Maybe I'm just 100% retarded, but consecration uses a debuff slot? I was fairly sure it didn't.

Here is a WWS of our guilds last killshot of brutallus; I'm somewhat dissapointed in my DPS output considering the group I was in (2 rogues, enh shammy, ms war, me).

I've read every page of this thread, compared rotations to what I am doing, consumables, optimized gear to Rawr to the best of my availability (some enchants/gem choices are purely for hit cap etc..) (Atm foregoing the use of any abilities that could possibly put me on GCD when CS is coming up) in priority of cs > judge/SoC > exorcism > consecrate.

Trigunflame - WWS

Does anyone have suggestions on what I could do to improve?

Nice work, yea BM hunter's 3% damage increase gives roughly 60 DPS at 2k DPS.

Seems your rotation is highly optimized with Haste and Haste pots, I'm not so sure if adding consecration would allow you to maintain the haste pot rotation comfortably, but you could give it at try.

BM hunter gives 3% damage boost, lack of arms warrior means about 3% DPS loss, and our guilds only arms warr is also a LW of which there was only one and a half in that group (me and one of the rotated shamans).

Our rogue that night, who is usually well informed, told me consecration acts as a debuff, and dropping it in favor for an additional haste pot and slightly better DPS gear mens it is a debuff you can easily live without.

It does act as a debuff, but only in the same way blizzard or flamestrike (dot component) does. While they use the mechanics of a debuff, they don't take one of the reserved debuff slots. Mana, however, is a whole other issue.

Edit for clarification: A debuff slot is not reserved because the debuff is not based on duration for its target, but rather location. Hence blizzard wouldn't have other issues trying to constantly add/remove debuffs in slots, which interact with the interface a lot and might cause lag/extra server strain/etc.

I'm not so sure about the Consecration "debuff" knocking stuff off, I seem to recall something about temporary debuffs that don't show up on the mob but it's so long ago I'm not sure it still applies.

If you have mana left over then do use it and see if there's any difference to raid debuffs being knocked off by just that, I highly doubt it however.


Additional Haste pots with with SoB are definitely great, though for those of us on the other side it's arguable at best.



EDIT: What Zurm said.

I've had no problem with judges getting knocked off on Brutallus so far. As for dps, the best I've had is 1770, but admittedly that using only str food as a consumable. no flask or haste pots yet. I know I've slacked there some and I need to farm herbs. Feel particularly bad since our best tries have been 5%, 4%, 3% and 2% >.<

In an effort to squeeze more dps, I bought the Badge Axe to use instead of my Torch (I know both should have better chants, but I save the Mongoose mats for the trash pole arm) and I found, the benefit of the Axe is arguable at best. Sometimes even "lower" in dps. Unless those fights I just happened to have a bad run. I can't really explain why.

Well, looking at it, the badge axe is only a small upgrade... a handful of DPS. Not something you'd likely notice in a night of attempts. Now going from Torch to the [Shivering Felspine]... that was a nice surprise. Each hit lands for about the same... just attack a lot faster.

HI!

Just have a quick question about the DPS Spreadsheet at the beginning of this section.

I've been messing around with it for a-while and occurred to me I didnt know if the DPS it calculated on the spreadsheet took into account the procs from the items? Or if they were calculated without the procs occurring?

EG , Libram of Divine Judgement.

Reason I ask is more and more of my ret paladin items are becoming proc based and wanted to make sure I was using the spreadsheet correctly for the correct result.

Sorry if this has been covered before.

Thanks.

Unreasonably stacked group or not, 2k+ on Brutallus is great! Nicely done Nex.

On the topic of haste vs mana potions for Alliance, does anyone know where in this thread or elsewhere I could see the math for the DPS gain from a haste potion off-set by the loss of Consecration/Exorcism DPS due to mana limitations while using an effectively 3.6 base weapon speed? I'm trying to determine whether to start stocking up on haste potions in anticipation of this fight (just downed Council, hopefully working on Illidan this week) instead of my usual mana potions and just altering my rotation to accomodate the decreased effective mana pool. I know haste potions won't affect my yellow damage at all as Alliance paladin as it does Horde w/ Seal of Blood, but assuming Improved Divine Spirit, Kings, Improved Wisdom, Improved Mark of the Wild, Arcane Brilliance, 2-piece tier 6 bonus, Judgment of Wisdom, and any splash damage normal to the melee group, as well as Sanctified Judgment and a ~6k mana pool, could anyone estimate the appreciable difference between haste pot'ing and cutting back on Consecrate vs mana pot'ing and alternating max and lower ranks of Consecrate?

