[lnkForumImage]
TotalShareware - Download Free Software
Usa Forum
 Home | Login | Register | Search 


 

Forums >

alt.games.warcraft

cast time analysis

k

5/30/2011 8:39:00 PM

does anyone here use cast time analysis?

I just installed it after a rather deflating run of one of the new troll
instances -I queued with my wife who plays a boomkin and was surpised that
blizz paired me (a mage) with another mage .. she and I play on a US server
from Perth, Australia and have pretty lousy latency. I'm generally one of
the heaviest hitters in our australian-based guild, but this run surprised
me.

The other mage is arcane like I, has about 200 gear points less than I
(wow-heroes), didn't have food buffs, a flask or use volcanic potion as I
did, all up I was +200 Int and around +350 SP over them buffed . I also
noted they ran at around 9% hit while I'm at just shy of 17%, they also had
lower haste and crit than I yet managed to get a lot more spells of even
though there was very little time when I wasn't casting.

and they soundly thumped me on damage and per-spell damage averages and
crits according to recount..

for example one boss fight they got off 45 ABs for a hit average of 25k and
a crit average of 54k
while I got off a mere 21 for a hit average of 24.7k and a crit average of
52k

we mixed it up with Ab's and missiles, but my spell count was a lower,
although I was being a good little turret and casting as fast as my
cooldowns would let me.

In all two things surprised me - they cast more often than I even though I
was queing spells and not dicking about in the fights, and secondly that
their spells were doing more damage given their lower stats on almost every
count.

Anyway after a suggestion from a guildie I installed the CTA addon and went
and thumped a boss target in SW for a time and got these numbers, which look
pretty depressing to me, unless I am reading them wrong .. can anyone
explain what they mean?

Total: 82s
quiet: 7.4s (9%) - i'm guessing this is lead in and lead out
Lag: 13.9s (16.9%) <-- this bit is scaring me
Wasted 0.0s (0.0%)
Used 60.7s (74%)
Channel 12.1s (19.9%)
Gobal 6.6s (10.8%)
Cast 42s (69.2%)

thanks


8 Answers

John Gordon

5/31/2011 2:32:00 PM

0

In <4aKdnZ1-Z_zJnXnQnZ2dnUVZ_oWdnZ2d@westnet.com.au> "k" <felafel@PING.com> writes:

> noted they ran at around 9% hit while I'm at just shy of 17%, they also had

17% hit is extreme overkill for 5-man dungeons, so in that respect his
gear was "better" than yours (he wasn't wasting item budget on useless
hit rating.)

--
John Gordon A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs
gordon@panix.com B is for Basil, assaulted by bears
-- Edward Gorey, "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"

S U N risr

5/31/2011 4:03:00 PM

0

John Gordon wrote:
> In <4aKdnZ1-Z_zJnXnQnZ2dnUVZ_oWdnZ2d@westnet.com.au> "k" <felafel@PING.com> writes:
>
>> noted they ran at around 9% hit while I'm at just shy of 17%, they also had
>
> 17% hit is extreme overkill for 5-man dungeons, so in that respect his
> gear was "better" than yours (he wasn't wasting item budget on useless
> hit rating.)
>

Was going to say something along those lines...While yes, 17% hit
technically is the cap, I'm a couple percentage points below that (have
to check my numbers) and I've never missed yet, even on the BoT raids
we're progressing through. If your trying to get to 17%, you're wasting
a couple % points you could be using elsewhere.

If your not sure on what you should reforge & gem to, in order to get
the most bang for your buck, you might want to run your mage through
Rawr and see what it says. I play around with stuff both on my own and
with what Rawr recommends just for shits & giggles. Most times I find
myself arguing with it saying "why would it suggest that - I'm not
giving up any <stat> for <stat>" only to find when I try it, it mostly
ends up a better choice...

