FoF Pooling

[Sikkz 27]

Wanted to get some input on an aspect of the mage class that I see varying information for.

 

My question revolves around the two most common ways mages handle their FoF and BF procs.  Almost all mages handle these procs one of two ways:

 

1.) Use each FoF and BF proc immediately when they arise.  Do not pool any charges at any time.

 

2.) Save one FoF proc until BF procs, so it benefits from the 25% damage increase given by our 2-set bonus.  

 

I have seen mages go to war with each other trying to defend each of these styles of play.  The IV guide for frost mages leans more towards scenario number one, yet I see some of the best frost mages out there swear by scenario number two.

 

My question is: What do you think? Which of the two play-styles do you use, and why not the other one? Do you have or know of any data that supports or refutes either one?  

Edited June 1, 2014 by Scottylol

[Berlinia 168]

Hello there Scotty

I am going to take my own gear profile
Haste: 50%
Mastery: 84%
Crit: 24%

Spellpower: 52.000

 

We can not use Lhivera's library wholly due to having PBoI messing with our crit Amp.
So let's figure out our own function.

With 0 Crit using Lhivera's Library: 126263

Having 24% Crit: As such 123906*0,24*1,097 = 33242

Total DPET = 159505

 

Using the 2pac your DPET get's raised by 20% so TotallyTotalDPET = 158505*1,20 = 191406

 

Now let's get to Icelance

 

For icelance we can't use Lhivera's library at all except to calculate Icelance at 0% Crit and without FoF's.
Icelance DPET at 50% Haste = 24521

FoF Icelance at 0% Crit: (24521+0,50*24521*1,097)*1,25*4 = 189852

FoF Icelance at 24% Crit: (24521+(2*0,24+0,50)*24521*1,097)*1,25*4 = 254412

 

So TotallyToalDPET with 2pac = 254412*1,20 = 305294

 

I think anyone can see the conclusion here ^^
If I have made any mistake, please point me to it as I am watching The Vampire Diaries while writing this ^^
 

Cheers
Berlinia
 

Edit: it's 25% on 20% but then the difference becomes even bigger
Excuse me

Edited June 1, 2014 by Berlinia

[Oltier 471]

Wanted to get some input on an aspect of the mage class that I see varying information for.

 

My question revolves around the two most common ways mages handle their FoF and BF procs.  Almost all mages handle these procs one of two ways:

 

1.) Use each FoF and BF proc immediately when they arise.  Do not pool any charges at any time.

 

2.) Save one FoF proc until BF procs, so it benefits from the 25% damage increase given by our 2-set bonus.  

 

I have seen mages go to war with each other trying to defend each of these styles of play.  The IV guide for frost mages leans more towards scenario number one, yet I see some of the best frost mages out there swear by scenario number two.

 

My question is: What do you think? Which of the two play-styles do you use, and why not the other one? Do you have or know of any data that supports or refutes either one?  

Definitely scenario number 2 with set bonus.

 

IV guide "suggests" the other, because we cannot assume that everybody has the 2 set bonus of this tier. If they don't have it, pooling FoF charges gives a high chance for mistake (wasting FoF procs).

 

The only thing against scenario 2 with the set bonus is the same. You might waste procs, which is bad obviously. But if you don't waste procs, because your reflexes are good (like mine muhaha), then no one can convince me not to pool one FoF until I get a BF.

 

However, no one should ever pool a BF. Use it immediately (unless you are using Frost Bomb, but that is like.. one fight...)

 

PS.: I don't know if anything I said makes sense. I feel like I am watching myself typing in TPS PoV, and I didn't even smoke oO

[Berlinia 168]

 

 

PS.: I don't know if anything I said makes sense. I feel like I am watching myself typing in TPS PoV, and I didn't even smoke oO

yaaaa I am typing while on LSD most of the time ^^

[Sikkz 27]

Thanks for taking some time elaborate, it's much appreciated!

 

Obviously my main concern pooling a FoF charge is the possibility of wasting charges, since we will be maxed on FoF charges quite often doing this.  I HATE having two stacks of FoF and do my best to avoid it at all costs, so I have always been reluctant to pool a FoF charge and save it for when BF procs.  However, I trust your guy's judgement. 

 

Thanks again for the help, cheers!

Edited June 2, 2014 by Scottylol

[Oltier 471]

Thanks for taking some time elaborate, it's much appreciated!

 

Obviously my main concern pooling a FoF charge is the possibility of wasting charges, since we will be maxed on FoF charges quite often doing this.  I HATE having two stacks of FoF and do my best to avoid it at all costs, so I have always been reluctant to pool a FoF charge and save it for when BF procs.  However, I trust your guy's judgement. 

