Ironically, the highest DPS combination I have found was a fast MH caster weapon and slow OH melee weapon, both with FT enchants. Go figure!
Originally Posted by Pitbuller
Counting all melee abilities from Enervate recount I get 936(44SS I guess).
This is the stuff that is KILLING ME
Hothgor, since I've seen you posting numbers I am assuming that the fast MH thing was from actual Beta testing and not from the simulator.
Lets take a moment and go over this again.
Stormstrike is broken in a very strange way. The damage occurs but it is being assigned to no one. Break a combatlog open and you can find all the damage. Take Enervatexx's recount and a good estimate would be to add at least an additional 80k damage to it from Stormstrike (which actually makes us look pretty damn good at the moment).
So if you really want to evaluate what a fast mainhand will do for dps you need to account for Stormstrike.
Run /combatlog and then put it through the parser and then take the fight that you are interested in and highlight it, then right click and select "show all events in a list". This will bring up the line by line code of the parse. Then you can either search for Stormstrike and look for the damage or you can Filter the Source by "Nill" and the All Fields Filter by "SPELL_DAMAGE" which will filter it down to all the spell damage assigned to nill.
You will get a very large block of attacks that were assigned to Nill, add them all up and then add that back into your dps and you will have a real way to determine how that fast mainhand is really doing.
Ahhh, and this is where real world experience trumps simulations.
Because Lava Burst crits for ~40% more damage, and crits every time. Lava Burst has a much higher low and high damage range than Lightning Bolt. Even with it only receiving 57.15% of our spell damage, its vastly superior to Lightning Bolt, which gets only 71.43% of our spell damage. In fact, you would need 3912 spell power before Lightning Bolt does more average damage than Lava Burst does.
I routinely get 6.7 to 7k crits with Lava Burst in my tests, while only 4-4.5k crits with Lightning Bolt. Lava Burst is simply the best spell for us to use. In fact, it does such a LARGE portion of my tested damage, that I will go out on a limb and say that we should ALWAYS cast Lava Burst the MOMENT it comes off CD, regardless of how many MW stacks we have. I have tried to alternate between the two, and while I think this will be possible with 55%+ melee crit, its not practical in normal circumstances. I have also tried taking LvB out of my rotation and only casting it when MW has full stacks, and noticed a significant reduction in overall dps: ~100 or so.
In short, I question anyone who has less than that much crit that throws out a LB just because LvB isn't off cooldown yet.
2 Humble questions:
1. If LaB is so strong (as recount pictures suggest) isn't 2 fast weapons the way to go? (Does Flametongue weapon procs give stacks to Maelstrom?)
2. I saw in one of your older pictures, that Lava Lash crits did about triple damage of a normal hit. Is it possible, that Lava Lash gets 100% extradmg because it's from a physical weapon, and then another 100% from that 100% spellcritdmg Talent in the elemental tree?
1. If LaB is so strong (as recount pictures suggest) isn't 2 fast weapons the way to go? (Does Flametongue weapon procs give stacks to Maelstrom?)
2. I saw in one of your older pictures, that Lava Lash crits did about triple damage of a normal hit. Is it possible, that Lava Lash gets 100% extradmg because it's from a physical weapon, and then another 100% from that 100% spellcritdmg Talent in the elemental tree?
1 - No. Fast weapons would negate the damage done by windfury and stormstrike which both benefit greatly from slower weapons. Flametongue does not proc Maelstrom, its just that the faster weapon generates the crits faster.
2 - Lava Lash is getting double dip bonuses right now from the standard melee crit multiplier and from Elemental Focus.
3 - The approved acronym for Lava Burst is LvB
For those of you who are in the beta - at what point do the trinkets scale down enough to start replacing them with some of the quest trinkets rewarded from quests at around 78-79? Specifically I'm running around with a MotB and the SoC but I can't figure out when they'll have outlived their usefulness.
Lava Lash appears to suffer from the same half-assed implementation Riptide has.
The implementation has been last minute, and there does nto seems to be any consistany. The crit double dip is just one example. This will end up getting nerfed as Malan indicated, but until we see what they expect from it who knows. Maybe they will leave it because they are just trying to push the Enh DPS up in their spreadsheets.
After the initial annoucement they never followed up with any answers, so we cant know what to expect at all.
I've been reading all the wonderful theorycrafting so far but I'm having a hard time searching through it so I'll ask outright.
Is there anyone on the beta right now (preferably in SWP gear) who's messed with slow/fast MH/OH with WF/FT and compared it directly to the usual slow/slow WF/WF?
Also do we have a set of EP values in WotLK yet? If so what are they?
The answer isn't simple. So much is broken right now on the Beta and so much changes from day to day, that no accurate tests can actually be said to be done.
Lava Lash is doing more damage than it likely will when it's finished. That alone makes slow off-hands seem a lot better.
The problem is that someone does a long test and then the terms of the test change. For example, they recently changed Lava Burst so it deals more damage. Any test that had Lava Burst would have it's numbers changed. Tests before Lava Lash were instantly nullified because Lava Lash changed the way we do DPS.
Essentially every test that is done only tells current information and that information keeps changing.
We can estimate based on current information what stats we think are best using the sim but all it takes is another major change and we have to throw out the results.
Another problem is that what you prioritize makes a big difference in what the values of stats will be. If you prioritize stormstrike first, you automatically make slow weapons more powerful which raises value of all melee stats. If you prioritize Maelstrom Weapon first, you automatically make fast weapons more powerful which raises the value of melee critical and all spell stats.
Another issue is that values change a lot depending on what you choose to stack first. If you automatically take hit to the spell hit level, the value of stats change based on that fact. If you take hit only to special attacks cap (like now), all spell stats are automatically worth much less.
Hothgor, since I've seen you posting numbers I am assuming that the fast MH thing was from actual Beta testing and not from the simulator.
Lets take a moment and go over this again.
Stormstrike is broken in a very strange way. The damage occurs but it is being assigned to no one. Break a combatlog open and you can find all the damage. Take Enervatexx's recount and a good estimate would be to add at least an additional 80k damage to it from Stormstrike (which actually makes us look pretty damn good at the moment).
So if you really want to evaluate what a fast mainhand will do for dps you need to account for Stormstrike.
Run /combatlog and then put it through the parser and then take the fight that you are interested in and highlight it, then right click and select "show all events in a list". This will bring up the line by line code of the parse. Then you can either search for Stormstrike and look for the damage or you can Filter the Source by "Nill" and the All Fields Filter by "SPELL_DAMAGE" which will filter it down to all the spell damage assigned to nill.
You will get a very large block of attacks that were assigned to Nill, add them all up and then add that back into your dps and you will have a real way to determine how that fast mainhand is really doing.
I'll see what I can do today. I just want to point out, however, that a larger portion of damage that is associated with Stormstrike is no longer associated with the weapon used, but the spells that consume the debuff. A 5000 damage lava burst will do an additional 1400 damage with one charge of Stormstrike alone. Adding 3 more shocks/lava lashes between casts and we will effectively be doing an additional 2.5-3k damage conservatively with just the SS debuff on the target. At no point in TBC has my SS damage with a Slow/Slow averaged that much according to Dr. Damage. Of course, with higher weapons this might change, but I would suspect that ratio to be around 50/50 for melee and spell damage bonus. That would make weapon speeds far less important for SS, would it not?
That would make weapon speeds far less important for SS, would it not?
Damage is damage.
Stormstrike has always been a significant source of damage and that has not changed.
Whether the additional damage will be enough to overcome the "advantages" from using fast weapons remains to be seen.
There is another thing to keep in mind with all this talk of fast weapons. Flametongue scales perfectly with weapon speed and since Stormstrike and Lava Lash give additional instant attacks that proc Flametongue the damage bonus from the slower speed still needs to be accounted for.
Highest rank Flametongue seems to be 68.5 x Weapon Speed + Spellpower/10 which means a 2.6 speed weapon will be doing 178.1 base damage and a 1.3 speed will do 89 base damage. Both getting the same amount from Spellpower.
If we count a constant 50% haste (WF totem + Flurry) that brings the 2.6 down to 1.73 and the 1.3 down to 0.87
So over a minute the 2.6speed will hit 34.7 times + 17.5 instant attacks and the 1.3speed will hit 69 times + 17.5 instant attacks.
So the base damage for the slow weapon would be 9296.82 over 1 minute and the base damage for the fast weapon would be 7698.5 over that same minute. So the 34.3 additional attacks from using a faster weapon have to generate 1598 damage before the increased speed generates any additional damage. That works out to 466 Spellpower.
The important thing to realize is that all of that only has to do with Flametongue. Lava Lash does more damage with a Slower Weapon and so does Stormstrike. The real question is how much Spellpower will be needed to overcome all of those things combined.
I'll see what I can do today. I just want to point out, however, that a larger portion of damage that is associated with Stormstrike is no longer associated with the weapon used, but the spells that consume the debuff. A 5000 damage lava burst will do an additional 1400 damage with one charge of Stormstrike alone. Adding 3 more shocks/lava lashes between casts and we will effectively be doing an additional 2.5-3k damage conservatively with just the SS debuff on the target. At no point in TBC has my SS damage with a Slow/Slow averaged that much according to Dr. Damage. Of course, with higher weapons this might change, but I would suspect that ratio to be around 50/50 for melee and spell damage bonus. That would make weapon speeds far less important for SS, would it not?
Stormstrike is still an instant attack that you can only use once every 8 seconds. Using fast weapons won't allow you to Stormstrike more often to increase the number of charges available, so the amount of spell damage we deal that is affected by the charges is completely irrelevant. At no point will weapon speed be "less important" for Stormstrike, unless the damage component is taken out entirely and all it does is apply a debuff, or it becomes "on next hit", neither of which are happening.
The arguement against using fast weapons/fast OH with FT:
A) Windfury will likely be fixed soon.
B) Faster weapons do not allow you to 1) Stormstrike more, 2) Lava burst more, 3) Get more windfury procs, 4) Shock more, etc etc etc.
Flametongue is a fantasy perpetuated by people frantically flailing about trying to find a substitute for windfury while it's broken. Wait until we ACTUALLY get 1470 bonus AP (assuming glyph + badge totem) from Windfury before you jump to conclusions. The thing that people seem to forget is this:
When all is said and done, the majority of our damage is still going to come from white attacks and windfury weapon procs, which benefit most from two slow weapons.
[23:05] <flake-prime> uninstalled steam changed password to random gibberish changed email changed that email account to random gibberish Enervate <-----When getting mad about DOTA goes too far
Rhaegal, as the melee portion of SS gets less important, so does the speed of our weapons. If fast weapons allows us to use X amount of extra SS charges w/ maelstrom weapon in a minute, it is possible that those extra spells will be greater dps gain than the difference between using slow weapons for SS.
This seems pretty unlikely to me though. And slightly complicated to figure out without testing. You have to figure out things like will we always use up those 4 SS charges in 8 seconds (I'd guess yes), how much damage are you actually gaining over using the SS for another spell, etc.
All these theorys always have to consider gear in the equation as well. What we select for gear will greatly determine our play style/spell priority.
Stormstrike has always been a significant source of damage and that has not changed.
Whether the additional damage will be enough to overcome the "advantages" from using fast weapons remains to be seen.
There is another thing to keep in mind with all this talk of fast weapons. Flametongue scales perfectly with weapon speed and since Stormstrike and Lava Lash give additional instant attacks that proc Flametongue the damage bonus from the slower speed still needs to be accounted for.
Highest rank Flametongue seems to be 68.5 x Weapon Speed + Spellpower/10 which means a 2.6 speed weapon will be doing 178.1 base damage and a 1.3 speed will do 89 base damage. Both getting the same amount from Spellpower.
If we count a constant 50% haste (WF totem + Flurry) that brings the 2.6 down to 1.73 and the 1.3 down to 0.87
So over a minute the 2.6speed will hit 34.7 times + 17.5 instant attacks and the 1.3speed will hit 69 times + 17.5 instant attacks.
So the base damage for the slow weapon would be 9296.82 over 1 minute and the base damage for the fast weapon would be 7698.5 over that same minute. So the 34.3 additional attacks from using a faster weapon have to generate 1598 damage before the increased speed generates any additional damage. That works out to 466 Spellpower.
The important thing to realize is that all of that only has to do with Flametongue. Lava Lash does more damage with a Slower Weapon and so does Stormstrike. The real question is how much Spellpower will be needed to overcome all of those things combined.
Coincidentally enough, the spell power bonus from 2 flame tongue enchants is 548, more than the 466 needed to overcome the difference.
Question... (and i appologize if this has been addressed, i searched and couldn't find anything...)
Mental Quickness says it applies Spell Power equal to 10/20/30% of our AP to our "instant cast" spells. Now I don't suppose a Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt etc reduced to 0 casting time from 5 Maelstorm Weapon stacks are considered "instant cast" spells?
The arguement against using fast weapons/fast OH with FT:
A) Windfury will likely be fixed soon.
B) Faster weapons do not allow you to 1) Stormstrike more, 2) Lava burst more, 3) Get more windfury procs, 4) Shock more, etc etc etc.
Flametongue is a fantasy perpetuated by people frantically flailing about trying to find a substitute for windfury while it's broken. Wait until we ACTUALLY get 1470 bonus AP (assuming glyph + badge totem) from Windfury before you jump to conclusions. The thing that people seem to forget is this:
When all is said and done, the majority of our damage is still going to come from white attacks and windfury weapon procs, which benefit most from two slow weapons.
If you have not been testing on the BETA server, you can not possibly know where the majority of our damage is 'still going to come from'. Even when comparing level 70 ranks of WF and FT, their damage is now fairly close to each other. And Lava Burst alone is doing far more damage than normal melee attacks. WF/SS would have to do enough damage to outweigh this AND the damage reduction penalty from bosses - this is especially important now that armor penetration is no longer -armor but -% armor. Magical damage, which ignores physical damage reduction on targets, will do a proportionally larger total of our damage, as is evident on the BETA realms ATM.
Question... (and i appologize if this has been addressed, i searched and couldn't find anything...)
Mental Quickness says it applies Spell Power equal to 10/20/30% of our AP to our "instant cast" spells. Now I don't suppose a Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt etc reduced to 0 casting time from 5 Maelstorm Weapon stacks are considered "instant cast" spells?
No, it reduces the mana cost of our instant spells and increases our SP by 10/20/30%. The two are unrelated.
WF/SS would have to do enough damage to outweigh this AND the damage reduction penalty from bosses - this is especially important now that armor penetration is no longer -armor but -% armor. Magical damage, which ignores physical damage reduction on targets, will do a proportionally larger total of our damage, as is evident on the BETA realms ATM.
Spells also get their damage reduced by the bosses. Don't forget about the unpenetratable level based resistences they all have.
Check out a parse from a Fire mage and look at how much damage was left on the table due to those.
If you want to be a caster then just spec Elemental.
The arguement against using fast weapons/fast OH with FT:
A) Windfury will likely be fixed soon.
B) Faster weapons do not allow you to 1) Stormstrike more, 2) Lava burst more, 3) Get more windfury procs, 4) Shock more, etc etc etc.
Flametongue is a fantasy perpetuated by people frantically flailing about trying to find a substitute for windfury while it's broken. Wait until we ACTUALLY get 1470 bonus AP (assuming glyph + badge totem) from Windfury before you jump to conclusions. The thing that people seem to forget is this:
When all is said and done, the majority of our damage is still going to come from white attacks and windfury weapon procs, which benefit most from two slow weapons.
While you are right at how broke things are at beta. You underestimate power of simulator. Windfury works fine at simulator and it show that flame tongue scale very good. Dual windfury isn't bad now(4150dps) but wf + ft(fast) look little(4300dps) better also wf + ft(slow) is option(4175dps). Those numbers inculed wf glyph but no wf totem. Flame tongue fantasy is coming from Tukez sim not from bugged beta testing. Our melee/spell portion is about half and half right now. With raid buffs you get so much crit that you get five crits much faster than once in 8s interval with fast off-hand even more and then lightning bolts come on rotation. Even at 20% unbuffed melee crit Lava burst/lightning bolt give 200dps over plain lava burst rotation. There is very easy macro for it.
It's very good thing that we have more option than slow/slow or die. But it's really hard to get all people understand that mechanic change and what was good so long maybe ins't best choise anymore. Anything can change after next patch but if we don't run number now we are late when we should start raiding Wotlk content.
Config file what I used is here.
About stormstrike and hidden damage. Sim give SS = 200dps but if you don't use SS you lose 614dps. So there is 414 hidden dps.
There are some pretty safe assumptions we can make, based on reason and comments by developers, and by what we can observe.
One, is that they don't want enhancement shaman using caster weapons. As a melee combat class, using melee weapons is pretty much class defining. If the numbers start pushing people towards caster weapons, they will change the numbers. The lone exception to this has always been protection paladins, and they are pushing them away from doing it as well.
Two, they seem to be solving the "windfury is too mathy" problem by encouraging us to use flametongue on the offhand. When a specific baseline skill (Lava Lash) mentions it, that's the way the average player is going to play. Now WF offhand might still end up competitive or even slightly better, but they aren't going to make design that is so blatant and then make it not viable at all.
Three, to counterbalance that, they don't want us using flametongue on our mainhands either. Windfury is a defining attribute of Enhancement Shaman, so if the numbers pull us away from that, again, they will change them.
