Heroic Imperator,Balance, Solstice and Astral Communion

[Triscone]

Is this worthwhile to do during transition phases to force yourself into solar attunement and casting sunfire along with sunfall for the highest uptime possible or am I missing why this is a bad idea?

[xtramuscle]

Is this worthwhile to do during transition phases to force yourself into solar attunement and casting sunfire along with sunfall for the highest uptime possible or am I missing why this is a bad idea?

Because any time you're not in solar with that glyph you'll more than half your dps. The idea behind starfall dealing lunar damage and sunfire hitting everything and dealing nature damage is you can deal damage at both ends. If you take glyph of soltice, and AC as the transition happens great, for the 8 seconds you actually AOE you'll do more damage, but if you then cycle into lunar you'll do less damage than unglyphed. Okay so instead you insta AC back to solar; great more damages again, but it still averages out less than unglyphed.

The only place for that glyph, is in conjunction with glyph of guided stars, in a setting like challenge modes. Where you want to hit the stuff in front of you very hard and very fast, but don't want to hit EVERYTHING.

[Triscone]

Because any time you're not in solar with that glyph you'll more than half your dps. The idea behind starfall dealing lunar damage and sunfire hitting everything and dealing nature damage is you can deal damage at both ends. If you take glyph of soltice, and AC as the transition happens great, for the 8 seconds you actually AOE you'll do more damage, but if you then cycle into lunar you'll do less damage than unglyphed. Okay so instead you insta AC back to solar; great more damages again, but it still averages out less than unglyphed.

I'm sorry, perhaps I'm stupid but I just don't follow your opening statement. You're basically saying, correct me if I'm wrong, that a 30% increase to starfall in lunar is twice as good as a 30% increase to sunfall in solar? I need to see more logic to qualify that statement cause that doesn't seem correct at all. Star/sunfall is going to be 100% up during these transitions regardless and keeping it up doesnt prevent you from doing dmg via other spells, at the very worst the glyph is DPS neutral.

The question becomes does AC'ing back to solar as soon as you enter lunar cost you more dps than you gain from having a stronger star/sunfall on a large number of targets.

The only place for that glyph, is in conjunction with glyph of guided stars, in a setting like challenge modes. Where you want to hit the stuff in front of you very hard and very fast, but don't want to hit EVERYTHING.

I believed this as well, thought it was mostly a cosmetic glyph, until I read the statement from Method's boomkin that stated we should be using this glyph on Mythic Kargath. I tried to figure out why this would be the case and the only reason I could come up with was because by using the glyph you can lock yourself into Solar eclipse along with CA/Inc and have both stronger sunfall and access to sunfire during the crowd portion of the fight.

This thinking then lead to the question I posited above, could this same line of thinking be applied elsewhere to heavy aoe phases of different fights. Imperator transistions as well as potentially tectus, though maybe not as much, could potentially benefit from such a strategy as well.

[xtramuscle]

I'm sorry, perhaps I'm stupid but I just don't follow your opening statement. You're basically saying, correct me if I'm wrong, that a 30% increase to starfall in lunar is twice as good as a 30% increase to sunfall in solar? I need to see more logic to qualify that statement cause that doesn't seem correct at all. Star/sunfall is going to be 100% up during these transitions regardless and keeping it up doesnt prevent you from doing dmg via other spells, at the very worst the glyph is DPS neutral. because then you're in lunar doing less damage with both sunfire and sunfall, instead of losing dps with sunfire but making up for it with starfall.

The question becomes does AC'ing back to solar as soon as you enter lunar cost you more dps than you gain from having a stronger star/sunfall on a large number of targets.



I believed this as well, thought it was mostly a cosmetic glyph, until I read the statement from Method's boomkin that stated we should be using this glyph on Mythic Kargath. I tried to figure out why this would be the case and the only reason I could come up with was because by using the glyph you can lock yourself into Solar eclipse along with CA/Inc and have both stronger sunfall and access to sunfire during the crowd portion of the fight. Except while CA is active you have max eclipse anyway, so starfall hits as hard as it's ever going to hit, and moonfire spreads sunfire aswell.

This thinking then lead to the question I posited above, could this same line of thinking be applied elsewhere to heavy aoe phases of different fights. Imperator transistions as well as potentially tectus, though maybe not as much, could potentially benefit from such a strategy as well.

See bolded text.

