Target dummy tests (no, not very accurate I know) last night have led me to wonder as to if our current priority system is still accurate. I am running a 2h frost build and had a benchmark of at least 10 million damage done for my tests, with cooldowns ignored (since they would affect either test equally) and performed on the boss dummy in Acherus to eliminate aoe damage.
What I was testing was if I should use those two death runes for an extra obliterate or for a pair of howling blasts. My results, once recount was working again, were that my dps was higher (by about 500) if I ignored blood plague (except for Outbreak) and only used Obliterate if I had an unholy rune free, otherwise frost/death runes would be used for Howling Blast, even if it meant using KM for frost strike.
Now I ask, aside from using the dummy, is there anything that I might be missing with this test? Also, would raid buffs push the Obliterate priority back up, likely due to sunder? Or would it remain similar due to the +Spell Dmg debuff?
"Engineering is the top profession given its stackable 480 strength bonus to gloves for 10 seconds every minute (80 strength average passive). Jewelcrafting follows as a second pick with its Bold Chimera gems replacing Bold Inferno Rubies netting 81 additonal strength. Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Inscription are on par bringing up the rear."
im confused about why engineering is said to be the top proffession given that it is listed here as an 80 strength passive, when JC gives plus 81 STR permanantly. i know +1 STR from JC is nothing massive, but were all here to min-max arent we, and surely JC is better, and engineering on par with BS etc with a +80 STR bonus
Regarding professions, remember engineering brings other things to the table as well, such as bombs which can be very handy for bursting down adds - really prevalent in this raid tier too - or just on cooldown. It should probably be clarified though.
The stat weights for DW seem a bit wonky. Expertise is set to 1.18 and Haste to 1.23, yet the stat priorities are Hit > Expertise > Haste.
If you aim to cap Expertise first, it should be better than any other stat per se, until you reach said cap. Having Haste better than Expertise, but still going for the Expertise cap doesn't make much sense. Especially when you're not GCD capped.
SimCraft shows me similar EP results for my gear, and ironically even with those EP stats I'm still ending up reforging to the Expertise cap - simply because it's the best reforge combination available. But that doesn't mean that I should go for it if there actually were other options (i.e. Haste already present on almost every piece of gear).
So it is more of an coincidence to reach the Expertise cap, and not due to a priority over Haste.
Originally Posted by Lithan
was a bit puzzled on the BiS trinket choices. why exactly is DMC:H no longer BiS? is it because the hit > haste reforging on License to Slay overtakes the DMC:H procs? would like the clarification here.
I second that. Switching out my DMC:H for License to Slay is a DPS decrease for me according to SimCraft (-100).
The reason engineering would be favored is because it cooldown exactly aligns with PoF, so every time you use it, it is worth an extra 96 strength. So instead of 480 str, consider it being worth 576 every minute for 10 seconds. Effectively an average of 96 strength (I know, a terrible way to look at it but that isn't the point). Whereas JC benefits from PoF for only 20 seconds every minute which makes it average out to merely 86.4 str.
Including Pillar of Frost to professions calculation would lead to:
Engineering: 80 str -> 96 str
JC: 81 str -> 86,4 str (20% increase 1/3 of the time)
Other professions: 80 str -> 85,33 str (20% increase 1/3 of the time)
But before powerleveling Engineering (which of course one should do if min/maxing) keep in mind that patch 4.2 introduces new trinkets, the strongest of them coming with a 1 minute CD on-use strength increase. As synapse springs lock out your on-use trinkets, this will weaken engineering a lot, as you would definitely use the trinket together with PoF instead of the synapse springs.
So, before Blizz is changing the lock-out-behaviour, save your money
With 11% haste from gear currently, while in Frost Presence I'm having to wait on runes whenever I miss more than 2 RE procs or HB procs. I feel that because of the reduction of necessary moves (1x OB vs 2x BS) that I'm no longer GCD capped even in FP anymore. I tried DW in UP and I found I was sitting around for 4-5 seconds at times. That is a lot of inactivity and I was a good 2k dps behind being in FP. Obviously anecdotal evidence, but a pretty massive indicator of something being different.
