Midra

Just did a quick test to provide some numbers verifying that SoA is treated the same as SotVH.

I used roughly the same setup as Aezoc in this earlier post.

Differenes in my case:

• AP is constantly 2669
• No diseases are used
• Rank 4 Oblit is 80% WPN + 467
• SoA is listed as 336 damage to Ob

WPN = weapon_base + AP / 14 * 2.4 = 3 + (2669/14) * 2.4 = 461
Ob = 0.8 * 461 + 467 = 835.8

One minor complicating factor is armor. I did these tests on an an L70 training dummy, since it was free of debuffs.
I have a miniscule amount of ArP, but getting the exact reduction is unimportant for establishing how SoA interacts with ToT.
So, expected MH Oblit hit is 835.8 with my []s.

Strikes were:

	hit	crit
MH	585	1434
OH	335	822

From this I calculated the armor reduction with observed, 585, divided by expected, 835.8. This is ~0.699.

With SoA:

	hit	crit
MH	820	2009
OH	606	1485

So, the difference:

	hit	crit
MH	235	575
OH	271	663

If we divide these by the reduction from armor, we get the benefit from SoA:

	hit	crit
MH	335.75	821.51
OH	387.20	947.24

The OH bonus is, as with SotVH, again 1.15x that of the MH. The crits are approx. 2.45x the hits, as expected.
Conclusion: SoA is functioning the same as SotVH on the PTR, IE, SoA provides full benefit to MH and OH, modulo NoCS. Tested on June 26th, patch 0.2.0 (10026).

Apologies if this is a bit long for a simple point. I like to keep things transparent.

 

Xentik

I'll take a look at it in a bit, shouldn't be too difficult as I just have to toggle the various talents and tell it to re-run the calculations.

Also in response to your point about merciless combat, I actually left it off for the calculations, I'll go back and clarify that in the first post. Merciless combat would, of course, further skew things in favor of Frost Strike.

 

Kyruski

I'm guessing you did your Calcs/graphs with SotVH for it. I'm wondering what it will look like sans SotVH in favor of Sigil of Virulence, and sans 2pT8 most likely because we'll switch to T9 most likely and the Sigil of Virulence once it drops.

 

Xentik

Yes, I used SotVH but no 2pT8. I'll go look both up and add them to the calculations when I go do the extra runs for Maraxus later tonight. I'll also see if I can get some numbers for enhancement of the two on a per-talent-point basis.

 

Sylari

So FS pulls ahead around 6-8k AP, but how does this stack up with the rest of the talents?

Also regarding your DC build, wouldn't giving up the 3 extra points in KM and treating it as filler in exchange for picking up something like ghoul net higher DPS?

 

Xentik

Well for my calculation currently KM has no effect on Frost Strike, and I'm not modelling anything but the DPRP for the two strikes so I can't say anything about overall DPS. One assumes that, all other things being equal, maximizing DPRP for our RP dump will result in a net gain in DPS, but that falls apart once you start comparing enhancing things other than the RP dumps to the RP dumps themselves.

The new calculations I'm working on produce the functions:

deltaDPRP(crit, deltaCrit, AP, deltaAP, MHDPS, OHDPS, TalentsTaken)

deltaDamage(crit, deltaCrit, AP, deltaAP, MHDPS, OHDPS, TalentsTaken)

where deltaCrit and deltaAP are the difference in AP/Crit between FS and DC. (e.g. If I have 15 crit on DC and 30 crit on FS, I would set crit = 15, deltaCrit= 15)

This should be a complete solution to FC vs DC problem. Once I have worked out the kinks I'll post it here so we can go over it rigorously and determine if there are any variables that might have been left out. With this problem solved we can figure out which attack we should use, and how much DPRP per talent point we can gain on either FS or DC. From there we can begin to compare those points to things like perma ghoul.


Maraxus: The two builds you listed earlier are the same, it appears your Frost strike build is missing. Could you fix the links?

