[Balance] Encounter Mechanics (T14) - Page 6

Zantaz · 11/15/12, 12:51 PM

That's some pretty potent healing and the kind of utility that makes it rewarding to play Balance. I look forward to giving it a try myself!

gannonjf · 11/16/12, 1:10 AM

Natural tendency on H Garalon is to dot everything, this isn't as effective as dotting the boss and focusing a leg while standing in the same circle for the leg.

gannonjf · 11/20/12, 3:36 AM

10man heroic. Windlord. Symbiosis a priest and mass dispell the quickening buff . Depending on your raid comp this becomes nearly essential.

Plopeuh · 11/21/12, 6:06 AM

First post on elitist, my english could be terrible, sorry for that. My guild and i did the first 2 raid, and first 2 boss in heroic on first raid.

The Stone Guard H
=> stampeding roar / shapshift AND Dash !
I merely do 30-40 buff by phase

Imperial Vizier Zor'lok
Symbiosys on your dk can be usefull :
- using it during pull permit you to stampeding roar in gas

Blade Lord Ta'yak
Symbiosys on rogue : you can dispell the dot to help your healer (i'am in a 10man raid)

Wind Lord Mel'jarak
As said by gannonj : symbiosis on priest allow you to dispell the quickening buff from the healer

Amber-Shaper Un'sok
In 10man raid HotW is very usefull here, multidotting with 6% int is king here ! HotW can be used when 1-2 heal is busy on transformation

Grand Empress Shek'zeer
Symbiosis on dk : if used at good timing, the dk shield permet you to avoid 1-2 fear, you must use it on the first débuff (dont know the english name sorry) before the fear.
Typhon allow you to help your tank to kite the little add during phase 2 (depend on your strat)
Starfall waste charge on bomb, could be clever to save it when one bomb exploded to ensure you have 10 star on boss.
As usual HotW help your healer for phase 3 (raid 10), and tranquility help soaking the exploding bomb.

Zantaz · 11/21/12, 8:21 AM

Originally Posted by Plopeuh

Imperial Vizier Zor'lok
Symbiosys on your dk can be usefull :
- using it during pull permit you to stampeding roar in gas

Whilst grabbing Anti-Magic Shell from a DK is still decent for this fight overall, there is no need to take it specifically to do what you mentioned above. Instead, have your tank countdown and pop SR at ~1s before the pull - it'll last long enough to get you onto the platform.

Plopeuh · 11/21/12, 8:50 AM

It's a way to use SR AND prépot for our first week of attempt on this boss.
I didn't find any other utility for raid to symbiosis another class (priest, for a free tranquility perhaps).

The dk shell can be used for each "force and verve".

Any clue for the new raid ?

I think at HotW for Tsulong fight, that can be usefull ? (depend on raid dps i suppose)

Stommped · 11/21/12, 10:53 AM

FWIW I saw higher dps on Heroic Windlord by simply rolling eclipsed dots on all targets and using SS procs on the boss. This strategy also won't be interrupted if you have to move for corrosive resin, wind bomb, trap, or boomerang.

Also for this make sure you have 3 mushrooms down and detonate them AFTER the first pack dies. There will be 3 less mobs but the 600% DMG taken on the boss will make up for it. Don't look at my log for our kill last night because I forgot to do this >.<

Zantaz · 11/21/12, 11:44 AM

'Force and Verve' is physical damage, so whilst you can use AMS on it, it's not actually reducing the damage. We can, however, shift to Bear Form for the armour bonus, if need be.

Lilija · 11/21/12, 2:43 PM

[H]Imperial Vizier Zor'lok
If you have symbiosis with a warlock you can use Unending Resolve+Barskin and take hardly any dmg from "Force and Verve" - usefull for killing Echo where you will have min 1 F&V but only 2 shields.

fr0d0b0ls0n · 11/22/12, 3:40 AM

As a raid leader I had a discussion with the moonkins about a tricky question.

In a boss like Protector of the Endless (multiple target, but the damage is only useful in one of them, except for ranking on WOL of course) they say that is a dmg increase on the focus to dot an extra target (extra probability of a Starsurge proc, and a tiny bit of eclipse uptime) and I'm not so sure.

In movement I could see it working, but on a static situation losing 2 GCD to dot another target for an extra chance to proc Starsurge for the next 15 seconds doesn't seem to be the best option. There is any consensus about that?

Stommped · 11/22/12, 4:12 AM

Originally Posted by fr0d0b0ls0n

As a raid leader I had a discussion with the moonkins about a tricky question.

In a boss like Protector of the Endless (multiple target, but the damage is only useful in one of them, except for ranking on WOL of course) they say that is a dmg increase on the focus to dot an extra target (extra probability of a Starsurge proc, and a tiny bit of eclipse uptime) and I'm not so sure.

In movement I could see it working, but on a static situation losing 2 GCD to dot another target for an extra chance to proc Starsurge for the next 15 seconds doesn't seem to be the best option. There is any consensus about that?

This is frequently brought up. I can't give you a for sure answer, but someone who is better at math than me should have no problem proving what's better one way or the other.

What I can tell you, is that back in Firelands someone had the math to prove that dotting Riplimb and Rageface in order for more SS procs to use on Shannox hurt your single target DPS, and was just meter padding.

Now what's different in MoP is the SS procs and the damage of our nukes. I may be wrong here, but I believe he needs 20.00% crit chance to equal the SS proc chance that was present in Cata. As far as our nukes, Starsurge does do more damage so that would have to be taken into consideration, but Wrath and Starfire also do more damage which is the globals you would be giving up in order to dot the other 2 adds. Also, another tiny thing would be if we dotted the other two adds first we would get the benefit of Lunar Shower when we dot the add we are actually killing (we didn't use Lunar Shower in Firelands).

