Ghostcrawler said at Blizzcon as part of the "we want to remove the cooldown" answer that they wanted to prevent shaman from getting two really fast weapons and proccing WF like crazy. I'm sure there are many reasons but this is one.
Other than more WF procs = more MW procs, I don't see what would be wrong in being able to use a fast weapon to get lots of WF. What is the difference between getting 12 ppm w/ a 1.0 speed weapon or 6 ppm w/ a 2.0 speed? The dps is equal. Any advantage to doing this would be outweighed by gimping your instant attacks.
As I am reading the suggestions, I too am leaning toward a "priority list" approach as the most useful. EP values are too erratic and playstyle dependent to to really come up with a generic set.
That being said, even though I personally understand why it is useful to cap certain stats, how each stat benefits me compared to another, etc., looking at some of the priority lists still has me thinking "Ok, thats cool... so which piece is better?" I have a feeling a lot of people will have the same reaction. Some people like to do the number crunching and analyze gear compared with their overall stats and how to maximize their performance. But some people just like to raid and think of gear collecting as a (necessary) distraction. These people just want to be told "This piece is better." If they are just given a stat priority list, they will ask questions like "I know that crit rating is good, but if I use this piece then I lose a TON of attack power. Is it worth it?" The response will be "Run the sim," which will lead to questions about the sim, etc.
If I am not mistaken, the generic T6 values were created based on a theoretical character wearing best in slot gear for that tier and standard raid buffs. Would this not also be a possible solution for WOTLK, especially since the expected raid buffs are even more clear than before? Ex: Choose a common playstyle (e.g. Slow/Fast WF/FT) and a generic spec that will compliment it, figure out the best in slot gear for each tier, run the sim with those stats, post the EP values. Along with the EP values, you could add a disclaimer saying something like, "These values were generated with the assumption that you are using WF/FT, spec X, and spell priority list Y. If you wish to deviate from these conditions, please consult the sim."
They will not always get the most ideal gear upgrades, but will at least know what to shoot for. Players wanting a little more insight can run the sim.
Other than more WF procs = more MW procs, I don't see what would be wrong in being able to use a fast weapon to get lots of WF. What is the difference between getting 12 ppm w/ a 1.0 speed weapon or 6 ppm w/ a 2.0 speed? The dps is equal. Any advantage to doing this would be outweighed by gimping your instant attacks.
Leads very quickly back into Enhancement Shaman wanting caster gear and fast caster weapons since more WF procs equals more MW charges equals more spells cast which equals better scaling for caster gear and weapons.
Leads very quickly back into Enhancement Shaman wanting caster gear and fast caster weapons since more WF procs equals more MW charges equals more spells cast which equals better scaling for caster gear and weapons.
Not true, since the chance per proc would be normalized to the weapon speed.
More chances at a lower rate = fewer chances at a higher rate, and haste affects them both equally.
Teeza:
Passive haste is tricky with dual WF. It's been discussed at length in the last 5 pages. If you have a good deal of haste gear, see what kind of luck you have with WF/FT.
As an aside same speed weapons were NEVER a problem; the first time Flurry falls off your weapons will go out of sync anyway.
Last edited by Toots Hepcat : 10/21/08 at 3:31 PM.
K, I'm pretty sure about the idea that using 2 weapons of the same speed is always* best.
That being said, haste (using a step of sixty to calculate EP) gives me weird results in the sim.
2.5/2.5 - I get an EP of 0.34
2.6/2.6 - I get an EP of -0.3
2.8/2.8 - I get an EP of 1.88
Anyone with similar results or explanations?
The relevance being that this leads to Boneweave Girdle outperforming the T6 belt (albeit very slightly).
*Assuming WF/WF and lvl 70 talents.
This is pretty common question. Haste cap(1.5s) with raid buff is very close. Becouse of doubble mongoose uptime isn't 100% there isn't exact passive haste point and this give odd result for haste. This haste cap is more theorical problem. We can't be sure is Wf cd allways exact 3 second in game. Sim don't handdle server lag. Maybe it should but then we would have test this with every server. Use negative haste ep range and go with that value or try avoid haste gear. This might look big problem but game don't work as perfect like sim.
Edit to clarify: When I say cap I mean reduced benefit area.
Not true, since the chance per proc would be normalized to the weapon speed.
More chances at a lower rate = fewer chances at a higher rate, and haste affects them both equally.
damn, you are right....
So there would be no additional charges from removing the cooldown due to the MW PPM mechanic normalizing them. What about the bonus AP? Would it favor the slow or the fast or would it be neutral? Thinking neutral as well.
Not true, since the chance per proc would be normalized to the weapon speed.
More chances at a lower rate = fewer chances at a higher rate, and haste affects them both equally.
Teeza:
Passive haste is tricky with dual WF. It's been discussed at length in the last 5 pages. If you have a good deal of haste gear, see what kind of luck you have with WF/FT.