 

Sakuratei

I ran some tests on the Target Dummy to check the uptimes of various weapon rune setups. I used two 2.6 weapons, specced for Improved Icy Talons and in Blood Presence.

2x Fallen Crusader: Over a 4 minute fight, FC had close to 95% uptime. The buff would often refresh itself when there was >7 seconds left, making me feel like this may be wasted uptime.

FC MH, Razorice OH: The Razorice application feels very random, but by drawing an average out of 10 tests, it seems to stack to 5 in 12-15 seconds average. Fallen Crusader had an uptime of roughly 75%.

Razorice MH, FC OH: Pretty much the same results as with FC in MH (Not a big surprise given the nature of all strikes attacking with both weapons).

 

Aezoc

To some extent, I think FC vs. RI will depend on what sort of fights are in the coliseum, which obviously nobody knows yet. Razorice suffers on any fight with lots of target switching or movement, since the full stack takes time to apply and may drop off if you can't touch the target for some reason.

To use Ulduar fights purely as an example, RI would suffer to some extent or another in: Razorscale P1, Deconstructor (if you get bombed), Stormcaller portion of council (overload and lightning tendrils), Auriaya's fear, Thorim's arena, Hodir (breaking out adds), Mimiron P3, and pretty much the whole Yogg fight.

Speculating on what kind of fights there will be is fairly pointless, but I think that FC's distinct advantage on mobile/multi-target bosses is definitely worth noting.

 

Sakuratei

Yes, that is definately a valid concern. I forgot to mention that Razorice seemed to refresh within 10 seconds almost always. Of course, there will always be random muckery, but I think we can assume the stack will stay up if you return to the target with 10 secs left of the Razorice debuff.

 

Nizari

I was testing out a blood/frost build (23/48/0)
I had the following

• Sigil of Awareness
• 4pT8
• Glyph of Blood Strike
• Using Death runes on blood strike unless refreshing diseases
• Armour penetration of 17%
• Unholy Presence
• Spell Hit Capped
• Expertese Capped

I was able to get much higher overall DPS than any other frost build I tested (most suggested here). Consistently 4k, with a 163 DPS main hand and a fast offhand (not ideal). Blood strikes were hitting harder than Obliterates which is amazing considering I had Merciless Combat (and the dummy was below 35%), the Obliterate Sigil and Obliterate Glyph.
I wasn't able to test out the Glyph of Disease, as I didn't want to try testing it as it would mean Icy Talons would never be re applied. I tested out Glyph of Icy Touch, which seemed a little bit better than Obliterate, it increased the overall Frost Strike Damage.
The biggest concern I have with this build, is, what will count towards the Blood Strike Glyph, seeing as mages are all going arcane fire these days.

The Spread seems to be consistently
Blood Strike - 32-34%
Frost Strike - 22-24%
Melee - 20-22%
Obliterate - 10-12%

Overall it makes Armour pen quite desirable. Haven't tested out any Unholy/Deathcoil builds yet, but at the moment this blood/frost build is looking pretty nice. Not sure if its worth subbing 3 points points from Frozen Tundra for 2 points in Bloody Vengeance and Veteran of the third war.

http://sigs.guildlaunch.net/sig.php/419258FqvWj.png

 

Bob002

Your tests with RI make me wonder what the DPS "loss" might potentially be with Slow/Fast. It seems like RI is akin to a combat rogue's poisons where you want a fast offhand for maximum poison application/procs. I'm also interested to see how CG stacks up vs RI. Maybe it would be best to use two different weapons with RI on them? A slow with RI for single target/stationary fights and a fast for multiple mob fights?

My other questions lie in how much hit rating is really "wanted" for DW to effectively work with BCB and Necrosis. I've seen quite a few instances where people say get the spell hit cap and just stack STR after that and it's most effective.

I think I'm going to find a white weapon to test BCB and Necrosis tonight; hopefully that will help me out with some of my confusion when it comes to these two talents.

 

Bob002

Seems the popular choice is a point in chillblains; I think it's mentioned earlier in the thread.