 

Thanks again for the help, cheers!

Pool only 1 charge. :)

[Berlinia 168]

You have to remember how FoF Charges work Scotty.
 

Why you don't pool BF procs:

BF procs through bomb damage which you have no control over as you want 100% uptime on the bomb. If you pool 1 charge of BF you have a chance at every bomb tick that you waste it by a proc overide.

 

Why you do pool FoF procs:

FoF procs off from two things during your single target rotation. Frozen Orb and Frostbolt. Even having two FoF charges doesn't risk you from overriding one if you don't cast one of these two spells (a.k.a Brain Freeze procs continuously). Staying at 1 charge in order to always have something for your brainfreeze does not pose a risk as long as you do the following:

 

Situation: You are at 0 FoF Charges

-Cast Frostbolt --> 1 FoF Charge

-Cast Frostbolt --> 2 FoF Charge

-Assuming you didn't have time to react at that second proc you cast another frostbolt.
Due to Frostbolts traveltime and the fact that it triggers a GCD makes it that now that this second frostbolt has just been fired you can Fire your second FoF charge which gives 1 out of two scenarios.
Frostbolt hits and generated an FoF bringing you back at 2 FoF's while Icelance hits as well making the charge not wasted.

Frostbolt hits and did not generate an FoF which means you are good to go.

 

When you have Frozen Orb up things get abit more tricky as you might get infinite charges of FoF (especially when there are more than 1 targets). But what tends to happen at these situations is that you spam Icelance because you get overwhelmed by the procs and you might even go even further and cast an extra Icelance without FoF. 

 

Now consider: Do you cast extra non-FoF'd-Icelances? Then always Pool FoF's even during Frozen Orb.
Do you not cast extra non-FoF'd Icelances? Again pool FoF's because apparently your reactiontimes are good enough for you to be able to do so .

 

There is really no reason not to pool. It's a dps gain and the potential overiden charge you can control due to how FoF mechanics work.

Cheers
Berlinia

 

Edit: Oh and oltier what you typed makes sense. I just read it in the morning when the sun was out and I wasn't stoned and yea it makes perfect sense!

Edited June 2, 2014 by Berlinia

[Sikkz 27]

I think I misspoke, sorry for the confusion.  I understand that you should only pool one charge.  What I'm saying is that, by pooling a charge, we will inherently be maxed out on FoF charges more often compared to someone who doesn't pool a charge.  More time at maxed FoF charges = a higher risk of charges being wasted.  That is my only concern, but I do believe that the benefits outweigh the pitfalls.

 

Berlinia, your analysis does make sense, and I appreciate it a lot!  I see now that, if reacted to properly, you can minimize or even remove the risk of charges being wasted. However, in my experience, I don't think I have ever had a fight where I react to my procs perfectly.  There are always a couple times throughout a fight where I will slack a little on my reaction time because heroic Siegecrafter seems to be targeting me with every single mechanic in his arsenal.  However, that is irrelevant, and you guys have definitely given me the answer I need.  I really appreciate it! 

Edited June 2, 2014 by Scottylol

[Berlinia 168]

Yea I understood your question.
The difference lies in the nature of FoF charge capping and BF charge capping.

FoF Charge Capping you have control over (as long as Frozen Orb is not up), which makes it so that even beeing at 2 FoF charges isn't a dps loss unless you get an additional one (which would require you to cast a frostbolt to do so roughly 1/0.15 = 7 times). This is an estimate but I hope you get the drill. If you do not feel free to ask another question on it and I will expand
BF charge capping is a shitty thing to do as every single bomb tick has a chance to override your BF's.

 

So i understand the concern you have but you can be able to have 100% control over the situation. However if you are not skilled enough to control it all the time (I know for a fact that I can't do it all the time) it's still worth it wasting a potential one charge to do this as you might not even get.

You could even mathematically state that the DPET loss for doing that would be 0.15*IcelanceDPET = 254412 * 0.15 =38161 if you cast one additional frostbolt that procs a third FoF effectively overriding one charge.

 

The DPET gain by pooling charges is roughly 110k which is around 3 times more than not pooling them.
So yea
Always pool!

Edit: Didn't see your edited post :) Still the maths part on this post should convince you to pool :P

 

Edited June 2, 2014 by Berlinia

[Sikkz 27]

Yes, that makes sense.  Regardless of being able to perfect your reaction time, pooling a charge will still yield better results overall.  I have been really happy with my dps output lately even without pooling FoF charges, so I'm really excited to see the benefits that this will have.  Thanks so much for your time Berlinia, I owe you one!

