Mearis

I am pretty sure potions roll over, I can try to do some tests by the dummies later on. I haven't run the math but I am pretty sure that the increase in SW: P damage rolling over the entire fight is better than the marginal increase you get in the potion value you get if you use it under heroism, since at most you are looking at a 30% increase in the benefit of the potion assuming that 30% haste improved our damage by 30%.

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

zaxxs

Thankfully we dont have to make that choice.

Simply use a pot on the countdown and in that 10-12 sec of poted combat time at the start of the fight build up stacks and get your SWP applied.

 

Cyberspace

Yup. Just use two pots per fight. One right before the pull, and another during BL.

 

Endus

Except the current theorycraft regarding BL/Heroism is to pop it as early as possible. There is no (or at least a vanishingly tiny) advantage to popping it later in the fight, unless there's a specific phase like an Enrage you're trying to burn through ASAP. If you're just looking at maximizing the raid DPS, your shaman should be casting it about 20-30 seconds into the fight, to give everyone time to settle in and pop trinkets.

 

jdgaynor

Could you clarify that? I thought that the prevailing theorycraft was to pop Bloodlust so that you:

1.) Use the entire duration
2.) Have the duration cover as much of sub 35% as possible.

I thought that this was because other classes like Mages, and Warriors, do extra damage when a boss is below 35%. Is that mistaken?

 

wyldcards

I believe the Bloodlust Timing was discussed here in this thread [Math] Bloodlust/Heroism timing

Quick and Dirty Summary:
The DPS increase relative to Bloodlust for the classes that have 'Execute' abilities is not far from the DPS Increase Overall for all classes with Bloodlust.
Or from another perspective: Bloodlust early gets you to execute range faster, and then you get a 'longer' time within the Execute range where your DPS is higher anyways.

 

Cyberspace

Depending on how late/early you BL you could squeeze in the pot for the end of the BL.

 

zaxxs

bloodlusting before the 35% phase for most fights does not preclude allowing 60 seconds between pull and hero. For example on even a quickish 2:20 patch kill the time line could look like this:

T -2 Pop pot number 1
T 0 pull
T 13 first pot drops off aftr allowing me to get up a SWP with extra crit and all raid buffs
T 58 - Pot cooldowns come back up.
T60 - Bloodlust
T100 - Bloodlust fades
T XX - hits 35% for mages
T XX+Y Hits 20% for warriros
T140 = death


This still allows for heriosm to be used "early" leading to a shorter 100-35% phase and more relitive time for exttra damage talents and abilities while giving 2 optimal pot times.


I dont even think that anyone would honestly tell us that we should
T 0 pull
T1 Hero
T1 Pot
T40 end hero
T140 death


That is obviously sub optimal for many classes. It does not allow us to get to 5stacks and have dots up pre hero, it does not allow scortch to be up the full hero, it does not allow time to get sunders up for physical dmage classes. ...

I think my guilds DPS is acceptable and on our normal 6-7 healer runs this is about the times we have for patch. This is only the example I picked feel free to sustitute another boss in here. For shorter bosses yes I have to forgoe my pre-pull pot but for longer fghts it becomes even more advantagious for me to use 2. I am fully aware that when stacking DPS patch quickly moves into the group of fights that is too short to use two pots.

 

Endus

Possible, yes, but as we figured out in the thread which wyldcard conveniently linked, the best possible time to burn BL/Heroism is as soon as possible in the fight. The difference in kill time in popping it late is insignificant; it shaves off less than a second off a boss kill if you pop it for the final 35%. This means that popping it early to allow for timing trinkets (and possibly getting a second trinket use late in the fight) and other cooldowns is going to make a much larger impact on the time to the boss' death.

The effect of the trinkets and other cooldowns is going to end up being far greater than that of the pots. In fact, you might find that it's better to save your pot cooldown for the BL/Heroism, rather than proactively potting and getting another one in later in the fight, though you'd have to test it to be sure.

The main reason, besides the timing of trinkets and such, is that should anyone happen to die, they obviously won't be getting the benefit of BL/Heroism. Chance of someone dying increases as the duration of the fight increases. Popping it early minimizes this chance of reduced effect, though mathematically, it's still better to pop early even if everyone stays alive the entire fight.

 

windcape

Getting hit capped is a absolute must for any serious raider today.

On the Bloodlust/Heroism topic, I can say I've experienced a lot of groups, specially in progress raids, where the time between "expected pull" and "actual pull" is rather large. I'd say we shouldn't rely on it being possible.

