3.1 Upcoming Changes - Page 29

Effinhunter · 02/27/09, 10:24 PM

Originally Posted by Sylvand

I think the math is oversimplified here. For one, your "% chance of proccing 2 LnLs, given proc at time = X" as you're adding probabilities instead of properly computing the odds that it won't happen.

Also I think your chaining is incorrect; it doesn't account at all for the fact that not all "2 LnLs" are the same, i.e. if you have 4 chances to proc, it will be different if it proc on the first one compared to the fourth.

Overall I haven't seen anyone take a good approach to this. I think it should generally be to calculate the expected time between LnL proc, correcting for the possibility that one proc may overwrite another resulting in an effectice half-proc (for the case that there would be no CD on LnL). Honestly with all the energy folks are putting into this, I'm surprised that no one has built a simulator to check it out.

I am computing the odds that it won't proc as part of those calculations. That's what the .9s are doing in there. I'm adding the probabilities of each of these because that's what you are supposed to do when unioning probabilities of different discrete events.

I did look at all possible ways that LnL could double proc in a minute, as that was my point (to see if the double procs would normalize those times that BA would not proc a LnL in a minute of applications due to good old fashioned RNG). The chances that BA with a cooldown would not proc in a minute of applications should be 35%. According to my calculations, it would appear the chances that it will proc twice in a minute will be 9%. The other 56% of the boss minutes will be once per minute LnL procs. I've shown my math. If it's wrong, you shouldn't have a problem pointing it out. I've been pretty detailed with it, I hope.

As for the argument concerning whether the proc rates average out to be the same thing between 10% proc rate BA with no cooldown and 10% SS LnL with a 30s cooldown? I will agree with this statement, but I will note, as you did, that we'll have a probability, though small, of getting a partial LnL in this case (because there is no cooldown and a full LnL rotation requires 6-7.5s to fully realize because of GCDs in our rotation and there is a chance of proccing LnL back to back, or close enough to back to back such that the latter occurs during the LnL shot rotation cycle). Consequently, I disagree that the systems are equivalent. Even if we get the same ppm in practice, we would still experience a slight dps decrease due to one of our LnL procs from a boss fight potentially being only a partial LnL cycle. Because a LnL shot rotation sequences covers a large portion of the active BA region, the probability of this happening is actually pretty large.

I'm on my way out the door right now, and I don't have time to do the probabilities, but the table should look like this (where x is the potential problem area with the GCDs):

.9 .9 .9 .9 .1 x x 0 0 0 - note this is not a conflict. It is included for completeness
.9 .9 .9 .1 x x 0 0 0 0 - 1 proc chance affected (time = 5)
.9 .9 .1 x x 0 0 0 0 0 - 2 proc chances affected (time = 4 and 5)
.9 .1 x x .1 0 0 0 0 0 - 2 proc chances affected (time = 3 and 4)
.1 x x .1 .1 0 0 0 0 0 - 2 proc chances affected (time = 2 and 3)

Consequently, I believe this as a slight nerf and not just reinventing the wheel. Though I believe this would be a very, very slight nerf, even if BA has no cooldown.

I also do not agree that we've proven there is no LnL cooldown on BA quite yet, and we shouldn't assume that the old proc rate and new proc rate are in agreement right now. Reach's testing could have shown that the trap and BA cooldowns are separate or that there is no cooldown.

Again, a 24-30 minute test would answer this, if someone would be willing. I don't have the hard drive space right now to hold the PTR version, but I may just pick up an external hard drive if I have to

.

Originally Posted by Ketari

BA's proc rate per the patch notes is 6% per tick, not 10%.

Quick - yes, it's...not very helpful in actually draining mana. This is a bit of a problem for Hunters as I see it: AV's burst is getting stepped on hard, we won't have a deacent drain and..er..what *are* we supposed to do in arena again?

I was using the 10% proc rate because that has been the basis for the argument all along. If the rate is dropped to 6%, I'm not sure how anyone could argue that this is not a nerf, and there would be no point in arguing that the BA system could possibly meet an expected 1 ppm. As I noted earlier in the thread, if 5-6% proc rate is assumed, BA's mechanic will proc LnL once every 2 minutes.

P.S. Not trying to argue that what I said was novel. That is just simple math.

P.P.S. Nevermind on the 30 minute test. It's no longer interesting if the proc chance is dropped to 6% on the test server.

Ryas · 02/28/09, 1:08 AM

Does this mean that steady shot is no longer effected by the haste bonus?

