Thanks for the macro & your hard work. Based on my sims, dummy testing, and gear I gain an average of 80k using belt & sephuz compared to using boots & sephuz. I posted my cleaned up & preferred modifier version of your macro for boots in the other thread. Here is mine that has been working wonderfully. Description of how to use modifiers is in the macro help section.
Sequences['AOTB_ST1'] = {
-- This Sequence was exported from GSE 2.2.00.
Author="Gween",
SpecID=253,
Talents = "2111113",
Help = [[Designed for use without legendary boots. Preferrably with waist at 40% crit 20% haste. Cleaned this up and added modifiers. Hold Shift during opener until 1 DB is cast, release, hold alt+shift when 1-2 min CDs are coming off, release when BW is off CD.]],
Default=1,
MacroVersions = {
[1] = {
Head=false,
Neck=false,
Belt=false,
Ring1=false,
Ring2=false,
StepFunction = "Priority",
KeyPress={
"/targetenemy [noharm][dead]",
"/cast [nopet,nodead] Call Pet 1; [@pet,dead] Heart of the Phoenix",
"/cast [nomod:alt,combat] Bestial Wrath",
"/cast [nomod:shift,combat] Titan's Thunder",
"/cast [nomod:alt,combat] Aspect of the Wild",
},
PreMacro={
},
"/cast Kill Command",
"/cast Dire Beast",
"/cast [nomod:alt,combat] A Murder of Crows",
"/cast Kill Command",
"/cast [nomod:ctrl] Cobra Shot",
PostMacro={
},
KeyRelease={
},
},
},
}
Wow… Way to Hijack this post with your (my version) is preferred…LOL no it’s not. Next time post your own macro in a separate post. BTW Gween is way to nice to tell you that!
Maybe you haven’t checked it, and I guess no one else did it, the use of Titan’s Thunder is optimized when used right after the Dire Beast (or Dire Frenzy) ability.
Since I write my own macros (of course I come here often to check if people has made some improvements or discovered new techniques), I use my macro techniques for some things. this is what I use to optimize Titan’s Thunder use. While it’s on CD, Dire Beast continues being used when it’s off CD too.
/castsequence [nochanneling] reset=0.5 Dire Beast, Titan's Thunder
So how does it work? It depends on whether you have Dire Beast or Dire Frenzy. Titan’s Thunder functionality changes based on which of those talents you have selected.
If you are using Stomp or Chimaera Shot (NOT Dire Frenzy), TT reads:
“Discharge a massive jolt into all your pets and Dire Beast, causing them to deal up to 42,457 Nature damage to their target every 1 sec. for 8 sec.”
What does this mean exactly? When you cast TT, any pets that are CURRENTLY active will damage their current target for up to 8 seconds. What is less clear is what happens if they don’t have a target, if their target dies, they acquire a new target, etc. Let’s say for the sake of argument that it is the absolute best case scenario and they continue doing this damage to the closest target that they are in combat with.
We can ignore your main pet and Hati, on the assumption that they are always up and will always get the maximum benefit. So the only variable is how many Dire Beasts are currently active and how long they have left.
At best any one Dire Beast is only active for 8 seconds. So even if you summon 1 and immediately cast TT right after, you might get the full 8 seconds, or you might only get 7 seconds worth. IF you wait and cast 2 DBs, the first may only have 5-6 seconds remaining and you only get the benefits for those 5-6 seconds. You might always wait until you get a lucky set of procs and you have 4 DBs active. BUt even then, how much cumulative time might you have? OF those 4, one might have 3 seconds remaining, 1 might have 5 seconds remaining 1 might have 6 seconds remaining and one would have 7 seconds remaining. This works out to around 18 hits of TT total for the 4 Dire Beasts you have active. Let’s be generous and grant that it is a total of 20 seconds of buff time. 20 x 42,457 = 849,140. Lets give ourselves 60% crit to increase this to 1,358,624. Other buffs that are active can increase this further, but as an optimal baseline, we can say that we will do, maximum, 1.35 million damage extra per minute, having a totally optimal Dire Beast spread active when we use TT.
