1500-1600 'paper' dps with any/all raid buffs? i can link a spreadsheet with those numbers

I have been wondering what the MFx2 SFx11 rotation refers to. As it stands now I use MF SFx2 IS SFx2 with my 4 piece tier 5 to keep the bonus going smoothly but the spreadsheet says that the former is my highest dps. I apologize if this has been answered, I read through a few pages but 24 is a lot to look through.

Mf, Sfx5(ish), Mf, Sfx6(ish)
Depending on NG procs. The spell cycles are based around DoT duration and average cast times. You never actually get average... you either get faster or slower, depending on how your crits stack up.

EDIT: Lemme know if you discover the new FAQ is missing any repeat questions from this thread...

Are there any Itemslists for Balance like Toskks' calc lists?

This is probably a bit off-topic, but.. Has anyone made calculations for Idol swapping in the rotations? I tried the standard macros for MF / SF / Wrath, the ones that look something like this:

#showtooltip Moonfire
/cast Moonfire
/equip [noequipped:Idol of the Unseen Moon] Idol of the Unseen Moon

Those work fine when it comes to getting the benefit from all idols, although it seems as they reset the GCD right after the spell has been cast (GCD ticks up to 15-25%, then starts over from 0%). It feels as there is a noticeable delay for idol swapping, and much switching of spells (say MF / Wrath rotation for trashmobs or MF / SF for bosses) would probably yield a few seconds more of "waiting time" than it would with just one idol.

Has anyone checked into this? Is there any benefin from using idol swapping, or is it rather a nerf of your damage?

My Dr. Boom tests showed a decrease in dps with idol swapping . I have pretty low latency and that didn't seem to help.

The largest problem I had, was that if I hit starfire too quickly, and the moonfire global cooldown had not finished, then starfire would not cast, but the idol swap would still occur, introducing another global cooldown, and screw me out of 1.5 seconds.

If you have higher latency it may work in your favor by not causing this problem.

For me, running under 100ms latency, it was clear that the increase in dps I was receiving from potential procs was offset by the time I was losing due to having to watch the global cooldown too closely between moonfire and starfire in a standard IS/MF/SF totation.

I suppose the ideal would be to have 2 starfire macros, and swap the idol on the 2nd starfire, insuring that you don't get a swap misfire and cause an extra global cooldown.

That's my experience anyway.

I've found an increase in DPS using idol swaps, however it's MUCH lower than it should be and if 2.3.2 doesn't fix it I will be putting my unseen moon idol in the bank.

I have 150-300 ms ping and I watch my gcd and cast time VERY closely so I don't swap in the idol without casting the spell but the idol swap can screw you over if your not carefull.

The idol swap seems to add double your ping to the GCD, (same as the red section on quartz.)

2.3.2 will add a cooldown of 30 seconds to the unseen moon idol, making it theoreticly a MINOR increase in dps with swaps compaired to the starfire idol and a MAJOR decrease without swaps. If they don't fix the extra GCD time using it will make you lose dps period.

Caliane and Saph/Neth did some calcs, but here are some simple numbers that can be used as a rough estimate:

With 140 spell damage, let's assume for each starfire you cast while this effect is active, your starfires will net you 300 more damage, on average including all crits and raid debuffs. It's less than 300, but this is a nice round number, and serves as an upper limit. For insect swarm, we'll assume 120 extra damage.

Let's further assume your rotation is MF, SFx2, IS, SF, for a 12 second rotation that allows you to get the most benefit from your 8.5 second proc. So currently, off of a proc, you will get 300 x2 and 120 x1 extra damage. Total of 720 damage for each proc. So on average, this is 360 damage per 12 second cycle increase using this idol in the current state. Yes, I am completely ignoring the fact that you lose the SF idol benefit for the last SF you cast. Easy math, and upper limit.

So to answer Kermit's quesiton, about if its worth swapping idols to increase damage:
In 2.3: Yes
In 2.3.2: No, bank that garbage and write an in game petition to the GM to report a bug where Geras is selling an item that clearly should be sold by Griftah.
However, either way, do NOT use the MF+MF idol swap. It only procs if your previous spell cast ended very close to the time you use the macro, and the extra incurred GCD is NOT worth the benefit even right now.

360 damage per 12 second cycle is 30 dps. Let's use a decently geared Kara moonkin, who can pull in 800 dps. You must have a 37.5 ms ping in order to even BREAK EVEN. Even at 300 dps, which I'm sure a moonkin in a full of the owl green armor set could pull, your ping would have to be less than 100 ms to even gain benefit from this macro.

Maax's [casting] method does not seem to work for me, and as such, the benefit from swapping is minimal. If you can do 800 dps, spending more than 40 ms due to safe idol swapping only lowers your damage.

In a perfect 0 latency connection where you hit your GCDs right on the mark and have 0 ms delay in between spells, you'd get a 30 dps increase right now, and about a 15 dps increase in 2.3.2. However, if like me, your connection is greater than 0, by a substantial amount like say, 50 ms(which I would kill for), then it becomes far harder to advocate idol swapping at all due to the threat of eating a double GCD period for hitting a macro too fast.

I normally play in Taiwan with 500ms+ delay as my previous tests state, and for Christmas break I have about 30 ms delay(yay west coast). After testing it out here, and crunching out the numbers some more, I've completely removed all idol swapping macros from my bar. It's simply not worth the amount of effort and risk for the tiny DPS reward as it stands, and in 2.3.2 it's basically pure garbage.

That's too bad, I had hoped I found a solution for it. Any idea why it doesn't work? Logically it should.

I'm not sure, I copied the exact macro and it swaps the idols regardless of whether I'm in combat, out of combat, casting or not. Can you try to confirm if you typed it correctly?

Even if you manage to get it working, the benefit from the idol is still kind of blah right now, and is not worth bothering with after 2.3.2.

A simple search of this thread for "MFx2, SFx11" would get you this post that answers your question.