PVE Raiding Compendium - Page 118

Rozzenwyn · 05/13/08, 2:29 PM

Originally Posted by Arelenda

Update: 115 pages of this thread have been examined for useful links.Those links have been added to the compendium. I'll do the remaining pages soonish. If you think I missed any relevant posts, please let me know.

Thanks! I already found useful data through your links that I had missed. Thanks for all your hard work on organizing this thread and keeping the info flowing.

Arelenda · 05/13/08, 4:05 PM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

Quagmirran's Eye internal cooldown is 45 seconds, so Hex Head is a better trinket.

6/(45-6+20)*320 = 32 haste is what you should enter.

It would be nice to see an LW/Tailor printout (add 20 haste for drums and the tailor chest).

Getting a drummer in your party is the effective gain of 20 haste for you. You drumming yourself does nothing.

The problem with drums is that you also lose a GCD. You barely gain out of it yourself. They're considerably better for classes that have no problems with GCD, such as rogues/ret paladins/enhancement shamans.

I'll show it with some quick calculations:

Stuff I'm ignoring:
- I'm assuming that drumming costs a GCD. This isn't always the case, similar to Life Tap.
- I'm assuming that haste effect ends after 30 seconds. Typically, your last spellcast will get hasted so you can get a bit more out of the last spell you cast.
- I'm assuming no passive haste. With haste it gets considerably more messy, but the end result is exactly the same.
- I'm assuming you're not stacking other cooldowns into drums, such as heroism/bloodlust and trinkets.

If you don't use drums, you get 31.5 second of dps spells.
If you do use drums, you lose 1.5 due to GCD, then 30 seconds of 80 haste.

Using the formula: equivalent_casting_time = real_casting_time * (1 + Haste_rating/1577) you see that
30 seconds of 80 haste = 31.52 seconds unhasted.

So you gain 0.02 seconds of effective casting time. Your party, however, gets 1.5 seconds of effective casting time per two minutes.

Ammanas · 05/13/08, 4:27 PM

Originally Posted by Alephnull

I have written a warlock gear optimiser in MATLAB that calculates the best gear set to achieve maximum DPS by wasting as few stat points as possible. It is based on a genetic algorithm which creates a 'population' of 10,000 gear and gem combinations (randomly) then selects the 8000 highest DPSing combinations, and 'breeds' them to create the next generation. It then adds 1000 random 'mutations' to the population by randomly changing gear options of random members of the population.

It will converge on the highest DPS output gear combination as defined by the file dps_func.m. This function finds the highest DPS, and considers everything _except_ drums of battle, heroism, totems of wrath, mana regen (its assumed lifetap scales with haste, plus if you are chain potting/dark runing, lifetapping is rare). All raid buffs, enchants and threads etc are added to the gear bonuses before the DPS calculation is carried out.

The gear database is in Script.m, it includes all decent DPS loot, as decided by me

Its pretty much all cloth DPS from MH, BT, SW plus a few imba items like Quagmirren's Eye and the S4 arena dagger.

Chaotic skyfire diamond meta gem is assumed, because its amazing.

Proc items are calculated as the uptime fraction of the bonus stat. Eg. (15 seconds / 120 sec CD) * 320 spelldamage = 40 SD.

Files are available here as a RAR archive:
Free file hosting by Savefile.com

Run Script.m to begin the calculation. Note it will run until it hits 3000DPS, which it wont...So you will have to stop it after a few hundred iterations with Ctrl-C. It usually converges by 40-70 iterations. By limiting the variation of the population, it can be made to converge within 10 iterations, but this gives a less exhaustive check of the search space.

Any corrections are WELCOME. Please suggest items i have missed, and mistakes i have made. I will do my best to correct them.

