Connecting the DoTs: A Summoner Guide

[Charybdis]

I'm not disagreeing about the concern/surprise over the Spell Speed weights. I am just as surprised myself. But there's a way to talk about it and a way not to. Everyone is curious/surprised/polarized. It's what drives us to DO the testing, find the formula, find the numbers, collect the data, etc. There's nothing wrong with Dervy, Judge, Sleigh, T0rin, and myself collecting this data. Speculation is also warranted and appreciated. Hell, speculation is the reason Dervy finds some of the things he does. But there's no need to bring negativity into the thread or say that the efforts we do are a waste of time. We don't deviate the thread so hard that people AREN'T getting help because they certainly still are. Discussion is good. We want discussion, we are not omniscient and may miss things. But don't discredit the hard work we are doing in the name of science.

Minorinz frustrated me not because of the doubt over Spell Speed, which is 100% justifiable. I have it. It was over the way they presented it, like doing the work we are doing is a waste of time which I don't agree with. Don't discredit the hard work being done to gain an understanding of "just how much" a stat is really affecting us. Or not.

[Havenchild]

The simple reality is that if the game doesn't back up the numbers, then you need to look at the numbers. The odds of there being human error involved are just as likely in a mathematical analysis as there are in executing a rotation in the game. That doesn't take away from the merit of either, it just means that you need to be very diligent about both. If the analysis is done right, then nothing in the game short of player error should counteract the data. Going back to your pre-3.0 example.. if the analysis is saying one thing and the reality is showing another, that points to a potential flaw in the analysis, but does not discount the idea that the analysis should definitively be able to prove out what is analytically better than something else.

This was a better statement I can get behind. You ideally want to see the theoretical yield of stats in action. It's what ultimately determines how high you will parse with Build A vs Build B.

And this is comparing dummy parse sims vs real fights, of course there will be differences in the impact of different stats. What if you wrote a sim that actually simulated real fights with normalized RNG on mechanics?

Forgive me if I'm mistaken but this would be an example of how spellspeed loses weight.

We can understand Spellspeeds weight in testing based off a few different things we look into.

1) How much damage Spellspeed changes our DoT ticks.
2) How much damage does Spellspeed influence Pet DPS, in the form of more attacks.
3) How many extra casts does additional Spellspeed give us.

The first two can be accurately portrayed on a dummy because there aren't too many factors that can heavily increase or decrease Spellspeed even during a fight after factoring player abilities. Not to mention, it also doesn't heavily affect the DoT damage. The last one however, will likely pull the weight down in an actual fight for two reasons. The first would be because of unavoidable downtime. Downtime is not adjusted regardless of how much Spellspeed a player may have. This means that the strength of Spellspeed in a fight, when referring to additional casts is balanced against the fact of gaining additional casts / or skill completions, before the inevitable downtime. Now on a striking dummy, or a simulator, odds are you will see something that will tell you, it's possible.

Now as for "what if you wrote something that simulated real fights with normalized RNG on mechanics?" This largely assumes one big thing, that your rotation is stagnantly proceeding regardless of the mechanic, however what if my actual rotation of skills is adjusted beforehand based off what I've seen from the mechanic which previously targeted someone else or presently targeting me? The maximum rotation would now flip in an instant for that encounter. If we can assume RNG as a constant factor in fights in terms of mechanics choosing players, than in the same breath we should assume that the maximum rotation of skills changes mid encounter and thus we change how many casts we have gained by not staying striking dummy like in execution and when weighed against what I said before of amount of casts you can get before inevitable downtime, this concludes the second reason of how the Spellspeed weights variate. So I'm not sure it's entirely possible to simulate a rotation entirely based off those and other factors, for example, how fast something is dying, which can also change depending on buffs, or gear acquisition among players etcetc.

Having said all that, what we would in theory also need to analyze is what part of spellspeed is the strongest portion of it. For example, in say 500 Spellspeed, how much of the weight concluded is represented by additional casts or increased DoT strength?
If it was in fact a strong modifier to DoT damage (would imagine 80-90% of the coefficient is how it affects DoT strength) than it's stat weight wouldn't change much even in an actual battle. However if its the former, of additional casts it will.

Considering however we know that, it's not too strong as a modifier of DoTs, even though it does modify them, we can safely conclude I think, that it's not somewhere in the 80-90% bracket, which means we have to fall back on additional Attacks or Casts from SMN or PET, correct me if I'm wrong here.

Don't discredit the hard work being done to gain an understanding of "just how much" a stat is really affecting us. Or not.

I 100% agree with this. For one, I personally appreciate all the efforts, you guys are showing to help fellow SMNs improve on the class. Let's try to keep the discussion as civil as possible regardless if we have differing opinions.