 

Sylari

Only time I can see CG potentially being viable is if the frost/DC builds end up being any good. although people don't seem to like them so far.

I'll try and do some testing later ( having issues with the PTR ) but it would be interesting to see how RI/BCB ( which favor fast weapons ) stack up to ToT .. I imagine slow OH will be better, but not significantly so, especially since RI is kinda negligible...

 

Sakuratei

In the current unholy builds, both Necrosis and BCB are around 3-4% of the total damage each. BCB is valued higher than Necrosis. However, if you go for Necrosis and BCB, you're skipping the Blood tree completely which is more Strike-oriented and falls in line with ToT's whole point.

CG is a chance on hit to increase the damage of your next two Frost and Shadow attacks. RI is 5% Frost damage as long as it is refreshed. CG may buff your Icy Touch, Plague Strike or Frost Strike, RI buffs Icy Touch, Frost Fever and every Frost Strike you pull out. If CG was somewhat controllable so you could always use the buff for frost strikes, it may have been competetive. As it is now, I feel it is somewhat lackluster.

Having a fast offhand will generate more BCB's, but they will all be weaker since they are based on the weapon damage. The DPS loss from ToT won't be that overwhelming as a majority of the strike damage comes from the main hand still, but it's hard to do any mathemathical calculations of damage done at this point, Blood Strike is (as I recall) still hitting for 50% more per disease even though the latest notes say 25% per disease.

 

Bob002

You're right. For some reason I was thinking it said something to the effect of 25% MH dmg or the like, which was my entire basis of thinking slow/fast.

 

mongoose221

Xentik, I'm not sure if you have taken this into consideration, but one more step in comparing DC vs. FS for the RP dump is the fact that talented out with GoG, FS gets a +45% crit damage bonus (for x2.45) vs a (x2.0) for DC. This should also be factored in when you finish the crit delta section, and is one of the reasons why frost is reliant on KM and crits.

 

Bob002

And part of the reason that a FS/UB build isn't working in my mind. Unless you switch DC and FS when the DoT from UB falls off.

 

Kyruski

Looking at his post Here, it looks like he has taken it into consideration.

Bob002: I don't think anyone has been even thinking about a FC/UB combo build if that's what you're referring to. From what you're saying, I'm not sure you understand the mechanics of the UB talent (or how it's supposedly going to work).

 

Amroo

As for Unholy subspec it should probably be distinguished between cases where there is an Enhancement shaman in the raid and cases where it is not. If you take all raid buffs as exogenously given (what should be done when determining the spec that yields the maximum DPS), there is no point for DW Frost to spec into Icy Talons or Improved Icy Talons. You only lose 5% haste, but gain any two of Deathchill, Howling Blast or 1-2 point(s) in BCB and three wild points for survival / utility talents like Improved Frost Presence or Hungering Cold. The DPS talents alone are worth more than those 5% haste, the value of 10% extra health or an instant AoE snare is immeasurable.

 

Sakuratei

I read somewhere in the Frost DPS thread that autoattack mechanics mean that 5% haste = 5% more damage for autoattacks. In my preliminary tests, autoattacks did roughly 25% of my damage. I don't see how a free crit every 2 mins can be more dps than 5% more autoattack damage.

You can spec for Improved Icy Talons, Howling Blast and 3/3 BCB with a 0/53/18 spec.

We're here to theorycraft the maximum DPS, although Hungering Cold and more Stamina may be useful, they will not contribure to more DPS in any scenario.

 

Amroo

Thank you for reminding me why we are here, I almost forgot. A 0-53-18 spec with IIT, HB excludes UA which while being rather lackluster when compared to other CDs is still a reasonable investment (you have the opportunity cost of 1 IT and 4/7 FS, but 25% more strength for 20 seconds easily outweighs that). And you can't skill deathchill. One crit every two minutes might not sound great, but it's not worse than your 5% haste:

Assume 5000 DPS, 25% of that is from auto-attack related attacks. Without 5% hase you would have done 1 / 1.05 of that damage, i.e. only 4940 DPS.