 

zaxxs

The conclusion you are trying to draw from that math is simply unsupported. I would hope that anyone can see that given other factors held constant

1) It is not optimal to pop hero as soon as you pull (or even within 10 sec) that simply does not give time to assure that debuffs are all up.

2) That allowing for 2 prime time pots is somehow a dps loss. (stating otherwise is simply silly)


Additionally if you have a few mid fight deaths the ability to save the hero for the next attempt is a huge boon in 10man.

On the topic of trinkets as far as I can recall trinket cooldowon behavor is not modeled in that thread and I havve spent some time in it. I am 100% sure that the thread did not break down the raiding trinkets basedon their inidivudal behavior, percentage that they each make up of raiding DPS, the typical usage of trinkets over which players have control ...

 

zaxxs

Yeah I just double checked and no where in either of the heroism analysis threads does anyone even claim to have made an analysis of which method made better use of the average trinket.

All 3 forms of the analysis simply attempt to decide if it is 1) better to use BL early to get to execute phase more quickly and allow more use of execute or 2) use it late to benefit execute et all.

Now negating the fact that these discussions ignore any non-linear increase in DPS from execute classes from effects like the excess rage leading to quicker and more powerfull executes in a manor that has a non-linear slope. I am willing to stipulate that as these forumals "show" it is likely close to a wash with early use the marginally better option (but marginal counts).


Now this stipulation in no way requres that BL be used in conjunctin with the pull as some people state. This only requires that heroism be used at least 40 sec before execute phase hits.

 

Talander

The "save BL for the next fight" argument is pretty moot as the cooldown for Bloodlust was reduced to 5 minutes - even at Sartharion which has about the shortest possible wipe recovery you'd barely have to wait much between tries.

Why does it require BL to be finished before execute phase? If I understood it correctly it said it's pretty much a wash when you use it - the factors for an early BL are the possibility to use all the cooldowns at the same time and pretty much guaranteeing all 25 raiders still being alive.
Then: Which debuffs take longer than 10 seconds to apply? I can't really think of that many besides sunder armor maybe.
Furthermore using the early bloodlust pretty much guarantees you having your trinkets proccing/being usable for the full duration during bloodlust - something which you cannot guarantee for the 35% one.
The only disadvantage I do see is the unability to use 2 pots during the encounter while ensuring having a full pot duration running during bloodlust.

The crit part of the Wild magic potion is kept by SW:P both on live and on the PTR.
I don't actually remember, but isn't the pot cooldown still 2 minutes? It's obviously a non-issue on Ulduar fights, but with patchwerk lasting 1:50-2:15 I wouldn't count on getting 2 pots in

 

Luthi

No, the cooldown is 1 Minute, which starts instantly when out of combat.

A heroism used at 40 seconds will allow for both potions.

 

Endus

Yes. Because if using it late isn't any improvement in the time to kill the boss, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to save it, and several reasons to use it early. Which are listed in that thread, though they aren't done mathematically because it's relatively obvious why they'd be an advantage; you don't need math to see it.

They don't consider that, because they're irrelevant. Those classes which have a feedback loop like that will quickly reach a point where their linear progression is throttled by game mechanics like global cooldowns. A death knight who can't spend his RP faster than he's gaining it is still limited to only as many Rune Strikes as he has weapon swings and as many runic power dumps as he has global cooldowns. Also, this boost in practice will be either a multiplicative or additive boost to the person's dps, both of which the math DOES take into account; that it progresses in a non-linear fashion is irrelevant to considering the effect on overall DPS, due to these constraints. The math doesn't care what happens second-by-second, just the overall effects.

Except that the later you wait into the fight;
1> the more likely it is someone will die, and thus not gain the benefit of Heroism at all
2> The more likely people will have popped their trinkets and 2-3 minute cooldowns early, hoping for a possible second use
3> The more unlikely random proc chances will have of coinciding with the duration due to internal cooldowns
4> The greater the chance that you'll pop it very slightly late and kill the boss before its duration ends, meaning there was wasted buff duration, since much of DPS is based on the RNG and any given fight can easily go faster than expected according to a timer

Four solid reasons why it's more effective to pop it early. And the only possible benefit of popping it late is a second pot buff for 15s of its duration for those who popped one just before the boss pull as well.

THOSE are why the thread suggests popping it early. It has nothing to do with the benefit being worse mathematically during the Execute phase; it's not. If it's timed perfectly and everything else is spot-on, it's about even. The problem is, that's almost impossible to guarantee, so you may as well just pop it early when it's much easier to coordinate everything rather than pray that everything works out perfectly to optimize a late BL/Heroism.

