LockApologist

It's not that it's not relevant. Just that SoC crit for 150%, and, even though crits bypass the dmg cap, if the base value is reduced due to dmg cap, your crit amount is reduced in value. Ex. SoC hits one mob for 1500 dmg. Crit would be 2250. SoC hits 14 mobs for 1125 each. Crits are 1732.

At least, that is my understanding of how it works. Could be wrong. In any case, still haven't seen a need to specifically increase AoE dmg.

 

Arelenda

This is exactly how it works. Except that you don't hit 14 targets for 1125 each, it'd be less. The cap is 13500.

Hit 20 ghouls, you'll hit each for 13500/20. Crits at 150% of that value, CoS targets at 110% of that, etc.

 

Izoul

Greetings,

My question might not be relevant to the current progression level of majority here, as I am still in T5 zone. I however quite a bit puzzled and can't find clear solution to my problem. The problem is a difference between RAWR&Leulier's tools and the numbers I am getting from WWS [that was with 0/21/40], which is from 300 to 600 DPS less from theoretically calculated, depending on the tool used. That report is the best I was able to get so far with my current gear, which is sad.

We don't have access to high-end group combination with multiple drums/heroism, and the best I am able to get in my group is an elemental shaman and occasional shadow priest. The last one is rather surprise then a common event, and he is the only one we have so far.

I tend to think that LT frequency I am using is too high, as from the combat log it averages to 1LT per 4SB. I also have more or less stable latency of ~200ms and using quartz, CoE is always up. Did not use destro potions yet, but super mana is always used on each cooldown. These are the two issues I came up with, can't think of anything else.

Would really appreciate any suggestions

 

• frmorrison

Rawr 14 had a poor model for Warlocks, Rawr 15 is getting better but not equal to Leulier yet.

When using Leulier, you have to account for lag, buffs, and how often you Life Tap to get a decent measure of your dps. Otherwise it is going to give you incorrect information.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Hyamora

My guild has just step into Sunwell and I have been worrying about maxing my dps. I'm currently a tailor and enchanter, all through the Illidan learning curve I was debating with myself if i should hold out for [Sunfire Robe] or just drop tailoring and pick up leatherworking. I understand the drop rate for the pattern leaves something to be desired, but from a purely dps stand point would it be better to hold out for the pattern and request a group that already has 4 drummers or should I just be a team player and get my drum on.

 

Arelenda

Drums are actually not that hot. I made the switch and don't particularly like it. The thing is that other classes might have GCD they don't care about. Us casters don't. You spend 1.5s casting a drum, and you get the equivalent of 1.52s out of it (in a haste free environment, although the gains are indepent of haste). The rest of the party gets the full benefit, of course, but if there's already plenty of drummers in the raid, I wouldn't make the conversion.

That said, waiting for the tailor pattern is pointless. The SWP patterns are absurdly rare.

 

Sydane

You're basically never going to get your theoretical dps from the spreadsheet, it's a comparison tool more than anything. Just glancing at your wws, your damage seems quite good for the level you are at. Even the dps number that wws gives you really doesn't mean much, because it's interpreted based on when you are dpsing (so it tries to compensate for times like when Lurker is submerged). However, if you did something like not dps at all when the adds were up, you'd actually see your dps numbers go up most likely, but that's clearly not a good thing to do, and of course your total damage would go down.

The best thing to do to maximize your dps is just learn the fights and do everything right. Sounds simple, but the few seconds here or there you can gain by properly timing things, good execution, and proper positioning, will make the biggest difference. Beyond that, as your gear gets better, your dps goes up. And keep using mana pots and leave the destro pots to the mages.

On the lurker fight you had 22 lifetaps and 128 shadowbolts, which is much closer to 1:6 than 1:4 and under 10% lifetap time, pretty normal overall. Of course the key to that is lifetapping at the right times (like while moving to the water to avoid spout). In wws, the total landed does not include the number that crit, you have to add that column if you want to see those numbers. I'm guessing your 1:4 comment was based on the 87 landed and didn't include the 41 crits. With your gear, I'd also guess that immolate would still be a dps increase for you, but the spreadsheet can probably tell you if it is. At least you aren't using Conflag, unlike the other two locks in your raid. The one with barely 20% crit rate should probably switch to affliction.

 

Arelenda

Of course actual dps will be lower than the theorethical maximum. One LT per 4SB is a lot, though. SB is 400 mana (with 5% discount talent), and Life Tap nets me 1830 or somesuch. So if I SB/SB/SB/SB/LT I'd actually gain more mana then I spend.

