I have 29% crit and 6/6 unleash the shadows, should l be taking auspicious spirits?

[Fascinate]

What the title says. Gearing up from broken shore stuff i find i have a lot of crit now, and got a 885 VT relic.

I ask because most say san layn is better, but in my case is it also?

[Yvaelle]

Hey Fascinate!

I'm 6/6 Unleash and I'm running AS too - I have over 10k crit and can't get rid of it fast enough ><

San'Layn is honestly probably still better for any multi-dot fight. The issue is that apparitions just do no damage, so doubling their damage is meaninglesss - and the only reason AS was so strong before was because it smoothed out and propped up S2M when it was OP: it probably needs a buff at this point.

[shettles]

My understanding is that whether you take AS or SL is entirely dependent on the amount of crit and mastery you have, not which relics.

This post takes you through that decision process: https howtopriest com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=9734

[hikamiro]

My understanding is that whether you take AS or SL is entirely dependent on the amount of crit and mastery you have, not which relics.

This post takes you through that decision process: https howtopriest com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=9734

Then you have a low level understanding. It's fairly obvious that Unleash the Shadows increases the value of AS. You spawn more apparitions after all. If it increases the value it must also change the breakpoint on whether AS is better or SL

[shettles]

Then you have a low level understanding. It's fairly obvious that Unleash the Shadows increases the value of AS. You spawn more apparitions after all. If it increases the value it must also change the breakpoint on whether AS is better or SL

Fair enough. But what is that value and how much does it change the breakpoint?

Within the thread that I linked, someone asked this question:

How does the relic trait "unleash the shadows" interact with the AS vs SL equation? I have managed (because of ilvl differences) to stumble into actually having 3x unleash the shadows for 90% chance for VT crit to create an apparition. Logically seems like that would favor AS over SL, but I don't have the math chops to back up my assertion. However I do have the simc which suggests that AS is better than SL for myself in any situation I'm in, but my gear has a lot of crit on it (can't really help it, its what I have)

To which Anshlun, the theorycrafter who crunched the numbers, responded with:

While UtS does favor more AS than SL, it doesn't change the charts by a large margin, maybe 0.5% at best

So while my statement that it is "entirely dependent" on the amount of crit and mastery you have is slightly inaccurate, it is still highly dependent.

[Yvaelle]

Fair enough. But what is that value and how much does it change the breakpoint?

Within the thread that I linked, someone asked this question:


To which Anshlun, the theorycrafter who crunched the numbers, responded with:


So while my statement that it is "entirely dependent" on the amount of crit and mastery you have is slightly inaccurate, it is still highly dependent.

Let me throw some numbers at it so it's more than just a discussion of what someone else says (no offense to Anshlun of course):

If you assume Pain and VT tick at the same rate regardless of haste (every 3 seconds without haste), and you have 30% crit, then:

In a 60 second window, Pain will tick 20 times on 1 target, and crit an average of 6 times.
In the same 60 second window, with 3/3 UtS, VT will tick 20 times on 1 target, and crit an average of 6 times, 45% of crits will generate an Apparition: which is ~3 apparitions.

If you have 6/6 UtS like Fascinate and I do, then:
In the same 60 second window, with 6/6 UtS, VT will tick 20 times on 1 target, and crit an average of 6 times, with 90% of crits will generate an Apparition: which is ~5.4 apparitions.


So 3/3 UtS = ~9 Apparitions per 60s, per target, with 0% haste and 30% crit.
So 6/6 UtS = ~11.4 Apparitions per 60s, per target, with 0% haste and 30% crit.

(0% haste is just to make the math easier to follow, more haste = more apparitions obviously)

So that's a 27% increase in the proc chance of apparitions over different relics.

Now, that's a pretty big boon to the benefit of Crit scaling with UtS, but the way that UtS manifests damage is complex: higher voidform uptime, and some apparition damage. So to get to the root of whether it's better than San'Layn, you have to actually run sims.

A key thing to note about Anshlun's sims though is that the largest difference for any crit or mastery distribution, is about 40k dps. This assumes crit/mastery ratios (his device) stretching all the way to 1.0 and 0.0: which means either 0 mastery rating, or 0 crit rating. In practice I doubt anyone ends up anywhere near either extreme - in which case that DPS difference - even in his most extreme scenario (single target with 10k+ haste) - is probably closer to that +/- 20k DPS mid-range (between 0.8 and 0.2 on his graphs).



So we can see that in that narrower band, even in this most extreme scenario - both talents are actually really close. For people with very high crit rating, and very low mastery rating - AS is apparently better than SL - and vice versa.

That still doesn't tell us how big an impact 6/6 vs 3/3 UtS makes, because SL also scales with crit, and AS also scales with mastery - each just to a less extent (hence the needs for sims): but it wasn't an assumption in any of his sims, so it stands to reason it empowers the crit portion of the equation because of the superior crit scaling in AS over SL. If they were pretty close in his 3/3 UtS assumptions, they would further favor AS (somewhat) if you assumed 6/6 UtS.

With that said, for multidot scenarios, I still think SL outperforms AS, even with 6/6 UtS - and his numbers kind of show that (for 3/3 UtS of course).

[shettles]

snip

Great stuff. Thanks for putting that together!

[Seriv]

If you assume Pain and VT tick at the same rate regardless of haste (every 3 seconds without haste)

SWP ticks every 2 seconds baseline.