Heroism timing

[daemonym]

the only time i can see that using blood lust under 35% is an increase is if you have a large amount of people in the raid with passive abilities that effect their damage at that hp total. one example is a frost DK with merciless combat talent (increases damage delt by 12% if boss is under 35%). unless your guild is uber pro or it's patchwerk, at least -somebody- is going to die before the execute phase which means you'll be losing damage by waiting then.

that said i call for a bloodlust if:

-there's a soft enrage (maexxena)
-people will be dying soon (heigan lawl)
-want a certain phase to end asap (grobbulous low health, thane 4h zerg)
-there won't be a good time to use it later on/outside buffs (malygos sparks, loatheb spores)
-if it's a fight that lasts longer than 5:30 i'll use it right away

the main thing i look at for a fight is really just how likely are people going to die and enrages.

[Elsie]

the only time i can see that using blood lust under 35% is an increase is if you have a large amount of people in the raid with passive abilities that effect their damage at that hp total. one example is a frost DK with merciless combat talent (increases damage delt by 12% if boss is under 35%)....

The opening, and all related theory in this thread, proves that this is NOT the case.

Bloodlust should then be used at any time except:
1) If people will probably die.
2) A boss ability increases the probability someone will die that can be removed through more dps.

The first case implies bloodlust should be used at the beginning of the fight. The second implies bloodlust should be used for the duration of the increased death probability time.

[Markoh]

Finally got a link to the post I was talking about.

http://elitistjerks.com/blogs/binkenste ... lents.html

[Flamewibble]

Hey guys, has anyone mulled over the possibility that this is an elaborate prank?

There's a bunch of highly suspicious, difficult-to-read algebra which leads to a conclusion that might decrease your raid's DPS on progression content

We have a lot of bored top tier guilds around nowadays. Are they bored enough to throw us month-behinders a curveball?

[Dagem]

Hey guys, has anyone mulled over the possibility that this is an elaborate prank?

There's a bunch of highly suspicious, difficult-to-read algebra which leads to a conclusion that might decrease your raid's DPS on progression content

We have a lot of bored top tier guilds around nowadays. Are they bored enough to throw us month-behinders a curveball?

The problem with this being an elaborate prank is, the math supports it. Not only this but basic logic also supports this theory.

bloodlust is haste.. this means you don't do more damage, you do the damage faster.. popping bloodlust gives you a 30% dps increase.. BUT if you have to cast 20 frostfire bolts in the 35% range you will have to cast 20 frostfire bolts with bloodlust.. so you have exactly the same benefit from the +dmg buff as if you would not use bloodlust. the only thing that changes is the time you have to spend for the 20 casts.

Edit to fix tags

[Dorvan]

Hey guys, has anyone mulled over the possibility that this is an elaborate prank?

There's a bunch of highly suspicious, difficult-to-read algebra which leads to a conclusion that might decrease your raid's DPS on progression content

We have a lot of bored top tier guilds around nowadays. Are they bored enough to throw us month-behinders a curveball?

There are plenty of people here with the math skills to pick apart the argument and analyze it. You can see the results in this thread, which are basically that the original math is sound, but that there are some caveats, particularly cases where the assumptions of the proof do not hold.

[Markoh]

Hey guys, has anyone mulled over the possibility that this is an elaborate prank?

There's a bunch of highly suspicious, difficult-to-read algebra which leads to a conclusion that might decrease your raid's DPS on progression content

We have a lot of bored top tier guilds around nowadays. Are they bored enough to throw us month-behinders a curveball?

Also the whole secret culture of raid progression is pretty much gone atm. Even ej is allowing people to talk about the ptr if they want, and before they had incredibly strict requirements of 50 kills on live. The basics of fights have become so easy that only hard modes will be held with any "secrecy".

Personally I don't even think people care about those either, b/c there isn't some secret hidden mechanic that makes the hard mode easy, it's just flat out performance.

[Flamewibble]

yeah, sorry guys

I still didn't believe you, so I got some paper and a pencil and dusted off my brain to figure out what was going on, and it turned out that not only were you guys 100% right, but the math is high school algebra level

/violin

[Joanadark]

bloodlust is haste.. this means you don't do more damage, you do the damage faster.. popping bloodlust gives you a 30% dps increase.. BUT if you have to cast 20 frostfire bolts in the 35% range you will have to cast 20 frostfire bolts with bloodlust.. so you have exactly the same benefit from the +dmg buff as if you would not use bloodlust. the only thing that changes is the time you have to spend for the 20 casts.

