Confusion about Glyph of Icy Veins

[Akraen]

That isn't how the scientific method traditionally works, usually the guy with the left field theory proves the concrete and proven theory wrong, not the other way around, you are arguing that you are right because no one has bothered to prove you wrong.

None of you have proven anything though. I'm stepping away from conventional theory, not a concrete method substantiated with any math at all. Knowing full well if I scribble some algebra down I'm not going to be able to represent anything.

I'm the guy in the field who was following convention, but then stumbled upon something. So I am experimenting and observing, recording and analyzing. What I am not doing is plugging data into a mathematical model to then reveal some glorious new convention to the world.

Why am I not doing that? Some nefarious grand plan to keep you all in the dark? No. I don't know how. My talents, unfortunately, are in other intellectual areas. If you notice, I chime in when someone says something so matter-of-factually yet is not what I do. I do that because I don't want people to get locked into a convention that I don't think is any more substantiated than my claims, just more embraced.

What we're doing now is basically arguing the existence of God. If you're so confident, show me the math behind the sources that you claim to be right. Show me the flawless math that indicates a 180 intellect gem is better than a 320 haste gem if it reduces me below 13053 haste. Don't use references to simcraft, show me the exact math from the ground up. Show the DPS it adds to each spell individually. I think we can agree I do competent and competitive levels of DPS. So the difference is not clear if my method is wrong. Maybe it's a slight bit better, the same, or a slight bit worse? Maybe the difference is so negligible we cannot possibly calculate it because of tricky factors like latency, hardware, RNG, other player timing, or whatever.

I strive to constantly be the best frost mage I can possibly be. That's my goal. Not to prove I'm right about a hunch. I want to do things correctly. So audit me. Tell me what to change, I'll change it, then I'll report back to you the results. How confident are you in the convention?

[Frost1129]

If I'm wrong then the difference is so negligible or I'm just that much of a better player than others. I doubt it's the latter.

You can number crunch for a year about what I ought to do, or I can plug gems in and get you a parse. Here's a Heroic Council: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-n0...?s=4559&e=4917

Why would I actively try to mislead people? I do fine for a 539 ilvl, beating plenty of people higher ilvl with glyphed icy veins. I'm also getting beat by people with glyphed icy veins but are also higher ilvl. More evidence to the former.

What I'm asking you to do is to prove I'm wrong. Not because I think I'm the be-all-end-all frost mage, but because I'm doing this experiment and finding good results. Empirical analysis is the best tool for those honest enough to admit they can't crunch the math themselves. That'd be me.

Even if you disagree with my thread about haste plateaus, those plateaus still exist. Regardless of your gearing method, those numbers are true and a helpful reference-- at least give me credit for that.

I'll just preface this by saying this isn't an attack on you. I like that you tried to present a new idea on mage play to the community. I don't like how your idea have been shown to be wrong and you're ignoring that and saying we need to prove wrong (didnt we?) and idea you never proved to begin with. I'm attacking you idea because I think you are leading mages down the wrong path and teaching them things that are plain wrong. I don't really care about you or how you feel - I care about how to present the best information we have to the mages who come here looking to improve.

The math behind how DoTs work says your breakpoint idea is completely wrong. And it is. The math doesn't lie, and after understanding the math the logic isn't sound either.

The burden of proof is on you. Especially when someone from the TC community comes over and shows why your logic is wrong using basic math and easy to understand examples. Do you want me to link them? They are on page 4 or 5 of your thread.

Linking one log doesn't support anything and shows your lack of understand in how to present this type of data in a convincing way. You should have multiple logs from the standard frost gearing, and then multiple logs from your proposed way of gearing. Or if you want to show it on dummies, a fuckload of pulls using both methods and the logs to show what happened during those pulls. Just saying "I got a 7.5% DPS increase" doesn't tell us anything. I could go write up a post on how I started going max mastery and crit, used frost bomb, and then saw a 7.5% DPS increase. I could fill it with pretty graphs, a lot of math and equations on how my idea is the best. But hopefully people aren't stupid enough to follow my advice without demanding I prove it first though.