Ghostcrawler: No. We just wanted to remove the quiver without losing its haste bonus. Except for inventory changes, you should not notice a difference. (Source)

Lockain · 02/28/09, 1:18 AM

I've been a huge survival nut since the release of WoW pretty much, even used good ol' Lacerate for a while. Now, I'm too lazy to download the ptr and find out for myself, so does anybody know what the Explosive Shot change implies? I read earlier and someone says it was the hotfix they did a while ago, but now they're "officially announcing" it; which means I SHOULDN'T see a damage difference when the patch is released?

Aside from that, there's a lot of talk about Black arrow, and I know this is all subject to change because Blizzard manages to remove 90% of whatever good they give hunters before patches are actually released, but would the rotation for "optimal" survival dps be something like: immo trap, rapid fire, explosive shot, multi, steady, blah blah. And then when the cooldown is up for traps, because BA is on the same cooldown (?), you'd throw in BA's? That way your explosive shots renew the immolation trap tick, but you still manage to keep both the trap and BA up? Also, is Serpent Sting still used in the rotation? Actually, if the SS glyph hasn't changed, then I'm gonna say SS is still in the rotation and would go in after multi shot or whatever.

Any word on SS glyph changing to just a basic 10% damage increase?

Rezdan · 02/28/09, 1:25 AM

Yes, the Explosive shot "nerf" is really just an announcement of the previous Explosive Shot hotfix that went through which decreased its RAP scaling coefficient.

As has been mentioned, Explosive Shots does NOT renew Immolation trap tick on the current PTR. This means that we're looking at only using BA without an initial trap. Serpent sting atm looks like it will still be used, but we're seeing less Steady Shots because of BA replacing it every so often. Also, several new glyphs have been added which look to be more useful than the Steady Shot glyph.

You can find the latest ptr notes on MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies.

Sylvand · 02/28/09, 3:42 AM

I have just confirmed that there is no internal cooldown on BA proc LnL. I sat for about 25 minutes just casting BA at the dummy. I made a macro to cancel LnL whenever it came up. Combatlog shows that indeed BA never ticked while LnL was still up, and finally after 25 minutes I got a back to back proc (this is when I ended the test).

In all I cast BA 50 times (250 ticks) and had 15 total LnL proc. This may be skewed toward LnL because the last two BA alone proc 3 LnL, but oddly enough this is exactly 6% proc rate (although the tooltip still says 10%?). At this rate (going by patch notes not my results), we should expect 0.6 PPM. Again, actual results will be slightly worse because we can lose effective procs if they happen to close to each other, as unlikely as that is.

Of course, expected PPM for the serpent sting LnL is 1, so this seems to be a significant nerf. By my math, actually Live 2/3 LnL gives as many procs as PTR 3/3 LnL with 3/3 resourcefulness (i.e. 24s CD on BA).

Effinhunter · 02/28/09, 4:56 AM

Originally Posted by Sylvand

I have just confirmed that there is no internal cooldown on BA proc LnL. I sat for about 25 minutes just casting BA at the dummy. I made a macro to cancel LnL whenever it came up. Combatlog shows that indeed BA never ticked while LnL was still up, and finally after 25 minutes I got a back to back proc (this is when I ended the test).

In all I cast BA 50 times (250 ticks) and had 15 total LnL proc. This may be skewed toward LnL because the last two BA alone proc 3 LnL, but oddly enough this is exactly 6% proc rate (although the tooltip still says 10%?). At this rate (going by patch notes not my results), we should expect 0.6 PPM. Again, actual results will be slightly worse because we can lose effective procs if they happen to close to each other, as unlikely as that is.

Of course, expected PPM for the serpent sting LnL is 1, so this seems to be a significant nerf. By my math, actually Live 2/3 LnL gives as many procs as PTR 3/3 LnL with 3/3 resourcefulness (i.e. 24s CD on BA).

Very interesting.

For those asking for a tangible, expected dps loss, again considering 7k ap and a 60% crit chance on explosive,

([RAP * 0.14 + 428]-[RAP * 0.14 + 516])
(7000 * .14 + 472 (avg)) = 1452 non crit. 1452 * 2.8 crit dmg = 4065.6

So, normalizing the dmg to an average. 1452 * .4 + 4065 * .6 = 580.8 + 2439 = 3019.8 avg tick dmg
Each LnL proc produces 3 explosive shots of 3 ticks. Assuming a 10 minute fight to simplify the math...

3019.8 * 3 * 3 = 27178.2 avg LnL proc dmg
We're losing 4 LnLs every 10 minutes, so... 27178.2 * 4 = 108712.8 / 600 seconds (10 min) = 181.188 dps

That's not really all that terrible. Anyone care to check my numbers (or solve it a different way to see if your solution agrees)? Again, if they eventually give us the explosive shot refresh of immolation trap, it's moot anyway, since we gain over twice this in dps with glyphed immo and explosive refresh. But is this even an overall patch nerf to survival?

