Lunicks

Thanks a lot for the correction and for clearing that up - I can't see why I'd think it wouldn't reset the swing timer.

 

Gamepro

Just how important is the expertise cap for ret? I know it sits third in the stat priority (2nd after hit cap) and I'm desperately hanging onto [Steelbreaker's Embrace] for the expertise cap. But I'm considering replacing it with [Turalyon's Battleplate of Triumph] and be sitting way below the cap.

 

Neraya

Both hit and expertise are important below the cap. Expertise still has some value above the "attack from behind" cap as you'll sometimes be hitting mobs from the front, hit doesn't have any value above cap.

But loosing out on other stats such as Str/Crit is also an important issue when valuating upgrades. As with all such questions: use Rawr.
It depends on your other gear as well (will the T9 activate your 2P or 4P bonus ?).

 

Glutton

That isn't correct. Hit provides additional, although significantly reduced DPS until you reach the spell hit cap.

 

• frmorrison

Even though that is a lot of expertise to lose, the tier set item is better. Sure you will get more dodged attacks, but the attack that do hit will hit harder. Plus you get closer the the tier bonuses (even though the 4 piece is weak, it is still good to get). Use Rawr to see how much dps you would gain.

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

 

baldilox

very useful thread, however what i am having problems with is how rawr itemizes gear.

currently, i am over hit cap, 1 below exp with SoV glyph active, and gemmed according to the standards set forth here.

if i followed rawr to the letter i would be using the 245 leather feet out of togc10, however doing so would cost me all the expertise that greaves of the 7th give.

another question, and i apologise if its stupid, i have read that the rotation changes if above 7k ap, which i get when fully raid buffed. after trying it i actually lost dps.

and my last noob question, does our rotation change when fighting undead and the like? currently i go with the standard cs-jow-ds-fcfs, however have wondered if i should change my rotation when facing enemies that my spells will auto crit on.

 

lou.cicconi

It seems like the new T10 libram will solve most of the problems with seal swapping in 3.3. If we can switch targets and switch seals without losing our 220 str (like our current 200 str with valiance), we can keep up our dps over target swapping fights.

This combined with the new T10 2pc bonus, as divine storm adds a lot of cleave damage, could offer a lot of dps increase in target switching and aoe fights.

I'm curious to see the dps with this new libram stacked with SoComm against a 4+ aoe fight.

 

• frmorrison

The 245 Leather boots are Acidmaw Treads (I use them). They have expertise and hit, while not as much expertise as 7th Legion, is is a solid item.

Don't change your priority on Undead. The only thing that changes is you can use Holy Wrath. Use Judgement first.

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

 

Jeh

Having just looked at your gear I find it surprising RAWR is telling you to drop 7th for acidmaw. They have less expertise and a lot more hit on them, but you are already at the hit cap. I'm pretty sure for the set you have on armory the only boots that would be better are the 258 version of 7th.

 

baldilox

ty for the rotation advice, i have since went with jow-cs-ds fcfs since reading this threat and my dps has noticeabley increased.

if i equip the acidmaw boots my expertise drops below single didgits, it would be around 15 with SoV on, couple with rawr showing me to use 2 nightmare tears, well I just don't trust it, so I am sticking with greaves of the 7th legion till we can get into togc25.

 

Grigorim

Regarding rotation, in my current gear RAWR shows j>cs to be 1 dps lower than cs>j. I do have the 4 piece T9. I've tried to figure out why my values differ from conventional wisdom, but have come up blank. Has anyone else noted this?

 

• Zurm

4pc T9 isn't a magical breaking point. The breaking point is around 2pc T9 and 7k ap raid buffed BEFORE procs. Your AP is incredibly low because of the extreme amount of agility gear you are wearing, and as a result you have higher crit but not enough AP to make the swap work (at your current gear level). I think you may have gone a bit overboard with the Agi gear, there is really no reason for someone in full 245 gear to not have at least 5k ap unbuffed.