im surprised by how low down the trinket list impatience of youth is (the baradin warden one). is this ranking taking into account the on use lining up with PoF? meaning it really has a +1926 STR on use effect, and you can reforge the mastery to haste
im surprised by how low down the trinket list impatience of youth is (the baradin warden one). is this ranking taking into account the on use lining up with PoF? meaning it really has a +1926 STR on use effect, and you can reforge the mastery to haste
This justification doesn't really apply in the same way that the profession discussion does because other trinkets have procs or aren't proc or strength reliant. The on-use for IOY is horribly underbudget for a 359, and that's why it ranks poorly.
i see what you mean. having looked at the other trinkets more closely i see that now. the 346 on the list has a slightly lower +STR bonus but it will proc much more often that once every 2 minutes i assume. suggestion to OP - add a (rough) proc per minute section to the trinkets table?
Clearly I need to re-evaluate DM: Hurricane. As well, I've gotten several PMs about the epidemic build. It is only marginally less DPS than a IBT build to the point that the player performance is going to make a much bigger difference than the difference of the two specs. So I'll add on a section about the Epidemic build illustrating the differences between the two.
I do agree with Mhobius that Blizzard does not intend DW to play in UP and we'll likely see a change to fix it.
Just to make sure I'm clear, as I read the priority list, the only time I should be HB'ing is to refresh frost fever, or on a Rime proc. Otherwise it's simply OB or FS, with the refreshment of BP as necessary due to PS. Seems weird that's the only time we would HB, but I guess that's accurate.
The epidemic build option - that's the 4/31/6 w/ 1 point in butchery and 1 in epidemic correct? How viable is a DW spec of 3/31/7, with 2/3 in epidemic and 2/3 in morbidity? Would give some aoe help and seems the 1 unholy wouldn't be much of a waste as long as the boss doesn't move out of it. Just curious.
Nice update for Frost finally.
For your Lines about Simularcum.
There are some nice possibilitys to use it, when there is something like Mind Control involved.
Just Debuff a Shadowpriest and tell him to cast Devouring Plague (Devouring Plague - Spell - World of Warcraft).
24 Seconds with an additonal Disease is worth those 20 RP.
I know this use would be limited, infact its probably the only time in a raid you will ever be able to use Simularcum, but, if you were able to pull it off, would the additional disease add to your attacks that do +% dmg per disease that you have? and if so, could you Festering Strike to keep it active?
And for people who read this at a glance and are like me at first "you cant cast that on a friendly target" it's only real application would be on a fight like cho'gall, and in the event that it just so happened that a S Priest got MC'd, and it just so happened that you got to him first, Simularcum, then break him out.
The problem with the IBT build is that it doesn't line up properly. With Epidemic you refresh Blood Plague approximately twice a minute; without, you would do it three times per minute. Assuming Outbreak fills the need for one of those (since we are not GCD capped, it is no loss of DPS to use a GCD on Outbreak), then with the Epidemic build, you would need to cast Plague Strike once every sixty seconds, which lines up with Blood Tap just fine. With IBT build, you'd need to cast Plague Strike twice every sixty seconds, but not 30 seconds apart. You would need to cast it at the 20 and 40 second marks, and IBT would not be off cooldown thus you aren't getting the savings.
You could use one Blood Tap on PS and another on Pillar of Frost, which would maximize your runic savings, but this requires a high degree of micromanagement to be effective, as you would need to link the timing of Pillar to your Diseases and your Blood Tap.
Also, someone mentioned IFP not working properly, I can confirm it. In Unholy or Blood Presence, it is giving no extra RP, therefore as of right now it is worthless if you are using UH Presence.
The problem with the IBT build is that it doesn't line up properly. With Epidemic you refresh Blood Plague approximately twice a minute; without, you would do it three times per minute. Assuming Outbreak fills the need for one of those (since we are not GCD capped, it is no loss of DPS to use a GCD on Outbreak), then with the Epidemic build, you would need to cast Plague Strike once every sixty seconds, which lines up with Blood Tap just fine. With IBT build, you'd need to cast Plague Strike twice every sixty seconds, but not 30 seconds apart. You would need to cast it at the 20 and 40 second marks, and IBT would not be off cooldown thus you aren't getting the savings.