Optimal gear setup currently appears to be :

Hood of the Malefic All sd meta
Amice of the Convoker All sd
Leggings of Calamity 2 sd 1 blue
Pendant of Sunfire All sd
Robes of Ghostly Hatred All sd
Belt of the Malefic All sd
Gloves of Tyris Power All sd
Bracers of the Malefic All sd
Boots of the Malefic All sd
Ring of Omnipotence
Loop of Forged Power
Grand Magisters Staff of Torrents 2 sd 1 blue
The Skull of Guldan
Quagmirrens Eye
Wand of the Demonsoul All sd
Nethervoid Cloak

To achieve 2785.2 DPS before drums, heroism, PI and ignoring lifetap time.

It also assumes you are an enchanter/JC...No tailoring or eng items have been included, because they will probably get trumped by Kil'jaeden loot. I could change this if people really want...

That seems pretty close, but I'm assuming its not accounting for socket bonuses? I'm reasind "All sd" as all straight damage gems, and with all of the SW gear having +damage socket bonuses using reckless pyrestones in yellow slots is definitely the better option. For most items you're looking at 24 dmg vs 22 dmg and 5 haste. Also, the Quags Eye haste proc may scale extremely well but there is no way that would be in the final gearset over the Mu'ru trinket.

Something I have been wondering about is as far as completely min/maxing professions, which ones are the best DPS in the "optimal" gearset. From what I can come up with, LW (drums are just better than anything else by a lot) and tailoring for the robe are the two best. Engineering helm is just underwhelming because of the lack of hit, and the spreadsheet gives me a very minimal DPS upgrade between [Amulet of Unfettered Magics] and [Pendant of Sunfire]. If you wanted to be crazy min/max about it, you would level enchanting and enchant your rings then drop enchanting for tailoring.

Darkmantle · 05/13/08, 7:37 PM

Originally Posted by Alephnull

The dps count that gets output will be lower than reality, due to the lack of drums and heroism. Im sure 2.8k would be easy with that kit...

Quagmirren's Eye is modelled as duration (6 sec) /( internal cd - duration ( 18 - 6) + time to proc) * bonus (320)

time to proc a 10% trinket is on average 10 casts, which would be 18-20 seconds when you have 400+ haste. So it works out as 6/(18-6+20)*320 = 60 haste in a constant nuke enviroment.

Basically, 18 secs is VERY short for an ICD, and 320 haste is loads....So my calculations suspect its actually pretty good.

Ill drop in the tailoring stuff and repost what i get for the output.

Last time I testesd quags eye I got an ICD of closer to 45 seconds.

Latas · 05/14/08, 1:57 AM

Originally Posted by Alephnull

I have written a warlock gear optimiser in MATLAB that calculates the best gear set to achieve maximum DPS by wasting as few stat points as possible. It is based on a genetic algorithm which creates a 'population' of 10,000 gear and gem combinations (randomly) then selects the 8000 highest DPSing combinations, and 'breeds' them to create the next generation. It then adds 1000 random 'mutations' to the population by randomly changing gear options of random members of the population.

It will converge on the highest DPS output gear combination as defined by the file dps_func.m. This function finds the highest DPS, and considers everything _except_ drums of battle, heroism, totems of wrath, mana regen (its assumed lifetap scales with haste, plus if you are chain potting/dark runing, lifetapping is rare). All raid buffs, enchants and threads etc are added to the gear bonuses before the DPS calculation is carried out.

The gear database is in Script.m, it includes all decent DPS loot, as decided by me

Its pretty much all cloth DPS from MH, BT, SW plus a few imba items like Quagmirren's Eye and the S4 arena dagger.

Chaotic skyfire diamond meta gem is assumed, because its amazing.

Proc items are calculated as the uptime fraction of the bonus stat. Eg. (15 seconds / 120 sec CD) * 320 spelldamage = 40 SD.

Files are available here as a RAR archive:
Free file hosting by Savefile.com

Run Script.m to begin the calculation. Note it will run until it hits 3000DPS, which it wont...So you will have to stop it after a few hundred iterations with Ctrl-C. It usually converges by 40-70 iterations. By limiting the variation of the population, it can be made to converge within 10 iterations, but this gives a less exhaustive check of the search space.

