That seems unlikely. Couldn't one re-roll, never train higher than rank1, and exploit? It's probably a bug or perhaps you entered the command incorrectly. AFAIK downranking has always been allowed on every spell with lower ranks recieving coefficient nerfs to compensate for unreasonable efficiency gains.
This is fairly easy to repeat, and I did so with a /cast Firebolt(Rank 7) macro. My imp, using this macro, went and shot off a single firebolt at Timber Worg in Terrokar Forest. Merely changing the macro to /cast Firebolt(Rank 1) resulted in my imp standing at my side idle. So, it appears it is not currently possible to downrank an Imp's Firebolt.
That seems unlikely. Couldn't one re-roll, never train higher than rank1, and exploit? It's probably a bug or perhaps you entered the command incorrectly. AFAIK downranking has always been allowed on every spell with lower ranks recieving coefficient nerfs to compensate for unreasonable efficiency gains.
Not entirely true. Downranking has never been allowed for Pet abilities or Physical abilities. There was a similar issue a few months back with Hunter pets during the "Scorpid Poison issue", where rank only rank 4 (level55 ability) could be infinitely stacked, while higher ranks could not. Hunters stared to abandon pets and level Silithus scorpids to take advantage of the exploit because downranking pet abilities was not a possibility.
Not entirely true. Downranking has never been allowed for Pet abilities or Physical abilities. There was a similar issue a few months back with Hunter pets during the "Scorpid Poison issue", where rank only rank 4 (level55 ability) could be infinitely stacked, while higher ranks could not. Hunters stared to abandon pets and level Silithus scorpids to take advantage of the exploit because downranking pet abilities was not a possibility.
There are a couple of other examples where upgrading your spells will be bad in the long run already implemented in the game.
Think of Devour Magic in long arena matches. Higher ranks simply have no purpose at all if nobody tries to kill your felhunter. Your pet just goes oom sooner and might not be able to cast the critical Spelllock.
Another example would be Rain of Fire. No sane warlock still uses higher ranks (rank 1 could sometimes be beneficial to detect stealthers) - allthough the AI absolutely loves to cast this spell when you are mind controlled to hurt your own buddies.
Last but not least there are still the higher ranks of Drain Soul - which do nothing, except cost you money to learn.
To repeat it again: The only way to cast lower ranks of Firebolts is to NEVER learn higher ranks (true since 2 years when the /petabandon() command was disabled).
Couldn't one re-roll, never train higher than rank1, and exploit?
Yes, one could, but if one were planning/willing to do that, then whether or not one could macro downranked Imp Firebolts would be irrelevant.
AFAIK downranking has always been allowed on every spell with lower ranks recieving coefficient nerfs to compensate for unreasonable efficiency gains.
This is quite unprecedented. Yes, we can downrank Shadow Bolts, but we've never had any reason to. We've never had any reason to downrank pet spells, either.
Also, not every spell has its previous ranks stored in the spellbook - once you train the next rank of Sinister Strike, the past ranks go poof.
I haven't tested if "/cast Sinister Strike(rank 1)" would work, but again only because there's never been any reason to - the energy cost remains the same across all ranks, so downranking costs as much for less damage, which Blizzard intuitively thought no one would ever want in the first place.
Yes, I acknowledge that Firebolt costs mana, but again, what I tried to do has never been done because there's never been any reason to.
Off-hand: Is there a spell from any class that costs mana whose previous ranks are not stored in the spell book? If there is, I'll try experimenting on that further. My clear next step is the aforementioned downranked Sinister Strike.
There are, however, historical precedents for specifically wanting to downrank spells. For example, mana shield has a significantly better mana efficiency at lower levels (costs less mana per damage absorbed) than at max rank. It really depends on what you aim to do.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
There are, however, historical precedents for specifically wanting to downrank spells. For example, mana shield has a significantly better mana efficiency at lower levels (costs less mana per damage absorbed) than at max rank. It really depends on what you aim to do.
Thanks for pointing that out - although this strikes me as more of downranked healing for efficiency's sake, because of how healing works.
I was pointing more towards downranked damage, where there's never really been a reason to do so because of how efficiency in that department scales, except for cases where damage does not matter: Frostbolt rank 1 to proc slows and the aforementioned Drain Soul for the shard come to mind.
Yes, one could, but if one were planning/willing to do that, then whether or not one could macro downranked Imp Firebolts would be irrelevant.
The whole need to downrank Firebolt is based on the incorrect assumption that extra crits you gain from Empowered Imp with higher Imp activity time are more useful than extra damage Imp deals with higher rank.
Originally Posted by Prinsesa
This is quite unprecedented. Yes, we can downrank Shadow Bolts, but we've never had any reason to. We've never had any reason to downrank pet spells, either.
Also, not every spell has its previous ranks stored in the spellbook - once you train the next rank of Sinister Strike, the past ranks go poof.
Healers did some massive downranking pre-2.0. Right now there is downranking penalty, but highest 2-3 ranks are unaffected and lower ranks will usually still have good DPM/HPM (though they lose massive amount of DPS/HPS). For Warlock even with Life Tap and infinite health for them it is possible to make downranking worth it (for example with current known values for Incinerate it is absolutely worth to downrank it from R4 to R2, and it not only doesn't cost you any DPS, but also skyrockets efficiency).
As for /cast macros they are essentially scanning your spellbook. If spell isn't in spellbook you can't /cast it.
And yes all non-pet spells that cost Mana keep all their previous ranks in spellbook, even if they have the same Mana cost (i.e. Fear)
Originally Posted by manly
There are, however, historical precedents for specifically wanting to downrank spells. For example, mana shield has a significantly better mana efficiency at lower levels (costs less mana per damage absorbed) than at max rank. It really depends on what you aim to do.
Excuse me? Unless I miss something this is simply not true.
Originally Posted by Prinsesa
I was pointing more towards downranked damage, where there's never really been a reason to do so because of how efficiency in that department scales, except for cases where damage does not matter: Frostbolt rank 1 to proc slows and the aforementioned Drain Soul for the shard come to mind.
Bonus spell damage nearly always puts lower ranks to higher mana efficiency than higher ranks. This is not only true for highest ranks that receive no downranking penalty, but generally goes all the way to spells learned as early as at level 20, and every lower rank ends up with higher DPM. Important thing to mention here is that "there is no BOOM in OOM". Even for a Warlock it's a trade between spell damage and Life Tap overhead. Bonus spell damage reduces difference between ranks (favors lower rank), and reduces difference in Life Tap overheads (favors higher rank), however which one scales better varies case to case.
Excuse me? Unless I miss something this is simply not true.
As weird as it sounds, it is. It is not very known to be quite honest. Sure, it willabsorb a lot less damage total, but it costs very significantly cheaper to do rank 1 mana shield compared to max rank. Try it out instead of calling bs.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
As weird as it sounds, it is. It is not very known to be quite honest. Sure, it willabsorb a lot less damage total, but it costs very significantly cheaper to do rank 1 mana shield compared to max rank. Try it out instead of calling bs.
Rank 1 absorbs 120 damage and costs 40 mana. That equals 120 damage for 2*120+40 = 280 mana (0.429 APM). Rank 7 absorbs 715 damage and costs 155 mana. That equals 715 damage for 2*715+155 = 1585 mana (0.451 APM). 0.451 > 0.429, what did I miss? Does scaling makes lower ranks better? It probably does, but it does it to all spells, mana shield is not special there.
Rank 1 absorbs 120 damage and costs 40 mana. That equals 120 damage for 2*120+40 = 280 mana (0.429 APM). Rank 7 absorbs 715 damage and costs 155 mana. That equals 715 damage for 2*715+155 = 1585 mana (0.451 APM). 0.451 > 0.429, what did I miss? Does scaling makes lower ranks better? It probably does, but it does it to all spells, mana shield is not special there.
---- edit
ironically, this line pretty much resumes what I think of this thread so far (and all wotlk threads). You can TC all you want, but if the real world works differently than what you think it does, then all your efforts are meaningless.
Last edited by manly : 06/16/08 at 1:01 PM.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
Except that right now I did real actual testing and the author of that thread was TCing without all the facts.
My testing indicates that extra absoption gain from bonus spell damage also drains more mana (2 mana lost per 1 damage absorbed stays). So that author should be shot for providing so incorrect information.
When rank 1 absorbs 460 damage, its true mana cost isn't 280, it's 2*460 + 40 = 960, so APM is 0.479
When rank 7 absorbs 1436 damage, its true mana cost isn't 1585, it's 2*1436 + 155 = 3027, so APM is 0.474.
Indeed rank 7 loses, but by very low number. That is assuming that amount absorbed provided in linked thread is correct, which it looks to be. So some more real testing tracking more details based on good TC is better than testing that fails at TC and forgets that cost component is scaling too. But I understand, Warlocks are more used to this kind of "alternative" scaling when cost (or part of it) scales too because it's the way Life Tap and Hellfire scale (also SW:Death, Seal/Judgement of Blood and as of recently Mana Shield, maybe some more though). Funny thing is that in post #25 of that thread Kalgan (lead designer, so likely knows about game mechanics way more than majority of people) states that cost is incorrect and "should be the total absorb after coefficient bonus *2 + base cost."
Keep in mind (again), this issue is true for many more spells. For example most mana efficient rank of Shadow Bolt is 4 (out of 11), and most efficient rank of Searing Pain is 1 (out of 8). It's just that for damage spells downranking haven't been all that viable in most cases, but some exceptions are still known.
Thanks for pointing that out - although this strikes me as more of downranked healing for efficiency's sake, because of how healing works.
I was pointing more towards downranked damage, where there's never really been a reason to do so because of how efficiency in that department scales, except for cases where damage does not matter: Frostbolt rank 1 to proc slows and the aforementioned Drain Soul for the shard come to mind.
Multishot Rank 1 saw quite a bit of use pre-tbc, where the idea of the spell was to get an extra attack in (which as a bonus may even hit extra targets), not necessarily to get as much of the ~200 damage difference (before modifiers) that was the difference between the first and last ranks). It's still a very usable spell purely for damage, but less common now that most hunters BM, and the only reason to do a multishot is to get more damage from an attack than a steadyshot.
Downranking Lifetap used to be pretty in-vogue for when you found yourself with too little life to afford a max-rank one. That practice pretty much stopped in 2.0 when the changes to the macro system no longer allowed a single macro to dynamically choose your rank of lifetap based on current health totals. Downranking Frostbolt to 4 or so was useful when we were 10-manning the AQ40 skeram trash, so they could maintain steady-state casting below the mana-drain-bomb threshold of 1000 or so.
If Mana Shield maintains a 2:1 ratio at lower ranks with no downranking penalty, then the rank with the highest mana efficiency will always have the highest mana efficiency, although they will all asymptotically approach 0.5 with more damage gear so the efficiency gain vanishes.
I have downranked a physical ability before, experimentally. This may have been removed since. Pets are unique enough that I'm not entirely surprised their mechanics should be inconsistent compared to players. Come to think of it, disallowing downranking is probably easier than writing the auto-cast functionality to account for multiple possible ranks and stupid or malicious people who turn more than one of them on at once.
Quick thought, but Everlasting Affliction's Corruption refresh wouldn't be potentially detrimental to DPS if when it reapplied it instantly ticked. This way it won't run the risk of repeatedly reapplying right before a normal tick thus losing Corruption DPS.
Quick thought, but Everlasting Affliction's Corruption refresh wouldn't be potentially detrimental to DPS if when it reapplied it instantly ticked. This way it won't run the risk of repeatedly reapplying right before a normal tick thus losing Corruption DPS.
Simpler solution would be simply to set the new duration to 18 seconds + X, where X is "time to next tick", and let it keep ticking on schedule, I'd think.
Simpler solution would be simply to set the new duration to 18 seconds + X, where X is "time to next tick", and let it keep ticking on schedule, I'd think.
Also works. Could actually end up being better if it just increases the duration of the existing Corruption. You could potentially stretch one dmg trinket boosted corruption on indefinitely.
Also works. Could actually end up being better if it just increases the duration of the existing Corruption. You could potentially stretch one dmg trinket boosted corruption on indefinitely.
I thought that they changed that when they changed Lifebloom. So the DoT/HoT checks per tick to determine the amount of damage/healing to prevent popping a trinket and rolling the same indefinitely.
Easy check would be to pop a trinket and ~6 seconds before it ends cast corruption on a mob and see if the DoT ticks drop in value when the trinket wears off.
+dmg effects have been locked-in at cast since around the time AQ came out. Before that you would pop trinkets after DoTing everything up, after that you would pop trinkets beforehand. Lifebloom worked differently because it was a stacking mechanism rather than a debuff that gets overriden normally, but the +dmg effect of all three stacks gets locked in based on the most recent refresh currently.
I'm fairly sure that Everlasting Affliction will work like Lacerate, where reapplication does not interfere with the Tick cycle. In addition, this is a god thing for on use trinkets. Take for example an IotSC on use with a proc item such as the Eternal Band of the Sage equipped:
Previously you would use the trinket, then cast Corruption. During the course of the Corruption and while the Icon buff was still active, the Ring buff procs. You now have 2 choices: A) Refresh the Corruption, interrupting it's tick cycle to apply a new Corruption with a higher bonus damage, or B) Allow the Corruption to continue it's course and continue spamming Shadow Bolts.