If memory serves, that discussion would probably be about 10-15 pages back now. Being a blood elf, I didn't pay a large amount of attention, but I'm sure if I'm wrong Avitus will correct me within an hour or so

The discussion of mana pots vs haste potions was about page 110 or so.

Basically since haste only affects white attacks for Alliance and more mana means more exocism/conc, you will get more returns from Super Mana Potions. A few guys did do the calcs, good luck finding them.

And actually, if you're going to be using mana pots, you may as well use fel mana pots, as they provide a higher dps increase than either super mana or Haste for alliance. (This was also in the discussion)

Found it. Avitus mentioned Fel Mana Potions back on page 120, then Avitus and Sigurd did some napkin math on Fel Mana Potions vs Haste Potions for both Alliance and Horde on page 122. To recap it, assuming ideal situations, Alliance get about 41 DPS increase from Fel Mana Potions, and Horde get 45 DPS increase from Haste Potions (Alliance get much less from Haste Potions).

Sounds like I need to start farming Fel Mana mats! Now I wish I were herb/alch... Damn my addiction to goggles and flying machines!

Thanks for the direction guys, I didn't look forward to combing through 50 pages of discussion to find that info.

Don't think anyone said it's unreasonably stacked, it's slightly more stacked (+1 bm) over the normal ret, war, enhance, rogue, rogue, but not much. Unreasonably stacked is if you'd stick a feral on top of that or throw in more than 2 heroisms. Well done indeed


Regardless 2k can be reached with a normal group as displayed by others, especially for horde pallies who should at this time do an estimated ~115 more DPS (assuming ~135 haste on gear = Torch + T6 bracers + T6 belt) and around ~175 more DPS at the end of Sunwell (assuming ~265-290 haste on best gear which will be inevitable for both horde and alliance the way the best items are itemized in Sunwell). Those estimates are according to RAWR btw, I think the spreadsheet said something similar +/- 5 dps.

The gap further widens if you include multiple heroisms (more than 1), haste potions and Drums rotations. It's pretty sad when you know end of Sunwell we'll be looking at roughly 200 DPS difference, simply due faction seal (and how it scales with the items available) and there's nothing you can do about it.


Regarding your haste vs mana pot question, the thing is you go from haste being the top stat for SoB to being one of the lowest low priority stats for SoC for us lowly alliance.


Checking bellator's spreadsheet (RAWR does not have this yet! ) you can actually check "Haste Pots" to see the effect it would have on your DPS.

I'll add some updated napkin math soon.

Ok here comes math! (duck!)

Assuming a 6 min fight (like Brutallus), you could also do the following:

-Grab a recent WWS log.
-A haste pot would add 25.38% haste to your white swings over 15 secs, over 2 mins, that's an average 3.17% hasted weapon speed overall if you take Haste pots on cooldown (there's 3 opportunities to do that in the 6 min fight).
-Multiply your damage from Auto-attack with 0.0317

This is how much haste pots would give you. Obviously slightly more if you time it with AW, but not much more. Remember this number.



Assuming you used to take super mana potions at 0:30, 2:30, 4:30 during the brut fight (again 3 opportunities), they should have given you an average 7200 mana during those 6 mins.

Again, assuming you can keep up your normal rotation (CS, JoC and maybe exorcism) without mana pots, those 7200 mana will all go towards Consecration.

7200 consecration affords you about 11 consecrations.

At 512 base damage for max rank, with JotC (+208 total damage, since it does NOT benefit from any multipliers, think I made a post 50 pages ago), 3x Vengeance (*1.15), Misery (*1.05), Imp Sanctity Aura (*1.122) and Crusade (*1.03) and 0 spelldamage gear, each consecration should give you about 922.47 damage.

11 extra casts of consecration will therefore give you 10147 damage (11x ~922.47 damage) or ~10k damage for rule of thumb over a 6 min fight.

If you use [Darkmoon Card: Crusade], following the same math but adding 80 spelldamage you'll do 11314 damage over those 11 consecrations (11x 1028.53 damage).

The number is obviously a bit more during 2x AW you will use, but while this can be easily calculated in, I'll not do so so you can compare the consecration damage directly to the damage you gain from haste potions where we did not model in AW.



Now for every paladin it's slightly different. In my case for example using [Assassin's Alchemist Stone] and [Fel Mana Potion], I will get a guaranteed 13440 more mana.

