From my testing AM is bugged currently regarding Arcane Potency. If you do single casts the 30% will be applied to the whole AM that procs the CC, and not to the one that consumes CC. However when you chain cast AM potency only applies to one wave/missile of AM. It seems like their code removes potency when AM channel ends and due to how client/server comm works it seems that end of last wave is processed after new wave is started and thus shortcircuits the buff.

I think I must have misunderstood some aspects of your original post. For instance I thought that you were saying ha you had experienced a 30% overall mitigation not counting full resists. I assumed meant plenty of partial resists above 30% in order to offset the ones below.

It did. But with a finer degree of steps of partial resist possible, the bell curve is much steeper than it used to be. No longer will the 6% resists against bosses mean ever seeing a 50% resist; instead it seems to be approximately 45% no resist, half 10% resist, and 5% 20% resist (or similar).

With frostbolts and ice lances, I was seeing about 10% of the time 10% or 50% resist, 20% of the time 20% or 40% resist, and 40% of the time 30% resist. I don't remember ever seeing a full non-resist, and 60% resists were extremely rare. All of them fell in the 10-60% range, giving an average of bit over 30%. No resists of 70%, 80%, or 90% were ever seen in testing, so it wouldn't make sense, even ignoring the icelance data, for 9.5% of casts to show up as 100% resists without *any* data points in the 70-90% range. Granted this was only 200 data points, but I find it highly unlikely further testing would suddenly see >10% of the hits be 70-90% resisted, and all it takes is one person seeing a full resist from ice lance to invalidate the theory that only spells with binary components can do so, so if anyone would like to do more data collection, please have at it.

SimulationCraft r225 available for download......

I've discovered the reason why my sim was valuing FFB so high: I was not combining Burnout and Ice Shards correctly.



It does make me wonder..... Perhaps Blizzard should combine Burnout and Ice Shards in a multiplicative manner instead of the way in which Spell Power and Ice Shards are combined. It is possible that would create an end-end-game place for FFB beyond just gimmicks: Essentially, FFB would eventually become more effective than Fireball provided the height of gearing was itemized for sufficient crit.

Oh..... the inclusion of JoW solves the Fire Mage mana issues quite easily:

Very interesting. I figured out part of what's penalizing frost so harshly in Simulationcraft compared to, say, magegraf. The lag simulation will of course hurt faster casts more than slower ones since it's functionally adding a static amount to the cast time of each spell. Lowering lag to 0-100ms from the default 150-250ms and correcting frost's talent tree (it doesn't have frost channeling, so it's evocating, whereas with frost channeling it does not evocate), a 360-second fight still results in 5% downtime for fire. Switching to mage armor saves it an evocation and keeps it downtime-free, while increasing its dps for a 6 minute fight. I also again doubled hit ratings from 200 to 400 to better approach the cap. I get the following, which makes frost look a lot more viable:



This still doesn't account for FoF-combos which would again add about 50dps to frost. It seems those with bad connections may specifically need to avoid frost at the time-being, as it'll affect both the viability of FoF-combos and penalize frost most heavily by adding cast time to more overall casts.

I LOVE your program, dedmon. It makes tweaking little things and seeing their results easy. The only thing I'd like to see would be (and this may already exist, I'm just not sure how to set the configuration file up to do it) a way to give every build the same stats without having to change the numbers in multiple places, so I could see how gearing in various ways affects the various specs. For instance, I'd expect crit scaling to be highest with frostfire, followed by fire, then frost, then arcane, but to change crit for them all right now requires a search and replace rather than just one line change.

I finally have a design for FoF-combos I'm happy with and I'll be implementing it later tonight.

At present there is no way to specify "default" gear settings. I'm not sure the most convenient method to implement: class-based defaults, lump casters together, etc.....

One thing I like to do is to use enchant_xxx on the command line. This enables me to boost one or more stats without editing the config file:

simcraft input=raid_wotlk.txt active=Mage_FrostFire enchant_spell_crit_rating=200

Yes, you do (for Beta at least, who knows for patch 3.0).

Support for "shatter combos" now exists in the simulation engine. The DPET numbers for IL seem awfully high...... probably needs investigation.

Where is Deep Freeze?

The huge discrepancy between magegraf and your sim is concerning. Do you have more detailed records of what's going on?

Not sure, check coefficients maybe?
Ice Lance scales like a 0.5s spell, so that when tripled, it scales like a 1.5s spell.

In my sheets, using Ice Lance as 3rd charge of FoF (when DF is on cooldown) is still a DPS gain, but a very very minor one only. Damage per cast time (GCD) of a FoF Ice Lance is only slightly better that the DPS of the whole frost cycle.

The 3rd FoF charge only gives a very noticable benefit with deep freeze.

