5.4 Warlock (Intellect) Trinkets

[Vile 9]

Yeah, I'm going to not play Demonology for a while and try to get brushed back up on the other stuff.  The trinket outlook hasn't changed, though...I still think Immerseus and A&O are the two best, even if A&O stays RPPM.

Sorry if I'm super slow here, but do these trinket/RPPM changes rule out sticking to UVOLS the rest of the expansion?

Edited August 1, 2013 by sallyboo

[Zagam 1,982]

It depends.  Remember, this is the PTR, and they JUST got into Heroic testing.  I still think we'll see a patch somewhere late August/early September, so they still have a month to fine tune things. 

 

The RPPM thing is generally loathed in the community.  They took lesser procs with dependable proc timers and gave us huge procs with random proc timers.  They have created the very issue they are trying to correct, which is the massive burst and big openers from classes.  There's some confusion on this and I'd like to clear it up a bit.  I wish I could do this on the official Blizzard forums, but people only go there to bitch, whine, complain, and ask really stupid questions.

 

Basically people complained about their procs randomly happening at the beginning of a fight.  DPS would see variances in their opener as high as 200-300k.  Personally, when I didn't get a Perfect Aim proc during Lei Shen progression, it made a big enough difference that we'd see a Thunderstruck just before transitioning whereas if I got my procs, my DPS was 100-150k higher and we didn't have to deal with that element.  Blizzard implemented a formula protection that would make sure you'd get procs even with horrible RNG.  They did this with a formula based around the time since your last proc.  It's been a general trend now that people have learned about this and have adapted.  DPS with low RPPM trinkets and powerful procs didn't release knowing that when you change zones, this timer resets.  By being out of combat for 5 minutes, people with trinkets like Unerring Vision of Lei Shen had over a 95% chance to proc their trinket at the beginning of combat.  If they released, ran back, and pulled and only had around 2 minutes of wait time, their proc chance was cut to approximately 30%. 

 

Because players have adapted to what Blizzard has set up, our openers have gotten out of control.  They've put in a system, and we've figured out how to manipulate it to our best possible means.  In our openers, we already have Tailoring/Engineering/Herbalism procs to go with our potions, racials, personal CDs, and now two crazy good trinkets.  Theorycrafters and high-end players find ways to adjust their openers to maximize DPS and they share that with others.  The trend with player skill has been increasing as time goes on, and this enhances what Blizz has tried to do to protect their RPPM trinket idea.  As an Orc Demonology Warlock with Tailoring, when I open up, I've got Blood Fury (2k SP), Lightweave (~1.5k SP), a potion (4k SP), Dark Soul (18k Mastery), Tempus Repit (30% Haste), Bloodlust (30% Haste), Stormlash Totem (+500k damage), Perfect Aim (100% Crit chance), and Breath of Many Minds (8.5k SP).  Any of you that use Affdots will know the effect of this when they apply Doom under all these conditions.  30 seconds into the fight, your Affdots Doom number will be somewhere around 20.  That means the Doom you applied under all of those conditions was approximately 5x as powerful as the one you sit at without all those procs.  Same sort of situation arises with Destruction using Breath of the Hydra and Wushoolay's, except this moment of Destruction (pun intended) comes at approximately T = 16.  16 seconds into the fight, you should have Dark Soul up along with your Breath of the Hydra proc (8.5k SP) and an 8-9 stack of Wushoolay (12-14k SP).  My unbuffed Chaos Bolts hit for about 400-430k.  When these two trinkets align with a potion, I've seen Chaos Bolts in the 1.3M range with no other modifiers.  I went into LFR to test something on Jin'rokh...I waited 15 seconds before starting combat.  I got this scenario while standing in a puddle.  2,143,553 Chaos Bolt.  Imagine seeing these procs line up on Horridon after he's bashed 4 doors.  Oh, and for shits and giggles, just Havoc that over to Jarok.

