5.0 Sent/Mara changes.....

[Bahadori]

Beast / Don,

 

Something i noticed yesterday and forgot to get on here and mention. Is clipping Twin Saber Throw or Dispatch into Precision > Lance > Blade Barrage > Clashing Blast practical/doable or did you design it to let Clashing Blast connect outside the Precision window?

 

Under Zen (with ~45% Alacrity) with a global cooldown of ~ 1.1 second my average for all these abilities is 3.3 seconds which is over our Precision window time to connect. I get the idea behind the method. Putting up the 20% Armor Pen with Lance but Blade Barrage set bonus proc would have been proc'd off the clipped Twin Saber Throw so unless i'm missing something here (or just suck) i'd drop Blade Barrage in the opener to fit Clashing Blast in which does much higher damage.

 

Then again this could all just be me sucking or my latency off for this but even if that is the case it seems really tight squeezing these three abilities in on a clipped Precision. On the other hand I don't understand what i'm seeing during testing because it should work, again it could just be on my end.

[Bonzenaattori]

thoughts on mastery crystals?

[Bonzenaattori]

Simply put, Blade barrage skill is utter garbage now, and the only thing saving it from grace is the simple fact that it costs nothing.

 

They should put Excuse... I mean Excise passive on Blade Barrage, and then give a talent around Watchman involving blade barrage... iunno perhaps something gimmicky like, blade barrage refreshes the duration of cauterize on the casted target or some crap. or maybe Blade barrage a component alongside Mericless slash on the Accelerating Victory talent so theres an ambient 50% chance your next slash/dispatch will have max stack without deviation. Especially considering the fact that Blade dance is no longer 3 seconds (2 gcd) but is now 1.5 second long (1 gcd duration). There's a gcd worth of room for a second slash or maintenance on watchman, and concentration barely gets away with this issue thanks to Nimble Slashes

 

That way every spec has 1 talent revolving around blade barrage & then theres 1 utility.

And there should be less issue with incorperating more flexibility around the missing 1.5 seconds in a cycle on any spec. No offense meant. but one passive on Lance is arbitrary and is pretty random.

 

Increase the duration of the hinder from Lance. CONSIDERING THE FACT THAT ITS ONLY HINDER AND NOT A SLOW

 

EDIT - >Bahadori - You should also take note, that Blade Barrage is linked with Auto crit into Lance.

I dont know if you've noticed this change. It is located on the 6 piece set bonus of the Weaponmaster set.

given your rotation theory, I think it would be far valuable to Blade Barrage first, into Lance for the auto crit

However, if you clip your Dispatch into Precision > Lance > Blade Barrage Clashing Blast, like you suggest, there's an inherent risk of losing the auto crit, depending on the duration that your next Lance will become available

Just a suggestion

Edited December 1, 2016 by Bonzenaattori

[Ardarell_Solo]

No one is a better Marauder than your, maybe except Trillog, may he rest in peace.

 

Don't you forget Gorband! :-)

[WiththeForc]

Beast / Don,

 

Something i noticed yesterday and forgot to get on here and mention. Is clipping Twin Saber Throw or Dispatch into Precision > Lance > Blade Barrage > Clashing Blast practical/doable or did you design it to let Clashing Blast connect outside the Precision window?

 

Under Zen (with ~45% Alacrity) with a global cooldown of ~ 1.1 second my average for all these abilities is 3.3 seconds which is over our Precision window time to connect. I get the idea behind the method. Putting up the 20% Armor Pen with Lance but Blade Barrage set bonus proc would have been proc'd off the clipped Twin Saber Throw so unless i'm missing something here (or just suck) i'd drop Blade Barrage in the opener to fit Clashing Blast in which does much higher damage.

 

Then again this could all just be me sucking or my latency off for this but even if that is the case it seems really tight squeezing these three abilities in on a clipped Precision. On the other hand I don't understand what i'm seeing during testing because it should work, again it could just be on my end.

 

So we're trying to fit 4 abilities into the ferocity window. Standard GCD is 1.5. Take that, multiply it by 0.55 (1 - our 45% alacrity) and we get 0.825. Then multiply that by 4, and you get 3.3, just like you said. So yes, you are correct, however, there's a little leeway ya need to consider. With clipping in VT or DST, you're not hitting them plus ferocity at the same time, you hit them, wait a fraction of a second, then hit ferocity. Then at the end of it all, Devastating Blast registers damage based on distance between the target and yourself, and as long as you are close, it will register the damage relatively quickly.

