PVE Raiding Compendium - Page 70

Trickykid · 02/29/08, 5:09 PM

Originally Posted by Stryn

Plugging the numbers you presented in the spreadsheet:

40/0/21 spec (Ruin): 1176.28
43/0/18 spec (Raid UA): 1211.95

So no, you're wrong. In the future, check your work before you go off spouting misinformation please.

One isn't better than the other at all gear levels, just check the sheet for yourself. Ruin scales better with crit and haste than UA, so at some gear/raid-buff levels it can be better. Those gear levels exist in 2.3 and will be significantly easier to reach in 2.4.

◊ Kyth · 02/29/08, 5:10 PM

Originally Posted by Akj

I think a lot of players are missing the difference between the current version & the PTR version.

Both versions scale (current - 80% of sdmg, ptr - 20% of max hp)
Both versions cause an increasing hp penalty per lifetap as you gear up ( damage & stamina both increase as one moves up the tiers)
Both versions scale with buffs (fort, wrath of air, flasks..)

The difference is that the current version has a direct correlation between hp lost & mp gained whereas the PTR version scales off two independent stats. Its like taxing someone based on hours worked but paying them based on the hours spent watching TV.

No, I'm not missing it, I'm just touching on a point I didn't make clear:

Go look at the gear between the tiers. Mana scales very very little, and sometimes negatively, between tiersets (and actually tends to drop once you hit tiered gear off your levelling gear as well.) The basic stats really do not change that much. +dmg, however, increases substantially from "just hit 70" to "Illidan dead for 6 months."

Just go look at the mana pools of T5 locks versus the mana pools of T6 locks and then come back and try to say that there is no scaling difference. (Heck, T4->T5 is actually a *loss* in lifetap time-efficiency due to mana decreasing if you look at the sets.)

◊ Stryn · 02/29/08, 5:13 PM

Originally Posted by Trickykid

One isn't better than the other at all gear levels, just check the sheet for yourself. Ruin scales better with crit and haste than UA, so at some gear/raid-buff levels it can be better. Those gear levels exist in 2.3 and will be significantly easier to reach in 2.4.

You're correct. I was correcting the point made that ruin "blew away UA" once the player is hit capped, which makes no sense.

Bandoer · 02/29/08, 5:15 PM

If the spreadsheet gives only a minimal theorycraft edge for UA, I would go with Ruin.

- You get more direct damage. Less loss from dots not going to full duration, whether dots are pushed off, fight mechanics end dots, or the fight duration is ending and you shouldn't reapply dots.
- More ISB procs from casting shadowbolt instead of UA

Necrostar · 02/29/08, 5:18 PM

Originally Posted by Bandoer

If the spreadsheet gives only a minimal theorycraft edge for UA, I would go with Ruin.

- You get more direct damage. Less loss from dots not going to full duration, whether dots are pushed off, fight mechanics end dots, or the fight duration is ending and you shouldn't reapply dots.
- More ISB procs from casting shadowbolt instead of UA

This man speaks the truth

Presarc · 02/29/08, 5:25 PM

Originally Posted by Bandoer

If the spreadsheet gives only a minimal theorycraft edge for UA, I would go with Ruin.

- You get more direct damage. Less loss from dots not going to full duration, whether dots are pushed off, fight mechanics end dots, or the fight duration is ending and you shouldn't reapply dots.
- More ISB procs from casting shadowbolt instead of UA

Agreed. If UA gave some form of raid utility it would be worth it, but it doesn't, so even regardless of the marginal increase in dps until extreme (unreachable?) gear levels are reached from UA, Ruin is still probably the better choice.

Necrostar · 02/29/08, 5:35 PM

Originally Posted by Presarc

Agreed. If UA gave some form of raid utility it would be worth it, but it doesn't, so even regardless of the marginal increase in dps until extreme (unreachable?) gear levels are reached from UA, Ruin is still probably the better choice.

Exactly , there is only so much the spreadsheet can mimic ... There are certain game mechanics that cannot be truly represented in a theorycraft spreadsheet.

ISB is the kicker here.

