Rouncer

Except it puts your Lava Lash on a 8 second cooldown so you are sacrificing dps. I use that macro for PvPing since when PvPing I want to always lead with a stormstrike (I hold a modifier down if I get disarmed so I can continue using Lava Lash). However when I am raiding I use the castrandom macro so that I don't lose out on any dps.

Once I hit level 80 and start using WF/FT I will just be using the castrandom macro all the time since with FT on the offhand the damage difference between a stormstrike and a lava lash will be a lot closer and then I won't have to worry about being disarmed and hitting a modifier anymore.

May not be ideal but it is pretty close and I prefer to use the same setup for PvE and PvP since it keeps the same muscle memory active. For PvP you will never want to include a Shock in a macro and for PvE using Earth Shock (with the Glyph) as often as possible will always be the most dps so having it as a separate bound is best. Being able to choose between LB or CL or a Heal is just....well, I would never want that choice made by a macro. But as for Stormstrike versus Lava Lash they should basically be hit as often as possible and it really doesn't matter (less then 0.5% dps) much which one is hit first so those get macroed together.

 

Roflmeow

I've been comparing the numbers on our progression fights for ([LB,SS,ES,LL] Full Cast random) Macro vs/ No-macro Priority rotations. (Twins, M'uru, KJ) The Non-macro does provide better dps on average by about 100-150dps in real world scenarios.

However the macro version takes the cake for ease of use resulting in a higher survival rate, better overall reaction times and Situational Awareness which results in easier(safer) boss kills. a faster learning curve, occasionally better dps on new/complex fights, while still keeping up very respectable dps in non-complex fights.

I average between 1700-2000 dps on sunwell fights using the macro, depending on the boss.

Personally i consider Brutallus(2375 dps non-macro) as a squishy mob since my dps numbers always seem inflated on the fight (stand here, Don't move, blow the everliving crap out of him).

The more mobile fights, such as Kalecgos, always deflate to around 1700ish, and middle of the road fights (twins/KJ) where it's stand here but GTFO, average in the 1800-1900dps range.

Examples

Kalecgos i typically use a non-macro, but i'm very familiar with the fight, and the changes are predictable and controlled.

The extra dps on a first fight like Brutallus is actually well warranted to use a non macro approach.

Felmyst, This one is a toss up, you won't be dps at a time where you need awareness unless a melee get's orbed.

Twins, Reaction time on Conflag is critical here, DPS is not, Macro it up.

M'uru, Reaction time helps to avoid the balls to the face in phase 2. Chain heal scroll macro is a huge help for stressed out healers if you're running into trouble.

KJ, Not a heavy awareness fight for melee. Collapse when you're told, Dps boost from non-macro is effective. Phase one is quick and i usually use a Chain heal macro to help keep up the other melee. then go manual/LB for the remainder.

I'll test some of the other suggestions listed here tomorrow after the reset.

 

Toots Hepcat

Does a one-hit macro improve reaction time? It seems to me it's pretty subjective.

When I was experimenting with a one-touch castrandom, I found myself carefully eyeing the GCD, then hammering the macro until the GCD tripped again. I'd say it took an average of three presses before an ability not on cooldown came up randomly for consideration. A few times while testing I didn't notice that my searing totem had disappeared.

In short: I got into the optimization zone, even though what I was optimizing one button.

Compare this to watching the GCD, and pressing one of three buttons according to a set priority...you're just trading one deterministic decision (which button to press next) for another non-deterministic one (when to stop pressing the button).

I guess a constant, rhythmic tapping on a "DPS button" might appeal to some, but it would just stress me out. Learning to shift your consciousness from "must hit buttons" to "watch for fire (push buttons if no fire)" is part of learning to raid.

 

Torrential

I think people are just mashing the button. Not hitting it until something happens, then waiting to hit it again. It's a 0-thought process I believe.

 

Ilmatar

I experimented with /castsequence stuff and I never really liked it.

In my opinion one of the most important things you can do is to move/resize/alpha Shock and Awe until you can see it, and the middle of your screen, in the same glance. The bars make it very easy to see what is not on cooldown, and what is about to come off of cooldown. Make sure it doesn't get in the way of your SCT/boss-mod, but my personal favorite is off to the right of the center of the screen. I shrink SnA down pretty small, and turn the text off.

All these HUD mods do you no good if you are looking at the corners of your screen and not where the important stuff is.

 

Malan

Has anyone started looking forward and figured out at what point TBC trinkets become replaceable from just quested trinkets in wrath?

