Mists of Pandaria: All Specs - Page 32

Rrui · 08/27/12, 4:04 PM

Is there a consensus on which spec for 5.0.4 will be top dps through the remainder of Dragon Soul?

diodiablo · 08/27/12, 6:33 PM

Originally Posted by Pathal

Brief PSA. Tomorrow, for those of you who will raid as Combat, you don't actually want 100% uptime on RvS.

When the RvS debuff expires, you want to pool your energy so long as you are not at 5 CP (as you won't have anticipation yet). This allows you to shift energy into better sources of damage. Don't cast SS/Evisc/Rupture with RvS down, just wait it out.

So lets say you can pool a hypothetical average of 40 energy per RvS, with a completely hypothetical 20e/s after Combat Potency. That's a delay of 2s, plus the duration of the RvS debuff, giving you 18/20 or 90% uptime on RvS. The actual "ideal uptime" will change with your gear, but just pool as high as you comfortably can before getting RvS back up.

Just to confirm, your suggestion is to try to use as few RvS as possible, ensuring to not keep it up when energy is too low to fire SS right away? This makes sense, as in the end of the fight we would have used less energy on RvS and more for SS, but I'm not sure this would make a big difference and with the actual levels of haste and energy regen in DS gear I think that the risk of overcapping energy with an (un)lucky proc of CP would offset the benefits, but it's worth to try.

Pathal · 08/27/12, 6:56 PM

Originally Posted by diodiablo

Just to confirm, your suggestion is to try to use as few RvS as possible, ensuring to not keep it up when energy is too low to fire SS right away? This makes sense, as in the end of the fight we would have used less energy on RvS and more for SS, but I'm not sure this would make a big difference and with the actual levels of haste and energy regen in DS gear I think that the risk of overcapping energy with an (un)lucky proc of CP would offset the benefits, but it's worth to try.

It sounds like you have the gist of it. I just wanted to make sure people realized this before it came "common knowledge" when Mists officially launches. The act of pooling may only be .8s on average for someone doing DS (95% uptime!), but there are many times in entry level t14 where you can sit there for 3-4 seconds before you cap energy. There's no point in hitting RvS in that scenario when the debuff is going to be wasted.

While our mop_combat script is pretty far from optimized and accurate (the backend could use a little more work too), I lose around 4.5% DPS by casting RvS every 18s in Mists, as opposed to pooling for 2s on average. That's a number that should be swimming in salt (not just a spoonful), but if it's in the right ballpark it's kind of a big deal to me.

This is what I sent to another person to clarify a few minutes ago:

Well, lets think of it this way. Lets pretend that RvS is a necessary evil, we need to cast it, but we really don't want to. So we really want to cast it as sparingly as possible that it will cover what we need to, which is to be up for every SS and damaging finisher. That is, only when we're close to capping energy (or are capped) and the RvS debuff is down.

So what pooling ends up doing is it reduces the RvS casts per minute, but our overall energy and CP generation stays the same. So we actually consume less energy via RvS than if we had kept constant uptime. This lets us use that energy on SS and finishers, which helps our DPS.

So we end up reducing the necessary evil, and in the process we maximize the strength of it.

Verain · 08/28/12, 2:47 AM

Presumably you would never delay an RvS if it would transition your bandit's guile color? (You would want to buff your autoattacks by progressing this, right?) Or would it be beneficial to delay in Yellow and Red, but not Blank or Green?

Omanko · 08/28/12, 6:15 AM

Gawd if that's the case I hope someone finally writes a mod to clearly mark the transition thresholds for BG on the UI :/

Fae · 08/28/12, 6:49 AM

I am quite sure it's possible to create such tracker in WeakAuras. Now it'll be even easier when you don't have to account target-switching. I did plan to create one but at the end, I decided to not bother with farm content and wait till 5.0 and full update of my UI.

I'll report back if I manage to create something useful.

Pathal · 08/28/12, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by Verain

Presumably you would never delay an RvS if it would transition your bandit's guile color? (You would want to buff your autoattacks by progressing this, right?) Or would it be beneficial to delay in Yellow and Red, but not Blank or Green?

It's always been beneficial to stall the transition from BG20 to BG30, it just wasn't that (for lack of a better word) practical to keep track of it. That's probably a valid point for the transition to BG10 and when BG30 expires though.

I'm not sure which has a greater impact right now, but I'll take another look into the pooling in Shadowcraft to see if the expectations are a little high.

jtstormrage · 08/28/12, 3:39 PM

Does anyone have any comments on the EP values for Combat and Sub tomorrow?

I am reforging as before the patch because I cannot think of a reason why the stat priority for Combat will change, and for Sub I think Mastery will go up and maybe Crit a tiny bit but otherwise I think Haste and Expertise will remain the most important.

EDIT: hit and expertise rating are idd 796.

Haileaus · 08/28/12, 4:07 PM

For sub we *think* the stat priority is Agi>>Hit(7.5%)>Exp(7.5%)>Mastery>Haste>Crit but that could be off, especially expertise. Crit is a lot worse now because we no longer get the extra damage bonus from BS/Hemo when we crit, nor do we get the extra energy for BS crits.

