Cataclysm Fire Mage Compendium - Page 18

Saruk · 02/03/11, 4:01 PM

Originally Posted by angayelle

I tried to include an Ignite predictor into CombustionHelper but in the end I had no way to have an accurate estimate of it.

An easier and potentially more useful addition would be to just show the current ignite tick when it procs. Technically you don't need to predict much in advance for combustion as it doesn't matter if you combust at the start of an ignite or the end or it, you still get the same result.

A prominent display of the first ignite tick would give you a good guide as to when combustion should be hit, and you will have a good 4-5 seconds to hit it.

EDIT: It pays to have the most up-to-date version of things. Yes, combustion helper does already do this.

Malcophant · 02/03/11, 7:30 PM

Originally Posted by Saruk

An easier and potentially more useful addition would be to just show the current ignite tick when it procs. Technically you don't need to predict much in advance for combustion as it doesn't matter if you combust at the start of an ignite or the end or it, you still get the same result.

A prominent display of the first ignite tick would give you a good guide as to when combustion should be hit, and you will have a good 4-5 seconds to hit it.

CombustionHelper already does this, from what I've seen when using it.

razor_rer · 02/04/11, 2:16 PM

Hi guys,

This forum has been my favorite resource for years now and I really apprecaite all the work you guys do to help us glass cannons make the most of our potential, keep up the great work!

I noticed this being discussed recently and wanted to add a question to the mix about how to best determine when to pop combustion now that we know that ignite is highest contributing dot.

Firstly, great job on this addon, I think combustion helper is fantastic and has definatly helped me increase my dps through its use.

My question is based on how ignite is shown on the addon. I can certianly understand how difficult it would be to anticipate dps figures so I was thinking that if we knew where the ignite originated we could better determine the most optimal time to use combustion. We get ignites from dot ticks, FBs and Pyros and because we would always want the big pyro/fb crit to use Combustion, is there a way to show where the ignite comes from on the helper panel?

Ie: Could there be 3 buttons under ignite that say: Tick, FB, Pyro that light up as the ignite is triggered and change accordingly as new ignites overwrite the others?

andastra · 02/04/11, 5:37 PM

Originally Posted by Maje

The answer is quite simple, to break it down into even more manageable chunks:

Assuming a 359 geared fire mage on a standard fight here is the breakdown of damage combustion does by components:

Combustion: 7374 tick - [100%]
----
Ignite: 9704.8/2 = 4852.4 [65.8%]
Living Bomb: 5612/3 = 1870.6 [25.35%]
Pyroblast! dot: 1953/3 = 651 [8.8%]

As can be plainly seen the contribution of the Pyroblast! dot is very small compared to how large your Ignite is, the general rule of thumb is if you get a good Ignite and Living Bomb is ticking it's not worth waiting for a P! to proc and risk loosing the Ignite damage. The better your gear is the less P! dot would contribute, same applies to 'special' fights eg. Halfus where LB and P! dot would contribute much much less.

Breaking it down that way, it is pretty clear that trinkets with spellpower procs are better contributors to combustion damage than a P! dot.

rathe101 · 02/05/11, 4:06 AM

Originally Posted by rathe101

Its not a huge increase, as indicated on the spreadsheet itself where you can compare the rotations side by side, but with the additional crit, i feel that while when one is forced to move, adding a fire blast to every 4 scorches will increase the overall movement DPS, as long as you have the mana available to spare on fire blasts, which with the current PTR changes, that mana becomes available.

After running the numbers again, I made another spreadsheet.

Here it is, and it shows you side by side the mana you would be using on the different rotations, the mana you would expect to get back from MoE, and the mana you would expect to get back from blessing of might, base regen, and Master of Elements. All mana values are in mp5, to make it easier to understand.

The total mana wasted sections is the percentage of mana you could've used on fireball instead while running that chain. It shows pretty clearly the value of Improved Scorch, which we all already knew, but it also shows us the mana value for the PTR change. Compared to live, your using 20 - 30% less mana per cast, which while expect due to the drop from 12% to 9%, once you factor in MoE, BoM etc it's nice to show exactly how much mana this change is saving us.

