Theck's MATLAB TPS analysis - WotLK/3.x

Melee haste rating will also be gaining a 30% increase for paladins if you didn't notice, hehe.

Haste Rating: shamans, paladins, druids, and death knights now receive 30% more melee haste from Haste Rating.

No, I hadn't noticed that, though our scaling with haste is so pathetic that it won't make much difference.

By the way, here's a heads up - with the patch today, the next week or so will be fairly hectic for me, and I don't know that I'll get much time to post more simulations. Luckily, I managed to crank out the most important ones this past weekend so that everything was prepared.

I will probably aim to incorporate the changes that have been noted in the past few posts here before making any more new plots. We'll see if I even have time for that this week.

The stuff I've calculated most recently with the 2-roll code is "good enough" even without those changes, so I will probably leave those as they are for now, and consider them accurate for 3.1 as it appears on the live servers.

Anything I generate from now on will be with the updated code and should (of course) be accurate for 3.1 as well. I'll be putting new plots in a /3.1/ folder and dropping the "2roll_" prefix (for those of you that actually look at the file names - probably nobody does but me).

I'm still willing to take suggestions/requests, but I may not get around to completing any of them for the next two weeks. It will all depend on how Ulduar progression goes, and how much of my time it takes. I will be glad to discuss or explain any of the stuff I've already posted though, of course.

Seeing as the +healing to devo is for all auras now, I think its time to start adding some ret/thorns into some model action. =D What do you think? Sometimes I'm the only pally around =(

As the only paladin you should still be using Dev aura. The mitigation it provides is not insignificant.

Indeed, but mitigation sometimes swaps places with threat generation for what the problem is.

æ wrote:Indeed, but mitigation sometimes swaps places with threat generation for what the problem is.

Like when?

æ wrote:Seeing as the +healing to devo is for all auras now, I think its time to start adding some ret/thorns into some model action.

I really don't see the point of this, to be honest. For one, they're not active abilities, like the rest of the things modeled. You either have them or you don't - you generally won't be aura-swapping during a boss tanking session. Thus, they're both static threat bonuses, since the only way to model them would be to assume a proc rate based on boss swing speed, just like Holy Shield. As far as I know they can't crit, and won't scale noticeably with gear upgrades - you can't Thorns yourself, and unless you're providing it Ret Aura won't either.

So modeling these would just add a flat +X TPS to almost every single statistic I generate. Let's quickly estimate what X should be. Both Ret Aura (from a ret pally) and Thorns seem to average 275 dmg per proc, based on last night's WWS. Assume 50% avoidance and a 2.4 swing speed. So that's (275 dmg/proc)* (0.5 procs / 2.4 seconds) = 57 DPS. That's 155 TPS for Ret Aura, and 82 TPS for Thorns. For a protection paladin, it should tick for less by a factor of 1.1/1.5, so closer to 110 TPS. Higher than I expected (on par with Holy Shield), but still only about 1% (~2% for Ret Aura from a ret pally) of your total threat.

All of the values I generate are imprecise, we probably can't trust the final values to better than +/- 10% anyway due to approximations, variations between different bosses, and so forth. I didn't run these simulations to calculate that you will do exactly 7789 TPS on a generic boss that's configured exactly the same way the simulation is. The point is to figure out the relative difference between different options, to determine what's "better" in terms of threat. Adding a flat +X to everything thus makes no difference in the qualitative results of the calculations, which is what we care about most.

The one case I can think of where we might be interested in adding thorns/ret aura is for comparisons that look at crit - for example, we'd expect them to do less for Conviction than for Crusade. But since these two abilities make up such a tiny portion of our total threat, the difference should be also be miniscule.

So in summary, you now have estimates for how much TPS each of those reflective damage auras are worth. It would be trivial to add them to the simulation, but also fairly useless - they're not abilities you're likely to ever be providing yourself as far as single-target boss-tanking goes. If possible, you should have them on you, but as Majiben pointed out you're probably using Devo for any boss worth worrying about.

If you don't have a Ret paladin, and don't mind losing a nice chunk of mitigation in the form of armor, at least now you have a ballpark figure for how much threat you gain by using Ret aura (around 1%, or 110ish TPS). But the effect it should have on the other simulations is so weak that it shouldn't end up mattering when it comes to rotation, seal, talents, or gear choices.

I'm sure this was posted somewhere, but I can't seem to find it*. I was wondering if there was any graph that showed the effects of the consecration glyph. How does the consecration glyph fair with 0/1/2 imp judge? The reason I ask is I am arguing with a guy on the mmo-champion forums (I know... stupid of me right?) and he says the consecration glyph can be used to create a gap that exorcism can be used on cooldown and not mess up your rotation. Is this possible in any way?

Here is the thread in question.

* I found the fcfs thread, but it just shows the effects of 0/2 imp judge, and doesn't add the consecration glyph in.

