One can only suspect that Blizzard had tried to sneak in some kind of an as-of-unknown change to our Seal mechanic and horribly screwed up while doing so last night.

Anyone noticed anything different since last night's emergency restart?

A Blue post stated that it was related to underlying 'proc' code. Update on Retribution Paladin Bug

Apparently a variety of classes' attacks had mechanics still triggering Vengeance on Tanks in PvP. Seems slightly suspicious that whatever they changed only affected Seals of Command; so maybe they decided to (try to) fix the double proc on seals issue while they were in there.

Maybe it's something to look out for on the PTR.

I played a little in 'Dr Manhattan' mode. It only worked on Instance Servers, so was a server-side patch. Also, not all Instance Servers had the patch in effect.

Hello ,

I have a question about Gurthalak ( normal version ) and slicer ( Heroic version ) , today on ultraxion 25 hm i was able to pull high sustained dps by switching weapons . I have started with slicer to grant me high burst and switched to Gurthalak after around 40 seconds ( during the first hour of twilight ) . Then i switched back to Slicer after getting the 2nd twilight ( after around 45 seconds ) and so .

I have checked skada for that try and compared it with two players who used Gurthalak full time , and i had around 2 less procs .

Can anyone confirm that there is a specific timing where we can switch weapons so we can get the highest dps possible ? am not good with numbers but i would really appreciate if anyone can check this and try it out .

Regards
Cloud

Best answer I can give, RNG is RNG. You got lucky with procs. All tests and parses I've seen up to this point hasn't led me to believe the proc nerf for Ret was revisited or reverted.

I can't find anything outside of favorable RNG that would have N Gurth at any time pull ahead of H Slicer. Even time between cooldowns, the higher weapon damage of H Slicer with secondary stats would prove superior in most cases than Gurth, except, like I've said, when RNG favors thou.

Gurthalak does not have an internal cooldown. Every eligible attack (which is not all our abilities) has a 2% chance to produce a tentacle, even if the last attack just produced one.

There is no window during which a weapon with better raw stats would 'pull ahead' while waiting for Gurthalak to regenerate, as there is no cooldown through which to sit. Even if Gurthalak did have an ICD (which, again, it does NOT), swapping weapons would not gain benefit. For at least the last few years (when Blizz seemed to create a standard for trinkets and procs) anything which has an ICD has that ICD reset when the item is equipped, specifically to prevent these multi-swap scenarios. Click-use items have a forced CD on equip to semi-mimic this situation.

Example:
Item A has an ICD of 50 seconds. It procs. You swap to Item B for 50 seconds. You swap back to Item A - and its ICD resets - it will not proc for the next 50 seconds. The entire time you used Item B did not count towards resetting Item A.

The tools available will permit you to compare Gurthalak with an average proc (i.e. exactly 2%) to another weapon and determine which is better for your gear and raid setup. In actual use you will generally have better RNG sometimes and Gur will beat a weapon that, on paper, it should not, or worse RNG and it falls behind a weapon that, on paper, it should surpass.

Again - swapping gains no benefit. Stick with one weapon or the other.

I can see weapon swaping during CDs/no-CDs periods. Using H Slicer for CDs and Gurthalak off-CDs. I never tried it but, like others said, it's all about Gurth's RNG. I got 416 Gurthalak last week and, during a H:Firelands run, I got a single proc on an entire Baleroc fight. This makes the weapon fall behind a lot, but you can't do much about it.

Repeating what Exemplar JUST said:
It is entirely possible to have more than one tentacle up at a time. I've personally seen 3 from my weapon alone. It's all RNG.

I tried to come up with a Simulationcraft profile that would model just a single cooldown cycle, so that ESS and Gurth could be compared side-by-side under the optimal conditions for ESS. Not being an expert with Simulationcraft, I used the initial default ability queue with a 25 second fight length (max_time=25 on the Override tab; that should allow for all sim runs to build 3 HP and get the full 20 seconds of cooldowns). This means that GoAK was up too which won't be true every CD cycle, but I thought that was acceptable to get a best-case ESS figure. I imported Saboya with his H-Gurth and ran checks with and without Bloodlust, then did the same with a Heroic ESS and otherwise the same gearset. H-Gurth was about 800 dps better under bloodlust, and 1100 dps better without bloodlust. Do of course note that this is not overall fight dps; an 800 dps increase under CDs is maybe 130 dps for the overall fight. But either, way, at least when it comes to Heroic weapons Gurth is better even only looking at cooldown phases than ESS (these sims likely ignore any Mind Flay ticks from existing tentacles that would tick on past the set encounter length, so Gurth is likely a little better than advertised here).

416 Gurth has higher weapon damage too, so that helps a lot... I think you'd be better off testing 410 Slicer / 406 Gurth.

Weapon swaps are not good. To amplify beyond the frequently ignored fact that Gur has no ICD: swapping weapons incurs a GCD and resets your swing timer.

I'd be extremely surprised if anyone was able to math a DPS gain for a single weapon swap, much less double swap (A to B to A), even for extra Str/Weapon damage during a CD window.

On average Gur beats everything else in its difficulty bracket (LFR > LFR weapons, Norm > Norm weapons, Heroic > H weapons). In specific it's up to the RNG - sometimes it'll suck, sometimes it'll be rock-star-magic-godlike-awesomesauce. If you want stable reliable damage every single fight then don't use a proc weapon.

Weapon swapping is not a gain, never was, and never will be unless your talking about swapping between extreme ilvl differences in which you would just use the high ilvl weapon exclusively.

I finally got a model going for that (and no, it wasn't easy), and it comes down to pure RNG.

