I got into the Beta this last push, so I'll be copying over both my main and a pre-made 80 (hopefully I'll find a way to gear up). I'll be taking a close look at most of the talents' effects on DPS, and trying to get a sense of our mana returns and scaling, mostly in a raiding scenario. I know we need to find out the internal cooldown of OOC, if it has one, similar for Moonkin Form regen. Is there anything else we need some heavy lifting on?

Sorry, didn't mean to violate posting policy.

Eclipse is much improved. Its 60% proc rate means it won't go up immediately as soon as it goes down, but fairly quickly. However, while questing, I found it did have an annoying tendency to proc irritatingly frequently just as the mob died (much like shadow trance for aff locks), leaving no mobs close enough to spend most of the buff on. However, knowing that it can come up again almost as soon as it goes away is a nice feeling, and on boss fights, if you watch your timers carefully, you should be able to spend a goodly amount of time casting enhanced versions of whichever spell you'd prefer to use.

There are still too many worthwhile talents! But I'm not complaining. I like having to make difficult choices between different good possibilities.

A while back they said they might shave a few points here and there. If they do this, we're looking pretty good, I think.

Latest version of SimulationCraft has latest beta updates, including Eclipse change.

One thing to note: I'm no longer certain that the Druid AI is correct. When the cooldown was 2min, it made sense to switch back to Wrath a few seconds before CD was up to force Starfire proc. Now I'm not so sure..... To force the SF proc, you now have to use Wrath while the SF bonus is still in affect.

I suppose if there is less than 3sec left on the SF buff you aren't going to get the 10% crit anyway, so maybe the AI should stay unchanged....

It would be nice if there were a (minor)glyph that would increase the duration of FF to 2-5 minutes, but remove the stealth prevention effect. This would make it much more convenient to use it in PvE while avoiding PvP implications.
As it looks right now I wouldn't even consider using iFF if there is a shadow priest and a feral around that could give the same benefit without loosing dps time.

Erregal:

In my numbers above, I was using the MF, SF, and IS glyphs. The strategy was a short SF cycle (with IS and "free" MF) to proc a 110%-damage Wrath cycle.

An alternate strategy would be a short Wrath cycle, used to proc a 10% extra-crit SF cycle. My gut feeling is that the dps gain would be minimal, but mana efficiency would be much better. I haven't run the numbers. If you assume higher lag numbers (I used 100 ms), Wrath DPS starts to look worse, and this strategy starts to look better.


dedmonwakeen:

I think the input for simcraft to reflect my numbers above would be

actions=.../wrath,eclipse=benefit,react/starfire

however, I'm not sure if "react" is something that you enter in the input file, or just needs to be in the code and associated with "benefit" procs. Guidance?

Edit: You won't spec Eclipse for PvP unless the SF and Wrath numbers are similar anyway. I don't think you'll worry too much about accidently getting the "wrong" buff. You'll just take advantage of it when it occurs.


Adoriele (or anyone on beta):

There are several things that would be nice to nail down for number crunchers. However most of these are really only a fraction of a %, so if they're hard to get, go ahead and just have fun and get problems reported.

• Naked stats at 80 (whichever race). I've seen at least three numbers used for base mana, so that throws off all DPM calculations.
• Stats in the premade gear. Seems like a nice, easy-to-get baseline for the entry-level raider.
• Genesis: Does it apply to the direct-damage portion of MF/Rg/Lb? Is the 3% an adder or a multiplier when combined with Moonfury?
• Nature's Splendor: Does a 15s insect swarm have 7 normal ticks, plus one "light" tick?
• Thorns: Lots of reports that it scales with the recipient's spellpower. Coefficient? Some reports that Brambles affects the base damage, but not the scaling. Confirm?
• CF,IMkF: Are these haste multipliers, or adders? If haste is affecting channeled spells, the combat log for Hurricane may be useful for precise haste computations.
• Typhoon, Starfall: Estimates of spell coefficients.
• Force of Nature: Health, base damage and scaling at 80. For Brambles+FoN, does the 15% apply to the total damage, or just the base damage? Does treant health scale with either your health or your spell damage (or both)? Do they get your hit rating and melee crit rating?
• Starfall: Is targeting random, or does it have some preference (like closest target)? Is the "splash" damage based on distance from you, or distance from the star's target? Are stars smart enough to avoid sheep or hibernated targets?
• Entangling Roots: Supposedly this type of CC is much less random. It will break once a target loses a certain percentage (perhaps 40%) of its health while CC'd. What is the number? Is the damage from roots included in the total?
• Hurricane/Typhoon: AoE's are supposed to have a damage cap. No matter how many targets you have, or how much spellpower you have, there is a fixed limit to the total damage a single cast may cause. What are the caps for these spells?

Thanks in advance for any and all assistance.

Hmmm..... Most proc-based conditionals are guarded by a "time_to_think" call that checks reaction time.....

Unfortunately, Eclipse was not coded that way...... This has been changed in the sub-version codebase (r269), but it may be a little while before a windows download is available.

When this is done, slimply use:

actions=.../wrath,eclipse=benefit/starfire

However..... I've found that only using Wrath to trigger the Starfire buff was better in my setup. I -do- have an Enhancement Shaman with the SS Glyph, but I also have a Ele-Shammy and a Ele-Hybrid-Shammy driving down the Nature Vulnerability up-time (~27%)

I've been using 100ms lag, while you've been using a larger number. I think you've also been using more haste, but less crit. Those choices have a large impact on the Wrath vs. SF decision. I'm pretty sure 100ms lag is too optimistic for me, but my play is very casual.


I've also got two more questions for people on beta, related to the SF idol:

1) As you extend the MF duration, does the tick stay constant, or does it vary with your current spellpower? If it stays constant, you could get a noticable boost by trinketing the MF cast, and then working hard to be sure MF never fades.

2) Can you use SF spam to push the "current-remaining" MF duration to a high value (say 30s) or is it capped at the normal limit (12-18s depending on gear and talents).

Awesome questions for sure. My thought process has been automatically assuming you could stack it past the limit, forgetting no one has tested that or whether it allows you to roll trinketed/procced moonfires (Potentially resulting in something silly like switching to the level 60 moonfire idol for your initial cast.)

Additional questions:

Force of Nature: Are they getting all raid-wide buffs when they are summoned? If they get bloodlust we'll want to time it so we can summon them before it's used like frost mages will do with water elemental. Do they have any aoe protection at the moment? If they do get raid buffs, how do they scale with AP? Previously we weren't normally in a position for them to get the melee buffs, now they're all raid wide. EDIT: How do they scale with -our- AP? There's always the potential for weapon switching before and after cast.

An addenum to Erdluf's AOE cap question: Does Gale Winds change the cap if you're able to reach it?

Typhoon: Reports were that hurricane crits are not returning mana, what about Typhoon? Erdluf asked about the scaling for this spell, in addition is Gale Winds applied to base damage, spell damage scaling, or total damage? How does Master Shapeshifter interact with it as well?

Starfall: Right now the splash healing from the Holy Light Glyph for pallies is also healing the target of the spell (No indication on whether this is intended.). Is Starfall double dipping similarly?

Not that I'm aware of, at least, not in a sense of "do they take less damage from random AoE attacks."