WotLK Discussion - Talents and abilities. - Page 114

Janraea · 10/13/08, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by casteel

I don't know if they changed anything about this since your comment, but I see very different results right now. My observations are:
#1 - If you get into combat, all your runes will go 10sec cd from their very first use.
#2 - If you stay in combat, and use the rune immediately when it's up, it again will go 10sec
#3 - If you stay in combat, but don't use the rune immediately, the cd will decrease by exactly the time you waited to use it again (or a maximum about 1.5-2 sec)
#4 - If you get out of combat, the first rule applies when you get into combat again

In fact, this mechanic makes a lot of sense, and helps us with those nasty "21.5 sec rotations", the ones where you use the same 2 runes for 1-1 rune skills and then a doublerune skill: when you use (for example) the Scourge Strike after the initial PS-IT-BS-BS-SS-RP rotation, the F rune will go 10 seconds (rule #2), but the U rune will only go 8.5 seconds (rule #3), so you can start over the whole rotation just in time, making it a 20sec rotation without having us to mess it up (you know, that SS-PS-IT-SS-(RP)-SS-BS-BS-SS-(RP) rotation, which is kindof sensitive on parries and dodges).

Can anyone verify this? It would make rotations way easier :-D (Though I'm sad again, cause there's no use for unholy presence still.)

Deathwing · 10/13/08, 11:58 AM

Gift of Arthas still count as a disease?

Daedalix · 10/13/08, 12:14 PM

[Gift of Arthas], according to Wrath WoWhead it still applies a disease.

Worth a test. Will prolly become a major Guardian Elixir for us or get changed to a magic debuff (or lvl 70+ mobs immune).

• Zurm · 10/13/08, 12:30 PM

Originally Posted by Daedalix

Worth a test. Will prolly become a major Guardian Elixir for us or get changed to a magic debuff (or lvl 70+ mobs immune).

Not unless you're tanking. It says "Strikes", meaning that the target would actually have to hit you (not attack, so aoe spells and such won't work). And I doubt people would find this so useful that its worth farming the annoying mats for simple leveling/questing.

Leaflock · 10/13/08, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by casteel

I don't know if they changed anything about this since your comment, but I see very different results right now. My observations are:
#1 - If you get into combat, all your runes will go 10sec cd from their very first use.
#2 - If you stay in combat, and use the rune immediately when it's up, it again will go 10sec
#3 - If you stay in combat, but don't use the rune immediately, the cd will decrease by exactly the time you waited to use it again (or a maximum about 1.5-2 sec)
#4 - If you get out of combat, the first rule applies when you get into combat again

In fact, this mechanic makes a lot of sense, and helps us with those nasty "21.5 sec rotations", the ones where you use the same 2 runes for 1-1 rune skills and then a doublerune skill: when you use (for example) the Scourge Strike after the initial PS-IT-BS-BS-SS-RP rotation, the F rune will go 10 seconds (rule #2), but the U rune will only go 8.5 seconds (rule #3), so you can start over the whole rotation just in time, making it a 20sec rotation without having us to mess it up (you know, that SS-PS-IT-SS-(RP)-SS-BS-BS-SS-(RP) rotation, which is kindof sensitive on parries and dodges).

This appears to be correct-- I just tried it out in beta. The 10-second rune cooldown is reduced by approximately how long you wait to use the rune again, up to an apparent maximum of 2.5 seconds. I got my initial results because I was always waiting to make sure I used the same rune. This more accurately explains why the 20-sec rotations are possible after the first rune use.

Darkrenown · 10/13/08, 12:51 PM

Originally Posted by Daedalix

[Gift of Arthas], according to Wrath WoWhead it still applies a disease.

Worth a test. Will prolly become a major Guardian Elixir for us or get changed to a magic debuff (or lvl 70+ mobs immune).

Does it matter anyway? All DK moves only scale from your own diseases now.

Leaflock · 10/13/08, 1:12 PM

Originally Posted by Arkasi

For two handers and one handers (non dual wielding) you have a 9% chance to miss.
To cap hit for two-handers at 80 you need 294 +hit.
For spells you have a base 17% chance to miss.
To cap hit for spells at 80 you need 556 + hit.
For dual-wielding you have a 28% chance to miss.
To cap hit for dual wielding at 80 you need 915 +hit.

With Nerves of Cold Steel. You gain an 3% chance to hit.
To cap hit for dual wielding at 80 with the talent you need 800 + hit.

