I was looking at the OoW spells that are currently planned (I know they are subject to change) and I was disappointed with the mana efficiency of our nukes.
The first 3 PoP nukes have a mana efficiency of 3.0 (150/50, 300/100, 450/150).
The level 63 nuke is down to 2.7 (675/250) which was bit of a let down.
Apparently, the GoD nukes are no better, staying at 2.7 (742/274, 810/300).
Currently the OoW nukes are
level 68: 877/312 = 2.81
level 70: 1053/390 = 2.7
More dmg is good, but I'd really like to see improved mana efficiency, or at least the same accross all nukes (ie 3.0).
Right now, having 2.7 on 63+ nukes doesn't make sense when our lower level nukes have 3.0, since the casting and recast times are all the same.
(And that peak at 2.8 for the 68 nuke is a bit strange)
What's everyone opinion on that?
My opinion is it doesn't matter, since people overstate the value of mana efficiency. I don't mind a reduction in mana efficiency if the increase in dps makes up for it. Also, those spells have such horrible recast times that I prefer having a huge blast, even if it's not the most efficient one.
Also, my guess is that the reduced efficiency in of higher level spells is to encourage the use of focus effects that improve that. For example, The Qvic gloves have a 25% mana preservation effect for Trushar's Frost -- if you assume an average savings of 12.5%, that makes the average mana cost of Trushars frost 240 mana, which is a 3.1 efficiency ratio. That makes the 65 spell do 395% more damage and is even *more* efficient than the level 34 nuke.
No classes really recieve a big boost in mana effieciency with OOW.
Besides that, why in a game play sense should a hybrid get better mana efficiency than say, a pure caster? Honestly our mana effiecncy should be below that of a pure caster for the same reason that our melee skills are above theirs.
Quote from: SkogHonestly our mana effiecncy should be below that of a pure caster for the same reason that our melee skills are above theirs.
I agree, which is why I'm not very happy about the fact that the lvl 67 Ranger heal is more mana efficent then the lvl 67 Shaman spot heal....
Efficiency is really, really, really, overrated.
Anyway, I disagree with the assumption that every hybrid spell has to be inferior to every caster spell in every conceivable way -- why stop with mana efficiency -- why not say that none of our spells should be faster, or be higher in any stat, or anything else that someone might say is "better?" Just because something is more efficient doesn't mean it's as good, and for a class that has outstanding mana regen (like shamans), even if they have some spells that are less effiicient than other class spells they can still come out way ahead in the big picture.
Well I certainly wasn't asking for better efficiency than pure caster/priest classes. Although they have other advantages as Bengali said (bigger mana pool, higher med skill - ok not much higher -, specialization, spell casting mastery), it makes senses we're not as efficient.
However it doesn't make sense that lower level nukes are more efficient. It's not like the higher level one have faster recast time or something (and they shouldn't).
Anyway, I'm not asking for 4 or 5 dmg/mana, but 3.0 like the lower level would make sense. But it's true that it would not make much difference anyway.
A couple of issues here.
The first is mana efficency and I think some people are missing one of the biggest factors, we melee! I've gone through this in another thread, but lemme do this one more time real quick...
Frost spear - 675dd 250mana 1.6 casting time maxed
Ice shard - 450dd 150mana 1.6 casting time maxed
Savage ice - 1053 390mana 1.6 casting time maxed
Our dds are basically a way for us to convert mana to damage in a fairly controlable fashion. Now let's say that you have 1600 mana to turn into damage over a period of time (the nukes have refresh hehe). Using 1600 because I'm lazy and used 1500 before, but 1600 lets you reasonably add in savage ice hehe. For frost/ice you've got 100mana extra left over, for savage you'd have 40 mana left over hehe.
1600 mana is:
10 casts of ice shard, 4500 damage and takes 16 seconds
6 casts of frost spear 4050 damage and takes 9.6 seconds (or 6.4 seconds less than ice shard)
4 casts of Savage ice 4212 damage and takes 6.4 seconds (or 9.6 seconds less than ice shard)
Now the mana efficency of just the nuke goes down, but you free up more time to melee. If you use a 2h this effect is less, but most beastlords DW and with most weapons they will be losing a second or so of melee each cast. Now what each beastlords melee/proc dps is varies of course, but for some it's just more damage to use the "inefficent" nuke and spend less time stuck in casting, fewer chances to be interupted, etc. than to use the more efficent nuke more times and lose more melee/proc dps.
