Arelenda

Can you elaborate? Preferably with some proof. I'll add it to the compendium. I don't actually have 4p T5 :/

 

zanaris

This was my whole problem with boar's speed and is why I brought it up here. I just feel that TC about boar's speed is a bit too theoretical. But I think i'm coming around to believe that it's much much better than vitality.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...ckhand&n=Galik

 

Arelenda

I don't think anyone is advocating boar's speed because of its "less time moving, so more time casting" component. It's not that important (although probably still in the "4mp5" ball park).

It's mostly because there's stuff in Sunwell that will cause you to go "I need to elsewhere _right now_". Extra speed will reduce your chances of getting hit by nasty things. If it even saves your hide once per two-three raids, it'd still be worth it over an optimistic 5dps to vitality.

 

Akj

Sure.

The following WWS snippet is from a test on Dr.Boom wearing only 4pc T5 as 0/21/40 spec, no buffs or debuffs.

Normal Scenario
12:55'40.971 Akhanj's Corruption dots Dr. Boom for 223 Shadow damage
12:55'44.055 Akhanj's Corruption dots Dr. Boom for 223 Shadow damage
12:55'46.899 Akhanj's Corruption dots Dr. Boom for 223 Shadow damage
12:55'50.104 Akhanj's Corruption dots Dr. Boom for 223 Shadow damage
12:55'52.918 Akhanj's Corruption dots Dr. Boom for 223 Shadow damage
12:55'56.092 Akhanj's Corruption dots Dr. Boom for 222 Shadow damage

Using rank 1 SB in between corruption ticks
12:54'18.612 Akhanj's Shadow Bolt hits Dr. Boom for 38 Shadow damage
12:54'19.393 Akhanj's Corruption dots Dr. Boom for 238 Shadow damage
12:54'20.675 Akhanj's Shadow Bolt hits Dr. Boom for 43 Shadow damage
12:54'22.307 Akhanj's Corruption dots Dr. Boom for 254 Shadow damage
12:54'24.330 Akhanj's Shadow Bolt hits Dr. Boom for 38 Shadow damage
12:54'25.512 Akhanj's Corruption dots Dr. Boom for 272 Shadow damage
12:54'27.034 Akhanj's Shadow Bolt hits Dr. Boom for 42 Shadow damage
12:54'28.516 Akhanj's Corruption dots Dr. Boom for 292 Shadow damage
12:54'30.149 Akhanj's Shadow Bolt hits Dr. Boom for 41 Shadow damage
12:54'31.340 Akhanj's Corruption dots Dr. Boom for 314 Shadow damage
12:54'33.744 Akhanj's Shadow Bolt hits Dr. Boom for 39 Shadow damage

The 10% stacking effect only applies to the base damage per tick
Therefore Tick 1 receives a 15 dmg boost
Tick 2 receives 15+(15*1.1) or a ~31 dmg boost
Tick 3 receives 15+(15*1.1)+(15*1.1*1.1) or a ~49 dmg boost
Tick 4 receives 15+(15*1.1)+(15*1.1*1.1)+(15*1.1*1.1*1.1) or a ~69 dmg boost
Tick 5 receives a ~91 dmg boost
Tick 6 receives a ~115 dmg boost (approximations due to rounding)

Net gain =370 damage or 20.6 dps. This figure will be higher with multipliers like CoE, ISB, misery ..etc but its still pretty weak.

 

Arelenda

Excellent work. Linked in compendium.

Thank you.

 

manupod

Here's an off-topic question. I've searched around a bit, but has there been any discussion of the Blood Elf racials, Mana Tap and Arcane Torrent as per raiding? My curiosity is about it's potential usefulness for mana return of course, and not as a silencing effect.

Just from first thought, it seems like it wouldn't work out because of the 30 second cooldown on Mana Tap. A GCD every 30 seconds, 3 times = 3 seconds of GCD over a 1:30sec period of time.

I might say that if the cooldown was short, or nonexistant, that it would be perfect for spamming during the initial pull of a boss. Stack your 3 Mana Taps, then when need be, Arcane Torrent to get a free Life Tap with no HP cost.

But like I said, the 30 second cooldown might make this useless. So has anyone discussed this, or better yet, tried it out? I'm going to tonight, but just thought I'd see if anything brewed up in here.