As an aside same speed weapons were NEVER a problem; the first time Flurry falls off your weapons will go out of sync anyway.
I'v always thought that speed only matters to procs from auto attacks, not specials, so more specials - more procs. I'm wrong?
Rounced that was an excellence set of rules you posted. Quick question for the 11-19% i'm assuming thats passive haste buffs before WF totem and other raid buffs
Pitbuller mentioned a haste cap of 1.5 seconds? I've never heard of this and considering that I can hit 1.38/1.41 attack speed with just WF totem, mongoose and flurry, I'd really like some clarification on the issue. I think i was at 1.01 /1.05 (or something close to that last night with raid buffs and heroism)
1.5s is NOT a cap! It's the threshold of a a zone of reduced benefit. As Teeza has discovered, haste gets better and better for Windfury as you approach 1.5s, then promptly sees its rate of DPS increase reduce, stall or even, briefly, go negative.
As you add haste to bring your weapon speeds further below 1.5s, you will begin to make up for increases in time-after-cooldown with decreases in time-to-proc. In other words, haste's value will go down to 0 (or less), and then go back up. This is why you see a benefit from big haste procs like the DST even as you approach this threshold -- they spike so much haste that we pass right through the zone of reduced benefit.
The real question of hitting 1.5 is what percentage of time is spent above and below this threshold, and how far below the threshold we go at these points.
I'v always thought that speed only matters to procs from auto attacks, not specials, so more specials - more procs. I'm wrong?
Absolutely wrong. Shaman specials proc at the same rate as the hand that's used to drive them. So if you've got a fast offhand, lavalash will have a lower chance to proc than if you had a slow offhand.
All of our specials favor slow weapons. Our procs favor slow weapons. So even if the windfury cooldown was removed, we'd use slow weapons for maximum DPS. Luckily, Blizzard has seeded their game with a lot of very nice, very slow weapons.
Just a quick note though (I apologize if it has been mentioned), the Hunter True Shot Aura Glyph was changed from an extra 2% AP to extra crit for Aimed Shot, putting UR back to equal.
1.5s is NOT a cap! It's the threshold of a a zone of reduced benefit. As Teeza has discovered, haste gets better and better for Windfury as you approach 1.5s, then promptly sees its rate of DPS increase reduce, stall or even, briefly, go negative.
Is this because of the WF cooldown? and if so, will this rule be voided if/when they remove its internal cooldown?
That's not at all the same thing as Windfury proccing itself, which is what I'm referring to in the quotation you've got there.
I meant the quote as more of a "hey, I'm replying to you" than a refute of your point.
RE: Maelstrom stacking with no cooldown
They weren't thinking about stacking MW faster (which is something some people have become quite obsessed with to the point of ignoring all else but that's another post) when they put the WF cooldown in; MW didn't exist yet. They put it in to prevent WF/WF on fast/fast becoming the best way to spec a shaman. Remember that WF is a flat 20% chance and not a PPM system like MW. For flat chance procs, swinging faster does help you. Sure they'd be wussy compared to a slow WF hit but you'd get a ton of them with daggers, flurry, heroism, and lots of haste. My bet is that the ran the numbers and found it to be a crazy DPS gain and thus the cooldown was born. Those from early TBC remember the big boost in DPS you got mixing ranks and negating the cooldown. We didn't have the sims and rigorous theorycraft back than like we do now but it was nerfed for a reason.
I don't want to derail the thread too much, just share something I learned at BlizzCon.
Mogonar, your conjecture is flat wrong and has 0 basis in reality. WF, without a cooldown, does not chose for any weapon speed, they all would be equal. Nearly ever other ability we have does select for slow weapons. I fail to see how a non-cooldown WF/WF on fast/fast would be a dps increase at all, let alone a big enough one to make up for the "crazy DPS" you would lose on our instant attacks.
Absolutely wrong. Shaman specials proc at the same rate as the hand that's used to drive them. So if you've got a fast offhand, lavalash will have a lower chance to proc than if you had a slow offhand.
All of our specials favor slow weapons. Our procs favor slow weapons. So even if the windfury cooldown was removed, we'd use slow weapons for maximum DPS. Luckily, Blizzard has seeded their game with a lot of very nice, very slow weapons.
For Lava lash and SS you right, yes. But what if WF is capable of proccing MW and WF is off cd, and WF remains flat chance on hit, you will see more MW procs from fast weapon with WF.
Now if this will be good or bad for dps is another question.
Mogonar, your conjecture is flat wrong and has 0 basis in reality. WF, without a cooldown, does not chose for any weapon speed, they all would be equal. Nearly ever other ability we have does select for slow weapons. I fail to see how a non-cooldown WF/WF on fast/fast would be a dps increase at all, let alone a big enough one to make up for the "crazy DPS" you would lose on our instant attacks.