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

• frmorrison

Rawr for Ret is telling me [First Mate's Pocketwatch] is better than Shard (from Howling Fjyord)

"http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=38081" is better than Bloodlust from badges/BRD boss, from Dragonblight.

Looks like Madness lasts until Naxx.

 

Rouncer

What I am more interested in is which weapon enchants are going to be the best to use in WotLK.

Black Magic is looking pretty damn viable as a weapon enchant for us (possibly the best one) since the proc lasts for 15 seconds and, provided it can refresh itself, should be worth 70dps which is the equivalent of 980AP.

Berzerking is a proc for 400AP with -25% armor while active. It does stack and the PPM is reported to be the same as mongoose.

Mongoose has an AeP of roughly 350 per proc at level 80 but doesn't suffer from the loss of armor.

Icebreaker is 72-82 damage per proc, basically seems like just an upgraded version of fiery so will really depend on whether Windfury Weapon can proc it and what the PPM is set as. If it is set at 6 PPM like Fiery then it won't be worth any consideration. If it is set to 10PPM and it can proc from Windfury Weapon hits then it could be worth considering.

Accuracy is 25 hit and crit rating

and finally Superior Potency with a straight buff of 65 AP.

Looking like if Mongoose does not degrade with level it will still potentially be viable as an enchant, especially for a weapon you may want to PvP with as well.


Still lots of questions, can't wait to start testing these things to determine the answers.

edited to respond

Nope that trinket is inferior to the Shard.

Expertise is the 2nd best stat until capped and since you can gem for expertise we get to be in the unusual position of evaluating the trinkets based on their gem value. You get 32 AP versus 16 Exp from a gem so that means the expertise on the Shard is worth 88AP so that leaves 140 Haste for 20 seconds usable every 2 minutes versus 230 AP for 20 seconds on a proc system. Since the Shard seems to proc at least once a minute that means its "equip" is worth roughly double the Pocketwatch's "use".

"http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?item=36871"

will probably equal out to the shard but just barely since it is on a 1 minute cooldown.

 

Malan

Expertise devalues at close to 1% per level though Rounced.

Beta ended this morning (servers are going down for good) and our Feral Spirits still do not scale.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Roywyn

Oh, you're just autoattacking with a one-hander and no talents at 80?
Geared at 70, you have 2 AP = 1 DPS. So, in early gear at 80 with low hit/crit/haste, you have perhaps 3 AP = 1 DPS.

That puts Black Magic at ~200 AP, if it can be refreshed, if refreshes don't clip and if it's always up.
It's a 50% proc in spell cast for a 15s duration. No one has any reports of in-game testing or cooldown.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Karok(EU)

GC did mention that it was scaling in an internal build (which can be as much as 3 builds ahead of live/beta). So lets hope that particular patch will hit live before we hit 80 and the scaling can become a much larger issue.

I'm aware that logically it should have been live already, but given the amount of free floating internal builds I wouldn't be surprised if it got lost somewhere in a minor internal build. Maybe get a ball rolling on official forums if the latest live patch does not have the wolf scaling in it and see where it ends up.

 

Malan

He's been saying that for 2 months when we first brought up the issue. Paraphrased he said "Wait you guys aren't seeing scaling? It's scaling for me on our internal build! Oh well, next patch for sure will fix it!" 3-4 builds later and 2 live patches, still no scaling. (At least, none that was mentioned in today's patch notes. I'll test it as soon as the servers are up)

Reminder to all US Enhancement shaman, Go vote!

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

BigZ

Anyone run any preliminary numbers on this new glyph change if it makes running FT on the OH the undisputed OH imbue?

Think it reads that Glyph of LL replaces Glyph of Str of Earth and increase the FT weapon imbue by 10%?

 

falonub

Depending on melee crit rating, berzerking (one would guess) would be the better PvE enchant, as I do not see any fight where us having 25-50% reduced armor would be a problem. Just looking at AP x2 berzerking is just over three times as much AP as x2 mongoose, but that's not looking at crit or the small haste. I believe mongoose will still be the PvP enchant for us though.

 

Karok(EU)

BigZ: Searching the thread does not kill kittens: http://elitistjerks.com/943035-post3314.html

Ofcourse its somewhat napkin-mathy but I guess it gives a decent indication of the value of the glyph, 0.32% dps increase.

 

BigZ

I apologize I guess my question is...what glyph would we replace SOE with and for that matter does it make FT OH imbue the better OH imbue? If I recall, back 50-100 pages of this thread. SOE glyph was superior to FT glyph, so do we assume that we should now run WF and FT glyph with FT on the OH since LL is such a small amount of our dps? From what patch notes read it is "replacing" SOE glyph.

