• Adoriele

You're right that a [Reckless Pyrestone] would be best in almost every slot (caveat: Assuming you're hit-capped, and assuming no incredibly out-there results from when I do a workup on Crit). If you only have the choice between [Quick Lionseye] and [Runed Crimson Spinel], though, chances are you're going to want the Spinel. I'll make an assumption that the 1392 breakpoint will hold to the same form as the 1077, i.e. that [Runed Crimson Spinel] will be better as long as your spell damage is less than your Spell Haste plus 1392. Of course, this depends on your sockets and bonuses.

[Edit] Okay, something's fishy. Say I have 1077 buffed spell damage, and two sockets left to go (And for the sake of argument, we'll assume that they have a useless socket bonus, like 5 Str, attached). I use the 'Runed is better until 1392' rule, and socket 12 spell damage in the first slot. I now have 1089 spell damage, and still 0 haste. If I follow the same rule, I should fill the second socket with a Spinel as well. If I follow the 'Keep them as close to the same as possible' rule, I should socket a Lionseye. They're both valid rules, with inconsistent results. I need to look into this more.

 

nakedduck

I was having the same thought proccess earlier, but "If I follow the 'Keep them as close to the same as possible' rule, I should socket a Lionseye." that rule implies you're getting a 1:1 ratio, but for gemming, it's a 1:1.2 ratio

 

• Adoriele

True. It would seem that that extra 2 spell damage would be more than enough to outweigh the benefits of keeping the two tied together. In fact, running the math on it, even a Pyrestone isn't enough to overcome it off the bat, though it does happen faster. I'll edit in the equation for it once I get a chance.

[edit] Nope, doesn't even happen faster, just gets you closer earlier on. The breakpoint is still the same 1392 that it is for a pure Haste gem, likely because the ratio remains 1.2:1. The equation, for those interested:


[edit2]Rare gems, on the other hand, are a completely different story. You'll want to start using [Reckless Noble Topaz] instead of [Runed Living Ruby] as soon as you hit the 1077 mark. Since the damage rounds up on the Topaz, you lose 4 points of damage and gain 4 points of haste, which is consistent with the 1-for-1 rule.

 

Saraya

Some trinket ratings:

The following rankings assume you don't run out of mana, and since I give each stat a hard value, should only be used as a guideline. These stats are based off a moonkin with a 25% base crit rating(for DD procs). To calculate the +damage equivalent, I'm using 1 dps = 1.8 damage, hit = 1.2 damage, haste = 1 damage, crit = 0.8 damage. This also assumes you do not have mana problems.

Note, Ashtongue numbers are kind of fudged.

174.42 [Eye of Magtheridon] (83% hit)
114.17 [The Skull of Gul'dan] (Click every 2 minutes)
104.44 [The Skull of Gul'dan] (Click every 3 minutes)
89.42 [Eye of Magtheridon] (95% hit)
88.17 [Hex Shrunken Head] (Click every 2 minutes)
85.00 [The Skull of Gul'dan] (Never click)
84.92 [Ashtongue Talisman of Equilibrium] (MF SFx4, 99 haste rating)
79.94 [The Lightning Capacitor] (MF Wx7)
78.00 [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] (always casting, 8 minute fight)
76.44 [Hex Shrunken Head] (Click every 3 minutes)
75.46 [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] (IS MF SFx3, full raid debuffs)
72.00 [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] (Casting 2 minute at a time)
70.51 [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] (IS MF SFx3)
68.83 [Icon of the Silver Crescent] (Click every 2)
68.27 [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] (IS SFx4, full raid debuffs)
67.83 [Ashtongue Talisman of Equilibrium] (MF SFx4)
64.68 [Sextant of Unstable Currents] (MF SFx4)
64.45 [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] (IS SFx4)
64.00 [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] (Casting 1 minute at a time)
63.61 [The Lightning Capacitor] (MF SFx4, misery)
63.20 [Neltharion's Tear]
63.00 [Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone]
62.87 [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] (MF SFx4, full raid debuffs)
62.26 [Sextant of Unstable Currents] (IS MF SFx3)
61.08 [Eye of Magtheridon] (99% hit)
60.22 [Icon of the Silver Crescent] (Click every 3)
59.91 [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] (MF SFx4)
54.59 [The Lightning Capacitor] (IS MF SFx3, misery)
53.00 [Hex Shrunken Head] (Never click)
48.21 [The Lightning Capacitor] (IS SFx4, misery)
47.00 [Battlemaster's Audacity]
43.00 [Icon of the Silver Crescent] (Never click)