What I meant in particular about "hit" was it's an extremely vital stat that drives Ruin > uA . Well, that and crit / haste. I could have worded it better.

galzohar · 02/29/08, 5:37 PM

Maybe it's just personal preference here, as it can't really be proven without posting a couple dozen videos of various people of different ranges, but my experience is that every bit of range you can get is a significant increase to both your DPS and survivability. Having that much bigger area where you can be and still DPS the boss is just *that* useful. If I could drop the tank's HP by 1k and give everyone in the raid a couple extra yards range on all their abilities I would probably do it on a couple fights. But yeah on some fights giving up the range (and threat reduction, which is a different discussion although I agree your tank should be good enough to hold threat off of an affliction warlock regardless..) in order to grab that improved imp. But improved imp is definitely not an obvoius talent to pick up, considering the big loss of not having full range (and a little more threat reduction).

Idk · 02/29/08, 5:41 PM

Originally Posted by Bandoer

If the spreadsheet gives only a minimal theorycraft edge for UA, I would go with Ruin.

- You get more direct damage. Less loss from dots not going to full duration, whether dots are pushed off, fight mechanics end dots, or the fight duration is ending and you shouldn't reapply dots.
- More ISB procs from casting shadowbolt instead of UA

The statement "more ISB procs from casting shadowbolt" is a generalization and incomplete. It should be, "a ruin-specced affliction lock provides more ISB procs from casting more shadowbolts but consumes more ISB charges for the same reason." The percentage contribution to ISB (whether it's positive or negative) depends on the crit of the affliction lock, the number and crit chance of the other locks in the raid, as well as the number of shadow priests and how often they're consuming charges.

One incidental that you left out is that UA provides more damage than ruin in any situation where you're killing more than 1 thing at a time and each thing lives for more than ~18 seconds.

Bottom line (I can't understand why people don't get this) there isn't a spec that's generically and unquestionably _better_. It varies highly depending on the situation and the make-up of your raid. Fortunately we have this awesome spreadsheet by Bolche/Leulier that can tell us how to quantify most of these variables.

Akj · 02/29/08, 5:45 PM

Originally Posted by Kyth

No, I'm not missing it, I'm just touching on a point I didn't make clear:

Go look at the gear between the tiers. Mana scales very very little, and sometimes negatively, between tiersets (and actually tends to drop once you hit tiered gear off your levelling gear as well.) The basic stats really do not change that much. +dmg, however, increases substantially from "just hit 70" to "Illidan dead for 6 months."

Just go look at the mana pools of T5 locks versus the mana pools of T6 locks and then come back and try to say that there is no scaling difference. (Heck, T4->T5 is actually a *loss* in lifetap time-efficiency due to mana decreasing if you look at the sets.)

Well maybe they do not want us to scale so much with a stat that increases rapidly (shadow damage) because it will spiral out of control in WotLK. There was also mention of making gear more generic in the recent blizzcast so maybe they want to itemize lock, mage & spriest gear in the same way.

Regardless, my argument all along is that if they do wish to change the current version then the scaling should happen off one attribute to keep cost & returns proportional (either 15% of max hp to equivalent mp, 15% of mp for equivalent hp but not 15% of max hp to 15% of max mana as on PTR).

galzohar · 02/29/08, 5:47 PM

In general due to how much ISB shadow priests are eating up, most realistic crit chances will put ISB up more than they eat it. The only time you'll be eating more than you put up is if you have no shadow priests and you have lower crit than the average shadowbolt crit in your raid, or if your crit rediculessly low, which it isn't if you're even thinking about aff/ruin, which does require very very high levels of gear to outperform UA, unlike full destruction which doesn't require much at all to outperform both specs - full crafted+kara+badge gear with proper gems should be enough to beat an affliction warlock with same gear available even if he tunes it for affliction.

As for more raid DPS because of ruin, dropping UA from your rotation will not be a major ISB increase, and even with the ISB increase you still need some pretty insnae gear to make ruin better than UA.

For actual numbers please use the speadsheet (should be linked in main post), it allows you to take all of these factors into account and see for yourselves.

Idk · 02/29/08, 5:58 PM

Originally Posted by galzohar

In general due to how much ISB shadow priests are eating up, most realistic crit chances will put ISB up more than they eat it. The only time you'll be eating more than you put up is if you have no shadow priests and you have lower crit than the average shadowbolt crit in your raid, or if your crit rediculessly low, which it isn't if you're even thinking about aff/ruin, which does require very very high levels of gear to outperform UA, unlike full destruction which doesn't require much at all to outperform both specs - full crafted+kara+badge gear with proper gems should be enough to beat an affliction warlock with same gear available even if he tunes it for affliction.

