Balance Raiding in Cataclysm - Page 27

Erdluf · 09/21/10, 8:05 AM

It looks like an SS cast-in-progress doesn't consume a Shooting Stars proc

Originally Posted by Arythorn's WoL

[00:16:54.169] Calculatéd begins to cast Starsurge
[00:16:55.672] Calculatéd gains Shooting Stars from Calculatéd
[00:16:56.821] Calculatéd Starsurge Melee Target *1* (O: 34213)
[00:16:57.305] Calculatéd gains 15 from Calculatéd's Starsurge
[00:16:57.689] Calculatéd casts Starsurge on Melee Target
[00:16:57.690] Calculatéd's Shooting Stars fades

Edit: Roughly 800 casts, and 14 Omen of Clarity procs is roughly 2% proc rate.

Arythorn · 09/21/10, 8:07 AM

Originally Posted by Mews

4. Is your haste so high that using HSA (gloves) on Wrath a waste? Particularly with Nature's torment?

It dropped me very low on Wrath when both Torment and Hyperspeed were up, I believe around 1.1 second cast time, but Quartz is not working atm on pointer (or at least it wasn't a little bit ago) so I'll have to look a bit closer and see. (EDIT: Quartz working now and it drops me to 1.207 cast time with both up). That said, my thought on Hyperspeed atm, is to try and use it as follows:

a) Inside an Eclipse only when I'm trying to squeeze a few more casts inside of a trinket proc
b) otherwise only after an Eclipse has ended to try and get to the opposite Eclipse more quickly

I can't say I was perfect on that execution or the rotation in general (or even if the theory is correct) -- I'm still getting used to it -- but the above is what makes sense to me. I'm also a bit surprised that I only had ~87% uptime on insect swarm as I really only let it drop without refreshing if I was a cast or two away from Solar but the logs don't lie. Equally surprised that I kept 70+% uptime on Moonfire when it can't be refreshed during Solar.

Arythorn · 09/21/10, 8:08 AM

Originally Posted by Erdluf

It looks like an SS cast-in-progress doesn't consume a Shooting Stars proc

The log is actually misleading on that. If Shooting Stars procs mid-Starsurge cast, sadly it definitely lets you finish the cast and then consumes the proc as well. I think I do remember that double-Starsurge though -- the Starsurge cast finished a micro-second (well looks like maybe 3/1000 of a second) before that Shooting Stars proc but Starsurge like Wrath it has a travel time, so Starsurge didn't actually register damage on the target until after the next Shooting Stars had proc'd. I was actually about to curse because I thought the proc had popped and gotten eaten right at the very end of my cast but then I saw the power aura that Starsurge was available again and keyed the rare back-to-back double-Starsurge with a smile.

Kluian · 09/21/10, 9:30 AM

I hope they fix Shooting Stars being proc/consumed while you cast Starsurge. I've seen it quite a bit in just the short time of leveling from 80-81. I'm not sure if they will fix it though because perhaps it will be too powerful to cast a Starsurge and and 2nd instant cast one right after.

Royalite · 09/21/10, 9:44 AM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

Eclipse not decaying whatsoever outside of combat means you can just prepare an Eclipse to carry into raid combat. Probably undesirable.

I am guessing they are trying to find a balance between using Eclipse while leveling and using Eclipse for raiding.
Removing the decay entirely really speeds the leveling aspect which might be more of a concern at the start of Cata than probably fast decay for balancing raiding.

I have been contemplating whether they really need to change it though...
The devs seem to be smoothing out Eclipse and as others have mention before it is no longer 80% of our dmg unlike live.
I think it may end up in the end up not being that large of a dps increase to justify the trouble to the raid for a full bar before the pull.

If they have eclipse decay completely when changing zones, it might hedge off the "Lock, summon me now. My bar is full" type abuse.
Otherwise if you have a clean run on farm content, just cleared trash and heading to down the boss... why not have a full bar at the start?

Again I am at the mercy of not having beta numbers but I am going to make a bet that player skill in managing the rotation with movement properly over the course of the fight will result in the largest dps difference than a full bar at the start would bring.

Erdluf · 09/21/10, 11:04 AM

Decay is particularly punishing in PvP. It is difficult to get the proc in the first place. You are out of combat a lot. In battlegrounds you will probably rez at zero energy, and arenas will almost certainly begin at zero.

Losing our mastery for the first 30s of most PvP fights is a serious weakness. It is certainly possible that we'll make up for that weakness in other areas (superior CC or cooldowns), but making Mastery a worthless stat for PvP would lead to gearing issues (particularly with Spirit already being trivial to cap for PvP).

Kluian · 09/21/10, 11:43 AM

I'm not sure if this was said but decay could just be introduced into a raid setting. That should fix most peoples attempts to set up an eclipse and it leaves it how it is not for easier leveling / pvp management.

Arythorn · 09/21/10, 1:23 PM

Another good long log (maybe 30 mins or so) of sustained at just over 12k:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

I actually have ForteXorcist, Quartz, and Powa working pretty much as I do on live and that's helping me track internal/hidden CDs and manage rotation better. I may post a vid of that even though Sunfire isn't working -- because with Forte cooldown timer working, the output is definitely instructional on how much is going on in the background and all the individual micro decisions based on procs, cools, position on Eclipse bar etc. It's a bit hectic to say the least.

Aarondf2003 · 09/21/10, 2:13 PM

Arythorn,

For your parse, are you glyphed and if so which are you using? I'm noticing some proportional differences in your damage spread to mine that I'm assuming is due to different or missing glyphs.