 

What this 90 second timer will do is make it so that our trinkets will have a significantly lower chance to proc when combat starts.  However, as time goes in combat without a proc, our proc rate multiplier increases greatly.  So regardless of how much time you've had since your last proc, it will always be 90 seconds according to your internal timer.  RPPM trinkets for melee typically have a high RPPM factor.  I think the one off of Primordius is aroudn 3.00.  However, Breath and UVLS have an RPPM factor of 0.525.  Wush's is 0.588, and Cha-Ye's is 0.81 * (1+your crit chance).  Remember, Cha-Ye's has half the duration of Breath, hence the higher proc modifier.  Cha-Ye's will have approximately twice the chance to proc at the beginning of a fight than Breath or Unerring.  There will be no more 'baseline opener' for specs anymore, because you'll want to time your most powerful abilities when your trinkets are live and that will be much more random than it is now.

 

The protection formula is very clunky and confusing.  The main gyst of it is that your trinket will have an increased chance to proc at around 1.5 times the expected proc rate.  Remember, you can calculate expected proc rate using the formula I list on the first page.  For my Haste level of 29.5% in raid, the expected proc rate of my 543 Unerring Vision of Lei Shen is 0.525 * 1.295 * 1.15 = 0.782.  This converts to an average proc rate of 76.7 seconds.  At 1.5x this, I will get a proc modifier greatly increasing my chance to proc.  Every 1% of the expected proc rate (EPR), your proc chance goes up 3%.  The math looks somewhat like this:

 

76.7 sec = average proc rate

153.4 sec = bonus proc rate start

 

From 153.4 sec, every 0.767 seconds, my proc rate goes up 3%.  In live data, I've witnessed proc intervals of 3:00 maximized out several times.  Basically, the very worst you could ever get is your trinket not proccing until this proc reaches 100%.  This would occur 33.3x your average proc rate, or in my case, 153.4 + (33.3 * 0.767) = 178.94 seconds.  Notice that this translates to 2:58.94 which is as close as you can get timewise to the 3:00 I've seen in logs.  This means that to get a guaranteed Unerring proc, your raid would need to wait 3:00 after your last proc wtih a 543 ilvl (adjust to find your own value based on Haste and ilvl).

 

Now, the bad news.  You can see that my average proc rate, at 543 ilvl with 30% Haste, gives me the bonus proc rate start time of 153.4 seconds.  This is a bit higher than Blizzard's new standard 90 seconds.  What does this mean?  You will have no more of a chance to proc your trinket at the start of a fight than you would any normal period of time in combat ranging over a 153.4 second window.  Under the worst conditions, note that you could not see a proc until 178.94 - 90 = 88.94 seconds into the fight.  Yes, with a Heroic 543 Unerring, it could take almost a minute and a half to proc Perfect Aim.  These values are similar for Wushoolay's and Breath of the Hydra.  

 

What does it mean?  If this goes live, you won't be banking on guaranteed crits.  The value of Unerring for Demo plummets.  The value of all the trinkets plummet for planned openers.  HOPEFULLY Blizzard just gives us ICD trinkets like we had in MSV and HoF.  They were much more manageable and didn't break the system.  If we're forced to continue to deal with RPPM trinkets on top of this new system, you can kiss your 500k+ openers goodbye unless you get EXTREMELY lucky. 

[Zagam 1,982]

All trinkets have been updated with their proc rates, names, and item level versions. 

[Sifon 25]

Second cleave trinket procs from heals so definately there is something wrong. Also int + crit proc trinket haven't been named yet, there is a high chance that it won't make it to live.

[Zagam 1,982]

Seems odd to have 5 trinkets from a tier, so I was hoping it'd get scraped.  I'm really pumped they added Intellect procs to the cleave/multistrike trinkets. 

 

T14

Light of the Cosmos

Relic of Yulon

Essence of Terror

 

T15

Wushoolays

Unerring

Breath

Cha-Ye's

(Volatile Talisman)

 

T16

Black Blood

Bindings

Multistrike

Cleave

 

I guess they could add another one, but I don't see how it would compete with these other ones.  It's going to make it so you want all 4 of them, though.

[JvChequer 43]

PBI is BIS, period.

 

But I really don't know which we can choose in second slot.

 

The cleave one is great for a lot of adds, the sinergy with the legendary cloack can be OP.

 

For Single target, BB looks amazing, and the flat haste increases more 300~ with the PBI sinergy, besides the huge proc that can just give you TONS of Int, but Multistrike it's a flat dps percentage increase.

 

Maybe with more gear, Multristrike looks better.