The above though is really only going to help give you an edge though.
If you really aren't playing the 3 arcane phases correctly, (which I'm
assuming you are) it's not going to make that 'life changing' kind of
improvement. What is your i-level (or playerscore if you use that) and
what does your dps look like? Your burn phase (first 15-20 seconds of a
boss fight, for example) should at least be throwing out almost
untouchable huge numbers, that will mostly fall back in line with
everyone over the course of the fight.

k

5/31/2011 4:31:00 PM

0


"John Gordon" <gordon@panix.com> wrote in message
news:is2u4m$3es$1@reader1.panix.com...
> In <4aKdnZ1-Z_zJnXnQnZ2dnUVZ_oWdnZ2d@westnet.com.au> "k"
> <felafel@PING.com> writes:
>
>> noted they ran at around 9% hit while I'm at just shy of 17%, they also
>> had
>
> 17% hit is extreme overkill for 5-man dungeons, so in that respect his
> gear was "better" than yours (he wasn't wasting item budget on useless
> hit rating.)
>

OK, I am a raid mage primarily so I can't drop hit without a gear swap.

but even considering that, I can' see 'better' anywhere (i did mention they
had lower haste, Int, SP, Hit and Crit), and add the food and elixir buffs
to me, compared no none for him.. I can't see it

me:
Intellect: 4285
Spell Power: 6229
Crit: 16.5 %
Haste: 1494
Hit: 1684


him:
Intellect: 4029
Spell Power: 5868
Crit: 15.82 %
Haste: 1365
Hit: 830



I also find on 5 minute dummy fights I regularly show between 3-5% misses
9sometimes as high as 9%), even though I show 'chance to miss' as less than
0.5%, so i'm reluctand to dump 'wasted' hit


I did a full 5 minute thump on targets and again logged data with cta which
showed the following, with explanations as they've since been explained to
me:

Total: 395.1seconds
Quiet: 9.2 seconds (2.3%) (lead in and lead out to fight so I'm now told)
Lag 68.8 seconds (17.4%) (total time delays added by the server/latency)
Wasted 0.0% (timne spent missing spellcasts or messing around)
Used 317.1seconds (80.3%) (actual spellcasting time)

apparently that translates as, (lag / lag+used+wasted ) x 100 = total
damage % lost as the server deals with the data and sunsequently eats damage

or a 17% reduction in my potential damage for my connection.

kinda depressing to consider that. though it still doesn't explain why
spell-for-spell his actual damage was higher than mine :(

k

5/31/2011 5:09:00 PM

0


"IYM" <"S U N risr"@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:is3380$qpd$1@dont-email.me...


> Was going to say something along those lines...While yes, 17% hit
> technically is the cap, I'm a couple percentage points below that (have to
> check my numbers) and I've never missed yet, even on the BoT raids we're
> progressing through. If your trying to get to 17%, you're wasting a
> couple % points you could be using elsewhere.


here's my toon
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/azuremyst/ces...

and the lovely lady mage that upset me (nice person, no complaints there :)
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/dalvengyr/andrin%c3...

they've added a wand since we ran together, using a non-heroic prior to
that - but aside from mastery they still remain lower than I on all stats
bar mastery. Add the mastery elixir I used and the severed sagefis and ..
hm.



> If your not sure on what you should reforge & gem to, in order to get the
> most bang for your buck, you might want to run your mage through Rawr and
> see what it says. I play around with stuff both on my own and with what
> Rawr recommends just for shits & giggles. Most times I find myself
> arguing with it saying "why would it suggest that - I'm not giving up any
> <stat> for <stat>" only to find when I try it, it mostly ends up a better
> choice...


lol, I used rawr a fair bit in the past but it got a bit jittery around Cata
and I felt I had kind of worked things out while playing as a Beta tester.
(I was a fire mage since I began playing, running all through ICC as fire
too - arcane just would not work correctly on my latency and I could at
best get 70% of the dps of a US guildie .. now fire fails for me and I can
only see 80% or less of what I get as arcane)

Having said that I realise mastery has gained some ground of late and I
could do with some more of that.. my brother has pumper her through a few
thousand fights with a simcrafter and still suggested crit was a slight
(oh-so slight) improvement above haste and master for me though.. so I
really don't know


> The above though is really only going to help give you an edge though. If
> you really aren't playing the 3 arcane phases correctly, (which I'm
> assuming you are) it's not going to make that 'life changing' kind of
> improvement. What is your i-level (or playerscore if you use that) and
> what does your dps look like? Your burn phase (first 15-20 seconds of a
> boss fight, for example) should at least be throwing out almost
> untouchable huge numbers, that will mostly fall back in line with everyone
> over the course of the fight.

