WotLK talents, one at a time

[lythrdskynrd]

Awesome! I'd love to see 2 or 3 "what if" questions answered on that sheet
#1 - what if they removed the 8 second cooldown (which I assume is going to be way overpowered)

#2 - what if the Internal Cooldown was 4 seconds

#3 - If you wanted to match the current mana per minute @35% crit rate with 0 internal cooldown what would the chances of proc be? (eg: 2% / 5% / 8% / 12% / 15% or whatever)

I think I'm interested in first understanding the reason they felt they had to include the ICD then second - trying to come up with reasonable alternatives

[ril]

I really hate internal cooldowns, seems a poor way to ensure something is not over powered.

This skill seems to come into the personal choice catagory right now, Everyone that deep into SV is going to grab it, but how much of it are they going to grab? A lot of people give ew/thrill 2/3 and now while those skills might be maxxed HP's distribution lets you downrank 1-4/5 while still maintaining a bit of effectiveness.

The problem with this is that RL's will come to expect 5/5 HP and if you don't have 5/5 you're going to be seen as not as helpful as the other guy who has 5/5...

[Arcazua]

edit: I realized everything I've posted up until now was using 20-40-60-80-100% rather than 20-30-40-50-60. I'm leaving this here for academic purposes, but the next post has accurate info.


Ask and ye shall receive...


No cooldown:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...tingParty0.jpg

4 second cooldown:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...tingParty4.jpg


Comparing 8 second cooldown to 0 cooldown:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...terParty08.jpg


Note that in the last picture, the percentages on the second tier are compared to the equivalent top position, not to 5/5 in that row, and those are additional percent. As in, I already took off the first 100%. (Compared to 5/5, all the columns go 20-40-60-80-100 when there's zero cooldown.)

As you can see, the power ramps up very quickly. Rememer, on the last page I reasoned that with those mechanics, the second point out of five was equivalent to a point in Thrill of the Hunt, but for the whole party. When we look at it with no cooldown, we have to start comparing it to invigoration. 1% mana per minute, on a 7k pool, is like 5.8 MP5. So 5/5 for 35% crit becomes closer to 269 MP5 when we take away the cooldown. Curiously, because this rate is actually lower than a beast master's pet's specials thanks to strings of autocrits, this is still a bit less than Invigoration. However, it's also being given to the entire party. When you multiply it five ways, suddenly it becomes a lot more powerful than Invig. I'm not convinced this is a horrible thing, but it is a bit much.

Compared to the current, 11.3% per mana is still about 66 MP5 for the group at 35% crit. That's not bad. Estimates on Cobra/Invig range from 300 to 450 MP5 depending on who you ask. 66 MP5 split 5 ways is over 330 MP5 group-wide, which puts it right in balance. It doesn't help the hunter maintain their mana pool better, which I feel is honestly much more important since other classes will be fending for themselves as well. However, it is fair the way it is if you use that perspective. Of course, the marksmanship talent is currently laughable to draw comparisons to, so we'll see Rapid Recuperation out of this.

What I'm not showing you is the 4-second comparison version. It makes the talent function at a meaningful level. At 35% crit, 4 second is 18.2% mana per minute, an increase of 60.7% over its 8-second cousin. This makes it more like 106 mana per minute, per person, or 530 MP5 for the group overall. Of course, we have to remember that the MP5 values I'm deriving are based on current hunter pools. A mage would get a much higher return than that. I think this version is actually a decent compromise.


If you want to talk about what might be fair, I think the concern with returning 2% mana to the group at some rate is considered more for the other group member's sake than for the hunter's sake. If we diminish the mana conferred to other group members rather than having a lengthy cooldown, then it might prevent a slightly better level of regeneration for the hunter while not forcing it to be gimped because of party returns. Something to the effect of "returns 2% mana to hunter and 1% mana, 10 energy, 5 rage, or 10 runic power to the other party members."

[Arcazua]

Here's the real versions, since I used the wrong percentages for 2/5 thru 5/5.


8-second cooldown:


4-second cooldown:


0-second cooldown:


8-to-0 comparison:



Alright, let's try conclusions again.

At 35% crit...

8-sec)
At 5/5, gain is 9.7% mana per minute (56.6 MP5 for 7k pool)
At 1/5, gain is 58.8% of what it is for 5/5.
At 2/5, gain is 74.0% of 5/5.

4-sec)
At 5/5, gain is 14.4% mana per minute (84 MP5)
At 1/5, gain is 49.0% of 5/5.
At 2/5, gain is 65.8% of 5/5.
At 3/5, gain is 80.4% of 5/5.

0-sec)
At 5/5, gain is 27.8% mana per minute (162 MP5)
At 1/5, gain is 33.3% of 5/5, and each point thereafter is 16.66%. So first point is effectively two points, but it otherwise scales linearly.
Compared to the 8-sec cooldown, 1 point has +62% effect and 5 points has +185% effect.