Don't bother with destro pots, mana pots are superior under almost all circumstances.

 

Izoul

I am very grateful for all replies. Indeed 1:4 was based on 87 hits, as I was not aware on separation between hit/crit in WWS. Should of think a bit though, as the fight lasted more then 8 minutes..., oh well.

 

Zasz

Why limit a SoC to a certain max dmg when it still outdamages any other aoe casting class? Only to prevent us from doing over 6k dps on hyjal trash?

And why does my ingame dmg show up to 20k dmg while bombing adds on felmyst when it never does more than 13580 per SoC as you say? My combatlog shows hits ranging from 1400 up to 3500, WWS logs back this up. So where is your evidence?

 

Hyamora

Some of those hits are probably crits also shadow weaving/CoE/misery can effect the amount of damage on a target hit by the explosion.

 

Arelenda

It's not just SoC that is capped. All aoe spells are. The stuff that hits for low amounts per second (like Consecrate and Hellfire) are harder to cap, but it can still be done.

What's with the attitude? I certainly don't mind people pointing out flaws in the compendium, but some courtesy wouldn't be misplaced. Even when you're right, which you're not.

The compendium clearly states multipliers are not affected. That would include crits and that Succubus you've been sacrificing.

Taking that into account, you should see ranges of 15600-23400. (13580*1.15 and 150% crit). Estimating 25% crit you'd expect an average of 17550 on all capped SoCs.

Seeing a max 20k SoC makes perfect sense to me, given those ranges.

 

Roywyn

Mage testing has shown that vulnerability debuffs extend past the cap, while self-buffs and simlar talents do not affect the cap.
Arcane Power (+30% damage from power) and Molten Fury (+20% damage to targets under 20% HP) had no effect while Imp. Scorch did affect it.

That means Shadow Mastery/Touch of Shadow shouldn't affect SoC damage on cap, only CoE/Misery should.
Just a minor note

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Arelenda

Damn, now I have to go out and test this.

Update: done.


I went into Stockades, and seeded tons of things. Interesting results. Roywyn is definitely right, the aoe cap doesn't change with the succubus sacced.

results from different seed explosions:
targets - crits - total damage - cap

5 1 8083
11 3 14138 1131
6 4 12008
9 3 15635 1508
7 3 13023
11 2 14809 1234
7 2 12043
6 3 11123
11 6 17277 1234
12 1 13053 1044
8 3 14031 1508
12 3 14098 1044
11 1 14191 1234

with succubus sacced:
10 5 15425 1234

(running with 1431 spell power and NO crit meta)


Obvious conclusions:
- The log does not link that cap to the number of targets hit directly, it seems to be off occasionally. Either the theory is wrong, the combat log is wrong, or the capping calculations are wrong.

- Succubus saccing does not help.

- While not obvious from this summary, the log clearly shows when the cap is reached. All targets will be hit for the same amount, with crits at 150% of that.



Less obvious conclusions:

Here's the values of the caps I did observe: 1044, 1131, 1234, 1508. I checked for possible multipliers and found that
13*1044 = 12*1131 = 11*1234 = 9*1508 = 13575. My theory is that sometimes it counts corpses or other non-viable entities and adds damage to those to the cap. Or some detonations don't show up in the log.

The spellpower contribution seems to be a tad higher than 16.6%. Further testing needed.



Update two:

Research done into seed spellpower contribution:

(here's examples of seed detonation damage, not capped, with 900 spellpower, no crit meta)
1306 1383 1463
1316 1383 1465
1324 1384 1469
1324 1384 1470
1327 1384 1471
1345 1397 1472
1346 1401 1473
1348 1406 2034
1349 1444 2056
1354 1448 2056
1358 1448 2068
1363 1450 2074
1364 1452 2074
1372 1459 2077
1376 1460 2086
1377 2143 2110
1383 2149 2171
(in semi random order due to formatting, anything over 2k is a crit)

This tells me the contribution has to be between 20,33% and 21,78%. I'll estimate it at 21%. Compendium updated.

I think the original calculation of 16.6% was made wearing a crit meta, which skewed the data.


In retrospect: the previously mentioned 20k number is high but not impossible. With all crits, you'd expect to see 20362 damage, or 20973 with the meta.

 

Arnath

Assuming you've tried b15, what are your criticisms? I ask because I'm the one developing it and I'd like to get it to the point where it's as good as the spreadsheet.

