Does Alacrity Help?

[CheechMacho]

Instead of crying about the nerf to Dark Infusion, I'm trying to find the best way to improve on our 2.5 sec cast time for it. As mentioned in every other single thread, it just isnt viable in PvP when it can be so easily interupted.

 

Before any alacrity augments (+18 alacrity, +12 endurance lvl 49 purples) it was taking DI 2.2 seconds for me. I've now added my 3rd Alacrity Augment to my War Hero Gear and my cast time is..... STILL 2.2 seconds???

 

Thats +54 Alacrity and I havent seen even a tenth of a reduction in my DI cast time? Before I fill in the other 3 pieces and my implants with Alacrity Augments, Can anyone tell me if they have been successful lowering DI below 2.2 seconds? Or does it cap after a certain point and I'm wasting my time and money?

 

I was hoping to at least get it down to 2 seconds or less. Any help from someone who knows for sure would be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[Onager]

Alacrity hits DR pretty quick.

 

IF this is for PVP, I'd probably make a build that doesn't even put points into shortening DI's cast time and just assume you'll be relying on Innervate, Revivification, Resurgence, and Static Barrier.

 

For PVE, you'll still cast DI occasionally (Still take the skill that lowers its cast time) but it falls behind Force Bent Innervate in terms of both HPS and HPF, so any time you have Resurgence and Innervate's off cooldown, it's your highest priority heal. Dark Infusion is just filler when you're not using either Resurgence or Innervate and have Salvation down.

 

As far as alacrity, though, I dropped some. I'm down to around 5% now and have brought my crit up to 39.95% buffed and that gets over 40% when I have a willpower stim. Multiplier is 77%. Healing is still around 540 fully buffed.

Edited April 27, 2012 by Onager

[CheechMacho]

So basically you are saying I should just give up on DI and I dont want to if Alacrity can help even just a bit.

 

Anybody else able to get it any lower?

[Daellia]

Alacrity doesn't cap, it just DRs pretty badly. It also scales significantly worse than Surge, at least until you get around 250-300 Surge rating. Also note that the tooltips round off the cast time to the nearest tenth, despite them casting in the actual modified cast time (rounded only insofar as the Alacrity Rating to Activation Time is rounded).

 

At the Rakata gear level, for maximum HPS, you should be aiming for about 200 Alacrity and 300 Surge.

[CheechMacho]

turns out alacrity is crap. I had 651 alacrity and it made no difference. My sorc buddy had 500ish alacrity and we had the same cast time on Dark Heals and Infusion.

 

So I guess it's back to Willpower augments....

[Daellia]

turns out alacrity is crap. I had 651 alacrity and it made no difference. My sorc buddy had 500ish alacrity and we had the same cast time on Dark Heals and Infusion.

 

So I guess it's back to Willpower augments....

 

No, you may have just had the same visible (ie. ROUNDED) cast time.

 

500 Alacrity Rating is 13.8033% cast time reduction. 651 is 16.5544%. On a 3.0 second cast, the former would reduce the cast time to 2.585901 seconds, while the latter would reduce it to 2.503368. If your friend instead had 570 Alacrity rating (still technically "500ish"), this would have given his 3.0 second cast a cast time of 2.545728, which would round down to 2.5 on the cast bar display just as it would at 651. However, the actual difference there results in around a 2% increase in the number of spells you can fit into the same time period (and thus a 2% increase to DPS/HPS for non-instant abilities).

 

That said, 570-650 Alacrity is way way WAY too much. Recommended to get it between 150 and 250, as to get 500-600, you have to sacrifice nearly all of your Surge rating (and all specs scale better with Surge than Alacrity until you get around 300 Surge).

 

And yes, always use Willpower augments. Alacrity at its best is worth about 40% what Willpower is.

Edited April 27, 2012 by Daellia

[CheechMacho]

Nice reply. Very helpful. I appreciate the feedback.

[xenofire]

Alacrity doesn't really seem as great for sorc heals anyways. Other stats will have much higher priority, since using bubbles or resurg won't even benefit from alacrity, and you should be using dark heal and dark infusion very rarely if at all.

