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  • Runetotem
  • 0. Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 04:19:15 AM PDT
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Back when AoE caps were first applied Faxmonkey released a list of approximate caps, since I was rather bored this morning I decided to expand the list with all our AoE (except blizzard, haven't done that one yet) and all ranks of the spells.

For any who don't know what the AoE caps are, lets assume for a moment that Arcane Explosion does 200 damage a target. The total damage done by the spell is easy to calculate, just multiply the targets it hits by its damage done, so vs one target:

200 damage * 1 target = 200 damage total

Vs two:

200 damage * 2 targets = 400 damage total

Vs 10:

200 damage * 10 targets = 2000 damage total


Too easy right? Now lets assume that you apply an artificial cap to these spells, where the total damage output of the spell can't exceed X amount. lets say for our 200 damage arcane explosion, the damage cap is 2000 points of damage, so for 1-10 targets we havent exceeded that amount of damage, so we deal full damage. What happens though, when we hit 11 targets?

200 damage * 11 targets = 2200 damage total

That exceeds the cap. What appears to happen in game, is that when you exceed the damage cap for a given spell, the game evenly distributes your damage cap over all the targets, like so:

2000 damage cap / 11 targets = 181.1818 damage per target


There are several really easy places to observe this behavior, low end instances are an easy place, the actual "best" place is the quest in Terrokar "The Dread Relic" (http://www.thottbot.com/q10877). When you open the chest and take the quest item from it, 29 level 60 zombies with around 600 hitpoints each spawn around you, they hit for about 6 damage a hit on cloth, and make for excellent cap testing. After you take the quest item you can continue to open the chest over and over and over again summoning the Zombies (as I did, for 10-15 testpoints per rank per spell, this has to be by far the most fun testing I've done yet).


Things I observed beyond the caps themselves while doing this testing:

1) Resists/immunes don't count towards the damage cap. If a target resists, its share of the damage is given to the rest of them.
2) Talents and gear do not change the damage caps, this means that the damage cap is exactly the same if you have 0 +damage as if you had 1000 +damage. Effects such as Molten Fury do not add to your damage done to the targets.
3) Effects such as Curse of Elements *DO* add to your damage done to that particular target, I cannot confirm at this time whether or not it comes out of the cap or not, I observed this while writing the addon I used to gather the data on this while a warlock was nuking Dr Boom and I was flamestriking his bomblets.
4) Extra damage that comes from critting does not count towards the cap.
5) The game is terrible at reporting large numbers of AoE damage events at once. Vs 29 targets about every three data points or so I'd lose one or two damage events, lending to a bit of chaos in the data.


Below are the tables I came up with for caps, along with spell damage ranges (sourced from http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/spelllist.html?class=Mage&sort=name), and how many targets its set up for based on min, mean, and max damage.


BIG HUGE ZOMG DISCLAIMER:

While doing this testing I got a lot of funky readings, caps would hold strong for 10 datapoints, then one would be 600 damage off. I was able to attribute most of this to missing damage events, but sometimes it just plain didn't add up. The numbers shifted plus or minus about 50 damage (probably due to rounding), so all these numbers are rounded averages. I took an average of the data collected, and rounded it to the nearest 10. These numbers are by *NO MEANS* absolute caps, but are guidelines of around how much ceiling you have to work with with a given spell. This mechanic is hard to feel out with any degree of accuracy worthy of decimal places, so my usual four places worth of accuracy has been forgone for this test.

[ Post edited by Zaldinar ]


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  • Runetotem
  • 1. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 04:19:46 AM PDT
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Columns are Rank, Minimum Damage, Average Damage, Max Damage, the observed damage cap, then that cap divided by the Min, Mean, and Max damages. The last three columns represent how many targets you can hit for full damage and be right on the cap.

Flamestrike				Targets By	

Rank Min Mean Max Capped Min Mean Max
1 52 60 68 980 18.85 16.33 14.41
2 96 109 122 1780 18.54 16.33 14.59
3 154 173 192 2670 17.34 15.43 13.91
4 220 246 272 3660 16.64 14.88 13.46
5 291 325 359 4700 16.15 14.46 13.09
6 375 417 459 5940 15.84 14.24 12.94
7 471 523 575 7830 16.62 14.97 13.62


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blastwave				Targets By	

Rank Min Mean Max Capped Min Mean Max
1 154 170 186 2470 16.04 14.53 13.28
2 201 221 241 3130 15.57 14.16 12.99
3 277 303 329 4140 14.95 13.66 12.58
4 365 399 433 5250 14.38 13.16 12.12
5 462 503 544 6900 14.94 13.72 12.68
6 533 580 627 8120 15.23 14 12.95
7 616 670 724 9440 15.32 14.09 13.04


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Arcane Explosion			Targets By	

