Cat DPS Rotation - Page 69

Centarion · 04/28/09, 4:29 AM

Originally Posted by Bogeywoman

As bad as boss dummies are, they do provide a stable, repeatable platform for testing, from which one can then draw conclusions -- more stable in my opinion than most raids, where maybe your role was to root on Ignis, or you had to run out because you kept getting lightbombed, or you needed to battle res someone who stood in fire, or etc. I agree that having the major armor debuff on the target might change things up a little, but as a Tauren I don't get hit buff from the raid, haste is good but scales better with agi's crit, and purely on the agi side, kings is huge, trauma/manglebot is huge...

I'd say, if anything, your test shows how powerful arp is - you sacrificed the things that help your rotation most on a dummy (ap, crit) for arp, that only really starts to shine with a major armor-debuff (sunder armor), and yet your dps didn't drop much.

Temelin · 04/28/09, 6:14 AM

Im affraid, that final word about ArPen value for most people could be declared only by giving WWS or recount results. Personaly, I have nothing against RAWR and people, who use its results. I used it for a long time and it helped a lot when I managed my gear pre Ulduar. But Idd like to see a player, who put his gear to RAWR and on live raid could provide same DPS. The only fights before Ulduar I was close to my RAWR was Patchwerk and dummy. I wrote close, it meant 100-200 DPS behind RAWR.
Its not hard to provide RiP all the time on target, but you have to sacrifice a lot of other things. When you try to maximize RiP uptime, you obviously have to wait while you have 5CP and ~8sec RiP remain. You cant use FB, because you risking not enough CP for another RiP. During this time, it can proc OOC and it can proc twice. Also there is great chance, that during this time your rake expire. So I can say, that just both rake nad RiP uptimes cant be 100%, if you are not overwriting them and if you are not raking over the 5 CP.

When someone came here with... "WoW I putted this AGI gear to RAWR and it shows 8.2k DPS and ArPen gear shows only 7.5k DPS" ... with all respect, this is weak argument. AGI gear have lot of potential, when god take a holiday, and you provide almost 100% bleed uptime, you will probably get only 500 DPS behind RAWR. Amount of damage from bleeds oscillate depended on luck. Then gear with high percentage DPS output from bleeds sufer a lot, when you are unable to maximite bleeds uptime.
In subjective opinion, if you will run raid content with ArPen gear, you will do more damage, when you will run raid content with AGI gear. During Vezax progres, I was in contact with another guild feral mate, who concentrate gear for AGI, and he was fairly behind in general. When my worst pulls was slightly behind 5k (I learned the new fight), his best was slightly over 5k... my best was 5.8k and during kill pull I managed 5.3 out of spite losing several CP and uptimes because of swiching targets. A day later he whispered, that he managed 5.2 in 10man with incredible luck about uptime.

I meant no offense against RAWR posters, also I apolgize for my dirty english. Ill work on recount and WWS reports from ArPen style feral during Ulduar runs. Hope, there will be comparable data from AGI gemed ferals.

Boevis · 04/28/09, 8:04 AM

I would point out that the current #1 and #3 (2 is in tanking gear atm) Druids on Deconstructor are both using a good deal of Armor Pen, but then I'd also have to mention that they have better gear than the #5 who's using Agi, so until we start breaking 8k on Rawr with our gear, there's really no point because comparisons are going to be highly skewed by gear, especially among those with Lotrafen already.

Murna · 04/28/09, 8:22 AM

@Temelin: Well, just because another feral buddy of yours has lower DPS than you with his AGI gear, that doesn't prove anything. His Gear could be worse or just his skill or his buffs...

@boevis: In my opinion the deconstructor fight favors ArPen because of the heart. Usually you will have one (or even two) times berserk for the heart, meaning you can spamshred on it. And you also start with a refreshed SR and a full energy bar on the heart leading to much more shreds than usual. And last but not least -> your rip will expire on the heart and you can't refresh it because the heart does not live long enough for 2 rips.

So deconstructor ist NOT the fight to compare ArPen to Agi...

Allev · 04/28/09, 9:55 AM

Regemming all your gear, the difference should only be on the order of a 50-100 DPS gain (assuming 10-20 gems and an average difference in DPS-per-point of .3). Getting more comfortable with a certain fight, luck with the RNG, small improvements in skill, and the play of people keeping buffs up for you will all obfuscate that gain in a WWS parse.

You really have to trust the math, and to do that, you either have to do it blindly, or actually know why the theory says what it says. When there are disagreements (like Toskk's/Rawr versus FBN/SC), you can just average the difference out, or trust one set of numbers. I STRONGLY recommend that you don't simply choose the one with the best interface, but the one that matches your playstyle the closest. Yes, this takes work, but if every last DPS matters to you, you owe it to yourself to figure it out.