You could use one Blood Tap on PS and another on Pillar of Frost, which would maximize your runic savings, but this requires a high degree of micromanagement to be effective, as you would need to link the timing of Pillar to your Diseases and your Blood Tap.
You don't have to be using the BT on the PS in order to "cash in" on the savings, so long as you are able to keep your death runes on cooldown so the BT isn't wasted it shouldn't matter at all what you use it for. With the Perma death runes the likelihood of you having no runes available to refresh PS is fairly remote, and with just a little foresight you should be able to at least plan to have one up in the 3 seconds or so before it wears off. In reality, you'll almost never actually use the BT on refreshing PS, its just the easiest analog to compare it to because of the tradeoff - having to use 1 extra PS per minute over an epidemic build.
My only complaint about IBT so far is it is exceedingly hard to actually use those death runes at the right time if you're trying to maximize KM OB because of storing death runes.
After seeing that License to Slay was ranked much higher than DMC: Hurricane on the new BiS list for DW, I along with many others was quite skeptical. I spent about an hour at the dummy swapping out the two trinkets and after running multiple trials, (using the recommended IBT spec, stat priorities, rotation, etc) I found that I consistently had about 700-1000 more dps while using DMC.
Has anyone else tried this as well, and if so what results have you seen? I think the best rationale for the DMC outperforming LtS would be attributed to Haste stacking as well as the attack speed buff from UP, thereby increasing the nature damage procs.
Lost me, and hopefully everyone else, right there. Personal experience isn't a valid source for justifications on gear choice.
Math via simcraft, or analysis of logs however..
On an unrelated note, it seems that 4.1 has indeed fixed rune pushback, which means that we will have haste 'caps' that correspond to levels where our rune cooldowns line up with a GCD. Does anyone have any math about this, such as where those points are and what crit and mastery would look like near and between points?
I'm rather curious about how Lava Spine didn't make it into the normal DW BiS list. It would give more haste(and a little crit) at the loss of some Mastery (after reforging some crit and mastery to hit). Unless we just don't want to stack haste all the time to keep stat divergence from maximizing and losing the synergetic values.
A week or two ago I made a post with evidence suggesting that DMC:Hurricane was undervalued for a 2H Setup.
I was a bit skeptical of trying a DW setup in UH presence. After raiding with it last night, I disliked the free globals but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. Of course, I had my trusty DMC equipped on the raid (still no Heart of Rage/Crushing Weight). My data from last night suggests that you have severely undervalued DMC:H for a DW setup.
I didn’t have a great night. I pulled agro off our brand new 346 tank a lot and had some mistakes to boot. Nevertheless I had anywhere from 2.86-5.46 PPM with my DMC:H. In particular the 5.46 PPM encounter renewed my interest in the trinket.
In order to compare the DMC:H to the patchwork style modeling of SimCraft I employed the following methodology.
Over the course of the entire parse from last night (trash + wipes + bosses ie everything) I had 238 procs. I then totaled up the Hits and Crits for FS, OB, White Hits, PS, BS and DS (I had the bright idea of switching my BS bind to DS so I ended up throwing a few BS out). These totaled up to 6,355. Calculating the observe proc percentage and the 95% CI we come up with the following:
Worst Case: 3.2918%
Observed: 3.7451%
Best Case: 4.2415%
Next I used the frequencies from the SimCraft:Parse here:
Theoritically when tunneling attacks you would expect 159.51 Opportunities to proc per minute. Using our percentages from above this calculates to:
5.25 – 5.97 – 6.77 PPM
Using an average proc of 5,900 (the avg from my Cho’Gal attempt. I didn’t want to take the night average because of the dmg mod on Al’Akir) and the stat weights for 359 DW from this guide:
1450-1521-1599 DPS
Compared to the other trinkets in the list:
HoS – 1352
CW – 1408
HoR – 1500
H.CW – 1592
H. HoR – 1696
Using the worst possible proc %, the DMC:H is better than HoS and CW. Using the best it is 2nd BiS.
I believe you are slightly undervaluing the trinket for 2H, but probably not by much. I may run a 2H setup tonight. If I do I will update the post for 2H.
Lost me, and hopefully everyone else, right there. Personal experience isn't a valid source for justifications on gear choice.
Math via simcraft, or analysis of logs however..
