efficiency

[bluejaye]

i've read a lot on these boards about how to maximize dps. i dinged 95 yesterday, and took my shiny new rk 1 spells to windsong. i used a multibind hotkey for voa spear rk 1, hot spear rk 2, and bolt rk 2. the mobs lasted long enough that on most mobs i started with rs, but not all by any means. the long and the short of it is that there's no way my mana could hold up for a lesson burn, much less an extended group xp session.

i decided to take a look at the numbers on alla, with a mindset to maximize efficiency rather than dps. i'll make a burn spellset for nameds, but how can i sustain dps for a grind? these numbers come from alla.

voa spear rk 1: 18111 damage/3097 mana = 5.85
hot spear rk 2: 14271 damage/2999 mana = 4.75
voa bolt rk 2: 10180 damage/1526 mana = 6.67
voa fickle rk 1: 7301 dama/1105 mana = 6.61
burning sands rk 1: 6062 damage/ 1078 mana = 5.62

voa surge rk 1: 48 hits * 2712 per hit = 130176/2459 mana = 50.69
magma blaze (new summoned nuke): 10 hits * 3996 per hit = 39960/3147 mana = 12.70
paradox (upgraded nuke clickie): 5 hits * 7649 per hit = 38245/2504 mana = 15.27

hot magic nuke rk 2: 5839 damage / 934 mana = 6.25
voa magic nuke rk 1: 7449 damage / 999 mana = 7.46

my initial thought is that the spear line can compete in efficiency only with a fickle proc. this, of course, doesn't take into account any percentage based aa, these are only the base numbers. yes, it's all a bit obvious, but thought some others might like to see what ive come up with.

[svenalo]

You need to factor in mana return augs and mana reduction aa's/focus items/clicks regardless of how you go about this...and what you need/want to do will be different if you are soloing versus grouping, as your gear changes, and as your aa count increases. You also need to get out of the mindset that you can nuke like a banshee and let the pets do some work.

[Voragath]

He's looking for the best sustained setup for dpm not dps. Anything that affects one of the spells he listed affects all as far as dpm/dps goes (well, dd's anyway).

I agree with Sven that, when trying to figure out the best setup if you are maxing dmg and minimizing mana costs, you'll need to figure on some discs and proc augs.

On the other hand, if all your looking at is best dpm, all those discs and proc augs won't change what you have already discovered. But you missed the RS pet. It has a huge mana cost but if you cast it at the beginning and it's dead by the time the mob dies, it's a nice little bit of dmg. That one you'll have to parse out yourself, probably, based on your EM focus to determine if the dpm is what you want from it.

[bluejaye]

i don't solo often. i'll usually log an alt if i'm soloin for a bit of a break from serious eq. i was actually hoping some other mages might give their experiences for spellsets for grinding rather than burning. for a long time, i've alternated fickle and bolt and lived by the procs. gom is either rs, spear, or surge depending on the timing. flames of power is always spear unless the mob is so close to dead that it's better to save it for the first nuke on the next mob. i tried starting every fight with rs, but didn't have the mana to sustain that. even using the above line up, i need to med before the cleric, which was always my personal cap for mana usage. (no way my group should have to wait for me to med, but they will most likely want the healer to have some mana.) we've gotten some fun new clickies, and having the two spears releases us from the long recast time of having just one. mana regen is the biggest issue i have atm, so any thoughts about how to best use these without needing to med constantly would be appreciated.

[bluejaye]

He's looking for the best sustained setup for dpm not dps. Anything that affects one of the spells he listed affects all as far as dpm/dps goes (well, dd's anyway).

I agree with Sven that, when trying to figure out the best setup if you are maxing dmg and minimizing mana costs, you'll need to figure on some discs and proc augs.

On the other hand, if all your looking at is best dpm, all those discs and proc augs won't change what you have already discovered. But you missed the RS pet. It has a huge mana cost but if you cast it at the beginning and it's dead by the time the mob dies, it's a nice little bit of dmg. That one you'll have to parse out yourself, probably, based on your EM focus to determine if the dpm is what you want from it.

i didn't put rs or the clickie pets in here because they don't have listed damage on alla, basically. swarm pets definitely have a role in this, it's just not as obvious. this is something i threw together before work the other day. percentage based effects, such as crits and scm, will have a larger effect on larger numbers, so they will skew the higher damage and mana cost spells to be more efficient than base values. i wouldn't be surprised to find that the voa spear receives enough of a boost to be comperable with fickle, for instance, but that burning sands never will. i suspect that based on having evocation specialization, i'll find the new summoned pet clickies will be best saved for a burn, although the summoned blazing orb and paradox will still be worth using regularly. surge looks to be a keeper. (where are you worn off message?)

here's what i have to factor in so far.
AA:
SCM
crit percentage
crit increase
twincast (not improved)
primary spec
secondary spec
(not using gom because might as well get max damage rather than think about efficiency.)

worn effects:
fire focus
magic focus
mana preservation detrimental
mana preservation beneficial
mana return aug
mana return weapon

what am i forgetting? things like first spire and fire core i use for burns, so i dont think i want to include them at this stage.