With Everlasting Affliction, if both the trinket and the ring buffs are active, simple casting a Shadow Bolt will refresh the Corruption with the inflated damage WITHOUT interruption of the tick cycle. That's a nice buff.
It's actually a pretty small buff, though. Previously there was a chance that the buff would be up when you were recasting corruption. Now, that chance is the same but recasting happens more frequently which results in the same average-case behavoir (although with lower variance). The actual buff if your ability to time lifetaps such that you let a higher-power corruption to get an extra half-tick before you refresh it, subject to any other effects that you game by timing lifetap.
Well, it's the difference between whether or not Everlasting Affliction adds a "new" corruption that behaves based on how the previous corruption is in its tick cycle OR if it simply adds to the duration of the existing Corruption.
IMO it would be much more preferable if it was #2. Pop a trinket up at the very beginning of a fight, getting a beefy Corruption tick going, and keeping that Corruption stack up with Shadowbolt/Drain life for the entire fight. If you somehow get more spell power than you had at the very beginning, IE two minutes later your hyjal ring procs and your damage trinket is up you can *manually* recast Corruption and get an even stronger Corruption rolling than before which will, like the previous one, continually getting refreshed every time you Shadowbolt.
Well, it's the difference between whether or not Everlasting Affliction adds a "new" corruption that behaves based on how the previous corruption is in its tick cycle OR if it simply adds to the duration of the existing Corruption.
IMO it would be much more preferable if it was #2. Pop a trinket up at the very beginning of a fight, getting a beefy Corruption tick going, and keeping that Corruption stack up with Shadowbolt/Drain life for the entire fight. If you somehow get more spell power than you had at the very beginning, IE two minutes later your hyjal ring procs and your damage trinket is up you can *manually* recast Corruption and get an even stronger Corruption rolling than before which will, like the previous one, continually getting refreshed every time you Shadowbolt.
It leaves more in the hands of the player =D
Your hope will not happen. As stated earlier, "rolling" over time effects were changed specifically to prevent the abuse of the mechanic you mentioned. It WAS like that, but was changed due to it's abuse by Druids "rolling" a stacked/trinketed Lifebloom for the duration of an encounter.
Items with an on use or proc ability are designed to have a limited increase in damage. What you suggests makes that effect unlimited. While I'd love to see Affliction becoming a primary spec again, whether through high DPS or powerfull debuffs (I'd prefer the latter), it needs to be done without abusing game mechanics. Any way you cut it, using mechanics to extended a limited advantage indefinitely is an abuse or exploit in their intent.
Your hope will not happen. As stated earlier, "rolling" over time effects were changed specifically to prevent the abuse of the mechanic you mentioned. It WAS like that, but was changed due to it's abuse by Druids "rolling" a stacked/trinketed Lifebloom for the duration of an encounter.
Items with an on use or proc ability are designed to have a limited increase in damage. What you suggests makes that effect unlimited. While I'd love to see Affliction becoming a primary spec again, whether through high DPS or powerfull debuffs (I'd prefer the latter), it needs to be done without abusing game mechanics. Any way you cut it, using mechanics to extended a limited advantage indefinitely is an abuse or exploit in their intent.
Cripple (new) - Cripples the target, reducing movement speed by 75%, silencing the target. Cripple causes the target to be immune to physical attacks, but still vulnerable to spells. Lasts 20 sec. Only 1 target can be crippled at a time. (1.5 sec cast, no cooldown) (Pacify effect removed in Build 8471)
Amazing!
I stand by my previous statement.
Cripple is the single most powerful anti-caster ability coming out of WoTLK. Along with the plethora of anti-caster abilities that already exist within the warlocks arsenal, I am finding it difficult to fathom exactly why Blizzard feels warlocks are weak against casters. Whatever their motivation may be, I think we can safely say that in WoTLK the gap between Warlocks and other casters will grow by quite a generous margin.
As I showed in my previous post, even if we assume Cripple will suffer from diminishing returns, it gives warlocks the ability to permanently CC an enemy caster all the while doing damage to him/her.
The 75% speed reduction, I believe, is just icing on an already rather tasty cake. It is exactly what warlocks need to handle melee in a very effective fashion. If I am not wrong, Cripple with a 75% speed reduction will be the single most powerful ranged, spammable snare in the game, surpassing the snares of even a deep frost mage with the chilled to the bone talent.
Coupled with the already mentioned "blink" that warlocks will get, as well as having the affliction tree do serious damage through DoTs and DD spells, I feel WoTLK will usher forth a new era for Warlocks, especially affliction specced ones
06/15/08, 10:00 PM
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