Spell Hit Discussion - Page 2

oldlockwam · 12/01/08, 6:17 PM

The 1% Draeni racial is called "Heroic Presence" and applies to party only, not raid.

Originally Posted by Calixtus

(ain't there a totem too...?)

There is no spell hit totem anymore -- Totem of Wrath used to do 3% each to spellhit & spell crit, but that has been changed to +280 spell power and +3% crit.

Splot · 12/01/08, 7:01 PM

I think its still worth while to mention the non boss hit caps (for those who swap in gear & food buffs on a boss fight) to reach the cap.

Mob level Hit
80 105 4%
81 132 5%
82 158 6%
83 +446

These are before raid buffs and talents but you cannot rely on shadow priest or moonkin debuffs going up on the target for trash.

PSGarak · 12/01/08, 9:25 PM

So, how bad is not capping Haunt? Napkin math follows:

Let's say you're at 99% hit, and you have 100 casts of haunt where one of them misses. We'll assume near-perfect play, which means that each hit haunt lasts 12 seconds and the missed one costs about 10 (you spam it on cooldown, it has a cast time). So, your haunt uptime is reduced by about 1/120. During that time your DoTs tick at 1/6 less (100% = 5/6 * 120%), making this haunt miss a 1/720 damage reduction to your DoTs from the haunt miss. If DoTs are around 1/2-2/3 of your damage I'd say a good rule of thumb is around 1/1000 to 1/1200 DPS decrease from the Haunt debuff per point hit below the cap. There's also a replacement effect of swapping a shadowbolt for a haunt, but that's like 1/500 of a shadowbolt per cast, and Haunt does damage itself, and shadowbolt is a filler, so I'm going to say this doesn't affect the rule-of-thumb results I got.

So while it does elevate the value of hit by like 10% or something, missing a haunt is not the difference between boatloads of DPS and slapping the boss with a wet noodle. While it's annoying when a haunt misses and having it drop on WWS is a mild embarassment, the benefits of being hit-capped are decidedly meh. Min-maxers will not hit-cap religiously, and any hit-capping that happens is purely incidental.

Akj · 12/01/08, 9:53 PM

You are not taking into account the fact that both corruption & shadow embrace can drop off because of a missed haunt.

PSGarak · 12/01/08, 10:21 PM

Unlikely, shadowbolt still refreshes both. Even at 4% miss on destro spells, the odds of every shadowbolt missing in the same 18-second window as a haunt resist is unlikely. And if it does happen all you've lost is 1.5s of filler on corruption. Shadow Embrace is half the effect of Haunt, so it's going to alter the final analysis no more than 50%.

Tauraherion · 12/02/08, 1:30 AM

Originally Posted by PSGarak

Unlikely, shadowbolt still refreshes both.

Shadowbolt does not refresh Corruption. 5/5 Everlasting Affliction tooltip is: "(...)and your Drain Life and Haunt spells have a 100% chance to reset the duration of your Corruption spell on the target."

Akj · 12/02/08, 1:45 AM

Originally Posted by PSGarak

Unlikely, shadowbolt still refreshes both. Even at 4% miss on destro spells, the odds of every shadowbolt missing in the same 18-second window as a haunt resist is unlikely. And if it does happen all you've lost is 1.5s of filler on corruption. Shadow Embrace is half the effect of Haunt, so it's going to alter the final analysis no more than 50%.

As pointed out, shadowbolt does not refresh corruption. It is not the preferred filler sub 25% either so if SE drops off you have to wait a while for it to stack back up.

Drundia · 12/02/08, 3:25 AM

Originally Posted by Nicarras

I can follow this line of thinking, but at least in the case of affliction and SBs still making up a large percentage of your damage. It remains to be seen where exactly the line is between 'Gearing to cap SB w/o talents' and 'Dont gear to cap it and stack dmg'. There may be a place in the middle that is more optimal but I just dont think that enough of us have had time to test yet.

I repeat: it's questionable if Hit is more cost-efficient stat than Spell Power even before you reach that partial hit cap. By the time you get enough Spell Power to make it worth gemming for Hit you will probably have capped it anyway, at least for talented spells. I would make a bet that it's worth capping Shadow Bolt hit for Affliction (when Affliciton is capped with Suppression) no earlier than at 5000 Spell Power, and then you still may benefit more from other ratings.

Originally Posted by Lothiron

I'm shooting for keeping the 368 hit rating for two main reasons.

1) Soulshatter is capped as long as a shadow priest is alive. Good to know that in those 'oh shit' moments I don't have a 3% chance of getting screwed.
2) If the shadow priest dies, disconnects, goes afk to get her kids dinner, etc, I'll still be hit capped on Haunt. I -absolutely- hate it when Haunt or any of my dots miss; completely screws up my rotation.

In order to want to cap hit for Soulshatter first of all you must make a reasonable assumption that you may need Soulshatter if everything goes fine. Reality is that when everything goes fine it doesn't seem to be needed.

While Haunt miss is indeed an issue, DOT miss is more of a nuissance than a catastrophe, since in reality you don't have any rotation to screw to begin with.

Originally Posted by Ravelvan

For a Destruction build, I think hit is still slightly better than spell power

What I remember is that around 2000 Spell Power, Chaos Bolt wins this race for Spell Power. The breakpoint is somewhere between 2500 and 3000 (a guess), but those calculations done didn't really account for Immolate and Corruption misses taking away damage from Incinerates rather than themselves, they only accounted for Chaos Bolt never missing which happened to be absolutely enough at that gear level.

Draele · 12/02/08, 6:16 AM

I've been running 14% hit, +3% from Suppression to cap Affliction. Absolutely necessary to not have Haunt resists, not so much for the sake of the debuff, but rather to keep Corruption rolling. Getting something like +940 Spellpower Corruption rolling (Renew Corr. when Sundial procs and activate Mark of the War Prisoner) keeping this larger tick up is quite important.

If Destruction stays at 14%- not a huge deal, but more likely than not the slack will be picked up by Misery/Imp FF anyway.

• dragon12 · 12/02/08, 6:20 AM

Originally Posted by Draele

Getting something like +940 Spellpower Corruption rolling (Renew Corr. when Sundial procs and activate Mark of the War Prisoner) keeping this larger tick up is quite important.

I'm pretty sure that every time Corruption is renewed by Haunt it recalculates the damage rather than continuing with trinketed damage from the previous application.

BeerBelly · 12/02/08, 7:59 AM

I was wondering about that as well. Does corruption continue to tick at the spellpower coefficient calculated when you cast the dot or does it recalculate the value at each tick. The first time I read the tooltip of the talent I presumed the first. But seeing more and more claims otherwise, I guess I'll need to do a quick test to determine which one it is.

DiamondTear · 12/02/08, 8:50 AM

I'd like to see more comparisons between cataclysm and ISB for an affliction-capped warlock.

Kana · 12/02/08, 9:16 AM

Regardless of whether or not spelldamage is better than hit in a pure mathmatical sense, most warlocks are still going to want to wind up wanting to be hitcapped.

Hit scales like haste; the more damage and crit you have, the more you like hit. Since hit is cheaper in terms of item budget than haste (or crit, but that's more complicated) and should produce similar returns, a warlock trying maximize DPS using real gear should be prioritizing pieces that provide hit, assuming equal item levels. Probably hit will be prioritized over haste anyway, because at a fairly low level of gear (ilvl 200-213) the combination of haste from gear, talents, buffs and procs starts bumping you into the hard GCD cap. For a class doing a large part of it's DPS using GCD casts, this is something to be avoided when possible.

The real discussion with hit for affliction is about the opportunity cost of cataclysm. Suppression should be mandatory for both affliction and destruction builds, both because of the mana cost component and because there isn't much else in the low end of the affliction tree. Taking cataclysm in a standard 56/0/15 build costs us 3 points of ISB. The -3% mana cost lets us cast 3% more shadowbolts over the length of a fight (time spent not-lifetapping), so the question is whether or not 3*(uptime) percent more damage is greater than the flat 3% more SB damage you get from the +hit. Should be a pretty easy question to answer given some study of the buff's uptime, and until gear gets to the point where going over the hitcap becomes a concern, it should come down pretty decisively on the side of cataclysm.

I think destruction takes both hit talents regardless, just because of where they fall in the trees.

PSGarak · 12/02/08, 2:35 PM

Sorry about the slipup with Everlasting Affliction. That increases the cost of a missed haunt by 3/5 of a shadowbolt, effectively making a haunt resist similar to a DoT resist. Since you're losing a lower-damage spell than the one you're casting it's less than 1% DPS per 1% hit, although much more comparable than it used to be.

Kana, if I'm understanding you right, you're saying that since hit is still affliction's best rating (which is probably true), and gear has multiple DPS stats, we're going to end up with hit because we'll be going for dmg/hit pieces rather than dmg/crit or dmg/haste. While I agree this is true that we'll end up with a good amount of hit, that doesn't necessarily mean we'll end up hit-capped. I haven't paged through various levels of gear, but if you were to need gems to hit-cap, it would be better not to and go for raw +dmg instead.

Kana · 12/02/08, 5:02 PM

Well, my gear is nothing special and I'm already floating around 10 or 11% hit from gear, without gemming (couple weeks of 10naxx and badge/craftable gear, along with one or two sunwell pieces.) And it honestly wouldn't really be that difficult to get up to 12 or 13 percent if 1-2 of the right upgrades drop for me. I think you're going to see a lot of warlocks floating around 12 or 13% (although maybe not trying too hard to be right at the cap) by the time we're midway through T8, if not sooner.

I also think people are overlooking the utility of hit for maintaining an efficient cycle. It isn't something you can quantify, but being at or near the hitcap should have a positive effect on dot uptime. Affliction plays pretty fast, especially with a decent amount of haste, and I usually find myself thinking 2-3 casts "ahead" of my timer. The upshot of this is that if UA (for example) does miss, I don't just recast it immediately; by the time I notice that it missed, I've already cast another instant and maybe started another SB. At that point I've either lost uptime or wasted casting time (if I interrupt whatever the next cast is to refresh UA instead.) Destruction, esp. with backdraft, can be even faster.

Drade · 12/02/08, 5:35 PM

Kana - You also have the option of taking 1/3 Eradication and no Dark Pact, or 2/3 Erad and 4/5 ISB. There are several combinations if you wanted 3/3 Cataclysm. It just depends on if the second and third points from Erad, or the fifth point in ISB are worth more dps than 3% to SB/Immo.

Kana · 12/02/08, 6:57 PM

I think 3/3 eradication is probably still better.

I can't find the post now, but depending on how you think eradication's ICD works, the last point adds 4-5% more uptime for the buff, for a net gain of about 1% DPS (20% haste 5% more often = 1 percent native haste), maybe a little bit less. The first and second points contribute more.

If you assume SB is contributing 1/3 of your damage (possibly even a high estimate based on the WWS I've seen linked) and that you crit enough to keep the buff up 100% of the time, every talent point in ISB is generating .66% more DPS. And between haunt eating charges and current gear levels, no one's coming even close to 100% uptime.

Edit: and yeah, I could lose dark pact. But it's such a useful ability on fights when lifetapping is sort of dicey (like loatheb, for example) that I have a hard time dropping it.

Lothiron · 12/02/08, 7:08 PM

Originally Posted by Drundia

In order to want to cap hit for Soulshatter first of all you must make a reasonable assumption that you may need Soulshatter if everything goes fine. Reality is that when everything goes fine it doesn't seem to be needed.

To each their own. I prefer to be prepared for the occasional catastrophe, rather than assume it won't happen.

While Haunt miss is indeed an issue, DOT miss is more of a nuissance than a catastrophe, since in reality you don't have any rotation to screw to begin with.

I realize that I don't have a rotation per se. Affliction DPS isn't a rotation; this has been well established over and over again on this board. However, 'rotation' is a word most will recognize; if I refer to a Haunt miss 'screwing up my priority queue in the affliction DPS scheduling algorithm.' that will fly over a few heads.

Disenchant · 12/03/08, 5:12 AM

As for the issue of Cataclysm and Suppression, I think that getting hit capped with Affliction is far more important then being hit capped with Destro, only due to the fact that if I get my Immolate or SB resisted, it's no biggy and I can recast it if I really want it, as oppose to Haunt that I can't recast it for 12 sec (if I'm not mistaken). Also, as Affliction spec, I have only 15 points to invest in the Destro tree, and as much as I would have liked to get those nice 3% to my Destro hit, I'd still rather take 5/5 Ruin...

Also, the idea of potions and food buffs is nice to get us hit-capped, but lets not forget that instead you could have gotten more Spellpower that as was shown before, is most of the times more beneficial then +Hit.

Ain't saying Hit capped ain't important, just don't go over your head to get it - I'd rather gem myself with Spellpower then hit.

Fenz · 12/03/08, 6:11 AM

but lets not forget that instead you could have gotten more Spellpower that as was shown before, is most of the times more beneficial then +Hit.

Where was this shown? I would like to see because I have a hard time believing it especially when talking about raid bosses.

