phalczen Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 Greetings all, In light of the alacrity revelations a few months ago I've been pondering the optimal use of adrenals. Resources are scarce and if there are adrenals I can share between characters and disciplines that helps. Since I do end game content that is both at-level and level synced, there is a reason to be concerned about adrenals which boosts stats already being capped/nerfed by Level sync. I'm going to focus on the Sage versions of procs and abilities. The adrenal ostensibly meant for damage dealers, the "Attack" one that boosts Power but reduces healing by 20%, seems like it would be inferior to the crit or alacrity adrenal in level synced areas, but possibly even at end game. Same with the "Triage" one ostensibly meant for healers which boosts Force and Tech power but nerfs damage by 20%. Furthermore, in some content its either helpful or even necessary for healers to do some dps, and it would be nice to have an adrenal that would be efficacious regardless of whether you needed to do damage or heal. Finally, I am often needed to swap disciplines for my guild, and so in order to save on resources, having one adrenal that can function regardless of discipline is helpful. Some of the (outdated) healing guides on Dulfy mention use of the Efficacy adrenal of which the Advanced Polybiotic version boosts alacrity by 870 as BiS for healers. But, in light of the GCD breakpoints, I decided to re-explore this. TL, DR: It doesn't seem by math like the Alacrity Adrenal buffs alacrity % enough to get your HPS up, so it seems like critical adrenals should be better. Warning, lots of math below in the spoiler tag: So, in light of what we know about alacrity and the GCD, I asked the question if there was an Alacrity % at which we could get the activation (cast) time of Deliverance below the GCD. Since the base activation time of Deliverance is 2 seconds, it will never take more than two GCDs to cast, so what alacrity percentage could get us a cast time below the 1.3s GCD (which I usually run on my Sage healer) and get Deliverance off within a single GCD? The math tells us that one would need 55.04% alacrity to get the cast time of Deliverance down to 1.29s, so that's not achievable under current conditions. However, the base activation for Benevolence (our smaller core heal) is 1.5 seconds, and that's easily gotten down to 1.29 seconds under current stat budgets. Hence, there is really no way an Alacrity Adrenal could get our biggest single target zero cooldown heal off in one global cooldown, which makes it seem like the critical adrenal would be superior, especially in light of our 2 piece set bonus. So, I looked at Healing Trance. Healing trance has a cooldown of 9 seconds at base and channels four ticks over 2.7 seconds at base. Getting off extra ticks of healing trance sooner means you can potentially build up stacks of Resplendence sooner, and getting a healing trance 1 GCD sooner also means more healing ability output as well. At base, HT cools down and is available after 6 GCDs. With the 1.3s GCD I usually run, 6 GCDs last 7.8 seconds, and at 2036 alacrity rating my healing trance cooldown is 7.73 seconds, so still within 6 GCDs. Could I get HT down to 5 GCDs? Well, 5 GCDs would last 6.5 seconds, and a healing trance cooldown of 6.49 seconds requires an alacrity % of 38.67%. That alacrity % is possible, but only by using the 20% buff from Mental Alacrity. But even the buff isn't enough, you need 2513 alacrity rating also, which requires quite a bit of critical chance sacrifice on your gear OR to use the alacrity adrenal. However, 38.67% alacrity ALSO reduces your GCD to 1.1 seconds. Five GCDs at 1.1 second each last 5.5 seconds, which unfortunately is less than what you've lowered the HT cooldown to, 6.49 seconds. So, you can't really get off any more healing trances per minute than you would simply by reducing the GCD. Said another way, the Alacrity adrenal doesn't give you any extra opportunities to use healing trance even under Mental Alacrity. Does it give any more ticks of healing trance? If you need to cut the HT channel short for some reason, getting in as many ticks as possible would be important. Well, two ticks of healing trance at base only need 1.35 seconds. Current alacrity recommendations fall well within that margin to ensure you have at least two ticks of HT in a 1.3 second GCD. So, is there an alacrity % that could get a third tick of HT within one GCD? Briefly, the answer is no. At base, three ticks of HT require 2.03 seconds, so to get three ticks squeezed into 1.29 seconds requires an alacrity % of 56.98%, which isn't even possible with buffs. So the Alacrity Adrenal does not give me any more ticks or use of healing trance without. Now, of course, in pvp, having to stand still to get off a Deliverance is a big problem … but you cannot use biochem adrenals in pvp areas anyway! So, any benefit an alacrity adrenal would have for healers would have to be in pve encounters. If I am not getting more ticks in, or getting casts off within a single GCD, I can't see the effect making a difference over the long run. In theory, getting Deliverance casted a few hundredths of a second before my tank dies is important, but in practice, has that really saved anyone? I mean, can you honestly point to a MM operation where your tank would have lived if your deliverance activation was 1.67 seconds instead of 1.72 seconds? So, it leads me to ask you all: is the alacrity adrenal really BiS for sage healers, in the 5.9.1 era? Is it useful for any class, really? If you are a Seer Sage player that does a mix of level synced and at-level content, and you want an adrenal you could use for dps or heals, isn't the critical adrenal be best in slot? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RikuvonDrake Posted May 26, 2018 Share Posted May 26, 2018 I am always interested in new thoughts regarding gearing and usage of consumables, but I feel that your argument for using either Alacrity or Critical, instead of the Triage adrenal doesn't really hold up, I have summarized your arguments below. Healers often need to do some dps and triage adrenal hinders this Nice to have an adrenal that can boost both HPS and/or DPS Save you money when you want to respec dps Naturally, this feels quite weird, yea I agree with you that healers quite often have globals over to deal damage, even in Nightmare both healers can easily have 1k-1.5k DPS depending on the skill and gear of the players in the team, but I hardly ever feel the need for increased healing and damage overlaps, in particular for the short duration (15 seconds) the adrenal lasts. Reusable consumables made by Biochem can be quite helpful, having an attack adrenal as well as a triage adrenal will ensure you can swap around depending on if you are DPS spec or Healing spec if you wish to save credits. However, for now, Triage adrenal is by far the more superior adrenal for healing, if you wish to readjust your available boost of starts, a Boundless Ages relic seems to be, by far, the superior choice instead of swapping to suboptimal adrenals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phalczen Posted May 26, 2018 Author Share Posted May 26, 2018 I am always interested in new thoughts regarding gearing and usage of consumables, but I feel that your argument for using either Alacrity or Critical, instead of the Triage adrenal doesn't really hold up, I have summarized your arguments below. Actually, I wasn't making an argument for ever using an Alacrity adrenal. The recommendation for an alacrity adrenal came from an older Dulfy sage/sorc healer guide that seemed to indicate the alacrity adrenal was BiS, but that was all before we knew how the GCD was rounded up. Based on the math, it doesn't look like Alacrity % would ever reach a point where I could get an important heal back one global cooldown sooner, get a key heal off within one GCD, or get more ticks of a HoT off sooner. It seems like at current levels, the Alacrity adrenal really doesn't help at all. But, I do know that most people recommend, for example, tertiary stat augments over mastery/power augments, and crit crystals over mastery/power color crystals. I would presume that there is a certain threshold amount of mastery or power, call it X. A set of augments amount of Mastery, or Power, below that amount X would be better spent in critical rating. But a number Y of say power much greater than X, say from a buff or a proc, or in this case, an adrenal, results in a larger dps or hps increase than you'd get from Y amount of critical rating. So since 14 augments worth of 96 Mastery is 1344 points of mastery, it seems most people would recommend that 1344 points be better spent in tertiary stats … enough accuracy to reach 110%, enough alacrity to reach the 1.3s GCD threshold, and the rest in crit. For most dps specs that ends up being about six 228-rating augments worth of critical rating, so 576 points. I'm inferring that 576 points of critical rating is superior to 576 mastery points, in terms of increasing overall dps or hps. 576 must be below that threshold X. Healers, however, have a lot more room since they don't need the accuracy. They could get another 3 augments' worth of points to play with for a total of 864. I've not seen people recommend healers equipping mastery or power augments over critical, so I'm inferring 864 is also under that threshold X. But, is 870 below that threshold? It's so close to what most healing classes have to play with on their augments that it makes me wonder if you need a lot more power from the Attack or Triage adrenals before you'd surpass Critical. I've not done the math on this, only enough math to see if the alacrity adrenal made any difference, which I conclude it doesn't. TL, DR: Has anyone done the math comparing the difference in dps/hps from an extra 870 points of critical rating compared to an extra 870 points of Power? Its a little more than nine 228-rating augments worth of points, and most people think nine Critical augments are superior to nine Overkill augments for dps/hps, hence my question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kissingaiur Posted June 3, 2018 Share Posted June 3, 2018 (edited) I just worked on a stat guide using a lot of the old theorycrafters info. You should read bants work on forums because majority of this stuff always has been figured out, math included. Bant basically did the math on how much dps/hps you get from each augment to figure out which stats was more optimal. For healers, the amount of hps you gain from master/power is slightly lower then crit/alacrity. That’s why healers only stack alacrity/crit. The amount of crit, for example, you would need for it to start being worse then a point of master is around like 3500 crit (an absurd amount). Alacrity is a lower amount but still enough to make mastery/power non-optimal to stack with the current stat pool. Edited June 4, 2018 by kissingaiur Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phalczen Posted June 5, 2018 Author Share Posted June 5, 2018 (edited) I just worked on a stat guide using a lot of the old theorycrafters info. You should read bants work on forums because majority of this stuff always has been figured out, math included. Bant basically did the math on how much dps/hps you get from each augment to figure out which stats was more optimal. For healers, the amount of hps you gain from master/power is slightly lower then crit/alacrity. That’s why healers only stack alacrity/crit. The amount of crit, for example, you would need for it to start being worse then a point of master is around like 3500 crit (an absurd amount). Alacrity is a lower amount but still enough to make mastery/power non-optimal to stack with the current stat pool. Right Hottie, which is why I posed the question of the thread. I am wondering if the adrenals follow the same principles as augments … in other words, is boosting Critical Rating from an adrenal superior to boosting Force Tech power? RikuvonDrake says it isn't. Bant's model never accounted for the GCD rounding, because we never knew about it, and given that, there is room for extra crit in most builds. I laid out the math for why the Alacrity adrenal does not get anyone to a new GCD breakpoint in the OP, making a case for why either the Crit adrenal or the Power adrenals would be better. So, the only question remaining is if 870 Crit Rating for 15 sec is superior to 870 F/T Power for heals, or really any class. EDIT: Also, most people still recommend FR/SA relics over some combination that includes the crit proc based Devastating Vengeance. I presume that's because of the size of the mastery and power procs. Is that true for adrenals too, or is the boost too small and crit wins out? Edited June 5, 2018 by phalczen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts