zenos

Are you MAD?

Eye for an Eye will be a must have for PVP. With the confluence of spell/melee crit you're looking at a lot of returned damage on EfaE procs, and as much as I wish they'd change Art of War into something useful for PVE and PVP, for smaller brackets it will be very useful. It's basically a great "un-peel" tool in our arsenal.

 

Keltos

As a long time lurker here, I have been noticing that many of the prospective 3.0 talent builds that are being posted seem to completely skip any points in Benediction.

I understand that Judgments of the Wise is out there now, but is there any real raid data yet on how this will affect mana returns? No one in this thread seems to have discussed that talent for about a month, so I am curious as to how efficient it will be in the pre-WotLK talent push to bypass it, versus taking it and skipping points in something like Crusade, Improved Judgments, or Divine Strength.

 

Rasputin

I already skip Benediction with just live JoW. With scaling JoW and JotW, mana should never be an issue. This is of course pending an actual working version of JotW for us to test and find out how it works,

 

Redcape

Due to CS functionality currently hit has a really powerful purpose aside from straight dps, but since that seems like it is going to go away in 3.0 I do not think that hit will actually end up being better than str. The spreadsheet that I created for level 80 certainly shows str being 50% better than hit for doing damage and substantially more than that for JotW mana returns. Granted those numbers are for level 80 raiding, but the 2 big differences there are that there is a big increase in AP and weapon damage numbers and a change in the coefficient on hit rating.

Betadpsv2.xls - FileFront.com

I tried dropping the weapon damage to SW gear levels, setting the coefficients to level 70 standards and lowering the stats and buffs to full SW geared level 70 standards.

DPS per 100 points

Str - 220
Hit - 214

MP5 from JotW

Str - 210
Hit - 127

So for maximizing personal dps the difference is very minimal, but str does give a big chunk of mana return. The other insane thing str does is it provides mana return from JoW.

100 Str * 2 (AP) * 1.15 (Divine str) * 1.1 (Kings) * 1.1 (UR) * 1.3 (Sheathe) * .09 (JoW return on SP/AP) = 32.56

So 100 Str grants 32.56 mana per proc. Since there is a 4 second cooldown on JoW now, it is rational to model this as 32.56 mp5 for every person actively attacking the target. Since you have something like

2.5 mage/warlock/hunter
.8 Moonkin/Elemental/Enhancement/Prot
1 Shadow/Ret

all hitting the target, you are getting 12.7 people netting 32.56 mp5 from your JoW which is 413.5 mp5. So in total from both JoW and JotW 100 str is returning 624 mp5. To sum:

100 Str

220 DPS
624 Mp5

100 Hit

214 DPS
127 MP5

Now all this extra mana from JoW only applies against a single target the raid is dpsing, but since added hit is only meaningful against a boss regardless I don't think that matters much. Str ends up bringing 6 more dps per 100 points and 497 more MP5.

The effects on JoW are so massive that I think ret paladin gearing may well come down to simply selecting the item that has the highest str score on it and hardly even caring about the rest. The mana return is so outrageously large that unless your raid really has no need for your mana restoration str is probably going to end up being at least 3 times as powerful as any other stat (barring AP, of course, since that has a fixed relationship).

Even if my sheet needs to change a little to accomodate the buff reorganization that is coming up I can't see anything coming even remotely close to str in value. I do expect a big change in ret paladin coefficients prior to live. With the numbers I just entered a ret pally with amazing SW gear in a fully buffed raid we should be seeing 4800+ dps with SoR without even counting Consecration, Exorcism or Hammer of Wrath!

 

Gevlin

Redcape, did you model the chance to miss Judgements when you factored in the value of strength. Also, did you figure the dps increase of Str based on a hit cap model? Str and Hit seem to synergize very well together, so as you get more and more Str, each point of Hit also becomes more valuable.

 

flyingtoastr

The effective cooldown for JoW is not 4 seconds.

The effective cooldown depends drastically on how rapidly you attack the target. The only classes that ever get close to the "ideal" 4 second cooldown are Hunters and Enhancement Shamans. Some classes, like Fire Mages, have nearly a 6 second cooldown because of their attack rate.

I have done the formulas for JoW returns in Wrath but they're not pretty. I'll post them up later though.

