I was generally impressed by the degree to which WC and Robot have been agreeing, and have been mostly going with those results. A few pages back when people were using Robot to check rotations in detail, lower DoT uptimes were looking favorable, although the differences were small and hard to resolve. I do think the point about favoring a rotation with fewer DoT's even when they're equal on paper, because of the reduced opportunity cost of movement, is an important one.

Dropping a DoT entirely looked like it had some potential for a short period before the Focus nerf. That's why people keep asking all those question. In truth, I don't think that it was a good idea even then, it just looked like before we examined low-uptime DoT rotations more. At the moment, there's no reason to leave out either DoT. But I think the weight of the evidence is in favor of lower uptimes than before. There's also a bit of common sense here--an unglyphed IS or an unextended Moonfire have such low DPET that's they're clearly not worth casting at certain times (say at the beginning of the "wrong" Eclipse). So even independently of the difficulties of modeling this all, there are going to times when it's not optimal to refresh.

The differences are so small at that all but the highest levels of play, it might not be worth worrying about the differences. I'd still recommend refreshing only after Eclipse to newer players, because it's probably easier to do consistently on the whole, and will leave them better prepared to learn to handle movement. And for advanced players who are going to execute any rotation correctly, it looks like partial DoT uptimes produce optimal DPS by a small margin.

So thats an example at one gearing level, has anyone checked at other gearing levels? I notice he is a little lighter in haste, I was curious if higher amounts of haste would diminish the value of DoT refreshing relative to the nukes. Certainly, in regards to starfire, it absolutely would.

Can you run numbers on say, my gear?

One thing that I have noticed is that these slight differences in rotations come up with less than 1% of your total DPS (as most of us are comfortably over the 10k mark). Anything that we attempt to test out in game is going to require massive amounts of carefully controlled scenarios which are quite simply impossible to actually control.

And these fractional changes in rotations are really not going to be visible. Take the glyphs issue. The difference for me comes out to be less than 5 DPS. That's 0.05% difference. Not only will human error cause that difference to be irrelevant, but so to will the nature of RNG (not to mention the margin of error for the approximations themselves).

In the end, it really comes down to personal preference and to some extent what you want to bring to the raid.

EDIT: I did want to add though that the Focus glyph may not be so insignificant on certain fights. During the Lich King attempts last night, Starfall was really doing some insane damage, particularly in phase 1 and 3. Every attempt I could usually get 2 Starfalls off in phase 1 and they would do around 300,000 damage total. That would be easily 30,000 extra damage. Is it worth it though? I don't know. For me it's not but again that's a personal preference. I prefer my max range and if you're using Focus you should also be using glyph of Insect Swarm.

I've been mainly sticking with the strategy of just keeping unglyphed insect swarm up for the hit debuff and my idol, and moonfiring during movement.

I have some questions about starfall though that will impact my timing of it. How big is the difference in total damage in the following scenarios:

Single target
Two targets, spaced apart
Two targets on top of each other

I think I read starfall uses more stars if you have more than one target but I'm not sure on what the real difference is.

Two targets, spaced apart
Two targets, spaced apart
Difference
2020 + 2.6*SP

If both targets are debuffed, it is a ~3600 damage difference @ 3400SP

Starfall shoots up to 2 stars per second for 10 seconds. So against a single target, you get 10 stars. Against two or more targets spaced, you get 20 stars, for twice as much damage. A splash hit is about 1/4 as big as a direct hit, so if there are 5 targets clumped, you're getting around 4 times as much damage as you would on a single target.

I'd use Focus anytime you're getting a chance to Starfall multiple targets, and not bother with it any other time.

That's some what unfortunate. I really wish things were more consistent with regard to this sort of thing. I think the overall idea is that if it causes push back (or is a DoT of some sort) it is suppose to proc Owlkin Frenzy. Other sources of damage are not. The issue is that the wording is so unclear. Additional, it sometimes appears to proc off things that don't even target you directly such as Malleable Goo, which seems to proc the effect even if you aren't the target.

One thing I have noticed is that when you get an absorb (Power Word: Shield for instance) unless the damage pierces the absorb, Owlkin Frenzy won't proc regardless of the damage source.

