I've been playing around with the following 2 setups:
SF / IS / F with 3/5 Genesis 0/2 iMF. Refreshing MF -never, IS - always.
SF / SF / MF with 1/5 Genesis 2/2 iMF. Refreshing MF and IS 'after one eclipse'.
(Just a note, with my current gear I'm crit capped during lunar eclipse without MF.)

The first one gives ~45 dps more, scales slightly better and has a simpler rotation. However it requires you to be closer to the boss for 10secs of every 60 and doesn't provide the IS debuff.

On focus glyph, the only fight I can see the range being an issue is Blood Princes.

I'm guessing that you're using this setup in simulation, but you are aware that the Focus glyph is getting reduced to 10% correct? It makes any of the DoT glyphs (Moonfire, Starfire, and Insect Swarm) better than Focus, which was only just barely ahead of the other setups.

Actually this was in wrath calcs, and I checked DpET of starfall with and without the glyph and it looked as if the glyph was upto date (ie 10% buff instead of 20%)

Where are you putting the other 2 talent points with the MF/SF/SF setup? You list 1/5 Genesis and 0/2 Improved Moonfire. Also, you should have more talents left over than that. There should be 2 more floating around somewhere (Owlkin Frenzy or Typhoon maybe?).

Going from there, the difference becomes insignificant (~3 DPS) compared to SF/SF/MF with my stats. 3 DPS for a unique hit debuff and a penalty to your range just doesn't seem worth it.

Sorry that was just a typo. it was meant to be 2/2 iMF on the second. And they are not left over talents really, as they are the only options for getting to the third tier, so long as mana is a none issue.

Guide (and sheet) updated with Glyph and DoT stuff for 3.3.3, people can see what they think.

The simulations I've run on AskMrRobot leaned towards the guide's recommendations, although I'd say the difference was within the margin of error.

Note that if rotation1 and rotation2 provide the same dps on a patchwerk fight, but rotation2 uses fewer dots, then rotation2 will be better on a movement fight (more dots available for movement, with less clipping).

I don't believe MrRobot supports fights with movement. I believe Simulationcraft does, but I haven't used it lately. Has anyone compared the DoT rotations using simc's movement options?

I actually believe the best time (other than movement) to place a DoT is when you might notice Eclipse proccing during the DoT's GCD. That means that there is a 25-55% chance that the DoT did not extend your Eclipse cycle, and also did not reduce the number of Eclipse'd nukes you got during the current cycle. The penalty is reduced DoT uptime, but with 4t10, that penalty is small, because DoTs, at best, aren't that much better than Eclipsed nukes.

Has anyone else noticed issues with Squawk and Awe miss reporting Eclipses and the cooldowns now?

Yep, I'm having trouble too, I think there's something wrong with the solar eclipse detection. I'm having other addon problems too, vertical bars that create different color gradients... making it very hard to read a broken SAA.

I went back to Team Robot under the same conditions I used back on post #38 on page 2. I tried a rotation in which moonfire is only applied just before Lunar Eclipse, and Insect Swarm is only applied just before Solar Eclipse. By "just before" I mean the preceding Eclipse has dropped and the next Eclipse is ready to proc.

Here are the results:
9909.4 +-25.6dps

These are lower than the rotation that allowed moonfire to be reapplied anytime except during Solar Eclipse, so that's two simulators that don't like the one-DoT rotation.

Seems to me that it's detecting the solar eclipse, but not drawing the bar for it.

On a related note, MSBT seems to have "lost" the setting to announce lunar eclipse, but that was solved by adding the trigger manually. Not sure what happened, but if anyone else has that issue, it's an easy fix.

Unfortunately the fellow who made SAA stopped playing the game, or stop raiding, or something of that sort. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Certainly sucks, as it's my favorite mod. :-(

SquawkAndAwe

Looks like it will be addressed fairly soon.

Ok, I did several sets of simulations using SimulationCraft. Most of them were based off of my toon, but I did do a test using Lappe assuming he is one of the best gear moonkin currently in game.

For each set of gear I ran two simulations changing how DoTs are applied in each sim. The first past was using the default rotation code of:

With the second I try to mimic the logic outlined by Hamlet. The code for it is:

For the first gear set I used my current gear set. Using the default rotation My sim DPS was 10773 when I switched the DoT code my sim DPS dropped to 10737.

In the second set I switched out my Nibelung for the 264 versions of FBS and SSS. For that gear my default sim DPS was 10476 and the custom rotation was 10454.

In the third set I switched my IotDS for the normal version of Muradin's Spyglass to push myself well over the caps. The Default DPS was 10593 and the custom DPS was 10562.

Finally I wondered if I might be the problem, so I exported Lappe from Paragon. Using the same two rotations I got a sim DPS of 11712 for the default rotation, and 11668 DPS for the custom rotation.

In short, in all the situations I tested, refreshing DoTs on cooldown resulted in more DPS then only refressing the dots after Eclipse just finished.

SimC is giving a DPS increase from constantly refreshing an unglyphed IS? That seems odd.

-------

Our Resto Shaman said that Water Shield didn't proc on BQL today. I'm going to guess that Shroud of Sorrow was fixed and Owlkin Frenzy won't proc anymore either.

Cdin,

I ran team robot with your character, from armory, except that I changed GoIS to GoStarfall.
I used a queue lag of 30ms and a gcd lag of 100 ms. Other settings were defaults (including 300s fight), except for number of runs (1000).