As for more raid DPS because of ruin, dropping UA from your rotation will not be a major ISB increase, and even with the ISB increase you still need some pretty insnae gear to make ruin better than UA.

I totally agree with this. Unfortunately, the unknowledgeable lock who's coming here for the first time may not know what that threshold (insane gear) is.. I worry they'll read something like "more shadowbolts means more ISB procs, therefore ruin > UA" which is simply too generic to be accurate.

Marklar · 02/29/08, 6:05 PM

Originally Posted by Nfariessence

So, assuming that the 20% max health for 20% max mana change goes live, does this mean that [Ember Skyfire Diamond] becomes a viable replacement for [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond]? Can someone better than me (and who has full access to the armory/WoW at the moment) do the math on this.

~ Chaotic gives you 14 crit rating and 3% more crit damage. I have about 25% crit from gear and 1500 spell damage self buffed. My observed crit rate is something around 33% with an elemental shaman and 1650ish spell damage while raid buffed, and my SB crits usually range from 6.5k - 9k (yes I get freak 11k crits as well, but it's not a common occurrence). That means I get 0.63% more crit and my crits hit for ~232 more damage, right?

~ Ember gives you 14 straight up spell damage, which itemizes better than crit on a point-for-point basis, but it also gives us 2% more Int which means about 46 more mana per life tap, or a free SB every 10 taps.

This is slightly further complicated by the fact that the color gem requirements of the Ember are much friendlier than they are on Chaotic. If I switched to Ember I could trade out the 2 [Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst]s that I have for 2 more [Runed Crimson Spinel]s for an extra 12 spell damage.

You have a major flaw here in equating extra mana with extra shadowbolts. The major cost of a shadowbolt is cast time, not mana.

A warlock with 600 int buffed has ~11.5k mana. The gem will only add 12 int for 180 mana. This means your LT frequency goes down about 1.6%. Assuming 5 SB (2k mana) per LT, you are tapping about 11% of the time, so it saves you approximately 0.17% on casting time, which is worth ~2.7 haste rating. The crit bonus is ~0.15%, which is worth ~3 crit rating.

So with a total bonus worth perhaps 14 damage, 3 crit and 3 haste, I don't see it competing with CSD.

PSGarak · 02/29/08, 7:42 PM

Whether more SBs leads to more ISB is really a matter of whether your shadowpriests cast DD nukes or not. I don't know what the situation or cutoff in that is anymore, but you used to not see much spriest direct nuking in T5. But if they don't nuke, a ruin build without backlash is at least 3% crit less than a destro build (5% than a demo/destro build) even with the same gear, so you would be dragging ISB uptime down, in the name of bringing it up. As an aff/ruin build, if you're concerned about ISB uptime you should prioritize crit over haste, compared to a destro warlock.

The arguement for ruin also leaves off the fact that UA continues to tick when you can't nuke, like movement, LoS, or CC components interfere. So realistically, deviations from an ideal brick-wall scenario favor as well as hurt UA.

Trickykid · 02/29/08, 7:48 PM

Originally Posted by PSGarak

The arguement for ruin also leaves off the fact that UA continues to tick when you can't nuke, like movement, LoS, or CC components interfere. So realistically, deviations from an ideal brick-wall scenario favor as well as hurt UA.

That argument goes both ways. If you have to move and UA is not up, you suffer more from the dot-gap.

nimo956 · 02/29/08, 8:18 PM

I'm a 21/40 lock and I'm having trouble determining how to gauge my contribution to raid dps. For example, I have the Crusader card, the icon, and the sextant trinkets. For raids with a lot of warlocks and spriests I usually wear the Crusader with the Sextant, putting my crit up to like 32%. Is this contributing more to my raid though than if I went purely with +dmg? (Also, i have around 1200 dmg and max hit)

Necrostar · 02/29/08, 8:25 PM

I'd say more spell damage , Icon / Card

Morwen · 02/29/08, 8:43 PM

Originally Posted by nimo956

I'm a 21/40 lock and I'm having trouble determining how to gauge my contribution to raid dps. For example, I have the Crusader card, the icon, and the sextant trinkets. For raids with a lot of warlocks and spriests I usually wear the Crusader with the Sextant, putting my crit up to like 32%. Is this contributing more to my raid though than if I went purely with +dmg? (Also, i have around 1200 dmg and max hit)

The spreadsheet has a simulator for raid ISB uptime where you can input the number of warlocks and shadow priests in your raid and their dps and crit frequencies and use that to calculate the next-stat value of your personal crit.

