does chain lightning count as an AoE?

[LosMartonos]

I'm asking because of Force Suffusion

[pureeffinmetal]

Yes it does.

[Daellia]

That said, 7/31/3 sims a couple percent lower on single-target DPS than 3/31/7. Better for AoE, obviously, but worse for single-target.

[LosMartonos]

I made this build, for pve and pvp, let me know if you have any constructive criticism please

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201hMbZMsbMdRrutzZzM.1

[Argure]

I made this build, for pve and pvp, let me know if you have any constructive criticism please

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201hMbZMsbMdRrutzZzM.1

 

Changing to 3/31/7 and hitting Recklessness (and possibly other cooldowns such as relics and adrenals) before CL will yield a far better DPS output, and is especially useful in PvP due to being able to line up a burst with your procs.

[LosMartonos]

this? http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201hZccbMdRrutzZcMM.1

[Argure]

this? http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201hZccbMdRrutzZcMM.1

 

More like this.

 

Static Barrier (and the blind) would be rather useless in PvE (and even more so in PvP) as most of your fights will have Boss Immunity leaving the blind totally useless. Not to mention that you shouldn't have to bubble yourself in a decent Ops, that's the healer's job. Don't waste a GCD on it, go and DPS that damn dude down already.

 

The root on Overload is equally underwhelming in PvE but is highly useful for the occasional PvP as it does not fill a target's resolve bar with an (often useless) blind.

 

Edit: that said, even if you decide to use Static Barrier, the 20% increase and the blind on pop should never go in the same spec. 20% increase to absorb is for using it defensively, with the blind you are using it offensively.

Edited May 10, 2012 by Argure

[LosMartonos]

More like this.

 

Static Barrier (and the blind) would be rather useless in PvE (and even more so in PvP) as most of your fights will have Boss Immunity leaving the blind totally useless. Not to mention that you shouldn't have to bubble yourself in a decent Ops, that's the healer's job. Don't waste a GCD on it, go and DPS that damn dude down already.

 

The root on Overload is equally underwhelming in PvE but is highly useful for the occasional PvP as it does not fill a target's resolve bar with an (often useless) blind.

 

Edit: that said, even if you decide to use Static Barrier, the 20% increase and the blind on pop should never go in the same spec. 20% increase to absorb is for using it defensively, with the blind you are using it offensively.

 

 

 

I see, but I disagree with your hate towards Static Barrier, since one can remove it, it's an awesome aoe stun and I love it.

 

this is the spec I made up after all this, I still don't get why would you waste 2 points on +100 mana, can we even get to low mana with +30% regen and often -50% cost?

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201hZMsr0dRrutzZcM0M.1

[Daellia]

this is the spec I made up after all this, I still don't get why would you waste 2 points on +100 mana, can we even get to low mana with +30% regen and often -50% cost?

 

Yes, relatively easily, in fact. Still, for Lightning, Reserves is the least powerful of any of the specs, as they have no regen effects based on a percentage of your force pool (except Consumption if you get low). For raid PvE, Reserves is worth it, but if you're focusing mostly on solo and small group play with mixed PvP, taking some of the defensive utility options is justifiable.

[Argure]

I see, but I disagree with your hate towards Static Barrier, since one can remove it, it's an awesome aoe stun and I love it.

 

this is the spec I made up after all this, I still don't get why would you waste 2 points on +100 mana, can we even get to low mana with +30% regen and often -50% cost?

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#201hZMsr0dRrutzZcM0M.1

 

The AOE stun is exactly why I hate it, though it comes from a PvP perspective. The AOE blind is uncontrolled and pretty much just fills everyone's resolve bar really quick. That sucks if you wanna stunlock someone in a controlled manner. I highly recommend you don't use this talent during any form of PvP.

 

That said, as pure DPS you will not run out of force as Lightning. However in a lot of Ops you'll have tanks having an OH SHI- moment. When the healer dies off an AOE for instance, or gets mindtrapped. Or the tank just gets pounded on during a beserk moment. It's useful to offheal as a Sorcerer in these kinds of situation, as in, bubble someone and spam Dark Heal. This will make you go OOF insanely fast though, hence the +100 force.

[Daellia]

The AOE stun is exactly why I hate it, though it comes from a PvP perspective. The AOE blind is uncontrolled and pretty much just fills everyone's resolve bar really quick. That sucks if you wanna stunlock someone in a controlled manner. I highly recommend you don't use this talent during any form of PvP.

 

The nice thing about it, however, is that since it's theoretically an uncontrolled stun, it ignores Resolve immunity. It'll still give the target more Resolve, but it can stun targets immune to CC due to Resolve (unless they changed it in 1.2).

[xenofire]

That said, 7/31/3 sims a couple percent lower on single-target DPS than 3/31/7. Better for AoE, obviously, but worse for single-target.

 

You keep saying this but nobody has ever proved that the tool is even accurate. Based on in field experiments of my own, I have to say I think the sim is broke.

[Daellia]

You keep saying this but nobody has ever proved that the tool is even accurate. Based on in field experiments of my own, I have to say I think the sim is broke.

 

Whatever, Xeno. I know you think Lightning is god's gift to DPS everywhere, but you have to understand just how ridiculously subjective that is. Pick through the source code and find me an inaccuracy or stop spouting your opinions as objective fact. I at least have math to back up my claims.

[xenofire]

Whatever, Xeno. I know you think Lightning is god's gift to DPS everywhere, but you have to understand just how ridiculously subjective that is. Pick through the source code and find me an inaccuracy or stop spouting your opinions as objective fact. I at least have math to back up my claims.

 

Saying it was broke was more in jest than anything. Regardless of the math, the practicality remains; I don't ever seen parses of sorcs as madness or hybrid in KP or EV doing more than 1500-1600 DPS wheras as lightning I can do up to 2k on pretty much every (real) fight. In EC I still do 1500 on every fight even though there's a lot of "stop dps... okay go... stop dps.. okay go.." moments.

 

Any way you shake it, there just aren't too many people willing to share their parses to prove the superiority of madness or hybrid.

 

In WoW, arcane sims slightly better than fire, but all the top parses are as fire mages and almost every top mage plays as fire. It's not like arcane is hard, but playing it to the precise point as only a computer could do to eek out that few extra dps that puts it ahead is not rational or realistic, and the variability on the end result of arcane dps is small, wheras fire can vary greatly based on RNG. I believe given more logs and practical data, it'd be apparent that arcane is to fire as madness is to lightning.

Edited May 11, 2012 by xenofire

[Daellia]

Saying it was broke was more in jest than anything. Regardless of the math, the practicality remains; I don't ever seen parses of sorcs as madness or hybrid in KP or EV doing more than 1500-1600 DPS wheras as lightning I can do up to 2k on pretty much every (real) fight. In EC I still do 1500 on every fight even though there's a lot of "stop dps... okay go... stop dps.. okay go.." moments.

 

You parse better. YOU. That's not statistical evidence. Beyond that, stop dps sections are actually better for Madness than Lightning due to DoTs, most parsers just see this as lower dps because they have more active time.

 

In WoW, arcane sims slightly better than fire, but all the top parses are as fire mages and almost every top mage plays as fire. It's not like arcane is hard, but playing it to the precise point as only a computer could do to eek out that few extra dps that puts it ahead is not rational or realistic, and the variability on the end result of arcane dps is small, wheras fire can vary greatly based on RNG. I believe given more logs and practical data, it'd be apparent that arcane is to fire as madness is to lightning.

 

The problem is, "top" parses isn't what we're after. If you have a spec that does 2000 dps like clockwork, never varying, and another that does 1000 DPS, but 1% of the time does 10000 DPS (average 1090 DPS), which would you prefer? The latter is guaranteed to have the top parses, but the former does significantly more DPS in the overwhelming majority of fights. Top parses are just that, they are statistical outliers. They measure which spec has the maximum peak DPS, not the maximum average dps.

 

Fire versus Arcane is a very good example of this. Fire has so much RNG, it's procs have procs. Arcane has very very little. Fire will always have higher top parses, but lower average parses. This is the reason I rail against parsing as a method of comparing specs to much. Far too many uncontrolled variables, far too many areas to misunderstand or misinterpret, it's just not useful as a spec comparison tool.

[xenofire]

You parse better. YOU. That's not statistical evidence. Beyond that, stop dps sections are actually better for Madness than Lightning due to DoTs, most parsers just see this as lower dps because they have more active time.

 

 

And now we get to the root of this... In the end I'm just another player that wants to min/max and perform the best; but I don't parse as well as madness or hybrid, and if there is someone who does I'd really love to see evidence of it so I can learn from it. The sample size is so small right now.

[xenofire]

Fire versus Arcane is a very good example of this. Fire has so much RNG, it's procs have procs. Arcane has very very little. Fire will always have higher top parses, but lower average parses. This is the reason I rail against parsing as a method of comparing specs to much. Far too many uncontrolled variables, far too many areas to misunderstand or misinterpret, it's just not useful as a spec comparison tool.

 

And yet in the end, most good players will play the spec with the highest potential because they believe in their ability to tilt the scales in their favor and get the highest parses.

 

I'd still love to argue that lightnings filler ability, LS, can be moved around in sequence as long as you don't lose out on other casts, so you can literally lose almost zero dps while on the move as lightning if you time the usage of your ICD's correctly. Wheras with madness, since your filler is so much of your damage and causes your procs... You don't want to lose uptime on crushing darkness at all that's a noticable DPS hit, you don't want to wait to use your death field cause you need to maximize it... I'd argue the only thing you can do on the move with madness without losing DPS is wrath proc'ing a LS, reapplying an affliction, or shocking... And these things aren't quite as much of a DPS neutral as interchanging a lightning strike with a shock or waiting a few seconds to cast CL (10s ICD!).