Those will afford me 20.36 more consecration casts. Rounding down to ~20 casts and following the math above (no Darkmoon Card since Fel Mana Potions eat into the 80 spelldamage buff, but not into the JotC debuff), those 20 casts are worth 18449.4 damage.


Now go back and compare to the number we marked in red above. If it's more than 3.17% haste to your auto attack would give you, use mana potions. If it's less, use haste. I'll add an example in a bit.


EDIT: Added. I knew something was missing when my numbers were slightly less than what I saw in my WWS, now it's perfect

Snap! Can you notice that I'm finally on (a long awaited) week long vacation? xD


Anyway, here's the promised example ("case study" if you will):

I'll take my own Brutallus WWS (Avitus - WWS) where I did 1977 DPS using Fel Mana Potions and Assassin's Stone.

Over the 6 min fight (5:59) my autoattack did 356,794 damage.

If I had used Haste Potions, I would have gained (autoattack damage * 0.031725) damage 11319.6 damage. (Note: I'm not 100% sure if this can be calculated so simply due to how other haste effects stack, it should be correct, but do suggest if you know otherwise).

As explained in the last post, using 3 fel mana potions allowed me to do 20.36 more max rank consecration casts, which at 922.47 damage per cast are worth ~18785 damage.

->Still Haste Potions would have been a loss here.

Assuming I didn't have Alchemist's Stone effect (40% more mana from potions), I would have gained 9600 mana from 3x Fel Mana Potions, which are worth 14.54 consecration casts, worth 13417 damage.

->Still Haste Potions would have been a loss here.


Assuming no Alchemist's Stone and no Fel Mana Potions (keep in mind that in contrast Super Mana Potions give an "average mana amount of 2400" so it can be more or less): 10.9 casts worth 10063.3 damage.

->Haste Potions would have been a gain here!.


If you add [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] to the last calculation however (should be used by anyone not using Fel Mana Potions and extensively making use of consecration): 10.9 casts worth 11220.3 damage.


->Pretty much the same.



So conclusion: In the majority of normal case scenarios for an alliance paladin using max rank consecration and no special spelldamage gear, the potion list is (from highest to lowest):

1. [Fel Mana Potion]
2. [Haste Potion]
3. [Super Mana Potion]

So if you are going to spend and have to pick a "special potion" (not normal Super Mana Potions), use Fel Mana Potions instead of Haste Potions as alliance.

If you are using [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] (and you should if you're not using Fel Mana Potions), there's almost no gain from Super Mana Potions -> Haste Potions.

Edit: For Consecration rank 4 + Darkmoon Card, Mana Potion is superior to haste. (See notes) Therefore use of Haste Potions for alliance is really almost always a waste.


Notes:

-It should be said in favor of Consecration: I've used max rank Consecration for the calculations. Lower Consecration ranks offer more bang for your buck (due to JotC not being affected by downranking). The perfect use of consecration would therefore be using a rank that you can spam non stop (while upranking during AW) without ever running into mana issues, while making sure to not finish the fight with any leftover mana.

Using the calculations above, but lower ranks, you will get MORE damage per mana potion used further going into favor of Mana Potions over Haste Potions.

For example Consecration Rank 4 + Super Mana Potions: 18.46 casts * 598.72 damage = 11053.3 damage (Almost the same, haste very slightly better.)

Consecration Rank 4 + Darkmoon Card + Super Mana Potions: 18.46 casts * 631.91 damage = 11666 damage (Super Mana Potion is better than haste!)


I used Consecration Rank 6 throughout since that's what I use on almost all other fights while maintaining 100% uptime.

Unfortunately, at Brutallus we only had 3 paladins, so no BoW and since there's also no raid damage if you don't get burn (I didn't, mana gained through Spiritual Attunment 96..... meh), my mana income was a lot less than usual.

For example our first attempt, I had burn and had 5,177 mana returned through Spiritual Attunement and never ran into mana issues. I did over 2k DPS in that try without any heroisms used yet, simply due to having a lot more mana and never having to stop Consecartion. (On the kill I was hovering between 2.1k and 2k until having to reduce consecration use due to mana issues and ending at 1977DPS overall).

Next time we go there, I'll try rank 4 or rank 5 and uprank if I get burn/AW or a 4th paladin doing BoW on me, hopefully tweaking it so I never stop casting and gain some DPS increase.