 

Dunno, I really need some theorycrafters here to help me xD

Edited August 3, 2013 by JvChequer

[Zagam 1,982]

The math is done, I did it on the first post.  It'll be fight dependent.

[Sifon 25]

A little note, PBoI increases crit damage to %213 not %226. It makes  your critical strikes hit %13 more, doesn't double dip. 

[Zagam 1,982]

It says it increases critical strike damage by 13%.  The meta gems that increase your critical strike damage by 3% increase your critical strike damage by 206% of a normal hit.  The factor is multiplicative with the 2x multiplier.

[Sifon 25]

Are you sure? I remember that meta gem was %203 too and I recall someone tested on PTR and said %213. I can test it sometime today.

[JvChequer 43]

It's 213% tested on MMO-Champion, at least.

[Omaric 246]

I think I'm going to try to pick up the heroic crit trinket from Animus before 5.4 rolls around.  The higher proc rate will help me more as Demonology, plus the added crit rating to bypass the crit I lose with the overall nerfed gameplay mechanics of UVoLS.

[tassadar 1]

Please advise me, what trinket is best for 525 Destro: 530 Volatile or 510 Cha-Ye? Paired with 530 Wushu.

Edited August 7, 2013 by tassadar

[JvChequer 43]

510 Cha-ye

[Meeloh 0]

Hey guys... first post here. I'm confused with the changes to RPPM trinkets and the way the 5.4 trinkets will work. Are the new ones more like ICD where you can plan more or less when they're gonna proc? Also, I've had bad luck with drops and I stopped playing for like 3 months so I'm stuck with Breath and LeiShen trinkets (both LFR :( ), which should I replace first for a new 5.4 trinket if I want to play Affliction next patch (offspec Demo)?

 Thanks in advance.

[Zagam 1,982]

Read the trinkets description on my trinket page or ptr.wowhead.com.  some of them have ICDs and some have RPPM procs.  you're going to want to replace any and all of the 5.3 trinkets with any and all of the 5.4 trinkets ASAP. 

[Kazistrasz 216]

Meeloh, the change is like so (if I get anything wrong, someone correct me as I'm only going off of what I've read):

 

In the past: Trinkets all had a static chance to proc and an ICD (like you referenced). You could generally count on them to proc within 5-10 seconds of coming off ICD since you've got a lot of things hitting the boss. This was given up in favor of "slightly" (read: absurdly) more random proc natures with RPPM "averaging" a certain number of procs per minute based on each ability's cast time, tick time, and other stupid, overly-mathy things. This has angered many people and has widely been regarded as a bad move.

 

Currently: RPPM trinkets increase chance to proc the longer they go without proc, as a sort of "bad luck protection". After a certain length of time, they will proc no matter what. So, at the beginning of a pull, none of your stuff has gone off recently, meaning it will all go off at the start. This is how we are able to plan openers to be going into meta and casting Doom right as UVLS procs at the start, and how we have all of our procs go off at the beginning and we're putting up ridiculously powerful DoTs.

 

In 5.4: When you begin combat, RPPM procs will have their last proc timers set to 90 seconds. This means they will no longer all proc in unison off the bat. Different RPPM rates with different "bad luck protection" will be guaranteed to go off at different times. Say your Breath trinket is guaranteed on a 2-minute basis (making this up since I don't know). This means when you start the fight, it will have the higher chance to proc from being 90 seconds since last proc, and it will guaranteedly go off within the first 30 seconds. Now pretend your UVLS is only guaranteed on a 6-minute basis (again, making it up). It will have the normal tiny chance to proc at the start from the 90 second timer. It won't be guaranteed to go off until 4.5 minutes into the fight.

 

Rather than simply doing something to nerf or fix UVLS, Blizzard decided to make sweeping nerfs to everything under the guise of, "everything at the start [like we've had for years with the old ICD trinkets] is breaking the game." Oh, and in case that weren't enough, in the event you do get a UVLS proc, they removed our Glyph of Everlasting Affliction to try to make sure you rarely last until the next proc.

 

In response to your question, you will want to get rid of your UVLS first. I, too, have the LFR version. While the 535/541 versions *might* be somewhat usable at the start of Siege, our 502 version is going to essentially be like not having a trinket proc at all. 