 

I suppose in the end it is just conjecture; and again this is an "I" statement, but I find madness or hybrid to be less favorable than lightning in movement situations.

[Daellia]

I'd still love to argue that lightnings filler ability, LS, can be moved around in sequence as long as you don't lose out on other casts, so you can literally lose almost zero dps while on the move as lightning if you time the usage of your ICD's correctly. Wheras with madness, since your filler is so much of your damage and causes your procs... You don't want to lose uptime on crushing darkness at all that's a noticable DPS hit, you don't want to wait to use your death field cause you need to maximize it... I'd argue the only thing you can do on the move with madness without losing DPS is wrath proc'ing a LS, reapplying an affliction, or shocking... And these things aren't quite as much of a DPS neutral as interchanging a lightning strike with a shock or waiting a few seconds to cast CL (10s ICD!).

 

DF is instant, and can be used on the move. FL is only about half of your damage, and Wrath has such a high proc rate that even with movement, you almost never have to delay CD for it. Shock is actually a DPCT increase on FL, it just costs enough that it's only worthwhile to cast while moving. Madness arguably has more options for movement, as they have 4 primary rotational abilities that are instacast, and Shock as a stand-in for FL as needed in addition.

 

Lightning basically has Affliction, Shock, and CL (if procced). I would also tend to argue that losing LS casts is just as painful for Lightning as losing FL casts is for Madness, perhaps more so, as 2 of your 3 procs rely on LS casts (Conduction and Lightning Storm). Lightning doesn't lose as much dps from moving as the Sim suggests, as the sim assumed unpredictable motion, but it certainly doesn't have more options for handling that movement than Madness (except perhaps the reduced CD on Force Speed, which is insanely good).

Edited May 11, 2012 by Daellia

[xenofire]

The thing about lightning though is you can TIME your movement around your instant casts... With madness you wont want to sit on wrath/CD or a death field, you need to maximize their uptime. It'd be like if thundering blast was instant cast; if you don't use it while anticipating movement then you lose out maximized time on it, that's not DPS neutral, for every second you don't cast it, that'd be a second into the next one you won't get. It'd be the same story with wrath/CD and death field, it will not be DPS neutral to wait for movement to use them.

 

So by my tabulation... Lightning has 3 DPS neutral things you can do while moving (shock, affliction(arguably, but the same for both specs), and CL proc.) While madness/hybrid has two. (affliction, shock.)

 

Or will you argue that wasting up time on crushing darkness / death field while anticipating movement is in some way dps neutral? I don't think that's a valid arguement at all.

Edited May 11, 2012 by xenofire

[Daellia]

Well, here's the thing. Lightning Storm doesn't exactly proc on cooldown. In fact, given a 30% proc chance and an average cast interval of maybe 1 LS per 2.5 seconds (factoring in GCDs spent casting TB and refreshing other stuff), you're looking at an average proc interval of around 18 seconds. Even if you did nothing but cast LS outside of the ICD, you're still looking at a minimum average proc interval of 15 seconds. You can't rely on having it up every time you move, because you can't delay using CL longer than the ICD without losing DPS. The difference is that Madness has a higher probability of having one of it's instant abilities becoming available for use during the movement.

 

Lightning really only has 3 options: Shock (on CD), refresh Affliction (might as well, even if it's not low), and CL if you're sitting on an LS proc. Madness, on the other hand, has two abilities every 15 seconds (DF and CD, very high chance you'll be sitting on a Wrath proc, since there's no DPS loss in doing so between CD casts), affliction and CT refresh, Shock on CD, and if they really need to (and have the time left on CD's cooldown), Wrath LS. They simply have more options, and a higher likelihood of being able to use them. If you can predict every movement you make down to the second, sure, Lightning could be managed to the degree of allowing higher dps, but you can't predict it that accurately, and you'd need to be a computer to perform to that level anyway (wasn't that your complaint about Arcane?)

Edited May 11, 2012 by Daellia

[xenofire]

It's probability verses predictability.... The probabilility of having DS/wrath available, verses whether or not your movement is predictable enough that you can sit on your CL proc in such a way that you don't cost yourself another proc.

 

I guess in either case, you still only have two guaranteed on the move casts... A better player can gauge predictability; probability is just probability, any way you bend it. However, you can choose to "pre-move" in either case, and I think in most situations premoving or postmoving will be adequate enough to get you 3 casts. Maybe it really is a wash, all things considered. (That is, as a sorc, with force speed, how often are you going to move longer than 3s?)

Edited May 11, 2012 by xenofire

[Daellia]

Yes, Force Speed is the great inequalizer. If movement regularly occurs more often than every 30 second, but no more than every 20, Lightning sees a massive boost.

 

That said, this also affects the equations. Force Speed takes a GCD. You rarely have to move for more than 2 GCDs unless it's a stop dps phase, so Force Speed -> Shock covers movement for basically every spec. Madness gains a bit more dps out of this combo, but Lightning can sometimes substitute if for CL. Probably a wash, as you say.