PVE Raiding Compendium - Page 107

Nicarras · 04/25/08, 5:06 PM

@Anexus

You can lookup what bosses CoR is very beneficial and you should use it on there. Generally you'll have more Melee than Mages, and it will add more RaidDPS than CoE. But it is situational, depends on the boss, how much melee dps you have and how many mages you have. Most bosses you can but CoR on, if you have 3 Locks, but bosses where the tank stands a chance of dying from spikey boss dmg you shouldnt CoR. IE: Bloodboil.

Shard Farming as destro for me goes like...

Sac Void

Shadowbolt
Immolate
Drain Soul

Sometimes a mob gets two shot and I dont get one, but most of the time I get one. And I'm farming Basilisk outside Shatt for shards and food consumables.

Deathwing · 04/25/08, 6:04 PM

Farming shards as destro is quite easy, barely any extra work because you don't go out of your way to do it. Basically, you get a crit, the mob is going to die before it gets to you. Figure out it if will take 1 or two more bolts, cast drain soul while the last bolt is in the air.

Anexus · 04/25/08, 6:57 PM

Originally Posted by Nicarras

You can lookup what bosses CoR is very beneficial and you should use it on there. Generally you'll have more Melee than Mages, and it will add more RaidDPS than CoE. But it is situational, depends on the boss, how much melee dps you have and how many mages you have. Most bosses you can but CoR on, if you have 3 Locks, but bosses where the tank stands a chance of dying from spikey boss dmg you shouldnt CoR. IE: Bloodboil.

So what i've found so far is that most bosses have either roughly 6200 or 7700 armor. Meaning 800 armor reduction from CoR is a fair chuck of armor, but still leaves out the possibility of hitting the 0 armor cap with any realistic set of armor penetration gear. One notable exception is RoS phase 1 where the boss has 0 armor. As for the AP i've read contradicting post on how to negate it. Some say 2/5 imp demo shout gives max ap reduction when CoR isnt applied and that full 5/5 is needed to negate the ap from CoR. Some posts claim that the hunter pet debuff Screech is also required. Now if you can completely negate the effect of the added AP it shouldnt matter how hard or spikey the boss hits. Or am i missing something?

PSGarak · 04/25/08, 8:24 PM

2/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout will negate all of a boss's base attack power. 5/5 Improved Demoralizing Shout plus Curse of Recklessness with leave a boss with 20 AP, significantly less than they would have had without either, but still slightly more than just with 2/5 improved demo. Screech will close this gap. Most people don't worry about it.

You are correct that 800 ArP will probably not drop any non-RoS boss to 0 armor in a realistic gear set, but if someone is building for it specifically you might encounter it between Sunder/Expose Armor, Faerie Fire, and some really high ArP procs like executioner and [Warp-Spring Coil].
Setting aside that cap... while the exact damage increase varies depending on absolute armor of target, you can expect aronud 5-6% damage increase on each physical DPS, so if your physical DPS classes outnumber your mages 2:1 your preference is for CoR, and if you have about two or three physical DPS classes total CoR beats CoD. Note that for those purposes, a ret pally should probably count as half a physical class (lots of holy damage), an enhancement shaman maybe 3/4 (some magic damage), and a felguard perhaps 1/4.

As far as destro shard farming, start drain soul while the shadowbolt is en route. While I've never been full destro, it's what I had to do when I was level 60, SM/ruin, and ridiculously overgeared (especially for WPL). It helps to start at max range and have good ping.

Chaley · 04/26/08, 2:09 PM

One thing to also consider when using CoR is that this will allow your tank to hit harder and thus generate more threat. This can help people who are throttling because they are threat capped.

Sumbish · 04/26/08, 11:37 PM

As an aff raid support spec I am always looking for ways to get a bit more DPS. I am not always required to provide bloodpact to the tanks so I am wondering whether it's possible to get some DPS from the imp given a few factors like is VE/VT available.

Has anyone had any real success with this or it's just a waste of time with the low Imp HPs?
Are there any T6 fights that it works well on?

Sorry if this is answered somewhere but if it is I can't find it.

Filmnio · 04/27/08, 5:36 AM

quick question, anyone know if you still get a hidden cooldown if you start casting a spell too early before the previous spell has finished casting? ie, do we still need to time our SB casts with our latency or can we just quickly mash our SB button?

Arelenda · 04/27/08, 5:49 AM

Originally Posted by Filmnio

quick question, anyone know if you still get a hidden cooldown if you start casting a spell too early before the previous spell has finished casting? ie, do we still need to time our SB casts with our latency or can we just quickly mash our SB button?