[_Minmaxer_]

I intend to have 0 Alacrity in my final build. I am a heal/dps hyrbid and probably cast at most 5 spells with a cast time in any given pvp match. Shaving a few fractions of a second off of Innervate/Force Lightning mean nothing to me compared to 550-600 power and 80% crit multiplier.

[-Vexus-]

I intend to have 0 Alacrity in my final build. I am a heal/dps hyrbid and probably cast at most 5 spells with a cast time in any given pvp match. Shaving a few fractions of a second off of Innervate/Force Lightning mean nothing to me compared to 550-600 power and 80% crit multiplier.

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that Alacrity also sped up channeled spells, such as Force Lightning. In PvP a faster channel of Force Lightning--our most often used dps spell--might be a good thing, right? I'm planning to do as you are though, and get my Crit and Surge to the DR marks and then boost as much Power and Willpower as I can for PvP.

 

I am curious where the numbers actually are best though. I know 30%-35% Critical and around 70%-75% Surge is where I want to be. For PvP purposes, is there a better or worse point for DR for Alacrity, Willpower, Power and Expertise though?

Edited April 28, 2012 by -Vexus-

[_Minmaxer_]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding was that Alacrity also sped up channeled spells, such as Force Lightning. In PvP a faster channel of Force Lightning--our most often used dps spell--might be a good thing, right? I'm planning to do as you are though, and get my Crit and Surge to the DR marks and then boost as much Power and Willpower as I can for PvP.

 

I am curious where the numbers actually are best though. I know 30%-35% Critical and around 70%-75% Surge is where I want to be. For PvP purposes, is there a better or worse point for DR for Alacrity, Willpower, Power and Expertise though?

 

Alacrity does effect channeled spells, but imo does not give you much value. 102 alacrity (2BM pieces) drops my Force Lightning from 3sec to 2.89, I would much prefer increased crit damage on all of my skills.

[Ugrah]

The impact of alacrity on channeled spells is minimal. Alacrity being on almost all pieces of ware hero equip instead of something usefull (surge/crit/power) is beyond me

[-Vexus-]

Alacrity does effect channeled spells, but imo does not give you much value. 102 alacrity (2BM pieces) drops my Force Lightning from 3sec to 2.89, I would much prefer increased crit damage on all of my skills.

 

Thanks.

[Daellia]

Couple of things. Alacrity affects channeled spells at the same rate that it does cast-time spells. Beyond that, it isn't really the raw magnitude of the change that is important, but rather the percentage change. If you have 5% Alacrity, your Force Lightning channel will go down to 2.85 seconds, which is a 5.26% increase in the number of FLs you can channel in the same arbitrary time period. That's 5.26% increased DPCT (and therefore DPS) to all non-instant abilities.

 

Now I won't lie, Alacrity isn't a good stat, but it's also not a bad one. Avoiding it entirely is silly. Like all stats in this DR system, there's a point where it becomes desirable, and point where it ceases to be so.

 

First off, you must consider that due to the design of gear stats, Alacrity only directly competes with Surge rating (except on Augments, and you should always be using Willpower augments). Enhancements always have Endurance, one of Power or Crit, and one of Alacrity or Surge (ignoring stats that don't help us). Items have a similar setup, it's nearly impossible to find items with both Power and Crit or both Alacrity and Surge.

 

This is actually a good thing, and part of the reason that the surge nerf wasn't necessarily a really terrible thing. Power only directly competes with Crit, and they are on the same order of magnitude as far as benefit. Surge and Alacrity directly compete only with each other, and while both are worth less than half as much as Power and Crit in most circumstances (read: reasonable stat balance on gear), they are also surprisingly close in value to each other.

 

Now, what we need to find is the point (or rather, series of points) at which Alacrity's value (its stat weight) is equal to Surge's. This point varies a bit based on spec, but at the Rakata gear level (which provides a bit over 500 combined Alacrity + Surge), the ideal ratio is roughly 3:2 Surge to Alacrity (ie. a bit over 300 Surge, and a bit over 200 Alacrity)

 

Below this gear level, shift the ratio a bit in favor of Surge. Above it, shift it slightly more in favor of Alacrity (but not much). Overall, though, you're going to want between 6% and 9% Alacrity on your final gear for proper stat balance.

Edited April 29, 2012 by Daellia

[Onager]

Alacrity does effect channeled spells, but imo does not give you much value. 102 alacrity (2BM pieces) drops my Force Lightning from 3sec to 2.89, I would much prefer increased crit damage on all of my skills.

 

In the case where said channeled spell retains a cooldown (Non-madness sorcerers or Corruption sorcerers) the specific effect of Alacrity on those channels is much less than they are with shallow Madness builds that remove the CD from Force Lightning.

 

Especially hybrid builds that have both Barrage and no CD on FL, these actually benefit as much from high alacrity as deep Lightning specs, contrary to popular belief.

[Daellia]

In the case where said channeled spell retains a cooldown (Non-madness sorcerers or Corruption sorcerers) the specific effect of Alacrity on those channels is much less than they are with shallow Madness builds that remove the CD from Force Lightning.

 

Especially hybrid builds that have both Barrage and no CD on FL, these actually benefit as much from high alacrity as deep Lightning specs, contrary to popular belief.

 

Lightning spends about 85% of its time casting non-instants and gains about 87% of its damage from non-instants. The hybrid build spends about 73% of its time casting non-instants and gains about 58% of its damage from non-instants (both based on the most recent 1.2 SimC results). Hybrid certainly sees better scaling out of Alacrity than Madness (which sees percentages of ~65% and ~46%, respectively), but Lightning definitely still scales better with the stat. In fact, at the BIS gear setup we had for pre-1.2, which balanced the stat weights almost perfectly for Hybrid (at around 210 Alacrity versus 320 Surge), Lightning's stat weights suggested at least another 50 more Alacrity (at the cost of Surge) would be needed to balance the stats for that spec.

 

However, you do make a solid point. Increasing Alacrity only increases the damage profile of the filler ability in most cases. It may slightly increase the damage profile of cooldown-based abilities, as you're able to more reliably start casting them the very instantly they come off cooldown, but any spell that derives from a proc with an ICD gains zero direct scaling from Alacrity. In addition, instant abilities gain zero scaling (obviously), and cooldown abilities gain very little. Alacrity, in net effect, just opens up more time for filler spell casts. Fillers are by definition the lowest DPCT priority, so this somewhat curbs the benefit of the stat.

 

That said, this doesn't actually affect the relative value of Alacrity much between Lightning and Hybrid, as they both have approximately the same percentage of damage from filler spells (51% versus 58%). Madness is actually loses a bit more Alacrity benefit here, as they only gain about 46% of their damage from filler spells.

Edited April 30, 2012 by Daellia

[_Minmaxer_]

Lots of Theorycrafting

 

If only the game was so simple that you could just spam skills at training dummies. I won't argue with the numbers that you provide, but there should be a big notice that screams "PVE BEST CASE", because theory crafting in a vacuum only gets you so far. What happens while theorycrafting is a far cry from what actually happens in the game. What happens when you get stunned every 10 seconds for 4 seconds. What happens when you cannot cast a spell with a cast time for 2 minutes straight. What happens when every cast you attempt (including channeled) gets interrupted at 3/4 completion, 1/2 completion, after the first tick? Should your goal be to maximize the worst case, the best case, or the average case? Does my group comp, play style, or skill effect my stat choices?

 

Not saying what you do doesn't have its uses, knowing which effects are multiplicative and additive and in what order they are applied is incredibly useful. As are many of your formulas and comments on the workings of skills. But sometimes you quote your numbers like they are gospel, that going X,Y, Z for stats will always give you the best results. At best, they can point you in the right direction, at worst, they can be totally misleading.

 

I urge players to try different approaches, and to find what works best for them, in their spec and playstyle. It's the in-game results that matter, not what the numbers on the message board say.