[bluejaye]

i've spent the day playin with the numbers and watching football. i made a lot of assumptions about the order in which calculations are made, some of which probably aren't accurate. thanks to all (wire, voragath, rasper, and mindrix among others) whose research i shamelessly ganked for these calculations. major assumptions i made include:

mana preserve is additive (added together percentage decreases from scm, worn mana preservation, and specialization.)

sympathetic alleviating burst procs stack, each with 10% chance to return mana. these were not included in clickie nukes.

max crit rate is 47% with voa aa

max crit increase with voa aa is 115%

twincast was applied at the end, with 4% chance to twincast. this included paradox and magma blaze. i think they both can twincast, but not entirely sure.

spell damage formula was spelldmg*(cast + recast)/7. spell damage was added in after worn damage focus was calculated and before crits were calculated. spell damage was not included in clickie nukes.

expected values were found assuming the average focus value (45% for fire damage focus, for instance, since i am currently using 20-70% focus to 95).

with my current set up, i've ranked the spells from most efficient to least. this will change for everyone, since it takes into account my own specializations, worn spell damage etc. i don't raid, so i've only included group focus effects.

1. surge (78.9 dpm)
2. magma blaze (45.9 dpm)
3. paradox (38.1 dpm)
4. voa magic nuke (29.1 dpm)
5. fickle (26.44 dpm)
6. bolt (26.40 dpm)
7. hot magic nuke (24.7 dpm)
8. voa spear (22.7 dpm)
9. burning sands (22.5 dpm)
10. hot spear (18.6 dpm)

it seems to be that soe backed off a little bit from the nerf to spear during hot that increased its damage but disproportionately increased its mana cost as well. although the voa spear still ranks fairly low, it is more competitive with the other spells.

[Fleiss]

The biggest issue with you trying to apply straight forward math to it is the RNG and %s.

SCM and Specialization is fixed %(based on specialization number), worn M pres is RNG. They stack but due to worn M pres your % of savings will be all over the place.

M Pres and DD focus are based off RNG. The larger nukes with high mana cost will have more benefit than smaller nukes/lower mana cost the higher the RNG is for each. If you applied max % for DD foci or M pres your numbers will look completely dfferent. But it is not linear and both numbers are independant. It would take a lot of parsing DD and m use parsing to really know. Though your data is useful I am not sure 45% will hold true or not. I personally laughed when I saw them add the lower range to spell damage mods. I couldn't ever remember seeing a nuke I thought I only got a 1% or .1% mod to. Same goes for M pres. I don't have a bunch of parse data to show you to back that statement up but I have parsed with spec augs to determine m usage and used parses and don't rememberin seeing any of them low balled at .1% of the effect. Makes me tend to believe it will not average in the middle and there is a little more to the RNG than it average exactly in the middle. Just my observations though. Thanks for the data.

[Sillaen]

max crit rate is 47% with voa aa

Did I miss something? This is really very high. FoM18+PoK was ~32%. This would mean we got a 5% increase per tier going from FoM18 - FoM21 which is highly unlikely. Note, I haven't parsed the new one yet, so just speculating that getting 15% from the last 3 tiers is doubtful when it was only 31% from the 1st 18 tiers.

max crit increase with voa aa is 115%

This is correct.

I will take some time this week to update my spreadsheet with the VoA stuff and see what I come up with.

[Sillaen]

sympathetic alleviating burst procs stack, each with 10% chance to return mana. these were not included in clickie nukes.

Could someone please clarify this for me. If I have a primary with Sympathetic Alleviating Burst VII and an aug in said primary with Sympathetic Alleviating Burst III, do the mana returns stack (150+80 = 230 mana returned)?
Also, according to lucy, this is a 100% chance to trigger, not 10%. Is that not correct?

[Shardin]

Also, if you are soloing/moloing it may be better to maximize dps then go to OOC and med for 2 min.. your kill rate may be higher and obviously your mana regen is higher when ooc. You can't do this in a group though, unless you just sit out dps'ing for a mob.