I seem to get best results by timing it meticulously. I don't mash, I just compensate for my latency and press so my "cast SB" message arrives at the server when the cast is complete, with as little downtime as possible. Sometimes I press too early and that causes a little lost time until I send again.

I don't know _why_ exactly it works. What you're saying, a sort of "hidden" cooldown would explain it, I guess.

Troffel · 04/27/08, 6:35 AM

Originally Posted by Filmnio

quick question, anyone know if you still get a hidden cooldown if you start casting a spell too early before the previous spell has finished casting? ie, do we still need to time our SB casts with our latency or can we just quickly mash our SB button?

For me, it works much better, if i "smash" the shadow bolt button.

But in general it depends on serveral factors:

1. Is on the underlying network the latency to send a next network paket low enough?
Otherwise timing of the shadow bolt button is important.

As a hint: Look at the nagle-algorithm of TCP-connections and try TCP_NODELAY.
It should be used by Blizzard nowadays, but my experience is enable it in the registry
ensures only a low latency. (I use Windows Vista.)

2. How the repeat rate of the keyboard affects the smashing?
If you have a low repeat rate of the keyboard, then timing of the shadow bolt button is preferable.

With my keyboard i able to set a very, very high repeat rate for the keyboard and i experience with
both settings (TCP_NODELAY, very high repeat rate) a smooth chain casting of shadow bolts.

By the way some keyboard allows to send keyboard events, when the key is presses, so hat smashing the keyboard is not really necessary.
You need only keep the button pressed and the keyboard is firing the event every 50ms or less.
This is some kind of auto firing for shadow bolts.

Anexus · 04/27/08, 7:05 AM

Originally Posted by Sumbish

As an aff raid support spec I am always looking for ways to get a bit more DPS. I am not always required to provide bloodpact to the tanks so I am wondering whether it's possible to get some DPS from the imp given a few factors like is VE/VT available.

Has anyone had any real success with this or it's just a waste of time with the low Imp HPs?
Are there any T6 fights that it works well on?

If your group can manage without the extra hp I'd say go ahead and try it. However it is very fragile and will most likely be one-shotted by any dmg. Some careful pet micromanaging is probably required. How to keep him alive is very fight specific and will probably take some practice. If you get too distracted by the micromanaging it might even be a dps loss, at least until you get used to it. Aslo, I doubt VE can save him, but VT will allow him to dps a bit longer before he goes oom. And he does go oom very fast. Since phase shift cannot be cast in combat you probably want to just save him for the end of the fight.

Shade of Akama is most likely the best fight for imp dps. Make sure all the casters are dead (those that do rain of fire) before you take him out of phase shift. Supremus might work in the tank and spank phase if you watch out for him, and allowing him to regen mana in the kiting phase. In MH I think I would have him dps adds if possible. Most bosses have some nasty aoe attack that will kill him, but depending on what posistioning your raid uses he might be out of range when killing adds (2nd and 4th boss).

Smurrf · 04/27/08, 9:09 AM

Originally Posted by Filmnio

quick question, anyone know if you still get a hidden cooldown if you start casting a spell too early before the previous spell has finished casting? ie, do we still need to time our SB casts with our latency or can we just quickly mash our SB button?

I've found it much better to time it. I've cast enough bolts by now to know that just after the cast bar passes the T, it's safe to cast the next one or a Drain Soul.

Anexus · 04/27/08, 9:38 AM

Originally Posted by Filmnio

quick question, anyone know if you still get a hidden cooldown if you start casting a spell too early before the previous spell has finished casting? ie, do we still need to time our SB casts with our latency or can we just quickly mash our SB button?

I prefer to just time it too. At least as destro. I usually have around 100ms and I dont know how much about the mechanics regarding server-client messages so I might be wrong in doing so. But when you are just spamming one spell you eventually get a feeling of when to cast, and when you hear the sound of bloodlust (and see yourself grow) you kind of automatically adjust to the new speed. As affliction though I had problems, especially with nightfall proccs messing up "my feeling". You didnt mention your specc so I thought I would bring it up.

Troffel · 04/27/08, 11:24 AM

Do decide, where time the shadow bolt key or spam it:
Is ther an addon, which measure the real time difference between the shadow bolts and compare it to the theoretical (minimum) time between shadow bolt casts?

Arelenda · 04/27/08, 12:20 PM

Originally Posted by Troffel

Do decide, where time the shadow bolt key or spam it:
Is ther an addon, which measure the real time difference between the shadow bolts and compare it to the theoretical (minimum) time between shadow bolt casts?

Quartz does this, more or less.

As for as perfect timing, you won't get it per spell for the same reason you can't see it right now: we don't have valid timestamps of anything.

You could, however, analyze a time slice and see how many spells you got off and how much time you lost doing nothing in between. This would actually be interesting information.