The biggest issue I have with the nukes is no resist mod on them. We give up our melee damage well we are casting, we use up mana and depending on the situation we might actually come out behind and have spent the mana to do less damage than we would have if we simply kept melee'n. I don't want anything crazy for a resist mod, but I really do think since we are giving up more by casting these spells they should land more reliably in places.
I think this is just another case of looking at things on paper verse actual in game applications though. *shrugs* I certainly wouldn't mind if the efficency were beefed up, but I'm happy to see the boost in dps, the two decent upgrades and if they'd just add a decent resist mod to it so we didn't waste our time/mana on them as much I'd be really happy (oh and FoM plz!!). 8P
*shrug*
The GoD nukes will be a net dps increase, since they maintain the same ratio (and refresh at the same rate) as the final PoP nukes. I wasn't all that concerned about mana efficiency anyway - I rarely get below 50% mana these days, and I don't expect that to change in GoD.
What tastian said.
Just to expand on it:
Quote1600 mana is:
10 casts of ice shard, 4500 damage and takes 16 seconds
6 casts of frost spear 4050 damage and takes 9.6 seconds (or 6.4 seconds less than ice shard)
4 casts of Savage ice 4212 damage and takes 6.4 seconds (or 9.6 seconds less than ice shard)
Not all of those casting seconds are wasted melee seconds, some of it is idle time in between swings. With fast 1H'ed weapons the waste% can go up to 50%, with a very slow 2HB you might not waste any melee time at all. If we look at the worst case scenario (50% waste), then 10 casts of ice shard takes 9.6s longer to cast then 4 savage ice casts. So the amount of wasted melee time is 4.8s more. Suppose your melee dps is only 60 dps (a number easily reached even by casual players), then thats 288 extra damage wasted. Subtract that amount from the spell damage of ice shard we get 4500-288 = (drumroll) 4212, the same amount of damage as savage ice does, for the same amount of mana. I don't believe in coincidences. Im certain the Devs make these kind of calculations themselves, using typical melee dps and weapon speed numbers.
Your mileage may vary a bit, depending on how fast your weapons are and what your exact melee dps is, but on the average, frost spear, Savage ice and ice shard all have about the same efficiency. Game efficiency that is, not paper efficiency.
/hugs
Quote from: Xilefbigger mana pool
Actually with itemization the way it is, even in the EPs, Hybrids really come out like bandits and the mana pool difference is not that much. We are breaking into Time at the moment (so just EP loot) and the difference is only about 800 mana or so for the most part.
Quote from: SkogActually with itemization the way it is, even in the EPs, Hybrids really come out like bandits and the mana pool difference is not that much. We are breaking into Time at the moment (so just EP loot) and the difference is only about 800 mana or so for the most part.
A couple of my Necro friends were actually a bit embarrassed when the numeric mana display came out to find that since they'd concentrated mainly on hp gear, half the hybrids in the guild had bigger mana pools. :P
Quote from: Tastian
The biggest issue I have with the nukes is no resist mod on them. We give up our melee damage well we are casting, we use up mana and depending on the situation we might actually come out behind and have spent the mana to do less damage than we would have if we simply kept melee'n. I don't want anything crazy for a resist mod, but I really do think since we are giving up more by casting these spells they should land more reliably in places.
I agree, the long recast hurts more when you take the time to cast two nukes, get both resisted, and it's ~30 seconds before you can cast another one.
Yeah I think too many people look at the spell dat alone across all classes and try and make unfair comparisions. This is the biggest problem with the ranger nukes atm. Rangers do a lot more melee dps and their spells bounce and just like with beastlords you hit these situations where you are better off not to waste the mana on the spell and keep melee'n than to spend the mana on a cast. The mana ratios can be reasonable and even look "decent" because we almost always will be giving up melee to cast the spells. Also since these spells have a built in 30 second refresh even on pure ranged fights we simply aren't chain casting them, so that's not a balance issue. I think at this point though the spells really need a resist mod so that we don't find ourselves spending mana to lose dps in various situations.