 

MegaKenny

Back on topic about dot crit logic. I did a little bit of math, which I can't post because I didn't save it anywhere, and found that if this indeed is the way things will be for 3.1 and using a crit stick for your initial cast of Shadow Word: Pain that the best weapon to use would be Damnation, followed by Blade of Unrequited Love from Karazhan with all crit gems in it while using Accursed Spine off-hand.

Obviously there are better from Ulduar, but I'm thinking about what I should use going into there. Has anyone else looked into this at all.

 

ildon

It's depressing to me that we're even in a position where swapping in a crit weapon at the start (especially when it's a melee weapon from Karazahn with crit gems in it) is even a consideration. I wish Blizzard would just fix the way Mindflay refreshes SW:P to include crit % and %-based damage multipliers and end this whole mess.

 

Mearis

I wrote some horrible garbled code to do a numeric simulation and using trinket during heroism usually results in an incredibly tiny dps increase assuming the trinket was a flat increase in damage, the damage increase was very puny though.

this is a bit moot though as there are no good 'on use' trinkets for shadowpriests.

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

wayth

Indeed. I seem to recall some blue post a long while back indicating that it was something with the engine that was limiting that issue, but frankly, this is such a ridiculous issue it should be dealt with. The fact that we have mods written specifically to show when to recast SW:P to take advantage of the myriad buffs is rather ridiculous.

I love the mechanic of having Mind Flay refresh SW:P. I think it's a unique and interesting asset to our class, but the numerous issues with it make it incredibly frustrating. If I'm forced to recast pain to take advantage of buffs, what's the point of having it refresh in the first place?

EDIT: I'm sure it's been done before, but I just made another topic on the suggestion forum: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Mind Flay refresh of Shadow Word: Pain

 

swankholyman

Real quick question about crit, old shadowform stated "dot's gain spell damage based on critical chance", but Ive never seen the numbers run on how this worked. Did the engine take the damage per tick, estimate the average damage per crit if crits were possible, then determine an average damage increase based on how much damage this spell would probably do if it crit at the rate defined by your crit chance. Or did it define extra damage based on crit chance not in referance to your spell power. If it used to base bonus dot damage exclusivly on crit rating (and I dont know how that would have worked either) and not on the total damage your dots are ticking at based on spell power, dots critting could be a huge boost in dps at high gear levels.

Also I havnt seen any dicussion on the changes to mind melt, which now gives our dots a 6% critical strike bonus that never existed prepatch. For a 2K sp 17% cahnce to crit SP the 5% boomkin buff was roughly equal to 350-400 dps, so this buff could equal around 300 extra dps which at 3800 dps prepatch is about an 8% dps increase.

 

ildon

In 3.0.9, it was a flat % damage increase on the dot at the time of casting based on your total crit % against the mob at that time (including buffs and debuffs). I forget the exact conversion, but I don't think it was 1% crit == 1% damage. I'm sure the info is somewhere in the forums if you search for it.

 

poohbear302001

So from all I read and I am not a number cruncher or good at this theorycrafting stuff, but from what you all are saying pre-patch you feel IF does not indeed crit with your dots? Now that patch is here has anyone been able to test and see if IF really does not give that extra crit chance with our dots since our dots are suppose to be critting? I have not been able to raid and see for myself so I wanted to see people's feedback after the fact.

 

ildon

There was no "feel" about it in 3.0.9 and previous. Inner Focus did not affect dot damage at all. Last time I tested it on the PTR it still did not affect the new dot crits. That was almost 2 months ago, but I have yet to see anything to contradict it yet, and I don't want to pay to respec to test it now. It's a pretty easy thing to test. Take all your gear off and use Inner Focus SW:P on a target dummy, then just refresh the dot with MF for a while. Your base dot crit rate while naked should be something like 8% (I think) and if Inner Focus gave a crit bonus your result should be around 25% more than that.

Honestly, the way SW:P is working right now it would be pretty stupid/broken for Inner Focus to affect it, because it would be a permanent 25% crit to the dot for as long as you could continue refreshing it, which would greatly over value the intended benefit of Inner Focus. I'm not saying it's impossible, Blizzard makes mistakes, but I would hope it would get hotfixed fast.

 

Rerolled

Went and tested this, IF doesn't affect SW:P, at least not the refreshes with mind flay. Oddly enough it did seem to affect DP ticks, though I didn't have the patience to test for long enough to get a statistically useful sample size.

 

marsui

According to Rawr, relative stat values should not be trusted. So is Crit now the second best stat for a shadow priest, or is it still haste?