Any corrections are WELCOME. Please suggest items i have missed, and mistakes i have made. I will do my best to correct them.

Optimal gear setup currently appears to be :

Hood of the Malefic All sd meta
Amice of the Convoker All sd
Leggings of Calamity 2 sd 1 blue
Pendant of Sunfire All sd
Robes of Ghostly Hatred All sd
Belt of the Malefic All sd
Gloves of Tyris Power All sd
Bracers of the Malefic All sd
Boots of the Malefic All sd
Ring of Omnipotence
Loop of Forged Power
Grand Magisters Staff of Torrents 2 sd 1 blue
The Skull of Guldan
Quagmirrens Eye
Wand of the Demonsoul All sd
Nethervoid Cloak

To achieve 2785.2 DPS before drums, heroism, PI and ignoring lifetap time.

It also assumes you are an enchanter/JC...No tailoring or eng items have been included, because they will probably get trumped by Kil'jaeden loot. I could change this if people really want...

What about the profession loot that doesn't require the profession, like the sunfire handwraps? What about the sunflare?

Faldrath · 05/14/08, 1:54 PM

Originally Posted by Rozzenwyn

Arelenda - To answer your question about making a new thread. Yes I think it would be greatly useful if we had 2 threads. One where you could update as new useful points are made and generally agreed to be "fact" and one for discussion. I for one have not read this entire thread because it is just too much. I read the beginning and have been trying to keep up for the past 15 or so pages with the new stuff that is being said but half of that is not really stuff I want to read until there is a clear consensus because I am not good at the number crunching and reading all the proofs just gets exhausting. Just my .02 cents since you asked.

Rozz

On a related note, isn't that the point of the new TTT? To have a post there with all current valid information, and keep using this forum for debate? I have no idea if a warlock thread is being developed there, but I assume there'll be one sooner or later.

◊ manly · 05/14/08, 2:32 PM

The point of the TTT is provide factual information, but unlike wikipedia, there is also an ongoing conversation between people submitting the text and the editors.

The idea is to have an answer to all the common questions, and no derailment or 100 pages threads with the information scattered all over. However, with this said, all information on it needs to be proved. With this said, if nobody submits a source warlock-specific document, then you won't see much on the TTT on the matter.

Arelenda · 05/14/08, 3:23 PM

Originally Posted by manly

The point of the TTT is provide factual information, but unlike wikipedia, there is also an ongoing conversation between people submitting the text and the editors.

The idea is to have an answer to all the common questions, and no derailment or 100 pages threads with the information scattered all over. However, with this said, all information on it needs to be proved. With this said, if nobody submits a source warlock-specific document, then you won't see much on the TTT on the matter.

I'll do this when I get around to it. If anyone else want to go ahead instead, you're more than welcome (let me know).

rutiene · 05/14/08, 5:05 PM

Alright. So, I just joined a BT guild with the following stats: 14% Crit, 202 Spell Hit, 1287 Shadow Damage. And... my dps fails.

Yes. >>Fails<<

My armory (http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...hwing&n=Luxury) is currently in my trash gear. I switch out a ring for the Ashyen's Gift, boots for the Boots of Incantations, and the shoulders for Voidheart Mantle to reach the above boss stats.

My question is, does anybody have any personal suggestions of what I can personally do to increase my DPS? And before someone starts praising spreadsheets to me, let me say that I do use them. I have used them. I even test my DPS on Dr. Boom. I'm looking for personal advice from personal experience.

I'm sort of thinking about regemming a few of my Living Rubies for +9 Crit rating, so I can obtain 3% more crit to go destruction. But I digress, what do you guys think?

◊ manly · 05/14/08, 5:18 PM

It never occured to you that maybe going destro would give you 500+ dps ?

Cohren · 05/14/08, 5:32 PM

Originally Posted by Arelenda

I'll do this when I get around to it. If anyone else want to go ahead instead, you're more than welcome (let me know).

