Cataclysm Balance Theorycraft and Spreadsheet Thread - Page 2

• Hamlet · 07/01/10, 5:08 PM

The nukes seems pretty straightforward: Starfire and Wrath have standard casttime/3.5 coefficients, but Starsurge has a very high coefficient: 1.535 (so Erdluf was right about that being their route to make SS useful).

Having a bit of trouble figuring out exactly what's going on with the DoT's.

IS:
First dataset (post 10) gives a base of 255/tick (+/- 1) and coefficient of 0.2/tick after dividing out 1.3 for the Glyph.
Second dataset (post 12) is incomplete.
Third (post 14), first set gives a base of 255/tick (over 7 ticks now), and a coefficient of 0.26/tick (1.82 over the full 7 ticks), after dividing out talents. So that's weird.
Third post, second set gives a base of 255/tick and coefficient of 0.26.

So maybe the Glyph affects base damage only? (which would be almost certain to make it . . . pretty awful).

Or maybe the tooltip is not correctly accounting for the Glyph's effect on the coefficient.

MF DoT:
Untalented coefficient is 0.540 over 12 seconds, talented coefficient is 0.540 over 15 seconds (after dividing out talents). Once again, something's not affecting the coefficient correctly, either in reality or just in the tooltip (but again, note that for IS, the apparent coefficient did increase to account for the extra tick, so I don't know).

MF DD:
Again, between talented and untalented table, DD seems to have been increased by 16%, but not coefficient.

Sfall:
Same, w.r.t Glyph of Focus.

Attached is my (kind of messy) computation table.

----

Liss:
--Can you check actual IS/MF damage on a dummy and see if it conforms to tooltips at high spellpower and with glyphs/talents?

copialinex · 07/01/10, 8:14 PM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

Main difference I think is that I was using 36% for max rank Improved Eclipse; you were using 30%...

I misunderstood the Eclipse tooltip; I thought it was Nature/Arcane , so I take back the "back to back" (Cata frenzy).

I think I didn't make myself clear with the dots issue: If the time to achieve 200 energy is under 15s, it doesn't matter,
you can (must) use the extra time to cast DoTs, the problem is when the time to achieve 200 energy is under 15s-2GCD (or 1GCD if single DoT rotation).

PS. I redid my calculations with a very simple implementation of NG and including the 5% haste buff, they reduced the time needed to achieve 200 energy by an amount I didn't thought of, all of this with Improved Eclipse being 30%, if it is 36%... you can imagine (the 30% data was picked from wowtal.com). Also, I treated energy points as damage buff, first, stack additively, then multiplicatively.
PS2. Could somebody please confirm the relation between Euphoria and SS? I noticed that in both wowtal and wowhead, the first point is said to affect SS, but not the second. Thank you very much.

aceofsween · 07/02/10, 9:11 AM

I honestly wouldn't worry much about Glyphs at this point. With the addition of Medium Glyphs we'll probably see massive changes across the board. And those are probably the last things I expect them to fix up. Plus, I'm curious how much they will effect our game play from a DPS perspective. GC has made his vague insinuations that glyphs will be changing because they don't offer the choice of gameplay they originally were designed to instead becoming a "which glyph is best" sort of deal.

For now, it's probably best to ignore glyphs entirely and wait until we are closer to the release.

PS2. Could somebody please confirm the relation between Euphoria and SS? I noticed that in both wowtal and wowhead, the first point is said to affect SS, but not the second. Thank you very much.

That's a fairly common bug with talents in their early stages. It's safe to assume that Starsurge is still (or will be) affected by Euphoria with 2 talent points spent.

lissanna · 07/02/10, 6:30 PM

The moonfire tooltip #'s aren't matching what it is actually doing once you talent into it and have on all your gear. Here's what I have from casting moonfire & insect swarm at the target dummy...

