Mana efficiency of our nukes

[Xilef]

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?

[Bengali]

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.

[Skog]

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.

[Skanda]

Honestly 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....

[Bengali]

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.

[Xilef]

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.

[Tastian]

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

[Eatbugs]

*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.

[Coprolith]

What tastian said.

Just to expand on it:

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)

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

[Skog]

bigger 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.

[Eatbugs]

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.

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

[Bengali]

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.

[Tastian]

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.

[Dysz]

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.

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!

[Tastian]

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.