This is the part that doesnt make any sense to me.

I guess what this statement is assuming is that the boss will die in 20 frostbolt casts from 35%, regardless of how fast those casts are.

The problem is that it isnt realistic for fights where 40 seconds of bloodlust are not enough time to bring a boss from 35%->dead. The example is trying to depict a misleading example where there is extra bloodlust uptime just kind of falling off the end after the boss is already dead from that 20th frostbolt cast.
The reality is that 20 Frostbolts without bloodlust doesnt not mean that there with only ever be 20 frostbolts no matter what you do. Bloodlusted, you'd actually have like 26-27 Frostbolts instead of 20, which means 6-7 more applications of your boosted +damage due to being in 35% range than you would otherwise have, which equals a overal dps increase and a reduction in fight length.

If you are encountering the point where popping bloodlust at 35% means extra time is falling off the end after that 20th frostbolt killing blow or whatever, obviously, you'd just pop lust slightly earlier.


The operative point is that what is important is NOT when lust is popped, but when it fades.
A correctly timed lust should fade a couple seconds before the boss's hp reaches 0. The trick is knowing your DPSers well enough so as to determine when that means it should be used.

[Elsie]

Thinking on it, the biggest caveat of the argument is haste is most effective only at certain intervals in caster rotations, and there is a net loss once the GCD is below 1.5s.

[Dorvan]

This is the part that doesnt make any sense to me.

I guess what this statement is assuming is that the boss will die in 20 frostbolt casts from 35%, regardless of how fast those casts are.

The problem is that it isnt realistic for fights where 40 seconds of bloodlust are not enough time to bring a boss from 35%->dead. The example is trying to depict a misleading example where there is extra bloodlust uptime just kind of falling off the end after the boss is already dead from that 20th frostbolt cast.
The reality is that 20 Frostbolts without bloodlust doesnt not mean that there with only ever be 20 frostbolts no matter what you do. Bloodlusted, you'd actually have like 26-27 Frostbolts instead of 20, which means 6-7 more applications of your boosted +damage due to being in 35% range than you would otherwise have, which equals a overal dps increase and a reduction in fight length.

If you are encountering the point where popping bloodlust at 35% means extra time is falling off the end after that 20th frostbolt killing blow or whatever, obviously, you'd just pop lust slightly earlier.


The operative point is that what is important is NOT when lust is popped, but when it fades.
A correctly timed lust should fade a couple seconds before the boss's hp reaches 0. The trick is knowing your DPSers well enough so as to determine when that means it should be used.

I'm afraid your conclusion, however intuitive it may be, is incorrect. Roughly the intuition is that Bloodlust packs 52 seconds worth of DPS into 40 seconds. Whether that 52 second is below 35% or above 35%, you're still just packing 52 seconds into 40, so the fight length is shortened by 12 seconds in either case. I personally didn't find it very intuitive at first, which is why I had to go over the proof a couple times to convince myself it was correct.

[Rolfson]

well really it seems that the only thing heroism does is shorten one phase of the boss. If you save it for after 35%, it just shortens the time that you have to spend with the boss under 35%, which can be beneficial due to some of the boss mechanics. However, you end up spending the same amount of time total as if you popped heroism in the beginning, but you would just end up spending more time in the 35%-0 range. All heroism really does is shorten one phase by lengthening (hypothetically, as if you had used heroism in the beginning) the phase you did not use it in. Whether you used it in beginning or end it will still be the same kill time, but there are some obvious benefits to taking the last 35% of the boss down as quick as possible.

[Candiru]

Actually, lets imagine everyone is a ret paladin.

Ret paladins do more damage under 20% health. (x->x+a)

This extra damage is NOT affected by haste, however. (x+a->xb+a)

BUT ret paladins also do more damage when they pop Wings, and that IS affected by haste.
(xb+a->W(xb+a))

So, if the ret paladins pop wings and bloodlust, it will do more damage under 20% than doing so above 20%. This will shortern the fight more with bloodlust under 20% than above 20%.

This is because now wings can either be used at 20%, OR during bloodlust, but not both.

I think most classes have trinkets / potions / CDs which make this the case.

[majiben]

You have a major flaw in your reasoning. You assume that a ret paladin can't use wings more than once a fight. There are very few fights that last less than 2:20 minutes. So even in your example there is no reason not to use bloodlust early.

[QuantumDelta]

2:20?
Isn't it just 2 minutes?