Why do Unholy Aura/Windfury Totem (and other attack speed buffs) not increase rune regeneration speed? Same question with goblin racial. Heroism and Unholy Frenzy however do. In contrast a caster's Cast time, DOTs and HOTs are affected by group buffs as well as things like Heroism and Power Infusion. Is this a bug? If not, could you please outline exactly what it is that will affect a Death Knight's rune speed regeneration?
Sure. “Haste” is somewhat of an overloaded word, in WoW’s vocabulary. There are, mechanically, several different kinds of haste:
Melee: Affects melee attack speed
Ranged: Affects ranged attack speed
Spell: Affects spell casting speed
Regen: Affects rune/energy/focus regen speed
Various sources of haste provide some or all of those. Haste rating, for example, provides all of them. There’s a raid buff that just applies 5% spell haste. And another that just applies 10% melee and ranged Haste. Typically, we refer to the combination melee+ranged as "attack speed," to indicate that it’s only affecting your attack speed, not your regen.
However, we’re not entirely consistent about this. On the character screen, the line that says “Haste” is really showing attack speed. We try to be specific about which one we’re giving you in specific spells or abilities. For example, the goblin racial and Unholy Aura specifically state that they increase attack speed, so they don’t give regen haste. Occasionally we mess up and refer to something as the wrong type of haste, but I don’t know of any more of those offhand.
Hunter (
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What? It's already not worth using either single target or in an AoE situation. Also, hunter shots are currently partially blockable as are pet attacks. Pet attacks are also suffering from glancing blows. Is this intended?
All of the hunter level 90 talents are getting an across the board damage buff (they’re intended to be worth using single-target, and currently they’re not). I just meant that Barrage’s damage will be lowered a bit relative than Powershot. Hunter ranged attacks should not be blockable, and they currently are (known issue, will be fixed). Pet attacks should be blockable and able to glance.
Mage (
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In regards to the mage level 90 talent Incanter's Ward, I have a bad feeling the fact that Priest shield spells are absorbed on higher priority than IW is going to foster a hateful relationship between a mage with the talent and the disc priest who is spell-blocking him. It would be a nice improvement to have Incanter's Ward at least have a higher absorb priority than other raiders' absorb spells if not also higher than Ice Barrier.
That’s a bug (or rather, we’re waiting on some code changes to support it that haven’t been implemented yet). Incanter’s Ward should always be used first to absorb damage.
Is Mage mana regen intended to increase only with Haste Rating, or with total haste? At present, it appears that neither the Frost Armor 5% haste buff nor the 5% haste aura increase regen.
Bug. Mage mana regen is currently scaling with melee haste instead of spell haste like it should be. That will be fixed in a future build.
We're also really wondering about the various "ignite-like" mechanics in the game....
Specific questions: Do these mechanics have the same basic implementation internally? In other words, can we trust that there is a single set of assumptions we can make about how the damage calculation and propagation works that will allow us to simulate all these mechanics correctly? And are there any details you can give us that would reduce the number of assumptions we need to make?
Ahhh, Ignite mechanics. What a storied history they have.
While there have been several versions of Ignite and similar effects, historically, the general goal for quite a while now has been for this sort of effect to be simply a way to move part of the damage from an attack into a DoT, to reduce burst, and add flavor. And since these attacks were likely to happen again before the DoT finished, each one needed to "roll" the damage left over from the previous DoT into the new one. However, that damage rolling processing has always been somewhat delayed. That leads to the “munching” problem (two hits could land at nearly the same time, and the first one wouldn’t have been processed yet when the second one lands, leading to the first one’s DoT getting overwritten by the second one’s).
However, we got some code changes done in 5.0 that handles rolling periodics better. If Blackout Kick does 20% of its damage as a DoT, then at the end of the fight, Blackout Kick’s DoT should have done exactly 20% of the damage of Blackout Kick (barring any rounding errors or overkill of course). The actual logic involved is rather simple: When reapplying this DoT, take the damage left in the previous DoT and distribute it evenly across the new DoT’s ticks. Do remember that refreshing a DoT refreshes it to the full duration, plus the next tick (so that you can clip DoTs by 1 tick and have no loss).
For example, suppose Blackout Kick does 20% additional damage as a DoT that ticks every 2 sec, for 4sec.
0sec: Blackout Kick lands for 100 damage. DoT applied, with 4sec remaining, doing 10 damage per tick.
2sec: Blackout Kick DoT ticks for 10 damage. 2sec remaining, still 10 damage per tick.
3sec: Another Blackout Kick lands, and this time it crits, for 200 damage. The DoT is refreshed and extended to 4sec past the next tick; 5sec remaining, or 3 ticks. It needs to do a total of 10 damage still from the previous DoT, and 40 more for this one, for a total of 50 damage over 3 ticks, so ticks for ~17 damage, 3 more times.
4sec: Blackout Kick DoT ticks for 17 damage. 4sec remaining, still 17 damage per tick.
6sec: Blackout Kick DoT ticks for 17 damage. 2sec remaining, still 17 damage per tick.
8sec: Blackout Kick DoT ticks for 17 damage, and expires.
Hope that helps.
Spells that use this mechanic include: Ignite, Blackout Kick, Echo of Light, Devouring Plague, Touch of Karma, Hand of Gul’dan, Bloodbath, Temporal Shield, Piercing Shots, Explosive Shot, and several set bonuses.
One additional addendum on the Ignite things: Explosive Shot does not do this in your current build, but will in the next. The others should all work that way in your current build.
Priest (
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How does Psyfiend pick which target and in what order to fear if there are more then one enemy attacking the priest? Is it based on location, order of who attacked when, or is it totally random?
Without trying it out, I believe it prefers the last target that attempted an attack on the priest.
What counts as the three direct attacks for Spectral Guise? Any attack that isn't a DoT, or is there more specific list of attacks?
Any damage event, including DoT ticks.
What exactly is considered a range attack for Phantasm? Is it any attack that can be cast beyond melee range, or are there spells that are exception to this?
The mechanics for this are identical to Smoke Bomb or Camouflage, so try those out to compare.
Shaman (
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Our shaman guy is working on implementing Stormlash, but he's lacking details on how the damage scales, in particular whether or not it scales with the cast time of the proccing spell, and if so what the formula is. I haven't looked into it myself so I don't have any more specific questions, but any other details you could share on Stormlash would be helpful as well.
We’re currently in the process of tuning Stormlash, so you can expect its numbers to change somewhat. It does vary the damage by the cast time of the spell or attack that proc’d it, but that formula is likely to change (and/or likely to include other variables). I’ll try to get that formula for you after we tune it.
Warlock (
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I'm assuming you're referring to the dot it triggers, Shadowflame, but that functions as a dot with a stacking mechanic: For one, it can crit, which seems counter to the whole premise of rolling forward a fixed amount of damage. It also just doesn't roll damage in that way at all - I can cast two HoGs back-to-back or I can wait and do the second one just before Shadowflame wears off, and after the second HoG I get a 2-stack dot ticking 7 times for the same amount in both cases.
By Hand of Gul’dan, I did indeed mean Shadowflame. However, as you point out, this rolling periodic mechanic interacts rather oddly with debuffs that stack. So, we’re just going to take it off of Shadowflame. Shadowflame will be a simple DoT that can stack, not using this rolling periodic mechanic.
Warrior (
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Pre-MoP Deep Wounds used this mechanic - does the MoP version continue to use it, or something else?
Mists’ Deep Wounds is no longer that kind of DoT; it’s now much more similar to Rend.