Prophecy of Fear [Megathread]

[Komma]

You know what? The "pulling a boss" bonus to RPPM trinkets might explain the "pessimism" about it.

This has been pretty thoroughly tested with solo pulls, so it is very unlikely to be the case. You can falsify this quite easily too: Go to Marrowgar, wait 4 minutes, and then do a pull. If you see a non-proc on the first attack, it doesn't happen.

Supporting evidence is hundreds of wipes on Archimonde as the only mage, and the raid asking me to find a way to get more consistent damage. We have consistently only wanted to do the one doomfire strat (first kill 3 months ago) so being the only mage (and 0 rogues) my dps has been crucial in making the push, where we'd often be off by 0.1% and call a wipe

Most of us who have killed the fight have been through hundreds of wipes on this boss. That does not prove anything. What you optimized for is consistency, not average throughput. You could easily be doing less on average, but removed some outliers that led to a failure to meet the minimum throughput requirement.

To break down the argument a bit:

I'd dare say it's even a dps increase.

This is the claim you are making.

However when it procced on the boss I would often get 11-14m damage, compared to 13-20m consistently with the new prophecy of fear strategy always proccing on crystal. We went from occasionally making the push to consistently making it after we made the change.

This is your evidence.

Basically you're saying that by increasing the lower bound of output numbers, you are therefore doing higher on average. I don't believe those two are equivalent.

I don't think your numbers add up when computing Doom Nova damage. Looking at the current top log on Archimonde, which had 5 Arcane Missile procs within the first 18 seconds (extremely high), the total Doom Nova damage done to Archimonde, Doomfire Spirit and Prismatic Crystal doesn't even reach 4 million. I have trouble believing you can get anything like 6M more top end damage because of Doom Nova, even if you compared against a log with zero Doom Nova damage. This should not happen unless you are playing really poorly when Mark of Doom fails to proc on PC.

[Searix]

I don't think your numbers add up when computing Doom Nova damage. Looking at the current top log on Archimonde, which had 5 Arcane Missile procs within the first 18 seconds (extremely high), the total Doom Nova damage done to Archimonde, Doomfire Spirit and Prismatic Crystal doesn't even reach 4 million.

He took 2.06m+1.83m=3.89m damage (the not even 4m number) ... but you forgot Nithramus (3.89m*1.437) =5.6 million damage directly attributable to prophecy of fear

To break down the argument a bit:

I'd dare say it's even a dps increase.

This is the claim you are making.

However when it procced on the boss I would often get 11-14m damage, compared to 13-20m consistently with the new prophecy of fear strategy always proccing on crystal. We went from occasionally making the push to consistently making it after we made the change.

This is your evidence.

Basically you're saying that by increasing the lower bound of output numbers, you are therefore doing higher on average. I don't believe those two are equivalent.

...this is exactly the case though.

Assume you will do 4m prophecy of fear damage (best mage did just under ~5.6m), what do you do the ~50% of the time it procs on boss? Not do 30% extra damage to crystal? Ignore PoF altogether and lose out on the 4m damage?

[Curnivore]

[..]ask the raid to wait 2 minutes if i'm respeccing fire

I don't get why you play fire there if you are wiping. If you want consistency play arcane. I was very surprised that archimonde is the only boss in the entire instance that arcane mages are still on top of warcraftlogs on very long fights and I'm not sure yet why it happens but it's probably that most others are hectic on a large part of the final phase while arcane can at least do the burns.

Go to Marrowgar, wait 4 minutes

As I said, the delusion might be happening because of very fast pulls that usually happen within around a minute of a wipe (with mages hitting their crystals before the boss-pull bonus of RPPM trinkets has registered yet).

[Komma]

...this is exactly the case though.

Assume you will do 4m prophecy of fear damage (best mage did just under ~5.6m), what do you do the ~50% of the time it procs on boss? Not do 30% extra damage to crystal? Ignore PoF altogether and lose out on the 4m damage?

We're looking at:
1. A 99 percentile RNG case where you get 5 AMs on the pull, deal a very high amount of 3.8 million Doom Nova (And as you mentioned, even with the ring that's still not 6 million) damage to both Archimonde and the Doomfire Spirit.
2. Not an extra 3 seconds of 2.3x magnification on Doom Nova damage on the tail end through PC, which would have accounted for >1 million on its own.
3. Half of the Doom Nova damage happened after t=9, which means PC at 3 would have failed to impact it. That's another 400K missing from the parse I linked.
4. And let's not forget additional AB and UM (which also gets a 2.3 multiplier) amplification over those 3 seconds.
5. Compared against a parse where you literally get zero AM procs (On 10 Arcane Blasts, that's about 2.82%).
6. That also has Mark of Doom procs on Archimonde (Assume equal proc attempts, roughly ~41%, 1.16% chance cumulative).