Please let me know if there are any mistakes, I'm pretty sure I corrected all the formulas to show the correct values.

• Wizeowel · 02/05/11, 7:16 AM

Originally Posted by rathe101

After running the numbers again

I want to highlight that you are talking about improved fire blast, and including fire blast in a scorch rotation. I'm not sure about something here. Take for example G6 vertically "Fireball Spam PTR" and horizontally "% of mana wasted when compared to fireball spam on PTR". I don't see how fireball spam costs anything but 100% of fireball spam. Can you clarify that please?

angayelle · 02/05/11, 11:45 AM

Originally Posted by razor_rer

--
My question is based on how ignite is shown on the addon. I can certianly understand how difficult it would be to anticipate dps figures so I was thinking that if we knew where the ignite originated we could better determine the most optimal time to use combustion. We get ignites from dot ticks, FBs and Pyros and because we would always want the big pyro/fb crit to use Combustion, is there a way to show where the ignite comes from on the helper panel?

Ie: Could there be 3 buttons under ignite that say: Tick, FB, Pyro that light up as the ignite is triggered and change accordingly as new ignites overwrite the others?

This question have been asked to me several times, so i'll respond to it for once. Yes, I could show which fire spells made criticals strikes as they land, so we could know without waiting 2 secs for the ignite report damage if it's worth using combustion or not. Sadly this won't be accurate enough as munching could still happen and eat that big pyro/fb crit you saw...

Do you want to be sure to have a big ignite by waiting for the tick to register or gamble and take the risk of wasting combustion on a munched ignite ? On a 1min cd combustion I'd take the latter, not on a 2 min cd.

If you still want to to gamble, then you can use whatever floating combat text addon you want and setup it for showing only big crits.

rathe101 · 02/05/11, 1:42 PM

Originally Posted by Wizeowel

I want to highlight that you are talking about improved fire blast, and including fire blast in a scorch rotation. I'm not sure about something here. Take for example G6 vertically "Fireball Spam PTR" and horizontally "% of mana wasted when compared to fireball spam on PTR". I don't see how fireball spam costs anything but 100% of fireball spam. Can you clarify that please?

At first I thought the numbers would just balance out, and spamming fireball would just amount to a 100% usage of mana to spam fireball, but due to mana regeneration, your actually gaining mana while casting fireball, so each fireball you cost is actually worth about 49.42%, so for every 2 fireballs you cast, your gaining enough mana to cast a third. Hope that clarifies that math a little better.

♦ nathanbp · 02/06/11, 12:37 PM

On the topic of Combustion, I just did a quick test. If the direct damage portion of Combustion crits, the value of the Combustion DOT is calculated without the ignite from that crit.

Tyrian · 02/07/11, 6:23 PM

The OP was given a quick brush-up to be a little more accurate for 4.06. This includes some minor and moderate changes such as:

- Downplaying the importance of "Mana Management" requirements after 4.06
- Explaining why "Scorch Weaving" is largely no longer necessary
- Removing "Mana Constraints" as a weakness of the Fire spec.
- Changing "Improved Scorch" from an essential talent to Optional/Situational (We'll get a better feel for this in a few more weeks)
- Noting that Arcane Concentration might provide mana efficiency which is no longer necessary
- Removing references to Mobile Scorch being tied to Molten Armor
- Notes to Enchant Bracer with the new Int enchant, switch to the new Meta gem, get rid of all blue hit gems (if anyone still used them to activate the now obsolete meta) etc

References to the actual words "Haste Cap" were downplayed and used more carefully, as usage of the phase got a little out of control and taken out of context. In hindsight, we should have called it something more like "Haste Step" instead.

The main things to consider for this patch, both ingame and how to present to the community are answers to these three questions

- Crit: "What's going on with the value of Crit rating?"
- Haste: "Exactly how good is Haste now ? How much should I aim to have?"
- Mastery: "Flashburn was buffed in 4.06, so how valuable is Mastery now? What about the recent Ignite Munching discussion, how much does that continue to devalue Mastery - even after these buffs?"