So comparatively, you need 506 more +hit than someone who strickly capped 2 handers, and you need 244 more +hit than someone who strickly capped spells.

This is pretty misleading. No dual-wielding classes are required to actively try to reach the white hit-cap. For rogues in BC, hit remained the highest dps-per-point stat for quite a long time, but this was because of the interaction of some specific talents. Incidentally, this may no longer be the case in Wrath, if you follow the rogue thread. The point is: the hit cap is not a magic number for doing proper dps, and it's not what would hold a DW DK back.

When I get the time to sit down and make a DK spreadsheet, stat equivalence is my top priority, because that's the kind of useful information you're going to need to know for selecting gear. Besides, it'll be fun to finally see-- is crit 2 times better than haste, or is it 3 times better?

Leaflock · 10/13/08, 1:21 PM

Originally Posted by kurokaze

Rune cooldowns. This has been confirmed by GC to be a side effect of anti-latency code. But that doesn't speak one way or another towards whether it's going to be changed. I'd be inclined to use 8-second cooldowns and assume that as a 'side effect' rather than a 'bug', things won't be changed very quickly if at all. But 10-second cooldowns is definitely the 'pure' way. Not a huge deal - I can easily put in a way to use either - but which should I use for general testing and theorycrafting?

Rotation flexibility. Currently, I have my spreadsheet set to have a user-modifiable list of skills for rotation A (no death runes, generally) and rotation B (death runes), and then spams them on the GCD and RP dumps when done. (Or you can RP dump in the middle, if you wish.) Is there - for a no-Annihilation Obliterate build, perhaps - a compelling reason to code in the capability to delay 0.5 secs rather than mashing as fast as possible? It would take a bit of redoing to implement, but it seems like it could be useful to some builds.

Catching up on replies.

1) Now that we think we know how the variable cooldown works, this makes sense. Where did you see it confirmed, though? I can't find it.

2) I tried out pausing in a non-Annihilation Blood dps spec, but the results weren't great. The only time you should pause is if you absolutely can't use a GCD for anything. If the runes are going to be available and you're out of runic power, you should just Obliterate and reapply diseases, because that does more than waiting for another disease tick and delaying all future GCDs. This is at the end of the pre-death rune cycle, of course, since your top priority dps ability as blood is Heart Strike.

Aezoc · 10/13/08, 1:48 PM

Originally Posted by Leaflock

1) Now that we think we know how the variable cooldown works, this makes sense. Where did you see it confirmed, though? I can't find it.

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Inconsistent Rune Refresh rate, the answer was the thread that I saw, although I haven't seen any blue followups yet.

I have very little experience with blood specs, but it seems like they are the worst off in this situation, since they are the most bound by the GCD (SD procs + rotations where they substitute 2x HS for an oblit). If the rune CD stays at 7.5-8 seconds, they're going to have to skip RP abilities altogether on some rotations.

Arkasi · 10/13/08, 3:38 PM

Originally Posted by Leaflock

This is pretty misleading. No dual-wielding classes are required to actively try to reach the white hit-cap. For rogues in BC, hit remained the highest dps-per-point stat for quite a long time, but this was because of the interaction of some specific talents. Incidentally, this may no longer be the case in Wrath, if you follow the rogue thread. The point is: the hit cap is not a magic number for doing proper dps, and it's not what would hold a DW DK back.

Didn't intend that to be misleading. Just wanted to post some hard numbers for everyone to work with.

Originally Posted by Leaflock

When I get the time to sit down and make a DK spreadsheet, stat equivalence is my top priority, because that's the kind of useful information you're going to need to know for selecting gear. Besides, it'll be fun to finally see-- is crit 2 times better than haste, or is it 3 times better?

This would be fantastic.

• Zurm · 10/13/08, 3:50 PM

Originally Posted by Leaflock

When I get the time to sit down and make a DK spreadsheet, stat equivalence is my top priority, because that's the kind of useful information you're going to need to know for selecting gear. Besides, it'll be fun to finally see-- is crit 2 times better than haste, or is it 3 times better?

My Rawr module has this, as well as talent comparisons (dps gained from one point in a given talent), gear comparisons, and it will also show a breakdown of individual ability DPS. All done through graphs. I also have 3 basic rotations modeled (working on a user-input system, but for now its Unholy, Frost, and Blood). I'd say it's about 80% done, I still have a handful of talents to model I have to figure out how to best model gargoyle and DRW.