Using the 60/0/13 build, 3319 spell power, 7.44% haste from gear plus haste mastery, out of moonkin form:
Moonfire has 1063 direct damage, plus 783 damage per tick for 5 ticks.
Insect swarm has 1279 damage per tick for 7 ticks

Using the 60/0/13 build, 140 spell power, only haste mastery, out of moonkin form:
Moonfire has 304 direct damage, plus 129 damage per tick for 5 ticks.
Insect swarm has 332 damage each tick for 7 ticks

I think haste isn't being handled well in the tooltip scaling or something strange is happening for DOTs, where their actual damage isn't reflected by our tooltips directly. I'm not 100% sure what's broken.

these numbers are without glyphs, I believe.

Erdluf · 07/02/10, 10:13 PM

Thanks lissana.

Actually, those IS numbers are pretty close to what you'd previously reported from the tooltip. Perhaps IS is now up to 26%/tick to make up for the missing hit debuff.

If you had 7.44% haste from gear, and another 8.01% haste from Mastery, IS should have had eight ticks according to the new rules.

I plugged MF numbers into Hamlet's spreadsheet, but threw in another 1.16 multiplier for DD (BotG and IMF, which I assume are additive with each other, but not with E&M or the mastery bonus - assumptions will need to be tested):

I get direct at 204 base DD, with an 18% coefficient (live at 80 is a 441 base with a 15% coef). DoT ticks at a 86 base and also a 18% coef./tick (Live 80 is 200 + 13%)

I also assume you weren't casting under the influence of the new WoC.

• Hamlet · 07/02/10, 11:22 PM

I'm getting 88/tick for MF but yeah, 18%. I'm not going to sweat all the +/- 1's for base damage since it will all be updated for 85 and working out the rounding is annoying. I'll put an updated sheet in the OP presently.

lissanna · 07/03/10, 5:30 PM

It is possible that haste scaling is broken on Beta (it really wouldn't surprise me). I'll bug report it in-game. I counted ticks a couple times, and nothing was increasing my number of DOT ticks, regardless of how much haste I stacked (I have more haste in my resto gear than my moonkin set, so combining the two, it's possible to boost haste #'s pretty high). The ticks are critting appropriately, but I'm posting non-crit numbers, since they are easier to work with.

For moonfire testing, I let WoC fall off before I cast it again.

• Hamlet · 07/03/10, 5:31 PM

Originally Posted by lissanna

It is possible that haste scaling is broken on Beta (it really wouldn't surprise me). I'll bug report it in-game. I counted ticks a couple times, and nothing was increasing my number of DOT ticks, regardless of how much haste I stacked (I have more haste in my resto gear than my moonkin set, so combining the two, it's possible to boost haste #'s pretty high). The ticks are critting appropriately, but I'm posting non-crit numbers, since they are easier to work with.

Was the duration of the DoT/HoT changing with haste?

lissanna · 07/03/10, 5:36 PM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

Was the duration of the DoT/HoT changing with haste?

Sometimes, the duration is a second longer than the tooltip says, but it never gets shorter, and we aren't getting any more ticks, as far as I've been able to tell. Something seems buggy with haste scaling. I'll keep testing & bug report it.

aceofsween · 07/03/10, 6:41 PM

Lissanna, if you have the know how (and are willing) it would be much easier to simply extract the spell data files from the beta client itself and use those to look up the coefficients rather than trying to reverse engineer them through testing (since the game can be rather buggy at times). As of right now though, all the coefficients you've come up with in game are matching up with the information I sent Arawethion a few days back from the 12164 Alpha Build.

For the sake of completion, here's the information I found from the Alpha Build:

Insect Swarm: .26
Moonfire DD: .18
Moonfire DoT: .18
Wrath: .741
Starfire: 1.00
Starsurge: 1.535
Starfall: .127 <~ Might not be correct, if you remember GC couldn't give us an accurate number when he pulled the coefficient from the spell data.
Wild Mushroom: .286

The only thing I can't find at the moment is Typhoon. It's coefficient is listed as 0 in the file I have right now. Not sure what's up with that.

• Hamlet · 07/03/10, 8:37 PM

Just recording a computation.

Currently, haste-capping Wrath after raid buffs and talents takes:
1.5 / (1.03*1.03*1.05*1.2) - 1 = 12.21% haste (which is where are 401 haste rating cap comes from).