Kazanir · 04/28/09, 10:21 AM

XT sucks as a benchmark for the stated reasons. Vezax sucks as a benchmark for the opposite reasons -- since white hits are a lower % of damage and bleeds are much more important, ArP is artificially worth less. It's important to understand these differences and make intelligent gear choices based on what is most important to you, especially since the class as it stands is so complex and vulnerable to small changes in the rotation.

Cryect · 04/28/09, 10:28 AM

Originally Posted by Kazanir

XT sucks as a benchmark for the stated reasons. Vezax sucks as a benchmark for the opposite reasons -- since white hits are a lower % of damage and bleeds are much more important, ArP is artificially worth less. It's important to understand these differences and make intelligent gear choices based on what is most important to you, especially since the class as it stands is so complex and vulnerable to small changes in the rotation.

At the moment Vezax is ArP favored if you care about top DPS in the current situation of the fight but I think they are going to continue to tweak the fight since they don't really seem to want Shadow Crash effecting melee at all (much to my dismay).

Really the closest thing to an optimal fight would be the second phase of Thorim which only involves minimal movement in general. Unfortunately its going to be hard to compare since can't tell if someone got really lucky/unlucky on having to move for lightning charges.

Kazanir · 04/28/09, 2:39 PM

Originally Posted by Cryect

At the moment Vezax is ArP favored if you care about top DPS in the current situation of the fight but I think they are going to continue to tweak the fight since they don't really seem to want Shadow Crash effecting melee at all (much to my dismay).

Really the closest thing to an optimal fight would be the second phase of Thorim which only involves minimal movement in general. Unfortunately its going to be hard to compare since can't tell if someone got really lucky/unlucky on having to move for lightning charges.

Yah I'm ignoring the lol-no-energy-moves part of Shadow Crash since that's apparently backwards implementation on their part and they don't want it affecting melee at all.

psuman99 · 04/29/09, 11:22 AM

Regarding the Armor Pen vs. Agility Discussion:

Does anyone know if Rawr or Toskk's Model on Druid Wiki have updated their models to reflect the actual game mechanics for Armor Pen as Ghostcrawler discussed in a recent blue post? The two models appear to disagree on which stat is better. Rawr lists Armor Pen as best while Toskk lists Agility, even when stacking Armor Pen above 250. I would be interested if people have quantifiable proof from a raid or testing dummy that Armor Pen is better. Perhaps, someone could get their guild to buff them with all of their raid buffs to test the difference on a dummy.

One other consideration, even if Armor Pen is #1 for top DPS it doesn't mean it is the best gear setup for actual raiding. What I mean is that certain fights are difficult to get in shreds or weave in FBs. These types of fights would obviously reduce the value of Armor Pen. This may be a situation where the #1 theorycrafting DPS setup is #2 when actually executed in the real world when you consider the full spectrum of fights we are encountering in Ulduar. I would be interested to hear others thoughts on this though.

Mijae · 04/29/09, 11:52 AM

Originally Posted by psuman99

Does anyone know if Rawr or Toskk's Model on Druid Wiki have updated their models to reflect the actual game mechanics for Armor Pen as Ghostcrawler discussed in a recent blue post? The two models appear to disagree on which stat is better. Rawr lists Armor Pen as best while Toskk lists Agility, even when stacking Armor Pen above 250. I would be interested if people have quantifiable proof from a raid or testing dummy that Armor Pen is better. Perhaps, someone could get their guild to buff them with all of their raid buffs to test the difference on a dummy.

Have you actually read the discussions on ArP? Yes, they both use updated ArP formulas. No, they are not the same model so the results will vary. See other threads for details. There is no way to give quantifiable proof from a raid since RNG will be impossible to overcome.

Originally Posted by psuman99

One other consideration, even if Armor Pen is #1 for top DPS does it doesn't mean it is the best gear setup for actual raiding. What I mean is that certain fights are difficult to get in shreds or weave in FBs. These types of fights would obviously reduce the value of Armor Pen. This may be a situation where the #1 theorycrafting DPS setup is #2 when actually executed in the real world when you consider the full spectrum of fights we are encountering in Ulduar. I would be interested to hear others thoughts on this though.

The opposite is actually true. In difficult encounters you will find that keeping bleeds up nearly 100% doesn't happen. This shifts the argument in the favor of ArP.

Allev · 04/29/09, 12:20 PM

psuman99: Toskk's is updated with the new model and I imagine Rawr is as well (it's hard to tell).

I haven't really kept up with Rawr as the authors make few attempts at transparency of what is going on in the code. "More cat 3.1 changes" doesn't really give any answers to the "why does stat X do this in one model and do that in Rawr?" For that reason, and because it's a calculator rather than a simulator, I'm more inclined to call it a beginner's tool.

