Is your variable x a random event in the sequence or is it a set period of time for each iteration? So are you modelling getting interrupted every 10 secs for 100 secs or 10 times at any time in 100 secs?
Not too sure what you mean by 'effective haste' as well. You are measuring the average increase in totals casts compared to what?
x is the time between two interrupts, however I didn't model it as a set x but rather as an interval. For example I can input the interval 0<=x<=3. It'll count the number of casts you get without haste in 0, 0.01, 0.02, ..., 2.99, 3.00 seconds and the number of casts you get in the same time spans with the haste applied. Then it divides the total amount of casts you'd get when hasted by the total amount of casts you'd get when not hasted. That's why I included the last example. In this example you get zero casts through without haste but a certain amount of casts with haste, so the increase is infinite.
Edit: To clarify, Effective Haste is the increase in casts that get through in the simulated situations if you apply the specified amount of haste.
•Item - Mage T10 2P Bonus - Your Mirror Image ability also causes you to deal 15% additional damage for 10 sec.
•Item - Mage T10 4P Bonus - Your Hot Streak, Missile Barrage, and Brain Freeze talents also grant you 12% haste for 3 sec when the effect of the talent is consumed.
- Two piece scales well with gear and can be further abused with stacking CD's for targetted high burst DPS periods (arcanes speciality)
- Four piece is nice for Arcane (Shifiting away things like crit themed bonuses so far). More haste is good, for most practical purposes without IV/Hero already up. Perhaps in situations where we IV/Hero the bonus would be wasted for parts of a Arcane Rotation, but overall its a neat bonus.
I'd sum these bonuses up by saying that Arcane can leverage them the most, pending more discussion on how much the 4 piece bonus would be wasted during times of IV/hero etc.
The two-piece is... shitty. Four-piece seems decent for Fire, but weak for Arcane since ABlast flirts with the GCD with cooldowns up already, to say nothing of when we'll have T10 haste levels.
I usually open a many fights (as arcane) with MI and all cooldowns blazing. Its 10 seconds of 15% damage, with maximum CD-stacking abuse. Not being able to pull agro via MI is a bonus.
I can understand that for fire (or specs that dont have so much targetted burst dps), however, that it might not be as attractive. These bonuses complement arcane very nicely.
Yeah, I'm ambivalent about the 2pc. I rarely use MI as a dps cooldown anymore, since threat is frequently an issue these days, so I'm not real wild about tying a dps buff to it and not having an extra "oh shit" cooldown for when it's needed. But apparently they're going for sledgehammer threat increases with the tank bonuses (20% extra damage on main abilities), so who knows.
Item - Mage T10 4P Bonus - Your Hot Streak, Missile Barrage, and Brain Freeze talents also grant you 12% haste for 3 sec when the effect of the talent is consumed.
So with missile barrage active, when we cast our next arcane missiles, that will consume the missile barrage.
The real question is going to be if the 12% haste applies to those missiles or if well effectively lose 1 second of that haste increase casting missiles before we can even start casting AB.
I presume it will not apply to the spell consuming the proc... That may not be wasteful, though, that's just how haste procs work. They don't benefit the spell being cast when they appear, but they benefit the spell that you begin casting just as the buff ends (unlike damage buffs).
That said, it brings out an interesting haste jumping-point for both mages spec: the point at which both spells following your HSPyro or your MBAM benefit from the buff, instead of only one.
This value will depend on lag, in two ways: the delay between two spells, and how long after the proc is consumed does the 4t10 buff actually appear.
For fire mages, it happens if your haste is such that unbuffed HS-Pyro + buffed Firebell + two cast time delay - buff appearance delay is less then 3 seconds. With a 50 ms casting delay and 100 ms buff delay, you'll need 944 haste rating to get double benefit from 4t10 in "normal" (cooldown/Heroism-less) circumstances. Actually, a bit less than double, since you may sometimes follow HSPyro with another GCD-spell (either a second Pyro, or Living Bomb, or Scorch), and in these cases you barely need any haste to get double benefit.
For Arcane mages, using the same parameters, you'd need 1342 haste rating. Perhaps a bit hard to obtain. Under IV, you only need 590, which most Arcane mages should have in ilevel 245 gear.
However... after a little examination of a combatlog to check the buff application delay of Hot Streak, it is extremely variable (from 25ms to 550 ms in my very small sample of 5). If the 4t10 buff delay is as changing as Hot Streak's, there might not be a nice jumping point, but instead haste will have more value in the range between 450 and 1000 rating (for Fire), which is the rather large interval where it gives an increasing chance of allowing two fireballs to benefit from the buff. For Arcane mages, that range should be approximately between 800 and 1400.
A closer examination of the buff delays (better than my quick sample of 5 Hot Streaks, and with a buff that procs on cast rather than on hit, say, as serverside code may have a different execution time) might yield differents values, though.
I presume it will not apply to the spell consuming the proc... That may not be wasteful, though, that's just how haste procs work. They don't benefit the spell being cast when they appear, but they benefit the spell that you begin casting just as the buff ands (unlike damage buffs).
That said, it brings out an interesting haste jumping-point for both mages spec: the point at which both spells following your HSPyro or your MBAM benefit from the buff.
It is interesting, but I'm not sure if it's reachable without cooldowns. Presuming that it doesn't apply to the GCD incurred by consuming the hot streak (using a fire example for now), you'd need a value of haste that causes that plus a fireball cast to be <2.9s, factoring lag. The way I work the numbers, it seems like you'd need 1446 haste rating to pull that off, which doesn't seem very reasonable unless Icecrown gear is far heavier in haste than a usual itemization spread would indicate. That's without a delay on the proc: even with it factored, you still need ~1346 haste. As you say, if you're going to do something instant after it then you get double benefit without any haste rating at all - as Fire and Frostfire, anyway. FFB under IV gets it in haste suits of about 780+, which is a fairly attainable number in current gear.
That said, short term haste cooldown combinations will probably be able to trigger this effect more reliably. Obviously Heroism/Bloodlust and IV help, but the new Black Magic enchant, a haste-clickable trinket similar to Scale of Fates, and Hyperspeed Accelerators will also probably help us hit the threshold in short bursts.
Two set bonus as Jarlyn said is quite bad, you might say 'burst' etc. but on boss fights it translates to 0.8% dps increase, which is quite horrible. Depending on how good t10 pieces are relative to the current ones, I doubt mages will be using 2t10 at the cost of 4t9.
As to 4t10, it's a little more difficult to model so I'll wait untill Kavan implements it.
In BiS ilevel 245 gear, Rawr says I cast 40,7 HS-Pyros, vs. 106.39 Fireballs and 23.09 Living Bombs over 5 minutes, which gives me about 276 GCDs worth of spells. Since I'd get a 12% haste increase on 40 fireballs (80 GCDs, or around 30% of my total casting time), that should average out to about 3,5% haste, not counting the possible double benefits I mentioned earlier. As Arcane, Rawr says I get 50 MBAMs for 170 total casts in 5 minutes, which, again, would allow the proc to speed up 30% of my spells, for the same average haste.
To epiphenom: As you saw in my post, I'm getting a much lower haste rating estimate than you are to benefit from a 4t10 proc on two fireballs (944 haste). Did you remember to count 5% haste from the totem and 3% from Ret Aura/Boomkin? Those are worth about the same as the gap between your numbers and mine.
Erm, the set bonus for 4 piece activates when the effect is consumed, not when it becomes active or when the pyroblast hits the mob. Given that the effect takes place as hot streak ends (i.e. you cast the instant pyroblast), it shoudl then work on the next fireball you cast - you won't start your cast until the GCD has ended for the next fireball, and the haste proc will have triggered at the start of the GCD. Given that every mage has their fireball casting shorter than 3.0 seconds due to 3% boomkin / retri haste, and 5% Wrath of air totem, it should work on the two next fireballs you cast.
EDIT: re the GCD affecting the duration of the buff is a good point, and will really depend on how fast the buff procs on players after they consume the hot streak. At the moment, both mage set bonuses look quite poor, so I suspect they may have to adjust the numbers on them. In particular, 4 seconds would be a better number for the haste proc as it shoudl allow any raiding mage the opportunity to cast 2 hasted fireballs.
The 2pc bonus seems really lackluster compared to most other classes' 2pc bonuses. for example Enhancement Shamans get a stronger proc (12% damage for 15 seconds vs. 15% damage for 10 seconds) on a 1 minute CD compared to our 3 minutes CD. I really hope that Blizzard further looks into them before calling them finished.
I agree that the bonuses seem pretty lackluster. The 2PC appeared to be decent, but it only lasts for 10 seconds on a 3-minute cooldown that we generally use for threat-purposes (although I do have it bound to my 'pop cooldowns' macro for arcane). The 4PC would be better if it added even another second or two for it to get rid of the variation in time of movement or taking into account GCD and other issues that would prevent you from casting another spell immediately (and as others have pointed out, MBAM may just make the timer to be able to even use the proc effectively on a single arcane blast).
On a different note, regarding the current content at least I was playing around with a talent calculator and put this together: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
It incorporates SOTM as well as any other major DPS increasing abilities. And with glyph of MA and the 2PC T9 bonus it seems that it would be a worthwhile DPS increase (as long as the user isn't having bad mana issues) or points can be split between flame throwing or burning soul as well depending on how one does with range/aggro/mana in most raid fights.
I don't remember seeing that posted in any of the stickies for 'highest dps possible' specs for fireball spec and was curious why (assumng, as I pointed out that you can afford to drop a point or two from moe/bs/throwing).
I applaud Blizzard for coming up with more interesting set bonuses, even if the numbers aren't there. I seem to recall there being much griping about T9's bonuses lacking creativity. These at least point to an effort to come up with something a little different.
The two piece T9 is a bit tricky. When you look at it, MI is really the only core class cooldown that has any type of dps increasing slant. They could choose to buff Arcane Power,Combustion, and Icy Veins blanketly, but then there's an issue of the bonus being unbalacingly better for specs that can grab 2 of them, such as Arcane and FFB. So if they're set on the idea of fiddling with buffing a cooldown, MI seems like the only "fair" option, despite it currently being used as a threat management tool. Anyway, I think all they'd need to do to make this bonus better is increase the duration to 20 or even the full 30 seconds.
4 piece T9 seems good, just perhaps may need to tweak the numbers a little. An extra second or two on the duration can help or perhaps change it to a 2 charge effect with a 10 second duration ala warrior's Flurry.
I applaud Blizzard for coming up with more interesting set bonuses, even if the numbers aren't there. I seem to recall there being much griping about T9's bonuses lacking creativity. These at least point to an effort to come up with something a little different.
In previous PTR's Blizzard often has thrown up 'first pass' set bonuses, then continues to revise the numbers accordingly, whilst the bonus mechanics themselves remained static.
Hopefully they will first consider changing the 4 piece to a 4 second bonus. The actual concept of the bonus is great, and doesn't need changing. Another option for the two piece is to change it to something like 5% damage over 20 seconds, helping specs that dont have CD-stacking burst potential. Ten seconds is indeed quite short, and any single second of movement/distraction is big chunk of the bonus's benefits wasted. This is quite harsh, considering a 3 minute cooldown is needed to proc it.
Biggest concern with the 4 piece bonus currently is the duration of the haste proc. How often this proc would be wasted for Arcane: such as periods when you have IV/Hero/Scale type trinkets (as others mentioned) and future ilvl ~270+ gear - will be an issue as well.
On your last concern, Tyrian, I suppose the circumstances for using haste-CDs of any sort are gonna change quite a bit in the future still. Obviously, scales might find a replacement, and given that we don't get any sort of icecrown-radiance, our passive haste will increase as well. We might find ourselves not stacking IV with BL as much as we are used to, for example; or avoid trinkets with any sort of haste-procc, if they turn out to make us drop into "below GCD"-range.
This is still to early to call though. Given the fact that this is still a testbuild, we have no certain information on the mechanics involved and there is a fair chance all of the different bonuses might see some change in the future, I doubt theorycrafting on them is of any value other then occupational therapy.
Personally I'm not impressed. Looking at the bonuses by themselves, they look like they MIGHT be cool. But when compared to the bonuses other classes are getting i think we got the shaft.
2pt10 - 15% damage for 10sec every 3 mins = (15%/180)*10 = .83% Avg damage, excluding CD stacking. (I think my math is correct. I hope it is not)
The trade off being 5% crit to main nukes (4pt9)
They should also reduce the CD of Images to 2 mins [(15%/120)*10 = 1.25 Avg damage}
4pt10 - 12% haste for 3 sec. I'm not sure if they want us casting the next spell or the next 2 spells with this buff. If we get the buff when we cast HS-Pyro, best case we lose 1 second due to the GCD incurred from the instant cast. This leaves 2 seconds of hasted cast speed, max. Granted we should be critting like mad and getting plenty HS-Ps, So it might not even matter if the up time is consistently high.
