This is my chief complaint with the Hidden Windfury Cooldown Mechanic.

I don't mind that the offhand would share the same timer, I'll use flametongue or something. At least the spell damage on my t4 gear will do something now. My complaint is that the mechanic is seriously flawed, and makes buffing effects actually detrimental. This affects all shaman who use windfury, not just the Enhancement shaman. I'll explain.

First, let me establish how windfury scales with weapon speed. If not for the 3.0 second cooldown, Windfury would be in identical dps increase across all weapon speeds. However, because of the cooldown, windfury favors slower weapons. The rule of thumb was that "fast weapons would have lots of small procs, while big weapons would have less, large procs". This is not true because the "lots of small procs" that a fast weapon should have are limited by the Hidden Windfury Cooldown Mechanic.

Let's assume that the Hidden Windfury Cooldown Mechanic is exactly a 3.00 second cooldown.
In this scenario, I'll hypothetically use a 1.5 speed weapon.

1.5 speed weapon
Time - Effect
0.00 - Weapon Swing - Windfury Proc
1.50 - Weapon Swing - Windfury cannot proc.
3.00 - Weapon Swing - Chance for Windfury Proc

Now look at the same situation with a 3.0 speed weapon.

3.0 speed weapon
Time - Effect
0.00 - Weapon Swing - Windfury Proc
3.00 - Weapon Swing - Chance for Windfury Proc

Now, that's add +1 haste rating to the equation.

2.99 speed weapon
Time - Effect
0.00 - Weapon Swing - Windfury Proc
2.99 - Weapon Swing - Windfury Cannot Proc
5.98 - Weapon Swing - Chance for Windfury Proc

See what happened? The 1 point of haste rating turned the 3.0 second windfury cooldown into a 5.98 second windfury cooldown!

Let me attach some numbers, to make this seem more quantative. Lets use a 1.5 speed weapon that hits for 250, and has Windfury Attacks for 400. We'll use a 3.0 speed weapon of the same dps, that hits for 500 and has Windfury Attacks for 800.

1.5 speed weapon
Time - Effect
0.00 - Weapon Swing - 250, 400, 400
1.50 - Weapon Swing - 250
3.00 - Weapon Swing - 250, 400, 400
4.50 - Weapon Swing - 250
6.00 - Weapon Swing - 250, 400, 400

Total - 3650


3.0 speed weapon
Time - Effect
0.00 - Weapon Swing - 500, 800, 800
3.00 - Weapon Swing - 500, 800, 800
6.00 - Weapon Swing - 500, 800, 800

Total - 6300


2.99 speed weapon
Time - Effect
0.00 - Weapon Swing - 500, 800, 800
2.99 - Weapon Swing - 500
5.98 - Weapon Swing - 500, 800, 800
6.00 - Technically, the time passed between 5.98 and 6.00 is a percentage of a swing cooldown, which is approx 3 damage. (0.006 * 500 = 3)

Total - 4703

See what a dramatic difference that is? 1 point of haste rating can significantly lower my dps. Keep in mind that many shaman pay talent points for an innate haste effect: Flurry, which could be actually lowering the shamans DPS, rather than improving it.

For simplicity of math, I assumed 100% windfury procs. Obviously, Windfury only has a 20% proc rate, so the actual dps lost by 1 haste rating would be less pronounced than what you see here. Nonetheless, the loss would be significant, and I feel that this should be a major point of investigation by the development team. Haste is one of the most expensive stats in terms of itemization, and obviously it is a mechanic that is supposed to increase damage output, not reduce it. Coupled with the fact that Flurry procs could actually reduce my dps, rather than increasing it, this issue should be addressed as quickly as possible.

Honestly, all we really would like to see is a blue response saying that this issue has been noted, and will be looked into. I'm fairly sure this is just an unintended side effect of the implementation of the Hidden Windfury Cooldown Mechanic.

Please keep this thread bumped so Tseric and other CM's can add it to their meeting notes.
Cheers!

Az

Tseric and his band of buddies dont seem to realize that windfury never worked right in the first place. downranking was only done in order to achieve an acceptable proc rate in relation to what the tooltip claims.

Right when I read the title, I thought to myself "How could the Devs miss this?"

It seems that fast weapons are becoming crappier for shamans, as they proc way less even with the slightest of speed increases, AND when they DO proc, it's just a slap on the wrist to the enemy :P

-Whitewice

What id very much like to see is a buff to rockbitter so that it actually scales with gear, making it a viable substitute.

It would lower it if it did in fact proc every time it could and you had a weapon speed that exactly matched the hidden cooldown. In the long run haste will not reduce dps. The odds are that once that cooldown is up, the next swing WON'T cause a windfury proc and haste will cause the swings after that to come around quicker. More chances to proc the next one and more white damage to boot. I didn't crunch any numbers, but it seems kind of common sense.

Fast weapons still suck, but not haste rating.

