Frost DPS | Cataclysm 4.0.6, This Is My Life - Page 31

Inruins · 04/20/11, 1:37 PM

Originally Posted by EwokChilli

Blood Tap won't be useless because it still refreshes a rune, hence getting another Oblit sooner.

Being GCD capped after the initial 6 runes are spent is actually unlikely unless doing 2H in FP. Without any haste you get back 3 runes every 10 seconds, not 6 runes every 10 seconds. In FP you're likely to get 2x OB, 2x FS, 1x HB (Rime) every 10 seconds. Any RE & Rime procs more/less than that is simply RNG at work. That's about 7.5 seconds out of 10 seconds accounted for.

Blood Tap every 30 seconds allows a minimum of an additional OB every minute. Probably less than that due to the additional RP which converts into FS and RE procs. Not to mention Blood Tap resetting the GCD which could allow for a minor tempo improvement.

ah yes i didnt take the rune renewing into factor. so i guess what i have to say to that Mhobius, is that you are absolutely right. same to Ewok, Blood Tap will just be a rune regeneration tool, and not a blood converting tool aswell.

Mhobius · 04/20/11, 2:25 PM

Originally Posted by NaeblisHyjal

From these sims it looks like the blood tap spec runs better while using Unholy Presence.
However, what I don't understand is that both specs run better in Unholy Presence. I was under the assumption that the traditional Frost DW spec was supposed to perform better in Frost Presence.

It's probably the fact that they are optimized around different stat weights. In the Improved Blood Tap spec haste loses a lot of potential, while crit and mastery get better. That spec gives you 1 more Obliterate and 57 runic power over 1 minute (33 + 24 from 2/2 Butchery). This can be translated in an additional Rime proc (= +10 runic power) and 1 more Frost Strike or 2 if Rime procced (= 1 or 2 more Runic Empowerment procs). In conclusion, you will get so many resources that you won't be able to properly spend with a high amount of haste in Frost Presence.

Originally Posted by Inruins

ah yes i didnt take the rune renewing into factor. so i guess what i have to say to that Mhobius, is that you are absolutely right. same to Ewok, Blood Tap will just be a rune regeneration tool, and not a blood converting tool aswell.

Exactly. On the current ptr build, Blood Tap instantly refreshes a Death Rune = 1 Runic Empowerment proc.

NaeblisHyjal · 04/20/11, 4:13 PM

I had the same thoughts Mhobius. That is why I used the BIS gear that simcraft provided because it has a healthy chunk of crit on it. I was looking at the stat distribution for that gear set up and it has haste at 1544 rating and crit at 1576 rating. Even at with a crit heavy set up UP still seemed to do better in both epidemic and blood tap specs on those sim results.

Grullthar · 04/21/11, 5:50 AM

I've done some sims on both PTR and live with simcraft. I tested the Haste>Mastery>Crit orientation with a new BiS 372 DW list that i made: chardev 8 - WoW Cataclysm

I use the 7/31/3 spec of NaeblisHyjal, with no Epidemic and Blood Tap.

In the sim, I run the test in UP, here are my results:
PTR DPS: 29517
Live DPS: 26309

I can post my results if you're intersted.
Do you think that BT spec in UP will really be the new best option for us in 4.1, or is it just an error of simcraft in modelling the spec?

EwokChilli · 04/21/11, 12:05 PM

With the removal of Blood Strike/Blood Boil from our bars, won't that lessen the GCD cap that we currently are hit with on Live? We'll never have to "fill" GCDs with Blood Strike and only have to worry about OB, FS, and diseases. Even with regenerating 3 runes every ~9 seconds (10% haste assumed) that will at MOST provide enough resources for OBx2 (if RE proc), FSx2 (if OBx2), and HBx2 (if Rime proc x2). With maximum procs, we'll be GCD capped, but that's very unlikely and will most likely have some filler room.

Mhobius · 04/21/11, 6:42 PM

I've done some testing and the priority action list of Simulationcraft needs to be looked at. In the PTR, as you know, Blood Tap will just refresh a Death Rune, but in my last sims, with my current gear, it's always delayed by 12/14 sec for no reason, considering it's an Off-GCD ability.

Usual 4/31/6 spec: Count: 6.3 - Interval: 72.70 sec
Improved Blood Tap spec with Epidemic: Count: 10 - Interval - 44.26 sec

That's wasted dps.

NaeblisHyjal · 04/21/11, 7:52 PM

I was looking at the blood tap intervals after you mentioned it.
Judging from the results data that I posted in the previous page it looks like the BIS gear is getting blood tap intervals of 35s while my current gear is 50s. I ran the simulations again today and got the same results.

