We at MMO-Mechanics.com have been hard at work over the last couple weeks boiling down all of the changes in 1.3 (and 1.2, to an extent), and we've come up with our solid marks for current BIS gear setups, linked below for each of the 3 DPS specs. I've also listed buffed stats for each, so those of you nearly BIS gear can use them as a landmark for ideal stat ratios. Lastly, I've included in spoiler tags the current priority list for each of the setups, in SimC format.

 

Note that the DPS listed assumes a single-target Patchwerk fight with a single armor debuff and full raid buffs (including stim), duration 300 seconds (5 minutes) ± 60 seconds. Stats listed are with raid buffs but before stim.

 

Lightning (1853.1 DPS)

AMR Profile

Stats: 2129 Willpower, 992 power, 164 crit, 342 alacrity, 228 surge

Rotation:

 

 

Madness (1781.8 DPS)

AMR Profile

Stats: 2129 Willpower, 838 power, 205 crit, 228 alacrity, 342 surge

Rotation:

 

 

Hybrid (1772.4 DPS)

AMR Profile

Stats: 2129 Willpower, 759 power, 287 crit, 285 alacrity, 285 surge

Rotation:

 

 

 

One thing to note in particular about the ability queues if that for Madness and Hybrid builds, it is ideal to use a charge of Recklessness on Deathfield, rather than both on Force Lightning, meaning you want to cast Recklessness at a time when DF is either already available or will be available within 1 FL channel duration.

 

For Lightning, the optimal use of Recklessness is on a Storm CL and a Barrage FL, as previous.

Awesome stuff, thanks!

 

On a side note, perhaps my SimC is out of date. I was getting better results using 205 Crit rather than 164 Crit as Lightning.

 

The Alacrity vs Surge was consistent with my tests and yours though. Still a bit surprising to me.

Edited July 6, 2012 by pureeffinmetal

I was getting a Power-normalized weight for crit of around 1.003, so that shouldn't be the case (might be statistical variance, depending on the amount of iterations you used, though).

 

That said, these are with the latest 1.3 release build.

just curious and in your opinion...

 

For PvP would the BiS armor mod be the assassin +1 recklessness charge -15sec cooldown, +5m force slow 4 piece bonus... or would it be the 2 set bonuses: -3 sec barrier lockout debuff and -1.5sec crushing darkness cool down +.5% health on periodic darkness crits?

 

For Madness sorc... 3/7/31 build spec'ed into parasitism/devour

Edited July 7, 2012 by whattt

just curious and in your opinion...

 

For PvP would the BiS armor mod be the assassin +1 recklessness charge -15sec cooldown, +5m force slow 4 piece bonus... or would it be the 2 set bonuses: -3 sec barrier lockout debuff and -1.5sec crushing darkness cool down +.5% health on periodic darkness crits?

 

For Madness sorc... 3/7/31 build spec'ed into parasitism/devour

 

PvP is a lot tougher to theorycraft, unfortunately. The 2/2 Masters/Mystic bonus is definitely superior for survivability, but the Assassin bonus definitely has the burst advantage. For Madness, I would tend to lean towards the 2/2 Masters/Mystic bonus, as burst isn't really your forte to start with, but it's really a playstyle decision more than anything.

thanks

Awesome post! Thanks Daellia! I'm surprised at how low the optimal critical rating is. Did you also manage to test one of the War Hero relics against a Campaign proc relic (probably Internal damage since armor debuffs no longer stack)?

 

Also I thought I'd point out there are some spaces in the Lightning rotation that break the action code. You might want to check the other rotations as well. Here are the offending lines in the Lightning rotation:

...

actions+=/thundering_blast,if=dot.affliction.remains>cast_ti me

actions+=/recklessness,if=(buff.lightning_barrage.react|buff .lightning_storm.react)&cooldown.thundering_blast. remains>3

...

actions+=/sequence,name=pewpew:force_lightning:lightning_str ike

...

Awesome post! Thanks Daellia! I'm surprised at how low the optimal critical rating is. Did you also manage to test one of the War Hero relics against a Campaign proc relic (probably Internal damage since armor debuffs no longer stack)?

Courtesy of hatterson. Basically the internal damge proc relic is interchangeable with a War Hero Boundless Ages relic.

Also I thought I'd point out there are some spaces in the Lightning rotation that break the action code. You might want to check the other rotations as well. Here are the offending lines in the Lightning rotation:

 

I believe the SimC profile parsers considers that legal, actually. I'm pretty sure carriage returns are automatically ignored, it looks for the key symbols rather than simply new lines.

 

I may be wrong, however. Either way, the SimC lists were really just included as a reference guide to DPS rotation. These lists should be included by default in the next SimC release.

Edited July 8, 2012 by Daellia

Courtesy of hatterson. Basically the internal damge proc relic is interchangeable with a War Hero Boundless Ages relic.

 

For madness and hybrid it is the case, but you may have to change one mod from power to crit, because the relic proc can crit, but overall you will get a lower dps.

 

For lightning i would prefer the double war hero variation, like Kaedis wrote: power's scale factor is quite huge for lightning.

