1. #1
    Mechagnome jtmzac's Avatar
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    A stupid question about invocation that makes me look and feel like such a noob

    When are you meant to refresh Invocation? I was under the assumption it should have a 100% up time so I start evocating before it comes off but I recently realised this might not be the best due to all the talk about invocation.

    Do you start evocating so you have 100% uptime or when Invocation runs out?

  2. #2
    I've always assumed you start evocating when the buff fades, there's no point on spending part of the buff evocating when you get no benefit out of it. I could be wrong tho, so don't quote me on that.

  3. #3
    Mechagnome jtmzac's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Inthislzon View Post
    I've always assumed you start evocating when the buff fades, there's no point on spending part of the buff evocating when you get no benefit out of it. I could be wrong tho, so don't quote me on that.
    You have to remember your bomb will still be ticking while you're evocating which is why I'm even asking the question.

  4. #4
    I may not be the best mage out there, so by all means feel free to tell me I'm wrong here, but lets look at it logically:

    After completing the evocation you get the buff. So during the 5 or so second evocate, you're not casting any actual damaging spells and thus not taking advantage of any invocation buff already applied.

    So maths time: 1 minute buff, 5 seconds spent evocating on the tail end of it to keep 100% uptime of the buff (but only 55 seconds EFFECTIVE uptime per cycle considering a perfect playstyle)

    Now lets evocate AFTER The buff expires. What do we lose? Nothing as far as I can tell. 100% uptime of buff changes to 95% uptime of buff (arbitrary numbers as usual, this is theoretical math :-P) 1 full minute of buff uptime with 60 seconds EFFECTIVE uptime on buff, and a 5 second 'buffer' period where no casting of spells is happening anyway.

    When I used invocation, I casted spells right up until that buff fell off - the last spell I casted while the buff was active fired, and then I evo'd with no buff. If you evo with a buff still active you are clipping a few seconds per cycle that could be spent casting an actual attack spell.

  5. #5
    Windry has posted math about it in other threads that I can't be bothered to look for, but the basic rule is to wait for it to fall off before refreshing. Never clip it.

    Quote Originally Posted by jtmzac View Post
    You have to remember your bomb will still be ticking while you're evocating which is why I'm even asking the question.
    Your bomb will be doing damage based on your stats at the point you cast it. Invocation dropping off won't make your LB start doing less damage midway through.

  6. #6
    Mechagnome jtmzac's Avatar
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    Invocation only lasts 40 seconds . and it's pretty much 5 secs of your normal rotation with the buff vs 5 secs of your bomb spell with the buff. I assume the rotation wins but thought it was worth asking anyway.

    Quote Originally Posted by JohnnyQuest View Post
    Your bomb will be doing damage based on your stats at the point you cast it. Invocation dropping off won't make your LB start doing less damage midway through

    Windry has posted math about it in other threads that I can't be bothered to look for, but the basic rule is to wait for it to fall off before refreshing. Never clip it.
    Are all the bomb spells the same though? I only use frost bomb for general use and nether tempest for raiding as frost.

    I thought most spells that ticked or hit multiple times adapted to changes in spellpower and stats. e.g. frozen orb, bomb spells. I might just be remembering stuff from 4.3 too much.

    Thanks for the definite answer. My dps should improve a bit now.
    Last edited by jtmzac; 2012-11-04 at 03:10 PM.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by jtmzac View Post
    Invocation only lasts 40 seconds . and it's pretty much 5 secs of your normal rotation with the buff vs 5 secs of your bomb spell with the buff. I assume the rotation wins but thought it was worth asking anyway.
    Again, as someone already pointed out, the buffs and debuffs applied to your bomb are calculated when the bomb is cast, you losing invocation, or clicking off a flask, or a food buff, after the bomb is cast, will not affect that bombs ticks. Only new casts of the bomb, or any spell for that matter.

  8. #8
    Even if living bomb and nether tempest are affected by invocation being removed during the duration it would not matter, increasing the damage of your bomb spells does not justify evocating with 5 seconds of invocation left rather than none.
    With a 40 second duration on the buff, starting 5 seconds before it ends means you are effectively wasting 12% of the uptime, and you will effectively be casting an extra evocation for every 8 evocations you could usually fit into a fight, a critical loss of damage.

    Wait until the buff falls off and don't even necessarily refresh it immediately then, make sure the boss is not about to turn invincible or interrupt your spell.

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    Herald of the Titans Orangetai420's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by furriusmurrius View Post
    Again, as someone already pointed out, the buffs and debuffs applied to your bomb are calculated when the bomb is cast, you losing invocation, or clicking off a flask, or a food buff, after the bomb is cast, will not affect that bombs ticks. Only new casts of the bomb, or any spell for that matter.
    Are you sure? I thought I read something about Frostbomb's damage being calculated when it actually explodes.

    I could be wrong
    MMO-C, home of the worst community on the internet.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Orangetai420 View Post
    Are you sure? I thought I read something about Frostbomb's damage being calculated when it actually explodes.

    I could be wrong
    It does.
    It's still not a significant enough portion of your damage to justify casting an extra full evocate per encounter though.

  11. #11
    Mechagnome jtmzac's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Imnick View Post
    It does.
    It's still not a significant enough portion of your damage to justify casting an extra full evocate per encounter though.
    Still nice to know. What about the other bombs and frozen orb?