Here is the quote (credit to Tuscarora) if someone wants to play with napkin math he used for Cata and update it for the MoP changes it should be pretty easy to give you an answer:

Supposing a 1-sec GCD (erring on the meter padding side), a DoT interval of 18 sec, and supposing two non-DoT GCDs per DoT cycle for Starsurges and cooldowns, we are casting Wrath and Starfire 14 sec out of 18 sec. If we reduce 14 sec to 10 sec, that's a 28% loss on the number of Wraths and Starfires. If they account for about 50% of our damage, that's a 14% DPS loss (a bit more because of the reduced NG uptime on the nukes, owing to the NG time consumed by DoT refreshing and the NG haste multiplier).

Now, using Hamlet's formula (I've added a second in fudge factor in the final Starsurge period number), the interval betwen Starsurges is reduced from 11 sec to 6 sec if you multiply by three the Shooting Stars proc rate. That's an 83% increase in the number of Starsurges. Since Starsurge accounts for 10% of our DPS, the increase is less than 8.3% (actually it's even less than that because of the reduced Eclipse % of Starsurges). Supposing that instant Starsurge has double DPET than Wrath and Starfire, the opportunity cost of that 83% more Starsurges is even less Wraths and Starfires, which means a 8.3%/2 = 4.15% DPS loss. Supposing Glyph of Starfall, the Starfall CD is reduced from 40 sec to 30 sec, which means 33% more Starfalls. Supposing a Starfall damage fraction of 5%, that's 1.66% more DPS (actually, less than that because of the Eclipse composition of the Starfalls and because the dogs can soak a lot of the stars)

8% + 1% - 4% - 14% = -9%

So, using my back-of-the-envelope calculations, you lose about 10% DPS on Shannox if you multidot . That's a significant number, and taking into account that my assumptions are slightly pro-multidot, we can confidently say that meter-padding is meter-padding.

Some items that might help, on the top Feng parse Starsurge accounts for about 14% damage and Starfire/Wrath account for about 30%.

Plopeuh · 11/22/12, 5:17 AM

Same question here for a spriest and me last night, on our first set of pull and finally down for this fight.

He was dotting all boss, and i sitting in mono.

I compare the raw domage on each transition, and afterall i did much more usefull dps than him.
But he was higher on dps metter. The dps lost on good boss is not optimal, i'll sit in mono for this fight.

Tuscarora · 11/22/12, 9:04 AM

Originally Posted by Stommped

Here is the quote (credit to Tuscarora) if someone wants to play with napkin math he used for Cata and update it for the MoP changes it should be pretty easy to give you an answer

It's probably a bit messier in MoP (mostly because of different SS proc mechanics). In the Lunar to Solar half of the cycle it's still probably not worth it (if you want to maximize DPS on the main target), but on Solar to Lunar it is not that clear to me since Wrath is weaker than Starfire (less opportunity cost). I'll probably take a closer look at this scenario soon (tm) and if I'm confident on my numbers I'll post them here. More or less, you want to have an estimate of how much Shooting Stars procs will you get by applying an additional DoT on an irrelevant target (possibly accounting for the fact that you can waste procs by overlap), and how much damage will you deal with the Starsurge compared with the damage you lose by casting less Wraths or Starfires (a GCD per DoT and a GCD per Starsurge, multiply by the DPET of the corresponding nuke). There are also NG uptime issues but I don't think they're big, possibly underestimating the opportunity cost.

I don't understand the Eclipse uptime point, since casting additional Starsurges does only swap Starfires for Starsurges on Lunar, with overall no impact in Eclipsed % of the nukes, and in Solar you actually lose a bit of Eclipse % if you cast more Starsurges than the canonical Solar rule (only one and the last of Eclipse). You could get extra ticks on the DoTs with SS crits but 1) Wrath/Starfire can also extend them and 2) on the other hand you'll probably have a slower rotation which hurts uptime.

EDIT: with movement it should be more attractive to DoT the remaining Protectors, I'll check it also.

Erdluf · 11/22/12, 10:17 AM

Outside of CA, you need pretty high crit to justify dotting a meaningless target. Napkin math

Suppose that at your crit and haste level it takes about 1.4 full-duration DoTs to get a Shooting Stars proc. When you cast Starsurge, you will have spent a total of 2.4 GCD's on that Starsurge. Looking at WrathCalcs, that would put its DPET somewhere between Wrath and Starfire. With those numbers, it makes absolutely no sense during Lunar (or post-Lunar).

Using this strategy means you will get Nature's Grace less often. You will also get hard-cast Starsurge less often. Slower Eclipse cycle means that on average, you will use Incarnation less often (waiting for your next Lunar to proc). Combine all of those, and it may not make sense to multi-dot worthless targets even during Solar (and post-solar).

Note that during CA (where you get two DoTs from one GCD) it probably is worth it. You can expect a Shooting Stars every 0.7 full (MF+SuF) durations. Adding a GCD to cast Starsurge means that 1.7 GCD's gives you a Starsurge. 1.7 GCD's is less than the cast time of Starfire, so that looks like a pretty clear win. Edit: However, you are taking a chance that the Starsurge won't occur until after CA expires, making it substantially less attractive.

Tuscarora · 11/22/12, 10:57 AM

That's more or less the kind of comparison I wanted to do. A minor point: when you have a lot of dots rolling on different targets, you waste more potential SS procs. Since you usually won't cast SS instantly because of reaction time and the fact that you will usually wait for your current cast to finish, there is a delay between the time the proc happens and the time that you consume it, thus any DoT tick that happens on that period can't proc SS (because you already have SS!). So each additional DoT provides less benefit in terms of DPS on the main target.