 

Durlindana

Glad to see your back toast :-)

As far as a 6 Second Effective for a mage, I personally think thats too long even for estimations sake. The amount of haste buffs going around is going to dramatically drop their cast times. Without getting too far into magecrafting, Netherwind Presence, and various other raid buffs, gems etc. I could see somewhere between 4.5 and 5 seconds in a raid being a more likely scenario.

Computing the effect of JoW without taking into considerations like the average raidwide Haste is a little skewed because of the effect it will have on every class.

 

flyingtoastr

Naturally, which is why I'm working on a formula for it. The fact remains though that even with Wrath of Air and Swift Retribution a Frostfire Bolt still has a 2.78 second cast time, which is still a 5.56 second cooldown. That's still a huge difference from the "ideal" 4 second cooldown.

 

Durlindana

I suppose there are two questions left to answer, What else effects spell haste in wow 3.0 (new boomkin aura?), excessive Gemming, Icy Veins, I am by no means a mage nor have the information to theory for one, but I guess where I'm going with this is, Is your 2.78 second FFbolt the average cast time or will it in reality be lower by enough to consider for our MP5 return. And who else is returning mana to the raid at the rate we do, ( in the end will the ideal 4 second proc from JoW even make a difference over the 5 second). Is there going to be enough mana coming back that it wont even matter if its a 4,5 or 6 second return?

I'm not expecting you to have the answer to that but its the concept which is important.

In addition, is JotW working at the moment? If it is, how does it decide who to return mana to. It would be terrible if say rogues and warriors could receive your mana return thus wasting it completely.

 

• Avitus

Rasputin, blindly comparing stats lost in a 1:1 ratio is not really useful. Losing 12 agi is less of a DPS hit than losing 10 str and even more so when the new Divine Strength and SoL talents are put in.


Redcape, I'd urge you to check the hidden sheets in bellator's spreadsheet (which the current incarnation of Rawr ret is based on) and compare the math there to yours. They're giving conflicting results so they can't both be right.

 

flyingtoastr

Incidentally I made a boo boo and added Swift Retribution and Wrath of Air; haste effects should be multiplicative and FFB should be a 2.77 cast time with those two buffs. 2.77 second FFB is simply a base 3.0 cast time spell modified with the 5% from Wrath of Air and 3% from Swift Retribution. In reality it will vary greatly depending on group comp and gearing.

The big thing with the cooldown in JoW is that you don't want to push your casts too quickly. JoW has a built in 4 second cooldown. For a normal FFB (3 seconds modified down to 2.77 from SW and WoA) you get the following proc cycle.

T=0 - FFB 1, JoW 1, JoW cooldown begins
T=2.77 - FFB 2
T=4 - JoW cooldown ends
T=5.54 - FFB 3, JoW 2

So you will get a JoW proc every other cast. JoW in this situation has an effective cooldown of 5.54 seconds. Now what happens if this mage gets a Bloodlust for an additional 30% haste and gems another 10% from gear? He now has 54.65% spell haste, dropping his FFB cast time to 1.94 seconds.

T=0 - FFB 1, JoW 1, JoW cooldown begins
T=1.94 - FFB 2
T=3.88 - FFB 3
T= 4 - JoW cooldown ends
T=5.82 - FFB 4, JoW 2

With Bloodlust you get a proc every 3 casts because of the natural internal cooldown. So you actually have a longer cooldown for JoW (5.82 seconds) during high haste situations because you're attacking just a hair too rapidly.

In this regard JoW is acting a lot like Windfury Weapon's internal cooldown. For an ideal return situation you want to attack exactly every 4 seconds (or a multiple thereof) to get the maximum number of procs. If you go even .1 second below that though you drastically extend your cooldown and lose a lot of regen.

It's not to say "oh noes haste is bad now" but rather just to point out that the effective cooldown on JoW can vary pretty wildly with buffs and gear and it needs to be taken into account before saying "JoW is worth x Mp5 to classes because it has a 4 second cooldown".

 

Durlindana

I guess in a pure MP5 sense then, whether you have a 2.01 second cast, or a 2.5 even an unmodified 3 second cast, you still return the same amount limited obviously by the CD. However I have to admit that is a good catch on the "too much haste" theory and I had not thought about that.

I suppose that is moot for us for the most part because its not our job to design everyones haste and rotations around our internal CD mechanics.