The best way to go about making an FAQ thread(don't know what else to call it) would be to first find some volunteers and then break up the pages and just write down which posts should make it into the new thread. For example Arelenda could take pages 1-25 person #2 takes 26-50 etc... Having 1 person or even a few people who are not organized go through this mammoth thread would not be practical as I am sure everyone would start at the beginning and quit around the same point.

rutiene · 05/14/08, 5:53 PM

Originally Posted by manly

It never occured to you that maybe going destro would give you 500+ dps ?

My last line clearly indicates that I have.

From what I can tell, it doesn't. Mind you when I respecced to destro, I didn't regem for crit. However, if I do regem/retrinket for crit, I would be losing a lot of +shadow damage. And from what I can tell and have read, with my current gear set up, Affliction and Destruction should be side by side in terms of potential damage.

Althir · 05/14/08, 5:58 PM

Originally Posted by rutiene

Alright. So, I just joined a BT guild with the following stats: 14% Crit, 202 Spell Hit, 1287 Shadow Damage. And... my dps fails.

Yes. >>Fails<<

My armory (The World of Warcraft Armory) is currently in my trash gear. I switch out a ring for the Ashyen's Gift, boots for the Boots of Incantations, and the shoulders for Voidheart Mantle to reach the above boss stats.

My question is, does anybody have any personal suggestions of what I can personally do to increase my DPS? And before someone starts praising spreadsheets to me, let me say that I do use them. I have used them. I even test my DPS on Dr. Boom. I'm looking for personal advice from personal experience.

I'm sort of thinking about regemming a few of my Living Rubies for +9 Crit rating, so I can obtain 3% more crit to go destruction. But I digress, what do you guys think?

You pick up 8% crit from talents when you switch to Destruction. +9 crit rating gems are very bad... gemming for crit rating is bad in general, considering the item budget. You would likely be better off regemming Veiled Noble Topaz and to avoid Ashyen's Gift or some other Hit-heavy gear.

Beyond gear changes, which will general yield marginal changes to your DPS anyway... do you use cooldowns effectively? Do you chug mana pots, or waste GCDs on Lifetaps to save gold? Do you use a flask and food and Wizard oil? Do you recast DoTs over the top of one another (this is bad)? Do you Lifetap/Drain life to manage your mana (this is also bad)? Do you Drain Life at all as a DPS tool (Shadowbolt is ALWAYS better)? Do you let DoTs fall off and forget to refresh them?

If/when you go destruction: Do you spam the ever-loving-hell out of your Shadowbolt key? Do you cast Immolate, Corruption? Both, neither?

Spreadsheets assume that you are playing correctly; without knowing what to do in the first place, they aren't going to tell you much.

◊ manly · 05/14/08, 6:09 PM

Well, my alt (The World of Warcraft Armory) has roughly your gear (1300 dmg, 26% crit, hitcap, ~3% haste - as destro). I saw a very stark dps increase switching to destro. I know some of it is due to the way wws calculates dps which makes the switch seem higher than it really is, given that affliction will always have 100% dps_time, which will dilute the wws shown dps. But still, the increase for me was quite stellar. I think for me I made the switch basically as soon as I realised that I could not make use of COD/COA (I mean, I somewhat thought it would have had been realistic to be used at least on trash, but not even so), which kinda made the whole affliction spec moot in any kind of raid scenario.

Arelenda · 05/14/08, 6:13 PM

Originally Posted by Cohren

The best way to go about making an FAQ thread(don't know what else to call it) would be to first find some volunteers and then break up the pages and just write down which posts should make it into the new thread. For example Arelenda could take pages 1-25 person #2 takes 26-50 etc... Having 1 person or even a few people who are not organized go through this mammoth thread would not be practical as I am sure everyone would start at the beginning and quit around the same point.

I've already gone through all pages and linked what I thought was useful. Basically it boils down to me sitting down and rewriting the compendium in a more FAQlike format.

rutiene · 05/14/08, 6:39 PM

Originally Posted by Althir

You pick up 8% crit from talents when you switch to Destruction. +9 crit rating gems are very bad... gemming for crit rating is bad in general, considering the item budget. You would likely be better off regemming Veiled Noble Topaz and to avoid Ashyen's Gift or some other Hit-heavy gear.

Beyond gear changes, which will general yield marginal changes to your DPS anyway... do you use cooldowns effectively? Do you chug mana pots, or waste GCDs on Lifetaps to save gold? Do you use a flask and food and Wizard oil? Do you recast DoTs over the top of one another (this is bad)? Do you Lifetap/Drain life to manage your mana (this is also bad)? Do you Drain Life at all as a DPS tool (Shadowbolt is ALWAYS better)? Do you let DoTs fall off and forget to refresh them?

If/when you go destruction: Do you spam the ever-loving-hell out of your Shadowbolt key? Do you cast Immolate, Corruption? Both, neither?

Spreadsheets assume that you are playing correctly; without knowing what to do in the first place, they aren't going to tell you much.

I realize that. But even with +8%, I would be sitting at 22%. Where the 'breakpoint' is considered to be 25% for obvious reasons. I don't want to be eating ISB's of the other locks and not putting them as much as I'm eating them, and subsequently lowering the raid DPS. I would have to do something to increase my crit. I also do not have any Crit rings that would make what you suggested a better option, since the Ring of Recurrence only gives 19 crit rating.

Yes. I chug mana pots, use Superior Wizard Oil, +23 Spell food, and a flask. I do not Shadowburn as much as I should on boss fights however, so that is a good point. I usually go to raids with 40-50 shards, but I'm always scared of running out for progression bosses. I never Drain Life unless absolutely necessary. I always refresh my dots with as little downtime as possible (aka, casting immolate with 3 seconds left on the dot).

I guess I should have said, let us assume I can read and know how to DPS as an affliction lock properly. I thought the fact that I itemized properly would be an indication of such. I meant more of the general talent changes or gear changes that people have found useful, but not reflected in spread sheets.

---

When DPS'ing as a destruction build, I usually throw up CoA then SB on trash. Then CoS then SB on bosses. I have found from spreadsheets and Dr. Boom that adding Corruption/Immolate to my spell rotation lowers my DPS.

PSGarak · 05/14/08, 7:05 PM

There is no crit breakpoint. You will be generating more charges than you consume if your crit rate is higher than theirs, and if theirs is 25% at your gear level, then they're stupid for focusing on crit so much. Most rules of thumb say 20% crit, with talents, is enough, you could probably edge 18% if necessary, so 22% is completely acceptable.

Shadowburn is a BAD thing, it scales worse than shadowbolt because of Bane and Shadow & Flame. Removing it from your hotbars is acceptable and often recomended, although using it while moving when lifetapping is somehow not necessary is fine. STOP refreshing DoTs early, it's better to refresh them late than override the tick--the half-shadowbolt you could have cast is more damage than the half-tick you gained.

Antoine · 05/14/08, 7:08 PM

As a minor aside, going destro from affliction only gains you 3% crit from backlash as most affliction specs already include devastation. However, even with only 17% crit I would suggest you swap to destro, it really is that much better especially if you're not confident in your ability to keep DoTs up as you seem to be.

LockApologist · 05/14/08, 7:09 PM

Originally Posted by rutiene

I realize that. But even with +8%, I would be sitting at 22%. Where the 'breakpoint' is considered to be 25% for obvious reasons. I don't want to be eating ISB's of the other locks and not putting them as much as I'm eating them, and subsequently lowering the raid DPS. I would have to do something to increase my crit. I also do not have any Crit rings that would make what you suggested a better option, since the Ring of Recurrence only gives 19 crit rating.

Yes. I chug mana pots, use Superior Wizard Oil, +23 Spell food, and a flask. I do not Shadowburn as much as I should on boss fights however, so that is a good point. I usually go to raids with 40-50 shards, but I'm always scared of running out for progression bosses. I never Drain Life unless absolutely necessary. I always refresh my dots with as little downtime as possible (aka, casting immolate with 3 seconds left on the dot).