On an unrelated note, it seems that 4.1 has indeed fixed rune pushback, which means that we will have haste 'caps' that correspond to levels where our rune cooldowns line up with a GCD. Does anyone have any math about this, such as where those points are and what crit and mastery would look like near and between points?
Calm down tiger. Never meant to draw conclusions, only wanted to bring it up as an item of discussion. Its a new patch with lots of changes so alot of the sims may not be accurate. As a matter of fact didn't the sims use to tell us mastery was our best stat for DW Frost, when it turned out haste was superior before the patch dropped?
Calm down tiger. Never meant to draw conclusions, only wanted to bring it up as an item of discussion. Its a new patch with lots of changes so alot of the sims may not be accurate. As a matter of fact didn't the sims use to tell us mastery was our best stat for DW Frost, when it turned out haste was superior before the patch dropped?
No, that was largely Consider, who had results that varied from a few people (who all posted in the thread). On all of the SimC and Kahories sims I ran with my personal gear I always got Haste > Crit > Mastery for results, and in game supported this. Up until a certain threshold I noticed FP was superior to UP even with a haste oriented setup (but it was such a low value that anyone in full epics would basically hit it if I remember right).
Consider based his logic on the usage of Frost Presence, where Crushing Weight procs, Bloodlust, etc. would GCD cap us, which is why he strongly recommended the usage of Mastery and Crit over Haste. If I remember correctly he felt Haste would cap us too much in Frost Presence, but not enough to make Unholy Presence viable.
<stalk and kill> - 25m EST - Now recruiting, US #97 T13, US #76 T12, US #80 T11
[22:56:57.671] Onslaughtx Rune Tap Onslaughtx +24272
[22:56:58.260] Onslaughtx Tipping of the Scales Onslaughtx +26997
[22:56:58.802] Onslaughtx gains Blood Shield from Onslaughtx (Remaining: 99978)
[22:56:58.802] Onslaughtx Death Strike Onslaughtx +71477
[22:57:00.321] Onslaughtx's Blood Shield is refreshed by Onslaughtx (Remaining: 199957)
[22:57:00.321] Onslaughtx Death Strike Onslaughtx +71478
I get that the recommendations are based on simulations, not conceptual arguments, but can anyone explain why the 4.1 changes should lead to unholy presence overtaking frost for DW? My understanding pre-patch was that unholy was only better for 2h because of the extra RP from MotFW; since it was nearly GCD locked already in frost presence without MotFW, most of the extra RP from picking up MotFW would be wasted without the faster GCD of unholy presence.
Now with the 4.1 changes to DW, it should actually become less GCD locked by freeing up one GCD per rune cycle with an extra obliterate replacing two blood strikes. So assuming a frost presence build really was superior before the patch, I don't see why that should change with 4.1.
Most of the talk about IBT in the last page has basically rediscussed the reasons 4/31/6 gained popularity after the Virulence change in the first place. IBT may sim better and math out better on paper, but in practice it tends to be difficult to utilize to optimum effect due to various conditions.
I'd also like to echo that DW switching to UP just doesn't make any sense since it actually gained free GCDs. Haste stacking rather than mastery stacking isn't going to bring you up to being GCD capped and warrant UP.
Most of the talk about IBT in the last page has basically rediscussed the reasons 4/31/6 gained popularity after the Virulence change in the first place. IBT may sim better and math out better on paper, but in practice it tends to be difficult to utilize to optimum effect due to various conditions.
I'd also like to echo that DW switching to UP just doesn't make any sense since it actually gained free GCDs. Haste stacking rather than mastery stacking isn't going to bring you up to being GCD capped and warrant UP.
Frost testing myself just self buffed I can already feel the constraints of Dw being gcd capped in frost presence. Though we may have freed up a gcd with no blood strikes, instead we get more rime procs and even greater runic generation from using more oblits over blood strikes. So I find they tend to chew up the free gcd we gain and I can only imagine how much worse it will be once a hero kicks in and you are unable to burn through runic without gimping runes and vice versa.
I'm finding that in some instances of using Army of the Dead, it seems to break the Blood of the North passive and turn the Death Runes back into Blood Runes with apparently no way to turn them back without respeccing back and forth.
04/27/11, 8:09 AM
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