I suppose this could be applied to our swing timer though as well. Which most certainly matters to us. Personally when burning a boss, I get down to 1.94 swing time which is obviously not in "rhythm" with JoW so the obvious answers here when applied are going to be, lose haste or gain it ( not arguing itemization and dps here). Maintaining your synergy with your own JoW should be pretty important for those skipping benediction

 

• Avitus

Not necessarily Durlindana. Even though you might get higher mana returns by losing haste, you're downgrading your DPS in the process.

It really remains to be seen how mana efficient we will be and how much of that additional mana return will be possible to translate into a DPS increase and then compare that to the DPS you lose by skipping some haste items.

 

Durlindana

Isnt Str becoming a better stat per stat point than Haste anyway, so losing a bit of haste gaining str (assuming thats what you would fill the itemization void with) and gaining mp5 be worth the marginal dps decrease. ( With the induction of DS we see a net increase in dps AND mana decrease, so for arguements sake you need to compensate for the increase in spell cost along with the addition of an additional spell

Additional thought:

Wasnt the conclusion that gaining Str a better dps increase than haste to begin with in 3.0? So trading haste for str should be a win win right? (within reason of course)

 

Redcape

As far as how much mana people are going to get from JoW goes, I selected 5 seconds for ease of use and because it just can't be all that far off.

You can easily see that the FFB mage is a terrible case for JoW procs due to his extremely high cast time but some classes get fairly close to the 4 second absolute limit such as enhancement shamans and hunters (maybe wrath spam boomkins too). The fact is that some classes will definitely end up below 5 second average cooldown between procs and none can go above 6 seconds. We could argue back and forth over the exact placement but because spell interruption, movement, complicated rotations and changing cast times due to buffs are a thing, getting it down to within 1% is just fooling ourselves. We simply can't get that level of precision and I don't think we need to.

We can get it to within a 5% margin of error though, and since this is only modeling the raid return on a single stat for us I think that is really plenty. Raid makeup will have a huge impact on this also, so it isn't like you can even figure it out perfectly regardless, running a little hunter heavy will hugely boost JoW returns and running with rogues will lower it but these things will change night by night in many cases, and you can't regem, reenchant or regear every night. If we can come within 5% of the 'correct' value we are as close as it is useful to be and I am quite sure than 5 seconds is that close.

I certainly won't claim that 5 second average cooldown happens to be the exact cooldown. Generating the exact cooldown simply isn't feasible or useful, but modeling our mana return on a value likely to be very close to the exact value (and unknown if it is high or low) seems like something we need to do to get a sense of what gear we should look for.


Gevlin, I modeled a gearset which is basically the one Avituus uses. It is a full SW gearset pretty much at the hit/exp cap. The model takes into account all raid buffs, gear and base stats. I did factor in hit into the judgement formula, but since the debuff is put on the target regardless of whether the attack hits or not it isn't contributing to JoW at all. (If the debuff isn't an autohit on beta, I would love to know about it, though that is a bitch to model).


Avituus, if you use both our spreadsheets and put in the same numbers, you get the same results. The numbers look hugely different if you just take the sheets as they download, but if you make sure the buffs and stats are the same they generate the same numbers. His returns on stats don't change when I alter stats on his sheet though, which is either because that part isn't done/doesn't work or Openoffice can't use it. Regardless, when I actually go in and make his hit rating 100 lower and his str 100 lower I get the same returns. Hit rating gives around a 1.2 dps/point return and str gives 1.86 dps/point return, which is almost the exact same numbers my sheet shows.

Bellator's sheet lacks a lot of the raid buffs mine has, and also lacks Seals of the Pure, which is hugely impactful. Once I corrected for those issues our sheets both look the same, which would suggest both are right. His sheet sure has lots of other added functionality though, which I hope to eventually implement in mine.

Strength currently is 1.5x better than anything else for dps, as well as being nutsane for mana generation (see my previous post).

 

• Avitus

Yes. However in practice, you don't always have the option to change stats on your gear as you do when theorycrafting Meaning you will lose dps if you say "I'll drop a few haste items" to get 2.0 speed and go to inferior items that don't have haste (and only str for example).

Note that obviously no sane paladin will gem haste of course.


Additionally, the way item point distribution works is you gain more from items which have multiple stats and since there's never been "haste only" items, that's one of the reasons such items tend to be so good.