Some notes: For mag's eye, if you have 0 hit rating and no balance of power, the proc will theoretically be up about 70% of the time, but keep in mind that it's gimping your actual DPS severely. If you are mana limited in a fight, the Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone is probably better than the Skull. And if your healers are terrible and 1750 hp will save your life, then the Battlemasters trinkets will be better than all of the above! For trinkets with click +damage like icon or hex head, the actual value is slightly higher, since you can easily fit in 2 rotation's worth of dots during the clicky period. In addition, if you get a bloodlust, these click effects benefit even further.

 

deima

Thank you Saraya. I'm wondering right now which trinkets to use and your list is very helpful. Do you have any idea how [The Lightning Capacitor] would fit into this? Rawr shows it as the no.1 trinket choice for my badge vendor moonkin. I just don't trust it that much since Rawr can't handle most the trinket procs correctly as far as I know.

 

tehdarkknight

To quote Adoriele a few pages ago:

"Now, remember, this only works for Starfire spam. When used in a rotation, this number will be higher, as Moonfire and IS do not gain as much benefit from Haste as Starfire does. That said, it can be generalized that until you have more than 1080 Spell damage, haste gear is a DPS downgrade."

I would like to see the same math done on Moonfire. Since haste now lowers the global cooldown, and Moonfire and Insect Swarm have spell damage coefficients of less than 100%, I'm curious as to how damage and haste play out in rotations. As much as I would like to craft the equations myself, I'm still unsure of certain coefficients and how talents like Moonfury are calculated.

 

Saraya

Thanks. I do remember reading that sentence, but I couldn't find it for some reason.

Just added my guesstimate of Lightning Capacitor to the list. For heroics and trash mobs where you'll probably use a MF Wx7 rotation, it's a very nice trinket to have. For raid bosses and gauntlet type fights where you want to sustain your mana, it's a little weaker.

One another additional note, my stupid post from yesterday with the SSO neck, lightning capacitor, and timbal's... it's quite an effective combo if you don't have some of the better trinkets. Using a IS, MF, Wx6 rotation, my trials last night showed the SSO neck proccing every 50 seconds, timbal's proccing every 30 seconds, and the lightning capacitor every 16-18 seconds. The SSO neck can proc off either the timbal's proc and capacitor proc. Crits from both the SSO neck proc and timbal's proc will also trigger the lightning capacitor. It's a really neat combo, and consistently produced the highest DPS/damage of all the equipment combinations I tried last night. They did hotfix the SSO pendant sometime between yesterday and today however, so I will have to check if this combo still has the proccing feedback chain.

 

Bellawynn

Due to the recent discussion on Haste, I looked through Efejel's spreadsheet and noticed that all of the epic +haste gems were missing, specifically:

[Quick Lionseye]
[Reckless Pyrestone]
[Forceful Seaspray Emerald]

 

thedopefishlives

I'm working a little bit on this in the next version of Rawr.Moonkin. I think I've got the theory down, but right now, the numbers aren't coming out to what they should be, and it's mildly irritating. At any rate, I hope to incorporate Adoriele's fine math into the next release, which should make it much better.

I do have a question about that, though: In Efejel's spreadsheet, it lists a typical rotation as "MF/Wx8" or "IS/Wx8", when Rawr calculates that you can only fit in 7 casts of Wrath with 0 haste before the DoT falls off. Is this correct, and is it "better" to allow DoT ticks to fall off rather than clipping them? Or am I misunderstanding how the DoT works? The way I model it right now is that the DoT component is applied instantly, and the time spent in the global cooldown is decremented from the DoT duration before moving on to the direct damage casts.

 

tehdarkknight

Typically with 0 haste and some latency, you can only fit in 7 wrath casts before refreshing the DoT. However with any significant amount of spell haste, you risk clipping the last tick by only casting 7 wraths, which will lower your dps and dpm.