Borrowing from Lilbitters:

Originally Posted by Lilbitters

Best spreadsheet numbers that I came up with were:
BM: 8420.88
MM: 6890.14
SV: 7372.72

If we subtract this out from the BiS dps
SV: 7372.72 - 181.19 = 7191.53, which is still higher than MM, and we all expect BM to be nerfed back by ~1k dps. I'm not sure if bitters was including the normalized 3% expected dmg increase from BA. If not, with serpent sting and BA at maximum uptime, this would become:

7191.53 * 1.03 (normalized BA) = 7407.2759

In other words, the addition of BA's 1.03 increase on top of Noxious stings 1.03 increase (which is very much doable through talents) would result in an overall buff to survival of ~40 dps, even with the nerf to LnL proc rate. Again, this is assuming that bitters wasn't including BA 1.03 in addition to Noxious 1.03 in the spreadsheet results quoted earlier.

Sylvand · 02/28/09, 5:48 AM

LnL doesn't simply grant ES, rather it replaces other shots with ES. It's best illustrated on a 12s cycle if you consider a situation where you might get 3 LnL proc timed perfectly together:

3 LnL proc:
ES__ES__ES__ES__ES__ES__(ES_...)

Normal:
ES_SS_SS_SS_ES_SS_SS_SS_(ES_...)

So from 3 LnL proc we replace 6 SS with 4 ES, so 2 SS for 4/3 ES (i.e. 4 ticks) per proc. Taking numbers from Middi's spreadsheet this is a trade of 8628.8 damage for 16405.04, i.e. 7776.24 damage for a LnL proc.

Losing 4 proc over 10 minutes should mean 31104.96 / 600 = 51.84 dps lost.

This is a very rough, potentially pessimistic figure. With ES__ES__ES_ for LnL proc, you may delay the casts of AiS (if you spec for it) and SrS. This would increase the amount of dps lost in addition to the replaced SS. It may certainly turn out that ES__ES__ES_ is not the way to go anymore, but I assume for now that it is.

edit: rewording the last comment. AS and BA aren't relevant because you don't use AS with ES and BA will always be on cooldown when LnL is up.

Effinhunter · 02/28/09, 7:08 AM

Originally Posted by Sylvand

LnL doesn't simply grant ES, rather it replaces other shots with ES. It's best illustrated on a 12s cycle if you consider a situation where you might get 3 LnL proc timed perfectly together:

3 LnL proc:
ES__ES__ES__ES__ES__ES__(ES_...)

Normal:
ES_SS_SS_SS_ES_SS_SS_SS_(ES_...)

So from 3 LnL proc we replace 6 SS with 4 ES, so 2 SS for 4/3 ES (i.e. 4 ticks) per proc. Taking numbers from Middi's spreadsheet this is a trade of 8628.8 damage for 16405.04, i.e. 7776.24 damage for a LnL proc.

Losing 4 proc over 10 minutes should mean 31104.96 / 600 = 51.84 dps lost.

This is a very rough, potentially pessimistic figure. With ES__ES__ES_ for LnL proc, you certainly delay the cast of AS, usually delay the cast of AiS (if you spec for it), and you may also delay the cast of BA/SrS. All of these will have a greater impact than simply replacing a SS. It may certainly turn out that ES__ES__ES_ is not the way to go anymore, but I assume for now that it is.

This assumes no crits, right? This seems a little low. Looking at some of my WWS, my max crit from explosive seems to hover around 5100 damage. That would would be roughly 1/3 your projected damage for what the 2 ESes connected to a LnL proc would even do in total.

Even so, it seems a trifling nerf. I would say your figure is more optimistic than pessimistic, actually

♦ Dravous · 02/28/09, 8:51 AM

Originally Posted by Ketari

Except warriors running over your frost trap with spell reflect on. Oops, nothing happens. It was bad enough when that only worked on freezing traps...

I think it was a change Blizz made for PvE purposes without thinking about the PvP consequences.

I'm baffled that I didn't come across one (1!) warrior with this potential in PvP or knowing about this so he could just ignore my trap... Well, I believe your word of course. But then again I have to say that if this is intended to happen (I don't hope so. But on the other hand, let's be fair, most Warriors don't really stand a chance against a well played hunter, no matter how good THEY play. Since the new Disengage that is.) it is just one more way to avoid the LnL burst to come. If a Shaman/Paladin/Druid dispelled your SerpentSting, he would also just be using an ability of his arsenal to counter yours. Or in other words: A warrior with spellreflect ready for a Frost Trap is just a far sighted player doing fine in PvPing a Hunter.