When other mages have done your method and provided logs to show their tests they showed your method to yield nothing.

- - - Updated - - -

None of you have proven anything though. I'm stepping away from conventional theory, not a concrete method substantiated with any math at all. Knowing full well if I scribble some algebra down I'm not going to be able to represent anything.

I'm the guy in the field who was following convention, but then stumbled upon something. So I am experimenting and observing, recording and analyzing. What I am not doing is plugging data into a mathematical model to then reveal some glorious new convention to the world.

Why am I not doing that? Some nefarious grand plan to keep you all in the dark? No. I don't know how. My talents, unfortunately, are in other intellectual areas. If you notice, I chime in when someone says something so matter-of-factually yet is not what I do. I do that because I don't want people to get locked into a convention that I don't think is any more substantiated than my claims, just more embraced.

What we're doing now is basically arguing the existence of God. If you're so confident, show me the math behind the sources that you claim to be right. Show me the flawless math that indicates a 180 intellect gem is better than a 320 haste gem if it reduces me below 13053 haste. Don't use references to simcraft, show me the exact math from the ground up. Show the DPS it adds to each spell individually. I think we can agree I do competent and competitive levels of DPS. So the difference is not clear if my method is wrong. Maybe it's a slight bit better, the same, or a slight bit worse? Maybe the difference is so negligible we cannot possibly calculate it because of tricky factors like latency, hardware, RNG, other player timing, or whatever.

I strive to constantly be the best frost mage I can possibly be. That's my goal. Not to prove I'm right about a hunch. I want to do things correctly. So audit me. Tell me what to change, I'll change it, then I'll report back to you the results. How confident are you in the convention?

Again, I'm not attacking you personally. I just don't agree with the idea and unless you can convince me otherwise, I'll continue to try and stop what I believe is leading frost mages astray.

I'm so confident you don't understand how DoTs / breakpoints work with high up-time DoTs and that your method is useless that I think if you provide us with a bunch of your logs with conventional gearing vs. your method there will be little to no difference. Provide some logs with you before and after a breakpoint and try to show that you magically get more DPS.

There isn't a "model" that people used to show how DoTs work. It's pretty basic math that just says if there is X ticks, Y haste, the dot ticks for Z seconds, and then you calculate the DPS. EDIT - I'll go find the post that shows your idea of breakpoints is wrong. Give me a minute or two.

here.

45.87788% haste: 17 ticks, 100 damage/tick, 1700 damage/cast, 11.65 sec total duration, 145.88 DPS

And now let's push you over that cap, give you 12684 haste:

45.88% haste: 18 ticks, 100 damage/tick, 1800 damage/cast, 12.34 sec total duration, 145.88 DPS

By gaining 1 point of haste, the frequency of your DoT ticks barely change, and thus the DPS barely changes! Gaining 1 point of haste rating will not have any noticeable impact on the rate at which NT ticks, the rate at which anything procs off of NT, or the DPS of NT. The above examples clearly show this. I don't think that anyone is arguing this point... but it helps to spell it out very clearly.

Haste breakpoints are important for DoTs like Combustion, where they are not providing a constant stream of DPS. With these DoTs it's their overall damage contribution that is important. So getting a Combustion where you get an additional tick at the expense of a longer ticking DoT is a significant improvement.

For DoTs that you are always keeping up breakpoints are pointless. There are multiple posts on this - Do you want me to link those too? As you increase haste towards a breakpoint you decrease the tick time of the DoT - increasing it's DPS. Once you go below a certain threashold the DoT says "I'm not allowed to end this quickly - I'll add another tick!" So you get another tick - and also increase the amount of time the DoT ticks for. This both increases the damage done (added tick) but decreases the DPS (you went from a faster to normal ticking DoT). The net result is that haste linearly increases the DPS of your DoTs, so for ones which you are constantly applying and caring about their DPS breakpoints are pointless.