The starfall buff has brought me to the top of the caster dps list with the mages...
Just wondering, what are the odds that they nerf it? It is kind of OP, and I could see it happening. Wondering what EJ things based on your experience with previous buffs/nerfs.

-54 Applications of Owlkin last week 3.3.2.
WoW Meters Online - Combatlog Replay


-5 Applications of Owlkin this week on 3.3.3.
WoW Meters Online - Combatlog Replay

It will probably get somewhat nerfed as the usual pure vs hybrid whining will start again. Personally I don't think it's that op'ed. On certain fights you can gain pretty high damage meter scores due to it hitting multiple targets while still maintaining more or less optimal dps on the boss itself (DKs, Shadow Priests, Warriors, Rogues, Fire mages etc all have similar opportunities aswell).

At Rotface for example, starfall does alot of damage, but in reality alot of the stars hit the oozes, in which the damage is technically wasted since you don't kill those anyways. However it does make you look good on the meters. It's like shadow priests multidotting Iron Council in Ulduar to look good on meters, but the damage is wasted since they heal up when 1 dies. Lich King p1 would be another example, where you can do massive dmg to the small adds, but you can kill them off with necrotic plague aswell. Same on Blood Council, where stars will drop on the 1hp bosses. Sindragosa you can whore meters by popping it on the tombs during air phase.

So I guess it's a matter of how you look at it. Strictly meter wise, it might be op'ed, but it's also somewhat uncontrolled damage. Also considering the relatively steep price we pay for having to move, and Blizzard's statements that the so called hybrid should expect to be somwhere along the lines of 5% lower on dps than pure ones, I don't think it's an unfair buff. Perhaps warlocks and maybe shadow priests need to be made stronger, but it's not like a moonkin is gonna violate a rogue or arcane mage that know what they're doing.

Pre patch 3.3.3 I would usually try to time Starfalls during Eclipse transistions, but some very rough calculations indicate that it is now worth it to cast it during Lunar Eclipse if there is a sufficient amount of time left before it ends. How are people timing their Starfalls at the moment? Just simply when it is off cooldown, or more like: only if there is more than x seconds left on Eclipse.

I agree; I think things that cause pushback are exactly what also proc OF.

Good question. Like you, I've been trying not to do it during Eclipse, unless it's at the very start of one. I don't have a specific number of seconds, just sort of gut-feeling at this point.

In a related question, when do people use it at the start of a fight? I've started waiting for my DFO to proc and get 4-5 stacks at the start of a fight before hitting SFall. It usually procs pretty quickly, but not always - is it worth waiting at all? Now that I think of it, I should probably start waiting for 10 stacks before popping my treants, unless I think I could otherwise get another cast off during the fight. That decision is much easier than SFall, however.

And in a question related to that: It's been said that SFall, like Hurricane, benefits from temporary +% effects like 2T10 on a per-tick basis and not just on initial cast. What about +SP effects (like the aforementioned DFO), though?

Hmm, I did forget about the IS debuff when I rewrote the DoT's section yesterday. Maybe the best compromise is to cast IS after each Eclipse? That gives pretty high uptime for very minimal DPS loss.

I've been seeing fair DPS improvements in Robot (~50 DPS) by choosing DoT logic somewhere between "always up" and "one DoT after each eclipse." Glyphs: MF SF Sfall.

This almost certainly isn't perfect, but for 4t10 the simulator likes

1) Never clip a DoT
2) Never cast a DoT during the "wrong" eclipse.
3) Never cast IS immediately after MF (reasoning, NG uptime and if this is pre-Lunar, I want a Wrath in flight).
4) Don't cast IS during the last four seconds of Solar (old arguments).

This tends to give IS uptimes around 55-60%, and MF uptimes around 70-75%.

The interaction of rules 2,3,4 mean you sometimes get only one IS per Eclipse cycle (cycles where both Eclipses proc quickly).

You usually get one MF per cycle, and it is usually cast in the pre-Lunar phase, or early in Lunar.

For 4t9, rule (2) applies only to IS. MF uptime is >90%, and IS uptime is about 65-70%.

Robot logic for IS is
Of course, this assumes you don't care very much about the IS debuf.