 

Malan

Yes, basically the choices now are boiled down entirely to the WF, LL, and FT glyphs.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Rouncer

Doesn't matter.

Best dps is from hit till capped on specials and then expertise till capped so we need to get that expertise from somewhere and 1 expertise is equal to 2 ap based on the gems. If I need to get expertise from a gem then I am sacrificing double that in attack power.

aren't you being a little snarky there :-)

1 AP is equal to ~0.3dps at level 70.

Which means the jury is definitely still out on weapon enchants. Black Magic should be worth 70dps constant and Zerker is worth ~120 dps during a proc. Mongoose has a 45% (pretty sure that's right) uptime on a single enchant and if Zerker has the same PPM that should mean it will be worth ~54dps.

As for the in-game testing look at the mats required for it. Either it will scale with spellpower and have a cooldown (which could make it disgustingly overpowered) or it will be able to refresh itself on consecutive casts. Sure, that will only be determined through testing but I would be very surprised if it ended up worth less then at least 70dps.


How can you discount the crit or the haste? 2% haste is 66 haste rating at level 80 and agi has an AeP value approaching 2 so the AeP value of Mongoose is much closer to Zerking then you imply.

 

Toots Hepcat

Rounce -- I think he meant that Expertise will get progressively worse per point as its scales out due to level, while the damage contribution of AP will remain roughly constant.

EG:
@70
~16 ER = 1% Dodge Reduction,
1 ER = 3 AP

@80
~32 ER = 1% Dodge Reduction
1 ER = 1.5 AP

 

Rouncer

I knew what he meant but that doesn't change the fact that Expertise has value and is worth double Attack Power since to replace the Exp on the Shard you will be losing the equivalent of 2x the Expertise value in Attack Power.

Expertise cap is 205, Shard has 44 Expertise on it so using that trinket I need 161 additional Expertise to cap it. Let's say I have 113 Expertise on my gear that means I need 3 exp gems (48 expertise rating) to hit the cap. If I have 6 gem slots available then I get to spend 3 of them on the exp and the other 3 on attackpower, which would be 48 expertise and 96AP.

Pull the shard and now I need 92 expertise to hit the cap, which basically means spending all 6 gems on expertise.

That was my point, scaling the rating stats downward doesn't change their replacement costs.

 

Taintedh

I am sure this has been asked in this thread a good hundred times or so, but I am still torn between which OH weapon imbue to use.

Tonight I have done several DPS tests on the level 60 training dummies and they have left me with somewhat mixxed feelings. I am currently the cookie cutter 8/53 spec.

The first tests I decided to do was an autoattack test for 5 minutes with totems down. (SoE, flametongue, and WF). With this, I got the following results:

WF/WF: 1402.2 dps
WF/FT : 1347.2 dps

Afterwards, several tests going all out (Using all my abilities, with the following prioritization rotation-- Lightning Bolt -> Stormstrike -> Earth Shock -> Lava Lash)

Here are some numbers

WF/WF: 2158 | 2346 | 2290 | 2187 | 2260 |
WF/FT : 2256 | 2264 | 2360 | 2440 | 2220 |

I find it hard to believe that I got a serious case of RNG for some of these results. My personal conclusion is that in current game state, at level 70, both are almost equal in terms of dps. But at 80, correct me if I'm wrong, FT will become the best OH imbue due to elemental fury.

Thoughts, concerns? Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

Atren

Expertise should be number one stat during levelling and solo in 80, even before capping out hit. Why? Because you get double benefit from it: reduces both parries and dodges. In practice you should have hit capped on specials anyways from your gear fighting equal level enemies and spells need even less than specials in those conditions.

 

Karok(EU)

Looks like Malan ended up guessing right, Feral Spirit still does not scale with gear.
For those wanting to check it out themselves:

/run if not oldHasPetUI then oldHasPetUI = HasPetUI; HasPetUI = function() return true, false; end end PetTab_Update() ToggleCharacter("PetPaperDollFrame")

Perhaps it should be brough to their attention again so they can dig up the internal build in which they did scale.

 

Malan

I posted in the beta forum complaining about it yesterday afternoon. Hopefully it gets looked into.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Mman

How much expertise are people going to be wearing while leveling though? Just a guess but I would not think that most of the leveling gear is going to have expertise on it. So we will just be left with what we have at level 70 and that gets weaker with each level. Also because leveling mobs have relatively low amounts of health it is usually more valuable to stack which ever stat makes you hit harder. Getting a series of dodges or misses sucks, but your average time fighting a mob is decreased more by just making you hit harder instead of more accurately.