 

Grigorim

Point taken, Zurm, but RAWR is the one that has been suggesting the AGI pieces I have over similar tier STR gear ever since I got the 2t9 bonus. Most of my pieces are BIS in my current setup for anything outside 10 totgc tribute runs and 25 man totgc (which my guild doesn't do and my server doesn't pug).

 

• frmorrison

I looked at your Armory and without Heroic mode, you don't have much to get besides a small upgrade via Dual-Blade Butcher or maybe the Onynia Expertise Sword and using Bloodshed Band + Bloodbath girdle.

I never ran an agility Normal mode set in the BiS thread, so it is interesting that with medium AP but high Crit CS barely beats Judgement. That is something to keep in mind with Tier 10 with 2T9 going away that CS could be better than Judge.

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

 

Glutton

SimulationCraft and Rawr agree in terms of what items constitute our BiS. The two programs disagree in terms of gems and enchants. Rawr states that the optimal cloak enchant is 22 AGI and the optimal yellow gem with a STR or AGI socket is an Inscribed Ametrine. In SimulationCraft for players below roughly 447 haste rating, the optimal cloak enchant is 23 haste and the optimal yellow gem with a STR or AGI socket bonus is a Fierce Ametrine.

I plotted the DPS results of tweaking my gear in SimulationCraft.

The first data point is my current armory. The second data point replaces +22 AGI to cloak with +23 haste rating. The third and subsequent data points replace Inscribed Ametrines with Fierce Ametrines one by one.

The priority order used was Judgement>Crusader Strike>Divine Storm>Consecration>Hammer of Wrath>Exorcism. We can see from the graph that the number of low priority ability uses decrease. Exorcism drops from 29.1 to 27.6, Consecration drops from 44.3 to 42.3, and Divine Storm drops from 44.8 to 42.7. The number of Crusader Strikes sky rockets from from 96.9 to 109.7. Even though it's the top priority ability, Judgement drops from 59.3 to 57.2 uses. I neglected to graph it, but the number of Hammer of Wraths stays nearly constant.

My question is does the local haste maxima observed around 447 haste rating (45.51% melee haste, 22.89% spell haste raid buffed) make sense? The DPS increase between 437 and 447 haste rating in SimulationCraft is quite significant - 83 in my current gear set. My initial guess is that 22.89% spell haste sufficiently decreases the GCD of Exorcism and Consecration in order to better align with a four second CS cooldown; however, the change in spell GCD between 437 and 447 haste rating is on the scale of a few milliseconds (1.22389 seconds down to 1.220604 seconds).

 

Capstone

I haven't seen Rawr suggest a yellow gem for an AGI bonus...

 

Wrathblood

Glutton, could it be a harmonic effect like Neraya was suggesting about Redcape's work over in the 3.3 thread?

 

dedmonwakeen

I am working on smoothing this out through the introduction of a "wait" action. However, in order for it to be effective I need to first standardize a considerable amount of "named" data (such as cooldowns, dot durations, etc) so that we can use arbitrary action conditionals:

actions+=...
actions+=wait,some_action.cooldown<=0.5
actions+=some_action
actions+=some_other_action

In some cases it is better to wait a fraction of time for a very high-dps action to come off CD or finish ticking, etc.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Neraya

It does make sense yes...

At 0 haste, both melee and spells have identical GCD.
As you get more haste, the GCD on spells (cons, exo) becomes shorter and sometimes adding a bit more haste will alter the rotation. Sometimes quite drastically AND unexpectedly.

If you plot out a perfect FCFS rotation using 1.5melee and spell GCD and compare it to a rotation with 1.5 melee and 1.49 spell gcd, you actually get off worse. Over a 5min fight this results in 2 less CS, 1 less Judge & 1 less DS and an extra 7 seconds of time waiting on CD's.
Wait. What ? More haste means less abilities hit ? In this particular case yes. Sometimes changing haste only a small bit can have a big impact. A slightly faster weapon swing speed will compensate this slightly but overall it'll still be a negative.


