The Arcane thread - Page 48

Roywyn · 01/30/09, 11:09 AM

Originally Posted by Thegoodman

The FFB mage has made the sacrifice to use a sub-optimal spec to benefit the raid. He should be rewarded as with the Focus Magic buff.

All my attempts of understanding this pretty much failed.

Originally Posted by Pintofbrew

That's a very good question. It really depends if you're optimizing on one of two possible scenaria:

1) You want to have the maximum uptime for you.
2) You want the maximum Raid benefit.

1) An Elemental Shaman will give you 100% uptime. Any other caster will give you around 97% uptime, Wrath Druids and Shadow Priests higher than that.
Affliction Warlocks are a bad choice because they spam Drain Soul below 20%, which won't produce any crits.

Since you have around 97% Focus Magic uptime, it is nearly irrelevant which class you put it on.

2) Check SampleOutput - simulationcraft - Google Code to find out what 3% crit gives your partner.
In particular, find the DPS Scale Factors table in the list and check for crit scaling.

You'll see what everyone has always said.
Frost Mages and Demo Warlocks are at the bottom.
Elemental Shaman have really bad scaling, just above them.
Destro Warlocks are next, followed by Druids and Arcane Mages.
Then Shadow Priests, then Fire Mages, and finally Frostfire Mages.

A Frostfire Mage benefits 2.6 times as much as a Frost Mage, and 1.9 times as much as a Shaman.
Also, there might be occasions where it's better on a healer. Maybe not now, but in the future.

If you focus purely on AoE zergs, you should probably stick it to your best Hurricane, Mind Sear or Blizzard spammer.
(Keep in mind that Shatter will crit-cap Blizzard in certain specs.)

3) The best ordering overall should be Frostfire>Fire>Priest.
You could stick it to your Shaman, but that means losing 25 RDPS to gain 4 DPS for yourself, which is pretty silly.

manly · 01/30/09, 1:30 PM

I updated the first post with kavan' last post. As before, I haven't independantly confirmed the numbers, will eventually do so.

I put in bold the cycles which I think most of the time players will end up using so as to make it more obvious.

Rotations
General principles:

-Only cast mbarr once you reach the maximal number of stacks you were reaching for. This is because AM is rather inefficient, however, it deals a lot of total_damage. As such, you want to apply the biggest ab_buff multiplier to it to make it worthwhile. This also means that generally going for mbarr procs as soon as it pops will tend to be suboptimal.
-Always follow mbarr with abarr unless going for the extreme mana efficient cycles.
-If you need a high mana conservation cycle (ex: evocation for interrupted), going for 2x AB max stack will save a tremendous amount of mana.
-AB spam until mbarr proc is almost 2x more mana intensive than the next rotation.

cycle	dps	mps	general use	note
[mbarr abarr] AB(*3+) [mbarr] abarr	5028.084	412.3207	mana dump	cast mbarr/abarr only at 3 or 0 stack
AB(*3+) [mbarr] abarr	5013.697	395.6343	mana dump	cast mbarr/abarr only at 3 stack
AB AB AB [mbarr] abarr	4801.682	237.0959	main cycle
AB [AB AB mbarr] abarr	4668.696	181.7985	main cycle
AB [AB mbarr] abarr	4566.665	145.9942	main cycle
AB (abarr or [AB mbarr])	4500.556	128.9478	mana saving	no abarr after mbarr
AB (abarr or [mbarr])	4445.778	116.023	mana saving	no abarr after mbarr
AB AM	3743.657	73.89004	mana saving

([] denotes conditional statement. Cast only on missile barrage proc.)

Majost · 01/30/09, 2:04 PM

I don't understand why you're so quick to throw out AB2ABar3C.

100001002:
4708.456 dps
201.7105 mps
AB0:	25.87%
ABar0:	11.19%
AB1:	25.87%
AB2:	11.19%
ABar2:	14.68%
MBAM3:	11.19%

It seems to fit nicely in between AB3ABar3C and ABABar3C in DPS, MPS and DPM.

(THANK YOU Kavan! Your contributions here are spectacular.)

manly · 01/30/09, 2:16 PM

I do believe the same as well. I think "AB AB [AB mbarr] abarr" is a very solid middle-of-the-pack choice. I do like a lot that it avoids casting AM when possible (no extra cost due to casting channelled spell), and that it leaves somewhat your mana open for cooldowns.

♦ nathanbp · 01/30/09, 2:18 PM

Originally Posted by Majost

I don't understand why you're so quick to throw out AB2ABar3C.

100001002:
4708.456 dps
201.7105 mps
AB0:	25.87%
ABar0:	11.19%
AB1:	25.87%
AB2:	11.19%
ABar2:	14.68%
MBAM3:	11.19%

It seems to fit nicely in between AB3ABar3C and ABABar3C in DPS, MPS and DPM.

(THANK YOU Kavan! Your contributions here are spectacular.)

If you do 36% AB3ABar3C and 64% ABABar3C it is same mps but 4716.583 dps (8 more dps). Therefore AB2ABar3C is suboptimal (with this gear set).

(It's actually 36.0089% and 63.9911% if you want to check my math.)

Edit to agree with Manly: 8 dps is really a <0.2% difference, so it's probably not a big deal.

Kavan · 01/30/09, 2:53 PM

Originally Posted by Korrigan

What happened to AB3ABar03C?

That was only optimal for a very short time when AB glyph didn't work on AM.

Papajan · 01/30/09, 2:57 PM

Quick WWS/Recount question - has anyone found a good way to log how much mana they had at the end of a fight? It's one of those quick tests I could do to spot sub-optimal arcane mage play, but I can't think of any good way to get it from mods/programs that are based on combat log parsing.