I come only as a reporter of what they said on stage. "We didn't want shamans running around with two fast weapons proccing windfury like crazy." Perhaps my attempts to read into it are wrong or don't pan out but that's what was said so take it however you would like.
For Lava lash and SS you right, yes. But what if WF is capable of proccing MW and WF is off cd, and WF remains flat chance on hit, you will see more MW procs from fast weapon with WF.
Now if this will be good or bad for dps is another question.
Nope that was the part I was wrong about too.
1.4 speed versus 2.8 speed
10 PPM means the 1.4 speed has a 23.3% chance to proc MW per hit and the 2.8 speed has a 46.7% chance.
100 hits with the 2.8 = 200 hits with the 1.4 (over the same unit time)
so
20 procs from the 2.8 = 40 procs from the 1.4
40 additional hits with the 2.8 = 80 additional hits with the 1.4
140 x 0.467 = 65.38 MW proc from the 2.6
280 x 0.233 = 65.24 MW procs from the 1.4
(the difference is more likely due to rounding then to any real advantage)
So the PPM mechanic normalizes the number of hits even when you involve something like Windfury Weapon which works off a percentage mechanism.
For Lava lash and SS you right, yes. But what if WF is capable of proccing MW and WF is off cd, and WF remains flat chance on hit, you will see more MW procs from fast weapon with WF.
Now if this will be good or bad for dps is another question.
Because MW is normalized for weapon speed, your chance to proc on those extra WFs will be less. So while you might get twice as many WF procs, those procs will be half as likely to proc MW.
Let's look at one weapon, 20% chance to proc, no cooldown, no crits, no misses, no bonus AP.
Weapon 1: 20 dps, swing time 1s
Weapon 2: 20 dps, swing time 2s
From Weapon 1: average of 1 proc every 5s. Each proc will do 2 attacks at 20 damage each, for a total of 4 damage per proc. 40 damage/5s = 8 dps
From Weapon 2: average of 1 procs every 10s. Each proc will do 2 attacks at 40 damage each, for a total of 8 damage per proc. 80 damage/10s = 8 dps
There is no advantage to fast weapons with windfury, nor could there be. At best they'd be equivalent, and stormstrike/lavalash would suffer.
BTW: Attached are two graphs I did, taking simulations with 2.7s weapons and full raid haste buffs including 1 set of drums, and adding .5% haste per run. The first analyzes only those stats affected directly by haste. The second just looks at the effect on windfury.
Notice that melee DPS and lightning bolt frequency steadily increase as you add haste -- but Windfury damage has several nasty hits (as momentary hasted speeds enter the threshold of reduced value).
Also notice that we're increasing steadily after about 13% haste; dps should increase linearly from haste until we add 65% passive haste (and get down below 1%).
At the worst point (going from 9.5 to 10% haste) there's a little less that a 1.5% loss in total dps. At most points, there's a .2-.4% increase.
Note: WF/FT would have a very different graph and 2.6 and 2.5s weapons would see the chaos with less haste. This is why WF/FT is better for many folks, especially folks in Sunwell with much passive haste.
Last edited by Toots Hepcat : 10/21/08 at 5:28 PM.
From this post - http://elitistjerks.com/455208-post1615.html - I have always assumed that having the same weapon speed with WF/WF was accepted to be a bad thing, though not significant enough to worry about.
At this point in LK Beta there are only three epic non-arena slow weapons that can be used as offhands, but one is a badge item (50 heroic badges): Weapons - Items - World of Warcraft
Sydane -- I remember that post, and I don't think anyone really understood it (even Yo). I'm not sure what he was doing or how he was doing it and indeed, the first diagram seems to contradict the others ("lost" MH procs -- a metric I hate, because it's misleading and has little impact on total DPS -- was lowest with 2 slow weapons).
I can say that I have never seen a case where having two same speed weapons provided less dps than having a slightly slower version of the offhand weapon. Not in either simulator, not in any of the equations I've played with and not live when I was testing dual Dragonstrike against Dragonstrike/Vanir's Left Fist.
I'm about 99% sure that when Blizzard changed WF hits from white meele hits to yellow spell hits is when they fixed "WF procs off of WF". Before that especially in classic there was a lot of "procs off of GCD" (where you could start chaining WF by using instacast abilities), so i dont think they will ever remove the 3sec WF cooldown. Windfury is an ability that with our talents can be exploited in different ways if the cooldown was removed completely.
The only thing that i have seen was that you would get 4 flurry charges instead of 3 if you had the same weapon speed, however I am not sure if it was proven.
Leads very quickly back into Enhancement Shaman wanting caster gear and fast caster weapons since more WF procs equals more MW charges equals more spells cast which equals better scaling for caster gear and weapons.
However, it would allow them to nurf the MW proc-rate back down to what they apparently intended it to be for dual wielding.
10/21/08, 3:12 PM