I guess I should have said, let us assume I can read and know how to DPS as an affliction lock properly. I thought the fact that I itemized properly would be an indication of such. I meant more of the general talent changes or gear changes that people have found useful, but not reflected in spread sheets.

---

When DPS'ing as a destruction build, I usually throw up CoA then SB on trash. Then CoS then SB on bosses. I have found from spreadsheets and Dr. Boom that adding Corruption/Immolate to my spell rotation lowers my DPS.

You should never shadowburn. It's a dps loss.

I was going to say that I'd be surprised if Immo were a dps drop for you, but then I looked at how much +shadow only gear you were wearing. Corr is probably a wash, but with range issues, it's understandable to drop.

But, what do you consider 'fails?'

rutiene · 05/14/08, 7:10 PM

No. They're mostly T6 geared, so they have all the necessary breakpoints. I'm not expecting to do as well as they are, but I definitely thought I wouldn't be sitting at #10 on the charts.

And I don't override the tick for dots. i.e. The cast time for Immo is 1.5s. I start casting at 2s so that it lands right as the dot finishes ticking. But only if I'm not already casting something else.

Originally Posted by Antoine

As a minor aside, going destro from affliction only gains you 3% crit from backlash as most affliction specs already include devastation. However, even with only 17% crit I would suggest you swap to destro, it really is that much better especially if you're not confident in your ability to keep DoTs up as you seem to be.

Forgot to mention that the 14% is tooltip, whereas the 25% I was talking about isn't. It would be 20% tooltip. So yes, essentially you're right. But it doesn't really change anything.

You should never shadowburn. It's a dps loss.

I had read somewhere that Shadowburn was considered to have a higher damage per cast time ratio than Shadowbolt? It seems I was mistaken though.

Kobal · 05/14/08, 7:25 PM

Originally Posted by rutiene

And I don't override the tick for dots. i.e. The cast time for Immo is 1.5s. I start casting at 2s so that it lands right as the dot finishes ticking.

You have just contradicted yourself.

rutiene · 05/14/08, 7:28 PM

Latency/my reaction time? I watch for 2s, so that when I actually start casting/after my button press it would be at 1.5s. Since when timers hit 2s, it means its already counting down within the 1.x seconds left.

Arelenda · 05/14/08, 8:00 PM

Originally Posted by rutiene

I had read somewhere that Shadowburn was considered to have a higher damage per cast time ratio than Shadowbolt? It seems I was mistaken though.

You are very much mistaken. Shadowburn gets almost no contribution from spellpower. It is instant damage, so it's a nice finisher when soloing or in small parties. That is the only thing it has going for it. It has almost no use in raids.

Removing Shadowburn from your spell rotation will improve your dps by a large margin.

As for destro gearing:

gem for hit cap (202 unless shaman/draenei)
gem the remaining sockets for haste/spellpower

haste>spellpower>crit, get spreadsheet for your tradeoff values.

playing destro on boss fights:
apply CoS, CoR or CoE (or CoD if all three are up)
then spam SB, sprinkled with LT. reapply curse if it drops off as top priority.

With mediocre gear Immolate might be a better dps spell, but never reapply it before it ran out. If your dot has less than 1.5seconds left, you can start casting a new one.

rutiene · 05/14/08, 8:02 PM

I did say that I never used it, but thought it would be an improvement. I'm glad to learn that its not before I did include it in my rotation, however.

But then what did you mean by blow my cooldowns, Althir? We don't exactly have any heavy hitting spells with cool downs for shadow.

Arelenda · 05/14/08, 8:09 PM

Originally Posted by rutiene

I did say that I never used it, but thought it would be an improvement. I'm glad to learn that its not before I did include it in my rotation, however.

But then what did you mean by blow my cooldowns, Althir? We don't exactly have any heavy hitting spells with cool downs for shadow.

He's talking about your trinkets. [Icon of the Silver Crescent] is the most common one.