QuoteSuppose your melee dps is only 60 dps (a number easily reached even by casual players), then thats 288 extra damage wasted. Subtract that amount from the spell damage of ice shard we get 4500-288 = (drumroll) 4212, the same amount of damage as savage ice does, for the same amount of mana.
That doesn't really make sense to me. Although I understand the theory, I don't understand the damage calculation. Regardless of whether you are idle or swinging in a standard melee round you would still do the same dps.
EXAMPLE, assuming weapons both have delay of 20:
Melee with DW set up for 10 seconds, get 60 dps
Melee with DW set up for 5 seconds, get 60 dps (averages here, whatever)
Melee with DW set up for 1 round (swinging first, then the delay until you would melee next), 60 dps.
Melee with DW set up for .05 round (just the swing) would be a ridiculous amount higher than 1200.
Melee with DW set up for .95 round (just the delay) and you get 0.
Average of both parts =/= whole.
That's why I don't think slicing the dps in half makes much sense here.
OBVIOUSLY as the time of the sample goes down the accuracy does as well, but not counting half the time you would be nuking is silly, since we 'idle' even when we are just meleeing.
So the actual calculation would be 60 * 9.6 = 576. 4500 - 576 = 3924 damage. Which makes sense, because it woudl scale on a better rate as you get levels. You said you don't believe in coincidences, but you just kind of pulled 60 dps out of the sky as a reachable amount by most beasts. Just got lucky maybe? hehe
If you don't get what I mean, let me know and I will try to re-explain, its late and my head is cloudy >.<
NOTE: sorry if you read this when I was still editing my post numerous times, sorry bout that!
The reason you don't just times your melee + proc dps by the differance in casting time is because you don't lose all of that time to casting. If for example you had a 40 delay weapon you'd swing every 4 seconds. If you started casting right after you swung then you'd lose no dps to casting because you'd finish your cast, wait another second and then your next round would come up. However, if you had say a 10 delay you'd swing every second. If you started casting right after you swung then the first second of the cast is still "free" in the sense you lose no melee/proc dps because you are still inside of the delay of your weapon so you wouldn't be swinging anyway. However, the spell is 1.6 casting time, so you lose .6 seconds of melee on that cast. This is why you don't count the whole casting time againist the damage done.
Now the issue of just how much time you lose has also been gone over by me and cop in a couple other threads. Basically it will depend on your delay and since you have chat lag and other issues it's hard to always time your casts immediatly after a swing even if you are trying. This means in a best case scenario you start your spell right after one round and only lose 1.6 - delay worth of melee/proc dps. However, worst case scenario you start your cast right before your next melee round was about to happen. That means that now you have almost the full 1.6 seconds of melee/proc dps you are losing. For the sake of the discussion and assuming you aren't using a really slow 2hb where it's much easier to time your casts, just assume that it's almost random where you start your cast relative to the attack delay and that's why you only take half of the 9.6 instead of the full thing.
Hope that was clear it's late and I'm out of it. 8( Basically you just aren't losing the full 9.6 because some of that time is used up by the natural delay of a weapon so whether you cast or not you wouldn't be getting any melee dps.
QuoteOBVIOUSLY as the time of the sample goes down the accuracy does as well, but not counting half the time you would be nuking is silly, since we 'idle' even when we are just meleeing.
Well OBVIOULSY the time we 'idle' when we are meleeing is already incorporated into the
average dps. Not correcting the cast time for idle time would be counting the idle time twice.
QuoteSo the actual calculation would be 60 * 9.6 = 576. 4500 - 576 = 3924 damage.
*sigh* And here i thought i was being clever in not doing the calculations for each spell separately. Should have known someone wouldnt understand it unless i calculated exact hp/mana ratio for each spell separately instead of doing a time-saving comparative efficiency calculation. So much for me giving me a 1-minute explanation.
Very well.
The 'actual' calculation for Ice shard is 4500-0.5*
16s*60dps = 4020 damage.
The 'actual' calculation for Savage Ice is 4212-0.5*
6.4s*60dps = 4020 damage.
What i did in my first post was to look only at comparative efficiency. I do not need to know the exact hp to mana ratio for that. All i need to know is the difference in melee damage wasted and subtract that. When the total damage numbers are the same, then the efficiency is the same, regardless of what the hp/mana actually is. The difference in melee damage between the two is simply 0.5*(16-6.4)*60dps, and subtracting that number from the Ice shard damage yields the same number as the savage ice damage, hence their efficiencies are the same. If i do both calculations, i am merely subtracting an additional but equal number from both spell damage values, which changes absolutely nothing to the conclusion that the efficiencies are the same, it just gives me the additional information of the efficiencies are exactly.
