Greetings everybody

I'll really appreciate if some theorycrafters can give us their feedback with several weeks or even months of use now concerning the 2.4 badge caster gear. Is the spirit in the leather gear is superior to the 1% (a little bit more) of additional crit rating in the warlock cloth gear, if we take into consideration that spirit is increased by bok in raid, and 10% of it is transferred to spell power with improved divine spirit ? In the spreedsheet, it seems that warlock cloth gear allow a little bit more dps, but regen is also important in long fights, or for "lazy" players like me, i'm feral and i just respec boomkin the week-end to change a little bit of gameplay, and don't want to mana pot every cd. I think that it will be very helpful to many new moonkins who hesitates a lot in front of these new gear (i'm talking of leather spirit + crit gear vs cloth without spirit but more crit rating), to have the opinions with hindsight of users of these items, do you choose the leather one, the cloth one, do you regret your choice or are fully satisfied with these items ?

Edit: i forgot the fact that haste become a very good stat at a certain level of spell power, and we must have the mana and the regen to sustain faster dps cycles, so spirit may be good for that, isn't it ?

I probably have a lot more gear than you do but I usually fluctuate from 2000-2200 dps on teron with spriest and resto shammy. What are your spell dmg/hit/haste stats like? seems like you're getting a heroism. Mine are somewhere around 1480SD 230 haste 24% crit with buffs. No ele shaman, no ret pally in raid.

151/152.

Yeah, you definitely way outgear me. lol....I'll have to write it down next tuesday when I raid... I have very little haste outside of a heroism as I've just started to add it on, so its only about 15 or so. I'm somewhere in the 1400s SD wise with 32-33% crit I believe, but I'll double check on Tuesday.

I checked my stats today it's about 29%crit, 240 haste, 1495 spell dmg. Well I looked over my old WWS and compared it to yours.

[ Wow Web Stats ] is my parse on teron two weeks ago or so.

It seems that I casted more starfires in 3 minutes of my encounter than your 5 minutes of encounter (my 240 haste can't make up for that much).

It seems like you casted 16 moonfires on a 5 minute fight. Assuming you have 2 piece T6, you should've had 20 moonfires or so if you were to refresh it without clipping it. (i'm assuming that you do have 2 piece) Few more if you dont have the 2 piece.

You also had 44 starfire hits and 22 crits, that's 66 total starfires. Assuming your starfires shoot on average of 2.6 seconds or so (33% crit rate and little bit of haste and heroism). Not accounting for pushback at all and subtracting the moonfire cast time (16 GCD), during a 5 minute fight you should have had about 106 starfires shot during that time.. even after pushback. I haven't gone through details of the log so I'm not sure if you're having severe latency issue or you had to do many things in between but it looks like you were alive the whole time and didn't get the ghosts. Even if you had to battle res, it shouldn't have taken more than 10 seconds max. Looking at the dps done i don't think you had threat issues either.

What prevented you from chain casting your starfire during the fight?

Let me count up the times that you casted.

16 moonfires (1.4s cast time ea) 66 starfires ( 2.6s ave cast time), 2 treants, looks like there was no imp FF on the boss.

16x1.4 + 66x2.6 + 2 x 1.4 = 22.4 + 171.6 + 2.8 = 196.8s

I'm not sure what you did for almost the third of time that you were dpsing the boss. During 4 min 55s encounter you only casted for 2/3 of the time. There has to be a problem somewhere. You can't be running oom with a spriest and only casting that many spells.

My theories are that you probably
1. have over 1000ms latency that you can't even take advantage of the spell queue system
2. are not spamming your buttons to take advantage of spell queue system
3. have a really screwed up idol switching macro/moves.
4. take too long to battle res(i dont think you did battle res though)
5. have a tea party at your house while raiding.


It would be more informative for us to figure out how to improve your dps if we can find out what's causing you to cast less starfire than you are allowed to during that given time. I honestly think with your gear level and the group you were in (spriest + shaman), you should be doing 1650 dps sustained, maybe 1500-1600ish on teron due to pushbacks. (according to Dr. Boom, which works pretty accurately for me).