Here is a picture of side by side comparison of stats.
Stat Comparison

I fiddled around with the stats in the sim and ran several simulations. I narrowed it down to crit being the cause of lowering the blood tap intervals. However, I'm not exactly sure why crit would produce those results in the sim.

deandrez · 04/22/11, 1:05 AM

Naeblius, I cant seem to find where UP is better then FP for DW. Personally, with napkin math I found that FP will be better in 4.1 (dw) from the less GCD locked rotations. The only things I do see in simcraft on Hatse vs crit/mastery are anywhere from 2-4 more KM procs(per min) and 6% more OB + FS hits. However this can be made up threw more melee, OB & FS natural non KM crits. On a side note since they buffed FS we gain much more from our already high mastery. Thus meaning FP will be the best alternative imo. Am I correct or did I miss something critical which proves UP is better then FP

xbit · 04/22/11, 3:23 AM

Originally Posted by Mhobius

I've done some testing and the priority action list of Simulationcraft needs to be looked at. In the PTR, as you know, Blood Tap will just refresh a Death Rune, but in my last sims, with my current gear, it's always delayed by 12/14 sec for no reason, considering it's an Off-GCD ability.

Usual 4/31/6 spec: Count: 6.3 - Interval: 72.70 sec
Improved Blood Tap spec with Epidemic: Count: 10 - Interval - 44.26 sec

That's wasted dps.

Fixed in revision 8399. If you want to test the changes before the next version of simc is released, just move blood tap higher up in the priority list. Specifically, just after pillar of frost:

actions+=/pillar_of_frost
actions+=/blood_tap,if=death!=2

NaeblisHyjal · 04/22/11, 4:24 AM

Originally Posted by deandrez

Naeblius, I cant seem to find where UP is better then FP for DW. Personally, with napkin math I found that FP will be better in 4.1 (dw) from the less GCD locked rotations. The only things I do see in simcraft on Hatse vs crit/mastery are anywhere from 2-4 more KM procs(per min) and 6% more OB + FS hits. However this can be made up threw more melee, OB & FS natural non KM crits. On a side note since they buffed FS we gain much more from our already high mastery. Thus meaning FP will be the best alternative imo. Am I correct or did I miss something critical which proves UP is better then FP

I decided to do more digging in the sims I ran and did a comparison of all the gcd abilities that we use. I did a count of how many times each ability is used, and added up the damage for each ability.

I took the crit% from the sim data and multiplied that percentage by the total usage count of that ability in order to get the crit count of that ability. I rounded all decimals down in regards to usage count because there is no such thing as a fraction of a hit. I also ignored all max crit numbers in the sim's result chart because those numbers are achieved through cooldowns. When speaking in relative terms all the data will be augmented by the cooldowns at that given period of time.

These numbers are breakdowns of these two sim results:
Epidemic FP & Blood Tap UP

Anyways here is the side by side comparison of the numbers.
Epidemic FP VS. Blood Tap UP

From this comparison we see that Blood Tap spec in UP is able to generate more Frost Strikes, Howling Blasts, Melee Hits, and Plague Strikes.
I didn't add in a total Howling Blast comparison in that link, however if you add it up it is Epidemic FP at 74 vs Blood Tap UP at 113.

Something to note is that the Blood Tap spec has about the same amount of obliterates as the epidemic spec, yet it has to refresh it's diseases manually more often. What this means is that it is getting extra obliterates from runes generated by frost strike which in turn leads to more RP and frost strikes. This explains why there are more frost strikes generated in the Blood Tap Spec. Not to mention the extra point in butchery ;p

However, I am by no means excellent at math. This is why I use sims and why I analyze them as much as I can with what math I do know.
If someone else can show me something that I am missing please let me know! I am just trying to figure out the best spec and stat weights for 4.1 like the rest of you.

deandrez · 04/23/11, 3:20 AM

NaeblisHyjal, very good point. The only thing I'm skeptical in is waiting time that the BT+UP brings 7.13% is like almost not doing anything 1/10 of the time. That's kind of iffy seeing as how RE procs are extremely random in a lot of cases and don't necessarily work in our favor. Some part of me thinks there is flaws (bugs) in the Simucrafts for UP. oh and the side by side comparison with the max damage is looking incorrect. There should be a 12-15% (FP) damage difference in the min-max and avg damage of each hit. It looks as if like there's only a 3-5% difference in the side by side comparison.