Default rotation (always maintain DoTs) gave 10057 DPS.
Change IS to only be cast when Solar is ready (off cooldown) and MF only when Lunar is ready gave 10187 DPS.

Both numbers have reported +/- of around 27 (1000 runs each).

Note, one difference between our 1-dot rotations is the start of the fight. My logic casts both MF and IS before the first nuke (or whenever both cooldowns happen to be up). Your logic wouldn't cast IS until after the first Lunar, and not cast MF until 30+ seconds into the fight. That means my idol was at full strength about 10s into the fight, your took something like 25s to reach full strength.

The differences in either case are small (your numbers favored continual DoTs by 0.3%, mine favored 1-dot by 1%). By comparison, I've seen 2% boosts by adding end-of-fight logic to the rotations (no IS with <14s left in fight, no MF with < 15s left in fight, Typhoon+MF when no time for a final nuke (Wrath has travel time in Robot)).

The Wrath travel time may account for part of the difference between simulators. Travel time means it takes longer for Robot to proc the first Lunar, on average, but Solar->Lunar gaps should be smaller on average (since wraths completed during Solar can still proc Lunar).

Erdluf,

Are you sure you used the correct spec? If you had to change GoIS to GoStarfall then you were likely using my Saurfang/Heroic Anub spec that does not have Improved IS. Unfortunately I forgot to switch back last night before I logged out, but if you used my Typhoon spec then that would explain some of the differences in our results.

The IotLE stacking may also be part of the issue. Does anyone know how to start a fight in SimulationCraft with both DoTs but not increase their priority in the spell rotation?

EDIT:

I tried to run the simulation with Team Robot using my standard spec.

In the first run the casting conditions were:


This run resulted in a DPS of 10746.7

In the second run the casting conditions were:
This run resulted in a DPS of 10063.7

I haven't worked with Team Robot much so I may have made a mistake somewhere, but the Team Robot sim seems to confirm my results from SimulationCraft

So both simulators should be similar in that regard.

I think sinulationcraft has a slightly more optimistic latency model, so I re-ran Robot with both lags set at zero (Graylo's armory had changed so that he already had GoSfl, I don't know if there were other changes). I've also increased the number of runs to 10k, to reduce the reported error margin to around +/-9

Full DoTs: 10746.5
One DoT: 10763.2

Note that one-dot, as modeled above, has the advantage of not wasting as many ticks at the end of the fight. I modified both rotations to not cast IS after 286s, or MF after 285s. Results:

Full DoTs: 10773.8
One DoT: 10768.4

That last comparison is a difference of just 1/20 of one percent, about the equivalent of blinking at the start of the fight, and taking an extra 1/7s for your first cast.

Edit: For these later tests you do not have IIS. You do have GoSfl. I'll add IIS (taking points from Typhoon and GW) and run again.


Cdin, for your later post, this might work for simcraft. This assumes Simc has both eclipses on cooldown if either eclipse is active.

actions+=/moonfire,if=!ticking&!buff.lunar_eclipse.cooldown_remains
actions+=/insect_swarm,if=!ticking&!buff.solar_eclipse.cooldown_remains

Edit2: My One DoT logic is

MF only if (NOT (Target has MF) and (Lunar Is Ready))
IS only if (NOT (Target has IS) and (Solar Is Ready))

So both DoTs get applied at the start of the fight (or in rare circumstances where it takes more than 15s to proc eclipse).

Just wanted to point somethin out here quick:
SC in latest release does not have the 15s cd on the other eclipse if you proc it, just realised it and added that.
So only using cooldown_remains may not bringt the results you'd expect. :S

Team Robot, 10k runs, Using Graylo (5/5 t10.264) with 3/3 IIS, glyphs of MF, SF, and Sfall, no end-of-fight logic, 0 delay on all casts:

Full DoTs: 10944
One DoT (both at start): 10868

Changing latency to 30ms queued, 100ms gcd I get:

Full DoTs: 10280
One DoT (both at start): 10281

The difference is pretty small, and the "winner" likely depends on things that we aren't measuring here (differences in gear, movement, pushback, ...)

That was pretty much the conclusion I came to myself Erdluf. Although, if you're going to use Full DoTs, Insect Swarm will probably provide better results at the cost of the hit debuff.

As far as which setup is actually better, I think movement (and obviously gear, but that's something we can measure) is going to be the biggest thing to take into consideration, and I'm really not sure which is better to be honest. Perhaps the 1 DoT setup, simply because you're not going to be clipping anything during movement, but actually applying a damage source that wouldn't otherwise be getting use.

However, in the end that's speculation and I'm really not sure.

I agree. My main point is that I don't think we can definitively say what the best strategy for refreshing DoTs is.

I get a lot of emails that say things like "Murmurs says we should cast IS when Solar is up," or "EJ says I should only cast one DoT." When I test these things with the tools available I can't match the claim.

Ultimately, I think because of the change to Starfall and the fact that Moonkin DoTs do not scale very well has lead a lot of people to believe that DoTs are inferior to nukes at high levels of gear, and should be dropped from the regular rotation.

While modifying our DoT refresh strategy may not hurt our DPS much, I am not seeing any indication that it real helps our DPS either. Therefore, there is no real need to recommend anything different then we were doing before 3.3.3.