It doesn't mean at all that non-SV Hunters would be excluded from using LnL.

There's also other hunters with masters call and TBW, and warriors with BS but these are small concerns. What I'd like to know is what about palys? With bubble and freedom they don't get slowed in the trap but it does at least set it off, so it's there for when the immunity wares off, and it's still a LnL proc. If an immune target won't trip a frost trap anymore does that mean when you see a paly you'll be loosing half your trap CDs?

ezMooks · 02/28/09, 10:17 AM

Originally Posted by Effinhunter

This assumes no crits, right? This seems a little low. Looking at some of my WWS, my max crit from explosive seems to hover around 5100 damage. That would would be roughly 1/3 your projected damage for what the 2 ESes connected to a LnL proc would even do in total.

It seems as though he included crits as the average tick was 2734.17 damage, which would be slightly lower than your averaged tick damage.

whylde · 02/28/09, 2:13 PM

Hey guys,

GC just responded to the question about the wording of the ES.

Yes, we did nerf the damage of Explosive Shot a little more. After many of the changes to locks, DKs, warriors and the rest, we felt SV hunters were too high. MM may still be a little too low. BM seems on target at the moment, but we had a few bugs in new pet abilities especially that was making it hard to get accurate numbers.

I'm not sure what you mean about Survival compexity. Are you talking about the shots themselves or the organization of the tree? I think some players are still thinking they are supposed to trap dance in PvE.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/28/154...-confusion.html

Hope to see a patch with bugfixes so we can see the numbers for BM.

regards

Starwind · 02/28/09, 2:23 PM

Originally Posted by Rezdan

Yes, the Explosive shot "nerf" is really just an announcement of the previous Explosive Shot hotfix that went through which decreased its RAP scaling coefficient.

As has been mentioned, Explosive Shots does NOT renew Immolation trap tick on the current PTR. This means that we're looking at only using BA without an initial trap. Serpent sting atm looks like it will still be used, but we're seeing less Steady Shots because of BA replacing it every so often. Also, several new glyphs have been added which look to be more useful than the Steady Shot glyph.

You can find the latest ptr notes on MMO-Champion - World of Warcraft Guides and Raid Strategies.

A quote from GC has me a little confused. The updated patch notes might reflect something more than simply aligning the notes with the 3.0.9 nerf: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> 3.1 Hunter Patch Notes Confusion

Yes, we did nerf the damage of Explosive Shot a little more. After many of the changes to locks, DKs, warriors and the rest, we felt SV hunters were too high. MM may still be a little too low. BM seems on target at the moment, but we had a few bugs in new pet abilities especially that was making it hard to get accurate numbers.

I'm not sure what you mean about Survival compexity. Are you talking about the shots themselves or the organization of the tree? I think some players are still thinking they are supposed to trap dance in PvE.

The first sentence could mean one of two things: 1) yes, we nerfed ES a little more in the past (currently on Live and what we hope it means), or 2) we've nerfed ES a little more (on the PTR or an internal build) on top of what was previously nerfed on Live.

Has anyone on the PTR verified the ES damage formula through testing?

Edit: Just saw the entry above mine (slow to organize my thoughts). The info is similar but I'm keeping this post b/c of the specfic question I've posed.

Æthien · 02/28/09, 2:24 PM

Well as SV you'll have:
A 6 second cooldown Explosive Shot
A 10 second cooldown Aimed Shot
A 15 (21) second refresh on Serpent Sting
A 30 second cooldown Black Arrow.
As many steady shots as you can squeeze into it.
And random LnL procs.

It's quite a lot to manage so I can see where people that say SV is complex are coming from.

The one thing I truly dislike about this is Aimed shot, as 10 seconds is the only one that does not fit with GCD's.
I think Survival rotations would feel a lot more natural if Aimed shot would be adjusted to either a 9 second or a 12 second cooldown (with corresponding mana/damage changes to keep the damage per mana and dps equal).

Hellifiknow · 02/28/09, 4:07 PM

Irrelevant.

Ketari · 02/28/09, 4:45 PM

Originally Posted by Hellifiknow

It would appear that tooltip matches current live formula on PTR and that the change is indeed only a reference to the already hotfixed version of Explosive Shot.

Except most of the changes GC is talking about are not patched in yet.

Æthien - The important thing is the comparison.

BM:

15s serpent sting
potentially 10s aimed shot
and a castsequence macro arcane/steady/steady/steady

Much simpler...you can keep a much higher degree of situational awareness.