Kana · 12/03/08, 8:31 AM

Originally Posted by Fenz

Where was this shown? I would like to see because I have a hard time believing it especially when talking about raid bosses.

It hasn't been, at least, not to my satisfaction. There's a post by Raevelan (sp) on the first page of the thread comparing the marginal returns of hit and damage using simulationcraft, but no actual math on the subject. And even if +dmg is better, I have a hard time believing it's almost twice as good, as the example would have us believe.

There are really two discussions going on in this thread: how much net DPS hit rating and spellpower add in relation to each other, and how an affliction lock should assign the 15 or 16 points they're putting in the destruction tree. I think putting three points in cataclysm is more useful than putting them in improved shadow bolt (math above), and I haven't really seen anyone argue against that.

• Zakalwe · 12/03/08, 10:32 AM

Since I happened to be doing some simcraft runs while reading this, I'll post scaling factors for my current gear:

  Warlock_0_41_30            intellect=0.51  spirit=0.55  spell_power=1.05  hit_rating=1.40  crit_rating=0.58  haste_rating=0.99
  Warlock_0_50_21            intellect=0.17  spirit=0.37  spell_power=0.93  hit_rating=1.13  crit_rating=0.40  haste_rating=0.60
  Warlock_2_13_56            intellect=0.36  spirit=0.48  spell_power=1.59  hit_rating=1.71  crit_rating=0.60  haste_rating=0.88
  Warlock_56_0_15            intellect=0.25  spirit=0.45  spell_power=1.41  hit_rating=1.17  crit_rating=0.53  haste_rating=0.74

Really though, everyone should just download simcraft and do this themselves, for their own gear values. It's reached a level of maturity now where it should be considered an extremely useful tool for anyone who wants to know what gear to get or what spec to use. Or even what glyphs to use for a given spec, or how much the Dying Curse proc is worth in terms of +dmg, etc etc.

For example: Today I spent about 15 minutes with it and found out the following two important facts: With my current gear and spec, glyph of coa beats out glyph of corruption by a significant margin, and the t6 4-piece bonus is worth about 120 +dmg. So I'm not breaking the set quite yet.

Eruantien · 12/03/08, 10:54 AM

Originally Posted by dragon12

I'm pretty sure that every time Corruption is renewed by Haunt it recalculates the damage rather than continuing with trinketed damage from the previous application.

Originally Posted by Beerbelly

I was wondering about that as well. Does corruption continue to tick at the spellpower coefficient calculated when you cast the dot or does it recalculate the value at each tick. The first time I read the tooltip of the talent I presumed the first. But seeing more and more claims otherwise, I guess I'll need to do a quick test to determine which one it is.

I assumed that it would recalculate based on your current spellpower every time you refreshed it with Haunt. I'm pretty sure I've been noticing times when I've put up a trinketed Corruption at the start of a fight, and then several refreshes later have tried to refresh Corruption manually for whatever reason, and been given a "more powerful spell is already active" message.

Just anecdotal though, it'd be better if someone who actually knows what they're doing had a look at it. I'm not sure how much this would really increase the value of spell hit, either, but it'd be good to know all the same.

Shodan30 · 12/03/08, 10:57 AM

Originally Posted by Nicarras

My theory, at least for Affliction, is to pick up the Supression and then hit cap your Shadow bolts assuming no Cataclysm, based on what is typically in your raid. So in my example that is 14% of +hit on your gear to cap your SBs.

I understand what your saying here but I think its a bit of a waste to only do one of the talents.

Since Improved Shadowbolt is not really a viable affliction talent anymore anyway, getting to bane would require you to dump at least 2 points into cataclysm anyway assuming you fill molten core.

Improved shadowbolts duration, combined with what is likely going to be a moderately low crit rate on shadowbolt due to affliction spec (even with raid buffs), and the rotation of keeping dots up around filler shadowbolts makes it a tenuously used talent at best.

Max out both, trust that the raid is going to supply you with 3% and you shave 100 hit rating off which can go to haste or crit.

rutiene · 12/03/08, 11:01 AM

Originally Posted by Zakalwe

Really though, everyone should just download simcraft and do this themselves, for their own gear values. It's reached a level of maturity now where it should be considered an extremely useful tool for anyone who wants to know what gear to get or what spec to use. Or even what glyphs to use for a given spec, or how much the Dying Curse proc is worth in terms of +dmg, etc etc.

I find SimCraft very user unfriendly. Until there's a GUI, I doubt many people will be using it.