colmanaburn

I dont see where in the thread it was proven that we are talking solely about arcane explosion, but I am not the brightest bulb on the christmas tree sometimes.

 

Hidden

The problem is not Living Bomb, the problem is that to experience the unusual behaviour you need to make sure that a) the final living bomb tick goes off and b) it hits many targets, both conditions usually aren't met in Anub p2.

 

Roywyn

Added 3.3 PTR Info to the front page. I'll clean up older info in a couple of days. I'll also add more information, changes, strategies, etc. once they come in.

I'm guessing this is fixed now as other people have reported. If there are still some wonky things going on, PM me about it and I'll have it added.


[Edit]: Enchant Weapon - Black Magic should become the best weapon enchant once you're out of blue gear.
Napkin math shows that it's competitive with Spell Power on 2H Weapons. Cooldown stacking should bring it on top as long as you don't hit Haste Caps or Mana Restraints.

As always - wait for Rawr/Simcraft updates to determine the proper final value.

[Edit II]: I assumed 15s duration, 45s cooldown and a high proc rate, because that is what it's on live. I mentioned it in the first post. We need a proper test on it of course.

But thank you for your tinkering in Rawr! It shows that it's most likely a pretty good enchant.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Hinalover

You can manually add in the enchant into Rawr by going into the EnchantCache.xml file in the data folder. The id is 3790. Considering I am not 100% sure on the proc chance, duration, etc, I've temporarily used the Lightweave proc chance system (15 second duration, 60 second CD, 35% chance to proc on Spell cast). Using these proc chance info it is better than 50 sp, but not quite as good as 63 SP enchant. I can update the listing once we get a better look at the proc rate.

To put it in perspective using the Enchants > Main Hand graph for my current gear (mostly ToC 10/10 HM/25 gear):

63 SP = 120.79 DPS
Black Magic = 110.41 DPS
50 SP = 95.87 DPS

 

Saruk

Is there any way to model (or has it been done) the effects of increased haste versus increased sp on fights with relatively consistent interrupts as a boss mechanic? (i.e. Ignis type fights).

Increased sp affects every cast that lands, haste is effective as it manifests itself as an additional cast after a cumulative number of shorter casts compared to an un-hasted spell. Chain casting for the length of the boss fight gives you the full haste bonus, but interrupts are likely to have a negative effect on that as you 'lose' some of that cumulative bonus compared to an un-hasted spell.

Put another way, if I am casting with 10% haste versus someone with 0% haste but additional sp, if I am interrupted before my haste bonus generates an additional cast compared to my opponent, I get no bonus from my haste yet they get the bonus of having landed x number of spells with their +sp.

There is no doubt that haste is worth it on many fights as it doesn't take long to start benefiting from that additional cast, but as interrupt mechanics like this can play a big role in many fights, it would be an interesting option to have in something like Rawr.

Especially in light of the fact that this new enchant is weapon based and weapons are easy to swap out in phases of fights where interrupts are an issue.

 

Hinalover

I know that RAWR is implementing a boss-handler system that is supposed to simulate different bosses. This would allow you see what your supposed dps should be (movement, spell interupts, etc) from different bosses. Also if you have a boss timer mod such as Deadly Boss Mods, you would know when to stop casting so that you don't get spell locked such as that on Ignis.

 

Saruk

It's not the fact that you get interrupted on Ignis and how to avoid it (I have DBM), it's the overall effect on dps of the Ignis mechanic requiring you to stop casting to avoid spell lock-down. Do the relative values of sp and haste differ significantly in this type of scenario?

 

Slander

Regarding Black Magic,

I went on the PTR just to test once, the duration is 10 seconds and the ICD is 35 seconds or less.

 

Hinalover

I've updated my calculations using my current character. I've also changed the spell proc trigger since I didn't completely read through the patch notes on that part:

So I changed the trigger to a SpellHit trigger and Black Magic just barely edges out Mighty Spell Power. I've kepted the proc chance at 35% but that can change.

Black Magic - 123.64
Mighty SP - 120.79
Exceptional SP - 95.87

 

minglau

I'm under the impression that weapon swapping mid fight was no longer viable do to the Internal CD of chants being reset when you equip a weapon. From my math it looks as though black magic will only narrowly edge out Mighty spellpower, which would mean adding an extra 35 sec of no enchant value to a fight of anything short of 10 minutes would probably result in a loss.