It's important players know that various tools (eg SimC) are now introducing more accurate Ignite Modelling, and this is a large factor driving the recent reshuffling of Crit value. Although i've been reading all the relevant posts, i'm not yet sure how accurate the SimC/Rawr developers consider their Ignite Munching models. We're aware that actual:expected is a 'much closer' ratio now, but just how close? The Combat Ratings section of the OP has notes on Crit stating the following, which should be sufficient for now until more details are available:

Crit is a strong Fire stat on paper, but a little weaker in practise. Crit increases the number of Hot Streak procs, the effectiveness of the Flashburn Mastery, and the amount of mana restored via Master of Elements. Please note that Ignite Munching is a serious factor to consider when placing a value on Crit. Various tools (Eg: Simulationcraft) have recently introduced more accurate modelling for Ignite Munching, and this may result in a considerable devaluation of the stat. Crit may be a strong stat on paper without Ignite Munching considered, but it certainly loses value when Ignite Munching is factored in. Exactly how much? Keep reading this EJ Thread and the Mage Simulation thread for more updates as they become available on this topic.

As for Haste/Mastery, i'm not sure what's the best information to present or put forward yet. Any suggestions? For those with a fortè in this area, what's your summary of the most important changes pertaining to Haste/Mastery that the community should know about for 4.06. And how/why do these changes alter/influence their Relative Value? Will review the various responses and edit points into the OP as necessary.

Kavan · 02/07/11, 6:52 PM

As far as ingnite munching goes for Rawr, it is not actually modeled, but just a user parameter in the options. I have defaulted it to 35% based on some simple observations, but it should be easy enough to change if it doesn't reflect what people are seeing in practice.

Maje · 02/08/11, 5:52 AM

The general consensus for both Rawr and Simcraft post 4.0.6 seems to be haste > crit > mastery; two facts contribute to the ratings, the first is that both now model Ignite munching (different method for each) which is ~around~ what logs look like which results in both mastery and crit getting devalued and the second fact is simply mana availability which is where crit gets devalued slightly.

Again it all depends on the gear composition / tier sets, but for t11 geared mage the stats are int >> spellpower ~ hit > haste > crit > mastery.

Sinless · 02/08/11, 11:01 AM

Originally Posted by Maje

The general consensus for both Rawr and Simcraft post 4.0.6 seems to be haste > crit > mastery; two facts contribute to the ratings, the first is that both now model Ignite munching (different method for each) which is ~around~ what logs look like which results in both mastery and crit getting devalued and the second fact is simply mana availability which is where crit gets devalued slightly.

Again it all depends on the gear composition / tier sets, but for t11 geared mage the stats are int >> spellpower ~ hit > haste > crit > mastery.

As far as Rawr is concerned, that order doesn't necessarily hold true because as you increase your haste rating via reforging/gemming/etc. there comes a point where crit rating becomes more valuable than haste. As Kavan said, Rawr doesn't use modeling per se to account for ignite munching, it's just a constant coefficient to reduce the amount of ignite damage, so I'm sure it doesn't have anything to do with "having haste beyond a certain % increases ignite munching which makes crit rating more valuable beyond that point".

angayelle · 02/08/11, 12:19 PM

Soon to come next version of CombustionHelper with Ignite munching report will help people in getting the right number for ignite munching depending of their playstyle. With this value, they will be able to plug it into Rawr and get maybe a more precise information about stats ratings rather than using predetermined values.

Maje · 02/08/11, 12:22 PM

As I said ratings are very much dependant on your gear, the genereic sense I get from running simcraft and rawr in PTR modes is what I outlined above; it's possible that in some scenarious it might value crit higher than haste but that was always true which is mainly the reason why the mage forums don't have generic EP values.

As Kavan said, Rawr doesn't use modeling per se to account for ignite munching, it's just a constant coefficient to reduce the amount of ignite damage, so I'm sure it doesn't have anything to do with "having haste beyond a certain % increases ignite munching which makes crit rating more valuable beyond that point".

I have no clue how is that related at all, only thing I did was tried to explain why both devalue crit, which is because of ignite munching 'handling' (modeled in simcraft and a parameter in Rawr).

"having haste beyond a certain % increases ignite munching which makes crit rating more valuable beyond that point"

I don't remember saying that at all, so I'm not sure how that is related either.