Feel free to correct me if I did things completely wrong.

i have a question about spellhaste, doing experiments with the spreadsheet.
on the official blizz forums it's often said that over a certain amount of spelldamage, haste is better than pure spelldamage ; or, better, that they compensate together while going up , giving the better dps increase overall.
i don't remember exactly, but that spelldamage amount on wich we should switch to 1/1 haste-sd should be around 1200.

now, after all of this theorycraft : why into the spreadsheet, with a 5/5 t6 set and comparable stuff to complete the equip (1290 spelldamage raidbuffed without shaman or consumables), gemming for pure spelldamage (12sd gems) gives better results than putting 5haste/6damage gems ??

it seems quite a contraddiction to me.

gimme some hint, i'll soon have 4/4 t6 and i must choose how to gem my t6chest without trashing a ton of badges and golds in experiments ^^'

thanks in advance guys!

I just wanted to say thank you to all who posted to try to help me with my very low DPS on Brutallis. I have posted a link of last nights attempts and kill to show the improvement you were all able to impart on me.
Wow Web Stats

Looks like you're doing 1500+ for most attempts now. That's great to hear! Maybe try using AutoHotKey program that ef posted a few pages ago and see if you can really tweak it. I think you have gear potential to do 150-250 more dps with full consumables given your situation. (spriest/elemental shaman/6 drums/idol of raven goddess / keeping FF).

Also, with that gem tradeoff you are looking at converting 6 +spell, to 5 +haste. I think for pure SF spam (and no latency) the breakeven for that occurs at 1390 +spell. That means that at 1390 +spell, and zero existing +haste, the two gem choices are essentially equal.

You should be a little bit past 1390 with consumables, but your rotation is not pure SF (as Adoriele said), and the default latency in the spreadsheet is not zero. Perhaps you already have some existing +haste also.

Also consider that +haste "pulls ahead" of +spell slowly. Its not going to be a "big" improvement until your +spell is even higher. On the other hand, if you are ever seeing mana issues, +haste is a big loser since it doesn't help your DPM at all.

i've been reading through these posts and some of it confuses the hell outta me, just thought if someone could explain the point at which i should start gemming more for haste, atm i'm in mostly badge gear (as my guild doesnt allow me cloth drops), i don't know if you can see my armory page but if you can i would greatly appreciate any possible help you can give me in general with improvements, i want to be the best i can be and i to do that i really need help, thanks in advance

p.s i am working with about 98 haste, but i can swap out 20 spd for like 45 spell haste, although i will also lose some crit

as a general rule of thumb, if you have decent gear 1 point of spell damage < 1 point in spell haste. if you're getting 45 spell haste by trading 20 spd that's definately an upgrade almost at any gear levels.

Uhh, yeah. By definition if you gear for Haste you're gonna have less spell damage (given a certain iLvl). The point is to find out which provides more benefit or, more generally, which set of gear provides the greatest DPS. We can talk about the theory behind what determines DPS, and hopefully work towards more accurate models, but in the end it all comes down to what works best. And the spreadsheet is very good at figuring that out.

So, by definition, after 1077 spell damage unbuffed, I should keep a 1:1 ratio between Spell Damage and Spell haste in such a way that when I get 1177 spell damage, I should have 100 spell haste? Or is the spell damage based off a buffed approach, as normally, I get upto 1426 Arcane damage buffed in my raid. Sorry about all the questions, it's just something I want to be sure about before I re-gem all my gear.

fully buffed, ofc.

Yea fully buffed sorry, we don't have an elemental shaman in the guild and I normally get shoved with 3/4 Mages and maybe a Shadow Priest, so I don't get extra spell damage in any other way. So is the 1077 and 1392 numbers based off buffed or unbuffed numbers? And by having 1177 Spell damage and 100 spell haste, am I working correcting and should I keep this 1:1 increase in stats?

Rules of thumb are rules of thumb. Yes. In an infinite mana situation, if all you do is spam Starfire, 1177 and 100 is the most optimum use of spell damage and haste. Good luck getting it with the gear selection we have, but yes, it's something to try and get close to. That said, you'll see that 1392 is the magic number for a 1:1.2 ratio, like what you get from gems. Yes, that small of a difference skyrockets the spell damage necessary. So if you're at 1177 and 0, adding 1 haste is better than adding 1 spell damage, but adding 40 spell damage is better than adding 30 haste, even though it pulls you further away from H = SD-1077.