[xenofire]

I agree with minmaxer here.

 

None of the fights in this game are a stationary turret fight, and the only ones that are even close (foreman crusher) have adds that you can chain lightning, which gives an advantage to the "lesser" spec (that is you listen only to theory).

[Onager]

What happens while theorycrafting is a far cry from what actually happens in the game.

 

If this is the case, then the theorycrafting wasn't thorough enough. SimCraft has a helter skelter setting to account for a lot of this. The whole point to sims and theorycrafting is to model what does happen in the game, then test it in the game to determine its end-user value. If it fails in the testing phase, the theorycrafting was **** to begin with. Scientific Method.

Edited May 1, 2012 by Onager

[-Vexus-]

Lots of good info in this thread. Thanks all. I find the testing to be very informative, thanks Daelia. I also recognize that the beauty of PvP is the creativeness and unpredictability of the opponents, thus the ever-chaning landscape of the PvP environment. This fluidness makes any testing results only one piece of the puzzle for what's 'best' for PvP.

 

But, knowing how Alacrity works and where it's sweet-spots are in PvE helps me prioritize things in PvP. For me, first I'm going to get my PvP gear. I don't really PvE because my limited time is best spent PvP'ing. Unfortunately, the PvP nerf of 1.2 means I'm constantly poor, lol.

 

So, I'm mixing and matching WH gear that has no Alacrity first where possible. This gives me probably too much Surge and sadly, not enough Critical. So I'm swapping old gear to get my Critical up. I used to load up on Power, but I've had to canibalize some Power to raise my Critical and Expertise ... so knowing that if I have 150 Alacrity (which keeps my Critical where it needs to be) I'll be OK until I can get fully geared is a valuable piece of knowledge.

 

Minmaxer, Daelia, and everyone else in this thread thank you for your excellent and mature discussion. These are the types of threads I enjoy reading.

[Daellia]

What happens while theorycrafting is a far cry from what actually happens in the game. What happens when you get stunned every 10 seconds for 4 seconds. What happens when you cannot cast a spell with a cast time for 2 minutes straight. What happens when every cast you attempt (including channeled) gets interrupted at 3/4 completion, 1/2 completion, after the first tick?

 

I would challenge you to find me a PvE fight where any of these are the case. PvP I always state is difficult at best to theorycraft, as you can only really do an analysis of a specific scenario. You can't really theorycraft PvP as you can PvE.

 

Not saying what you do doesn't have its uses, knowing which effects are multiplicative and additive and in what order they are applied is incredibly useful. As are many of your formulas and comments on the workings of skills. But sometimes you quote your numbers like they are gospel, that going X,Y, Z for stats will always give you the best results. At best, they can point you in the right direction, at worst, they can be totally misleading.

 

I very rarely say "X will always give you the best results". Particularly for stats, I invariably stress how dependent stat weights are on your current gear, and give no more than suggested ratios or the ratios present in our current BIS gear set. I utterly refuse to give a solid X > Y > Z stat priority list.

 

On terms of gameplay, I will indeed suggest priorities for certain scenarios, because frankly there is a best way to do it in every conceivable situation. I do tend to caveat my advice with "on a Patchwerk fight", or add in alternatives if certain conditionals are difficult to maintain.

Edited May 3, 2012 by Daellia

[zipsfan]

+10 to everyone for this thread.

[Midgardener]

This thread is a good informative read. Thank you.

[AshlaBoga]

Here's the ideal build for a Sorc HEALER

 

Power: +300

Alarcrity: +200

Crit: 30% chance (without buffs)

Surge: 65% multiply (without buffs, +70% after buffs)

Health: +17850 (with buffs)

[Daellia]

Surge: 65% multiply (without buffs, +70% after buffs)

 

Buffs don't amplify Surge at all. Also, with only 200 Alacrity, you're going to have at least 275-300 Surge, which puts you at least 70-75% multiplier (which is actually ideal, not 65%).

 

Same with crit. Ideally, you want closer to 250ish crit rating, and around 500 Power, not 300.