2.3 for a week so I could have some baseline numbers to compare my damage against when I eventually re-gear up(+spell hit) and respec deep fire.
Here's my initial comparison with Deep arcane in 2.2 vs 2.3 in fairly similar Raids (one night of clearing 5/6 bosses from SSC) with the same type of gear and raid make-up. I pack 4pc T5, MSD and TLC/Crusade and T4-T5 level gear in all other slots.
Key #s:
Arcane Missile 69% of total Damage
TLC 6% of total damage w/ 203 hits
MSD Focus Proc = 150x
And here's my deep arcane output in 2.3 Wow Web Stats
Key #s:
Arcane Missile 61% of total Damage
TLC 5% of total damage w/ 180 hits
MSD Focus Proc = 108x
I was reasonably satisfied that I was able to maintain decent dps as deep arcane post 2.3. Though this was probably due to the ability to AE a lot of stuff in trash and boss fights. I look forward to playing around in Deep Fire and even Deep Frost soon to see how the numbers stack up for me. But I am kinda happy to see that deep arcane may work for me in raiding.
- Please keep feedback regarding the WWS related to me or anything that would relate to me.
- My armory is not up to date as I was fooling around with different gear before I logged off.
Chase: I don't think you are giving haste enough credit, as it seems you are thinking in terms of one fireball. You concede that the value of haste is obvious for fights with no dps interuptions, where you are free to do your rotation continuously. Here is an illustration of how haste helps with interuptions:
Assume 174.4 haste rating (2.7 second fireball) vs 0 haste rating (3 second fireball).
Assume interuptions are such that they require complete cancellation of spell (assume away spell pushback).
Assume time between interruptions is a random variable (natural assumption).
If the time between interruptions is between 2.7 and 2.999 seconds, haste gear yields 1 extra fireball.
If the time between interruptions is between 5.4 and 5.999 seconds, haste gear yields 1 extra fireball.
If the time between interruptions is between 8.1 and 8.999 seconds, haste gear yields 1 extra fireball.
If the time between interruptions is between 10.8 and 11.999 seconds, haste gear yields 1 extra fireball.
If the time between interruptions is between 13.5 and 14.999 seconds, haste gear yields 1 extra fireball.
If the time between interruptions is between 16.2 and 17.999 seconds, haste gear yields 1 extra fireball.
If the time between interruptions is between 18.9 and 20.999 seconds, haste gear yields 1 extra fireball.
If the time between interruptions is between 21.6 and 23.999 seconds, haste gear yields 1 extra fireball.
If the time between interruptions is between 24.3 and 26.999 seconds, haste gear yields 1 extra fireball.
If the time between interruptions is between 27 and 29.999 seconds, haste gear yields 1 extra fireball.
Notice here that the duration of the window where the interrupt causes different numbers of fireballs to occur is a proportion of the "whole time" we are looking at, namely 10%.
10% of the time, total spell interruption means that wearing haste gear yields an extra fireball. Without actually doing the math to completion, I'm fairly confident that this translate to a percent increase in DPS equal to the % haste (in probability).
Galzohar: I'm sorry wary of posting this, as at this point I feel like I am just arguing semantics (which generally does not further the goal of increasing our productivity in raids in any meaningful way). I should start by saying that I don't disagree in any way with what I think you are trying to say. What I disagree with is how you are saying it. Namely:
"Which is why I claim that the theoretical value is the MINIMUM value for "on-use" trinkets."
and
"This is why the claim "but on so and so fight I don't use it on-cooldown" doesn't mean the trinket is less useful. You're not using it on-cooldown because it'll cause you to gain more than its theoretical value."
"Theoretical values" are maximum values. By definition, you cannot get more than the maximum value out of something. If you notice that in practice that you are getting "more" than the theoretical value of something (other than what is attributable to the probabilistic nature of crit, hit, and the base damage range), this means that your model that tells you what the theoretical maximum value is somehow incomplete. Your misuse of the term "theoretical value" is my only objection with your posts.
As I said, I am CERTAINLY arguing semantics here, but when we model complex scenarios like the optimization of OUTs in this forum, we tend to give answers like, "Icon of the Silver Crescent = XXX.XX dps." When people read what you wrote, they are led to believe that there are situations where they get more than that XXX.XX, which is not possible if the model takes all the variables into account.
Back of the envelope calculations at 1450 spell damage shows 33/28 topping 10/48/3 on infinite duration fireball spam at 31.5% crit from gear/buffs/base (not counting Arcane Mind).
This is with:
Molten fury as flat 4% damage
Combustion as a flat 1.5% spell crit
Arcane Potency 2/3 as a flat 2% spell crit
Arcane power as a flat 2.5% damage
PoM+Pyro as a flat 1% damage
4/5 Arcane Mind as a flat .75% spell crit
Both specs hit capped, with Elemental Precision giving 38 extra spell damage to 10/48/3
I'm a little surprised that 33/28 does so well. Anything I'm missing?