Like I keep saying. Rules of thumb are good for estimation, but use the spreadsheet if you really want to know what will be best.

On your spreadsheet, Adoriele, I'm confused about something. I'm probably just reading the spreadsheet wrong, but it is saying that at 1139 spell damage, hit cap with 0 haste, a lionseye is equal to a crimson spinel. I was under the impression the spreadsheet would say that at 1392 spell damage. Should I be reading that number as how much 1 haste is worth in spell damage? Again, I assume I'm just reading it wrong, and I should be looking for the "equivalent # of crimson spinels" to say 1.2?

Hah! Thank you for catching this. There's an error, in that the calculation for the DPS benefit from the Lionseye is taking into account raid boss debuffs, but the Spinel is not. I'll edit in a fixed copy ASAP.

[edit] Clarification

[edit2]

Alright, new version is up. Fixed the issue with boss debuffs being applied inconsistently when calculating gem benefits. This includes not being applied at all when looking at the benefits for Wrath. Numbers should match up to what people expect. Also added in Stormstrike uptime while I was in there, since it ended up making more sense to do it now.

Spi. I only have one thing to say: wow. Those kind of 2k+ wws-reports seem so unreal. In fact, those kind of numbers would be a dream come true for me. I still have one question. You casted 42 starfires and 9 moonfires. At first I thought you are using MF+5xSF-cycle but then I did some counting and noticed 3 missing starfires. So do you use a different rotation or did the boss just bite the dust before you could land those three starfires or.. are you using a totally different type of cycle?
Sorry, this might seem a bit stupid question but I kinda need to know :E

First off I would like to thank all of you here. This has become a bible of sorts for me and I really wanted to express my gratitude.

Currently my guild and I are progressing through the last of the T5 content and making small forays into T6. I use the spreadsheet frequently when an upgrade presents itself.

I am at a bit of an impasse though as what I should do to improve next. I will post a WWS when we have a new one. I nearly always find myself within the top 3 DPSers in our raids.

In my current gear configuration I have lower hit due to running with an elemental shaman. I am only buffed with mark and sitting at 1281 spell damage.

Normally I rotate with moonfire and insect swarm up constantly as to not clip and to make certain I receive the benefit from my 4pc T5 bonus.

I may have just overlooked something simple on the spreadsheet, but I don't see a way to currently increase my dps from where it is.

My thanks in advance for any assistance and please keep all this good information coming.

I just make sure I don't clip my moonfires. So, it can be MF + SF x5 or MF + SFx6. Also, I try to time my last starfire+moonfire right before boss dies for that little extra damage. It is likely that my last spell casted on the boss is a moonfire, not a starfire. Because of different procs (NG/heroism/drums) my starfire cast time is pretty dynamic, so I'd like to keep my rotation dynamic as well. When I used Lherin's simulator, not clipping moonfire gave the highest dps numbers, so I decided to never clip my moonfire ticks. I'm not so sure whether that's dps maximizing rotation to be honest, but it is the most mana efficient MF/SF rotation.

Also, keep in mind that Teron does quite a bit of spell pushbacks during the encounter. Missing starfires may have come from there.

P.S. Teron gorefiend is a short fight, so this is a fight where cooldowns really count. With 2 heroisms I have about 30% uptime on heroism and that's the only reason why my dps is 2200+. On fights like brutallus, it'd be a struggle to break 2.1k+ with my current gear.

Thanks for the help on this Spi....

I am gimping myself somewhere, I run FiOS, so my average latency is about 30ms, that isn't an issue...my spriest did ghost in the encounter, so I did use one innervate (which has a weapon swap to max the mana gained) but I didn't oom, and my macros are not that complex -- I have druidswap-addon for the trinket swap, and I have a /use for my icon in my starfire macro with ignore errors. Pretty sure I wasn't having a tea party, lol...

I think the fault is in me not spamming buttons for the spell queue system... I'm used to basing my single button presses off of quartz meters (from /stopcasting in previous patches).... I'll have to try button mashing. I think we're going to be hitting gorfiend tonight, lets see how this goes.