All you really need to do is be about to leave solar, so you can sunfire, get starfall up, and sunfire the next set of adds in 15 seconds time with Euphoria. No need to AC, glyph or anything else. It goes without saying you should be using CA on these transitions any way so you have access to both dots with 1 global and max eclipse starfall simultaneously anyway.

[Triscone]

See bolded text.

All you really need to do is be about to leave solar, so you can sunfire, get starfall up, and sunfire the next set of adds in 15 seconds time with Euphoria. No need to AC, glyph or anything else. It goes without saying you should be using CA on these transitions any way so you have access to both dots with 1 global and max eclipse starfall simultaneously anyway.

I still need further clarification on the first point sadly. Okay so my sunfall hits less hard in lunar when I'm glyphed, we agree here. My starfall does less dmg in solar when unglyphed, I assume we agree here. Sunfire and Moonfire assumedly are going to be close to 100% uptime in either scenario, the ONLY thing the glyph does is change during which eclipse my starfall is boosted. I still fail to see how the glyph can be a DPS loss except in an edge case where I get 2 cycles of lunar and only a single solar cycle during a given transitions/phase/time frame. The same could be said here in reverse though about unglyphed where I get in a case with 2 solars and a single lunar.


I concede the second point, I was thinking that moonfire would also put up sunfire during CA but that it would not spread, and thus sunfire spreading still needed to be done during a solar phase.

[xtramuscle]

Perhaps you mis understood, im not saying it'll do less damage (except int he case where you're spamming AC to be in solar as much as possible) I'm saying itll go from doing more (than glyphed) to less (than glyphed) when you enter lunar again. its just bursiter that is all, bigger ebbs and flows.

[Deleted]

this is pretty obvious stuff really....

Option 1: Sunfall = More burst damage during solar, which means more burst for aoe, major damage loss during lunar
Option 2: Starfall = No significant burst, instead a steady flow of dps, less significant loss during solar

Average dps is still the same over a longer period of time, if we strip out all the rng factors, as the peaks during the solar even out the dps to match, by supporting the lows in lunar

With euphoria the use for this glyph is highly cosmetic, as the eclipses cycle so fast that we don't really need to AC in order to maximize our performance. Once again, if the aoe phase lasts for more than 20 seconds without euphoria and we see an even number of eclipses for that phase, the damage dealt averages out to be the same, only factor changing this is the starting eclipse.

If we see an uneven number of eclipses or the AoE phase is short lived, we have to control our eclipse bar with AC, regardless of our glyphs. Only with starfall you can skip the control phase and herp derp your way to do "adequate" dps, which is not our interest (i hope). This is the case when we don't use euphoria (which is highly likely in BRF).

One thing that people seem to have a hard time to understand though, is that our eclipse bar moves based on TIME, if we don't mess up our opener or AC to change the timings. Regardless of the type of opener you use, you should have noticed by now that certain boss abilities that favor starfall and are regulated by time follow the pattern of our eclipse bar.

The reason why someone would recommend glyph of solstice for bosses like (M only) Kargath, Tectus, Brackenspore and Imperator is that something in this boss fight that is regulated by time, lines up with your solar eclipse, giving you a massive burst dps bonus during that moment and thus causing your average dps to be higher, not because sunfall > starfall, but because the starting eclipse was solar. You can try this out, just look at your eclipse timing when you enter the stands (kargath), when the small adds spawn (tectus,brackenspore) when your imperator adds break up in to million small adds etc.

[Triscone]

this is pretty obvious stuff really....

Option 1: Sunfall = More burst damage during solar, which means more burst for aoe, major damage loss during lunar
Option 2: Starfall = No significant burst, instead a steady flow of dps, less significant loss during solar

Average dps is still the same over a longer period of time, if we strip out all the rng factors, as the peaks during the solar even out the dps to match the lows in lunar

With euphoria the use for this glyph is highly cosmetic, as the eclipses cycle so fast that we don't really need to AC in order to maximize our performance. Once again, if the aoe phase lasts for more than 20 seconds without euphoria and we see an even number of eclipses for that phase, the damage dealt averages out to be the same, only factor changing this is the starting eclipse.

If we see an uneven number of eclipses, or the AoE phase is short lived we have to control our eclipse bar with AC, regardless of our glyphs, only with starfall you can skip the control phase and herp derp your way to do "adequate" dps, which is not our interest (i hope). This is the case when we don't use euphoria (which is highly likely in BRF).