Now let’s compare this to a minimal DB spread. IF we assume there is only 1 DB active with 7 seconds remaining, it will do 7 x 42,457 x 1.6 = 475518 damage every minute. The best minus the worst 1,358,624 - 475518 = 883106 damage every minute. Divide this by 60 to get the DPS loss maximum. At worst, you will lose a maximum of 14,718 DPS if TT isn’t used optimally.
Said a different way: At best, you can gain about 14,718 DPS if you use TT optimally every time. This isn’t actually true either, since by delaying the cast of TT means you are dividing the benefit by 65 seconds or 70 seconds or whatever, instead of by 60 seconds. And this is assuming you can get that perfect configuration of 4 dire beast out when TT becomes available.
Frankly, the benefit of ‘optimizing’ TT is dubious at best.
I do grant that in some circumstances, your way can make TT do a bit more damage. But it also matters where you place this particular line in the macro. If it isn’t the very first line, the chances that it skips casting TT by virtue of the rest are higher.
However, using my way, even at the risk of losing some small amount of TT damage, TT is kept perfectly synchronized with my casting of AOTW and Blood Fury (I am an orc), which means that even if I don’t have any dire beasts out, my pet and Hati will ALWAYS have those buffs active for the full duration of TT. And I could get lucky and have multiple Dire Beasts out as well. This is also why I include an ALT modifier to block the casting of AOTW, BF and TT. If I see that I could delay those buffs for a few seconds and get a more optimal opportunity to use them (more Dire Beasts active) I can. But honestly, this is not something I do often. I use it most at the beginning of the fight to get that extra burst by waiting a couple of seconds until I have the most number of DBs active.
In my humble opinion, the total benefits of my method, outweigh the more narrow benefits that your method enjoys.
But what about Dire Frenzy?
Using Dire Frenzy the buff to active pets remains the same, so that part my previous discussion still applies. However, it also provides a buff to your main pet so that the next Dire Frenzy (5 attacks total) generates additional damage (103,911 damage x 5 according to my toolbar). This means that casting TT more frequently, without delay (as my method does), provides a greater value than delaying the use of TT even by just a few seconds.
Again, I totally appreciate where you are coming from, and from the perspective of just optimizing TT, you are mostly correct. However, from an overall standpoint, I think my method is superior all the way around.
Well, let’s start to the point where we both agree that using TT right after using Dire Beast or right before Dire Frenzy it optimizes the TT use. This is well-known in the community, like stated in the links down here and others.
That said, let’s go to something else. Have you ever tried the code I put here? I mean, I’ve tested this and it works flawlessly to me, as it don’t let my TT being fired without DB or DF being off CD. As soon as they are off CD, it fires them AND TT at same time, so technically HERE it doesn’t matter if you use DB or DF with TT right after/before, since both abilities will be used at same time, immediately.
You could think that using TT in a castsequence macro may skip TT while GSE cycle through the sequence, but it doesn’t happen (at least in my use tests, since 7.1). Castsequence works different with no GCD abilities, like TT. It doesn’t wait for the CD to cycle to the next spell in the sequence. Instead, fires it immediately. Doing that, you WILL optimize TT every time.
So, how can I be wrong in this? Have you ever tested what you said in empirical way, i.e. custom simulationcraft with results that can be studied and put to proof? If yes, can you please put a link or something for us to check it out and discuss about it? I mean, I don’t want to come here to create some dispute or anything, I just brought some information I considered to be important, based on what the community has considered pacific subject.
BTW, you and other people should try it out and say what you find. FOR ME, it’s very useful.
I agree that it optimizes TT use specifically. However, I do not agree that it is optimal generally.
Indeed I have. In fact, while I was writing my response, I went through many iterations of testing to ensure that not only was my memory correct, but that it still worked in precisely the way I was claiming.
This is sort of a red herring. The issue isn’t about whether TT is being used prior to DB of DF being used, although using my method that is possible.
