Retribution DPS Theorycraft - Page 388

Redcape · 10/07/08, 11:05 PM

Originally Posted by Trakor

The fact is my rotation allowed for a 0.5 secs delay and your arugement and your calculations are based on the fact it doesnt, when it obviously needs to. Like I mentioned before, prioritising CS over judgement means you are swaping 1 judgement for 3 CS and keeping +130ap 100% uptime. Your rotation keeps the buff up 75% of the time, at best. FCFS bandwagon surely can be good enough, but i dont see how its the best, as you claim.

Why do you keep assuming I am using your crazy rotation that makes CS only go off each 8 seconds? I don't have a .5 second lag on hitting buttons, and I don't see how you raid anything with that kind of latency. When you prioritize Judgement you hit

0 - Judgement
1.5 - CS
7.5 - CS
9 - Judgement

Look back at my post. Notice this. This is NOT swapping 1 Judgement for 3 CS. This is delaying CS by 1.5 seconds if and only if it collides with Judgement. Have you modeled a FCFS rotation on a spreadsheet for several minutes of simulated raid time? How about a model where you prioritize CS? I have done both, and I can tell you for certain that FCFS is the strongest, highest dps rotation. Until you have actually done the homework, please stop insisting that you know something about the topic.

Andrast · 10/07/08, 11:25 PM

Originally Posted by Redcape

I don't have a .5 second lag on hitting buttons, and I don't see how you raid anything with that kind of latency.

This is exactly the point. You don't see how we raid at high latency but somehow, we do! I think you need to read what he has written slightly more carefully and not dismiss him out of hand.

In reality most of us do raid at 200-400ms latency although there are many people in our raids who sit at 500-600ms every single night.

I was raiding on beta with Trakor and I'm fairly sure there is some misunderstanding going on here since we were discussing/arguing about this after the raid. Basically in high latency situations we're advocating that you prioritise CS > Judgment > DS in the case of a clash. Otherwise it is FCFS. I modelled it and found that over a long enough period of time it does settle into a rotation but it is far too complex to memorise and trying to macro it would be stupid.

In any case there are times when saving a cooldown might be best. On Malygos for instance you really want to prioritise CS over anything else especially before the whirlwind since it is highly likely you won't be in melee range but will still be able to cast Judgment and Divine Storm while affected. Similarly for Maxaena you probably want to save Divine Storm for the spider bugs and assist with their aoe. This is particularly true in a 10-man environment.

Janraea · 10/07/08, 11:43 PM

Originally Posted by Andrast

This is exactly the point. You don't see how we raid at high latency but somehow, we do! I think you need to read what he has written slightly more carefully and not dismiss him out of hand.

In reality most of us do raid at 200-400ms latency although there are many people in our raids who sit at 500-600ms every single night.

Then write or modify the spreadsheet for that kind of latency for yourself. But don't argue over the best rotation on that basis - most of the people on the ej boards don't operate in those absurd conditions. Trakor seems to be insisting that *everyone* has 500 ms or latency.

Originally Posted by trakor

The fact is my rotation allowed for a 0.5 secs delay and your arugement and your calculations are based on the fact it doesnt, when it obviously needs to.

If you'd like to make some theorycraft argument about the best rotation in very high latency, make a new thread and talk about that there. At the very least, don't assume that the people that make the spreadsheets (have you looked at that thing!?) are morons that don't know what they're talking about.

Andrast · 10/08/08, 12:24 AM

Originally Posted by Janraea

Then write or modify the spreadsheet for that kind of latency for yourself. But don't argue over the best rotation on that basis - most of the people on the ej boards don't operate in those absurd conditions. Trakor seems to be insisting that *everyone* has 500 ms or latency.

If you'd like to make some theorycraft argument about the best rotation in very high latency, make a new thread and talk about that there. At the very least, don't assume that the people that make the spreadsheets (have you looked at that thing!?) are morons that don't know what they're talking about.

I did write my own spreadsheet based on my own non-absurd conditions. I don't see how it is helpful to be so defensive/angry/dismissive of people who are merely trying to add to the known knowledge base. If nothing else it is a helpful thought-experiment to imagine how a "rotation" performs under latency or bad-reaction time.

Finally, can someone explain this fundamental concept I appear to have missed:

Originally Posted by Redcape

If you have choices because multiple abilities just came off cooldown you hit the highest damage ability first

Perhaps my thinking is off but this does not appear to be a self-evident fact. For burst damage I can see how this is the case, but for sustained damage what matters would be the amount of times you use each ability. Surely wouldn't the technique for resolving collisions be: Prioritise whichever ability that "prevents" collision for the longest amount of time.