Also: Linking council is going to of course make anything giving you extra ticks look strong. more ticks = more cleave. And that fight is super heavy on cleave. I'd say any increase is due to that, not due to your strategy generally being a better way to gear.

[Akraen]

That's not the whole picture because I never argued that adding haste increases the damage of NT itself. By reaching new plateaus you're getting more procs.

You claim there's math, but any moron could calculate how haste impacts the damage of NT.

Armory Kuni, you think he's wrong? Pete? Boxedwaffle? Mozza? Phair? Scort? 法訷? 달랑?

We're all stacking haste. We're all pulling incredible numbers consistently. And my thread isn't even about using NT, it has information for LB and some of the above mages have had great success with that bomb as well.

I think you're still not understanding the point of my post or you're in theoretical la-la land. Let me take a look at your armory and parses and see what you've done.

[Frost1129]

That's not the whole picture because I never argued that adding haste increases the damage of NT itself. By reaching new plateaus you're getting more procs.

You claim there's math, but any moron could calculate how haste impacts the damage of NT.

Armory Kuni, you think he's wrong? Pete? Boxedwaffle? Mozza? Phair? Scort? 法訷? 달랑?

We're all stacking haste. We're all pulling incredible numbers consistently. And my thread isn't even about using NT, it has information for LB and some of the above mages have had great success with that bomb as well.

I think you're still not understanding the point of my post or you're in theoretical la-la land. Let me take a look at your armory and parses and see what you've done.

I'm glad you've taken this from arguing about your idea to attacking my progression (which my guild didn't start until a month or so after ToT was even released). Stay classy. I don't play Frost and quite frankly I'm not impressed by listing mages that are more progressed than the vast majority of other mages. Seriosuly - some of those mages are almost 450 iLVL. That's fucking insane. Congrats on having higher DPS as frost compared to the mages who aren't anywhere near your gear level. Do you want a medal for being faster / stronger than the kids at the special Olympics too?

I also don't care who the mages are, if the idea is correct it will stand on it's own regardless of who is supporting it. And of course you gear for haste over all - Haste has always been better than other stats for Frost.

And lets look at those mages you listed. They surly support your non-IV glyphed idea?

Kuni. He has the IV glyph
Boxedwaffle - He has the IV glyph.
Mozza has the IV glyph.
I cant find citizenpete.
Phair has the IV glyph.
Scort has the IV glyph.

Oh. I guess not.

I'm not going to go find the asian named ones, unless you want to link them for me (to see that they too have the IV glyph.)

Also: Quoted from the beginning of your guide: "How many ticks of Nether Tempest can you get? This is an attempt at making a simpler to understand guide to maximizing Nether Tempest damage." And here " I recently discovered a ~7.5% dps gain by removing the Glyph of Icy Veins to maximize NT ticks."

I understand more haste = more ticks. And under Meta / hero / Haste procs you are going to get more ticks in a similar period of time, leading to more procs and better cleave. But you're wasting huge amounts of haste to get those procs if you are keeping standard IV. What if you have IV up and the meta procs? Boom. You'
re wasting HUGE amounts of haste. No more stacking IV during hero either. Obviously people are stacking haste. But they shouldn't be doing it to hit magic breakpoints and then altering their gearing, and they shouldn't be keeping the standard IV glyph to do so.

TL;DR :

Breakpoints are useless for NT / LB. There is no magic number where you should stop getting haste (unless you're capping it, i'd think)
Unglyphed IV is useless and wastes haste and an otherwise strong CD.

[Akraen]

I alternate between using the glyph and not. I find a slight gain in situations that I've tested by removing the glyph. However, if you check my armory right now you'll see that I have it glyphed.

Scenarios when more NT ticks, i.e. council, during times when you're not spending much time casting frostbolt anyway will favor removing the glyph. That's one of my points-- there is no hard and fast rule for how to play frost and oftentimes you switch things up.

I'm also not attacking your progression, I'm trying to push the idea here that many of us are finding experimentation a lot better than calculation this expansion. If there are calculations on forums telling us to gem int and not worry about haste breakpoints, but the top 25 frost mages are all using haste gems and going for breakpoints, then there must be a piece of math missing.