With currently known Cataclysm mechanics, if NG is unchanged, it will take:
2.0 / (1.05*1.0801*1.2) - 1 = 46.96% haste from gear.

Haste-capping the GCD will take:
1.5 / (1.05*1.0801*1.2) - 1 = 10.22%

lissanna · 07/04/10, 10:46 AM

Originally Posted by aceofsween

Lissanna, if you have the know how (and are willing) it would be much easier to simply extract the spell data files from the beta client itself and use those to look up the coefficients rather than trying to reverse engineer them through testing (since the game can be rather buggy at times). As of right now though, all the coefficients you've come up with in game are matching up with the information I sent Arawethion a few days back from the 12164 Alpha Build.

For the sake of completion, here's the information I found from the Alpha Build:

Insect Swarm: .26
Moonfire DD: .18
Moonfire DoT: .18
Wrath: .741
Starfire: 1.00
Starsurge: 1.535
Starfall: .127 <~ Might not be correct, if you remember GC couldn't give us an accurate number when he pulled the coefficient from the spell data.
Wild Mushroom: .286

The only thing I can't find at the moment is Typhoon. It's coefficient is listed as 0 in the file I have right now. Not sure what's up with that.

I really don't like digging into the actual files (and I honestly don't know how). I prefer to just get samples of data from in the game. Also, if we find things that look really high or low from the in-game files (ie. if things aren't matching), then we can bug report it.

Right now, Typhoon's tooltip is bugged, which is why it's showing up as 0 in the files. However, I believe I got the #'s from actually casting it for people to play with posted in another thread.

Starfall as a whole is back to feeling "nerfed", so the value for starfall may be accurate.

lissanna · 07/04/10, 10:55 AM

Originally Posted by Arawethion

Just recording a computation.

Currently, haste-capping Wrath after raid buffs and talents takes:
1.5 / (1.03*1.03*1.05*1.2) - 1 = 12.21% haste (which is where are 401 haste rating cap comes from).

With currently known Cataclysm mechanics, if NG is unchanged, it will take:
2.0 / (1.05*1.0801*1.2) - 1 = 46.96% haste from gear.

Haste-capping the GCD will take:
1.5 / (1.05*1.0801*1.2) - 1 = 10.22%

With 11.73% haste from gear (784 haste rating from gear), 8.01% haste from mastery, and the 5% haste from imp moonkin form, and Nature's Grace proc active, I have wrath down to a 1.31 second cast time. So, with even moderate haste values, we can still get wrath to have a fairly short cast time with NG active.

I'm at a 1.58 cast time on wrath without Nature's Grace (with the other buffs described above).

At 7.44% haste from gear (495 haste rating at 82), with haste from mastery and imp moonkin form (NO nature's grace), I have a 1.68 sec cast time.

• Hamlet · 07/30/10, 7:10 PM

Ok, it's been a little while and a bunch of stuff has changed, so here's a new spreadsheet update reflecting the current state of things on the beta. All the talents that aren't in the current build are zeroed out.

I tried to model the Twitter Eclipse and the smart energy from SS. The SS setup isn't great yet--it uses it only once per half-cycle, and you choose whether to use it inside Eclipse or outside Eclipse. I'm pretty sure the best DPS will be to just use it on cooldown, but that might be a lot trickier to model.

A few quick things:
--Euphoria obviously very weak for DPS now.
--So is Lunar Guidance.
--Genesis isn't bad, since our DoT's do so much damage now. If we continue to have a bunch of leftover points, it will be standard for DPS.

Anyway, it's there to play with more. Will keep updating when I'm not playing Starcraft.

aceofsween · 07/30/10, 10:39 PM

I've gotta be honest, I'm not following some of the Calculations here with regard to Eclipse.

With the "default" stats, Wrath has ~15.8856 energy per cast. That would equate to about 6.295 casts in the Pre-Lunar phase. But the "Pre Lunar casts" value lists that as 5.1212? Furthermore, it says the phase is going to last 7.645 seconds. Is that accurate? I'm not questioning the value (it checks out with the average wrath cast time) but it just seems extremely short. They probably need to rebalance our Energy gains so that we aren't zipping from one end of Eclipse to the other.