Also could you give an idea of your Eclipse uptime? According to the WoL sheet you had a 46.4% Lunar and 39.1% Solar uptime (85.5%) for Eclipse which is obviously high.
Thanks

Arythorn · 09/21/10, 3:29 PM

I'll defer to what the log says for Eclipse uptime - though I agree that sounds crazy high. Not sure what's going on there. The last log I posted (further up in this thread) has Lunar uptime at 37.9 and Solar at 29.3 (total 67.2% uptime) which sounds more realitic. As to glyphs, I pretty much have what I came over on live with though I did make a change or two from some glyphs I happened to have in bag:

Primes are: Moonfire, Insect Swarm, and Starfire.
Major is: Starfall

I actually only have one Major atm -- looking at what's available however, I don't see anything in Majors that would greatly affect single-target dps. I also didn't reforge anything. Honestly couldn't make sense of it. I'm perilously close to self-buffed hit-cap in current gear. If I reforge any spirit to haste, crit, I'm below. So I pretty much left things alone. I'm also missing a Red INT gem in my idol, but whatever

I have vid rendering and will upload to Youtube thereafter so you can see exactly what I'm up to -- probably hit this evening.

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EDIT: Vid is processed and available in HD up at:

YouTube - Boomkin Cataclysm Rotation PTR 12984

This is on Argent Tourney dummy to avoid extra Starfall hits. Granted, it's lvl 80 dummy versus 83 dummy in cities. That aside, city dummy DPS is higher due to Starfall targetting. Commentary on add-ons and rotation decisions are included. What I'm struggling with is a three-state Lunar ~15 sec / Non-Eclipse ~8 sec / Solar ~15 second alternating spell school buff cycle intermixed with Long duration dots and DFO / Phylactery procs interwoven as well (honestly, when they are active, the trinket procs have more of an upward effect on dps than the Eclipse cycles). Makes for a tough time knowing when and when not to clip.

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Erdluf · 09/22/10, 10:23 AM

30 Minute log shows 21 Omen procs from what I see as 1059 casts, staying at a 2% proc rate.

Aarondf2003 · 09/22/10, 12:05 PM

One nice oversight I came across is the direct damage portion of Moonfire still activates Shooting Stars. The tooltip reads that all damage will work but I assumed it would just be the DoT ticks. When spamming during movement for Lunar Shower I was getting great Stars procs, making for even better movement damage capabilities.

Arythorn · 09/22/10, 2:15 PM

Spent some time today on target dummy with the strategy of forcing myself to treat Phylactery / DFO procs as well as Eclipse cycles as so much background noise. In other words I did not clip dots based on trinket procs, I did not delay Starfall or Hyperspeed Gloves or Force of Nature for procs or for specific Eclipse cycles. I pretty much popped things as they came back up whenever they came back up and refreshed dots only when they needed refreshing. The one exception to this is there is pretty much either an enforced DoT clip after an Eclipse to get the haste from Nature's Torment OR an enforced DoT drop if you let it drop a few seconds before the Eclipse in anticipation of refreshing it then to proc Nature's Torment.

In this fashion, I was moving between Eclipse cycles faster -- sometimes I got lucky on dots getting refreshed during "good" trinket procs, sometimes I didn't. Nukes benefitted from the procs either way. I probably have more Nature's Torment uptime as a result of wasting less GCDs clipping and micro-managing dots (I'll have to review log for that). Long and short, using this strategy over a prolonged dummy rotation (~28 minutes and ~20 million damage) put me right at the same 12k sustained I got from micro-managing and clipping dots based on procs.

So . . . with all of that said, if I could get feedback to the devs, my statement would be that we change the description and function of 3/3 Nature's Torment to read:

"You gain 15% spell haste after you gain Solar or Lunar Eclipse, lasting 15 sec."

That's it. No cooldown -- however fast you can get to the opposite Eclipse is how fast you can get the Nature's Torment proc again. Just as it is now. Still meets what I think the design goal is (to encourage us to move between Eclipses -- actually meets it even better as you couldn't just wait 1 minute in the same Eclipse -- you have to go proc the other to get it again). The only difference is the proc of the Eclipse grants the effect rather than a mandatory DoT cast thereafter which may or may not make sense at the time.

This way we can let the dots that are currently up persist. The won't get the immediate bonus of the Eclipse but, as long as we naturally refresh them at their end sometime within the Eclipse (very likely they will expire in that ~15 seconds), that dot will carry the buff even after the Eclipse drops, so on and so forth, repeating the same refresh strategy through each Eclipse cycle ad infinitum.

Acting in this way and with Nature's Torment revised, I could pretty much remove most of the clipping concerns I have at the moment. Without dot clipping / dropping caused by our reaction to Nature's Torment, haste would allow dots to scale as intended. The remaining issues will be how we manage to be in the right Eclipse for things like AoE but, at least for the stand-still, single-target rotation, I have fewer issues.

The other revision would be to change Lunar Shower to tone that down a bit -- something to the effect of 10/20/30% -- number crunchers could figure out what would be reasonable and, overall, it's fairly workable as a talent tree.

Extended log from today at:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

for those interested.

Aarondf2003 · 09/22/10, 2:38 PM

That defeats the purpose of them using Nature's Torment as a Tier 1 talent meant for Resto Druids to take advantage of as well. They can't proc an Eclipse.
However if they shift Nature's Torment to second level in return for Moonglow or Genesis, that would make them happy as well.

Arythorn · 09/22/10, 2:45 PM

Once they tied it to dot casting, I felt it kind of defeated the purpose of Resto Druids taking it. At least it made it unwieldy. The Resto talent spec and available choices however is a whole other set of problems that, quite frankly, I think the devs are much further from the target on. More for another thread I suppose. I am sensitive to it as I played Resto main spec for the first three-quarters of WotLK -- it just feels like they have already made this talent far less useful for Resto druids even as currently written.