I did a 10 min test of the skycall totem under pure LB spam. I haven't had a chance to do a longer test, and prefer not to until there's a good uptime meter so I don't have to get this data manually. Here are the parameter of the test.

• Spam only rank 3 LB for 10 minutes
• Only haste item equipped was Skycall Totem (0 hast rating on gear)
• No casting of totems
• One full watershield duration during the test, so no refreshing of watershield
• Manually recorded every proc of Skycall while testing (this includes procs occurring while the buff was still active)

I went through the log myself and recorded the times the "Energized" aura was applied and removed. I recorded the information in a spreadsheet, with the actual time stamp from the log, conversion to the elapsed times, uptime for each occurrence of the buff, the total number of procs during each individual uptime, and the total uptime over the course of the 10 minute test.

The results are in Google Docs - skycall test data and show an approximately 59% uptime for LB spam.

Keep in mind this was only 10 minutes of testing, and only for LB spam. Some observations on the test.

• 12 out of 19 times the buff was active, there were multiple procs
• at one point the buff was active for a full 57 seconds as the totem procced 14 times without the buff dropping off, providing a real example of how inaccurate WWS data is at determining your uptime during a fight
• the average uptime per proc (351.8s of uptime divided by 57 procs) is about 6.2 seconds

Hopefully someone will have a good uptime meter working with the current combat log soon.

I was going to try looking at my WWS logs for the same thing, but I think it'd be save to say that a 60% uptime is a good estimate at the moment.

I'll get to work on a framework for calculating the static haste equiv for skycall today.

[edit]ignore that, something was wrong.
Figure is relativity static, with minor variance.

Ok, doing some updates on haste procs.
Skycall & Skull = no problem
Quag's eye = really weird. I need to get an accurate cooldown/proc chance for the buff, but as far as I can tell the buff is better than the Skull buff

I wrote an addon to measure uptime of the buff by comparing cast times to expected cast times.
Basically expected cast time is 1.8 if it's 1.7 iso it's under the effect of the buff, while checking for heroism/drums/skull.

Then I got a little lazy and checked the wowcombatlog file and came to the conclusion just parsing that was 10 times less work.

Example:

4/8 11:24:58.765 SPELL_AURA_APPLIED,0x0000000000000000,nil,0x80000000,0x0000000000C9793E,"Ashilh",0x51 1,43751,"Energized",0x8,BUFF
4/8 11:25:15.625 SPELL_AURA_REMOVED,0x0000000000000000,nil,0x80000000,0x0000000000C9793E,"Ashilh",0x51 1,43751,"Energized",0x8,BUFF

^^ No skills needed just a calculater and a G15 to spam R3 LB while doing the Dishes from the last 2 weeks if you are only interested in the uptime that is.


181 Haste, no drums, no skull, no quag, no heroism 65.18% Uptime
0 Haste , no drums , no skull, no quag, nop heroism 56.73% Uptime


Edit: I see I'm too late with this amazing discovery now I read the last few posts
Edit2: 181 Haste VS 0 Haste 2 +/-35 minute sessions, scaled down spell dmg to make mr boom live for the same time with and without haste.
The longer testing period improved the total % uptime from the lower 10 minute sessions from before, but still show rather huge fluctuations in uptime between different time segments, chance based increases ftl I guess.

The scaling doesn't seem to be very interesting for me, a large amount of haste only nets you a little more added benefit VS the chance on having shitty luck with procs. Coupled with a CL rotation this totem doesn't seem to be worth the effort to me.

Ok, so the reason why Quag's seems to be rated so high is that it effectively gives us another cast at 0.67 seconds.
I'll put both Skull/Quag's onto the graph I posted earlier for Skycall when I get to work tomorrow (left it on there rather than putting it on my flash drive like normal)

About Scryer neck from shattered sun faction:
- It procs a 355 (around 355, couldnt figure the exact numbers) arcane based direct damage
- It can crit, it crits x1.5, tho the crit rate seems fairly low (i was with 16+5% crit healing gear, i had less than 10% crit)
- I only ran tree 10 minutes test but it appears to have around 10% chances to proc
- I am positively sure it has a one minute inner cooldown
I have the feeling this item is not great, even worste than the PvP honnor neck piece.


About Skycaller
I'm trying to understand how better/worste it is compared to Ancestral Guidance.
I really have the feeling i just deal -less- damages with skycaller.

Looking at the Skycall graph above, I assume the X axis is my current haste value, and the Y is the Haste equiv for the totem?

Assuming I have that correct, is that graph stating the the totem actually gives less value as we get more haste? This seems fairly counter intuitive as the uptime would increase with higher haste values, correct? I do note that you assumed uptime in the graph was static, is there a reason for that (did we find that its actually PPM based, and not chance on cast?)

I was wondering if anyone else had noticed a significant bug to their spell crit rate while raid buffed since 2.4 came out. I have been seeing consistently lower crit averages on all sunwell bosses, averaging only 35-38% maximum per boss. Is there something up with elemental spell crit since patch, or has anyone else noticed sunwell bosses seeming to be in resiliance gear? My raid buffed crit, including totems, setbonus etc is around 43-45% depending on gear equipped. On tonights Brutallus kill I only could manage 34.5% in both attempts it took to kill him. I've attempted to unequip gear, and then reequip it, log out and back in, as well as submitting a ticket, yet I have yet to kill a boss since 2.4 arrived where my crit value even equaled what I should have, and it is becoming very frustrating to watch it destroy my normally very high damage.