 

Question about PBI:

 

Can we get a definite clarification on how the amplification works, especially in regards to raid buffs? It seems like it's either got to be not as good as it sounds or way too good (i.e., buff only base rating or stack manipulatively with everything a la spell haste buff).

[Zagam 1,982]

It's pretty simplistic and does exactly what it says.  If you have 10,000 Haste rating and you equip the 553 version that amplifies stats by 6%, you'd then have 10,600 Haste rating.  Same with Mastery.  For Crit damage, it's calculated similarly to how Crits worked with Crit meta gems.  Crit damage modifier is x2.00.  The meta gem used to be 3% chance, but the Crit damage multiplier wasn't 2.03, it was 2.00 x 1.03 = 2.06, so it increased Crit damage by 6%.  For the Amplification proc, you'll be seeing a Crit modifier of 2.00 x 1.06 = 2.12, or a 12% increased Crit damage.  This trinket will obviously scale as your gear gets better.  It will be BiS for all caster classes.

[Sifon 25]

Read the trinkets description on my trinket page or ptr.wowhead.com.  some of them have ICDs and some have RPPM procs.  you're going to want to replace any and all of the 5.3 trinkets with any and all of the 5.4 trinkets ASAP. 

 

I'm gonna keep my 549 wush until heroics probably.

 

Also I'm almost %100 sure that crit modifiers doesn't double dip, %3 modifier is %203 damage.

[Meeloh 0]

So now we won't have to rely on huge openers. What about the meta gem? Is it still gonna be worth it considering the change on haste-rppm trinket relationship?

[Zagam 1,982]

I'm gonna keep my 549 wush until heroics probably.

 

Also I'm almost %100 sure that crit modifiers doesn't double dip, %3 modifier is %203 damage.

Wush is being nerfed to a 10 second duration with the Int proc increasing every 1 second.  It's RPPM adjustment has been modified to make it so it procs 2x as often.  It'll be a solid choice for Affliction, but not Demonology or Destruction.  Crit modifiers were proven to work as I described with the 3% increased critical damage modifier from the previous meta gems.  Why wouldn't this trinket work the same?  It's not a 'double-dip'...it's just how the calculation is done.  If it said it increased Crit chance by 6%, it wouldn't double dip.  It's modifying the Crit damage which is calculated through WoW's mechanical critical damage formula which is damage = 2.0 * modifiers which means you get 2x the effect listed.

 

So now we won't have to rely on huge openers. What about the meta gem? Is it still gonna be worth it considering the change on haste-rppm trinket relationship?

"Rely" on huge openers is a manipulation of how most heroic raiders approached this system.  They didn't "rely" on the procs.  The procs happened.  They used the procs to the most advantagous possible strategy to maximize damage.  It just made the opener important and made not getting procs at the beginning really detrimental to your overall contribution.  The Meta gem is a free Bloodlust-equivalent proc at random intervals.  As a DoT class, you can snapshot this and extend the duration far past its 10 second window.  Of course the meta will remain the absolute BiS for your meta slot.

[Meeloh 0]

and now the chance for all those procs to align at pull has been greatly reduced right?

[Zagam 1,982]

Correct.  Anything with an RPPM factor of less than 1 will absolutely not proc at the beginning.  UVLS's RPPM is .525.  It is guaranteed to proc with an interval of 3:10, but with the timer set to 1:30 on pull, you could see a proc, but you could also not see a proc until 1:40 into the fight.  It is unrealistic to last 1:40 just as much as it is to see the proc at the pull.  You'll be most likely to see it somewhere between 0:30 and 1:00 into a fight.

 

Same goes with other low RPPM trinkets.  High RPPM trinkets will have a much higher chance to proc at the pull, but most of these are ramp up trinkets (think Wushoolay's).

[Meeloh 0]

Ah awesome I get it... thanks a lot man.

[Caxamillion 0]

Maths question time!

 

Given heroic UVLS upgraded to 2/2 (roughly 0.67 procs a minute) and the new change to RPPM trinkets setting the timer at 120 seconds. What is the maximum amount of time into the fight that the trinket can proc. How does haste adjust this period of time? At what level of haste can we expect procs off the bat again?