What the blue poster specifically seems to be objecting to is that a single keypress is resulting in a stream of casts (that could otherwise not normally be done without AHK/G15 through macros). That is automation as the blue poster sees it and therefore against the ToS. Since what we are looking for from this is not casting automation but lag reduction, I wonder if there might be a way to work around this. Suppose AHK or G15 or some other program could send repeated keypresses, but only for 1 second. Then you would press and hold down your lightning bolt macro key and have to press it again for each lightning bolt cast. I don't know if AHK or G15 can be setup to do this, but if you used it like it were anyway (that is, pressing the key for each cast) it's not really any different and seems like it should be allowed under the "It's ok to use something that could be used in a way that's against the ToS as long as you don't use it in the way that is against the ToS." policy they have for the G15 keyboard. I would have raised this in the thread, but the blue poster locked it.

Any thoughts on whether this might be worth pursuing?

I think the travel time of the bolt might confuse things. What I did was to remove all pieces of gear that might cause variable amounts of haste, skycall, quag's eye etc . . . Hell you can strip naked, it won't matter. Then I did testing with various macros and g15 scripts. When I looked into the logs I looked not at the distance between cast_success and cast_start, but simply the time between cast_start and cast_start. So if I was naked I would expect a value close to 2 seconds. The measured lag was the amount higher than 2 that I averaged. I also recently have been modifying the logs to change the name of my lightning capacitor procs from lightning bolt to capacitor bolts or something similar, then on WWS I can see what percent they are. I should probably do the same for the LO bolts.

Yes, I know. I'm thinking about adding a best-in-slot list to the TTT post at some point.

Actually, from reading that post/blue response it would seem they are objecting to having 1 key spammed that performs multiple actions aka the hunter shot rotation. If all you are doing is performing a single action there's no way they can take any action, since the client can't distinguish between someone mashing thier key 10 times a second or AHK since both processes are being performed by the operating system and then sent to the client. All I can say is don't be retardedly lazy and sit there holding the key down for hours and hours, I've increased the sleep delay to 30 to reduce client spam and I only hold it down when the cast is 50%+ (apart from with heroism @ 1 sec casts).

You mean - one button click that performs multiple actions. Because 1-button mashing for several actions = regular macro :p

This gentleman in sunwell/BT gear: The World of Warcraft Armory (when he's not wearing his PVP outfit) posted a WWS a while back (now expired, unfortunately) that showed him at 2,323 DPS on a Brutallus kill. Albeit he had two enhancement shamans, a moonkin, and a shadowpriest, but he also used a 4:1 rotation (and the venerable Lightning Capacitor). To me, this demonstrates in a convincing manner the viability of a 4:1 rotation (and the LC) at the BT/Sunwell level. Do you have any Brutallus WWS's showing your poor 4:1 performance?

So you're waiting for cast completion with or without lag prediction and pressing the next key in rotation? Looking at your gear, you've gone pretty far into haste territory at the expense of spell damage. As others have suggested prior, I would grab LagInfo off Curse and see how much negative haste rating you have. A lot of people are sporting -200 haste ratings and don't know it. But a 4:1+FS rotation manually timed? I think you're in for a .. shock...

It's not like the Logitech G15 is some aberration of keyboard technology catering to a shrinking niche. It will no doubt become standard for ALL keyboards (or their drivers) in the near future. Once this technology becomes commonplace (and I believe it's far enough along already), Blizzard will see the cost/benefit of policing such behavior as terribly bleak. I believe they will need to:

A) Revise their policy. While it's nice to have ideals about purity of gameplay, 'one button/one action' and whatnot, the course of technological progress and market forces will not regard it.

B) Redesign the game mechanics to defeat any undue gains that could be derived from complex macros.

Blizzard's message is akin to preaching abstinence on a college campus. You can abstain, but you'll be the only virgin.

Brutallus tonight. With 1enhance shaman, no boomkin and 1 only lust.

Wow Web Stats

Thats using a 4:1 rotation and TLC.

Very good dps Pwnzer, I'm trying to find out how your dps is so high. Your Wws shows your crit being quite high for both LB and CL but when i armoryed you, your crit is about the same as mine which is around 23.59% unbuffed as it shows on the character sheet, the same goes for your spell damage. I'd like to ask your ms/lag because it would probably affect your dps and your rotation. Does your enhancement shaman let you have the stormstrikes? Sorry for the splattered information i'm just trying brainstorm and compare while coming out confused at the end. Your dps rules over mine, maybe i just suck

Well raid buffed including ret pally, im sitting at the exact crit i manage to obtain on the wws... Seriously im always 5% under my crit

Umm well im based in oz so i have a 300 ms average ping, i use AHK so im casting at around 25ms on average.

edit; Enhance shammy was doing a combo of FS and ES so i believe i would of got at least 50% of them. Also im sitting on 300 haste, unsure of what your on, that would change the results big time if you where lacking in that department.