 

Beerguzzler

Drums are the single biggest dps boost you can provide for your raid. I dropped Tailoring for LW a long time ago and haven't looked back. We regularly have perma drums in the lock group and it's pretty amazing for dps throughout Sunwell. Oh and yea....Sunfire Robes don't exist.

 

Arelenda

For the record, assuming 1500 unhasted dps per party member (which is a reasonable estimate if you're in a good all dps group), drum use gives the raid about 9k damage per 2 minutes, which translates to 75 raid dps. At 2K unhasted dps (which is not impossible but very hard to do), you can estimate it at 100dps.

I have to admit, those are very impressive numbers for a profession. I wouldn't call it "the single dps boost you can provide for your raid", but that's semantics. As much as I hate the concept, LW drums are clearly superior to anything other professions bring at end game gear levels.

It is very doubtful you'll ever see the robe pattern. If you're looking to help your raid now, LW is the way to go. Just don't blame me afterward once the drums are nerfed. They're a pain to restock and LW by itself is pretty stupid for warlocks.

 

Zasz

I dont mean to be rude, its just that your answers dont make sense to me. First you post about a dmg cap and then in your tests your prove that it does not exist. Otherwise my english must be far worse than I thought.
Maybe this "13500 cap" should be explained abit more clearly.

 

Noobkov

Exactly!

Having 4 drummers (constant uptime for those who are totally clueless) in any DPS group is just SO good! 80 permanent haste for a 1,5 sec global cooldown every 2 minutes? YES PLEASE.

All the "but I really like my tailoring/enchanting" talk is BULLSHIT. If you keep tailoring for the sole hope of a Sunfire Robe pattern dropping - either a) You are a moron or b) Your guild leaders are morons.
Any competent GM / loot council will aknowledge that the pattern should go to those people who are willing to reroll LW to actually help the guild progress. In fact I would never vote for a person with tailoring for the pattern over a person with LW. If the pattern drops you'll spend an hour rerolling tailoring and BOOM! You're a pro!

If you would lose 4 drummers in the party due to that, (let's say the 5th person can't get LW) you can drop enchanting (unless of course you have already killed KJ and thus can relax on the min-maxing). That way you get the best of 3 worlds with only 2 professions (considering you've already enchanted your rings)!

In numbers I can say that leveling LW to 350 costs about 1-1,5k gold (give or take the gold you get back from DEing the crafts).

If you really care about your guild's progress, you will roll leatherworking, no questions asked.

EDIT: Considering the rumors of them nerfing drums.. Yes, they will most probably do that in WotlK. All the more reason to abuse it now while you still can, it's super-easy to get and the benefit is huge. If they nerf it you can simply reroll in a few hours time. A small tip - buy the mats to reroll to another profession (and keep them on an alt) before WotLK hits because there will probably be a shitload of people rerolling out of LW and the prices will go high!

 

Roywyn

It's very clear and explains everything pretty well.

If you want an introductory read:
AoE Spell Cap Mechanics

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Borodin

Drum Nerf confirmed in Wrath: Tinnitus effect essentially means you can only benefit from drums every 2 mins.

(Tinnitus is a ringing in the ears by the way - I have it to some degree permanently in both ears: right ear caused by a Metallica gig and left ear from walking right past a giant stack of speakers in a rock club).

 

Beerguzzler

I don't think anyone actually considers keeping LWing after the expansion, unless you can actually use leather items. Personally I will prob be lvling up inscriptions once it's available.

 

Aeragon

I have search the thread for shadow vs fire lock. It seem that shadow is suppose to be better than fire for the raid dps.

My raid group usualy have 2 warlock and a shadow priest.
When i use the spreedsheet, it tell me that fire is better. What i find weird is that the spreedsheet tell me that i have better shadow dps if i am the only warlock(same thing for the other lock when i use the spreedsheet with his stat). Is that normal? I alway though that each warlock in the raid group add a bit of isb uptime, tho better dps for each shadow user. Because if that is right, that mean that i have a better dps if i am the only shadow warlock. But if i am the only shadow warlock, i should go fire isntead since it better dps.

Also, The cell "Raid DPS loss if you switch to fire" is -10. That mean that the raid dps while increase if i go fire?!


I dont quiet understant all this, can someone enlight me

 

Bibdy

Out of curiosity, does spell haste affect the AOE damage cap at all? I'm wondering if they limit us in DPS, or DPM.

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

• Arawethion

Currently, AoE DPS can still scale with haste (and crit, as applicable).

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.