Arelenda · 02/29/08, 9:28 PM

Originally Posted by nimo956

I'm a 21/40 lock and I'm having trouble determining how to gauge my contribution to raid dps. For example, I have the Crusader card, the icon, and the sextant trinkets. For raids with a lot of warlocks and spriests I usually wear the Crusader with the Sextant, putting my crit up to like 32%. Is this contributing more to my raid though than if I went purely with +dmg? (Also, i have around 1200 dmg and max hit)

Crusade is probably better, except in Hyjal (it procs off SoC crits).

Arelenda · 02/29/08, 9:29 PM

Originally Posted by nimo956

I'm a 21/40 lock and I'm having trouble determining how to gauge my contribution to raid dps. For example, I have the Crusader card, the icon, and the sextant trinkets. For raids with a lot of warlocks and spriests I usually wear the Crusader with the Sextant, putting my crit up to like 32%. Is this contributing more to my raid though than if I went purely with +dmg? (Also, i have around 1200 dmg and max hit)

Crusade is better, except in Hyjal (sextant procs off SoC crits). Besides, crit is better when aoeing, since you're typically aoe capped. Leulier's sheet or ShadowSeer will answer it for you.

Hmm, apparently I clicked too fast, resulting in a double post. I can't seem to delete it, though.

Flamingcloud · 02/29/08, 10:21 PM

UA vs Ruin? did we return to march? It was concluded back then UA was better, plus 9 out of 10 smart warlocks wouldn't even have 16% hit as affliction (only those with gul'dan have any hope of this)

"If the spreadsheet gives only a minimal theorycraft edge for UA, I would go with Ruin."

Agreed. Except that it gives more than a minimal theorycraft edge, ergo Ruin is not the way to go..

Pentamorfi · 02/29/08, 10:58 PM

Originally Posted by Flamingcloud

UA vs Ruin? did we return to march? It was concluded back then UA was better, plus 9 out of 10 smart warlocks wouldn't even have 16% hit as affliction (only those with gul'dan have any hope of this)

I don't quite understand what you mean by that. I've been affliction for ages now (only recently respeced to destro with 4/5 t6 and the likes, no skull) and I've been hit capped for about as long.

Evidicus · 02/29/08, 10:58 PM

I haven't seen this specific discussion yet, but has anyone thought about the upgraded Alchemist Stone for casters coming in the next patch? http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...hemystones.jpg

Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone
Equip: Spell Hit +54
Equip: +40% effect from mana and healing potions

Considering the new Life Tap changes, the high hit cap for Destro, and the fact that you only need a lot of hit or to drink mana potions on boss fights, I am tempted to pursue Alchemy for this trinket. I can see swapping this trinket in for boss fights and then swapping it out on trash.

Just looking for some opinions as it looked like an interesting item that offered some unique utility.

PSGarak · 02/29/08, 11:05 PM

At the very least, it allows you to gear for having an elemental shaman and only swap out one piece of gear if he's missing. I have no idea how the bonus mana regen compares to mana spring, but that's another possiblity. Also note, you can get the healer one, which is a surprisingly unretarded choice: 119 heal means 40 damage. 40 damage obviously isn't worth a trinket slot, but 40 damage and the mana regen might be.

Morakk · 03/01/08, 2:26 AM

The trinkets gives you 960 mana per potion.

Exactly how much DPS that's worth in 2.4 depends on the size of your mana pool, but it's approximately 1/2 a life tap, or .3 shadow bolts/minute (before haste).

Also, will it be possible to swap to a lvl 70 green staff of int, with 30 int on it, and the badge wand with an epic int gem, to maximize the mana gained from life tap? CasterWeaponSwapper can do something similar for mages evocating for instance. However, lifetap is instant, so I'm not sure that it's possible to have the gcd incurred from switching weapons stack with the gcd from casting lifetap itself, and still get the benefit of the additional intellect.