  12. #12
    I'm not going to lie, I am confused as to why you are asking me instead of just walking over to a target dummy and doing this yourself.
    You don't need a 6000 iteration test to check if your ticks reduce in damage when you remove the invocation buff from yourself in the middle of the DoT duration.

    As far as I could tell just casting Nether Tempest and Invocation, the bomb spells do scale dynamically with your Invocation buff. So did Frozen Orb.

  13. #13
    Herald of the Titans Shangalar's Avatar
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    Haste is applied on cast, damage modifiers per tick, as far as I remember.

  14. #14
    Good thread.

    Since the question seems to be answered now, I'm going to go slightly offtopic. My question is related to this topic so I didn't want to start a new thread.
    (I believe this requires more math than I'm able to do myself.)

    My trinkets sometimes proc when it's time to refresh Invocation. (I have the darkmoon card and Normal Cosmos)
    What do I do? Keep casting so that my procs aren't wasted or evocate regardless?

    I used to just evocate anyway when I only had the dmc, but now that I have 2 proc'ing trinkets, I feel like maybe I should wait for the trinket buffs to go away before evocating. Can anyone chime in with some maths? <3

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Franksredhot View Post
    Good thread.

    Since the question seems to be answered now, I'm going to go slightly offtopic. My question is related to this topic so I didn't want to start a new thread.
    (I believe this requires more math than I'm able to do myself.)

    My trinkets sometimes proc when it's time to refresh Invocation. (I have the darkmoon card and Normal Cosmos)
    What do I do? Keep casting so that my procs aren't wasted or evocate regardless?

    I used to just evocate anyway when I only had the dmc, but now that I have 2 proc'ing trinkets, I feel like maybe I should wait for the trinket buffs to go away before evocating. Can anyone chime in with some maths? <3
    Going to watch this thread and see if anyone comes up with an answer because I was wondering the exact same thing in the raid tonight. Too many times did my Relic proc just as I noticed that my invocation needed to be refreshed. Im not good at maths, but I can take an educated guess that with 2 trinket procs up we should just continue to DPS until they're off, and then evocate. However, this then brings up another question: should be evocate early if we know our trinkets will be off ICD shortly, or just let invocation fall off through the proc and evocate after?

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Franksredhot View Post
    Good thread.

    Since the question seems to be answered now, I'm going to go slightly offtopic. My question is related to this topic so I didn't want to start a new thread.
    (I believe this requires more math than I'm able to do myself.)

    My trinkets sometimes proc when it's time to refresh Invocation. (I have the darkmoon card and Normal Cosmos)
    What do I do? Keep casting so that my procs aren't wasted or evocate regardless?

    I used to just evocate anyway when I only had the dmc, but now that I have 2 proc'ing trinkets, I feel like maybe I should wait for the trinket buffs to go away before evocating. Can anyone chime in with some maths? <3
    I was interested too, so I used http://lhiveras-library.com/wow-spells and plugged in a few values.
    I was only interested in Frostbolt using the frost spec (so taking into consideration my mastery value of 23.15)
    I got the following results

    With 20025 int on character sheet no buffs hits non crit for 26332
    With both LFR Cosmos and Relic of Yu'lon active, 25918 int on character sheet no buffs hits non crit for 33698
    With 20025 int on character sheet but with 25% from invocation 32915

    It is a similar story with FoF icelance etc.

    Now correct me if I am wrong, but this looks like you would continue to dps if you were unlucky enough to have them proc right as you were supposed to evocate. or if your invocation buff fell off mid way into your trinkets proc.

  17. #17
    You shouldn't feel stupid for asking a question, that is what this forum is for. But, it is my understanding that you should be trying to keep invocation up as much as you can of course, however, you should try your best to not overlap the invocation buff. Using the full 40 seconds for dps, and then refreshing when you have the opportunity, is the right way to go. There are fights where you will have a period that you can and should overlap, such as Feng's epicenter, you may already have refreshed your invocation, but when epicenter is going out, and you are 75% more likely to miss, you should take advantage and wrack up some extra time on your invocation. Just remember to use good judgement, and not continue to waste time cutting invocation casts to maneuver out of a mechanic.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by pyrostorm9001 View Post
    I was interested too, so I used http://lhiveras-library.com/wow-spells and plugged in a few values.
    I was only interested in Frostbolt using the frost spec (so taking into consideration my mastery value of 23.15)
    I got the following results

    With 20025 int on character sheet no buffs hits non crit for 26332
    With both LFR Cosmos and Relic of Yu'lon active, 25918 int on character sheet no buffs hits non crit for 33698
    With 20025 int on character sheet but with 25% from invocation 32915

    It is a similar story with FoF icelance etc.

    Now correct me if I am wrong, but this looks like you would continue to dps if you were unlucky enough to have them proc right as you were supposed to evocate. or if your invocation buff fell off mid way into your trinkets proc.
    I used the tool in that website for Fire and I came up with the same conclusion as you did for Frost. Assuming the tool is accurate:

    When it comes to Cosmos and DMC...
    If only 1 of those trinkets is active, refresh invo.
    But if both are active, keep dps'ing.

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