If you compare this to the previous post, it perhaps hints to us why they adjusted it to 20-30-40-50-60 instead of 20-40-60-80-100. If they remove the cooldown, the effect is significantly different. I would argue this makes it even less of a linear increase. 1/5 is only 50% of the effect of 5/5 instead of 58%, even if it catches up quickly at 2/5. The 60% version of the talent also reduces the effectiveness to about 86% of it's previous capacity. (All these numbers I'm making up are when using a 35% crit.)


Overall, though, I still like to use Invigoration as a benchmark. At 30% crit, (5% less since not surv,) Cobra Strikes is active for 55.5% of pet special attacks, and on the other 44.5% the pet should still crit on its own about 15% of the time. So 62.1% of pet specials, which occur every 1.5 seconds...equals a proc every 2.41 seconds. Hunting Party provides the exact same benefit to the hunter as Invigoration, but less frequently because it helps the entire group. I suppose this is a fair trade-off, when surv also has Thrill of the Hunt, but I'd still like to get half of the effect. That would require a trigger roughly every 6 seconds. The internal cooldown isn't even that long! If we keep it at a point where we say that a Hunting Party proc is 5 times as valuable as an Invigoration proc, it still has to happen every 12.5 seconds. Curiously, at 60% proc rate (5/5) on a 35% crit rate, that's almost exactly what it does. Now we probably have the real reason why it was moved to a 60% proc rate. (100% would be about a 10.5 second period.)

[ril]

Originally Posted by Arcazua

Ask and ye shall receive...

Interesting but whats the deviation of the results between different weapon speeds types? is the difference between 2.2 and 2.6 enough that SV is going to be the new wolfslayer hunter?

The internal cooldown makes sense, though I hate it, the possibility of downranking to a weapon with an effective speed of < 1 second would turn into a massive regen.

[Arcazua]

Ah, fair question. I left an input blank for the shot speed, but never even touched the modifier. Honestly, I think one of the reasons the 8-second cooldown is in place is to diminish the effectiveness of faster weapons. If you could fire twice as fast with no cooldown, the talent would be twice as effective...with a forced downtime of 8 seconds, triggering after 2 seconds instead of 4 is only 16% more effective.

But alright, I'll plug in the values. Rather than posting pics of the DB, I'm just going to post the lines of 8-second cooldown, 35% crit:

2.60 sec (3.0 with just quiver): 1/5 - 5.6% mpm, 2/5 - 7.0% mpm, 3/5 - 8.1%, 4/5 - 8.9%, 5/5 - 9.6%.
2.43 sec (2.8 with just quiver): 1/5 - 5.6%, 2/5 - 7.1%, 3/5 - 8.2%, 4/5 - 9.0%, 5/5 - 9.7%
2.25 sec (3.0 with quiver and 16% windfury): 1/5 - 5.8%, 2/5 - 7.2%, 3/5 - 8.3%, 4/5 - 9.1%, 5/5 - 9.8%
2.0 sec: 5.9, 7.4, 8.5, 9.3, 9.9
1.5 sec: 6.4, 7.9, 9.0, 9.8, 10.4
1.0 sec: 7.2, 8.8, 9.8, 10.5, 11.1

not that you're going to reach those bottom rows without a lot of help, or weapons that are significantly faster than we currently have. Going even from 2.6 to 2.0 had very small returns, just an extra 0.3% effectiveness. (OK, technically it was 3.0% more effective.) If you can consistently shoot faster than this, obviously it will help, but I wouldn't say that it's a kingmaker for fast weapons.

Sidenote: I just realized the blank marked "shots per second" should actually read "seconds per shot."

[lythrdskynrd]

all I can say is that those differences are *really* interesting
40% mana per minute seems ungodly good - but remember there's an incoming potion sickness too ... no more chain chugging pots!

So while that sounds super powerful in today's climate - tomorrow's climate is being .... altered.

[ril]

Originally Posted by lythrdskynrd

all I can say is that those differences are *really* interesting
40% mana per minute seems ungodly good - but remember there's an incoming potion sickness too ... no more chain chugging pots!

So while that sounds super powerful in today's climate - tomorrow's climate is being .... altered.

Best, not gonna happen, case seems to be ~14% mpm right now.

As for the postion sickness it may make SV raiders a requirment, along with retadins SP's and Shammies.

[lythrdskynrd]

Originally Posted by ril

Best, not gonna happen, case seems to be ~14% mpm right now.

As for the postion sickness it may make SV raiders a requirment, along with retadins SP's and Shammies.

aye - this blue post here puts the whole discussion into "wait and see" mode

* The mana cost of new ranks is not just an issue for Hunters. We're looking at lowering the mana cost of all new ranks among all classes. We also intend to do some improvements to Aspect of the Viper. Not to mention mana return mechanics in each of the tree's (Invigoration, Rapid Recuperation, Hunting Party etc.) (http://blue.mmo-champion.com/3/85572...na-issues.html)

I think if Hunting Party roughly equaled the return of a Shadow Priest *AND* scaled with gear it would be just about right. One Hunter for melee groups & SP for caster groups.

sounds great!

[Arcazua]

Originally Posted by lythrdskynrd

I think if Hunting Party roughly equaled the return of a Shadow Priest *AND* scaled with gear it would be just about right. One Hunter for melee groups & SP for caster groups.

Are the gains for the alternate resource types really that good?