Rank Min Mean Max Capped Min Mean Max
1 32 34 36 610 19.06 17.94 16.94
2 57 60 63 1180 20.7 19.67 18.73
3 97 101 105 1800 18.56 17.82 17.14
4 139 145 151 2470 17.77 17.03 16.36
5 186 194 202 3180 17.1 16.39 15.74
6 243 253 263 4000 16.46 15.81 15.21
7 306 318 330 5300 17.32 16.67 16.06
8 377 392 407 6730 17.85 17.17 16.54


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dragon's Breath				Targets By	

Rank Min Mean Max Capped Min Mean Max
1 370 400 430 5370 14.51 13.43 12.49
2 454 490 526 6470 14.25 13.2 12.3
3 574 620 666 8470 14.76 13.66 12.72
4 680 735 790 10100 14.85 13.74 12.78


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cone of Cold				Targets By	

Rank Min Mean Max Capped Min Mean Max
1 98 103 108 1650 16.84 16.02 15.28
2 146 153 160 2350 16.1 15.36 14.69
3 203 213 223 3160 15.57 14.84 14.17
4 264 277 290 4000 15.15 14.44 13.79
5 335 350 365 5120 15.28 14.63 14.03
6 410 429 448 6500 15.85 15.15 14.51

[ Post edited by Zaldinar ]


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  • Runetotem
  • 2. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 04:24:06 AM PDT
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And as is customary, for the TL:DR crew:

Theres a bunch of numbers up there you don't care about because the post was too long.

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  • Moonrunner
  • 3. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 04:57:13 AM PDT
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So Dragon's Breath is our best AoE attack? /cry

There are 10 types of WoW players... those who understand binary, and those who don't.
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  • Runetotem
  • 4. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 05:24:09 AM PDT
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No, the cap itself isnt really important, how many targets you can hit with it is. DB may be able to do the most damage at once, but AE can hit the most targets for full damage at once. Its those last three columns that truly matter.

I guess I did forget a big crayon explanation of the figures and what they actually mean.


The cap itself just represents the ceiling of the spell, without relating it to the base damage of the spell its not very useful at all. Dividing the cap by the base damage gives us the number of targets we can hit at once (which is the true measure of AoE spells in relation to their caps). The ranking of 'best' to 'worst' using that metric to judge them by goes like this:

Arcane Explosion 17.17
Cone of Cold 15.15
Flamestrike 14.97
Blast Wave 14.09
Dragon's Breath 13.74

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  • Moonrunner
  • 5. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 05:28:19 AM PDT
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So wait... the target list - Are those numbers the calculated 'number of targets you have to hit to reach the cap', or is that the number of targets you hit in your tests to calculate the cap?

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  • Runetotem
  • 6. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 05:31:30 AM PDT
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Those columns are Cap / Min, Cap / Mean, Cap / Max, the only measured values in the tables are the caps themselves, the rest are calculated or sourced from datamining sites.

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  • Moonrunner
  • 7. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 05:37:19 AM PDT
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Ahhh, thought you were doing it the other way around - ie. Looking at the average hit and multiplying it by the avg. target number to determine the cap.

Gotcha

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  • Runetotem
  • 8. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 05:44:19 AM PDT
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Clarified the table post.

Basically all the addon did was say "Woa, you cast an AoE spell, and I saw X sucess events for it, Y were resists/immunes, check all the damage events, they're all within 2 damage of eachother so you're capped out, so multiply that damage number by (x-y) and we have our total non-crit damage done". Which is why the missing events screwed the observed caps up. If I really hit 29 targets, and I've only got 28 damage events registered my calculation will be fubar.

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  • Gorgonnash
  • 9. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 06:46:16 AM PDT
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K i gotta ask... why are they doing this? I don't see any real good reason for this damage cap. Sure in reality the more objects in a blast radius would take slightly less damage but this is not reality.
Just another thing that blizz didnt see as "working as intended" or whatever.
Sure the change will be hardly noticable the majority of the time but one has to ask why they're making "important fixes" like this when there are many other things much of the WoW population is way more worried about.
Last I checked there weren't 50 threads complaining about how fast a mage can run a lowbie through an instance...
So many *Helpful* things could be done meanwhile they're doing this. I just dont get it.

Btw awesome job figuring this stuff out Z, you're amaze me :P

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  • 10. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 06:59:40 AM PDT
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They did this to limit mages from simply running around AOEing everything to level and make money ;\

I think this data seems fairly accurate one point I have noticed myself however is bizzare damage behavior under some circumstances while AOEing..

I could be using AE, in a large group, deal 1700 to every target but a handful would only take 400 and mash as much as I might, that number would not increase whatsoever (These were level 60 mobs in Gahrons). It usually occured if I gathered more than 16 mobs and was VERY noticeable at the Troll Village cemetary in EPL. When 30 zombies spawn I could barely scratch them, yet they were still hitting me as hard as they did at level 60.