A fundamental flaw of both models, however, is that they average out Armor penetration on trinket procs. This works very well when talking about something which adds a fixed value (i.e. AP), and well enough with stats that only scale slightly (crit, hit). It works terribly with Armor Penetration. For instance, in Rawr, create two new items: one with Grim Toll's proc up, and one without it. 20% of the proc uptime trinket and 80% of the proc downtime trinket should equal the actual Grim Toll trinket, but it's actually off by 20+ DPS. Toskk's does the same thing. Essentially, if you have that trinket equipped (or Mjolnir), both calculators are going to give you a bogus result.

As far as Ulduar fights go:
Flame Leviathan: irrelevant
Ignis: pretty close to top DPS fight
Razorscale: Kitty swipe, which majorly favors ArPen
XT002: You use berserk during the double-damage period, which means you get a higher percentage of shred damage, which favors ArPen
Iron Council: close to a top DPS fight, except for running out of AOE spots. Slight disadvantage for ArPen.
Kologarn: no shreds, disadvantage for ArPen
Auriaya: swipes, favors ArPen
Hodir: close to a top DPS fight, but with swipes and crit/haste bonuses, which both favor stacking ArPen
Thorim: Swipes in P1, close to a top DPS fight in P2, favors ArPen
Freya: Haven't fought yet, but I know there are adds, and places where you need to stop DPS, which doesn't favor bleeds.
Mimiron: Only seen in 10-man, but there are 4 phases (thus 4 opening sequences) which probably make up for running in/out on phase 1. It's probably stat-neutral.
Vezax: close to a top DPS fight, favors ArPen.
Yogg: Haven't fought yet.

So in my experience, I've seen two fights where ArPen doesn't have a factor which favors it, and one of those is a fight we're expected to underperform.

Kazanir · 04/29/09, 2:43 PM

Based on looking at Rawr, it seems like all this ArPen business is based on the fact that you can stack both trinkets and gem for ArPen and push it beyond the intuitive cap of 100% penetration -- something that does work as of now but seems pretty clearly opposed to Blizzard's intentions.

Antagonist78 · 04/29/09, 3:14 PM

Originally Posted by vbdotnetrulz

Here is what gear I found to be best in slot so far:
Helm: [Conqueror's Nightsong Headguard]
Neck: [Broach of the Wailing Night]
Shoulders: [Conqueror's Nightsong Shoulderpads]
Cloak: [Drape of the Faceless General]
Chest: [Winter's Icy Embrace]
Wrists: [Mechanist's Bindings]
Gloves: [Conqueror's Nightsong Handgrips]
Belt: [Relic Hunter's Cord]
Legs: [Conqueror's Nightsong Legguards]
Boots: [Footpads of Silence]
Ring 1: [Loop of the Agile]
Ring 2: [Cindershard Ring]
Trinket 1: [Grim Toll]
Trinket 2: [Mjolnir Runestone]
Weapon: [Furious Gladiator's Greatstaff]

I used Shred/Rip/SR glyphs and LW/Alch professions.
8307 dps points as of RAWR 2.2.1
The only way I can increase the dps is by making it a BS/JC, but dealing with JC gems is annoying when it comes to testing. Of course RAWR could be wrong, but it is a much better theorycrafter than I.

Edited for readability and grammar (sorry).

Couple questions here (assuming that trinkets do stack)

Why [Winter's Icy Embrace], both [Conqueror's Nightsong Raiments] and even [Chestguard of the Recluse] rate better, [Relic Hunter's Cord] has [Death-Warmed Belt], and assuming I want to stay away from pvp (or don't think I'd make the rating required for) [Furious Gladiator's Greatstaff] I'm assuming I could replace that with [Lotrafen, Spear of the Damned] would that be correct?

Or is this set just intended to stack as much ArP as possible?

Allev · 04/29/09, 3:19 PM

Rawr doesn't stack the trinkets above the intuitive cap of 100% penetration, it averages them out.

If this is against Blizzard's intentions, then pretty soon we'll have no choice to stack crit and haste, because we'll have run out of room to improve based on other stats.

And the "intuitive" 100% cap is stupid, because it doesn't actually mean 100% of the armor is gone. It's simply a relic of the old way Armor Penetration was calculated. It would be clearly wrong if it took you past 0 armor, but it doesn't. It just takes you past the arbitrary 100% mark.

If blizzard really didn't want us going past 100%, they shouldn't introduce multiple trinkets that get us halfway there when they proc. That's just mean.

Mijae · 04/29/09, 3:38 PM

Originally Posted by Allev

If blizzard really didn't want us going past 100%, they shouldn't introduce multiple trinkets that get us halfway there when they proc. That's just mean.

Unless their intention was an upgrade path for one, not to add a second.