Redcape, that's a very interesting claim, I'll investigate further. If it's true, it pretty much throws everything we've gone for so far regarding hit cap upside down.

Is this with level 70 rating conversions? You got PM btw.

 

Redcape

My sheet is using level 80 conversions, as is his. His sheet uses level 70 armor calculations, which are certainly not quite accurate, and mine is using a flat out guess at armor reduction that seems consistent with what we would see in a raid (25%) but certainly is only a guess. Until we have boss armor values at level 80 we don't really have much ability to predict armor reduction unfortunately.

 

• Avitus

Ok just so we're all talking about the same thing: We're talking about the "WoW 3.0 patch" which will be added to TBC at level 70 not WotLK.

Conversion rates and everything else should be what they are at 70, not 80 for this.

 

Kigale

In the haste modeling, has the lowered GCD been factored in? In high haste environments I have, at times, been able to maintain a tighter rotation. This is probably only applicable on Demon bosses, but being able to squeeze an exorcism and consecrate where one would normally not fit is kind of nice. Sheath may make it much nicer.

 

flyingtoastr

Once again, I have a formula for the effective cooldown of JoW. It's messy because I haven't had time to find some nicer ways to write parts of formula but if you can't live without it for another day you can mess around with it now. I was planning on a nice long step-by-step post on how to use the formula sometime this weekend so hopefully by then you can have your exact precision.



The divisor is the model for the effective cooldown. It is (simply) determining how often your attacks land and multiplying by the number of attacks it takes to get outside the 4 second cooldown. Again, I'll have a nice little write up sometime tomorrow (hopefully).

Just remember that each 1% you're off is a very appreciable difference in theorycraft. With 4100 AP (about typical for a reasonably buffed BT/Sunwell pally) JoW tics for 480, meaning just a 1% difference in the effective cooldown (.04 seconds) is almost 6 Mp5. It is important to be as accurate as possible.

 

• Avitus

Redcape, I've gone over both spreadsheets and here's my conclusion:


For level 80 conversions:

-You seem to be correct or at least I can't find any flaw in your calculations. 1 point of Str will indeed be worth more than 1 point of hit.

-This is specifically due to rating conversion rates being so high 80, yet seemingly costing the same itemlevel as now (1:1).

-Increasingly higher weapon damage (first 2h epic from naxx is already at 200 DPS+) will counteract this somewhat, but not enough for hit to overtake str, unless something else changes.

Note: This means that "gearing for the hit cap" will not be a valid optimum at 80 anymore (similar to the situation enhancement shamen are in right now) but rather each item will have to be evaluated individually regardless of not being hit capped. The only use of the "hit cap" at 80 will be to make sure you don't exceed that number and waste stats.

Additionally from a practical point of view, landing every hit will be less important since we don't have to worry about keeping up all judgements anymore.


For level 70 conversions:

-It's arguable whether we can claim a general case of "Str > Hit" since there is a reachable point of inflection now.

-In most cases, it seems Str will be superior to Hit.

-Once you reach a certain amount of AP (the POI), hit becomes superior again.

-Preliminary numbers estimate the POI at somewhere around the ballpark range of 4800-5000 buffed AP. Obviously the POI is dynamic and depends on your stats/gear.

-This is for SoR. For SoB the numbers are much closer, Str and Hit are almost 1:1 ratio.



This is a pretty vital find, so I think it would be useful if more people double check this and confirm, or come up with their own counter claims.

 

• frmorrison

Why is that? SoR only hits if your melee hit. SoB has its own hit and crit table, so I see how SoB slightly favors hit, but I am missing something.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Redcape

The POI is definately going to be within reach at level 70. I don't know if people will be at it or not, but it can't be far off. It is vital to keep in mind though that the POI you are talking about is only for personal dps. If hit and str are very similar in dps numbers but str returns 6 mp5 to the raid per point of str in addition, the comparison isn't even remotely close.

If your raid values mana return then even with level 70 conversions there isn't a contest, str is monstrously out in front. If you don't care about your mana return, they are pretty close.