I, uh, hate to brake it to you sport, but there are no 3.0+ speed 1 handers in the game. Well there IS one... have a look. http://www.thottbot.com/?i=3912

So really, 2.9 is as slow as a 1 hander gets. And they started getting rid of those for TBC too, now 2.7 is the standard slowest 1 hander you'll find at 70.

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Q u o t e:
I didn't crunch any numbers

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And please come back when you do.

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Q u o t e:
I, uh, hate to brake it to you sport, but there are no 3.0+ speed 1 handers in the game. Well there IS one... have a look. http://www.thottbot.com/?i=3912

So really, 2.9 is as slow as a 1 hander gets. And they started getting rid of those for TBC too, now 2.7 is the standard slowest 1 hander you'll find at 70.

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Yes, it was a hypothetical weapon - and not necessarily a 1 handed weapon. This same rule applies to 2 handed weapons.

Even in the case of a 1 hander, just look at the above math, and do the calculations with 1.5 speed weapon. You'll find that a 1.5 speed weapon will do much more damage than a 1.499 speed weapon.

you didn't calculate anything legitimate either. you used 100% procs then said "i mean yeah it doesn't actually do that but still guys!"

break my class more blizzard, gg.

I agree, this definitely sounds like a thoughtless nerf on Blizzard's part.

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Q u o t e:
you didn't calculate anything legitimate either. you used 100% procs then said "i mean yeah it doesn't actually do that but still guys!"

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Okay man. Use your head.
I was trying to keep the above post as simple as possible - a lot of people see long charts of probability math and stop reading.

Look at this chart again

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Q u o t e:
2.99 speed weapon
Time - Effect
0.00 - Weapon Swing - 500, 800, 800
2.99 - Weapon Swing - 500
5.98 - Weapon Swing - 500, 800, 800

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Now, what you're trying to argue, is that shaving 0.01 seconds off of the next swing, is going to outweigh the 20% chance to do a hypothetical 1600 damage with a windfury. Last I checked, in this scenario which was using a 3.0 weapon, a 20% chance to proc 1600 damage is significantly more than a 0.01s swing timer increase.

Cmon.

Simi side note.

Anyone know what the maximum swing speed is?

I think its 1.0, but maybe thats just hunter pets.

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Q u o t e:
Simi side note.

Anyone know what the maximum swing speed is?

I think its 1.0, but maybe thats just hunter pets.

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You mean minimum swing speed? I saw a report earlier of someone around 0.7 range.
Please don't derail this thread :(

Uh excuse me, but this isn't exactly new info you are giving us here.

Some of us have known it for over 2 years now, and you are right to tell people you shouldn't need long charts and graphs to understand it, or even prove it, its pretty simple stuff.

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Q u o t e:


You mean minimum swing speed? I saw a report earlier of someone around 0.7 range.
Please don't derail this thread :(

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.79 speed is the fastest I've seen with my offhand. Thats with its haste proc proc'd, bloodlust, and flurry up.

get one of the better weapons with a larger haste effect for your main hand, and a 1.3 speed dagger for the offhand and you can really get it down there. More so if you are a troll and can toss that 10% speed increase back on.

That said given the 3sec cooldown, even if you make the weapon twice as fast by stacking buffs like mad, you don't remotely get 2x the dps thanks to WF at best only procing every 3 seconds.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/?#character-talents.xml?r=Elune&n=xxyyzz

link to my scrubby gear so you can tell which mace offhandI have.

on my shaman I got http://thottbot.com/?i=3958 at 34, with flurry and the use, it was .62, for each swing two numbers would pop up :D

Alright, either I've forgotten how to do statistics or you're correct.

I did... (i know columns won't maintain but pretend)
time white wf procing not-procing avg-wf avg-total
0 500 1600 0.2 0.8 320 820
2.9 500 1600 0.16 0.84 256 756
where procing is chance to proc times the chance the hidden cooldown is up (same as chance of previous swing not proccing) I extended this out to a minute and got total damage of 161444

Then I did...
0 500 1600 0.2 0.8 320 820
3 500 1600 0.2 0.8 320 820
which for a minute gives total damage of 17220

However, a 2.5 second swing resulted in 19211 damage in one minute, so your claim isn't COMPLETELY true.

Now, if I extend it to 5 minutes, a swing every 3 seconds does 82,820, every 2.9 does 79,777, and every 2.5 does 92,811. I would imagine that taking half a second off isn't reasonable though, and I don't really care to find the point at which it breaks even.

So in conclusion, haste does seem to harm dps, especially in short fights. For it to be beneficial, you'd need a considerable amount of it. I think Flurry and things like trinkets which give several hundred haste qualify as considerable, so they'd still be worthwhile.

Moral being, if you're going to get any haste rating, get a lot of it.

And thus dawns the age of the return of the 2 hander.

We complained that 2 handers were obsolete because of dual wield... so they nerfed the way Dual Wield interacts with our Weapon buffs.
2 Handers + Haste + Windfury = win... /sigh.