 

Arelenda

I don't mean to sound rude, but this isn't the place to ask stupid questions. At least do basic research before asking.

Global Cooldown is 1.5s with no haste, not 1 second. Arcane torrent, with triple stacked charge, gives around 500 mana.

No warlock in their right mind would spend 6 seconds of GCD on a weaker version of Life Tap. If you're that concerned with health, just Drain Life or Bandage. Even drain mana is better.

 

smoo86

I wanted to calculate if I should use the exalted-MH-ring or the narjentus ring, because I still have 2x +10 spellhit gems, which I could replace with +5spelldmg+5spellhaste gems.

[Band of the Eternal Sage]
vs
[Ring of Captured Storms]

I read that the MH ring proc adds 15,8 spelldmg (due to internal CD). I couldnt calculate the Int of the MH-Ring to my spell crit rating, dont really know how to do that, just came out with 0,3 spellcrit, but not how much spell crit rating. :/ Shame on me.


any help please?

 

Lokag

Your answer lies in the spreadsheet linked in the first post on this thread.

WoW Warlock DPS Spreadsheet

 

Anthraxx

Thanks for T5 clarifications guys. That pretty much rounds up my list of non-obvious gear sets I guess (4pc T3 with corruption bonus again ;/).

Next stop - 4p T6 + 4p T7. ;D

 

vishal

I wasn't sure where to put this seeing we don't have a warlock help section, if I missed it sorry about that.

I recently came back to the game and the gem vendor was out so I decided to try out spell haste. I have used Vontre's worksheet but the numbers I got there for my dps does not seem to reflect the dps I do in raid. I am hoping someone well versed in the ins and outs of worlock could please answer few questions.

Character: Nascency

Comment: My group setup runs with Elemental Shaman and Boomkin.

I used to run with all crit/damage gems where you see the haste/damage setup and would have ~28%-29% crit rating showing on my character sheet. As you can see I do not have 4p bonus yet and hope to grab the T6 chest soon (we have stopped doing Hyjal, and way too many people in front of the line for me to grab Bracer in next few weeks).

I have not provided my wws but on Teron, i would usually come around 1770-1850 dps (not using destruction pots and missing shadowpriest).

My current haste rating is at 144. and current crit is below 23.xx% (I have Blessing deck equipped on boss fight where i have no downtime and on trash I use xi'ri's gift). Once I get my T6 chest it will be most likely be even lower.

Problem: My dps is lower then it used to be when I was crit gemed.

I realize there is many reasons for this but I am just curious what seasoned warlocks would define to be the most likely reason.

Remark: I do play on a labtop and i usually get anywhere from 200-400 ms lag. I am sure this has a lot to do with it, but this can't be helped untill I get a new computer.

Any comment would be appreciated.
TY.

 

Sydane

Lag can be the bane of haste. If you can't get chain casts off due to lag, you can lose all the benefit of haste, thus you'd be better off with crit. It may seem simple, but be sure to start to cast your next spell before the last one finishes, in order to chain them server side (there are addons that can help with this as well like Quartz). This should alleviate most of the lag issue.

There's a lot of controversy over the value of haste in this thread, because a lot of the argument is that if you aren't getting the extra spell cast, the haste is completely wasted. Of course, if you're not getting the crit, the crit is wasted as well. Haste gems better than crit does for the simple reason that haste is a less expensive stat. Personally I prefer haste, it suits my play style well, but that is not universally true.

 

Torq

Just to add a bit of a comment here, on the haste issue.

Perhaps a useful metric would be "average burn time" on a per-fight basis. Take a fight like Council, for instance. There's near-constant aoe, but not necessarily near-constant movement on an individual player basis. However, you could say that ~3 seconds you have ~2/25 chance of having an aoe on yourself or a player near you. (if it's truly random target).

So if you were to do the math on this, and get a value for the average number of aoes dropped on an individual player during the course of the fight (~9 min?), you could figure out a burn time.

Obviously, for an aoe intensive fight like Council, this wouldn't be very high. But for a fight like Brutallus, 6-min duration with what.... Maybe 10 possible Burns across 25 players? This time to burn would probably be ~4.5-5 minutes.

Then, you can factor this into your current amount of haste, to get a figure on how many "extra" bolts you'd be able to cast, over having 0 haste. This could give you a better handle on the benefit of haste vs spell damage, since they tend to be about 1:1 from a stat points perspective (10 haste ~= 12 SD).