Sometimes the damage cap still seemed to be active even after I had stopped aoeing a large group and was starting to aoe another group (but with less mobs) several moments later

Also note: Dead bodies sometimes still count against the damage cap for no apparent reason.

[ Post edited by Zelorur ]

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  • Runetotem
  • 11. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 07:16:12 AM PDT
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Q u o t e:
K i gotta ask... why are they doing this? I don't see any real good reason for this damage cap. Sure in reality the more objects in a blast radius would take slightly less damage but this is not reality.


I think they first applied the caps because of people like Faxmonkey during the scourge invasion taking entire nodes at once. I think the idea of a cap itself is fine, but the fact that it doesnt scale with spec or gear makes it not smurfy. Spec yourself for Imp CoC and get some fair gear going on and you'll hit that cap really quickly.


Q u o t e:
Btw awesome job figuring this stuff out Z, you're amaze me :P


Bored geeks do crazy crazy things, heh.

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  • Runetotem
  • 12. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 07:18:48 AM PDT
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Q u o t e:
I could be using AE, in a large group, deal 1700 to every target but a handful would only take 400 and mash as much as I might, that number would not increase whatsoever (These were level 60 mobs in Gahrons). It usually occured if I gathered more than 16 mobs and was VERY noticeable at the Troll Village cemetary in EPL. When 30 zombies spawn I could barely scratch them, yet they were still hitting me as hard as they did at level 60.


Interesting, Might be worth going back and checking to see if its partial resists causing that, I haven't seen what they can do to the mechanic. Easy place to test that is strat, the citizens have nasty resists that you cant penetrate through easily.


Q u o t e:
Sometimes the damage cap still seemed to be active even after I had stopped aoeing a large group and was starting to aoe another group (but with less mobs) several moments later


Hmm, havent seen that one yet. So you hit group 1 with X mobs for Y damage each, then hit group 2 with < X mobs for Y damage each again?


Q u o t e:
Also note: Dead bodies sometimes still count against the damage cap for no apparent reason.


Hmm, hadn't thought to check that, all my testing was done with targets stacked on corpses, that could explain some of the weirdness if its true.

To truly model the game, we first must research it.
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  • Shattered Halls
  • 13. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 09:57:24 AM PDT
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Don't bother testing blizzard as you indicated you may in your original post; It is not modified with an aoe cap.

But if the math is correct on everything else, this is a good post to bookmark for theorycraft later on.

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  • Runetotem
  • 14. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 11:39:19 AM PDT
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Check the PTR patch notes, its getting one in the next patch. I havent bothered doing it yet because I'd have to teach my addon to collect its periodic damage (since I believe its a different set of events that it throws), and dont care enough right now to do it, once the patch is finalized and in place I'll feel it out.

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  • Runetotem
  • 15. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 11:41:16 AM PDT
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Q u o t e:
Mages


* Arcane Missiles: Some procs were not triggered by this spell and now will be (such as Eye of Magtheridon). The tooltip for this spell will now update correctly when a Mage is affected by spell haste.
* Blizzard: This spell is now affected by area damage caps. Its bonus damage coefficients have also been increased.
* Dragon's Breath: The movement-slowing component of this spell is now properly considered a Snare. Immunity and clearing effects will now work properly with it.
* Frost Nova: This spell is now affected correctly by area damage caps.
* Molten Armor: This armor can now be triggered while the Mage is sitting.
* Polymorph duration against PvP targets has been reduced to 10 seconds.
* Slow: It is no longer sometimes possible to Slow two targets at the same time in the outdoor world.
* Spell Steal now receives the proper amount of points from a stacked aura.


http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=174505927&sid=1

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  • Cenarion Circle
  • 16. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 11:59:15 AM PDT
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Just as a thought, wouldn't testing this over by Doc Boom in Netherstorm be a bit easier?

He endlessly spawns a great number of little bombs, that appear to have a short range and life. I typically see 10-15 of them up all at once. Typically, I head down there to test Chain Lightning out.

It might be a better, and less situational, place to test these things out, as they're all fairly tightly packed and make excellent AoE targets.

My ability to generate aggro is like Gojira on the Tokyo of my lifespan.
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  • Runetotem
  • 17. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 12:18:49 PM PDT
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It works there, the best place in the game is that quest in Terrokar though, unlimited supply of 29 zombies at once that barely hit for any amount of damage.

The problem with Dr Boom testing is to test point-blank AoEs you get within his range and he blows you up.

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  • Cenarion Circle
  • 18. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 12:20:04 PM PDT
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Hmm.

Didn't consider that one...

Now I may have to go give him a hug, out of curiosity.

My ability to generate aggro is like Gojira on the Tokyo of my lifespan.
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  • Ursin
  • 19. Re: Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing   07/29/2007 01:12:41 PM PDT
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So when i clicked this thread, All i wanted to know was the new blizzard +damage coefficient.

Instead i got a bunch of useless tables, and nothing about blizzard.

This thread is full of fail.
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