One thing that people seem to have a hard time to understand though, is that our eclipse bar moves based on TIME, if we don't mess up our opener or AC to change the timings. Regardless of the type of opener you use, you should have noticed by now that certain boss abilities that favor starfall and are regulated by time follow the pattern of our eclipse bar.

The reason why someone would recommend glyph of solstice for bosses like (M only) Kargath, Tectus, Brackenspore and Imperator is that something in this boss fight that is regulated by time, lines up with your solar eclipse, giving you a massive burst dps bonus during that moment and thus causing your average dps to be higher, not because sunfall > starfall, but because the starting eclipse was solar. You can try this out, just look at your eclipse timing when you enter the stands (kargath), when the small adds spawn (tectus,brackenspore) when your imperator adds break up in to million small adds etc.

While I believe the denigration you started the post with was unnecessary and condescending, I respect what you have put forth here. It definitely clarifies WHY one would use the glyph for certain encounters and not others which was one of the things I was not clear on. It makes perfect sense to me that certain time dependent phases and abilities are going to line exactly in the same manner every single time, because as you mentioned where you are at in your eclipse is dependent on time of encounter. I just didn't realize that was why the recommendation was made.

Still leaves me with the question though, would there not be a certain minimum number of targets such that an increase to xfall from using AC to control eclipse state would be enough to counteract the loss of dmg from the time used casting AC? Has anyone done the math on this or investigated it anywhere?

[Deleted]

While I believe the denigration you started the post with was unnecessary and condescending, I respect what you have put forth here. It definitely clarifies WHY one would use the glyph for certain encounters and not others which was one of the things I was not clear on. It makes perfect sense to me that certain time dependent phases and abilities are going to line exactly in the same manner every single time, because as you mentioned where you are at in your eclipse is dependent on time of encounter. I just didn't realize that was why the recommendation was made.

Still leaves me with the question though, would there not be a certain minimum number of targets such that an increase to xfall from using AC to control eclipse state would be enough to counteract the loss of dmg from the time used casting AC? Has anyone done the math on this or investigated it anywhere?

Sorry for the offensive opening to my previous post

About your question regarding AC control:

You theoretically could determine whether or not it is actually worth it to AC during the decline (moving from opposite peak to the middle), how ever the problem with this is that the math itself is filled with so many variables, which would have to be changed to fixed values to give reasonable results, without us actually having to re-do it every time we acquire a new piece of gear and in the process also determine 100 different factors to change during this, that it's simply not worth it as the math with fixed values wouldn't be accurate enough for this use. I have a feeling that this could be achieved with simulationcraft, but i have no expertise in that field so i'll leave it to people who know how to do it, if they so desire.

Only answers i can offer you about this matter are:

- It's definitely more worth it if you use sunfall
- You should never AC when rising towards a peak
- It gives better results with euphoria in the small window, and without euphoria it works better in the big window
- It might be worth it if you encounter a situation where you have a lot of adds (i mean like closer to the 20 target limit, a lot) that you can't hurricane and even then it would only worth it with the glyph of sunfall (due to sunfire). Maybe if the add's on kargath's stand would live longer, that might be a scenario where channeling AC through the drought of lunar eclipse might result in dps gain. But then again it's easy to hurricane them if needed, so it would have to be something like tectus last phase (8 motes + 2 shards out) mobility wise or something where the adds are spread out within the 40 yards range (Garrosh empowered whirl adds mby?)

In a nutshell, you shouldn't do it unless you want to mess around or you face some kind of a wonky to say the least situation.

[xtramuscle]

@ Vutk can you remind me how many adds I need to make it worth me using hurricane in solar (and lunar?) cause I've literally moved it off my keybinds for the time being.

[axxey]

however much you may wish it imperator is about targeted dps not padding as much total damage output as possible, there's classes that pad much better so no reason to target burst AoE on padding targets at a cost of higher sustained on priority targets.

[Deleted]

@xtramuscle, wowhead benchmarks hurricane at 15,8625% SP/ 1 sec, so you need at least 5 before it's better than wrath/starfire. Hurricane in solar gives more value than Astral storm in lunar, but that difference is quite minimal.

@axxey, there is no add padding on imperator, just guided stars & kiting, or no guided stars. Since you have to pop starfall, regardless of the strategy you use, during the intermissions, you aren't padding even if you dps the adds when your guild has decided to kill them.