If I'm understanding the code section correctly, hits of 3481 and crits of 6971 are way off. Perhaps you're coefficienting it at 43%, when it's actually (1.5/3.5)/3 to account for the tripling?

Edit: Roywyn beat me to it. Serves me right for leaving the window open.

What kind of speccs did you use for Arcane Spam and Arcane (which sits awefully low).
Done any calculations with 34% Haste+ and waeving ArBarr into AB rotations and/or Missle Barrages?
I'll never specc somthing which is 1 button mashing only again. It's so damn mind numbing.

The vanilla Arcane spell priority list was coded as if AB-spam was not sustainable:

arcane_missiles,barrage=1
arcane_barrage
arcane_blast

It was more interesting with the old version of Moonkin Haste...... now it is a bit boring.

The Arcane Spam priority list is just arcane_power/arcane_blast with Mage Armor. Mana is easy..... no need to even Evocate. Obviously busted.

With all these questions in regards to penetrative resist gear and scores generating what appear to be full resists, didn't Blizzard indicate that the combat log would be modified to show what was a tohit based resist and what was a penetrative based resist?

If so, Xentropy, did you happen to /combatlog the test? And if you didn't, would you be willing to go out there super-hitcapped for the targets and cast until you see a resist, then find a target without being hit capped against it and cast until you get what should be a tohit based resist, and compare the two raw combat log entries?

If the combat log structure has changed the way they indicated, it should be childs play to show the difference.

Edit: To do a quick test of this on live, I just went into Strat and ran a 257 datapoint fireball test on Spectral Citizens (notorious, to me atleast, for generating annoying penetrative resists), I came up with (7644) / (26844) = (0.284756370138578) 28.47% mitigation with 2 full resists observed. If we assume a constantly present 1% miss rate from tohit based resists, this is consistent with what we would expect to observe if penetrative resists do not generate full resists for nonbinary spells in the current scheme of things.

Thus, if frostbolt observes any full resists that cannot be attributed to being tohit based, then it is not behaving as a non-binary spell should based on live mechanics.

Version r234 now available for download. Frost model looks good:

I've been experimenting with specs a bit, take a look at this spec:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...50320132000000

Essentially, imagine this. It's the Wrath Brutallus, you are trying for the first kill, few people dead, and dps will come down to you.

20% comes around, your cools are up, heroism is up, you bribed your Disc Priest to give you divine aegis, you fire ward/mana shield, he meteor slashes and you absorb 10k for 1500 spell damage right as you pop your cools, you pre-scorched.
You gain Arcane Power, Combustion, Trinket(s), Haste Potion, Flame Cap, Heroism, Incanter's Absorbtion, Tricks of the Trade, on a Molten Fury target.

Maybe i'm getting over-excited, maybe losing Spell Power kills this spec, but everything i know about that spec leads me to believe that it should be the hands down best dps spec out there all factored in, in additon to 2 minute cooldowns.

Edit: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...40323132000000

Same concept, except Arcane Blast spam, and true 2 minute cooldowns (and 2 peice t5 cough)

Edit: Ballparking the combo:
Arcane Power (30%), Trinket(s) (7%), Haste Potion (20%), Heroism(30%), Incanter's Absorbtion(20%), Tricks of the Trade(15%), on a Molten Fury(20%) target = 360% damage during 3 stack Arcane Blast Cooldown chain.

I didn't save the log, but I know for a fact the combatlog called the resist a miss, while the graphic over the target's head said Resist. In my earlier DTK instance runs my misses due to hit said Miss over the target's head, but I believe the combatlog's verbiage was exactly the same as these full resists. I'll try to confirm. (I thought this was clear in my OP on the Blizzard forums, but I already was super-hitcapped in the original test. I outleveled the targets by 5 levels and had a bit over 12% hit.)

Edit: It seems as well that level differences (and likely spell hit) are still countering binary-based resists. I went out there with a level 80 premade and had zero misses in 100 casts of frostbolt. It's likely a level 69 attacker against these level 69 mobs would see ~30% full resists *and* ~30% partially resisted damage on the hits.

I'm level 75 now, but found a group of level 70-71 ice elementals and removed all my hit gear (so I just have 3% from EP; I should've respeced too but didn't want to spend the time). I'm testing 200 of each again now. Already at 20% full resists after my first 59 casts. It's actually a pain even staying alive against these guys.

Would tacking on;

/cast Pyroblast
/stopcasting

to the beginning of nearly every spell cast work for only casting instant Pyros to avoid overlapping Hot Streak crits? It seems like a valuable thing to do when scorch spamming since you don't want to be cancelling casts when you notice that you crit twice consecutively, especially for PvP. I know that you could leave out the stopcasting line as long as you are moving, but obviously you don't want to cast a Pyroblast any time you stand still and I can't seem to remember if stopcasting works in succession like that.