Edit:
Note that I use the word rotation knowing that it isn't strictly accurate. It appears to be a fun thing to do in this thread to attack someone because they use the word rotation when they are, in fact, speaking about a FCFS system but merely using the "r-word" as a convenience.

Fqubed · 10/08/08, 7:26 AM

I'm doing the stupidly mindnumming list of abilities and their uses as they turn up. Basically in a three minute rotation there might be a good time to delay judge for one more GCD in order to prevent further collisions later on, but you are not going to notice any real difference in dps (if it turns out avoiding a collision further on is a dps gain, this is still to be disputed). So just do FCFS and when both are up whoever does more damage.

Trakor · 10/08/08, 10:15 AM

Look, right now, on live, we consider a good rotation to have cs every 6.5 secs and judgements every 8.5 secs, with cs > judgement when they clash. The reason for that, as discussed here before, is due to lag and human error/reaction time. We have seen several WWS reports and we dont often, see a rotation, if at all, where cs was used every 6 secs. We can theorycraft and assume 0 ping and no human error whatsoever, but it is not what happens, at least most of the time, when we see the actual results.

Making a rotation or theorycrafting on numbers assuming 0 ping and perfection all the time from humans is wrong and will provide wrong results.

Originally Posted by Andrast

Perhaps my thinking is off but this does not appear to be a self-evident fact. For burst damage I can see how this is the case, but for sustained damage what matters would be the amount of times you use each ability. Surely wouldn't the technique for resolving collisions be: Prioritise whichever ability that "prevents" collision for the longest amount of time.

I totally agree with you, and its what I have been trying to say, but probably not geting the idea across correctly. Over time, to have the highest dps, it will come down to who uses the abilities the most, at the right order when they clash.

Cerakona · 10/08/08, 10:51 AM

Out of curiousity, has anyone heard if Blizz are re-itemising the tier4/5/6 ret gear again? I have seen posts on mmo-champion that involved changing the Pally Protection sets to move more in line with the intended changes (dropping of Intellect in favor of more tanking stats), but I am not sure if that is happening at all now. So, has anyone heard anything about that at all?

Trakor · 10/08/08, 11:30 AM

Originally Posted by Cerakona

Out of curiousity, has anyone heard if Blizz are re-itemising the tier4/5/6 ret gear again? I have seen posts on mmo-champion that involved changing the Pally Protection sets to move more in line with the intended changes (dropping of Intellect in favor of more tanking stats), but I am not sure if that is happening at all now. So, has anyone heard anything about that at all?

Item Sets - World of Warcraft

Exemplar · 10/08/08, 11:38 AM

JoW does not scale - same proc regardless who judges. JoL scales - more AP/SP, better procs. At a glance it appears Ret will produce better JoL than Holy (coefficient for SP and AP are identical, we're going to have tons more AP than they have SP).

JoL heals are attributed to the Judger. Therefore if I judge Light, all healing done by JoL show as if I performed the heal. Based on other classes (Priest PoM and Shaman ES) this does appear to generate threat for the healer.

Curious - if the Ret drops JoL and there's heavy AOE damage which affects melee... how bad does the healing threat generated get?

I'd suspect negligable, as I haven't heard threat concerns regarding 80 runs so far, but I had heard some Spriest QQing that they potentially could be doing 750 HPS per person and the threat nighmares involved with that, so thought I'd ask.

Cerakona · 10/08/08, 11:41 AM

Thanks Trakor... now why the hell haven't they updated the Ret gear with the changes, but done so for the Prot? It seems a little meh to me

Prinsesa · 10/08/08, 12:00 PM

Cerakona, the drastic changes to Prot's mechanics would have made tanking plate with spell power well-nigh-useless come 3.0, whereas the significantly less drastic changes to Ret's mechanics simply make the INT an arguably wasted stat.

• frmorrison · 10/08/08, 2:11 PM

Originally Posted by Cerakona

Thanks Trakor... now why the hell haven't they updated the Ret gear with the changes, but done so for the Prot? It seems a little meh to me

Prot had a fundamental shift in mechanics (Strength is good, spell power is not as good but useful), while Ret had a very small change (int is bad, stack even more strength).

So dev time to remove int and add str was not worth it.

Pereg · 10/08/08, 2:25 PM

Originally Posted by Trakor

Redcape, like I said before and Avitus tried to explain here, you dont use what hit the hardest 1st, because of CDs menagement. For examply, lets look at judgement > cs rotation, considering that 1.5secs GCD + 0.5 secs (latency + reaction time) means that there would be, on avg, 2 secs between each ability.