 

The window should be very tight now, yes, and it's possible that without complete perfection on the clip that DB will fall out of the ferocity window. But I definitely believe with the new augments and new gear that's going to increase the alacrity, this is going to make it a hell of a lot easier to perform the clip. But we'll have to see. By the 5th when we start trying to step in to nightmare I will most likely have parsed to see.

[g_mK]

So we're trying to fit 4 abilities into the ferocity window. Standard GCD is 1.5. Take that, multiply it by 0.55 (1 - our 45% alacrity) and we get 0.825. Then multiply that by 4, and you get 3.3, just like you said. So yes, you are correct, however, there's a little leeway ya need to consider. With clipping in VT or DST, you're not hitting them plus ferocity at the same time, you hit them, wait a fraction of a second, then hit ferocity. Then at the end of it all, Devastating Blast registers damage based on distance between the target and yourself, and as long as you are close, it will register the damage relatively quickly.

 

The window should be very tight now, yes, and it's possible that without complete perfection on the clip that DB will fall out of the ferocity window. But I definitely believe with the new augments and new gear that's going to increase the alacrity, this is going to make it a hell of a lot easier to perform the clip. But we'll have to see. By the 5th when we start trying to step in to nightmare I will most likely have parsed to see.

 

Remember that alacrity is GCD/(1+Alacrity%) not GCD*(1-Alacrity%). With 236 gear we should have about ~%46.14 Alacrity depending on augments which brings the GCD to 1.0264sec

 

That being said, you are right with the last statement. Best way is to sit down and see how long each (DB, Ravage, Gore) take to actually hit after they are activated, whichever hits first would be our best candidate as last ability inside Ferocity window. High Alacrity builds may actually be interesting to try, 60APM here we go:D.

[Tsetso]

High Alacrity builds may actually be interesting to try, 60APM here we go:D.

 

TBH, I've always thought that 1.5s gcd was too long.

[Thaladan]

seems we lost immune cc under force camo ..

[Bahadori]

So we're trying to fit 4 abilities into the ferocity window. Standard GCD is 1.5. Take that, multiply it by 0.55 (1 - our 45% alacrity) and we get 0.825. Then multiply that by 4, and you get 3.3, just like you said. So yes, you are correct, however, there's a little leeway ya need to consider. With clipping in VT or DST, you're not hitting them plus ferocity at the same time, you hit them, wait a fraction of a second, then hit ferocity. Then at the end of it all, Devastating Blast registers damage based on distance between the target and yourself, and as long as you are close, it will register the damage relatively quickly.

 

The window should be very tight now, yes, and it's possible that without complete perfection on the clip that DB will fall out of the ferocity window. But I definitely believe with the new augments and new gear that's going to increase the alacrity, this is going to make it a hell of a lot easier to perform the clip. But we'll have to see. By the 5th when we start trying to step in to nightmare I will most likely have parsed to see.

 

Remember that alacrity is GCD/(1+Alacrity%) not GCD*(1-Alacrity%). With 236 gear we should have about ~%46.14 Alacrity depending on augments which brings the GCD to 1.0264sec

 

That being said, you are right with the last statement. Best way is to sit down and see how long each (DB, Ravage, Gore) take to actually hit after they are activated, whichever hits first would be our best candidate as last ability inside Ferocity window. High Alacrity builds may actually be interesting to try, 60APM here we go:D.

 

It's the stat budget I have then that's the culprit. Sucks not getting invited to the Beta and having to see all this stuff for the first time at launch. Well if that is indeed the gearing situation then with 5.0 gear i can see that getting flushed out and doable. My concern was not for the 1% but the average player. There was no way that was gonna work for them. I don't have any gearing data in front of me for 5.0 (again cause no beta invite) and so far i've gone and leveled on Bestia and spent time slashing away at my ops dummy. Not 1 point of CXP gained yet LOL. To bad theorycrafting grants 0 CXP!

 

Also, i'm working on a MATLAB model to generate the optimal rotation based on the current 5.0 variables. Once I have it up and running to my standard i'll post my findings here and see how close we are to Beasts clipping rotation and the few others people are suggesting.

[WiththeForc]

Ok, quick update. Starting testing with the spec. First thing I tested was if we could in fact clip everything in with berserk, and as this log shows, you can: http://parsely.io/parser/view/218185

 

13:10:10.774 @Beastfury @Beastfury Dual Saber Throw Event : AbilityActivate ()

13:10:11.275 @Beastfury @Beastfury Ferocity Event : AbilityActivate ()

13:10:11.275 @Beastfury @Beastfury Ferocity ApplyEffect : Ferocity ()

13:10:11.349 @Beastfury Operations Training Dummy Dual Saber Throw ApplyEffect : Damage (5157 energy ) <5157>

13:10:11.349 @Beastfury Operations Training Dummy Dual Saber Throw ApplyEffect : Damage (513 energy ) <513>

...