I do plan on testing the stat priorities in live one I get the chance though. Also does anyone know what we will be doing for openers as sub?

Also my own tests have indicated that 768 rating is both the hit and expertise cap at level 85 (as I posted earlier). Can anyone verify the actual cap?

Edit: To clarify, recently on beta I checked hit/exp numbers. I posted them in my guide on the official forums, but if you are afraid of those then here ya go:

773 hit = 7.55%
761 hit = 7.43%

.01% per point means cap (7.50%) is 768 hit rating

749 exp = 7.31%
752 exp = 7.34%
771 exp = 7.53%

.01% per point means cap (7.50%) is 768 exp rating

Of course (and I put this in my guide mind you) the scaling might not be linear and even so it is only about 1% per point, meaning the caps could be plus or minus one.

Verain · 08/28/12, 4:56 PM

Originally Posted by Omanko

Gawd if that's the case I hope someone finally writes a mod to clearly mark the transition thresholds for BG on the UI :/

That addon has existed for all of Cataclysm:
Bandits Guile Helper - Rogue - World of Warcraft Addons - Curse

It's always been beneficial to stall the transition from BG20 to BG30, it just wasn't that (for lack of a better word) practical to keep track of it. That's probably a valid point for the transition to BG10 and when BG30 expires though.

Well, the problem in yellow hasn't been the tracking, it's that many of your transitions you have something else going on that precludes the transition.

The question is more of, if you have blank 3, green 3, yellow 3... in those cases, do you want to pool energy if your RvS falls off? I would assume you would want that at yellow 3, but the others aren't very intuitive, as you are upping your time spent under weak colors to do the delay, and transforming a revealing into a sinister, while a dps gain, probably doesn't touch the other stuff here. My intuition would be to only delay on yellow 3, and to try to fit in an evis under red, and to pool otherwise.

Lumen222 · 08/29/12, 1:53 PM

Originally Posted by Haileaus

Also does anyone know what we will be doing for openers as sub?

I keep having this conversation but not coming up with concrete answers. I do see various people making broad statements about Ambush but when I question it they often fail to take multiple factors into account, and seem to just be focusing on the raw damage numbers of Ambush vs Garrote. It seems much more convoluted than that to me. Here are the factors I've been discussing with other people.

Assuming Shadow Focus talented-

The first Ambush is not affected by Find Weakness. It applies it but does not benefit from it.

Ambush is mitigated by armor Garrote is not.

Garrote instantly activates Sanguinary Veins, allowing you to start SnD earlier

Ambush awards 2 CP, Garrote only awards 1

Assuming Subterfuge talented-

All of the above is still a factor, but additionally:

Ambush costs the full 60 energy when used from normal stealth. Its cost is only reduced when used in Shadow Dance. Garrote on the other hand is only 45 energy.

I've tested the openers on the beta under the raid buff conditions provided in Shattrath. In PvE gear (no energy bonus from the PvP set) I could easily complete two Ambushes before the Subterfuge buff wore off. Three was out of the question. Likewise I could easily Garrote-->Ambush, but that was the limit.

The double Ambush set up unsurprisingly always resulted in CP over flow into Anticipation. Assuming of course you are using Premed... which you should, because where else are you going to use it? That said, on the off chance that you are not using Anticipation as your level 90 talent for some reason, this too could affect what's optimal. Premed--Garrote--Ambush also results in a smaller CP overflow, due to Hat Procs.

Conclusion:

I don't have one. As far as I've been able to ball park it *seems* like Subterfuge, starting with a Garrote-->Ambush--> SnD, is going to be the best option, due to being fully ramped up in 3 globals. But honestly the entire thing seems like it needs to be modeled in order to really know the answer. Factoring in things like the armor reduction on the first Ambush is beyond me. I guess the good news is nothing is so obviously "the right answer" that it's far and away the best option.

Egészségére · 08/29/12, 9:11 PM

[Cataclysmic Gladiator's Insignia of Conquest]

Is it just me or is this VERY good for PvE now, BiS material infact.

Lumen222 · 08/29/12, 10:34 PM

One last consideration I just noticed on the Sub opener/T15 issue.

MoS does not start counting down until after Subterfuge is over or "breaks" as the tool tip puts it, and is stil active as a passive ability during Subterfuge itself. So you get an extra couple of seconds of MoS if you talent this.

jtstormrage · 08/30/12, 4:45 AM

Crimson Tempest dot damage increased by 700%.

Beta Class Balance Analysis Pt. II - Forums - World of Warcraft

I suppose this makes CT the finisher for Assassination during aoe over Envenom?

XeroFour · 08/30/12, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by Egészségére

[Cataclysmic Gladiator's Insignia of Conquest]

Is it just me or is this VERY good for PvE now, BiS material infact.

This is very interesting, on paper this trinket is roughly 1000 static agi right? Wouldn't this and wrath of unchaining be BiS for all specs?