As I'm typing this I'm thinking about going the opposite way (switching from a black magic weapon to a mighty spellpower weapon) which could add value in almost all fights in the final 25-40 secs after your last expected proc of the fight expires.

I'm looking forward to playing with this on the PTR.

 

ferros

I went on the PTR to test Black Magic as well.

With a sample=30 of Arcane Blast spam until proc (on a dummy), where every attempt was separated by more than 35 seconds (seems to be accurate value for Black Magic ICD), I managed to obtain expected value of proc of about 37%. This test was far from being sufficient to say what the real value of this proc is, but it gives a pretty good estimation for the time being.

P.S. This is my first post here. Hello EJ!

 

Saruk

Remember also that the more times you 'stop' casting in a fight, the more the relative worth of the sp enchant increases compared to the haste one. So when you run somewhere, get interrupted, etc, you are essentially 'resetting' the haste bonus.

If I have 15% haste on a 3sec cast, that's a 2.55sec cast time. After 15secs I have cast 5.88 times (88% of the way through my 6th cast), if the mage next to me has 0% haste but +100sp dmg and we both get interrupted at exactly 15secs in (after exactly 5 casts each), he is ahead of me in the meters as we have both cast 5 times - I never realize the extra cast due to my haste yet each of his casts has 100 sp dmg added.

However, if we get interrupted 18secs in, I get to 7 casts while he is still on 6. So I realize the full haste dmg bonus in the form of an extra cast.

Essentially,the more movement in a fight, the less relative value haste has.

 

Solisa

False, you might also be able to get another full cast depending on the window in question. It is not necessarily valuable only in increments unless we know for certain exactly what those increments will be, and we do not. Can we not start the "haste isn't valuable unless you reach x plateau" discussion again?

And this is true even of extremely small windows; to use your example of cast times, what if the window had been a scant 2.9 seconds? or 5.9?

 

Saruk

I don't remember that discussion so I will try and find it. In general though, while the increments aren't known, modelling for a fight that has interrupts on the basis that it doesn't isn't going to be accurate simply because not all those interrupt increments are going to be in your favor.

If this has all been discussed before, apologies. I will try and find the thread.

 

Solisa

The discussion may have been in a retired thread, but I know it was brought up here before.

And not all of them are going to be in the opponent's favor. If I get 1% haste over 500 spell power and the window is 2.99 seconds for a fireball spec, then I am getting a dps increase over that spell power gear choice. But as you can see, I have chosen an extremely skewed window, one that is not representative of the majority of times. For every situation you can construct where haste is only valuable if you get an extra cast, there can be constructed a window where you do, indeed, get an extra cast barring absurdly short windows where no one could get a cast. It's futile.

 

Dralektus

As Solisa points out this is indeed related to the discussion that people had back when haste was first introduced and people were arguing that you needed enough haste to get an additional cast in the fight for it to be valuable. That is not the real benefit of haste. The real benefit is that the hits land sooner. If that last hit was the hit needed to push the boss into another phase you will have moved the event up a fraction of a second. And remember, from a raid perspective we don't change the damage done to the boss, we change the speed with which the boss dies.

That said, since we aren't talking about the value of haste outright, just how its value relative to the value of spell power changes with frequency of interrupts, so the conversation isn't entirely unwarranted. And the answer should be that the value of haste will go up the more you are interrupted since you will lose less cast time on average to a random interrupt. On average an interrupt will land half way through your cast. If you have two people doing the same dps, but one of them is using 2 second casts and the other is using 3 second casts then both will lose on average cast time/2 each time there is a random interrupt. So the 2 second caster will lose a half second less of dps time on average every time he has to move out of the fire.

So if you chose values for haste and spell power that are equal in a stand still fight, the value of haste ought to increase slightly if you introduce a random interrupt. On the other hand since in this particular case we are talking about a random proc, it loses some value compared to a static boost since there is always some chance of the proc being wasted on movement or a phase where dps doesn't matter. The more interrupts you have in a fight, the more chances you will lose cast time during a proc. While the proc will make you lose less cast time on average than without it, it will still devalue the proc if you get fewer hasted casts out of it because of the interruption.