Rozzenwyn · 04/27/08, 1:19 PM

Originally Posted by Arelenda

Quartz does this, more or less.

As for as perfect timing, you won't get it per spell for the same reason you can't see it right now: we don't have valid timestamps of anything.

You could, however, analyze a time slice and see how many spells you got off and how much time you lost doing nothing in between. This would actually be interesting information.

Quartz definitely helped me up my DPS. It puts a "red" area at the end of the cast bar. As soon as your cast gets into that red area its safe to cast the next spell. Sometimes the red area for me is tiny and other times when latency spikes its been over half the cast bar. That's a LOT of wasted time not casting if I didn't have quartz to let me know it was safe to cast again.

I thought they recently changed the way the client server info was sent and there was not supposed to be any more of that locking out the spell if you send again too soon and button mashing was supposed to work better now? Or am I remembering it backwards. Either way I don't do the mashing, I use quartz but I could have sworn it was in patch notes a few patches back.

Demoniack · 04/27/08, 2:53 PM

Anyone has the maths to know how many haste is needed for a firelock to cast a 7th Incinerate in the rotation?

Does it worth it to drop spell damage and crit for this 7th Incinerate?

Eph · 04/27/08, 3:33 PM

Originally Posted by Rozzenwyn

Quartz definitely helped me up my DPS. It puts a "red" area at the end of the cast bar. As soon as your cast gets into that red area its safe to cast the next spell. Sometimes the red area for me is tiny and other times when latency spikes its been over half the cast bar. That's a LOT of wasted time not casting if I didn't have quartz to let me know it was safe to cast again.

I thought they recently changed the way the client server info was sent and there was not supposed to be any more of that locking out the spell if you send again too soon and button mashing was supposed to work better now? Or am I remembering it backwards. Either way I don't do the mashing, I use quartz but I could have sworn it was in patch notes a few patches back.

I believe you can cast just before the 'red' area now.

Troffel · 04/27/08, 4:05 PM

Originally Posted by Arelenda

Quartz does this, more or less.
...

Quartz measure a different time as latency: Difference between keypress and time of the spell start event.

By i want to measure the player skill aka spam efficiency.
This is the difference between the time of the spell end event of the first spell and the start event of the second spell.

In an perfect timed or perfect spammed world this time should be zero and indicates how good a player is able to chain cast.

This ist the time i want to watch do decide, whether spamming or timing is better.

Nas · 04/27/08, 4:23 PM

Originally Posted by Troffel

Quartz measure a different time as latency: Difference between keypress and time of the spell start event.

By i want to measure the player skill aka spam efficiency.
This is the difference between the time of the spell end event of the first spell and the start event of the second spell.

In an perfect timed or perfect spammed world this time should be zero and indicates how good a player is able to chain cast.

This ist the time i want to watch do decide, whether spamming or timing is better.

You can check the exact time between consecutive Shadow Bolts hitting by using WWS:

Browse -> Browse Log File -> Filter -> Select the Actor -> Choose Event = Hit

You can then create a spreadsheet that calculates the difference, in milliseconds, between a perfect cast time (which would depend on the haste you're under at the time - you could do Dr Boom with no haste effects whatsoever, too) and each of your own Shadowbolts.

Troffel · 04/27/08, 5:40 PM

Originally Posted by Nas

You can check the exact time between consecutive Shadow Bolts hitting by using WWS:

Browse -> Browse Log File -> Filter -> Select the Actor -> Choose Event = Hit

You can then create a spreadsheet that calculates the difference, in milliseconds, between a perfect cast time (which would depend on the haste you're under at the time - you could do Dr Boom with no haste effects whatsoever, too) and each of your own Shadowbolts.

Very good hint! It seems that i come in the Brutallus fight often close to the theoretical cast time within a 10ms margin.
So i think spamming (with high repeat rate of the keyboard) is much better, than timing. I would not expect that with timed keypressing a better result.

So i think that there is NOT hidden CD, while spamming keys.

I had 90 spell haste rating:

...
19:52'01.664	Troffel's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 4852 Shadow damage
19:52'04.017	Troffel's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 2389 Shadow damage (1567 resisted)
19:52'06.438	Troffel's Shadow Bolt crits Brutallus for 10141 Shadow damage
19:52'08.808	Troffel's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 4854 Shadow damage
19:52'11.180	Troffel's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 4044 Shadow damage
19:52'13.554	Troffel's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3629 Shadow damage
19:52'15.913	Troffel's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 2200 Shadow damage (1443 resisted)
19:52'18.278	Troffel's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 4352 Shadow damage
19:52'20.621	Troffel's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3512 Shadow damage
19:52'22.994	Troffel's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3701 Shadow damage
19:52'25.340	Troffel's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 4155 Shadow damage
19:52'27.741	Troffel's Shadow Bolt crits Brutallus for 10646 Shadow damage
...

richard · 04/27/08, 5:51 PM

I was under the impression that when they removed the need for /stopcasting macros. you could just mash the button?