I'm generally the highest hitter in most of our guild raids, but can easily
be supassed by other mages on US servers. In the initial stages I can throw
out big numbers but I know latency impacts my damage a lot, but seeing the
mage above do average spell damage in recount, both hit and crits across a
whole dungeon being higher than mine was a surprise.

if anyone is interested in peering at what our latency crippled guild does
in a raid: (halfus)
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/riuph9k7xj43gp7f/sum/d...
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/riuph9k7xj43gp7f/d...

S U N risr

5/31/2011 6:55:00 PM

0

k wrote:
> "IYM" <"S U N risr"@optonline.net> wrote in message
> news:is3380$qpd$1@dont-email.me...
>
>
>> Was going to say something along those lines...While yes, 17% hit
>> technically is the cap, I'm a couple percentage points below that (have to
>> check my numbers) and I've never missed yet, even on the BoT raids we're
>> progressing through. If your trying to get to 17%, you're wasting a
>> couple % points you could be using elsewhere.
>
>
> here's my toon
> http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/azuremyst/ces...
>
> and the lovely lady mage that upset me (nice person, no complaints there :)
> http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/dalvengyr/andrin%c3...
>
> they've added a wand since we ran together, using a non-heroic prior to
> that - but aside from mastery they still remain lower than I on all stats
> bar mastery. Add the mastery elixir I used and the severed sagefis and ..
> hm.
>
>
>
>> If your not sure on what you should reforge & gem to, in order to get the
>> most bang for your buck, you might want to run your mage through Rawr and
>> see what it says. I play around with stuff both on my own and with what
>> Rawr recommends just for shits & giggles. Most times I find myself
>> arguing with it saying "why would it suggest that - I'm not giving up any
>> <stat> for <stat>" only to find when I try it, it mostly ends up a better
>> choice...
>
>
> lol, I used rawr a fair bit in the past but it got a bit jittery around Cata
> and I felt I had kind of worked things out while playing as a Beta tester.
> (I was a fire mage since I began playing, running all through ICC as fire
> too - arcane just would not work correctly on my latency and I could at
> best get 70% of the dps of a US guildie .. now fire fails for me and I can
> only see 80% or less of what I get as arcane)
>
> Having said that I realise mastery has gained some ground of late and I
> could do with some more of that.. my brother has pumper her through a few
> thousand fights with a simcrafter and still suggested crit was a slight
> (oh-so slight) improvement above haste and master for me though.. so I
> really don't know
>
>
>> The above though is really only going to help give you an edge though. If
>> you really aren't playing the 3 arcane phases correctly, (which I'm
>> assuming you are) it's not going to make that 'life changing' kind of
>> improvement. What is your i-level (or playerscore if you use that) and
>> what does your dps look like? Your burn phase (first 15-20 seconds of a
>> boss fight, for example) should at least be throwing out almost
>> untouchable huge numbers, that will mostly fall back in line with everyone
>> over the course of the fight.
>
> I'm generally the highest hitter in most of our guild raids, but can easily
> be supassed by other mages on US servers. In the initial stages I can throw
> out big numbers but I know latency impacts my damage a lot, but seeing the
> mage above do average spell damage in recount, both hit and crits across a
> whole dungeon being higher than mine was a surprise.
>
> if anyone is interested in peering at what our latency crippled guild does
> in a raid: (halfus)
> http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/riuph9k7xj43gp7f/sum/d...
> http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/riuph9k7xj43gp7f/d...
>
>
>
>
>
OK - I can't look right now as I don't have web access (lol - before you
scratch your head on that, I'm at work and they have the internet and
newsgroups blocked, but the ports needed for newsgroups using a reader
like thunderbird open - go figure)