Since we are on the subject, I was hoping one of you might be able to help me....

1) I noticed the gargoyle can both do melee attacks AND cast spells for nature damage. Does anyone have more information (how many spells it can cast, how many melee attacks it does, and how to calculate the melee damage)?

2) With DRW, is it safe to assume it will be used on cooldown? Given that it needs at least 50 RP, and ideally 100+, how much of a delay on those 3 minutes shoudl I put on it for the start of a fight? 20 seconds? More?

◊ Embar · 10/13/08, 3:56 PM

Originally Posted by Zurm

2) With DRW, is it safe to assume it will be used on cooldown? Given that it needs at least 50 RP, and ideally 100+, how much of a delay on those 3 minutes shoudl I put on it for the start of a fight? 20 seconds? More?

DRW use would depend on setup, whether you're going to Hysteria yourself or someone else, whether it will be used in sync with Heroism/Bloodlust. 20 seconds/1 rotation seems safe enough to build up the 100RP for the most part, although you may need more time to do it in actual practice if Death Trance doesn't proc early and you use your RP to deathcoil instead of storing it for DRW on the second rotation.

Arkasi · 10/13/08, 4:50 PM

Originally Posted by Aezoc

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Inconsistent Rune Refresh rate, the answer was the thread that I saw, although I haven't seen any blue followups yet.

I have very little experience with blood specs, but it seems like they are the worst off in this situation, since they are the most bound by the GCD (SD procs + rotations where they substitute 2x HS for an oblit). If the rune CD stays at 7.5-8 seconds, they're going to have to skip RP abilities altogether on some rotations.

This actually got me thinking. Suppose you are blood specced, and are in blood presence. On the previous rotation you turned your Frost and Unholy runes into Death Runes. You now have 2 blood runes and 4 death runes and runes are refreshing every 8 seconds. You spam 6 Heart Strikes in a row. That's 6 abilities times a 1.5 second cool down is 9 seconds total. So you're refreshing runes before you even finish your rotation.

Does this mean that blood dps has to use a normal FU ability every rotation or end up hitting their own rune refresh rate?
Even so that's a 7.5 second rotation in an 8 second window, where would you use your RP? Will Blood dps have to use unholy presence to keep from being rp capped and not fall behind their own refresh rate?

• Zurm · 10/13/08, 4:52 PM

Originally Posted by Arkasi

That's 6 abilities times a 1.5 second cool down is 9 seconds total. So you're refreshing runes before you even finish your rotation.

I was under the impression that strikes (SS, HS, etc) only incurred a 1 second GCD, while spells (deathcoil, IT) used the normal 1.5 sec GCD.

casteel · 10/13/08, 4:58 PM

Originally Posted by Arkasi

This actually got me thinking. Suppose you are blood specced, and are in blood presence. On the previous rotation you turned your Frost and Unholy runes into Death Runes. You now have 2 blood runes and 4 death runes and runes are refreshing every 8 seconds. You spam 6 Heart Strikes in a row. That's 6 abilities times a 1.5 second cool down is 9 seconds total. So you're refreshing runes before you even finish your rotation.

Does this mean that blood dps has to use a normal FU ability every rotation or end up hitting their own rune refresh rate?
Even so that's a 7.5 second rotation in an 8 second window, where would you use your RP? Will Blood dps have to use unholy presence to keep from being rp capped and not fall behind their own refresh rate?

Why are we still assuming it's 8 seconds for rune cd?

Aezoc · 10/13/08, 5:03 PM

I don't think (again, haven't played blood much) that you'll ever have a 6 HS rotation. But that doesn't mean the problem isn't there; the cycle I just sketched out is IT->PS->HSx2->Oblit->DC->Oblit->HSx4 (assumes epidemic and annihilation). The first half of the cycle gives 1 GCD for a DC, the second half has no room - you get a rune refresh 0.5s after the last HS with the current 8 second cooldown. Even assuming nothing ever misses and ignoring SD procs, you can't burn off RP as fast as you get it with a cycle like that. Once you factor in those two, there's going to be a significant amount of RP wasted due to the GCD.

Edit: Two things.
1) Everything incurs a 1.5s GCD in blood presence. Spells get the GCD reduced from haste rating, nothing reduces the GCD on strikes.
2) We're assuming an 8 sec rune refresh because that's what it is currently. There hasn't been any blue comment on whether they intend to fix it by always setting the rune refresh at 10 seconds (likely requiring some DPS rebalancing), or just fix the anti-lag code so everyone gets the 8s refresh that's achievable currently.