 

EDIT: I got it wrong, so forget about the scale factor of power, i just misread kaedis' post, but i assume that my conclusion is not false since the lightning setup has a lower critrating.

Edited July 8, 2012 by Messiaah

Nice BiS, but why surge is that high for madness? Its 77%

Nice BiS, but why surge is that high for madness? Its 77%

 

Dots do not scale with alacrity, that is the simple answer. You can only trade surge against alacrity, that's why you have to take that much surge. If you could choose power or crit instead you would go for it, but that is impossible.

Dots do not scale with alacrity, that is the simple answer. You can only trade surge against alacrity, that's why you have to take that much surge. If you could choose power or crit instead you would go for it, but that is impossible.

 

Pretty much. We only get benefit from alacrity on Force Lightning, everything else is insta cast. And even on that FL gets an extra 6% crit from talents so even it gets more help than normal from Surge than Alacrity.

Awesome post! Thanks Daellia! I'm surprised at how low the optimal critical rating is. Did you also manage to test one of the War Hero relics against a Campaign proc relic (probably Internal damage since armor debuffs no longer stack)?

 

Also I thought I'd point out there are some spaces in the Lightning rotation that break the action code. You might want to check the other rotations as well. Here are the offending lines in the Lightning rotation:

 

I think the spaces are just a copy/paste issue...they shouldn't be there.

 

In regards to the relics. Yes I did test them. The Campaign internal proc relic was best for Madness and Hybrid (by 1-2 DPS) and the WH was best for Lightning (by 2-3 DPS). The main reason for this is the proc rate of the Campaign relic. With Hybrid and Madness your filler is Force Lightning which is hitting the mob twice as often as Lightning Strike does which increases how fast the relic procs on average once the 4.5s cooldown is hit.

 

I don't have the reports in front of me, but under Madness and Hybrid the relic was procing every 5.7-5.8s whereas under lightning it was 6.2-6.3s which takes it from a 41-42 DPS relic to a 37-38 DPS relic.

I realize that these numbers are for a patchwork style fight, but do you have any baselines for a normal ops encounter where you cannot turret with 100% up time?

Once these profiles have been included in the upcoming SimC release, there should be Light Movement and Helter-Skelter sims available for your perusal at Simulationcraft.org.

Once these profiles have been included in the upcoming SimC release, there should be Light Movement and Helter-Skelter sims available for your perusal at Simulationcraft.org.

 

Do you guys have a BiS list for dedicated healers? I didn't see that in your post. :-(

Do you guys have a BiS list for dedicated healers? I didn't see that in your post. :-(

 

We don't really make BIS lists for healers like we do DPS. To quote Aurojiin:

 

Aside from augments, gearing a Sorc is a tug of war in two separate categories: Power vs Critical Rating, and Surge vs Alacrity. The ‘ideal’ amounts of each are not as clear cut for healers as they are for DPS Sorcs. It is important to understand that healing is not DPSing. Your goal is not to maximise your healing output, but rather to effectively meet the healing demands of an encounter, and the burden can vary dramatically at different stages.

 

Basically, as a healer you have a lot more flex in your gear than a DPSer does, a lot more options for tailoring your gear to your preferred healing style, rather than simply focusing on objective maximum output. This does, unfortunately, inhibit the production of BIS lists.

Basically, as a healer you have a lot more flex in your gear than a DPSer does, a lot more options for tailoring your gear to your preferred healing style, rather than simply focusing on objective maximum output. This does, unfortunately, inhibit the production of BIS lists.

 

Yea, unfortunately healing takes many different forms. With DPS it's a little simpler. The idea is to put out as much damage on a single target as possible. Fortunately, under current setup there are no force issues and even if you do, simply spamming FL can recharge your force fairly quickly. There's also no such thing as 'over damage'.

 

With healing you have a lot more concerns. You don't really care about healing as much as possible, per se, you care about making sure the tank doesn't die. If you run out of force, the tank dies. Overhealing does not help the tank live longer so you want to limit overhealing because it's essentially wasting force. Now, certainly you could optimize your gear for mostly force neutral maximum HPS on a single target with a given rotation but that chances of you staying on a single target and fully going through the rotation are minimal. Most likely you'll heal the tank a bit, then toss a heal on a DPS, then get a burst damage phase and need to change your rotation a bit, etc. You also generally aren't healing the entire time and can toss an affliction or two on the target which changes things.

 

The weight you place on alacrity also depends on the situation. If you know there's going to be a crazy burst phase and you need to pump out heals fast, higher alacrity might be better so you can spam out Dark Infusion faster. If there won't be a burst phase then higher surge might be better as it results in higher long term numbers.

 

Personally I think the Balance/Hybrid numbers are a good thing to shoot for, but I wouldn't think of it as a min/max point as the TK numbers certainly aren't going to gimp you as a healer.

I note this in my healing guide, but for the academically interested, the technical BiS stats for sustained healing would be: 2129 Willpower, 838 power, 205 crit, 342 alacrity, 228 surge. Mind you, the calculations that yielded those would best be described as "quick and dirty", so take them with a grain of salt at present.