13:10:14.070 @Beastfury @Beastfury Devastating Blast Event : AbilityActivate ()

13:10:14.318 @Beastfury Operations Training Dummy Devastating Blast ApplyEffect : Damage (21276* energy ) <21276>

13:10:14.362 @Beastfury @Beastfury Ferocity RemoveEffect : Ferocity ()

 

So, VERY tight timer at 1100 alacrity right now, but we'll be having roughly 100-200 more than that with the final builds which will give you a little bit more leeway.

 

Looking at this, I think it would be wise to change up the rotation under ferocity a little bit. So there's a couple options to test with the rotation I have written down already:

 

1) Gore has a shorter ability activation -> damage applied time period, so it may be more beneficial to end the ferocity windows with that instead of DB. That being said, you may consider still using Gore in the first window to get the armor pen up and maybe move on to the 2nd option.

 

2) You could end the window with Ravage. This would basically assure that most of your ravage hits (the last 4) will land outside the ferocity window, but you could make sure that both DB and Gore will land inside the ferocity window. With VT hitting harder than Ravage, at least for those windows, this would still be worthwhile. Though it would definitely and consistently be a dps loss compared to getting everything in the window, this would also be the most minimal dps loss than having gore or DB land outside the window.

 

More testing to come.

Edited December 4, 2016 by WiththeForc

[kenskog]

Has anyone given crit stacking a good shake ? Stacking alacrity to fit 5 abilities in the Ferocity window sounds good and all but then you'll get less burst every non-berserk window instead right ? With sever now boosting guaranteed damage bonus on DB, as well as normal crit damage on Massacre, it feels like a little crit goes a long way.

 

Don't have anything parsed or anything, just an idea.

[WiththeForc]

Has anyone given crit stacking a good shake ? Stacking alacrity to fit 5 abilities in the Ferocity window sounds good and all but then you'll get less burst every non-berserk window instead right ? With sever now boosting guaranteed damage bonus on DB, as well as normal crit damage on Massacre, it feels like a little crit goes a long way.

 

Don't have anything parsed or anything, just an idea.

 

The problem with that is that crit is suffering heavy diminishing returns at this point. Prior to 5.0, we would sit ~1200-1300 crit rating and about 38% crit chance. As of last night I now have ~1250 alac (which noticeably helped clipping btw) and over 1700 crit. Now I'm only up to 41% crit chance, and some of that 3% difference is the extra mastery on the gear.

 

So trying to go even higher on crit would see very minimal benefits in damage done and you'd be attacking slower, which would also make clipping harder, if not impossible.

Edited December 5, 2016 by WiththeForc

[Bahadori]

Has anyone given crit stacking a good shake ? Stacking alacrity to fit 5 abilities in the Ferocity window sounds good and all but then you'll get less burst every non-berserk window instead right ? With sever now boosting guaranteed damage bonus on DB, as well as normal crit damage on Massacre, it feels like a little crit goes a long way.

 

Don't have anything parsed or anything, just an idea.

 

Through my own testing I completely concur. I've yet to get lucky enough to gather any alacrity gear from the CXP crates (which means i'm about to have to start buying/crafting gear). Thus, my alacrity is sitting sub 1K and crit is about 1300. For 5.0 we need Alacrity levels higher than we ran in 4.0 to achieve a steady state rotation that is still close to optimal.

 

I'm still working on my model so all of this is in game testing and more theory than anything else at this point but i agree with Beast completely.

[Machricar]

Another possibility may be clipping the last hit of Ravage into the Ferocity window. From my parses, it takes about 0.7 seconds from activation until the final hit(s). I haven't tried clipping it in an actual parse yet, so I'm not convinced that it will do more damage than just splitting up Gore and Ravage between Ferocity windows. From what I've seen, Berserk is also no longer necessary to fit 3 abilities in a Ferocity window, so at this point it is mostly useful for the 3% damage buff and the reduced cooldown on Ferocity. However I have heard (but not confirmed) that the double stance bug actually applies to all classes, which may make 3 non-clipped abilities in ferocity not possible when fixed (if the bug currently applies to carnage).

[g_mK]

Like Beast said, we are already high on the Crit DR while Alacrity is not as bad. The fact remains that landing Gore/DB outside the ferocity window is a higher dps loss than a some extra damage on crits.

[Bahadori]

Don I was talking with Michael last night and he said he was using your PTS information for his calculations. He mentioned your model specifically for Combat/Carnage may be more detailed than his analysis. So at this point are we charging ahead optimizing Beast's data, your's, or both?