So that said, I can't look at your toon but I was going to say it was
hard to tell if you were a newer mage, but I should have realized that
you weren't as your i-level was at least high enough to get into ZA/ZG
(sorry - "duh" on my part) I'm a raiding arcane mage as well, and for
apples comparison as we just started a fresh BoT last week - On Halfus,
with this weeks combo, (I think Time, Nether and Storm? - that I can't
remember, BUT no whelps, so no DPS buff from them) we left nether alone
and burned Storm, then Time then Halfus - I ended up 2nd place on the
dps charts at around 26K to the hunter (27K), with a Frost DK about 1K
under me, and just squeaking 3rd in damage with slight flip-flop between
me and the DK. Under full burn phase for 15-20 seconds at the start of
the fight while burning Storm with Time Warp / Heroism popped, I was
holding at 30-34K with movement to get out of "donuts" (what my guild
calls the fire rings under your feet you can avoid while Time Drake is
up - lol), then the drop off for evocation and conservation phase.

k

5/31/2011 7:20:00 PM

0


"IYM" <"S U N risr"@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:is3da9$vgq$1@dont-email.me...
>k wrote:
>> "IYM" <"S U N risr"@optonline.net> wrote in message
>> news:is3380$qpd$1@dont-email.me...


> OK - I can't look right now as I don't have web access (lol - before you
> scratch your head on that, I'm at work and they have the internet and
> newsgroups blocked, but the ports needed for newsgroups using a reader
> like thunderbird open - go figure)
>
> So that said, I can't look at your toon but I was going to say it was
> hard to tell if you were a newer mage, but I should have realized that
> you weren't as your i-level was at least high enough to get into ZA/ZG
> (sorry - "duh" on my part) I'm a raiding arcane mage as well, and for
> apples comparison as we just started a fresh BoT last week - On Halfus,
> with this weeks combo, (I think Time, Nether and Storm? - that I can't
> remember, BUT no whelps, so no DPS buff from them) we left nether alone
> and burned Storm, then Time then Halfus - I ended up 2nd place on the
> dps charts at around 26K to the hunter (27K), with a Frost DK about 1K
> under me, and just squeaking 3rd in damage with slight flip-flop between
> me and the DK. Under full burn phase for 15-20 seconds at the start of
> the fight while burning Storm with Time Warp / Heroism popped, I was
> holding at 30-34K with movement to get out of "donuts" (what my guild
> calls the fire rings under your feet you can avoid while Time Drake is
> up - lol), then the drop off for evocation and conservation phase.

oh my.. you're in for a surprise when you see our guilds efforts then !


we really stuggle given stuff happens at least half a second to a second (or
more)before we see it ! We have US guilldies who can tell us who died on
Vent before we know we're dead.. kinda hard to find out you're dead when
you're still button mashing and think you're doing dps.

If you can see my dps later in world of logs when you have access, compare
it to my GS and understand I'm the hardest hitter our guild has among the
local aussie players, you'll appreciate that latency effect reflected by the
cta reports .. for a single dummy fight in SW .. is magnified many more
times when raiding with 10 people lashing out spell effects

please don't laugh ;)

S U N risr

5/31/2011 7:52:00 PM

0

k wrote:
> "IYM" <"S U N risr"@optonline.net> wrote in message
> news:is3da9$vgq$1@dont-email.me...
>> k wrote:
>>> "IYM" <"S U N risr"@optonline.net> wrote in message
>>> news:is3380$qpd$1@dont-email.me...
>
>
>> OK - I can't look right now as I don't have web access (lol - before you
>> scratch your head on that, I'm at work and they have the internet and
>> newsgroups blocked, but the ports needed for newsgroups using a reader
>> like thunderbird open - go figure)
>>
>> So that said, I can't look at your toon but I was going to say it was
>> hard to tell if you were a newer mage, but I should have realized that
>> you weren't as your i-level was at least high enough to get into ZA/ZG
>> (sorry - "duh" on my part) I'm a raiding arcane mage as well, and for
>> apples comparison as we just started a fresh BoT last week - On Halfus,
>> with this weeks combo, (I think Time, Nether and Storm? - that I can't
>> remember, BUT no whelps, so no DPS buff from them) we left nether alone
>> and burned Storm, then Time then Halfus - I ended up 2nd place on the
>> dps charts at around 26K to the hunter (27K), with a Frost DK about 1K
>> under me, and just squeaking 3rd in damage with slight flip-flop between
>> me and the DK. Under full burn phase for 15-20 seconds at the start of
>> the fight while burning Storm with Time Warp / Heroism popped, I was
>> holding at 30-34K with movement to get out of "donuts" (what my guild
>> calls the fire rings under your feet you can avoid while Time Drake is
>> up - lol), then the drop off for evocation and conservation phase.
>
> oh my.. you're in for a surprise when you see our guilds efforts then !
>
>
> we really stuggle given stuff happens at least half a second to a second (or
> more)before we see it ! We have US guilldies who can tell us who died on
> Vent before we know we're dead.. kinda hard to find out you're dead when
> you're still button mashing and think you're doing dps.
>
> If you can see my dps later in world of logs when you have access, compare
> it to my GS and understand I'm the hardest hitter our guild has among the
> local aussie players, you'll appreciate that latency effect reflected by the
> cta reports .. for a single dummy fight in SW .. is magnified many more
> times when raiding with 10 people lashing out spell effects
>
> please don't laugh ;)