I'd love someone, such as yourself, who has a knack for math, to properly explain why so that people know why they follow Kuni's guide, know why the top mages are doing what we're doing, and finally to understand that when I make a post about breakpoints, it's purely informational. Use it or don't, but there's no need to attack it.

What I am willing to do right now is clean up some of the wording of my haste post so that it isn't leading any unsubstantiated conclusions. Perhaps if I do that you'll understand that my ambition is the most accurate understanding and analysis of our damage and then encouraging others to adopt the best practices learned by the top mages.

Then what I ask from you is to understand that those of us actually doing these fights on heroic might know a thing or two even if we haven't mathed it out, simply by trial and error. And if the difference is negligible, which sometimes it is (glyphed IV or not on cleave fights), then why even argue about it?


Oh, also, I'm only 539. That's not a high ilvl nowadays. I'm competing with people who are 545+
My rag-tag gaggle of ex-vanilla casuals are clearing heroics no problem with these dumb cloaks. You'll catch up before the next patch as long as you (or a majority of your raid team) get your legendary stuff done.

[Polarthief]

Breakpoints are useless for NT / LB.

Despite the whole thing with Akraen (that I too find a bit silly and weird), I would like to SLIGHTLY counter-argue this. For some DoTs like Combustion and Devouring Plague (neither of which are spammable), there's obviously a reason to have breakpoints that are vital. With spammable DoTs (NT/LB, SWP, MF/SF, etc), it's not AS important, but they do help to an extent.

While small, the extra globals you save from having your DoT at exactly the maximum amount of time (e.g., 12s for LB) is a DPS gain in itself. Having to cast LB every 10s instead of 12s should be quite a small difference over the course of a 6m+ fight (5 globals saved) [10 globals saved at 10m].

Not to mention, the longer the DoT, the longer/more ticks that are affected by procs (like trinkets, heroism, meta, etc), but the counter is also true; if the DoT wears off a bit earlier, you may be able to clip the last second of the temporary buffs.

Either way, I wouldn't say breakpoints are useless, but definitely not as important as people think they are.


Anyways, I'll let you guys get back to arguing about Akraen's Crazy Super Haste Frost Build for Nether Tempest™

[Frost1129]

There was math done on the increased haste over a Breakpoint giving you more globals. If I'm remembering correctly it was like 2 or 3 GCDs at best. Unless your play is perfect and you are not moving when you need to take advantage of these it's a negligible DPS increase.

Useless was not the correct word - Something to not be aimed for perhaps is a better way to describe it? You can essentially ignore them for things like NT since the DPS scaling is linear with haste. Going 1 point above or below a breakpoint doesn't do anything really.

I'll respond to you again Akraen, I just need to think about it a bit so it comes out decent.

[Deleted]

I will be short :
NT & LB don't have breakpoint mathematically speaking

But increase in DPS also depend on the increasing proc rate of BF and the subsequent FoF proc.
The idea is very simple:
-- obtain your maximum tick
-- maximise INtel/Mastery for increasing damage from NT/LB's tick, FFB and IL.

and after 15k haste, frostbolt is capped more than 40% of the time so haste value began to decrease too.

[Frost1129]

I will be short :
NT & LB don't have breakpoint mathematically speaking

But increase in DPS also depend on the increasing proc rate of BF and the subsequent FoF proc.
The idea is very simple:
-- obtain your maximum tick
-- maximise INtel/Mastery for increasing damage from NT/LB's tick, FFB and IL.

and after 15k haste, frostbolt is capped more than 40% of the time so haste value began to decrease too.

Every DoT has breakpoints at which an additional tick is added. What are you talking about? It's just that the DPS doesn't increase - but the damage does spike up (At the cost of a longer overall DoT time).

I understand the idea. You want more ticks, so you don't glyph IV in order to control how many times you get a spike in haste - therefore giving you a spike in FFB procs. (Granted, that wasn't how it was originally sold. The main post of the guide says it's in order to give an increase in overall DPS via. NT damage).