That is literally a 99% RNG parse versus a 1% RNG parse, and we're intentionally penalizing the 1% RNG parse by saying they're not allowed to have any Doom Nova damage (When was the last time you've seen 0 Doom Nova damage on a log?). This is also without any compromises from early PC and losing out on PC/AP/Ring. Simply put, you're almost never going to see that kind of variance, unless you intentionally play badly when MoD doesn't proc on PC. Yet we're still not seeing the numerical differences you claim. How is that the case?

EDIT: And in addition to that, ICD mechanics aren't even the same as RPPM. ICD trinkets don't reset to 0 upon zone in. You'd actually have to wipe, zone in, AND THEN stand there for 4 minutes without doing anything in between pulls. This is different from Sandman's where your 115 second counter starts the moment you gain a proc. I don't know what your raid does, but this window of standing still for 4 minutes doesn't happen for me except on break.

[Searix]

[..]ask the raid to wait 2 minutes if i'm respeccing fire

I don't get why you play fire there if you are wiping. If you want consistency play arcane. I was very surprised that archimonde is the only boss in the entire instance that arcane mages are still on top of warcraftlogs on very long fights and I'm not sure yet why it happens but it's probably that most others are hectic on a large part of the final phase while arcane can at least do the burns.

Despite my die-hard love for fire, i spec arcane for the fight. The wait 2 minutes reference was mainly for bosses like xhul

...this is exactly the case though.

Assume you will do 4m prophecy of fear damage (best mage did just under ~5.6m), what do you do the ~50% of the time it procs on boss? Not do 30% extra damage to crystal? Ignore PoF altogether and lose out on the 4m damage?

We're looking at:
1. A 99 percentile RNG case where you get 5 AMs on the pull, deal a very high amount of 3.8 million Doom Nova (And as you mentioned, even with the ring that's still not 6 million) damage to both Archimonde and the Doomfire Spirit.
2. Not an extra 3 seconds of 2.3x magnification on Doom Nova damage on the tail end through PC, which would have accounted for >1 million on its own.
3. Half of the Doom Nova damage happened after t=9, which means PC at 3 would have failed to impact it. That's another 400K missing from the parse I linked.
4. And let's not forget additional AB and UM (which also gets a 2.3 multiplier) amplification over those 3 seconds.
5. Compared against a parse where you literally get zero AM procs (On 10 Arcane Blasts, that's about 2.82%).
6. That also has Mark of Doom procs on Archimonde (Assume equal proc attempts, roughly ~41%, 1.16% chance cumulative).

That is literally a 99% RNG parse versus a 1% RNG parse, and we're intentionally penalizing the 1% RNG parse by saying they're not allowed to have any Doom Nova damage (When was the last time you've seen 0 Doom Nova damage on a log?). This is also without any compromises from early PC and losing out on PC/AP/Ring. Simply put, you're almost never going to see that kind of variance, unless you intentionally play badly when MoD doesn't proc on PC. Yet we're still not seeing the numerical differences you claim. How is that the case?

EDIT: And in addition to that, ICD mechanics aren't even the same as RPPM. ICD trinkets don't reset to 0 upon zone in. You'd actually have to wipe, zone in, AND THEN stand there for 4 minutes without doing anything in between pulls. This is different from Sandman's where your 115 second counter starts the moment you gain a proc. I don't know what your raid does, but this window of standing still for 4 minutes doesn't happen for me except on break.

I have a 5.4m nithramus hit https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/c9 ... nd=4586841" target="_blank

to his 5.64m hit https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/d3 ... nd=3997444" target="_blank

and my first altered time buddy didn't come until halfway through crystal, and i only had 2 total during crystal.

Here's the VOD again of that log: https://www.twitch.tv/searix/v/68381770" target="_blank

edit: and i bet i have worse gear than him

[Searix]

so Cinderstorm is proccing Prophecy, and i want to say something else is passively proccing it, but not sure what

[Architech]

conflag

[Thisgame]

conflag

Also the conflags from other targets that hit it in aoe, to be clear. Makes for some pretty funny mass aoe situations.

[Curnivore]

The trinket seems to beat sandman's here for fire on simcraft. Though I've heard the opposite so I'm not sure if it's a universal answer. Cinderstorm + Conflag in.

Also a moderate optimization is to cinderstorm during doom even if combustion is up but that change wasn't required for that result.

[Sturmcantor]

The trinket seems to beat sandman's here for fire on simcraft. Though I've heard the opposite so I'm not sure if it's a universal answer. Cinderstorm + Conflag in.

Also a moderate optimization is to cinderstorm during doom even if combustion is up but that change wasn't required for that result.

My feeling (no sims yet to back this up) from working with both trinkets on dummies and during our Mythic farm this past week is that Sandman's is a much more consistently strong opener since often PoF won't proc in the opener. So on short fights (Reaver/Kormrok/Council/Fel Lord) it is probably better. Any fight where your guild holds on to ring and thus desyncs Sandman's from ring/combustion PoF is probably better.

[Curnivore]

On sims sandman's is better on fights 70sec or lower.