-It should be said in favor of Consecration again: In contrast to your white swings from which you can remove miss and dodge, your Consecration ticks will still get resisted. In my example I had 0 miss/0 dodge, but 8 fully resisted Consecration ticks (3% of total) and 40 partially resisted ticks (6.6% of total) over a total of 252 ticks (31.5 consecration casts).

HOWEVER

Your white hits will still suffer from Glancing blows (I had 21%, but the norm is 20% chance of a glancing blows against level 73 bosses, glancing blows do only 70% damage). Also as illustrated above, only the first tick of consecration can ever be fully resisted. I'm not going to go into further math here, but I'll assume the loss to glancing probably outweighs the partial resist, people are welcome to do more indepth calculations of this and post here.


-For future proofing: Since I doubt we'll be getting any spelldamage gear anymore, damage done by consecration will always remain at what it is now. In contrast, your damage through white hits should increase somewhat by the end of Sunwell due to improved gear. I can assume it will be enough to further the gap between Haste Potions and Super Mana Potions, but I doubt it will be enough to overtake Fel Mana Potions, especially not with an Alchemist's Stone.

-There is a slight loss in damage for using [Item not found!] obviously, however the net DPS increase from the added Consecration Spam due to the increased mana gain is more than using a "better" melee trinket (DST, Berserker's Call).


-As said before, all calculations do not include AW, so they should be more or less equal.




Finally I'll say. This is probably the reason why I did like Spelldamage on our t6 gear (I think I had 260 spelldamage + 80 from darkmoon card). It used to close the gap somewhat to haste spamming SoB users, but yea that's no more.

On the other hand, we gained a buff by being able to use Fel Mana Potions (we couldn't before since it worked against the spelldamage on our gear).

If you time two of your haste potions with your two AW during the fight, they are 20% more effective on average. If you also stack a clickable trinket like Berserker's Call, the effect is further multiplied.

The real increase in consecration damage should be compared against r1 Consecration. Rank 1 Consecration is a fairly low mana, efficient spell, using mana potions allows you to rank up Consecration more often. Rank 1 Consecration with ~100 spell damage, standard talents and raid debuffs deals 445.92 damage per cast for 120 mana. Rank 6 Consecration under the same circumstances deals 1137.37 for 660 mana.

The marginal damage gain for casting a r6 Cons over a r1 Cons is 691.45 damage. The marginal increase in cost is 540 mana. Replacing r1 Cons with r6 Cons is effectively 1.28 DPM.

I would argue that any time you can stack a potion cooldown with AW you should be using a Haste potion.

Thanks for the case study Avitus, I'll read it more closely at work. I do wonder, though, what the breakpoint is where Haste Potions overtake Super Mana Potions, out of sheer curiousity.

Regardless, I'm not going to reroll alchemist, so I'll just have to go with base Fel Mana returns. The question now becomes [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] or [Berserker's Call] to pair with my [Shard of Contempt]. Time to play with spreadsheets...

Aramul, not sure how you calculated your consecration damage, how are you doing your calculations?

Conc r1:

208 + ((100 * 0.47) + 64) * 1.15 * 1.05 * 1.03 * 1.122 = 362.9 damage per cast (not 445.92, did you remember to lower the co-efficient for downranking?)

Conc r6:

208 + ((100 * 0.95) + 512) * 1.15 * 1.05 * 1.03 * 1.122 = 1055 damage per cast (not 1137, how are you getting this?).



Now the real question is, can you keep up SoC, JoC, Exorcism and Conc r1 on Brutallus without BoW and 0 mana from Spiritual Attunement (Burn is a special case)? According to my estimates, no.


(If you could, you might have to deduct the damage Conc r1 would do, from the damage you gain from using mana potions and spamming r6, which would definitely change things quiet a bit, but atm I don't see how you can maintain that without using mana potions.)


I'm actually working on calculating just that atm and as well as where exactly Assassin's Alchemist's Stone ranks. I'll post here when I have more conclusive results.

(Base + JotC*.95 + SpD * .95 * Downrank) * 1.15 * 1.05 * 1.03 * 1.122.

The number mismatch is from placement of JotC. I know it's not affected by downranking, is it also unaffected by our damage multipliers? That damage (~83) should be dropped from both estimates in that case.

With a single mana pot in the middle (when not stacked with AW), maintaining everything is a possibility.

It's not affected by multipliers, so yeah.


Corrected equation:
(Base + SpD * .95 * Downrank) * 1.15 * 1.05 * 1.03 * 1.122 + JotC*.95