QuoteYou said you don't believe in coincidences, but you just kind of pulled 60 dps out of the sky as a reachable amount by most beasts. Just got lucky maybe? hehe
No i did not get lucky. Those numbers are not pulled out the sky, they are typical for a casual player. Of course no one individual will come out to have the exact same efficiency. Some will do 120dps with 65% waste time, making Savage ice considerably more efficient then ice shard. Others will be doing 60dps, but with only 10% waste time because they're using a 2HB, making Ice shard better efficiency. The point is that on average, the three spells do have about the same effiency, and its no coincidence that they do because when you're a Dev you don't suck spell data like 1053DD for 390mana out of your thumb. The Devs don't do paper comparisons, they do calculations just like tastian and I did and that is the reason why my calculated values werent a coincidence. It has nothing to do with them being exactly the same (although its pretty neat it happened hence the drumroll for dramatic effect) but them being about the same. It shows that there is a method to the apparent madness of raw spell data.
Its very well possible that if you do exact calculations with exact dps and waste% numbers for every beastlord and only then average it out it turns out that savage ice is in fact slighty more efficient then ice shard on average. Now if you want to collect exact dps and waste% numbers for each and every BL, then calculate the exact hp/mana for each spell and every BL separately (starting with recalculating Tastians numbers into damage for exactly the same amount of mana spent instead of having some left over) and only then calculate the exact average efficiencies be my guest
Me, I'll settle for looking at the comparative efficiency using typical numbers instead of the exact hp/mana ratio. Thats all i need to support the conclusion that paper comparisons are meaningless and that the 3 three spells do in fact have about the same game efficiency instead.
Speaking in terms of "dps" throws a lot of people at times. It's not an exact figure and it is an average. Really there are a couple ways you could look at this. The way I listed was just the most straight forward imo as you could just see that in spending X mana you simply lose more melee'n. If you want to carry out the calcs using a flat rate of mana then you could use 19,500 for your mana number. That would allow for 130 casts at 150 mana each, for 78 casts at 250 mana each, and for 50 casts at 390 mana each. That leaves you with...
Ice shard: 208s for 58,500dmg
Frost spear: 124.8s for 52,650dmg
Savage ice: 80s for 52,650dmg
Now that means going to frost spear from ice shard on the same mana you lose 3,850 damage, but save 83.2s. Going from Ice shard to Savage ice on the same mana you lose 3,850 damage, but save 128s. That means that savage ice is actually more "overall efficent" than frost spear simply because you lose less time to casting it which means less melee/proc dps lost. Again though some of those seconds saved don't effect your melee/proc dps because they occur during the "resting" phase between your melee rounds. The faster your weapons are the more likely you are to lose more and more of that time. Like was said if you swung a slow 2hb and had no chat lag you could technically lose 0 seconds of melee time to the casts. For many beastlords using 20(ish) delay weapons though and having atleast 86(ish)% haste at these levels you are going to be losing half a second of melee even on well timed casts. *shrugs*
Quote from: SkogNo classes really recieve a big boost in mana effieciency with OOW.
Besides that, why in a game play sense should a hybrid get better mana efficiency than say, a pure caster? Honestly our mana effiecncy should be below that of a pure caster for the same reason that our melee skills are above theirs.
there's already a big penalty in recast time that prevents us from out-casting casters, but i agree that the early level ones having as good of efficiency as they do is more of a problem than the higher ones being as low as they are. it'd be nice if it scaled, but maybe they should have left it even just to make it consistent
QuoteFor many beastlords using 20(ish) delay weapons though and having atleast 86(ish)% haste at these levels you are going to be losing half a second of melee even on well timed casts.
There's really no point in trying to time your casts when dw'ing. You'll always loose ~0.3s simply from your reaction time and on top of that you have the lagtime between the moment of the actual swing and it being written to the chat box. It doesn't take much lag before the lagtime reaches several tenths of a second as well. Combined, there's a very good chance that these effects end up causing you to loose more melee damage then you would when hitting the spell cast button at random.
/hugs