 

Solisa

This isn't true either. There's every bit as much of a chance that your spell power proc will be up when you are not moving, and thus will have a greater benefit than average because the times when you are not moving comprise a disproportionate amount of your total DPS time. When we say that we average out a proc's value, then it is truly an average, and not a best-case scenario as some people seem to assume.

 

Saruk

The problem with this type of thinking is that 'half a second of dps time' is useless as you don't deliver dmg in half a second lots. As was pointed out before, if you both get interrupted before either of you get second cast off, that half a second of dps time is never used.

I took a look at the math on this using an iterative procedure to test the first 60 seconds of a fight comparing a 2.9sec cast time spell to a 3.0sec cast time spell with 10% more sp dmg. If you assume that an interrupt can happen at any time in those 60 seconds (I looked at it in 0.1 sec intervals) then at any given 0.1 sec interval the 2.9 sec cast and the 3.0 sec cast have x probability to be 'ahead' in the fight.

When you lay this out, you see the 'windows' the 2.9 sec cast has - at 2.9 secs there is a 0.1 sec window where the interrupt benefits the 2.9 sec cast before the 3.0sec cast lands, and so on - at 8.7 secs, there is a 0.4 sec window where the interrupt benefits the 2.9 sec cast before the 3.0sec cast lands.

If you do this over 60 seconds and sum the 0.1 increments where the 2.9 sec cast benefits versus the 3.0sec cast, the ratio is actually 35% to 65% in favor of the 3.0 sec cast. So in those first 60 seconds, if the interrupt happens on any of the 0.1 second increments, the 3.0sec cast spell has a 65% chance of benefiting versus the 2.9sec cast spell.

Kind of interesting, as I thought it would be more even. But makes sense when you look at the distribution, the 60sec time frame isn't long enough to really let the hasted spell shine in terms of absolute advantage over the non-hasted one.

When you factor in sp dmg it gets a little bit more complicated as an extra spell landing is a lot more dmg than 10% sp. However, the real advantage of the hasted spell in terms of dmg done is early on (or when the sequence gets 2 spells ahead). As you get more into the sequence (6, 7, 8 casts in), the 3.0 sec cast is doing 10% more dmg each time so if the interrupt lands in a window where it benefits the 2.9 sec cast, the 3.0 cast has already done a considerable more dmg cumulatively. Will have to work out the probabilities here.

Of course the 60 sec window is arbitrary in of itself, and the longer you have the window, the more even the results should be. In addition, the more haste you have, the better off you will be. But it doesn't seem like this scenario is a far cry from what you experience in certain fights (i.e. Ignis).

 

minglau

Saruk, I'm not sure I follow completely, but in thinking about the ignis fight there are so many more factors you have to consider. We get fair warning that an interrupt is coming, so we can make a good decision as to what to do. Here is the way i handle just a few of the possible situations

Flame Jets (FJ) starts and I will be able to finish my current AB, so I do. if I don't have an MB proc and I have a 3 or 4 stack I probably just use an arcane barrage and allow the interrupt to occur during the GCD. If in this same situation I would like to continue stacking AB I can use my POM and again let the interrupt come during the GCD. If I have an MB proc and FJ starts I might just use my AM and cast cancel it before the interrupt.

There are of course cases where I lose some small amount of DPS time, but I don't think the way you are approaching this mimics an actual fight simulation.

Am I missing something?

 

Saruk

Ok, so the broad assumptions made when theorycrafting never really mimic a real fight situation. My example is indeed a simplified version. But it was argued by Solisa that the time increment you are talking about could equally benefit both a haste situation or a +sp situation depending on when the interrupt was. As it turns out, if you go through the cast sequence I described, the benefit isn't 50/50, it's more like 35/65 in favor of the non-hasted spell.

 

elluminea

The discussion about "getting an extra cast in using haste" would be valuable if bosses used their abilities like clockwork, Ignis himself uses flame jets anywhere between 25 and 30 seconds. The difference between somebody who does more damage per spell and somebody who casts more spells per minute is going to come down to when the RNG decided Ignis should cast. You don't really have control over this.