Now take those 4940 DPS, every 2 minutes you get an extra FS crit that does 10k instead of 4k damage. 6000 damage over 120 seconds is 50 DPS. Since the crit multiplier for FS is actually slightly hgher than 2.5 you probably gain slightly more than 50 DPS. Plus the boost from UA which is certainly more than 10 DPS.

So you get more damage, more survivability, more utility at the cost of a buff that no one needs if you have an Enhancement shaman in your raid.

Edit: Just to visualize: Compare your spec with this spec. You gain Deathchill, UA, 3% crit on OB and BS, 8% aggro reduce, 10% health and HC at the cost of 5% haste. Even in pure DPS terms the second spec is far better.

 

Sylari

While 5% haste isn't exactly a huge DPS boost for 6 points, frost isn't very bloated at that tier, and you end up spending points on talents that don't necessarily effect DPS at all, most notably you can get 'stuck' around 31 talent points if you ignore IT.

Beyond that, IIT is the stronger application of the buff, and the two talent points ( at least as far as I can see ) don't have any alternatives that are a significant enough DPS boost to make it matter.

edit: your deathchill math only works assuming you have a 0% chance to crit to begin with also.

 

Kaveli

Still,

5% haste should improve proc based effects like KM.

Also using Deathchill only guarentees a crit in an already high crit based dps build, what's to say you wouldn't have crit without it, or got a KM proc at the same time?

So it may not be in "actualality" 50 dps, just a "potential" if the forced crit wouldn't have crit without it. I hope that makes sense.


ps: no spell check in this web browser. pardon spelling errors.

 

Arazan

Maybe I'm nitpicking here, but wouldn't you always want to use Deathchill for Obliterate? Ob's hitting harder than frost strike, and even through Rime your FS's should have a higher crit rate due to Killing Machine.

Also, you're overstating Deathchill's value a bit. Using deathchill does not guarantee that a non-crit will crit, just that an ability will crit. So if you're running, say, a 50% crit rate (for math's sake) for Frost Strike and Obliterate, using Deathchill on one isn't giving you 145% extra damage for the number crunching, but only half that (because the Deathchill is basically giving you +50% crit).

So in your same example let's say you had 40% crit on Frost Strike, using Death Chill is only guaranteeing you 60% of the 6000 damage, which is 30 DPS, remarkably less than that you calculated for IIT.

I do agree wholeheartedly on UA though, free pseudo-trinket every 2 minutes is quite amazing.

 

Amroo

Agreed, 5% haste increases KM ppm by 5%, so one proc every 4 minutes or so and it slightly increases FC uptime (which is high to begin with). You are also right about the fact that the FS could have crit anyways (about a 1 in 3 chance), however you are wrong about KM, since KM and DC stack. So even if DC equals only 40 DPS and 5% haste equal 70 instead of 60 dps you still have an additional 3% crit on OB / BS (~20% of your damage) and UA. It's very hard to estimate the value of UA, but it is definitely significantly positive. So even when your caveats are taken into account, you still have superior damage and better survivability / utility.

Also, all these assumptions are in a static environment where you are always on the boss. As soon as you need to move away from the boss clicky-talents scale better than static talents, since the time left on the cooldown decreases no matter what you are doing.

edit: @Arazan, is OB critting higher than FS a new DW thing? In none of my 2H-Frost parses is OB critting heavier than FS. Oh, and DC does not overwrite KM.

Also, since I get the impression people are fighting this notion that 5% haste is really not that great compared to what else you could get (even just damage-wise), although it is kind of obvious, this might be because you are wondering why it never considered with 2H specs. The answer is simply that you did not have to take the 6 DW-talent points and you needed exactly 51 points to get all DPS talents in the tree. Now, if you want to take IIT you have to miss out on either one point in BCB or UA or HB due to the three points in ToT. Once IIT is debatable, the entire 6 points spent in getting there become debatable.