Oh - I wouldn't laugh at anyones efforts...If someone can tell you over
vent that you died before you see it, I'd say, oh my - your problem is
definitely a latency issue, and most likely not anything the way your
toon set up or how you play it... :) Dps numbers are just numbers and
are non-comparible in a situation where people are not on equal footing
like that. I would be frustrated beyond the point of even attempting to
raid like that, so for you to attempt to do so shows you AND your
guildies have the patience of saints, so hats off to all of you.

I had a similar experience once, where it was raid night but I was away
and attempted to do ICC on my laptop from a hotel room last summer. My
laptop was fine but the lag at the hotel was so bad, at one point
spiking a 12K latency, that I at one point was still fighting Lord
Marrowgar and my guild told me I was dead and they were handing out loot
and a few of them started heading up to Deathwhisperer...lol. I was
actually suprised that the servers didn't DC me as I was that far out of
sync. I asked for a rez, and then politely asked to be replaced, as I
just can't raid like that. I ended up leveling an low level alt
instead. :)

All said, I'm more sure your dps problem is NOT you :)

ting

5/31/2011 8:38:00 PM

0

On May 30, 4:38 pm, "k" <fela...@PING.com> wrote:
> In all two things surprised me - they cast more often than I even though I
> was queing spells and not dicking about in the fights,  and secondly that
> their spells were doing more damage given their lower stats on almost every
> count.

Common dps issues:

1. Not doing dps while moving. If you know you have to move, toss out
an instant and move during the global cooldown. If you need to stay
moving for longer than the length of a global cooldown, toss out
another instant.

2. Not using your long cooldowns. It's common to see dps players use
their 30 second cooldowns, but save their 3 minute cooldowns. Use
*all* of your cooldowns, not just the short ones.

3. Not using your cooldowns early enough. If can swing it (aka, you
have a decent tank), pop your cooldowns extremely early in the fight,
and then pop them again the moment they come back up. The longer you
wait on using your cooldowns, the lower your dps will be. A 3:30 fight
means that your 3 minute cooldowns should have been used twice.

4. Not changing your rotation based upon what cooldown was used.
Typically, the max dps rotation changes depending upon what cooldown
was used. For example, under bloodlust, you are better off casting
spells, so if you know a bloodlust is coming, you should toss out
instants and dots beforehand, so that you don't waste bloodlust on
them.

5. Are you really queuing up your spells? The client knows what your
lag is and adjusts how soon you can queue up a spell accordingly. That
is, a 500 ms lag means that a queued spell is sent to the server about
500 ms before the current spell's cast animation completes. Thus, you
should be queuing up your spell at least 600 ms before the spell
completes, in order to make sure your action gets registered with the
server as soon as possible. If you wait until there is only 400 ms
left on your cast bar, it means that your toon will idle for 100 ms
before the server registers the cast.

Your best bet on all of this would have been to write your combat log
to a file (via /combatlog) and then load the log into WorldOfLogs for
later perusal. I've never tested out the WorldOfLogs interface for 5
mans, but I've done this several times for pug raids, just to see what
other people are doing.
--
// T.Hsu