 

crinkles

Something I have not seen crop up a lot in these forums, but is nevertheless true, is that interrupts are NOT necessarily detrimental to the relative DPS of the black magic buff vs spell power (or other proc vs static calculations). It is true that haste suffers from the random interrupts that don't allow an extra spell cast to finish, leading to the recent posts regarding static spell power being better for most interrupt fights. However, if a significant interrupt phase occurs (think submerge for acidmaw/dreadscale in beasts or all the way back to dancing on heigen), this gives the internal cooldown on a proc like black magic time to reset. Thus, if the proc was 15 s with a 45 s internal cooldown, in the extreme case where you move for 30 secs and cast for 15, the proc would have 100% uptime essentially, making it far superior to static spell power. More realistically, lets say you move for 10 seconds out of every 45, instead of using the calculation of 15/45 * haste bonus to estimate the average haste benefit, we would do the calculation 15/35 * haste bonus, giving a much bigger effective increase. It is true that you risk having your haste bonus cut short if it procs 5 secs before the movement phase, for instance, but probability is in your favor that it will be available at the period just after the movement phase, due to a large chance the cooldown resets during the phase.

 

Hidden

I've just written a small SWI Prolog script (because it's the language I'm currently learning) that gives me the benefit of haste. It's quite hard to explain as someone who doesn't have English as their native language but I'll try.
Basically if you get interrupted every x seconds it means you have x-a time to cast spells inbetween, a being the time between having to stop your cast and the event that requires you to stop it to happen. As both x and a are variables that depend on the encounter and random or semi-random events the script calculates the results for a given interval in 0.01 seconds steps. Since the base cast time (prior to the haste you may want to apply) also varies it's an interval that's processed in 0.01 seconds steps as well.

In conclusion you can input a haste percentage, a base cast time interval and a time frame interval and get the average increase in total casts through haste and by how much it differs from the input haste value.

Some quick data using rough arcane values:

Haste in %	Min Base Cast Time in s	Max Base Cast Time in s	Min Time Span in s	Max Time Span in s	Effective Haste in %	Effective Haste relative to Input Haste in %
5	1.2	2.2	0	15	5.659	113.171
10	1.2	2.2	0	15	11.251	112.514
10	1.2	2.2	1	3	17.562	175.623
10	1.2	2.2	15	30	10.359	103.590
10	1.2	2.2	0	360	10.054	100.541
100	3	5	0	2.5	infinite (gave an error because of that)	infinite

If anybody wants the short script (was only a matter of a few minutes) I can upload it.

Looks like my script reinforces the theory that the value of haste on average slightly increases with the frequency of interrupts (and interrupts at all).

 

Dralektus

No, you don't deliver your damage in half second lots, that's just a way of thinking about it. Perhaps a better way of thinking about it is this: assuming again that we're talking about two casters doing the same dps over all, the one with higher haste does less damage per spell cast and so loses less damage to the interrupted spell. This remains wherever in the cast you get interrupted. If you get interrupted right before finishing, the 2 second caster loses 2 seconds of dps time (1 cast) and the 3 second caster loses 3 seconds (1 cast). Interrupt midway through and they each lose half a cast. Sure you can't use half a cast, but if you get interrupted half way through your cast 4 times over the fight the 2 second caster loses 4 seconds and the 3 second caster loses 6 seconds (2 casts each).

But since they do the same dps 2 casts are worth more to the 3 second caster which works out to be the same as saying that the 2 second caster loses 0.5 seconds less of dps time per interrupt on average.

This is true in general. However, I'm still concerned that if the whole reason a spell haste proc might be better than an otherwise equal static spell power buff in interrupt heavy environments is because of lessening the impact of being interrupted, that this might cancel that benefit out. If you get interrupted but the proc isn't active, there's no extra benefit to haste since you have the same haste as you would have had with the spell power enchant. If you get interrupted during a proc, the interrupt is slightly less painful than it would be otherwise, but if you aren't casting for long enough that you lose a hasted cast, that should be a worse loss than the interrupt specific benefit of haste discussed above.

In other words, I don't think that a proc based haste buff will have that same extra benefit as static haste will. Really, though I imagine that simulations with a tool like simcraft (does simcraft support randomly placed interrupts?) will be necessary to put the nail in the coffin of this discussion.

 

dedmonwakeen

SimulationCraft supports the following "raid" events:

Boss auto-attack swings (for tanks)
Boss spell casting (requiring players to use kick, silence, etc)
Boss invulvernability
Boss vulnerability
Splash damage
Movement
Stuns

I guess the closest analogy to a player interrupt would be randomly spaced movement for a very very short time such that it interrupts spell casting without affecting auto-attack.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft