[Elemental] Lava Burst Testing - Page 2

Sharkathi · 05/08/09, 11:47 AM

Edit: turns out I won´t be able to do the testing after all. Sorry!

Also

Originally Posted by Cryonic

I was actually discussing this bug tonight in my guilds caster channel and cheking the numbers in recount all night intentionally not putting up FS to check crit vs non-crit numbers. I was pointing out to fellow casters that I'd see 6-7k non-crit LvB's and 8-9k crit LvB's on the same mobs. To rule out Fire Resist it was on mobs from every corner of Ulduar. I also lead PuG Naxx25's with friends and guildies to get alts gear and I notice the same ranges there on its damage.

If this holds up under scrutiny (e.g. no trinket procs messing things up etc.), this sounds awfully like Elemental Fury not working properly...
What about your average hit/crit for the entire instance? (excluding Thaddius)

Agash · 05/08/09, 12:34 PM

Great information Ash – I have taken the liberty of compiling this into a WWS for ease of analysis:

Wow Web Stats

Assuming your Armoury is still right with (2 piece T7/T8) and 1927 SP it appears you are actually hitting too hard! Using existing models to analyse the data, I would suggest that your min/ave/max values under those conditions should be:

LvB Max Crit : (1518+0.7714*1927)*1.11*2.2208 = 7406.3
LvB Ave Crit : (1355+0.7714*1927)*1.11*2.2208 = 7004.5
LvB Min Crit : (1192+0.7714*1927)*1.11*2.2208 = 6602.7

LvB Max Hit : (1518+0.7714*1927)*1.11 = 3335.0
LvB Ave Hit : (1355+0.7714*1927)*1.11 = 3154.0
LvB Min Hit : (1192+0.7714*1927)*1.11 = 2973.1

In fact you got:

LvB Max Crit : 8326 (+12.4%)
LvB Ave Crit : 7513 (+7.3%)
LvB Min Crit : 6608 (+0.1%)

LvB Max Hit : 3650 (+9.4%)
LvB Ave Hit : 3239 (+2.7%)
LvB Min Hit : 2976 (+0.1%)

It looks like your minimums are exactly where they should be but your average and maximum values are very high. It would take a better expert than me to analyse the combat logs precisely but looking at them, there appear to be times where your trinket procs or CC buff were not removed and this could be effecting the results. For example, the first 6 lines of your log are:

0:00'21.110 Ashye Lava Burst hits Grandmaster’s Training Dummy for 3278 Fire.
0:00'26.250 Ashye Clearcasting was removed from Ashye.
0:00'30.875 Ashye Lava Burst hits Grandmaster’s Training Dummy for 3206 Fire.
0:00'40.219 Ashye gains Dying Curse.
0:00'41.125 Ashye Lava Burst hits Grandmaster’s Training Dummy for 3323 Fire.
0:00'42.938 Ashye Dying Curse was removed from Ashye.

So at first glance it appears that 2 out of those 3 LvBs were effected by CC or Trinket procs. My understandng is that a trinket will proc on cast AND effect that cast which means that the buff cannot be cancelled for that cast (damage is calculated on cast, not landing I believe). The only way to do this test reliably is to remove any proccing trinkets. Finally, although you have been fairly religious in removing the EO buff before casts, it is actually the CC buff that gives the bonus damage and that you have often left on.

As a point of interest, all casts that hit for harder than anticipated were effected by either Trinkets, CC or Lightweave.

In a nutshell, without disecting the combatlog in extreme detail, this test shows that the minimum values are where expected but does not tell us much about the average and top end behaviour of the spell.

Agash · 05/08/09, 4:10 PM

I’ve run 3 tests on the level 80 target dummy. All tests were performed with no procs, no CC, no totems and no weapon buffs. No tests included Glyphs that effect the results. All results are given in the format: No. of Casts : Min/Ave/Max.

Test 1 – No Elemental Talents, 1958 SP, 4 Pc T7 bonus

LvB Hits : 67 : 2312 / 2487 / 2616
LvB Crits : 33 : 3709 / 3983 / 4213

Theoretical results are:

LvB Hits : 2310 / 2473 / 2636
LvB Crits : 3695 / 3956 / 4216

All results are within the min/max boundaries and within 0.7% of theoretical values.

Test 2 – All Elemental Talents, 1958 SP, 4 Pc T7 bonus,

LvB Hits : 50 : 3001 / 3178 / 3360
LvB Crits : 50 : 6838 / 7239 / 7619

Theoretical results are:

LvB Hits : 3000 / 3181 / 3362
LvB Crits : 6826 / 7238 / 7650

All results are within the min/max boundaries and within 0.4% of theoretical values.

Test 3 – All Elemental Talents, 1964 SP, NO 4 Pc T7 bonus

LvB Hits : 50 : 3007 / 3175 / 3348
LvB Crits : 50 : 6695 / 7085 / 7475

Theoretical results are:

LvB Hits : 3005 / 3186 / 3367
LvB Crits : 6674 / 7075 / 7477

All results are within the min/max boundaries and within 0.6% of theoretical values.

Conclusion :

For me at least Lava Burst is behaving exactly as predicted as is the 4pc T7 bonus.

Binkenstein · 05/08/09, 5:16 PM

Based on Test 3, we'd expect the following with raid buffs:
Just 13% damage debuff: 7542 - 9294
13% debuff & 3% buff: 7768 - 9573

And that's about where we've been seeing things post 3.1. At this stage I'm thinking the only difference is that people swapped Lava out for ToW, and were expecting to see an extra 500-900 damage on LvB.

Agash · 05/08/09, 5:50 PM

I think that is a possibility. The glyph swap and the loss of the 4pc T7 will reduce LvB damage by about 9.3% which is about 1400 damage off max LvB crits and I believe this may account for much of the initial reaction. The Totem of Hex is also more widely available now and that would account for another 400 loss over the LvB totem for people that were using that. However, there are also reports from people that I would usually consider less likely to make a hurried conclusion like that who are reporting a drop in overall DPS which this does not account for.

Some of the DPS loss can be attributed to the nerf to Elemental Mastery and part to the nerf to Scorch – about 200 DPS between them. Some more might be attributed to the more mobile nature of the fights, the more frequent target switching, the changes to rotations as haste ratings change and the wider spacing causing some buffs to be lost. Not least of course is the possibility that in harder content more raid members die and buffs are lost that way.

What we really need to see is some solid WWS reports that include LvBs hitting for less than they should considering all the buffs/debuffs present. Average numbers here will prove nothing as it is impossible to determine what was going on during the fight that might cause DPS to drop.

So if anyone has a report where a LvB (or LB) hits for less than it should, let’s see them and see if they can be explained. All it takes is one conclusive example to prove that there is a problem – it shouldn’t be too hard considering the number of people reporting the problem.

Mmootimus · 05/08/09, 11:05 PM

Latest from Ghostcrawler:

As I posted in the other active thread on this topic, we still cannot find any bugs with Elemental. We looked at a lot of numbers from before and after 3.1 and (except for the lower crit values) the numbers don't seem very different. It could be that other classes, notably rogues and Feral druids, just improved.

Nonetheless, we do think Elemental is a little low so there is likely to be a small buff coming. I feel obligated to add the standard no promises caveat.

I will be interested to see how exactly this is handled. I still feel that Ele is right up there with the best of the pure classes for single target nuke DPS, so it will be interesting what form this buff takes. (This is probably best discussed in another thread).

I do not think this should detract from trying to find any LvB bug however. If there is a bug, it is most likely to affect scaling, and so will not necessarily be permanently fixed by a small buff. I am also concerned generally by the sheer amount of attention this issue has received, and think it needs to be pinned down for the sake of the general sanity of the shaman community (seeing as it has got the attention of everyone from EJ to Blizzard, to say nothing of several thousand less enlightened posters on the various official forums).

Binkenstein · 05/09/09, 2:54 AM

What exactly changed between 3.0.9 and 3.1?

Lost 5% crit for 30 seconds every 3 minutes + 5% crit -> roughly 262 crit rating, which would be about 157 dps, although I'm not sure if that would account for the lower ClearCasting uptime. (Obviously it's closer to 262 with both the T8 bonuses).
Gained direct damage bonus to flameshock (all of 20 dps for 2 points)

The other problem is that now that Demonology locks are getting close to 2800 spellpower as well as being viable dps, it may be that Totem of Wrath needs to be changed so that we get some personal bonus from the talent (unless they consider the glyph to be the personal bonus)

Agash · 05/09/09, 4:24 AM

I think you have missed the reduction of EM from 30 to 15 secs in your calcs. That effectively reduces your crit by 15% for 15 secs per 3 mins over what you have listed for an average crit rating loss of about 318. Including for CC uptime losses and gains on FS damage, I think our overall DPS loss is around 212. When other classes/spec have received slight buffs (some, more than slight), it is not surprising that we see ourselves dropping down the DPS rankings.

Demonic Pact introduces some interesting possibilities. Of course it is a higher DPS boost than ToW but it is also a less reliable one and pre 3.1 could end up dropping off the target ~2% of the time (not precise as I’m no lock expert). The Scorch nerf actually increases this to maybe a 3% drop off. I am wondering if some of the reduced LvBs reported in raids are due to this drop off as guilds switch to using DP over ToW (especially as Demo locks have been buffed relative to Aff). It would account for a 750 damage drop on LvB crits.

Cascade · 05/09/09, 10:24 AM

Here are my results on the heroic traning dummy.

Attributes

Spell Power: 1830
Hit Rating: 224
Crit Chance: 27.00%
Haste Rating: 336

Intellect: 1053

Spec

Standard 57/14/0, Dual-Spec enabled

Elemental (57 points)

2/5 Convection
5/5 Concussion
3/3 Call of Flame
3/3 Elemental Warding
1/1 Elemental Focus
5/5 Elemental Fury
3/3 Eye of the Storm
2/2 Elemental Reach
1/1 Call of Thunder
3/3 Unrelenting Storm
3/3 Elemental Precision
5/5 Lightning Mastery
1/1 Elemental Mastery
3/3 Storm, Earth and Fire
2/2 Booming Echoes
2/2 Elemental Oath
3/3 Lightning Overload
1/1 Totem of Wrath
3/3 Lava Flows
5/5 Shamanism
1/1 Thunderstorm

Enhancement (14 points)

5/5 Ancestral Knowledge
5/5 Thundering Strikes
3/3 Elemental Weapons
1/1 Shamanistic Focus

Restoration (0 points)

None

Glyphs

Major: LB, ToW, FS
Minor: Thunderstorm, WS, Water Breathing

Gear
No CSD, 2pc T7

Misc

No weapon buff, no totems, EO / CC canceled always, Sundial canceled too

Results

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Log

http://blackravens.net/lvb_cascades_20090509.zip

Ryn · 05/09/09, 10:32 AM

What if this "bug" is not reproducable on a targeting dummy, maybe it requires a raid buff of some sort. Like a warlock's Demonic Pact overwriting totem of wrath, and for one second, neither buff is applied, just speculating here. Although testing on a target dummy does rule out a lot of variables, it may actually rule out the ones causing the bug.

Moshne · 05/09/09, 11:33 AM

We recognize that the bug might not, and very likely is not, reproducible on the dummies. The problem is that we need to make sure we understand how our relatively simple abilities work (the multipliers on Lava Burst etc.) After we are sure we understand them, we can start looking for other culprits, if there are any.

Degorn · 05/10/09, 1:37 AM

Originally Posted by Ryn

I started to hear of this "low crits" problem some time ago, but never really thought much of it, didn't feel like I was having any problem with my Lava Bursts. But today on Ignis, I had ~4k SP (trinket procs) and my LvB crit for just 10k. This was in the heat of the moment, so I didn't really check if there was a reason to it, like partial resist or even missing CoE, but my LvB had generally seemed low the whole raid.

Recently, I've been working on this addon here. In it, I've added some debug code to it which will calculate the expected damage range a spell should hit for, and then report if the actual spell hit outside this range. Could be interesting to turn this debug code on during a raid, just to see if there are any problems.

Hmph, I wish I had read this before writing a little addon to figure this thing out. I haven't been able to test it in a raid yet but everything seems to be working correctly...including Lava Burst.

Anyway, here it is. It assumes that you're using CSD as your meta and it doesn't support Thunderfall Totem, but otherwise it's fairly accurate.

Zomglazerpew · 05/10/09, 2:32 AM

Originally Posted by Ash

Did some testing with some spare time I had this morning.
All gear should be the same as listed in my armory, no weapon buffs or totems down and I cancelaura'd every trinket proc and elemental mastery.

Wow Web Stats

Hosted your log for you.

Zomglazerpew · 05/10/09, 6:20 AM

I did some testing of my own just to see what each talent would do to the damage without any gear on. Only thing used was Water Shield (W/ WS Glyph), and Mana Spring Totem. I exited and deleted my combatlog after every upload.

This WWS is base with no talents and no gear.
Wow Web Stats

Next was with 5 points into Concussion. Still no gear.
Wow Web Stats

5 points into Convection and Concussion. No gear worn.
Wow Web Stats

5 points into Convection and Concussion 3 points into Call of Flame. No gear.
Wow Web Stats

5 points into Convection, Concussion, Elemental Fury, and 3 points into Call of Flame.
Wow Web Stats

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Reason for going so low so fast is because TECH those talents shouldn't effect LvB. Also I did 2 tests after this, 1 with keeping Elemental Focus up, one without. Only reason I did this is because we have no clue is to what is doing it, so I did all variables possible to see if there was any side effects. I will also be doing this with Elemental Oath later on.
Wow Web Stats w/ Elemental Focus
Wow Web Stats w/o Elemental Focus

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft.
Wow Web Stats w/ Elemental Focus
Wow Web Stats w/o Elemental Focus

This next part will have 4 different WWS, each with different variables. 1 with Elemental Focus and Elemental Oath, 1 without either, 1 with just Elemental Focus, and 1 with just Elemental Oath.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft.
Wow Web Stats w/ Elemental Focus & Elemental Oath
Wow Web Stats w/o Elemental Focus & Elemental Oath
Wow Web Stats w/ Elemental Focus & w/o Elemental Oath
Wow Web Stats w/o Elemental Focus & w/ Elemental Oath

With this next one I will be doing the same thing as the last tests.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft.
Wow Web Stats w/ Elemental Focus & Elemental Oath
Wow Web Stats w/o Elemental Focus & Elemental Oath
Wow Web Stats w/ Elemental Focus & w/o Elemental Oath
Wow Web Stats w/o Elemental Focus & w/ Elemental Oath

To me overall it doesn't seem nothing effects it with raw stats. Hope this helps in figuring out the issue, cause I've definitely noticed it myself in 25 mans when trinkets proc and I still have low LvB hits. If anything I think it might be caused by everyone changing from Glyph of Lava to Totem of Wrath Glyph.

Mmootimus · 05/10/09, 10:12 PM

OK, I have done my bit, and did some tests.

Summary: Having tested basic LvB function, and the 4-pc T7 bonus, both are working entirely normally. Based on basic testing Dual-specc also showed no problems.

All tests were done with:
- CSD meta-gem
- 5/5 Concussion, 3/3 Call of Flame, 3/3 Lava flows, 5/5 Shamanism
- Both trinkets removed
- Using the L80 Grandmaster's training dummy
- No Glyph of Lava in either specc
- No FT buff or any totems dropped

I will show the predicted hits based on the current understanding of LvB and my actual numbers for each test. I can see no discrepancy whatsoever. I did do slightly less than the 50 casts suggested originally, but you can check out the WWS for details.

Test 1

2064 spellpower

Min. normal hit:
Theoretical - 3090, Actual - 3095
Max. normal hit
Theoretical - 3452, Actual - 3446

Min. crit
Theoretical - 6864, Actual - 6871
Max crit
Theoretical - 7668, Actual - 7662

Wow Web Stats

Test 2

- 2050 spellpower
- Added 4-pc T7 bonus. Also switched to my secondary specc. This is an Ele PVP specc, so still has all the talents shown above, and lacks nothing that should change LvB damage. (I realise its slightly bad science to change two variables at once, and if I had found any weird results I would have tested further in isolation).

Min. normal hit:
Theoretical - 3079, Actual - 3082
Max. normal hit
Theoretical - 3440, Actual - 3427

Min. crit
Theoretical - 7001, Actual - 7063
Max crit
Theoretical - 7823, Actual - 7820

Wow Web Stats

I can't see a thing wrong myself, although I didn't particularly expect to either. My result with the highest variance from its theoretical limit is the "min crit" on test 2, but even then its actually too high rather than too low, and in no way inconsistent with the understood mechanics of the spell. At first glance the average damage done also looks fine.

I am beginning to get a funny feeling we won't get to the bottom of this, but time will tell. Hopefully when a few more items on Bink's original list are tested then maybe more scrutiny can be given to the raid environment.