Obviously, higher amounts of haste mean shorter time to achieve an extra spellcast. Couple that with the decrease in GCD, it'll probably slightly outweigh SD on most fights. However, there still are plenty of fights that have a very high degree of movement (or chance of movement), and if your time to gain an extra cast is lower than the average burn length, on average, you'll receive 0 benefit from haste.

I've started to see this first-hand. There are a bunch of locks that swear by haste, and use their dps on Brutallus to back it up. However, after running with them and watching their performance on high-likelihood movement fights, their dps quickly drops to a more "on par" number for the fight, effectively negating all that gain from haste.

It's just interesting to watch the dynamics of haste in general. On paper, it's an amazing stat. In play, there are far too many variables in the way of achieving that "optimal" dps gain.

 

Sydane

But as has been discussed earlier, there's an equal likelihood that AoE will hit 2.3 seconds into your cast as any other point, and if you have the haste to make that cast go off, you just got full benefit, and if you don't, you missed out. It's ever bit as random as if you get 26% crits in a fight or 29%, if you get that 1 resist in 30 casts or 1 in 60 (supposedly going away in WotLK btw).

Now, one real factor that gimps haste is lag on instants, because by the time your client recovers, chances are you've missed out on the 0.2 seconds the haste saved you. Not to mention the fact that on any fight that isn't a "stand and burn" fight, your predicted dps by wws isn't at all comparable to other fights. Even on stand and burn fights, it's very hard to compare from week to week because of all the other factors that come into play.

 

Torq

Sure, during every cast there's an equal chance that the aoe will hit a x seconds into your cast... But the odds of it being during the last .2 seconds (the amount shaved off by haste, for instance) are only ~.2/2.5. So really, the odds that haste will make a difference on a per cast basis with a randomly-distributed interruption is really (amount of time gained by haste)/(unhasted cast speed). This expression can then be abstracted to a cast-chain sequence of any arbitrary length, resulting in a metric that can be used in conjuction with the "average burn length" metric.


I agree this can be an issue. However, lag affects non-hasted casts just the same as hasted casts, so it really cancels itself out in the haste vs non-haste argument. If you're saying that the .2 sec you saved with haste is canceled by client response time, that same .2 would be lost even if the cast were a 2.5 sec cast (effectively making it a 2.7 sec cast). Lag affects all things equally. You can still "pre-cast" hasted or non-hasted to achieve higher chain-cast rates. I find that you can start your next spell at .5-.6 sec before the previous one goes off, regardless of haste, and have the server "queue" it successfully.

[E] Actually, I find the above only applies to spells with a cast time > GCD. The GCD firing off still tends to be clientside, so pre-casting on instants just ends up with that little UI click and nothing happening.

 

Trickykid

This was already discussed earlier in the thread. The % increase in casts from haste changes quite a lot, but on the average will give you what the spreadsheet predicts.

 

Torq

The conclusion of said discussion was that the value of haste as determined in the spreadsheet is the upper bound on it's real benefit. It is impossible for haste to give you more benefit than it's calculated benefit, because the calculated benefit is pure cast time, with 0 interruptions.

The argument that "it can give you more or it can give you less" is accurate when used to approximate crit, but not for haste, since haste itself is not a RNG effect, unlike crit. This would be like assuming that since a crit gives you 100% more damage (with ruin), it gives you 100% more dps. However, as everyone knows, this is false, because while the benefit of a crit is 100% more damage for a single bolt, you're depending on a random roll to give you a crit or not; this is the parallel to the "any given point in time may result in an interruption" portion of the haste debate.

So the benefit of haste is a quicker cast time, by x amount. The value of haste is that benefit weighted by the amount of time you spend casting (as a portion of the absolute maximum, in this case either infinity or time to OOM, depending on your model).

As an extreme example, say a given warlock has 80% haste. This allows him to cast 1 shadowbolt every 1.3889 seconds. A second warlock has 0 haste, allowing him to cast 1 shadowbolt every 2.5 seconds. One would assume that with 80% haste, the first warlock would cast 80% more shadowbolts--the advertised benefit. However, let's throw some fight mechanics into the mix. Now let's assume each warlock has to jump every 2.6 seconds, or die. Now you see that warlock a can still only cast 1 shadowbolt in that window, just like warlock b. So in the end, warlock a gains 0% of the benefit of haste.