- CS strike cd is 6 secs
- Judgement cd (with talents) is 8 secs

Time Ability
0 Judgement
2 CS
8 Judgement and CS are up
8 Judgement
10 CS
16 Judgement and CS are up
16 Judgement
18 CS

As you can see, if you prioritise judgement over CS, cds will always clash, and you would always be delaying CS by 2 secs, which, over an entire fight, means you lose way more CS hits.

Now, if we prioritise CS > Judgement

Time Ability
0 CS
2 Judgement
6 CS
10 Judgement
12 CS
18 Crusader Strike and judgement are up
18 CS
20 Judgement

As you can see, with Judgement > CS, you basically turn CS into a 8 sec cd, losing 25% of its DPS. If you use CS > Judgement, you will delay judgement by 2 secs every 18 secs, rather than delaying CS by 2 secs every 6 secs.

You pretty much want to use your abilities on shorter cd first to avoid more clashes like these, which, in the long term, it will cost you a smaller dps loss.

You've got to stop your comparison at 18sec if you want to compare apples to apples. At 18sec in your first example you would get 3 judgements and 3 cs's. In your second example you would get 2 judgements and 4 cs's.

So even considering a .5 sec delay, 3 Judgements + 3 CS > 2 Judgements + 4 CS in terms of damage. And that damage difference gets bigger as time goes on. Now the libram you mention might change things, but getting that high end arena libram at lvl 80 is really far off time wise. I'm a lot more concerned currently with my guilds continued progression in Sunwell after 3.0 hits and before WotLK gets here. So I'm with the FCFS camp prioritzing your biggest damage abilities in case of a cd clash. Also in my case, I'll be using a Judgement glyph and will still be using the Libram of Avengement and together, that makes the case for prioritizing Judgement even bigger.

Avitus · 10/08/08, 3:03 PM

Keep in mind they also changed all Sunwell prot paladin itemization (non set epics) this way, where as Sunwell ret itemization didn't need changes as it's pretty much "standard warrior gear" with no int/regen/spelldamage, so it'll be perfect if you can get it.

The good news for people currently "farming T6 content but struggling with Sunwell" is that they recently announced (blue post somewhere) that all Sunwell mobs will receive a fairly major nerf in HP and melee damage output. Combined with the new 3.0 talents, I'd expect a large number of guilds that previously didn't to start clearing SW or getting at least deeper = You'll ditch the now subpar T6 for more suitable Sunwell gear.

T4/T5 people are probably screwed for that month depending on how much they nerf Sunwell to make it accessible even to them. Your best bet is probably to go for non-set DPS armor to replace the tier pieces (start gathering now).

Taraxuss · 10/08/08, 7:09 PM

So, to start off, this is my first post, so go easy on me. Here goes:

I made a spreadsheet to simulate the results of prioritizing Hammer of Wrath or Judgment, based on which one used first when their cooldowns collide. I put together two rotations, one using a priority of HoW > Judgement > DS > CS, another using Judgment > HoW > DS > CS. It’s a FCFS rotation, using the priorities only when abilities come off cooldown at the same time, OR when they come off cooldown before the last GCD used. Both rotation and ability counts are over 120 seconds. Consecration was only used when there was a full GCD without one of those abilities coming off cooldowns, and without the glyph that extends it to 10 seconds. I set up different rotations, two of each Judgement cooldown (7,8,9 seconds).

So, for the results. For more detailed information or to view the rotations, please download the spreadsheet from the link provided at the bottom of the post.
HoW-priority FCFS, 7 second Judgement: 5 Consecrates, 16 CS, 11 DS, 17 Judgement, 19 HoW
Judgement FCFS, 7 second Judgement: 5 Consecrates, 17 CS, 11 DS, 17 Judgement, 17 HoW
HoW-priority FCFS, 8 second Judgement: 10 Consecrates, 19 CS, 10 DS, 13 Judgement, 20 HoW
Judgement FCFS, 8 second Judgement: 9 Consecrates, 18 CS, 11 DS, 14 Judgement, 18 HoW
HoW-priority FCFS, 9 second Judgement: 8 Consecrates, 17 CS, 12 DS, 13 Judgement, 19 HoW
Judgement FCFS, 9 second Judgement: 10 Consecrates, 18 CS, 12 DS, 13 Judgement, 19 HoW

Then, I thought about what a rotation of HoW and Judgement might be like, with them fitting together similarly to Judgement and CS on Live right now. Here were the results:
HoW-Judgement Priority, 9 second Judgement: 10 Consecrates, 17 CS, 10 DS, 14 Judgement, 20 HoW

Link to the spreadsheet: MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service