Going over or below a breakpoint doesn't really do anything though. It doesn't significantly change the number of ticks / second you are getting. What does that is the massive haste spikes (From IV / Hero / Meta). Caring about what breakpoint you can hit (aka the maximum number of ticks) is pointless. Haste will always be good - it'll always increase your DoT DPS, give you higher meta uptimes, and higher RPPM uptimes in addition to letting you get your ILs / FFB out faster to avoid overwrites. You should just always go for more haste.

If you before a certain breakpoint, lets take the 17/18 one for example. Below it you have 17 ticks in 11.65 seconds for 1.459 ticks/sec. If you go above that to 18 ticks (which because you are adding a tick you increase the time of the DoT. That's the entire reason why a tick is added - so the DoT doesn't tick faster than it's allowed) you now are at 18 ticks over 12.34s. Giving you 1.459 ticks / sec. There is no increase in ticks / sec when you are going beyond a breakpoint. Finding your "maximum tick" is pointless.

In removing the IV glyph you are basically giving yourself another window of boosted haste so you can go from lets say 18 ticks to 22 (with IV not glyphed). You are trading a 20% damage increase for the ability to add 4 ticks to your NT every 3 minutes. So twice a fight, lets say.

Your 18 tick NT will have 1.459 ticks / sec.
Your 22 tick NT will have 22 ticks / 12.34 second DoT = 1.783 ticks / sec.

You gain 0.324 ticks / sec by not glyphing it. You're trying to tell me that 0.324 ticks / sec worth of additional FFB procs is worth losing 20% damage on any FFB, IL, and FB you cast. Especially considering you can stack glyphed IV during pull (when you have all your trinket procs so the 20% is going to be even larger) or during hero? If you pop IV (unglyphed) and then your meta procs you're losing huge amounts of haste if you have to do anything but cast NT.

I could maybe, maybe, MAYBE see this working on a fight where you're doing nothing but NTing and you are able to IV (unglyphed) and have that +4 tick NT cleaving onto a 4-5 targets constantly. but any fight where you're getting a significant portion of your DPS from FB / IL / FFB I just can't see it making any sense.

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Also, the breakpoints do matter for snapshotting purposes. While adding ticks might not change DPS, it does change DPCT, and that matters when you can nearly double your spell power off of trinket procs.

[Frost1129]

Also, the breakpoints do matter for snapshotting purposes. While adding ticks might not change DPS, it does change DPCT, and that matters when you can nearly double your spell power off of trinket procs.

Right. But you're already gearing haste as your primary stat - yes? So you're always going for higher breakpoints just by gearing standard. Do you suddenly stop gearing haste once you go 1haste over the BP? NT BPs wern't why frost mages were gearing haste IIRC.

IV unglyphed would only let you do that a couple times per fight. And you're probably already trying to snapshot from meta procs and other trinket procs. Does stacking IV ontop of those (which de-values the haste over the cap outside NT) net you anything significant? If you're JUST casting NT, yeah. But how often are you just casting NT?

[Akraen]

I'll give you an example.

I have +175 haste on my boots right now to get 15832, 19th base NT ticks.

Once I get another gear upgrade, I'm switching back to mastery and runspeed.

Does that sound absurd to you?

- - - Updated - - -

Right. But you're already gearing haste as your primary stat - yes? So you're always going for higher breakpoints just by gearing standard. Do you suddenly stop gearing haste once you go 1haste over the BP? NT BPs wern't why frost mages were gearing haste IIRC.

IV unglyphed would only let you do that a couple times per fight. And you're probably already trying to snapshot from meta procs and other trinket procs. Does stacking IV ontop of those (which de-values the haste over the cap outside NT) net you anything significant? If you're JUST casting NT, yeah. But how often are you just casting NT?

On Council, Tortos, Primordius (heroics of course), I'm casting NT a lot. Like, a majority of the time. And it's not padding either. By me taking oozes out with NT, others get to tunnel the boss. Viable, efficient, and good strategy that allowed my rag-tag gaggle of raiders kill it on heroic after only a few tries

[Frost1129]

I'll give you an example.