If I am correct, then the damage lost per second of not using Starfall is at least 750. Let's say Starfall is 58K damage for one GCD and Lunar gives about 13K damage per GCD if used on Starfire (numbers are rounded in a way to make Starfall look worse). The benefit of Starfall above Lunar Starfire spam is then: 58-13=45K damage. Every second Starfall is not used then costs you at least: 45K/60= 750 damage.

The benefit of an extra GCD Lunar Starfire versus a normal Starfire is about 3K. So, this implies that if you have more than 4 seconds left of Lunar, then you should cast Starfall. However, the benefit of an extra GCD Lunar Starfire is lower than 3K, since casting the Starfall after Lunar reduces future Eclipse up-time. If Eclipse up-time is about 66%, then the loss is only 1K damage, which then implies that you only want to delay Starfall if there is slightly more than 1 second of Lunar left.

The math is a bit vague, but I get the feeling that the benefit of delaying Starfall in order to benefit more from Eclipse up-time is quite small.

So, I got to thinking about the old discussion of using GotW to proc our 2p tier bonus for extra damage on dots. It was generally agreed that this was a damage loss, because of the GCD you lost wasn't outweighed by the damage you gained. But how about using it in conjunction with starfall.

I pulled these numbers from Wrath Calcs. I realise that it might be a bit screwered, but I lack the mathematical skills to make it more advanced than this.

The idea would be to pop starfall, and then a GotW - it doesn't matter that we might miss the first star, because the bonus is only for 6 seconds anyways, so six stars. I estimated that on a single target fight, starfall might do 50.000 damage unbuffed and with 6/10 stars buffed, I place it at 54.000 damage. I did include some starfires to extend the moonfire.

I also assumed three wraths to proc eclipse, and one more to "notice it".

So, in this model, there is a 15.593 damage difference over 12 seconds if using GotW after casting starfall. If my calculations are correct (and it is entirely possible that they are not), then we can score a bit more damage from popping GotW for a bonus which is sufficient to take over the damage we lose from using that GCD on buffing.

Am i anywhere close with this? Could this work in a real envrioment, and is this something we could use on the pull, or even mid fight after we throw out starfall?

Qieth,

It might work. Numbers questions:

50k Starfall for a single target may be a bit high?

What is the chance for GotW to not proc Omen? 30+%?

If Omen bonus applies to spells which have already been cast, you'll do a little better if you already have IS, MF, and possibly 4t10 ticking at the time of the GotW cast. If Omen bonus doesn't apply in this situation, you might need to cast GotW before Starfall, reducing the impact.

Qieth, did you also take into account the up-time of Omen without GOTW? By the way, if you just want to use 1 GOTW during Starfall during to proc Omen, then you might be better off delaying GOTW a few seconds, to see if Omen happens to proc without GOTW and only cast GOTW if there is still 6-7 seconds of Starfall left and Omen didnt proc.

Just want to clarify that a single Starfall when fully buffed is very easy to break over the 50k mark. Mine is showing an average total damage of 57670.828 per Starfall. If anything, 50k is too low as mine are close to breaking the 60k mark fully raid buffed.

As for the chance to proc GotW: it's about 6% per raid member per cast. Comes out to about 80% chance to proc OoC (78.70898627%).

Hmm, someone on the guide thread points out that Engineering my be good now. I hadn't looked at professions in while (I think since I originally wrote it, actually):
http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-m...a/#post1597151

Anyone notice anything wrong with this?

I've been wondering the very same thing for a while now and was hoping to see someone put numbers to it. The hyperspeed + lunar eclipse sounds like it could potentially be better but I'm horrible at math so I'm not for certain. I'd imagine hyperspeed + lunar + speed pot + hero and you might hit the GCD for starfires and that sounds delicious. I think I could trade my lightweave embroidery for that if the numbers crunched back up what I'm already semi assuming. Can anyone well versed in math map this out a bit for us?

Some napkin math:

Assume 600 haste (ICC gear). Potion of Speed = 500 haste, Hyperspeed Accelerators = 340 haste. 600 + 500 + 340 = 1440 haste. Entering that haste value into WrathCalcs, I get a NG-ed Starfire cast time of 1.6 seconds. Heroism increases casting speed by 30%, so 1.6/1.3 = 1.23 second cast Starfire.The same calculation with 900 haste results in a 1.15 second cast Starfire.