Forgot what patch it was and I have no idea what mechanics they changed, but I went from timing it carefully to just mashing it since then. (here's wat I found, from 2.3: Client spell cast requests are now sent to the server even if your player is already casting another spell. This eliminates the need for /stopcasting in macros to compensate for latency.

Edit: Interesting numbers; this is mine with 6% spellhaste (shows 2.2seconds on quartz cast bar)
Looks like I can still improve a little, but the question is whether I can do that by mashing it faster or timing it carefully?

22:37'05.843	Ric's Shadow Bolt crits Brutallus for 8345 Shadow damage
22:37'11.281	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 4061 Shadow damage
22:37'13.468	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3386 Shadow damage
22:37'15.734	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3164 Shadow damage
22:37'17.937	Ric's Shadow Bolt crits Brutallus for 6587 Shadow damage
22:37'20.156	Ric's Shadow Bolt crits Brutallus for 6861 Shadow damage
22:37'22.484	Ric's Shadow Bolt crits Brutallus for 8125 Shadow damage
22:37'26.531	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3889 Shadow damage
22:37'28.531	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3953 Shadow damage
22:37'30.859	Ric's Shadow Bolt crits Brutallus for 6613 Shadow damage
22:37'33.343	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3741 Shadow damage
22:37'35.625	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3762 Shadow damage
22:37'37.968	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 2858 Shadow damage (687 resisted)
22:37'40.281	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3775 Shadow damage
22:37'42.687	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3162 Shadow damage
22:37'45.093	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3126 Shadow damage
22:37'47.515	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3126 Shadow damage
22:37'50.000	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3811 Shadow damage
22:37'52.265	Ric's Shadow Bolt hits Brutallus for 3117 Shadow damage

Troffel: How can you see the repeat rate of your keyboard, and is there a way to alter it?

Troffel · 04/27/08, 5:57 PM

Originally Posted by richard

I was under the impression that when they removed the need for /stopcasting macros. you could just mash the button?

Forgot what patch it was and I have no idea what mechanics they changed, but I went from timing it carefully to just mashing it since then.

No /stopcasting only simple smashing the button resp. let the finger down on the button.
(For the "Let the finger down on the button"-stategie you need a keyboard, which has a auto repeating function working with WoW. For my keyboard setting the autorepeat is 50ms.)

vaniah · 04/28/08, 2:20 AM

Can anyone link some url's to updated warlock spreadsheets comparing fire builds with incinerate to the default shadow destro build?

i tried the spreadsheet listed at the start of this thread but it doesn't look like it has an option for incinerate spam for some reason.

otherwise some well researched debate would be nice on fire / shadow with a typical raid set up, which ought to be defined by whoever making the arguements.

also, if its already somewhere in this thread... a link would nice as well. this thread is way past the "way too long" threshold... an admin or someone needs to either start a fresh one or delete the relatively useless posts

Nas · 04/28/08, 5:45 AM

A few questions I am hoping to find an answer to from those who have tanked Alythess:

1) I am assuming Nether protection is a bad idea for the Warlock tank, am I safe in assuming that?
2) I am contemplating a 40/21 sort of spec in order to have MD and Soul Link, do you feel this is necessary for survivability or would 0/21/40 without Nether Protection be optimal due to the DPS advantage in Phase 2?
3) I assume if the Warlock tank is fast enough, one wouldn't need any FR gear on save raid buffs, is that a safe assumption?

Thanks in advance!

Madlax · 04/28/08, 6:14 AM

Originally Posted by Nas

A few questions I am hoping to find an answer to from those who have tanked Alythess:

1) I am assuming Nether protection is a bad idea for the Warlock tank, am I safe in assuming that?
2) I am contemplating a 40/21 sort of spec in order to have MD and Soul Link, do you feel this is necessary for survivability or would 0/21/40 without Nether Protection be optimal due to the DPS advantage in Phase 2?
3) I assume if the Warlock tank is fast enough, one wouldn't need any FR gear on save raid buffs, is that a safe assumption?

Thanks in advance!

No Nether prot. Also no standing in melee range.
DPS problems as tanking warlock is none of your concern. Survival is.
Fire res gear doesn´t work.
3 Tanks - 1 Lock Sacrolash last
Wow Web Stats
2 Tanks - 1 Lock Alythess last
Wow Web Stats

Hope that helps.