I am sorry, but you are simply wrong here.
There can be variance whether you are using SEQUENTIAL or PRIORITY macro sequencing. But either way it runs through the entire macro once for each pass. That means it is NOT POSSIBLE for it to cast 2 abilities at the same time. It doesn’t matter whether they are on the GCD or not. To demonstrate this, here is a simple macro:
Go to a dummy and try this macro. Press it once and it will cast Kill Command, but nothing else. Press it again and it will cast TT, but only TT. Press it again and it will cast BW, and only BW. And so forth. Even if you remove the Kill Command such that all the abilities in the cast sequence are off the GCD, it will still only cast 1 ability each time you press the macro.
If you spam the macro fast, it might appear that multiple abilities are cast simultaneously, but this just isn’t so. So there is some time between the casting of different abilities, even if that time is very small.
No, it works identically. If it appears to work different, that is merely an illusion.
This is true, but it has nothing to do with the castsequence functionality. It is merely an artifact of being off the GCD. If an ability is off the GCD (Global Cool Down for those wondering), it means 2 things:
1: The ability doesn’t create a GCD.
2: The ability ignores any current GCD.
A GCD, when invoked means that any ability that is on the GCD has to wait for at least the time of the GCD before it can be used. So, if you cast Kill Command (which is on the GCD) it invokes a GCD. For the sake of discussion let’s just assume that the GCD is 1 second (it actually varies). If you cast TT, you can cast Kill Command as soon as possible, because there was no GCD invoked. But if you cast Kill Command and invoke a GCD, you can still cast TT, even inside of that 1 second GCD, because it is exempt from the GCD. So it does not generate a GCD and in fact, totally ignores the GCD.
On the other hand, if you cast Kill Command, invoking a GCD, you cannot use Dire Beast for at least a full second because it is on the GCD also and is blocked from use until the GCD has expired. This remains true even for spamming the same ability (such as Cobra Shot) which has no cool down.
I can only guess. I assume that you have made an erroneous assumption based on the appearance of the functionality, rather than the actual functionality.
Always and constantly. Even when I think or ‘know’ I am right, I still verify to ensure that I am correct. EVen as I am writing this, I am testing it in game to ensure that my understanding of the functionality is actually correct, even though I ‘knew’ I was correct already.
This may be part of your problem. SimCraft is hardly needed to test this. I simply wrote a little macro and tested it manually in game. The only I provided. I modified it to try different spells, but it was clear just from that testing that what I am saying is correct.
There is no dispute, at least from my point of view. Such discussions are helpful because they can help people, or even myself, re-evaluate what we think we know and make adjustments. Just because we were correct in our knowledge yesterday, doesn’t mean we are correct today. Things change.
I thought I did that in my previous response on this topic. I went thought several 5 minute cycles using a simplified version of my macro and then doing it in the way you suggested. I looked at the damage, the number of hits (which is the most important thing) and at the DPS percentage.
Doing it your way resulted in a slight increase of the DPS percentage for the TT ability itself, but also resulted in slightly lower DPS overall. I explained in some detail why this was so and why my way, in my humble opinion, is superior.
I will redo the macros I made for testing it both ways and post in a subsequent post in this thread.
I accidentally lost this post the first time I wrote it, so I might have more brevity this time through…
However, I recommend you test using this macro, running 5 minutes on each tab. Obviously this won’t give you reliable numbers in a single test, but there are some answers you can get generally.
Things to pay attention to:
Damage of ‘Beast: Titan’s Thunder’ (this is how it appears in my skada)
Number of hits for ‘Beast: Titan’s Thunder’ (Hits + Crits)
DPS % of ‘Beast: Titan’s Thunder’
Admittedly, my testing proves little if anything. There is enough random chance that the numbers can be skewed in a number of different ways. But from a theory-crafting perspective, I still believe that what I have said holds.
Still, I will run some LFRs with TT tied to DB and see how it works. I am more curious about longer fights though, since the effectively in Mythic fights is what matters to me.