The really, really hard thing about this is that we have to figure out how valuable mana is. For example, even if we figure out that hunters get exactly 527 mp5 (numbers made up) we need a value for it, and that value will vary wildly from how much a mage would value 527 mp5. Return on mp5 isn't a nice curve at all but rather hugely spikey based on different rotations, downtime amounts, fight lengths, spec, and of course class. Actually figuring out how much dps 527 mp5 would give to a hunter is difficult in the extreme because we have to know first how much mana they have available and what rotations are possible etc, etc. We can actually make these determinations once we see the final talents and in particular finalized mana returns methods, but at this point we can say how much mana a class gets with some reasonable amount of accuracy (+/- 10%) but saying how much that matters to them is really pure guesswork given what we know right now.

Toastr, I don't think your formula accounts for the way that ability cooldowns stack together. It is a approximation, but since GCDs collide and force many attacks to come precisely 1.5 seconds after each other instead of them coming along in a predictable 'once every average cooldown' fashion the formula as I see it isn't actually going to reflect how the mana will flow. Our attacks don't happen in a independent fashion, and that is true of other mana classes that have an autoattack. If the JoW procs off an autoattack, you can't just use cooldowns like

DS 10.4 average cooldown
Judge 8 average cooldown
CS 6.7 average cooldown

and plug those numbers in. You might be in the middle of a CS - DS - Judge - Exorcism series just as JoW comes off cooldown and you won't see a smooth distribution like your formula would suggest. Also, your next autoattack would come in at 5.44 seconds later (guesstimation for illustrative purposes) regardless, which really wrecks the math. If your cooldowns are clumped (which they should be) you will also end up with more JoW cooldown ends during times where you have no buttons to hit which throws another wrench into the mix because you would have to rely on AA to get your JoW proc at that point.

You can actually develop pretty solid JoW numbers for nukers because once you know their rotations you don't have to worry about AA messing everything up and you can actually just sit down with their hasted cast speeds and figure out exactly when JoW will proc. You can't do the same for hunters, rets, prots, or enhancement shamans though. You are going to need to just guess for them unless you want to write a simulator.

Edit: Frmorrison, the reason SoB is different is that it is much worse, basically. It gets much lower return on str on both the judgement and the seal and as such it does less damage and has a lower str return. It gets a return on weapon damage, so it has a higher weapon damage return than SoR, but its str return is so much lower that str and hit get pretty tight for value.

IMPORTANT EDIT:

Ignore JotW completely, it would seem. Blue has stated that all mana battery functions will be based on returning a percentage of max mana instead of based on damage. If JotW only returns a % of base mana then it looks like Ret paladins will be back to crying the blues about soloing, but it will mean we have a powerful raid role. Anyway, see the post at MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Changes to Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking Lots of implications, obviously.

 

bellator

For those that havent seen there has been a big blue post about buffs/debuffs here:-

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Changes to Debuffs, Buffs, and Raid Stacking

Some of the highlights which directly effect retribution paladins are:-

1) It would appear JotW is being completely change so that it on a judgement up to 10 people in the raid get a buff called replenishment which causes them to regenerate 0.5% of their maximim mana each second. For a ret paladin on lets say 7k mana this equates to a buff of 35 mana per second. This is a little under half what JotW would give per person when split over 3 people.....this could provide serious mana issues for paladins.

2) This replenishment buff is also being utilised by spriests and hunters in different forms (also effecting 10 people), which suggests Blizzard wants 2 mana batteries per raid and that each mana battery can provide a maximum of 0.5% mana per second for each person. With this level of consistency one has to wonder what will happen to JoW as in its current form it would be far too powerful.

3) BoM and Battleshouts buffs will be identical and non stackable

4) Heart of the Crusader doesnt stack with Totem of Wrath (which is being changed to provide a flat spell damage buff + all enemies in its radius receive an identical (different name) to Crusader strike.

5) Sanctified retribution now longer stacks with ferocious inspriation (which will effect raid, and both will have same dmg increase)

6) Swift Retribution now no longer stacks with improved moonkin aura (which is changed to be idential to swift retribution)

All in all almost every classes buffs can be buffed from another class. How they are going to balance every specs dps now if beyond me. I do think the idea behind this is a good one, but how it will be implemented is yet to be seen.

 

Alleyra

Something to consider is that a lot of similar buffs will no longer be stacking. Blizzard made a post today listing these. There's a few tidbits regarding JotW in there, as well. Perhaps not as relevant to the POI discussion as some things: but definitely something we should all be aware of in future theory-crafting.

EDIT: Bellator beat me to it!