 

Crit is easy enough; you either take the mathematically optimal amount or you stack enough to reach 40% buffed crit chance to guarantee Dark Infusion crits with Recklessness. There's no point in a middle ground.

 

For DPSers, Alacrity's benefit stems from allowing you to cast quicker, increasing (by definition) DPS. For healers, that holds true in terms of increasing output, but there's also the matter of your heals landing slightly sooner; it's not a massive difference, but a tenth or two of a second can occasionally be the difference between someone living or dying (hey, I have seen it). So even if you're idling (and inevitably you will idle somewhat when healing) you still get benefits from the stat. Personally I just run Surge = Alacrity and call it a day.

Edited July 9, 2012 by Aurojiin

I know that generally you guys stray away from PVP related angles of these DPS details, but I do have one question regarding the crit RATING. I remember reading a Daellia post saying that you generally want to be somewhere between 250 and 350 for the rating, yet these builds are all significantly lower (specifically madness as that's what I spec to).

 

Right now I'm sitting at about 1800 WP, I still need a few WH pieces so it will increase a tad, my crit rating is 292 and crit chance is 30.78 (no agent buff) with 76% surge. My bonus dmg is 822 (without the warrior buff) with 808 power. I am about to grab my WH offhand today and that is a decently large commitment so I want to make sure I make the right choice. Two of the choices will cost me 82 crit dropping me to a 210 rating.

 

Just wanted to see what you thought about the crit rating and being significantly different than previously mentioned.

Edited July 9, 2012 by Enhancer

Note that the "250-350 crit rating" advice was an extrapolation based on previously optimized Rakata gear (which was only done for the then-dominant 0/13/28 Hybrid spec). I didn't expect there to be as large a difference as above in the value of crit rating among the specs. The above are the stat ratios to shoot for in at the campaign gear level for each respective spec. They supersede any previous advice I've given (I'm not perfect, after all, and I do make educated guesses from time to time, when definitive results are still being formulated). Edited July 9, 2012 by Daellia

I know that generally you guys stray away from PVP related angles of these DPS details, but I do have one question regarding the crit RATING. I remember reading a Daellia post saying that you generally want to be somewhere between 250 and 350 for the rating, yet these builds are all significantly lower (specifically madness as that's what I spec to).

 

Right now I'm sitting at about 1800 WP, I still need a few WH pieces so it will increase a tad, my crit rating is 292 and crit chance is 30.78 (no agent buff) with 76% surge. My bonus dmg is 822 (without the warrior buff) with 808 power. I am about to grab my WH offhand today and that is a decently large commitment so I want to make sure I make the right choice. Two of the choices will cost me 82 crit dropping me to a 210 rating.

 

Just wanted to see what you thought about the crit rating and being significantly different than previously mentioned.

 

In pvp, some classes, specifically concealment ops, stack crit and surge like crazy for the increased chance at front-end burst. I don't know if it's "optimal" or just conventional wisdom gone wrong, but the thinking is that the increased chance to crit the opening sequence outweighs any flat loss to the lesser skills (rapid shots or some other low-dmg ability) spammed while waiting for another opportunity to chain your money skills. I use a carnage marauder and do not stack crit, but then my damage doesn't fall off when gore's cooling down near as much as an op's does after their initial rotation.

 

With Madness, you don't really have a chunky set of sequential skills that could theoretically benefit from chain crits, like an operative. You do have high sustained damage, so it's probably better to play to your strengths, I would think. When I start tinkering with my war hero mods (on my madness sorc), I'm going to get it as close to the pve BiS setup as is possible with the available +expertise modifications.

 

Edit: Buy the offhand. Mainhand's a little murkier. I went with the force-mystic's.

Edited July 9, 2012 by Larry_Dallas

Note that the "250-350 crit rating" advice was an extrapolation based on previously optimized Rakata gear (which was only done for the then-dominant 0/13/28 Hybrid spec). I didn't expect there to be as large a difference as above in the value of crit rating among the specs. The above are the stat ratios to shoot for in at the campaign gear level for each respective spec. They supersede any previous advice I've given (I'm not perfect, after all, and I do make educated guesses from time to time, when definitive results are still being formulated).

 

 

So essentially since WH gear is also 61, the numbers should translate similarly. Glad I saw this, I was in the process of having to grind up another BM offhand since the one I currently have to trade was not what I thought I needed. This changes everything.....

 

Thanks Daellia.

Note that the "250-350 crit rating" advice was an extrapolation based on previously optimized Rakata gear (which was only done for the then-dominant 0/13/28 Hybrid spec). I didn't expect there to be as large a difference as above in the value of crit rating among the specs. The above are the stat ratios to shoot for in at the campaign gear level for each respective spec. They supersede any previous advice I've given (I'm not perfect, after all, and I do make educated guesses from time to time, when definitive results are still being formulated).

 

To add to this. When running the Lightning sims specifically I was shocked at how low the value of crit was and how high the alacrity was. I kept thinking "there must be something I'm doing wrong" but time and again the numbers would show themselves.

 

I even looked through the SimC code to see if I could find a bug with the weighting algorithms, but everything looked good there.