Next up would be to look at mana from Arcane Mine (small), Arcane Med (huge), and slightly higher MoE returns (small) versus Elemental Precision and Pyromaniac (~6% mana cost reduction to fire spells)
EDIT: Re OUTS
"Theoretical value" is being used by OUTs proponents to mean the value of the trinket if the On Use was converted into a passive stat. So the theoretical max value can indeed be too low, if the value of a passive stat is lowered by the mechanics of a fight.
Any time you have to stop DPSing for a portion of the fight, passive damage produces less DPS than it would otherwise. So an OUT that is activated during a 100% dps time is worth a relatively greater amount of passive stat for that fight.
Anyway, yeah Fire is still top DPS and DMG king, but I like the idea of a hasted Arcane build and if Blizzard implements more Fire resist/Immune fights in Sunwell, and comes out with more haste gear, I think we all might want to take this build a bit more seriously.
Personally I am hoping that Blizzard notices how retarded the fire immune fights does not make any more them.
Plus if you were learning a fire where the boss was Fire immune, my understanding is that you are better off specing Deep Ice. This is because you don't need to regem/regear just for 1 fight & you can easily get within 3-5% of the DPS of a Deep Fire build, without having to worry about semi complex Arcane Rotations.
I would rather they buff the Arcane tree so that it is the highest DPS tree with the lowest DPM, as Blizzard said it would be, instead of what is right now.. Which is this weird mana eating spec that doesn't do so well.
"Theoretical values" are maximum values. By definition, you cannot get more than the maximum value out of something. If you notice that in practice that you are getting "more" than the theoretical value of something (other than what is attributable to the probabilistic nature of crit, hit, and the base damage range), this means that your model that tells you what the theoretical maximum value is somehow incomplete. Your misuse of the term "theoretical value" is my only objection with your posts.
As I said, I am CERTAINLY arguing semantics here, but when we model complex scenarios like the optimization of OUTs in this forum, we tend to give answers like, "Icon of the Silver Crescent = XXX.XX dps." When people read what you wrote, they are led to believe that there are situations where they get more than that XXX.XX, which is not possible if the model takes all the variables into account.
The "theoretical value" used in mage theorycrafting is not its maximum value. The XXX.XX dps shown in all computations for trinkets like Icon of the Silver Crescent is the value it would have if you used it immediately after every cooldown. It also assumes that fight length is a multiple of cooldown length. Timing things like molten fury, combustion, flame caps, heroism, destruction pots, etc. to coincide with using the trinket would beat the value given in the calculations. It is NOT a maximum value.
What they mean to see is that the commonly accepted model used for OUTs is totally incorrect.
The models need only a couple corrections: variables for the proportion of time where the use effect can be used and for the proportion of time where you can actually cast.
Namely, if we let...
tu = on use time
tc = cooldown time
pu = time casting while under use effect / tu
pc = actual time casting / tc
Then for an on-use effect with benefit ∆xu while under its effects, the long run benefit ∆x is...
∆x = ∆xu*pu*tu/(pc*tc)
In essence, your casting uptime with the use effect over your casting uptime while the item is on CD.
Thanks for those reports Chii. I'm finding similar conclusions about arcane in 2.3. The buff to Arcane Meditation about evens out with nerf to MSD and TLC at T5 gear level and I'm seeing the same performance in 2.3 if not slightly higher than in 2.2. I did change the meta to CSD though and went with a ABAMx3+Sc rotation (similar to ABx3+AM+Sc except you don't suffer from latency effects on AB debuff, has about the same characteristics, slightly better performance and scaling). The only decrease in performance I've seen was on AOE fights where TLC damage dropped from 10% to 5%. Here's a report from raid yesterday if anyone is interested: Wow Web Stats
I've been seeing similar results to Kavan. My guild is midway through the T6 instances, so we're all mostly still in T5. It seems like it's still viable to stay arcane at that gear level. The biggest hit I've seen is TLC's contribution in AOE fights going from 10-12% to 5-6% (still worth keeping equipped, I think).
On a side note, every mage should go into ZA and spellsteal the haste buff off the Firebreathers(I think that's the name). AM was casting so quickly I was having trouble chaining them together and Pyro is finally spammable. Good fun.
Thanks for those reports Chii. I'm finding similar conclusions about arcane in 2.3. The buff to Arcane Meditation about evens out with nerf to MSD and TLC at T5 gear level and I'm seeing the same performance in 2.3 if not slightly higher than in 2.2. I did change the meta to CSD though and went with a ABAMx3+Sc rotation (similar to ABx3+AM+Sc except you don't suffer from latency effects on AB debuff, has about the same characteristics, slightly better performance and scaling). The only decrease in performance I've seen was on AOE fights where TLC damage dropped from 10% to 5%. Here's a report from raid yesterday if anyone is interested: Wow Web Stats
Kavan, thanks for providing your WWS stats.
Can you clarify for me the arcane spell rotation ABAMx3+Sc rotation? Does that mean AB, AMx3 + Sc or does it mean AB x 3, AM x 3 +Sc? It's not clear to me because I saw that AB made up most of your damage and wanted to understand exactly how you were using AB. I'm also curious to see how your numbers would be if you spammed AM for your entire raid run. Do you think it would be less than or greater than your current arcane spell rotation.
11/15/07, 2:42 PM
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