[Eliadann 0]

I love this thread!

 

I want to bring up something I am giving some thoughts lately.

 

How to handle FoF and BF charges while Tempus Repit proc (30% haste) is up for 10 seconds.

 

Assuming that before TR proc we are already at 50% haste, casting instant spell out of FoF or BF will NOT benefit from 30% haste up. However, casting Frostbolt will benefit from 30% haste up, thus increasing DPS. Therefore, if we get a proc of TR, should we pool FoF and/or BF charges until TR buff is over?

 

FoF charges. IF we are handling more than one mob and they are close to each other, it might be worth to cast right away Icelance to take advantage of splitting ice glyph. However if we are handling one mob only, I am not really sure as we are reducing casts of Frostbolts boosted up by 30% haste.

 

BF charges. As Berlinia points out, not using a BF charge right away causes that subsecuent tics of the bomb cannot generate a BF, which would be a DPS loss. However this is a potential loss of DPS, versus an actual loss of DPS coming from NOT casting a Frostbolt with 30% extra haste and casting instant Frostfire bolt instead.

 

Thoughts? Thanks!

 

- Elia -

[Berlinia 168]

Hello Eliadann,

 

You bring up a point I had not considered so I will try to tell my thoughts of it here. 

So let's work it out again with the 30% Haste buff included.
Head over to Lhivera's Library

Frostbolt DPET: 131754

Icelance DPET stays the same past GCD cap which is: 305.294 post Amplification.

In order to work out what you are saying, one needs to work out the DPET of Frostfirebolt pre-amp at 0%crit which is

219.590

 

Now assuming 24% crit
Frostbolt DPET: 131754*1,20 + 131.754*0,24*1,097 = 158.104 + 34688 = 192.793

at 80% Haste, Living bomb has +4 ticks (source is AMR), which means that LB ticks over 12 / 4+4 = 12/8 = 1,5 seconds.

In the 9 seconds that LB will be ticking assuming you cast LB the instant TR procced minus the GCD you spent doing so, LB will have ticked 9/1,5 = 6 times (this is not completely correct but it's an average).

You have 30% chance of BF procs of each tick which means 0,30 * 219.590 = 65.877 damage per tick that would be in your potential Frostfirebolt.

The damage gain from Frostbolt at 80% haste is roughly 1.300 per cast. So now every 1,50 seconds (which means every tick of an LB bomb if snapshotted at TR proc), you lose a potential 65.877 damage, to gain 1.300 damage.
My conclusion would be you shouldn't follow that practice.
However I am not 100% sure if this post is completely correct. If anyone can comment on my math and my assumptions that would be great. 

Also keep in mind that I am european. Dots in numbers are for me indication of a thousand. That's why 1.000 means one-thousand. A coma means a number smaller than 1. As such 0,50 and not 0.50.

Cheers
Berlinia

 

Edit:  I have a feeling my initial post used some wrongs numbers in Lhivera's calculator. I will run them through at another time cause I have absolutely no interest in doing this on my birthday :)
So you can expect an update somewhere around tomorrow.

Edited June 14, 2014 by Berlinia

[Eliadann 0]

Thanks for the quick reply and happy birthday, Berlinia :p

 

In the meantime, I will continue in shock at the huge amount of work that took building such a resource as http://lhiveras-library.com/

 

Cheers,

 

- Elia -

[durrtygoodz 60]

I can't even digest what Berlinia is trying to say :O

 

You need 110% mastery in order to ignore FoF procs during meta.

[Berlinia 168]

We are talking about ignoring BF procs Durrty :P
And the nature of my posts in general is to try and make people understand why they should do something :P
 

[Berlinia 168]

I found what made me think I had made a miscalculation.
I forgot to insert the Invocation buff on Lhivera's Calculator on my posts after Elia's.

I will be updating with the new data.
Cheers
Berlinia

[Belicosa 11]

Speaking for myself only, I find that I do much higher dps when I am not obsessing over this proc or that and playing my best I know while paying attention to the fight. I've seen too many players (not just Mages) die in fires, etc. because they were only watching cast bars and procs, like some healers do. What I'm trying to say is that if I sacrifice a bit of dps not worrying too much about procs and stay alive the entire fight, my total damage done will be exponentially higher than if I am busy watching cast bars and procs and stand in sha splash and die.

 

Just my $.02

[Berlinia 168]

Hey Belicosa,
To further expand upon your post you should only FoF pool when you can manage to obey mechanics as well. FoF pooling is not an excuse to ignore boss mechanics. You can go Arcane to do that :)
Cheers

Berlinia