Friday, January 30, 2009

Boosting

EDIT: Due to comments and thinking things through, I edited the "what I'd lose" part of this post.

As I've epeened here before, I'll do it again.
Last night's Naxx continuation: Loetheb, first two bosses in Spider wing, and two Patchwerk attempts.

I'm starting to notice a disturbing trend when it comes to our 10 man runs: I'm boosting.

On this meter, I pumped out 2.2 million more damage than my closest compeditor. 2 point 2 freakin' million! Add to that, three of my fellow dpsers are below the two tanks (#'s 3 & 4).

So, what's the deal? Am I that 1337?? I don't think so.

I took a look at some of their gear and things started to come into focus:
1. Some were still wearing level 70 Burning Crusade gear.
2. Some were missing enchants.
3. Some had empty sockets.

And, this is the same guild that replies with "crickets chirping" when someone tries to put together a Heroic. Have you seen this in your guilds? People who want to raid but do not want to gear themselves through Heroics or even pick up easily attainable crafted gear?

I really get the feeling that Teurion and I are dragging people through content that they just aren't prepared to see.

Case in point:
-Last Tuesday, at the 50% point, four people were left on the Heigan fight, and as I chronicled, we downed him.

-This Tuesday, three people survived past the 50% point, and we still downed him (I died at 50K left, and Teurion was able to kill him).

Alright, now let me add some more possible explanations for low DPS.
1. The warrior that is #6 missed one Loetheb attempt due to not being able to make it through the eye stalk room.
2. I was on eye stalk killing duty for the multiple attempts that we made in trying to rez said warrior.
3. The warrior that is #2 spent a good deal of time dead on the first Spider quarter boss as well as some time eating dirt on Patchwerk.
4. The druid that is #7 off-tanked Patchwerk for our second attempt. I mention this only in fairness to fully assess the situation; one fight at the end of the night is not going to affect the numbers radically.
5. The off tank death knight (#3) wore his DPS gear for the vast majority of the night.

Ok, so I didn't want to make this post about whining and complaining; what I did want to do is analyze the run and try to get a good assessment of the situation.

My conclusion? More Heroics for the people on our team. Of course, right now, our team is somewhat fluid, so it might be tricky getting the same people next week.

Now, my personal performance:
This is what Recount shows for the "rolling your face around the keyboard" shot rotation.

Some notable items:
1. Autoshot is king! Never ever ever discount the value of Autoshot.
2 I had a +hit rating of 98 (!!!) for this run with a Draenai in my party. I had 20 misses out of 4197 shots for a .476% miss rate.
3. I had around 5K attack power/37% crits raid buffed.

Ok, I'm not sure if the agi/crit/ap that I'd give up to get to 173 +hit rating is worth it. I would exchange a trinket with 148 ap on it for one with 55 +hit and exchange a +20 agi enchant on my gloves for a +20 hit.

With those two item swaps, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't miss at all. But is it worth it? Let me see if I can calculate what those 20 shots might have netted me verses what I got without the +hit.

I'm just going to do a general, aggragete calculation and ignore crits; I'll also assume that all shots are equal and that attack power is simply added to shots while realizing that they're not. I'm sure that I don't have the precise numbers for conversion, but I think I can get an idea which might be better. I'm looking for the order of magnitude...

With that in mind, I averaged 7208348 damage/4197 shots = 1717.5 dmg/shot.

So, with the "no miss" gear, I would gain 1717.5 - 168 = 1549.5 dmg/shot * 20 = 30990 damage

But I would lose 4197 * 168 = 705096 damage. <-Wrong!

EDIT: Since I'm a doofus and didn't think things through...ie, 168 ap is not added to each and every shot...here's a better analysis of what I'd lose:

1 AP ~ .071197 DPS
168 AP ~ 12 DPS
I spent 3172.4 seconds in combat.
3172.4 seconds * 12 DPS = 38068 Damage

Now, that doesn't take into account crits I'd lose. Contrarily, I should discount the Volleys because I don't volley on Bosses; I do, however Multi-shot on Bosses. Thanks to Kestrel and Deathrender for setting me straight!

By those calculations, it's pretty clear that the misses just don't matter in the long run.

REMEMBER!!! These calculations are not precise!!! They might be wrong in all their assumptions and may be wildly misleading!!! This ain't Elitest Jerks; it's just a Regular Jerk.

....and....discuss....

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heya Dax...haven't stopped by in ages, but I did want to point out something regarding your hit rating: at almost a 40% crit rate, if you had hit 20 more times instead of missing, you'd have had 8 more crits.

Moar crits==good. BUT... All the agility and attack power and crit gear in the world won't turn even one of those misses into a hit, much less another crit.

So when you get those Heroics going, help your raid even more by capping your hit rating. It isn't that hard. :)

Rusty said...

Point taken. However...

Figuring in crits, I would have:
30990 + (30990*.4)= 43386 damage.

Which still doesn't approach the 700K damage that I would get with the "miss" set.

Of course, more crits also equal more pet focus which equals more pet damage, but I still am not convinced that my misses are that critical.

Now, that said, if better gear comes along that has more +hit on it, I'm surely not going to turn it down!

I'm not THAT much of a nutjob...

EDIT: fixed the crit damage addition.

Anonymous said...

If it were me, I'd put +16 Hit gems in your gun, you first belt slot, your first boot slot, and your second helm slot. That boosts your Hit to 162...one point shy of the cap if you're specced 3/3 into Focused Aim.

You lose a whopping 64AP, 24 Crit rating, and 12 Sta. The crit rating can be made up with an Agility pot or buff food and 64AP..when you're sporting around 5K buffed..is nothing dude. :)

Also you're forgetting that getting Hit Capped is for the boss fights where the damage from misses adds up. Keep in mind that your numbers need to be modified to take Multi-shot and Volley out of the equation. They account for nearly 1/3 of your total damage but I know you aren't using them on boss fights..or at least not nearly as much as you are on trash.

Hit Rating is for bosses man..where misses can add up. You're forgetting that Hit Rating transfers to your pet too. If you're missing, so is your pet which equals more damage lost..especially when your pet accounts for 30-40% of your dps.

Rusty said...

Well, I should have put more thought into what I lost.

That 168 ap is not added to each and every shot...whoops. So I definitely don't lose 700K damage.

And now we know why I don't do theory crafting....I hate being bothered with the details.

A more accurate gauge of what I'd lose with 168 AP is to figure out what that equates to in terms of DPS, then multipy that by the total seconds of combat and subtract the result from my damage total.

That would be my true loss, but I'm just feeling too lazy to math it out....

Rusty said...

Bah, dang non-editing comments.

I wouldn't have to subtract from my total because I'm just looking for what I'd lose....

Anonymous said...

To be honest, you're never going to get an accurate count. The RNG is just too strong. And if you go with the re-gemming, you only lose out on 64AP, not 168 :)

The Fuzz said...

Plus with your new numbers, you're out what? Just under 8K damage if you hit cap out? Factoring crits, I'm sure that number is actually a lot closer to even.

In the bigger picture, I would have thought a BM spec would shoot more than 299 arcane shots. Maybe I'm missing something.

Rusty said...

I hit Arcane shot every time it's up. I do, however need to seriously look at my glyphs and see if I can tweak them better.