A Call to Arms - Cataclysm Mechanics testing

[tlitp]

Excellent work, Marble. Thanks.

EDIT :

• Seal of Justice: It seems that SoJ's damage is on the spell attack table. It can miss and crit (no dodge or parry).
• Avenger's Shield on 2 targets, Holy Wrath on 1/2/3/4 targets & Consecration: They're all probably on the spell attack table. Consecration can crit and miss any of the ticks.

Both of them can be easily tested on PTR :
I. 8% physical hit, attacking a boss-level dummy.
II. 8% physical hit, casting AS on a boss-level dummy.

Additionally, the "jumps" must also be tested. Therefore one needs to pick a boss-level dummy that has in proximity one or more lower lvl dummies. Having 0% hit, check misses on primary target (boss-level) vs hit/miss on secondary targets.

[theckhd]

Censure is apparently on the melee attack table and it can miss/dodge/parry on refresh. The ticks always do damage and can crit.

I'm pretty sure what you're seeing there is Censure applications missing. A few of the logs I scrutinized earlier followed this pattern as well - the only miss/dodge/parry entries for Censure occurred with other abilities, in-between the regular 3-second ticks.

Judgement of Truth while melee-ing (full Censure): Judgement procs SoT (as stated before).[/url]

Was this with or without being specced into JotJ?

Vindication can miss.

This is probably on the spell hit table, but it might be worth checking that down the line to make sure. For now it's a low-priority question.

SotR is on the melee attack table and when it doesn't connect, it resets Holy Power to 1. That means that missing a 1-HoPo SotR doesn't consume any Holy Power, while missing a 2-HoPo or 3 HoPo SotR, it consumes 1 and 2 Holy Power respectively.

Flex posted a video earlier of different behavior - he was retaining all Holy Power when SotR missed, even if he had 3 going into it. Maybe this is a difference between beta and PTR though.

Avenger's Shield on 2 targets, Holy Wrath on 1/2/3/4 targets & Consecration:[/url][/b] They're all probably on the spell attack table. Consecration can crit and miss any of the ticks.

Avenger's Shield is probably still coded as a ranged attack (like Judgement), which can miss but not be dodged/parried. I'm not sure if the secondary targets are the same way, but I doubt they're any different.

[tlitp]

Heh, two wolves on the same sheep.

[theckhd]

Heh, two wolves on the same sheep.

According to his avatar, we're actually hunting wabbits.

[Marblehead]

Just to clarify, all the parses were on the boss level dummy. AS, HW and Cons consequent targets were the nearby lvl 80 and lvl 70 dummies.

I'm pretty sure what you're seeing there is Censure applications missing. A few of the logs I scrutinized earlier followed this pattern as well - the only miss/dodge/parry entries for Censure occurred with other abilities, in-between the regular 3-second ticks.

Maybe my wording wasn't the best, but that's what I was trying to say. I thought it was clear by saying "Censure ticks always hit", that the previous sentence was referring to the Censure applications/refreshes.

Was this with or without being specced into JotJ?

Spec - 0/31/10 (glyphs included)

I was specced into JotJ.

This is probably on the spell hit table, but it might be worth checking that down the line to make sure. For now it's a low-priority question.

Checking the Vindication miss rates on the CS and HotR parses, after casting 172 successful CS + HotR, there were 31 Vindication misses or 18% miss rate.

Flex posted a video earlier of different behavior - he was retaining all Holy Power when SotR missed, even if he had 3 going into it. Maybe this is a difference between beta and PTR though.

I know. I've seen Flex' video, but what I observed was different. I haven't researched further, but the reason you gave seems pretty logical to me.

Avenger's Shield is probably still coded as a ranged attack (like Judgement), which can miss but not be dodged/parried. I'm not sure if the secondary targets are the same way, but I doubt they're any different.

The reason I said that it's on the spell table is cause it doesn't proc SoT or SoR. If I understand the mechanics correct, SoR and SoT procs happen from attacks on the melee table (swings, CS, HotR, SotR) and attacks on the ranged table (Judge, HoR). So any other ability that doesn't proc them it should be on the spell table, right?

[tlitp]

At 0 exp/8 phys_hit, in 50 AS casts :

• ~9*10^(-3) probability of getting no misses (if on spell hit table)
• ~10^(-5) probability of getting no dodge/parry events (if on ranged physical table)

With proper positioning one can also test the "jumps" in a single session.

[Chicken]

Flex posted a video earlier of different behavior - he was retaining all Holy Power when SotR missed, even if he had 3 going into it. Maybe this is a difference between beta and PTR though.

I know. I've seen Flex' video, but what I observed was different. I haven't researched further, but the reason you gave seems pretty logical to me.

I believe currently the PTR is a one released build ahead of the beta servers. That hopefully means that the behavior Flex reported is the intended behavior. In all likelihood it's supposed to work in a way similar to Templar's Verdict: on a miss you lose one unit of Holy Power.

[Neziah]

I have been uploading logs as I level.
If that is not the type of data you want, please let me know.

[theckhd]

Maybe my wording wasn't the best, but that's what I was trying to say. I thought it was clear by saying "Censure ticks always hit", that the previous sentence was referring to the Censure applications/refreshes.

Was this with or without being specced into JotJ?

Spec - 0/31/10 (glyphs included)

I was specced into JotJ.

I was posting while sleepy and raiding, so pardon me for a few of the redundant questions.

