Mana efficiency of our nukes

[Coprolith]

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.

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.

So 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.

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

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.

[Tastian]

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*

[Rhaasz]

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.

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

[Coprolith]

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.

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