Omnia · 01/30/09, 3:04 PM

Originally Posted by Kavan

ABABar3C (AB-ABar, MBAM-ABar at 3 stack): 4668.696 dps, 181.7985 mps

Another good point for AB2Abar3C is that you never run into Abar-cooldown issues when hasted above 33%, unlike ABAbar* rotations.

PS: Maybe that does mean these are just not optimal in practice?

♦ nathanbp · 01/30/09, 3:15 PM

Originally Posted by Omnia

Another good point for AB2Abar3C is that you never run into Abar-cooldown issues when hasted above 33%, unlike ABAbar* rotations.

I don't think we're going to see >33% haste without cooldowns for a while yet (I have about 24%, including Swift Retribution/Improved Moonkin Aura, and the spell haste totem). I'm pretty sure that under cooldowns you want to be using one of the AB spam rotations or at least doing AB3*. I don't want to set the new Rawr up at work, but I believe it was suggesting AB3ABar3C or ABSpam3MBAM during cooldowns for me and a combination of ABABar3C and AB3ABar3C while not under cooldowns, depending on fight length.

Although, as I mentioned above, the difference between a ABABar3C/AB3ABar3C combo and AB2ABar3C is very small. I may end up using AB2ABar3C since I tend to get Power Infusion randomly and that way I won't be clipping the ABar cooldown.

Raencloud · 01/30/09, 3:24 PM

True about not being passively over 33%, but most arcane mages will be using (or seeking to use) the Embrace of the Spider. When it proc's I would be over that barrier, so it would be better to use a rotation that doesn't run into a clipping problem.

Omnia · 01/30/09, 3:28 PM

My understanding is that "AB-spam time" is when you have a damage boost like AP, and not only a haste boost. I doubt we should use an unsustainable rotation for the whole 40 seconds of Bloodlust/Heroism, which is a huge chunk of the fight. But during that time, you would hit Abar-cooldown issues with ABAbar* rotations.

Edit: plus Embrace of the Spider / Egg of Mortal Essence outside of cooldowns, right. But let's not call that clipping, people get confused :-)

Majost · 01/30/09, 3:29 PM

Originally Posted by Raencloud

You misunderstood the rotation in question. I am not suggesting to use MBAM as soon as it comes up. Look at the first 2 rotations in Kavan's list (these are the 2 highest DPS rotations under unlimited mana). You will notice that they are both the same with 1 exception.

First rotation (highest DPS) says: AB 3 times, if no MB has proc'd, continue casting AB until you see a MB proc, then MBAM-ABarr. If the ABarr proc's MB, then MBAM-ABarr again. Continue this process until ABarr does not proc MB, then restart.

Second rotation (slightly less DPS) says: AB 3 times, if no MB has proc'd, continue casting AB until you see a MB, then MBAM-ABarr. If ABarr proc's MB, ignore it and restart.

The rotations are identical with the exception of casting MBAM on MB procs after ABarr is cast (which is only cast after a MBAM, and thus when the AB debuff has already been consumed). It stands to reason, then, that MBAM-ABarr repeat should be the highest DPS rotation if ABarr always proc'd MB.

The problem is that this relationship does not hold for the more mana optimal rotations:

First rotation (highest optimal DPS) says: AB 3 times, if MB has proc'd, then MBAM-ABarr. if no MB has proc'd ABarr. If ABarr proc's MB, ignore it and restart.

Second rotation (slightly less DPS) says: AB 3 times, if MB has proc'd then MBAM-ABarr. if no MB has proc'd ABarr. If ABarr proc's MB, then MBAM-ABarr until ABarr does not proc MB, and then restart.

You will notice that here that casting MBAM-ABarr after a MB proc from a proceeding ABarr results in a DPS loss to always stacking to 3 first, and that is what I have a problem with (because the reverse is true above). In no rotation do I suggest using MBAM-ABarr when AB is at 1 or 2 stacks, and in all 4 rotations the proportions of AB0s, AB1s, and AB2s will be equal. AB3 will never be cast in the 2nd set of rotations because at the 3rd stack you will always either MBAM or ABarr.

I think I finally managed to come up with a decent reason for this:

In AB3ABar3C, there are often 4 spells that can proc an ABAM that you'd be able to use for the next three stack AB. (AB, ABar, AB, AB)
In AB3ABar03C, there are only 3 spells that can proc an ABAM that you'd be able to use for the next three stack AB. (ABar, AB, AB)

The chances of 3 spells proccing an ABAM is 47.2% while the chance of 4 is 52.6%. This 5% difference means that you cast fewer 3 stacked ABAMs and more 0 stacked ABAMs.

In the highest burn regime, you're *always* waiting for a three stack ABAM, so there are always three chances to proc by your third AB for both AB*3C and AB*03C.

Lerxst · 01/30/09, 3:31 PM

With regards to "AB3ABar3C", I understand what it means (blast, blast, blast, barrage), except the 3C part. What does the 3 and the C mean in this case?

Omnia · 01/30/09, 3:34 PM

Speaking of haste: is there any way to model Egg of Mortal Essence in Rawr, to have it proc on AM? With the current rotations, it's hard to tell if it's better or worse than Sundial. It was definitely better when AM was part of every cycle.

Karoo · 01/30/09, 4:09 PM

Originally Posted by Omnia

Speaking of haste: is there any way to model Egg of Mortal Essence in Rawr, to have it proc on AM? With the current rotations, it's hard to tell if it's better or worse than Sundial. It was definitely better when AM was part of every cycle.

Is there a bug with Egg of Mortal Essence that I am not aware of?

The tooltip on the items states that it only works on healing spells.