Unless they buff the 2pt10, it might not be worth is to drop 4pt9 until 4pt10. This is unusual because 2p bonuses of higher tiers are usually better than 4p bonus of the previous tier.
Examples of other DPS class bonuses that are insane:
Item - Death Knight T10 Melee 2P Bonus - Your Obliterate, Scourge Strike, and Death Strike abilities deal 10% increased damage.
Item - Druid T10 Feral 2P Bonus/4P Bonus - the cost of your Rip ability is reduced by 10 energy / the periodic damage done by your Rake ability can now be a critical strike.
Item - Warrior T10 Melee 4P Bonus - You have a 20% chance for your Blood Surge and Sudden Death talents to grant 2 charges of their effect instead of 1 and for the duration of the effect to be increased by 100%.
Item - Priest T10 Shadow 4P Bonus - Reduces the channel duration and period of your Mind Flay spell by 51%.(assuming typo, should be 15%)
Item - Paladin T10 Retribution 2P Bonus - Your Seals and Judgements deal 10% additional damage.
I'm also under the assumption they intentionally design next-tier 2 piece bonuses to be superior to previous-tier 4 pieces. Upgading gear in a new instance should be welcome, exciting and desirable. Not a decision you feel forced to make and begrudgingly accept. Blizzard would very much want Icecrown to be the most desirable instance to raid (in all respects), so their choice of bonuses needs to also gel with that concept.
When people put it that way: "5% Permenant crit VS 15% damage for 10 seconds every 3 minutes", it does spin a new perspective on the bonus's value - and seem quite inadequate - despite the bonus itself potentially 'sounding fun/unique' at a first glance. Once the fun, esoteric ways to leverage the bonus are exposed: people will be left to discuss whether its actually good or not in general. It would be fun to leverage the 2 piece with a Arcane CD stacking CD set in specific circumstances, but does that make it a good bonus?
As LB dot uses spell power when it is casted, and LB explosion uses spell power of explosion time(correct me if I am wrong), how does LB dot and explosion benefit from damage bonus like 2pc T10?
1) It's strange to see the bounce from T9, where the 2 and 4pc bonus are much stronger for FB/FFB, to T10, where the 4pc looks to be substantially stronger for arcane, especially since it appears possible to clip an extra 12% hasted AB with proper rotation of haste cds
2) However, I think it's fairly likely the set bonuses will change (at least somewhat) before implementation, as there are listed bonuses that just plain can's exist -- i.e. Lava burst CD (8 sec) being reduced by 15 seconds.
1) It's strange to see the bounce from T9, where the 2 and 4pc bonus are much stronger for FB/FFB, to T10, where the 4pc looks to be substantially stronger for arcane, especially since it appears possible to clip an extra 12% hasted AB with proper rotation of haste cds
2) However, I think it's fairly likely the set bonuses will change (at least somewhat) before implementation, as there are listed bonuses that just plain can's exist -- i.e. Lava burst CD (8 sec) being reduced by 15 seconds.
So, hold your horses, folks.
Just a note, that could easily be a typo with it supposed to be 1.5 seconds, and not 15.
There are definite typos in some other classes' set bonuses, but I don't think there is any typo regarding Mage Tier 10 set bonuses. However, I'm fairly certain these numbers will be fine-tuned as we move deeper into PTR testing and/or as people start to get their 2-piece bonuses after 3.3 hits live servers.
To epiphenom: As you saw in my post, I'm getting a much lower haste rating estimate than you are to benefit from a 4t10 proc on two fireballs (944 haste). Did you remember to count 5% haste from the totem and 3% from Ret Aura/Boomkin? Those are worth about the same as the gap between your numbers and mine.
Good catch. I did not account for either of those two haste sources. Factoring them in, I still have results higher than yours (~1090 haste) but it's definitely in reachable territory now. I don't know how I feel about that, because it makes the task of properly balancing for this bonus difficult - not to mention subtracting substantially from fire builds' mobility if it is expected.
The tier 10 bonuses have been updated by Bornakk on the feedback thread in the official Damage Dealing forum.
Update:
Mage 2 piece bonus – Hot Streak, Missile Barrage and Brain Freeze grant 12% haste for 5 sec.
Mage 4 piece bonus – Mirror Image is 30 sec and damage bonus is 18%.
10/07/09, 1:41 PM