Krab� t · 04/23/11, 4:00 AM

Originally Posted by NaeblisHyjal

Something to note is that the Blood Tap spec has about the same amount of obliterates as the epidemic spec, yet it has to refresh it's diseases manually more often. What this means is that it is getting extra obliterates from runes generated by frost strike which in turn leads to more RP and frost strikes. This explains why there are more frost strikes generated in the Blood Tap Spec. Not to mention the extra point in butchery ;p

However, I am by no means excellent at math. This is why I use sims and why I analyze them as much as I can with what math I do know.
If someone else can show me something that I am missing please let me know! I am just trying to figure out the best spec and stat weights for 4.1 like the rest of you.

What settings did you use to generate those Results?

@deandrez
RNG is the core of the Frost Speccs.
You won't be able to model those RE-Proccs properly.
For the thoughts on FP vs UP. UP will be superior and this was discussed some sides ago.

NaeblisHyjal · 04/23/11, 4:10 AM

Originally Posted by deandrez

NaeblisHyjal, very good point. The only thing I'm skeptical in is waiting time that the BT+UP brings 7.13% is like almost not doing anything 1/10 of the time. That's kind of iffy seeing as how RE procs are extremely random in a lot of cases and don't necessarily work in our favor. Some part of me thinks there is flaws (bugs) in the Simucrafts for UP. oh and the side by side comparison with the max damage is looking incorrect. There should be a 12-15% (FP) damage difference in the min-max and avg damage of each hit. It looks as if like there's only a 3-5% difference in the side by side comparison.

I pointed out that the max damage of each ability shouldn't be considered when comparing the two because the max damage are achieved through cooldowns and procs. So the max damage of each spec would have a pretty wide range. I think it is better to look at the average damage because the damage increase from the procs and cooldowns will be relative across all data points during that period of time.

If you look at the base damages, I will use Frost Strike as an example here, Epidemic FP is dealing 12688. 12% of that is 1522. So if you subtract that from FP's damage you get 11,166 which is pretty close to the side by side average frost strike hit that BT UP offers which is 11,307.

Originally Posted by Krab� t

What settings did you use to generate those Results?

Here is a screenshot of my settings.
The screenshots on the very bottom is the action list priority right before I click sim.
On the left is Epidemic FP and on the right is Unholy UP.
I realize that the image is quite large and may shrink on some browsers, you should be able to click on it to zoom in.
Simcraft Settings

xbit · 04/23/11, 1:15 PM

4.1 DPS Scaling
Stat scaling from simc 406-20 on svn, DW frost 7/31/3 spec using my own gear in unholy presence. For reference, the 0 point on that graph has haste=1970, crit=729, mastery=1059, expertise=690 (human +3 exp bonus).

The scaling seems to suggest that between ~1800 and ~2300 haste, haste, crit, and mastery are completely equal. Crit and mastery are clearly equal everywhere (and therefore mastery > crit for AoE benefit). I haven't been able to find a reason for this lull in the value of haste, or rather, why it would then increase again at ~2300. I did another sim at +400 haste, and there was still 6.36% waiting, so the spec isn't GCD capped. The only thing I can think of is that from -1000 to 0, haste gradually tapers off as it naturally does as one approaches the GCD cap (more iterations run into periods of being capped from RNG, even if on average it is not). Then, at around 2300 haste, there is a "breakpoint" of sorts where the additional haste allows something to occur that results in extra dps, like extra HoT ticks for resto druids. I just have no idea on what that something is, or if it even exists or is just an artifact of the simulator.

Edit: I may have found the source. The exact values seem to be a product of the simulator (based on default wheel granularity and aura delay, re-simming to confirm), however, it seems to be linked to rune regen times becoming multiples of the GCD. Essentially, there should be a dps increase associated with runes that are not RE'ed back to full coming off CD at the same time your GCD is up, hence not waiting fractions of a GCD to be able to use them. The value of this on live should be at 11.1%, 25%, 42.9% haste (9, 8, 7 seconds). Latency should not be a factor due to the spell queue system.

rh8452 · 04/23/11, 7:40 PM

Originally Posted by xbit

Edit: I may have found the source. The exact values seem to be a product of the simulator (based on default wheel granularity and aura delay, re-simming to confirm), however, it seems to be linked to rune regen times becoming multiples of the GCD. Essentially, there should be a dps increase associated with runes that are not RE'ed back to full coming off CD at the same time your GCD is up, hence not waiting fractions of a GCD to be able to use them. The value of this on live should be at 11.1%, 25%, 42.9% haste (9, 8, 7 seconds). Latency should not be a factor due to the spell queue system.

This is interesting, but does the sim take into account the rune pushback bug? Because runes push back half a second whenever you use glyphed howling blast or outbreak, being at a breakpoint will be less useful than it would seem.

Maybe this bug is fixed on the PTR but I haven't heard any rejoicing over it yet so I assume not.