Well, you can simply alternate consecration and exorcism if you want, and your rotation never has any "dead time" that way. The consecrate glyph gets you 2 more ticks every 18 seconds, but I'm pretty sure it's been clearly shown that losing that much consecration damage is bad for TPS overall.

-- I guess it sounds like he's suggesting a more complicated rotation somehow. I guess you'd need to go back to a time-slice graph to verify it, but I think the burden's on him to suggest the complete cycle.

Rasmfrackn wrote:Well, you can simply alternate consecration and exorcism if you want, and your rotation never has any "dead time" that way.

Yeah... hes claiming that the glyph can be used to create a gap of dead time that exorcism can be used during. I fail at numbers though.... but, I doubt its the case because I know there are lots of people here good with numbers that would have figured this out already.

WATERBOYsh wrote:

Rasmfrackn wrote:Well, you can simply alternate consecration and exorcism if you want, and your rotation never has any "dead time" that way.

Yeah... hes claiming that the glyph can be used to create a gap of dead time that exorcism can be used during. I fail at numbers though.... but, I doubt its the case because I know there are lots of people here good with numbers that would have figured this out already.

Technically he's right.

You basically cast half as many consecrations, and put an exorcism where consecration would normally be every other cycle.

The down side is that consecration will only be ticking for 10/18 seconds instead of 8/9 seconds.

I think this 3.1 rotation comparison post is what you're looking for. Note that it's a bit outdated, so I'm not sure how much the conversion to the 2-roll code changes things. Since you're subbing one spell for another, it shouldn't make much difference in principle.

The relevant part of of that calculation showed that while you can get a slight increase by substituting Exorcism in for Consecration, it required 3 DPS glyps to do so (SoV, Exor, and Consecrate). If you were limited to two DPS glyphs, then it was strictly inferior.

He might be imagining something like the Exorcism on Cooldown rotation in that analysis (subbing Exorcism into a 9's slot whenever it's on cooldown), which is a DPS increase. However, it results in 2-second gaps where you don't have Holy Shield up, and the Consecration glyph breaks that rotation too:

(assume 6-second cooldowns are alternated on the GCDs not shown)

0 - Cons (next available at 10 if glyphed)
3 - Jud
6 - HS
9 - Exor (since Cons not available) (next available at 24)
12 - Cons (next available at 22 if glyphed)
15 - Jud
18 - HS
21 - Oops! (AS? - next available at 51)
24 - cycle repeats

You could sub AS into the "Oops" slot the first time (if you didn't use it on the pull), but it wouldn't be available for the second iteration of the cycle. So you'd have one empty GCD every 48 seconds. If you don't sub AS in, you have an empty GCD every 24 seconds, which is likely to be enough of a nerf to destroy any benefit you get from the Consecration glyph.

Just to check, let's plug in some numbers. From this post, we have:
ShoR ~ 5k damage
HotR ~ 3k damage
Cons ~ 3.5k (4.4k glyphed)
Exor ~ 2.6k (3.1k glyphed)
JoVen ~ 2.3k (2.5k glyphed)
AS ~ 2.6k (5.3k glyphed)

In this rotation, we get:
4 ShoR (20k)
4 HotR (12k)
2 Consecrations (7k, or 8.8k glyphed)
2 Judgements (4.6k, or 5k glyphed)
1 Exorcism (2.6k, or 3.1k glyphed)
0.5 AS (1.3k, or 2.6k glyphed)
in 24 seconds

Let's assume for the moment that you're using the Divine Plea glyph. That means you can only choose 1 DPS glyphs, because the Vengeance one is assumed. The Consecration glyph gives the biggest benefit at 1.8k, which is good since that's the reason we're even looking at this rotation. So totaling it up, we have
20+12+8.8+4.6+2.6+1.3 = 49.3k damage
49.3k / 24 = 2.05k dps
(no AS: 48k / 24 = 2k dps)

A standard 969 gets 2 Consecrations, 2 Judgements, 3 ShoR, and 3 HotR in 18 seconds. Choosing the Judgement glyph:
7+5+15+9 = 36k damage
36k / 18 = 2k dps

So you gain ~50 DPS at the cost of Holy Shield uptime (4 missing seconds out of 24, or 83% uptime) if you weave AS in. You gain absolutely no dps if you don't use AS. Note that I haven't added Holy Shield dps in here either - it's usually around 150 dps, but that will go down with reduced uptime, which will give a slight advantage to 969.

Is it also usefull to use Seal of Blood if i get the 2 piece set bonus from T8.5 set, or am i forced to use Corruption?

I'd love to see this TPS work reduced down to a set of stat weights for add-ons like Pawn. (Apologies if this has been done already and I missed it!) I'm really interested in knowing what the highest threat pieces are, and stat weights would help me not take a piece I don't need as my guild progresses through Ulduar. If the weights were just computed for a common spec and certain pre-existing gear level (say typical gear set you'd have when entering Uldaur), e.g., tanking with the 969 rotation, using SoV, 5/5 Conviction and 3/3 Crusade, that would be very helpful.