I have +175 haste on my boots right now to get 15832, 19th base NT ticks.

Once I get another gear upgrade, I'm switching back to mastery and runspeed.

Does that sound absurd to you?

- - - Updated - - -



On Council, Tortos, Primordius (heroics of course), I'm casting NT a lot. Like, a majority of the time. And it's not padding either. By me taking oozes out with NT, others get to tunnel the boss. Viable, efficient, and good strategy that allowed my rag-tag gaggle of raiders kill it on heroic after only a few tries

I just did some really basic stuff using the AMR haste point calculator and Lhivera's DPS calculator.

Assuming you're sitting around 12.6k haste (or whatever your initial magic number was. I used that)

Difference between NT non-thing proc'd and IV: 2506
Difference between NT Meta and Meta + IV: 2667
Difference between NT Meta + Hero and Meta + Hero + IV: 4252

Having an INT proc up at the same time increases the difference by 600-1000 DPS.
Those are pretty insignificant DPS gains I think for the amount of haste you waste and the wasted 20% damage potential from the glyph.

I don't have the haste levels that you do or the gear to mess round with these types of things, so I have to use these methods to test it (which is why I was asking for a lot of logs)


So I've put the least amount of effort into the following numbers. They're done in a pretty basic way, and could very well be shit.

NT is dealing what, 62400 extra damage on a single target with IV not glyphed, an int proc up, and stacked with Hero and Meta. You could get 2 NTs off, so like 124800 extra damage. During my opener (with my shit frost gear aka fire gear in frost spec) I got off 5 ILs, 4 FFBs, and some frostbolts while under IV. Just the extra damage from the FFBs alone nearly makes up for that.

Looking at the log you posted (I haven't done council yet on heroic. They are next on the choping block once we down IQ - tonight. Hopefully >.<) I would say that you're still doing a lot of damage trough IL / FFB procs and frostbolt. Just not nearly as much as you normally would be.

I'd be willing to say non-IV glyphed has the potential to be a DPS increase on fights extremely heavy on cleave damage, which also limit you on the amount of time you can spend in IV. So like tortos if you're on turtles and constantly moving / chasing shit you might want to take IV unglyphed since you probably wont be taking advantage of FB / IL during it. So yeah, Council, Tortos, Primordius (if on ooze duty. If you job is to kill primordius padding with a stronger NT on oozes doesn't help the raid) could be places where this is applicable. Outside of those conditions I don't think it is a viable strategy.

And I do think it's absurd to change gearing due to NT breakpoints. Haste will still be better.

[Deleted]

I'm actually quite glad we brought this discussion back to life. It had died down a bit, but it still deserves some thought, and I think it would be great if we could do that without the hostility that has sometimes creeped up in here. I'll chip in with some observations, which I believe might be important to the debate:

First, here is what I think we should stop arguing about, because it is thoroughly established math and simply proven by this point:

1. The DPS (damage per second) of LB/NT scales completely linear. Every single point of haste adds the same gain to the DoT.

2. The DPET (if it helps you visualize it: the damage a single cast of any given DoT does) changes non-linearly. Breakpoints that add an additional tick do increase the DPET of that DoT by exactly that one tick. Haste, before those breakpoints, adds nothing to the DPET of the DoT.

3. In a sidenote, it has been show that generally, one does not earn a significant amount of GCDs by casting DoTs just above their breakpoints; though I think this could be inquired further, I'd leave that issue aside for now.

Understanding the difference is hugely important to debating these issues. Please note that this statement of fact does not support or deny Acraen's theories, but serves to demonstrate one important point: Haste breakpoints do exist, but they do not always matter. Saying they are completely irrelevant would be just as false as assuming them to be the only points of importance.


Now, with that in mind, lets look at some further issues. When are haste-breakpoints important, and how so?