In reality things aren't as bad because human inaccuracy, server response time etc will add 'random' delays between each spell making a sustainable "perfect" following of the rotation impossible.

Minor changes in the rotation asside, the first major change in the rotation happens when you get enough haste to make the spell GCD 1.25s. and yes, the change is major even compared with 1 less haste rating.


I'm not sure if rawr models gear upgrades accounting for the fact that a change in haste would change the rotation.

 

• Zurm

The only reason Rawr is prefering crit so highly right now is due to the 2pc T9 bonus. I expect if you want to find the root cause, you should look to differences on that front regarding the cloak enchant.

As for gems... haste is not as good of a stat as crit is, even without 2pc T9. I'd have to look at the code they are using, but not enough of our damage is affected by haste to warrant such results, in my opinion. I could be wrong though; haste is one of those stats that only gets more attractive as gear (primarily due to AP totals) increases.

It does. Every time it re-calculates (gear swap, talent change, buff change, etc) it re-runs the rotation stuff.

 

Brekkie

What is the haste level to reach that 1.25 sec spell gcd? approximately 400 haste rating pre-raid buffs?

 

• frmorrison

Another factor that isn't covered to well by Rawr/Simcraft is movement. There aren't anymore Patchwerk encounters, so as you are running from fire or running to kill the next add, haste loses some value (haste isn't helping if you can't hit something), while crit is marginally better (you can Exo/HoW/Taunt while running).

However, on a stand still encounter, that is interesting that 447 haste (does this include 5% spell haste from Totem?) seems to give a nice dps increase.

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

 

dedmonwakeen

SimC provides a variety of raid events, including movement. How well they correspond to real raid events is certainly debatable.....

Ex:
raid_events+=movement,duration=5.0,cooldown=45.0

By default, if duration_stddev and cooldown_stddev are not specified, they are set to 10% of the given average value.

When players are moving the sim turns off auto_attack and only allows ranged instant-cast abilities.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Rurahk

Does this amount of haste allow an extra melee swing+seal proc and/or ability use over the course of the fight? The cumulative effect of spell haste lowering spell GCD and faster melee swings over a 5 minute fight can cause sudden jumps in DPS for relatively small values of haste, as you are showing. Try changing the fight length to rule this out, perhaps averaging several sims in the range of +/- 5 seconds.

 

Glutton

Perhaps this is curtailed to certain pieces of gear. For example in our no restriction BiS, you'll observe a higher DPS increase from placing an Inscribed Ametrine + Bold Cardinal Ruby in the Belt of the Pitiless to obtain a +6 agi socket bonus.

I would disagree. Festergut and Rotface are fairly close to Patchwerk from a melee perspective (tanks and ranged have to do more work, however). Lord Jaraxxus falls into the same boat depending on your luck with Legion Flame and guild needs (i.e. is you switching overkill for portals?). Algalon is basically a tank and spank as well.

Yes, this DPS jump was observed with 3% all haste and 5% spell haste (along with 20% melee haste, but that doesn't affect your spell GCD).

If this haste/rotation jump is something more than an aberration in Simcraft, you'd probably have to stack quite a bit more than 447 haste in order take advantage of the jump due to individual variations in key stroke input and network latency.

Yes, however the increase in melee swings in fairly linear. SimulationCraft will report increases in fractional melee hits down to the tenths unit. It appears that each incase in 10 haste produces roughly one more melee hit in a 8.3 minute long encounter. On the graph you can observe that going from 447 to 457 (+10 haste, -10 crit) and so and on so forth produce small increases in DPS, most likely due to the effect you describe.

Although you might have hit on something. There is a sharp, nonlinear increase in the number of Seal of Vengeance procs going from 437 to 447 haste - from 340.2 procs to 351.5 procs. In all other parts of the graph it's roughly a 1 proc increase per 10 haste. I assume that's related to the increase in number of Crusader Strikes? Which would again point to something fundamentally changing in terms of GCD alignments in our rotation.