Has anyone else experianced an issue such as this? Or am I just getting destroyed by horrible RNG as of late?

I didn't understand what you meant until I started modeling it myself today (assuming you do mean what I discovered.)

Quag's Eye gives us a 6 second proc, and it procs on cast, not on hit (this is important.)

The implication of this is that while the buff lasts 6 seconds, your spells hasted cast time is established on cast, so if you can get in a cast just before the 6 seconds wears off, you get haste for the full duration of the cast. Essentially, the duration of the proc is:

Round up to whole number(6 / avgcasttime) *avgcasttime. With my current haste setup of 174, this amounts to a 6. 24 second proc, or at the end of the whole calculation, a passive haste value of about 44. Once you've added the spell damage into it, it becomes a very powerful trinket.

hey y'all, so we got our 2nd Brutallus kill tonight, and it was also my first time having a shadow priest in months, so I went back to a 3/1 CL rotation and chugged destruction pots on the first several attempts.

Wow Web Stats

I only was able to net a pitifully 1300-1400dps. About 100dps LESS than I was used to getting without a shadow priest chugging super mana pots. I was extremely frustrated with this, as you can imagine. So I dropped CL just as an experiment, and wound up with 1700dps on the kill.

everything I read everywhere tells me "chain lightning rotations = win". Why did I see a 250dps increase with LB spam over my best 3/1 attempt?

my armory:
The World of Warcraft Armory

Wow Web Stats

5:1 rotation used on brutallus. Once again managed 2k+ dps this week.

Our gear doesn't seem too different Brastai, I may just be getting luckier with crits.

Notes:
1) run with a boomkin + ret paladin (~9% crit because our druid uses the + crit idol)
2) 2 of us in group have drums

Most of the time I find trying to maintain a 3/1 rotation is the biggest counter against it.
I've gone up ~100dps going to LB spam and a bit of haste, so it works well.

Also, ignore that graph, I screwed it up

Same as you, Evovi. I consistently did less damage than I should have according to spreadsheets yesterday and when checking stuff out, I noticed consistently lower crit. And it wasn't just any random crit rate, it was ALWAYS around 34%, no more, no less.

Are you saying that with the right amount of haste LB spam is the way to go?

I think the issue is the CL cooldown. Always be casting. Chain Lightning is higher dps than Lightning Bolt. With Haste, a 3/1 rotation will clip due to waiting for CL to be available. Basically, you should always cast Chain Lightning (unless CC or mana are issues) when it is available. This translates to a rotation of x/1 where X is how many bolts you need to cast before CL is available. With 0 Haste, this value is 3. For my raid set, this value is 4. Under Bloodlust, this value is 5.

There is a theoretical point where waiting on the CL cooldown produces higher dps, but "Always be casting" is an easier guideline.

yeah, i don't have a boomkin or a ret paladin. we have a holy paladin who is able to keep the crit debuff up about half the time, but thats about it.

thanks for all the replys, guess i'll be sticking to LB spam.

My Brutallus dps has been pretty consistent the past 2 weeks but not as high as kromes(2k dps! Need!). At this time we have no drums in my group and only 1 hero but hitting around 1750dps. Need to get some trinket love so I can drop alch for LW Heres our WWS to compair rotations/buffs/pots used for the peeps without drums.

Wow Web Stats

I am getting about the same dps out of quags eye and Icon but havent really done detailed tests other than watching my personal dps.

I went through my WWS post-2.4, and my crit seems in perfect order, or near expectation. I have not done Sunwell, however. In the tank threads, the warriors are reporting the mobs seem to be ignoring X% of your dodge as well, so it wouldn't surprise me if the Sunwell puts a "handicap" on us when we go there. Granted this isn't confirmed by any means, but I'd compare some Sunwell/non-Sunwell parses before we start wondering if the crit itself is bugged.

From a post I made in the Benefactor Bar. Think it covers most of what I needed to say on the subject.

My response is as long as CL is doing more dps for you than LB it is worth using. With a sp in group mana isn't much of a concern unless the fight has mechanics that break up the mana returns you get. Even less if your raid runs with a ret pally or your holies are good at keeping up JoW. Hence something like Kalecgos, where you have to drop totems twice as much and uptimes on VT might not always be great. There I revert to a more heavy LB mix because mana can be a concern there, especially if you're throwing out a heal every once in a while to keep yourself alive. But on a pure dps fight like Brutallus, as long as your heroism doesn't drop CL below a 1.0 second cast it is worth using in your rotation. Just make sure to spread it out and never wait for CL to come back up.

I know that on paper a LB/CL rotation works out to be 50-60 dps more (completely ignoring mana use), but in practice maintaining a perfect LB/CL rotation is near impossible. Then there's the fact that I can maintain a higher uptime of Skycall by spamming LB than I can with LB/CL (probably 60% vs 45%) which means that Ancestral Guidance would be a better option, but that will result in lower dps overall as haste is more valuable than damage at this point.

The biggest thing is that if you are maintaining a LB/CL rotation and stuff up one CL cast due to lag or whatever, you're going to end up doing less DPS overall as there is very little room for error.