Gunnery spec and alacrity after 1.3

[nbayer]

Since the 1.3 change to cell charger I've found myself with a slight excess of ammo, I never have to use hammer shot so I'm thinking I can ramp up the speed a little bit without starving myself. I've been experimenting a bit with the two alacrity talents that are within reach of a gunnery specced command, they are as follows (paraphrased):

 

First Responder (1/2): Crits have a (50/100)% chance to increase alacrity by 5% for 6 sec

Weapon Calibrations (1/2): Increase alacrity by (2/4)%

 

I'm curious if anyone has done any testing to see what the pros and cons are of each? So far i've tried the straight 4% increase in alacrity and found it was burning just a tiny bit more ammo than I wanted. Currently I have 1 point in first responder and it is managable, I'm considering moving one point into calibrations as well for a flat 2% + proced 5%.

[ArchangelLBC]

I use two points in the 4% alacrity talent. Was good even before the cell charger change and it's even better now.

[deadandburied]

If you have excess ammo and never have to use Hammershot it's for 1 of 2 reasons. 1 your rotation is incorrect or 2 your cast times are way longer than you think. 1 is correctable. 2 is correctable only by a fixed amount. 2 is usually due to server lag and latency. Latency for me is usually just under 50ms. Lag however is typically 0.230. Adding both together =0.280 added to my casts. So with 0% alacrity my 1.5 second casts are actually 1.78 seconds. With my current gear my dps would be as follows based on cast times.

 

1.364-1.50=1900dps

1.501-1.65=1710dps (worse case)

1.651-1.875=1520dps (worse case)

1.876-2.14=1330dps (worse case)

 

Using the 5/31/5 4% alacrity build this puts my cast times at 1.5*.96=1.44+.05+.230=1.720 on average. Yes the lag on my server is that bad and i would suggest you look at operation logs to verify your times between casts to get an accurate number. FYI i need 9% alacrity to be in the 1710dps bracket with this lag. Think of alacrity as being a way to get into the lower cast times and higher dps brackets as listed above. If lag isn't an issue for you and 4% alacrity gets your cast time totals with latency and lag added under 1.5 seconds then there really isn't any need to increase alacrity beyond that.

[nbayer]

I guess I should not have phrased it as never, more like less often than it seems like I should. It's really a result of there are few bosses where you actually get to stand still long enough, and in those cases I can just use hammer shot. My skill priorities have a net ammo loss but it ends up getting replenished when I have to reposition for whatever reason. After 1.3 moving around gains more ammo since it's time based.

 

I'm sure there are better ways for me to spend ammo when I'm moving, but usually I will just use HIB and DM, then a HS if neither of those are up.

 

One thing I'm curious about is does a crit refresh the proc on first responder or does the proc have to drop before it can be reapplied.

[ArchangelLBC]

I guess I should not have phrased it as never, more like less often than it seems like I should. It's really a result of there are few bosses where you actually get to stand still long enough, and in those cases I can just use hammer shot. My skill priorities have a net ammo loss but it ends up getting replenished when I have to reposition for whatever reason. After 1.3 moving around gains more ammo since it's time based.

 

I'm sure there are better ways for me to spend ammo when I'm moving, but usually I will just use HIB and DM, then a HS if neither of those are up.

 

One thing I'm curious about is does a crit refresh the proc on first responder or does the proc have to drop before it can be reapplied.

 

 

I took first responder for awhile. A crit reapplies it. I ended up switching because to my mind

4% all the time is better than 5% a good chunk of the time.

[Acrolepsia]

What about 2% all the times and 7% a good bit of time?

[ArchangelLBC]

What about 2% all the times and 7% a good bit of time?

 

50% chance to apply on Crits and at best I'm getting about a 55% crit rate (for Grav Round). That's like 25% of the time. 7% 25% of the time or 4% all the time? I'll take the 4% all the time.

[Acrolepsia]

50% chance to apply on Crits and at best I'm getting about a 55% crit rate (for Grav Round). That's like 25% of the time. 7% 25% of the time or 4% all the time? I'll take the 4% all the time.

 

Not only GR crits triggers it. Each and every healing/damaging ability does.

Edited August 6, 2012 by Acrolepsia

[ArchangelLBC]

Not only GR crits triggers it. Each and every healing/damaging ability does.

 

I was just quoting the ability with the best crit chance (with PVE set bonus). Where I was wrong was in the uptime estimate since it lasts for more than one GCD, but nevertheless once you're stacking random chance to crit AND a random chance to get the crit bonus you're uptime on that really starts to suffer from RNG (I have a 45% chance to proc CoF on each Grav Round and I still get really unlucky streaks where I can't get the damn thing to proc for the 15 seconds an adrenal lasts. 3 of those seconds are used up by HiB and Demo Round, but the rest are just me spamming grav round hoping to get the proc.)

[nbayer]

I took first responder for awhile. A crit reapplies it. I ended up switching because to my mind

4% all the time is better than 5% a good chunk of the time.

 

Well thats good, I figure with 6 seconds per proc you can reliably get 3 abilities off. ~35% crit on most abilities an 50% on GR means that it's likely one of those abilities will crit so your left with roughly a 50/50 chance it will be refreshed before it falls off.

 

I'll have to play around with it a bit and see how it feels, maybe 1 point in the guaranteed 2% and 1 point in the proc would be a good middle ground.

[ArchangelLBC]

Well thats good, I figure with 6 seconds per proc you can reliably get 3 abilities off. ~35% crit on most abilities an 50% on GR means that it's likely one of those abilities will crit so your left with roughly a 50/50 chance it will be refreshed before it falls off.

 

I'll have to play around with it a bit and see how it feels, maybe 1 point in the guaranteed 2% and 1 point in the proc would be a good middle ground.

 

WIth 2 points in it you can definitely have a very significant uptime, though of course that first cast is going to come slow, and you can get unlucky with crits and have it drop. I don't think you can go too far wrong either way. I also just liked not having another buff cluttering up my bar. Both of them are better than taking another endurance talent or the snare for Full Auto in my opinion.

[deadandburied]

Very odd results. Looking at my last Raid and Stormcaller/Firebrand specifically and using the 6/31/4 7% alacrity talent build the middle result is what i got.

 

7/31/3 5% alacrity build figure First Responder uptime at 84.6%=So 5*.846=4.23% alacrity (I just doubled the uptime from below so may actually be higher)

 

6/31/4 7% alacrity build First Responder uptime was 42.3%=So (5*.423)+2=4.115% (This was during my last Stormcaller/Firebrand fight)

 

5/31/5 4% alacrity build uptime is 4% (Passive so always at 4%)

 

It's those damn 15+ seconds of not critting. This is why i hate RNG. I'm seeing extra bad results for Curtain of Fire procs as well and it doesn't even rely on crits. It's just passive 45% chance to proc from using Grav Round.

 

Granted the above may have been a worse case scenario with extremely bad luck. But i'm seeing close to the same results on all boss fights. Checking the Keyphess fight with 6/31/4 7% alacrity build i show an uptime of 52.31%. So (5*.5231)+2=4.62%

 

There ya go. Testing as you requested.

Edited August 8, 2012 by deadandburied

[ArchangelLBC]

Could I convince you to go on the Ops Training Dummy and spam attacks at it for like 20 to 40 minutes. The longer you go the less RNG has an effect and the closer things get to their theoretical average.

[deadandburied]

No can do. However i can give you the opposite extreme. Looking at the crits for the last 2 examples they were extremely low. For example demo round on Storm/Fire was at 15.4%. Overall for all abilities i was at 35.8% crit for that fight. Keyphess overall was at 39.1%. Still well below what it should be. I just ran a quick test on the ops dummy. Overall crits were at 45.9%. A bit higher than average. Uptime on First responder with 6/31/4 7% alacrity build was 74.25%. So total speed increase was (5*.7425)+2=5.7125%.

 

RNG is RNG. Can't rely on it. This is why i dislike simulators. They show basically a perfect scenario and never allow for streaks of non crits for example. Or streaks of procs that don't proc because of RNG. Putting 2 together like 50% chance on top of crit chance makes it even worse. We had the same problem in WoW. Devs finally got rid of most of these double chance upon chance procs. And testing on a dummy when you stand still and never stop to switch targets or whatever isn't realistic on quite a few fights. There are a few bosses with very minimal down time though. So it's not a waste really.

 

I think i'll be going back to 5/31/5 as the 4% passive speed boost is obviously consistent. For me anyways this makes it easier to time the uses of my abilities. The switching back and forth from 2% to 7% was really throwing me off. I'm lazy and prefer easy mode which consequently actually makes my dps better or maybe i should say less bad? In either case i know what i'll be doing.

[ArchangelLBC]

No can do. However i can give you the opposite extreme. Looking at the crits for the last 2 examples they were extremely low. For example demo round on Storm/Fire was at 15.4%. Overall for all abilities i was at 35.8% crit for that fight. Keyphess overall was at 39.1%. Still well below what it should be. I just ran a quick test on the ops dummy. Overall crits were at 45.9%. A bit higher than average. Uptime on First responder with 6/31/4 7% alacrity build was 74.25%. So total speed increase was (5*.7425)+2=5.7125%.

 

RNG is RNG. Can't rely on it. This is why i dislike simulators. They show basically a perfect scenario and never allow for streaks of non crits for example. Or streaks of procs that don't proc because of RNG. Putting 2 together like 50% chance on top of crit chance makes it even worse. We had the same problem in WoW. Devs finally got rid of most of these double chance upon chance procs. And testing on a dummy when you stand still and never stop to switch targets or whatever isn't realistic on quite a few fights. There are a few bosses with very minimal down time though. So it's not a waste really.

 

I think i'll be going back to 5/31/5 as the 4% passive speed boost is obviously consistent. For me anyways this makes it easier to time the uses of my abilities. The switching back and forth from 2% to 7% was really throwing me off. I'm lazy and prefer easy mode which consequently actually makes my dps better or maybe i should say less bad? In either case i know what i'll be doing.

 

 

This is basically my reasoning as well. It's also why, as much as I didn't like the changes to Cell Charger in theory when they were first announced, I'm very happy with them now.