As Exemplar said, RNG is RNG, and since Gurth has no ICD...well....there's absolutely no reason to swap. If you want to rank, you hedge your bets on good RNG and maybe, at some point, hit favorable and blow the DPS charts away.

For the rest of us, 78% of the time, H Slicer pulls ahead. 62% of the time, H Atar pulls ahead. At no point does N Gurth consistently beat any heroic weapon, in actuality, it falls below the median. Even H Gurth I find to be on par with H Slicer, completely dependent on proc rate alone. I've found enough variance to call it a wash, with your choice between consistency or extremes.

Any and all weapon swaps, even from LFG Gurth to H Gurth and vice versa, I've found to be a monumental DPS loss, unless any great string of luck favors you.

Hopefully this puts the weapon swap debate to rest.

Hello guys!

I have a question regarding seal swapping "SoT to SoR" during fights and I hope this is the right thread. The article says:

My question is: Do you think it is better to swap seals during the forgotten ones at "Yor'sahj" for example? Would swapping be better for the blood at "Madness of Deathwing" too?
The difference between the two fights is also that the forgotten ones are way more longer alive than the blood. So maybe it is only useful against Yor'sahj? We also have to consider that we lose 2 GCDs during the swap.

In general: Is it only useful to switch to SoR if we can use it for a minimum number of enemies AND a certain minimum time?

Greetz

Yes and no, in that order.

It's stupid question, I know, but where I can see my own stat weigths in Exemplar spreadsheet without STR to put values in wowreforge and do most effective reforge? I can't find it. Thanks.

You can use the AutoEnchant/gem/reforge tool included in the spreadsheet (in the Character tab) .
It gives very satisfying results.

It gives me haste>mastery and mastery enchant on boots, but I want to test reforge mastery>haste> crit, just replace value of haste by mastery. And in my mind, hit enchant boots prefer than mastery because hit is greatest, and mastery from this enchant I can take by reforge from worse stat. Sorry for my English =\

Hit is trivially easy to cap by reforging a weaker stat to hit on a piece that has mastery on already though. By enchanting hit on boots you'll be left with 50 of crit or haste elsewhere on your gear that you wouldn't have had otherwise, and the net result will be that either way you will be hit capped, but with the hit enchant on your boots you will have less mastery overall and more haste or crit.

For example, you could reforge the haste on your belt to hit and gain 76 hit there, switch your boot enchant to mastery, and overall you'd be up 50 mastery, 26 hit, and down 76 haste from your current setup.

I suggest running your character through something like wowreforge though, you're below expertise cap and over hit cap by quite a large margin when you could have 962 hit, 481 exp (caps are 961, 481), gaining expertise cap at the cost of 9 mastery rating.

Thanks for the answers. But I still have one question:

Can we compute a time limit x (time of the adds while they are active), which tells us: If the adds are x seconds available we switch to SoR? Or is the swap to SoR just like a "subjective" inspiration?

Of course you can.

(DPS of SoR on # of targets * X number of seconds on targets) vs (DPS of SoT on # of targets * (X number of seconds on target + ~2.8 seconds))

The 'about 2.8' extra seconds for the SoT calc are because the Seal Swap costs you 3 seconds, but autoattack keeps running. Solve for X until the first beats the second.

There is no cut and dried perfect answer because everyone's gearing and often raid buffs varies, thus DPS winds up different.

If you are looking for meter padding - swap for Yor adds. If you are looking to help the raid, stay SoT and use DS while otherwise single-targeting Yor. As long as the adds die before new slimes spawn then the goal is utmost DPS to the boss.

For Madness, I strongly suspect seal swap for Hemorrhage-slimes (Regenerative Blood) is uniformly a loss. The double seal swap time is a huge DPS loss for slimes that should survive for only a few GCD. A few hundred extra DPS per slime is unlikely to be the difference between killing slime or it healing to full, which makes that DPS 100% wasted anyway.

Using Wowreforge
If you want to use stats directly from the spreadsheet - I don't understand the problem. Ignore Str and just input the other values provided. Leave hit and expertise unchanged - if you set wowreforge to zero it's likely to give you bad results as it could reforge you way under cap. Pay attention to hit/exp cap values - wowreforge does not appear to adjust for racial bonuses, though it picks up the 10 Exp from GoSoT.

If you want to test a specific stat order with wowreforge - use any values you want where hit/exp > stat #1 > stat #2 > stat #3. Values are just for it to calculate an imaginary total sum. For the actual reforging what's important is greater or less than another stat.

Seal swapping for Hemorrhage slimes is definetly an overall loss, only do it if you REALLY need that burst DPS (eg in case you don't do Kalecgos last and need to burn the adds down). It's a personal loss to do it on Congealing Bloods (heroic Madness) too, but it helps the raid since you need to bring those adds down.

I have a question about Inquisition that me and my guildies have been discussing lately.
Mark that i usually tank on my paladin, but has recently found retri to be great fun.

The rule of thumb is to use Inquisition at 3HP to gain a 36 sec buff. However i have noticed when i am in dungeons and raids that i almost never have a ready 3HP when the buff is about to expire.

And here is the question, do i loose anything by using Inquisition with only 2 HP?
From my personal view that will make my up time of the buff even greater without having to re-apply when the buff still has 8-12 sec left. I have not run any really simulations on this, but my basic calculations in my head tells me that it will be an overall gain.

This might mean i use more 2HP Inq during a fight then a 3HP, but all over i have longer uptime and fell like i get out more 3HP Templars this way. And the tool tip on Inq strictly says that you gain a 30% buff to holy spells for 12 seconds per HP.

Has anyone ever done any math on this or tested it out?