[Edit] I'm seeing a lot of trinket math, which is really helpful. Any chance that someone could simulate [Ashtongue Talisman of Equilibrium]? Any arbitrary amount of spell haste is fine, perhaps increments of 50.

 

• Adoriele

Saraya: Awesome list, I love you. Now I need to get myself some heroic MgT runs going. Would it be possible to get an idea of the placement of [Sextant of Unstable Currents]?

Darkknight: I plan on doing workups for all the spells, though they won't all show up for a bit. I should have Starfire on its own done by the end of the week, as long as my idea about handling Nature's Grace works properly. After that, I'm planning on working on each spell the same way, then forming rotations, and lastly working out mana issues. Most of the math past the first phase of each should be relatively easy, though, as I've left everything in closed form with variables instead of plugging in numbers right away. For example, Saraya asked about whether the formula holds for more than just Starfire, and in a sense it does. Take the equivalence formula

Substitute the constants for Wrath in, and you'll get the corresponding Wrath breakpoints etc.

Bellawynn: The spreadsheet isn't updated for 2.4 yet, so no haste gems. It's fairly simple to add your own, though, and involves unhiding the Gem sheet and adding it in. Be aware that the spirit regen change is also not factored yet, but you can work around it by giving yourself a really good fake shadowpriest for the MP5.

 

thedopefishlives

As I mentioned, I was planning on making use of your equations in Rawr.Moonkin. After a minor hiccup involving my own stupidity in calculating effective hit rating, I discovered to my pleasant surprise that your equation for Starfire was exactly on the mark (including Nature's Grace), and that the modifications I made to include Wrath, Moonfire, and Insect Swarm were similarly accurate. Not having access to a nice math formatting program at the moment, I can't post the calculations, but I will do my best to do so soon-ish. The short version is that the key point in the equation is in the calculation of effective cast time, which is the bottom portion.

 

Benita

Assuming 1 ppm 79.5

 

• Adoriele

If you quote any of my posts with significant equations, you can get a good idea of how to do the same. Long story short, there's a tag involved that flags text to be parsed through LaTeX. As for equations, I'm always happy to split the work when possible. Send me a PM with anything you have, I'll double-check it and add it to the Article.

 

thedopefishlives

Here's the math I came up with, vetted by Adoriele for accuracy.

For Wrath, the equation is basically the same except you take out the provision for Nature's Grace, since it does not reduce the GCD. The equation then becomes:


For Insect Swarm, that case is fairly easy. To my knowledge, it cannot crit, as it is a pure DoT, and with no direct damage component, the equation is simply:

where is the number of ticks and is the total duration of the DoT, and is the damage per tick.

Combining these two for Moonfire became tricky, but it became significantly easier when applying the basic concept of DPS: Damage Per _Second_. The effective cast time of Moonfire's direct damage is not the GCD, but the total duration of the DoT. However, since the cast itself is an instant cast, it is not affected by Nature's Grace. The final equation I produced looks something like this:

 

• Adoriele

Alrighty, guys. I revisited some of my earlier work today to make sure I was correct about something, and I wasn't. Turns out Nature's Grace isn't always worth 315.2 Haste. It does end up scaling with Haste, and in a positive direction, I.E. The more haste you have, the more 'Haste' NG is worth, even though it's factored in before Haste. Turns out it's of the form

Which makes sense, since without haste NG is a 20% cast time reduction.

 

thedopefishlives

An update on the trinket math. I finished re-implementing the spell calculation on Rawr.Moonkin according to the above equations worked out between me and Adoriele. I wanted to check with you guys because the results I got as far as trinket math were, well, rather surprising. The list I found is as follows:

1) Eye of Magtheridon, if not hit-capped
2) Skull of Gul'dan
3) Timbal's
4) Lightning Capacitor
5) Quagmirran's
6) Hex Shrunken Head
7) Battlemaster's
8) Icon

I'm still not sure why Battlemaster's is ranked above Icon. Stamina is not taken into account at all. I'll worry about that later, but what do you guys think about the rest of it?

 

nakedduck

Any reason you haven't included the ashtonge trinket? On a tank and spank fight, it's worth about 86.7 spell damage

edit: this is based on 3 starfires in 8 seconds

if you can only squeeze 2 in 8 seconds, it's only worth 65.6 spell damage

@ Saraya: Might want to add nef's tear @ 63.2 still a good trinket ;p

 

erragal

Was Darkmoon Card: Crusade not tested/used? Or just forgotten?

Just from cursory examination without having a strong mathematical basis, it seems that the click on effect trinkets are not being looked at properly. Hex Shrunken Head being lower than Quag's Eye/TLC doesn't appear correct. And the power of the click effect should scale with haste. When you reach enough haste rating to fit another Starfire during the buff, it becomes significantly more powerful. Can there really be a cut and dry, "Which trinket is best?" answer, other than: Skull of Gul'dan is number one by a significant margin. (Assuming you're going to be hit capped, which you want to be.)

Those were my observations.

 

shenando

Whats the percentage to spell cap we need to theoretically maximise the Eye of Mag proc?

 

Saraya

Yeah, those rankings match up to the (never click) versions of the trinkets in the the list I provided. I'm also squinting at your Mag's Eye rating, since it should fall below Guldan's at around 95% or 96% hit.

To theoretically maximize the Eye of Mag proc, you want 0 spell hit and no balance of power. But this really gimps your actual DPS since you're going to get resisted so much. I really doubt there's any point where dumping hit will help your overall DPS.

I just added the Ashtongue trinket and Sextant to the list. The sextant has been nerfed apparently, and only procs on 20% of the crits, on a 45 second cooldown, which makes it kind of weak. And as surprising as it is, the ashtongue trinket does seem quite good. While it is true that it does not affect the spell you casted it on, the worst case scenario with 0 nature's grace procs would having it affect 2 starfires in the MF SFx4 rotation. This alone gives it uptime of 6 seconds out of 13.5, or a 66.666(repeating of course) equivalent damage rating.

 

thedopefishlives

I agree. The trick is in converting all of these to flat spell damage/haste ratings to feed into the calculator. The on-click ones are the most puzzling, because they're rather simple: effect_magnitude * duration / cooldown. It doesn't get any easier than that, and yet they consistently come up underwhelming. As for the Eye of Magtheridon proc, that one boils down to an effective spell damage of:

where is the magnitude of the effect, 170; is the duration of the effect, 10 sec; is the time spent casting; is the hit rate in percent; is the count of spells cast during the casting time.

 

tehdarkknight

With 240 spell haste and 0 Nature's Grace procs, the casting time of starfire would be reduced to 2.6 seconds, allowing a third Starfire during the proc with forgiving latency. With a standard T6 rotation (MF, SFx5+), it would have a 125%+ chance to proc per rotation, giving an uptime of 10s out of 15s, or a 100 equivalent damage rating, give or take.

I'm trying to determine the effects of spell haste in a rotation, and it's really wracking my brain. I've got the equation for Moonfire's damage worked out. However, I'm having issues with how spell haste contributes to the overall dps of Moonfire.

Example: No matter how much spell haste you have, as long as your other stats stay constant, Moonfire will always do the same amount of damage over 12 seconds (or 15 for 2t6). However, let's say you have 112 spell haste, approximately 7%. This is enough to reduce your global cooldown to 1.4 seconds. Now, instead of having 10.5 seconds to cast other spells (or 13.5 for 2t6) before Moonfire wears off, you now have 10.6 (or 13.6) seconds.

 

Saraya

There's probably one of two things happening with the trinkets:
1) The "Use:" effects are getting left out somehow. Check the damage ratio between the hex head and icon. If it's a perfect 53:43, then it's simply not being added.
2) The DPS calculations are given in dpsx100 or something, so maybe on use effects aren't getting this multiplier for some reason?

Just some guesses off the top of my head since I can't see the new source.

 

Benita

Take. Alot.
10s out of 15s is not equivalent to 100 damage rating. I posted this like 3-4 times already over the last half year, but here we go again: If you don't have the buff up and your SF procs it, that SF doesn't receive the bonus damage of it aka worst possible timing of the procs. Unless they stealth changed this mechanic, it means it's alot less powerful than you guys want it to be.