 

Additionally, I think it would be a good idea to develop (or at least theorize) a 'Standard' rotation that can be utilized outside of the high Alacrity requirement for those players who are max level but have yet to obtain the needed stats to pull off the clipping rotation optimally. Just something I was thinking about for the Combat/Carnage guides. Unless Dulfy has someone lined up for it then it appears we're own our own as a community in decimating information for the spec. Unless a guide is released prior to our testing being completed i'll be hosting one for Combat/Carnage on Hayete.net

[WiththeForc]

So yeah, after a couple Master raids, I'm happy to say Carnage is amazing. Just check that Brontes burn https://www.twitch.tv/supahsub/v/105643106

 

As for the rotation i laid out, I've noticed something that is probably going to have to be changed, but I'm pretty tired now so I'll look in to it when I get up.

Edited December 6, 2016 by WiththeForc

[g_mK]

Don I was talking with Michael last night and he said he was using your PTS information for his calculations. He mentioned your model specifically for Combat/Carnage may be more detailed than his analysis. So at this point are we charging ahead optimizing Beast's data, your's, or both?

 

Additionally, I think it would be a good idea to develop (or at least theorize) a 'Standard' rotation that can be utilized outside of the high Alacrity requirement for those players who are max level but have yet to obtain the needed stats to pull off the clipping rotation optimally. Just something I was thinking about for the Combat/Carnage guides. Unless Dulfy has someone lined up for it then it appears we're own our own as a community in decimating information for the spec. Unless a guide is released prior to our testing being completed i'll be hosting one for Combat/Carnage on Hayete.net

 

So, ehm, I've been lazy and been watching the story . I will have to sit down and plot fury's rotation to see which one comes on top. You do have to take whatever crit/alacrity ratio math indicates with a grain of salt since I'm assuming that we are always able to clip perfectly TST/VT in to PS. Raiders will have to determine whether is practicable to have more alacrity during a raid environment to ensure no ability falls outside PS/Ferocity.

With regards to a standard rotation I would make one without as much focus on clipping, since clipping has as much to do with skill as with gear. More than a set rotation, priorities may be more intuitive for newcomers with CB>Dispatch>Lance>BB>BR Taking priority inside PS.

Edited December 6, 2016 by g_mK

[Bahadori]

So yeah, after a couple Master raids, I'm happy to say Carnage is amazing. Just check that Brontes burn https://www.twitch.tv/supahsub/v/105643106

 

As for the rotation i laid out, I've noticed something that is probably going to have to be changed, but I'm pretty tired now so I'll look in to it when I get up.

 

I was laughing through that video bro. Grats on that defeat. Definitely upload that to Parsely

[Tsetso]

I was laughing through that video bro. Grats on that defeat. Definitely upload that to Parsely

 

Yes. "Good to have a marauder to carry you" was brilliant.

[g_mK]

So yeah, after a couple Master raids, I'm happy to say Carnage is amazing. Just check that Brontes burn https://www.twitch.tv/supahsub/v/105643106

 

As for the rotation i laid out, I've noticed something that is probably going to have to be changed, but I'm pretty tired now so I'll look in to it when I get up.

 

But marauders are bad this tier, you are not supposed to take them raiding.

[WiththeForc]

But marauders are bad this tier, you are not supposed to take them raiding.

 

How right you are my good sir. Just supposed to be mercs and snipers, maybe a sin for the dank discharge and ridonculous reflect Kappapride

Edited December 7, 2016 by WiththeForc

[Bahadori]

Beast what was your Alacrity at for Brontes NiM? I'm going over the log and doing some time crunching.

 

Lance/Gore is connecting on average 0.2 seconds before Precision/Ferocity falls off. The smallest increment I found was 0.12 before. Whatever you're Alacrity was at for that fight I would estimate is about the bare minimum for getting Blade Barrage/Ravage > Clashing Blast/Devastating Blast > Lance/Gore off in the Precision/Ferocity window. Just curious what that figure was at the time it was done.

[WiththeForc]

Beast what was your Alacrity at for Brontes NiM? I'm going over the log and doing some time crunching.

 

Lance/Gore is connecting on average 0.2 seconds before Precision/Ferocity falls off. The smallest increment I found was 0.12 before. Whatever you're Alacrity was at for that fight I would estimate is about the bare minimum for getting Blade Barrage/Ravage > Clashing Blast/Devastating Blast > Lance/Gore off in the Precision/Ferocity window. Just curious what that figure was at the time it was done.

 

1259 alac atm

[Bahadori]

1259 alac atm

 

Ok, yeah that seems right. My math model was estimating ~1230 as the cutoff. If you would have said like 1500 I would have quit LOL