To prevent the reverse argument of "what if they have to jump every 2.4 seconds?" consider that warlock b is producing 100% of his spreadsheet expected dps. If he had to jump every 2.4 seconds, he would be now be producing 0% of his spreadsheet expected dps--but warlock a still isn't producing 100% of his. Given the nature of haste, it is never possible to exceed the "spreadsheet value" of haste, because with the model used, that value is the maximum value, and not an average value.

 

Sydane

Yes, the spreadsheet is an upper limit of haste where it could be argued it is just an average model for crit. If the difference between the gear is marginal, chances are the crit gear would outperform the haste gear because of that very reason. Haste is just a drastically cheaper stat to have on gear, so even if you arbitrarily chop 20% off the value of haste, it is still more worthwhile than an equal amount of crit rating.

You'd probably have a better chance of modeling human behavior on getting out of the fire than the actual value of haste; it is just so strongly affected by play style and conditions. Really, if people don't feel like they are gaining from haste, it never hurts to just gem pure damage and let the rest of your gear fall as it may (since most T6 pre-SW has no haste and most SW gear has both).

 

Torq

Well, I definitely wasn't arguing that crit was a better choice. Crit is a much heavier item stat, by far, to be worth gearing for it. You take what you get, but you don't go out of your way to get more. And haste isn't bad, either. What I disagree with are the models and estimations that 1 haste rating = 1.2 spell damage, except under ideal circumstances. The problem with it is, those "ideal circumstances" (aka brutallus w/o getting a burn) are few and far betwee. Sadly, I see too many people going out of their way to gem for haste, because they firmly believe in that magic ratio.

I'm finding that it's better to go haste/sd for yellow slots, and if you get red, go straight sd. The haste is nice, but not worth as much as consistently putting out a bigger SB every time.

 

Trickykid

If you reread that older discussion, you'll see that it's very possible for haste to give you more than it says in the tooltip. Even in your last point, you point it out. If the DPS-gaps allowed are smaller than an unhasted SB (2.5s), the hasted lock actually casts INFINITELY more. If it's just enough for 2 casts on the hasted lock (meaning only 1 for the unhasted lock), it's 100% more casts.

Also, while haste doesn't follow randomness, the time slices in which it is possible to cast spells do. This means that you'll see those times when adding a bolt adds more than the tooltip haste in bolts, just as you'll see ones where it doesn't gain you anything. The math in that area of the thread show that the bounds narrow as the time slices get larger but they converge on 10%.

 

Arelenda

All tests I've run, and addons I've written, have shown me that after hit rating, haste gave me the biggest benefit on a point-for-point basis for my gear and spec (0/21/40, 1300+ spellpower, capped hit, etc). Unless you went completely overboard and lost significantly more spellpower and crit rating than the haste rating you've gained, you should not be seeing a decrease in damage.

Possible reasons:
- are you SURE you've lost dps compared to before? Was it under the same circumstances? Same group setup? Same connection quality? I can easily see 200 dps differences on sequential tries so I'm interested in what makes you think you've lost dps.

- Update: as pointed out in the other posts, the "dps" tab in WWS is NOT AT ALL reliable. Compare total damage done, not the dps field.

- you might not be making optimal use of your faster casting time. As has been suggested, try running addons that allow you to time your spells better

- if all else fails, haste is simply not for you, and you can go back to the original setup. I'd only go for this if you can't figure out what else it holding you back

 

Anexus

I would just like to add some observations I've made to this discussion. First of all are you looking at your DPS or Damage Done for the fight? As an example, today on a Supremus kill I was on top of DPS. About 200dps above the second on the list, but I was only second on Damage Done. By quite a bit too. The number one on Damage Done was an ele shaman. So faster casting time on mobile fights really do seem to be a benefit. Your DPS might not change drastically with haste vs crit, but in the end it's Damage Done that really matters. Also, when you check your dmg for a specific fight remember to check how much you actually critted. My lowest today was 20% and I had 50% on some fights. Which makes a huge impact on the dmg for the fight.