1. Generally speaking, DPET of a DoT matters in situations where you will apply a certain DoT once, it will tick its full duration, and you can not refresh the DoT. The best example for mages is Combustion, where breakpoints (e.g. 5036) are very valid, but it holds true for any situation where you have a CD on a DoT.

2. Other important situations where DPET matters are influenced heavily by encounters. i.e. situations where I will only have time or opportunity to apply one single cast of the DoT. Examples include add-fights like Horridon and Tortos, but those examples can turn sour as soon as adds die before the DoT runs its full course. A better example might be Twin Consorts where you get only limited applications (one, most of the time) on the fire-twin during the first phase. Here, the damage gain will amount to the additional tick gained by reaching certain breakpoints.

3. Finally, breakpoints can matter because of snapshotting-situations. If a given damage-procc, like a trinket, only allows for a limited number of DoT-applications during it's uptime, the value of reaching a higher haste-breakpoint is the value of the additional tick with the procc compared to the damage of a tick of the then-refreshed new DoT without the procc.

4. Please keep in mind that this effect does not increase or decrease with the Meta-Gem and other haste-effects. Reaching a breakpoint (from gear) does not become a lot more beneficial under the influence of a procc. Cooldown-stacking aside, going from 12 to 13 ticks adds the same DPET as going from 22 to 23 ticks. Gearing specifically for breakpoints that will only ever be reached under very specific circumstances (i.e. BL+IV+Meta etc.) will still only add one tick.


That last point shows another distinction to be made: For now, at least, this is not about the value of haste per se. For the time being, we're assuming that gemming and reforging for haste is the usual route, though we should elaborate on that later. Either way, the argument here is not about haste or no haste, it's about breakpoints or no breakpoints.

Up until now, I have just gathered the information I believe can be agreed upon easily. The conclusion is that breakpoints do exist, and they do matter in specific scenarios, but not in the model that is still dominating calculations: 100%-DoT-uptime on a single target fight.



Everything so far is mostly fact. We still need to keep those issues in mind when discussing, because we really like to become tangled up in those questions. And it gets even messier: Realistically, we're not comparing anyone using a breakpoint against anyone being just below that breakpoint. When talking ONLY about DoTs, when we accept that haste is the best second-stat for their DPS, then we need to compare those using a breakpoint to those who are using the same breakpoint but are still continuing to stack haste. To be clear about that again:

The case of breakpoint-proponents needs to be why they STOP using haste after any given point.

And this is finally where the "reality" (of WoW, that is) intercepts our model of DoTs in a vacuum. Other issues, especially for Frost, influence when and why we want to use haste, not only the damage of DoTs. It becomes exceedingly hard to calculate these interactions without the use of advanced simulations. While we can easily calculate the value of player A (just over the breakpoint) vs. player B (stacking haste without regard to breakpoints) as far as the DoTs go, we can not say who will do more damage from that alone.

Since this has become quite lengthy already, I will mostly stop with these observations now, but I would like to add some of my own conclusions:

1. In my experience, breakpoints do matter. The "messy" environment of raiding favours them even in situations where we would them assume not to matter, not only via snapshotting, but also when other factors force us to not keep on applying the DoT, which can happen quite frequently.

2. The value of haste in general, especially for Frost, is more tricky to calculate. Bomb-damage has become a significant part of our output, and increased Brain Freeze-proccs are obviously beneficial, but those benefits need to be carefully weighed against the "lost" DPS from overcapping the GCD with all our other spells.

3. We don't need to prove any theory over any other theory right now. We have no measure of verification whatsoever once we assume that our simulators are "broken", and our possibility to comply empirical evidence is VERY limited and fraught with wildly varying factors. So right now, we are not arguing anything is right and anything is wrong. We can just offer up, as I tried to do here, the factors which influence our gameplay, and try to agree on how heavily they weigh in on our game, always considering that this is not a math-only discussion, but also greatly connects to issues of "style" (i.e. clunkiness) and specific encounters.