◊ Embar · 10/13/08, 5:13 PM

Doing some detailed testing of DRW, and noted the following:

- My rune weapon melees for slightly more damage than I do, or at the very least equal damage.
- The first melee hit is an exception; it is always abnormally low.
- The rune weapon also appears to get in more white hits than I do (12 white hits as opposed to my 7 over 20 seconds). I use a 3.4 speed weapon, so this would seem to imply that DRW may have its own set weapon speed that is sub 2.0.
- Special attacks performed by the rune weapon hit for a lot less - the rune weapon's HS hits for about 560, but my own hits for 960. I am as yet unable to explain this behavior given that the white hit damage is similar and disease scaling should not be playing a part, and bloody strikes is only 18%.
- Talents that improve the crit coefficient appear to carry over to the rune weapon (RW's HS crit for ~260%, same as my own).
- In addition, the rune weapon likes to attack from the front (and get parry/blocked).

Test was done in frost presence, with no diseases up (will be testing with diseases/buffs up shortly).

• Zurm · 10/13/08, 5:27 PM

Originally Posted by Aezoc

1) Everything incurs a 1.5s GCD in blood presence. Spells get the GCD reduced from haste rating, nothing reduces the GCD on strikes.

My mistake, thanks.

Aezoc · 10/13/08, 5:28 PM

Originally Posted by Zurm

Curious, because other melee classes have a 1 sec GCD on strikes (Stormstrike, Sinister strike, etc), and shaman still have the 1.5 sec GCD on their shocks.

Nope, rogues and kitty druids are the only ones with a 1s GCD (and shaman, for totems only). Everyone else has a 1.5s GCD.

casteel · 10/13/08, 5:33 PM

Originally Posted by Aezoc

2) We're assuming an 8 sec rune refresh because that's what it is currently. There hasn't been any blue comment on whether they intend to fix it by always setting the rune refresh at 10 seconds (likely requiring some DPS rebalancing), or just fix the anti-lag code so everyone gets the 8s refresh that's achievable currently.

As I mentioned earlier, it isn't 8 sec cd, it only becomes 8 if you don't immediately use it up. I can back this up with timestamped combatlogs if you need proof.

Aezoc · 10/13/08, 5:43 PM

Originally Posted by casteel

As I mentioned earlier, it isn't 8 sec cd, it only becomes 8 if you don't immediately use it up. I can back this up with timestamped combatlogs if you need proof.

I believe you, but that's not something that everyone's seeing. Running the in-game stopwatch and burning runes as soon as they come up, I'm consistently getting an 8 sec CD. Other people have reported that they get the 10 sec CD no matter what. Clearly there's something fishy going on, but until Blizzard announces what the fix for it will be, this is just speculation. The point was just that with the 8 sec rune cooldown that some people can achieve, blood is completely GCD starved. If the rune cooldown becomes 10 seconds at all times then the problem's not so severe, but still more so than frost or unholy.

In general, Sudden Doom doesn't seem very well designed. It would make more sense IMO if it boosted your normal death coils more, rather than giving a free one and requiring another GCD. Or, alternately, HS could become a BB strike.

jaxdahl · 10/13/08, 6:05 PM

Originally Posted by Embar

Doing some detailed testing of DRW, and noted the following:

...
- The first melee hit is an exception; it is always abnormally low.
...

Is this true when you use DRW, wait a few seconds, then attack the target as opposed to casting DRW directly onto the target?

• frmorrison · 10/13/08, 6:07 PM

Sudden Death would work better if the Death Coil was GCD free, but that is not going to happen.

The talent is still a fair dps boost, but if you don't like it you can do a hybrid spec or a whole other tree for dps.

The amount of choices a DK has is one of the best things about the class.

Tantlin · 10/13/08, 6:07 PM

Updated my DK Tanking Simulator with all tank the gear on wowhead and now I have a ported version to Open Office Calc. The Talent page is not as versatile in OOC however.

Excel 2007

Open office Calc

◊ Embar · 10/13/08, 6:11 PM

Originally Posted by jaxdahl

Is this true when you use DRW, wait a few seconds, then attack the target as opposed to casting DRW directly onto the target?

I will test this when the servers come back up, but my initial suspicion is that it takes a while for the scaling part of the DRW's stats to be applied (similar to the delay with bladed armor).