Archive for January 10th, 2009

Jan

Unholy Live vs PTR 3.0.8 – To be nerfed, or not to be nerfed?

Posted by: Skeleton Jack in Blue, Specs

That is the question. Heya guys!! So before we get all too much “Doom and Gloom” around here, I figured it was time to go do some testing on PTR. Since they put through most of the Unholy nerfs I’ve been waiting for, this was an optimal time to check Live Unholy DPS versus PTR 3.0.8 DPS.

Now I encountered the Test Dummy bug…yay!! /sigh They were pretty lit up on the PTR so Wandering Plague and Necrosis were doing 1 damage per hit. I managed to later find a boss dummy that had some health, but was only able to get a very small test sample in for average damage on those two strikes. Now of note, it has been referenced MANY times in the past that Necrosis is not a true % damage bonus. I don’t remember what the math is behind it, but if it says 10% or 20% or whatever…you never actually get that number. *shrug*

Leaving that one as a mystery of WoW. I’ve got better things to research atm. So basically I had to do manual math to fix the PTR numbers.

For those people who are anal and want to see proof here are the links to the pics that are relevant for me doing the math:

OK then, so lets jump into the math eh?

PTR

I did 1,913,411 damage over 676 seconds. Necrosis hit 205 times for 1 damage. The average for Necrosis from a short sample was 325 damage. WP hit 101 times for 1 damage. The average for WP from a short sample was 497 damage. Changing the averages from 1 to the correct numbers this adds in 116,822 damage for a total of 2,030,233 damage in 676 seconds, or 3,002 dps over 11.2 minutes.

Live

I did 2,161,358 damage over 713.3 seconds. The Test Dummy had enough hit points to generate correct numbers with no issues. Or in other words this did 3,030 dps over 11.8 minutes.

Comparisons

I used the exact same Glyphs, Spec, Rotation, Buff Management, 3 Gargoyles, and 1 Empower Rune Weapon on each test.
Standard 17/0/54 Unholy Spec.
Major Glyphs were: IT, SS, and Ghoul.
Each test was relatively the same period of time.
Live Necrosis did 221 damage on average, while on PTR it did 325 damage on average.
Live WP did 511 damage on average, while on PTR it did 497 damage on average.
The damage spread was longer than a typical boss fight, which means the true “power” of the Gargoyle was diminished. No Heroism, or short period of time, to do a larger % of the base damage.
Gargoyle did 852 DPS on PTR, and 1034 DPS on Live.
Ghoul did 287 DPS on PTR, and 255 DPS on Live. (+20% extra Str on the Glyph doesn’t seem so OP anymore does it?)

Caveats

You need to remember that the Gargoyle damage will be much spikier in a real Live Raid environment. It will do a significantly larger dps portion and scale better with Heroism and your AP. So it would be more likely to see a range of 300-500 DPS at least in a Raid once 3.0.8 goes Live. That being said however, outside of Patchwerk there are a ton of fights where he dies early and contributes very little. In the long run, this probably will not impact Unholy as much as was expected.

The test sample was also relatively small. 11 minutes each on PTR and Live. Many would argue that a true test would require at least 1 hour on each side. I’ve got a life people. The “simple” version works for me. I’ll let some other crazy SOB do that if they want to.

I lost the EP debuff for almost a full minute on the PTR test due to another DK. I had it up for at least 10min however, or I would have started over later.

End Result?

I’d still have to see what happens in a Raid. Like I’ve always said, Test Dummies can only tell you so much. Real test results in a Raid with buffs, debuffs, etc… That is what really will tell you what will go down. All in all however being able to maintain 3k dps on a dummy left me very happy however. Shows serious promise for Unholy still as things stand in 3.0.8 PTR. In my current gear, even with a dps loss, I should still be able to hit at least 5k DPS on Patchwerk if 3.0.8 went live today.

WHAT ABOUT BLOOD AND FROST!?!?!?! ZOMG!!!

You serious? Buff, buff, buff, buff, buff! You guys are getting tons of loving. There’s no need to test how your dps is being affected. It’s going up ya newbs!!! Heh! j/k No testing needed seriously, Blood and Frost are getting a lot of Lovin’.