I seem to be having Macro confusion this morning.

I'm personally more interested in the actual text file combat log entry. IE:

Where the '20' was the displayed damage, and '60' was the mitigated value. Vs a tohit resist of

Vs a probably penetrative resist of

I'd assume the change is the constant of "RESIST" changed to "MISS" for the tohit based resists. The question becomes whether any effect that can be fully resisted based on penetrative resistances gets displayed as a "Miss" or "Resist", ie Polymorph vs Arcane resistance. I don't trust Recount collected data, or really any data collection addon that wasn't written by the tester, since you aren't 100% certain what it sources its data from. Things being labeled miss on the screen does help make the data more credible, but a manual / scripted parse of a combat log helps weed out the potential for the addon being confused. Plus I want to know what the structure difference is for that change so I can work it into my addon ahead of time... Ulterior motives.

I also didn't mean to imply that you weren't hit capped, just being specific on what would likely generate the correct combat log entries.


So the conditions for this test were initially you at Target Level + 5 with 12% hit and I assume likely no penetration to speak of? Which had you observing 30% penetrative mitigation on the damage events themselves and a 9.5% full resist rate, then returning to the scene with a Target Level + 11 caster with X hit resulted in 0 full resists?

If I understand the resistance system correctly as damage dealers relative level to resistance wearer increases the effectiveness of the resistance score decreases in its overall mitigation rate. Assuming that I'm not in left field, you should have seen a reduction in partial mitigation as well as your observed drop in full?

Definitely on the list of things to play with on the PTR.



The initial /cast Pyroblast would start the GCD client side, and it wouldn't be canceled until the /stopcasting went through, at which point your follow up cast would fail if it were further down in the same macro. You could two-tap it, one to nuke one to Pyro, but you'd lose casting time to the mini-GCD of the canceled Pyroblast.

One thing worth mentioning about simulationcraft: Whenever a spell has a reaction-time based conditional (such as the Hot Streak Pyroblast) I require that the buff occur reaction_time seconds prior to the player being ready to cast the next spell. By default reaction_time is set to 0.5 seconds.

This means that Hot Streak Pyroblasts in the sim are reasonably indicative of actual game-play and not an idealized prescient artificial intelligence.

This is what one of these full binary resists looks like in the /combatlog:
9/5 06:49:48.752 SPELL_MISSED,0x000000000008EA01,"Xentropy",0x511,0xF430005EA4008097,"Iceshard Elemental",0x10a48,42841,"Frostbolt",0x10,RESIST,0

And this is what a Miss looks like in the /combatlog:
9/5 08:31:26.314 SPELL_MISSED,0x000000000008EA01,"Xentropy",0x511,0xF130006DC500A14F,"Blighted Corpse",0x10a48,42841,"Frostbolt",0x10,MISS

And there IS an in-game combat log difference as well. A binary full resist displays:
Your [Frostbolt] missed [Iceshard Elemental].

And a miss displays:
Your [Frostbolt] missed [Blighted Corpse]. (miss)

So without an extra (miss) at the end it's a binary full resist based on resistance and not spell hit.

---

I have now completed two more tests. Level 80 with approx 5.2% hit vs level 69 mobs with about 30% frost resistance, 100 frostbolt casts (didn't bother with ice lance since frostbolt never full resisted anyway):
Partially resisted 31.6% damage
Full resists 0.0%

Level 75 vs level 70-71 mobs and all hit gear removed, so just 3.0% hit (EP), casting 200 frostbolts and 100 ice lances:
Frostbolt --
Partially resisted 32.2%
Full resists 17.0%

Ice lance --
Partially resisted 31.1%
Full resists 0.0%

Now I'll put my hit gear back on and cast 200 more frostbolts to see if the 17% full resists drop. I suspect they will, as spell hit *does* counter binary resistance in Live.

Level 75 vs level 70-71 mobs with 12.78% hit. 200 frostbolts, didn't bother with ice lances since that data doesn't seem to change at all regardless of hit/level:
Partially resisted 29.9%
Full resists 6.0%

Definitely within the margin of error. Spell hit still counters full binary resistance.

As far as Kalgan's comment regarding mages doing 8000 DPS, could this have been in relation to pyroblast's 1.5 second cast time, before the 10 second increased CD was added? Has anyone ran the numbers on that, including all possible buffs (before buffs and debuffs were made unstackable in most cases)? I know 8000 DPS is a wildly high number, but look at the numbers we are seeing now -- 3.8k DPS with fireball spam. What we don't know is what gear they were testing this in -- possibly T9 quality gear? 8000 just doesn't seem that far off, especially if exploits are being taken into account.

I know a lot of theorycrafting is going on, but I think the numbers were seeing now are pretty decent, and his comment about nerfing mage DPS isn't anything to necessarily worry about, if he was exaggerating or not.