Pwnz

AHK?

What is that?

Mad.

Isnt using that AHK bannable ? Same with G15 .

I've got some serious "I'm not worthy" complex against posting here but I thought it would be worth mentioning because I haven't seen it said.

Using LagInfo and G11 with a 10ms delay.

With castsequence (4:1 rotation) I get ~175-225ms lag. With straight spam of LB (no castsequence) I get -35 to 10ish. It looks like cast sequence significantly slows down your casting speed, and for single target DPS I'm assuming that nearly a quarter of a second lost for every cast does not make up for the minimal bonus CL gives. (No 4t6 here.)

I don't have hard numbers or Dr. Boom tests, but I found it interesting how there was a very clear difference in lag time while using castsequence (and the difference in the cast bar being displayed is also apparent even to the naked eye.) It makes me wonder how you could do a rotation without castsequence, but I'm guessing its not worth messing with for the time being. (My guild isn't that hardcore and I'm not really under pressure to push the limits to the max. I'll do what I can, but I'm not going to kill myself over it.)

Just thought I'd mention it.

Have you tried doing your 4/1 rotation manually?

Just flew to Dr. Boom to test. Manually I was able to keep -25 to -15. With G15 10ms on my castsequence it was 200-250. Boo at requiring effort

Goodness. Just bind two separate keys, say 2 for LB, 6 for CL. Use driver or AHK to make each key 'repeat while pressed.' Press 6, hold 2 for 5 seconds, hold 6 for one second, hold 2 for 5 seconds, hold 6 for 1 second, and so on.

Is that the level of effort you're seeking to avoid?

BTW, just because it's 'against policy' doesn't make it "bannable." Some fears are just plain irrational.

So what you're saying is to use all +10 haste gems or the 5 haste/6 damage gems?

Also, with T6 and like items, is it really worth going for the set bonus (which seems to be 2 damage or 2 crit) or just ignore them and go straight for haste?

But do you think the spell damage should be where its at? I've read ~40% is where crit should be at. What kind of level should spell damage be at though, unbuffed or buffed, to start stacking haste?

I'm trying out the Lag Info mod, however if you want to compare me to someone who got a Boomkin and 2 enhancement shaman you are quite simply not qualified to compare test data. I'm lucky to get one Enhancement shaman, and never a Boomkin. And he had a Retadin, something I also never have. He had +8% more crit from raid buffs, no mention of how many drum rotations used, + 4 SS debuffs per 10 seconds.

With a 23.59% crit rate base, you should be right around 39/40% raid buffed with totems and 4pc with no Boomkin. 44/48%'s with only a retadin would still be slightly over par by 1-2/9-10% roughly.

Just used Lag Info mod from Curse at Dr. Boom with all of my normal mods, etc...running at the time.

I did a few runs. Some I did I reset the meter after I went OOM or Dr. Boom died. Then I also did several runs without resetting once (in case one method is a better test method I wrote down both).

I spammed the buttons in the same method I do in a raid. I noticed that on the initial casts the number could spike as low as -90 and as high as 90ms. But within 4-10 casts the number would always normalize into a number between -20 to 20ms total.

4/1 rotations would yield:
10 full bars of mana, no reseting: 12ms (lows of -15, highs of 20)
1 full bar of mana with reseting each attempt ranged between -15 to 21ms. The average was always closer to 10ish.

LB spam would yield:
10 full bars of mana, no reseting: 4ms (lows of 1, highs of 5)
1 full bar of mana with reseting each attempt ranged between -6 to 15ms. The average was in the 4-9ms range.

I'm not sure what everyone else's personal playstle preferences are, but I just sit there and button mash spam with my fingers. It's part of why I have a N52TE and a keyboard. I swap hands in boss fights sometimes and will swap keyboards to "ease up" on my fingers (and I did that during the test, just like I do in raids).

So again I say, Lag is NOT an issue for me. I was not remotely surprised by the results. To change it up, I tried not button mashing and waiting to press buttons like I hear some people say. That fucking killed my ms. Pushed me as low as -110 and as high as 98 doing that crap. And it took WAY more concentration and attention. Hated it. I'd rather my fingers be mad at me.

So, revist again please my question? Is there any math to explain why LB spam is winning more often than 4/1 rotations for me in raids? Is there a break point with haste at certain ms rates that can cause this? Should I simply regear/regem?

Actually, with sunwell gear you can actually reach a point of inflection where damage gems > haste gems