Four, on a lighter note, let's all hope they make offhand weapon speed not matter much, because right now there are 2 slow offhands total in all of T7 and one is from Kel'thuzad-25.
Remember, numbers are the easiest thing to change. As long as the class mechanics are playable and at all fun, they can and will change numbers to put the class where they want it to be. They have made a lot of nice improvements (the tweaks to Maelstrom for example) based on suggestions and feedback that was based on mechanics, not on complaining.
Also, while it's great to refine and get the sim working accurately, it's still way premature to be making assumptions or doing substaintial testing both in game or with the sim when it comes to numbers and production, because it will all change twice a week for at least the next month, and everything you did before the most recent change is basically pointless.
Spells also get their damage reduced by the bosses. Don't forget about the unpenetratable level based resistences they all have.
Check out a parse from a Fire mage and look at how much damage was left on the table due to those.
If you want to be a caster then just spec Elemental.
I don't think its quite as simple as 'if you want to cast spells spec Elemental'. We have to use what tools that Blizzard is giving us to do the best possible DPS that we can do. It seems to be that they want us to do ~50% of our damage via spells. Seeing as how that is the case, wouldn't it be just as easy to say 'if you want to only do melee damage, reroll a Rogue?'
I don't think its quite as simple as 'if you want to cast spells spec Elemental'. We have to use what tools that Blizzard is giving us to do the best possible DPS that we can do. It seems to be that they want us to do ~50% of our damage via spells. Seeing as how that is the case, wouldn't it be just as easy to say 'if you want to only do melee damage, reroll a Rogue?'
Did you run your combatlogs through that parser and add back in the Stormstrike damage so you can do proper comparisons between all the weapon choices?
Did you run your combatlogs through that parser and add back in the Stormstrike damage so you can do proper comparisons between all the weapon choices?
There are some pretty safe assumptions we can make, based on reason and comments by developers, and by what we can observe.
One, is that they don't want enhancement shaman using caster weapons. As a melee combat class, using melee weapons is pretty much class defining. If the numbers start pushing people towards caster weapons, they will change the numbers. The lone exception to this has always been protection paladins, and they are pushing them away from doing it as well.
Two, they seem to be solving the "windfury is too mathy" problem by encouraging us to use flametongue on the offhand. When a specific baseline skill (Lava Lash) mentions it, that's the way the average player is going to play. Now WF offhand might still end up competitive or even slightly better, but they aren't going to make design that is so blatant and then make it not viable at all.
Three, to counterbalance that, they don't want us using flametongue on our mainhands either. Windfury is a defining attribute of Enhancement Shaman, so if the numbers pull us away from that, again, they will change them.
Four, on a lighter note, let's all hope they make offhand weapon speed not matter much, because right now there are 2 slow offhands total in all of T7 and one is from Kel'thuzad-25.
Remember, numbers are the easiest thing to change. As long as the class mechanics are playable and at all fun, they can and will change numbers to put the class where they want it to be. They have made a lot of nice improvements (the tweaks to Maelstrom for example) based on suggestions and feedback that was based on mechanics, not on complaining.
Also, while it's great to refine and get the sim working accurately, it's still way premature to be making assumptions or doing substaintial testing both in game or with the sim when it comes to numbers and production, because it will all change twice a week for at least the next month, and everything you did before the most recent change is basically pointless.
Why wouldn't they want enhancement shamans to use caster weapons? They clearly introduced once in the form of [Wraith Strike] - a 90 dps 2.6 speed Mh only weapon with 461 spell power on it. Edit: its called Wraith Strike.
Four specs can use Wraith Strike: Elemental and Resto Shaman, and Balance and Resto Druids. Yes, the speed is an anomaly that seems to point towards Enhancement using caster weapons. There's also Titansteel Guardian. Every other caster weapon is 1.8 speed except the arena weapons which are 1.6. They are also main hand only as they'd be very OP and we'd all use them if you could offhand it.
Part of the problem is, using a caster weapon reduces the percent of our damage which is white damage, and Blizzard has said in regards to Death Knights that they try to keep that amount in a certain range for melee classes as it makes balancing easier (40% or so). It's like Death Knights tanking while dual wielding. They can do it, but Blizzard doesn't want them to, so they do things to discourage it. There's nothing wrong with Enhance being a caster/melee hybrid (in fact it's what I love most, being a caster that can also whack stuff), but it's still primarily a melee class, and the defining aspect of melee dps is the weapons.
09/22/08, 9:40 AM