 

Torq

Wrong. If you re-read, you'll see why. I pointed it out, because neither lock is getting the full benefit of their haste. If the entire fight were a 6 min fight involving movement every 2.4 seconds, the unhasted lock would be doing 0% of his spreadsheet value (the value everyone holds as key when deciding their attributes). The hasted lock would be doing ~50% of what the spreadsheet says. Neither one is achieving his dps "ideal," the number stated by the spreadsheet that says "80% haste is 80% more dps." The hasted lock is getting 50% of his value, the unhasted is getting 0%. Neither can ever get more. To further top it off, warlock c has the same item budget as a and b, but has just enough haste to get him to 2.35 sec cast, with the rest invested into damage. Who do you think will be doing FAR more damage?

I agree that there is an element of randomness. But the randomness of times doesn't mean you'll sometimes get MORE, because the assumption of a spreadsheet is 100% time spent casting. You cannot exceed this. It's impossible. The best you can achieve is some fractional portion of that, which, if you want to play the averages game, lowers the effective value of both hasted and unhasted casting by the same degree.

[E]

I find this interesting. I ran some sims that essentially were 5 locks with varying degrees of haste/damage combinations on top of a specific base, with randomized interruptions during the fight, and found haste to actually be worth slightly less than damage. I'm curious to the details of your sims.

 

Trickykid

Reread my posts again please . Nowhere do I say haste will give you higher DPS than the spreadsheet says. I say it'll give you more than the tooltip says, which means it returns more relative to the other stats than in a typical stand and nuke situation (which is calculated very nicely in the spreadsheet).

Let's pretend that the spreadsheet reports that every stat point is equal, haste = crit = damage. Now, the relative weights of these stats are computed by looking at an "ideal DPS" situation. But if we can show that even in a less than perfect situation one of those stats will be relatively more useful, we can see that the stat can be worth more than it says in the tooltip (ie 10% haste could return more than 10% more casts). So going back to my previous examples, where the available time to cast allows for a 10% hasted lock to get 2 SBs and an unhasted one to get 1 SB off. In this example, 10% haste is allowing for 100% more casts. Napkin math shows that even though neither of the locks is doing their "spreadsheet DPS", haste is worth far more than the other stats in this situation.

We good? In short, the DPS on the spreadsheet doesn't matter for stat values since they're all relative. The spreadsheet just helps calculate those returns so that you can make gear choices between the stats. However if the circumstances differ from the nonstop cast scenario, those relative weights can shift. All I am saying is that haste is not upper-bounded by that value, that is already the average, it can go above and below that relative value to the other stats, which makes it worth more than the spreadsheet says (without making any claims that you will do more DPS than the spreadsheet predicts).

 

Torq

Well, at least you're agreeing with me now. Before, you were insisting that haste could give you a better dps benefit than the spreadsheet value (earlier in the thread). This is where I was disagreeing with you. You were implying that if the spreadsheet states you can hit 2000 dps based on certain values of haste, you could actually achieve more than that.

You're disagreeing with me over nothing, then. I was stating that the dps value in the spreadsheet is your upper bound, and cannot be exceeded. The problem is, everyone bases their gear and stat choices off that dps value in the spreadsheet, since the dps values in the spreadsheet are based off of increases to that overall number, not necessarily the relative increases. Therefore, your dps increase from haste is still upper-bounded by that spreadsheet value. I'm comparing a single relation, you're comparing a double relation.

In your scenario, the following is true (neglecting crit):

Relative to the unhasted lock, the hasted lock is achieving 200% casts (100% more).
Relative to the hasted lock, the unhasted lock is achieving 50% casts (50% less).
Relative to the spreadsheet value, the hasted lock is achieving at most 100% of his theoretical dps.
Relative to the spreadsheet value, the unhasted lock is achieving at most 50% of his theoretical dps.

Note: The at most assumes that movement is a net loss of 0 seconds of casting time at best (obviously not true, but it's a lower bound of time lost).

If you look at the relations, you can see that if the hasted lock is achieving 200% casts over the unhasted lock, who is doing at most 50% of his theoretical dps, the hasted lock is doing at most 100% of his theoretical dps. So you are correct in that depending on the situation, haste can offer a greater "relative" benefit, but only in relation to the same caster with less/no haste. The disconnect in both of our arguments, I think, is using extreme examples.

But then we're back to my original point, of where it'd be useful to have a metric that would give some meaningful number to the amount of movement in a given fight...