This is probably on the spell hit table, but it might be worth checking that down the line to make sure. For now it's a low-priority question.

Checking the Vindication miss rates on the CS and HotR parses, after casting 172 successful CS + HotR, there were 31 Vindication misses or 18% miss rate.

Yup, that certainly suggests it's spell miss.

Avenger's Shield is probably still coded as a ranged attack (like Judgement), which can miss but not be dodged/parried. I'm not sure if the secondary targets are the same way, but I doubt they're any different.

The reason I said that it's on the spell table is cause it doesn't proc SoT or SoR. If I understand the mechanics correct, SoR and SoT procs happen from attacks on the melee table (swings, CS, HotR, SotR) and attacks on the ranged table (Judge, HoR). So any other ability that doesn't proc them it should be on the spell table, right?

Not quite. 'Melee' attacks trigger seal procs. In general, 'ranged' attacks like Judgement, HoW, and AS don't. The reason we see procs from Judgement on live is because of JotJ, which is why I asked - the application of the JotJ debuff is treated like a melee attack.

Note that individual attacks can be coded specifically to cause or not cause seal procs. In essence, each ability has a "procs seals" flag coded into it. The default behavior of this flag is 'true' for melee attacks, and 'false' for ranged attacks, but there's no reason that Blizzard can't set the flag for individual abilities as they see fit.

HoR doesn't cause procs on live, but it was doing so on the beta for a while - presumably they recoded it as a melee attack before they decided to give tanks 6% spell hit with their spec.

Similarly, there was a period where Judgement caused seal procs, and with JotJ we were getting 2 procs per Judgement. Then they hotfixed it (or patched it, I forget), and the base spell no longer caused SoV/SoC procs (though we were still getting them from JotJ). Interestingly, we still get 2 SoR procs from each Judgement on live, which indicates that their code allows them to enable or disable each seal independently. Presumably, they made an oversight when hotfixing it and forgot to disable SoR on Judgement.

Also note that beyond seal procs, melee/ranged abilities have some other differences from spell abilities. The most obvious of which is that melee/ranged crit for double damage, while spell crit for 1.5x. If AS crits for double damage, that's further evidence that it's a ranged ability.

Given all of that, it's likely that:
1) JotJ still causes a seal proc (test as Ret or untalented to see if the proc goes away to prove)
2) AS and HoW are coded as ranged abilities (get to 8% hit and observe a miss to disprove)

[Marblehead]

Ok, I understand. More testing to come.

On a side note, HoR still causes seal procs on beta.

[Shathus]

Marblehead wrote:
theckhd wrote:
Flex posted a video earlier of different behavior - he was retaining all Holy Power when SotR missed, even if he had 3 going into it. Maybe this is a difference between beta and PTR though.

I know. I've seen Flex' video, but what I observed was different. I haven't researched further, but the reason you gave seems pretty logical to me.

Wasn't sure if this was the best thread to mention this but...
One thing I noticed on the PTR, while like you said, you keep your Holy Power if SotR misses, you lose your Sacred Duty proc, which seems like it would make missing an even bigger threat loss.

[KysenMurrin]

On a side note, HoR still causes seal procs on beta.

I've only seen it proc Seal of Righteousness.

[Marblehead]

On a side note, HoR still causes seal procs on beta.

I've only seen it proc Seal of Righteousness.

It won't proc SoT if there aren't any Censure stacks on the target. That's also why the first swing on a target only applies Censure without causing a SoT proc. Neither Judgement will proc SoT if there aren't any Censure stacks. It happens because the proc damage is dependent on the amount of the stacks, meaning that with 0 stacks it will get multiplied with 0, resulting in 0 damage (no proc).

[theckhd]

I need some people to test my ability model implementation to confirm these average damage values against a boss-level (88) target dummy:

Code: Select all

ShoR    1194
CS      1279
JoT      509
AS      3603
HW      2499
HoW     1517
Exor    1350
SoT      198
SoR       52
SoJ       24
Cens     801
Cons     399
HotR     338
HaNova   729
Melee    666

All damage values are against a single target. Cons damage is total per cast, Censure is a 5 stack over 15 seconds (ticks should be 20% of that). Judgement also assumes a 5-stack of Censure present on the target.

The setup is a 0/38/0 spec, no glyphs, no buffs, and naked except for the premade tanking weapon and shield (Mace of the Gullet and Bulwark of the Primordial Mound, no gems or enchants). Anyone with beta access who can create a premade can carry out this test, so it would help if a few different people took data for consistency checking. Please mention what your player stats are (AP, SP primarily) and make sure that you're not hitting a dummy that someone else is debuffing.

I'll be posting a similar request for level 80 values shortly, though obviously with a different spec and gear.

[theckhd]

Level 80 version on PTR:
<edit> Hold on, these aren't right, wrong base damages.
<edit2> Fixed.

Code: Select all

ShoR     626
CS       127
JoT      277
AS      3052
HW      2209
HoW     1290
Exor    1155
SoT       20
SoR       15
SoJ        7
Cens     426
Cons     215
HotR      34
HaNova   653
Melee     66

Same talent spec (but skip EG and GbtL), no glyphs, no buffs, naked with a Dalaran Sword. If you need a shield to use ShoR (tooltip doesn't say so, but it may still need one), grab any white vendor shield (i.e. no stats but armor).