[Deleted]

Just to backup Akraen here: I used to play frost with a full haste build (don´t play much atm and didn´t in the last few weeks). Found a log on animus heroic from 19th june without using glyph, so yes I had ~287% haste for 16 seconds and using IV glyph here would be a DPS loss

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...6&e=11214#Pete

Boxedwaffle (pretty decent fella) use to play with a full haste build and I think he is playing encounters like Council and Animus without Icy Veins glyph, too. They obviously doing Animus not with the "progress strat", so I can´t say much here.

[voltaa]

Just to backup Akraen here: I used to play frost with a full haste build (don´t play much atm and didn´t in the last few weeks). Found a log on animus heroic from 19th june without using glyph, so yes I had ~287% haste for 16 seconds and using IV glyph here would be a DPS loss

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...6&e=11214#Pete

Boxedwaffle (pretty decent fella) use to play with a full haste build and I think he is playing encounters like Council and Animus without Icy Veins glyph, too. They obviously doing Animus not with the "progress strat", so I can´t say much here.

that's a completely different situation though, on animus, stack haste and NT til you're blue in the face, Akraen trying to argue that this is the way to play in a single target situation just doesn't make sense

[Akraen]

that's a completely different situation though, on animus, stack haste and NT til you're blue in the face, Akraen trying to argue that this is the way to play in a single target situation just doesn't make sense

You're putting words in my mouth.

[Frost1129]

You're putting words in my mouth.

Breakpoints totally do exist, btw. When I said they were meaningless I was saying it from a Frost Mage PoV (You're stacking haste anyways.lolz)

To be fair, your initial post on this and your subsequent advice to people (go look at the post you first made in this thread) make it sound very much like you are promoting the haste breakpoint + non-IV strategy as a general gearing strategy for Mages. I think that our discussion in this thread, and in the bit we talked in game, might show you to think otherwise.

There are a few posts I need to respond to in here but don't have the time to really give them what they deserve until I get home later. But until then I am curious as to why you care about BPs as frost, Akraen?

Haste is valued as our best stat because of a number of things it influences. Why would a breakpoint suddenly change that? Every mage I've looked at is just straight up stacking haste. Which means they are not gearing for BPs, but are instead gearing the standard haste > * frost mage gear strat.

An example of gearing for BPs would be Fire going for a very specific amount of haste and the switching to Mastery. Or Boomkins and their DoT. Haste is bad in-between the BPs, but good if you can hit them. Haste is always good for Frost, so BPs are irrelevant. (I only mention this because I got into a huge debate about BPs and Haste with a boomkin in our guild. I am now nick-named Breakpointz. Thank you Akraen >.<)

[Akraen]

I only outline breakpoints for two major reasons:

1) To keep a good handle on how many ticks are happening at varying points of haste and burst haste. This helps keep track of hectic fights where you don't renew your NT (like Tortos, DA, Twins, etc)

2) To enforce the idea that sometimes you break a socket bonus or remove the run speed enchant from your boots in order to nudge yourself up to the next breakpoint. Example is me right now, I need +175 haste to boots but once I get another upgrade I can go back to mastery/speed.


More info is always better

As for IV, I just have only found better results by removing the glyph. Might be me, might be RNG, might be the truth. I don't see enough data to indicate one way or the other. I could do 1000 fights and still be within RNG if the difference gap is small. For my playstyle though I enjoy extra burst haste and more NT ticks.

[Wuga]

The math is not really that complicated - unglyphing IV essentially increases your bomb damage by 20% in exchange for lowering your frostbolt and ice lance damage by 20% (and your ffb damage by a couple percent, but for argument's sake let's say it's even).

So is the +20% bomb damage worth it? If you want to look at huge cleavefests like council and DA, of course, NT is 50%+ of your total damage and buffing that by 20% is obviously worth dropping your fb/il damage (~20-25% of your total damage) by 20%.

In a single target environment, your damage is more like 20% from bomb and 40-45% from fb/il, and in that case, it's not worth it.

Breakpoints only really matter in situations where there are more available targets to dot than you can keep your bomb up on. Outside of padding on DA, I believe this happens on approximately 0 fights this tier.