12.11.2006

Patch 2.0: Combat Potency

Combat Potency is a 35 points combat talent that gives, at 5/5, 20% chance to regen 15 energy on successful OH attacks. It is quite easy to model the amount of energy regen.

Energy Regen as a function of Weapon Speed and Mitigation, without any speed mods.
ER (S, M)
= (1/S) * (1 - M) * 20% * 15
= 3 * (1-M) / S

Grahpically depict, ER (S, M) looks like:
To maximize ER, take partial derivative on S:
d ER / d S = -3 * (1 - M) / S^2

No minimum or maximum function can be obtained as this is an negative squared function, but the graph indicates that any weapon speed 2.0 or under offers higher marginal value than those with speed 2.0 or above. Doubling OH weapon speed will reduce the rate of energy regen by 50%.

Combat potency has proc quite often during PvE fights with my 1.8 speed Anbisath Warhammer, and I would have to adjust/micro manage my PvE cycles because of the energy regen. Instead of a steady 5/5 SnD cycles, I could actually throw in a few cp worth of rupture when I got lucky on procs.

In summary:
  • ER (S, M) = 3 * (1-M) / S, without any speed mods such as BF/SnD. To factor BF into account, multiply everything by 1.2; SnD, 1.3; both, 1.5.
  • Combat potency benefits much more from fast OH weapons than slow ones.
P.S. I am currently working through a backlog of emails, and I will be updating/reviewing every post to fix errors and fit them for expansion.

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

seems simple enough, if I am reading it correctly ER simply varies liniarly with speed but how does er relate to Damage or dps? Obiously more ER = more damage but is ther a quantitative method for making decisions like the one below?

Ive been off handing the BB but now post patch should I be off handing the war blade of hakkar offhand.

bb ~52dps 2.5 speed
Wobh ~49 dps 1.8 speed

bb stats are alittle better but its close.

Stealthism said...

This has been bugging me for a while.
Combat potency seems like it could boost my raid dps a great deal but look and your math i have one problem.

Do i offhand:

GM mace, 59.5 dps, 2.9speed, 207 top end.

Anubisath Warhammer, 52.5 dps, 1.8speed, 123 top end.

The obvious answer would be the hammer for combat potency but since having the gm mace offhand my damage in raids has improved and id assume placing the hammer back in my offhand for C.P. would only decrease my damage or keep it as it is because of the extra energy.

Anonymous said...

I have found @ lvl 60 that Ruthlessness + Relentless Strikes is better ER then CP. I had a very hard time keeping up 5/5 SnD (daggers).

@ lvl 70 having Ruth + RS + CP will be good.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps this is not the best place to post this request but I was wondering if anyone had come across any data in regards to damage output comparisons between Sinister Strike at lvl 70 and Shiv + instant poison. I have heard some confusing rumors that Shiv could output higher DPS then SS properly specd (emphasis on deep combat tree) and I was curious to know if anyone could validate/invalidate this claim.

Anonymous said...

Combat potency is buged atm.
Source : MJ request on french server

"le talent toute-puissance de combat présente actuellement un problème que notre équipe technique a connaissance, aucunne date n'est connue tant qu'a la résolution de ce problème"

In 2 words : "combat potency is buged, we know it, but we don't know when it will be fixed".

Anonymous said...

Ghosty do you have any source or link to that information please ?

or else stop trolling thx

Anonymous said...

One of the previous patches made all percentage bonuses multiplicative. As a result, if you utilize Slice N Dice and Blade Flurry together, you will notice the total speed is ~156%.. not 150%.

Anonymous said...

For the first two posters:

The key here is to compare your gained energy/second to 10, since that is your innate energy/second (we get 20 per tick for being rogues). If potency gives you 1 eps, that's 10% more than you had, so also 10% more damage from energy-spending abilities.

I created a little script to do that analysis for you at http://www.mythgaming.net/wow/cp.php

It will tell you the sustained %change to yellow damage (anything you use energy for), and the %change to white damage when you switch one weapon for the other. You can use a mod like recap to record how much of your overall damage is yellow or white and go from there.

Note that relentless strikes will improve yellow damage even further, because of the way combo points regen energy.

Anonymous said...

on that note, I have always wondered why slice&dice at 1cp is considered wasteful? S&D costs 25 energy which I instantly regain from relentless strikes? When I am combat I do not generally care about my combo points since I generally only use them for S&D, why would I, for example, ever want to open with something other than ss->s&d?

it seems to me that since relentless regains 25 energy and s&d uses 25 energy it is irrelevant which amount of combo points I use for it? Please someone elaborate :)

Anonymous said...

Relentless Strikes only gives you the energy back at 5 combo points. If you S&D at 1 point, you have only a 20% chance.

Over a long period of time, you can just think of S&D as costing 5 less energy for every combo point:

1 cp = 20 energy
2 cp = 15 energy
3 cp = 10 energy
4 cp = 5 energy
5 cp = 0 energy

Also since the S&D lasts longer, you can wait longer before you have to spend energy on it AGAIN, and you'll have more combo points when you do it again so it'll be cheaper. This all adds up.

You can easily SS twice and S&D without losing any time waiting for ticks, so that will probably be the best solution. Many people say to wait for 3, that way your next S&D will be a free one (5cp), and last long enough for you to get an evisc. I think they say the optimal cycle is S&D(3), S&D(5), Evisc(5), S&D(3), S&D(5), etc.

I am combat daggers so I don't have too much experience with sword builds, but your post inspired me to analyze this carefully for backstabbing. How important is that extra 4 seconds of S&D compared to the energy it costs to do it early? I will leave the math out because there is a lot of it, but basically I analyzed the full cycle up to the stable point and divided damage by energy cost. Then I compared the damage efficiency from the two different cycles.

I found that the Backstab -> S&D opener is better than the Backstab (x2) -> S&D opener in sustained dps for any rogue. Note: sustained dps, so might be less true if the mob dies before the 5pt S&D.

Anonymous said...

Where is the next topic? :(

Anonymous said...

I'm using the second level of the crafted hammer, and just going to use the highest dps dagger offhand I can get.

I figure the speed in the offhand for extra haste procs and combat potency outweighs any gain from hammer spec in pve.

Anonymous said...

I was hoping you could elaborate a bit more on the topic of offhand weapon speeds.

Take offhand daggers for example. You have the Fast daggers such as Searing Sunblade and even the crafted Dirge sitting at 1.3/1.4 speeds respectively. How do these fair vs 1.8 speed dagger like Malchazeen and Emerald Ripper.

I've been using the dps spreadsheet off EJ's forums, and testing a bit on my own, and it seems that due to mongoose enchant procs, poison damage, combat potency etc all add up making the faster daggers that have marginally less dps, the better choice.

Would you agree with this or could you look into this a bit?

Thanks

Gnubsila said...

after reading this topic I started to think about changing my 1.8 speed Emerald Ripper against a 1.4 speed PVP weapon because of the better energy reg with combat potency.
I tried to calculate the gained DPS an plotted thin in a graph. You can see the result at http://gnubsila.blogspot.com/ sorry for the german speec, but my english ist pretty bad. I hope you understand it anyway and perhaps you can correct me if an fault occurred.

Gnubsila said...

after reading this topic I started to think about changing my 1.8 speed Emerald Ripper against a 1.4 speed PVP weapon because of the better energy reg with combat potency.
I tried to calculate the gained DPS an plotted thin in a graph. You can see the result at http://gnubsila.blogspot.com/ sorry for the german speec, but my english ist pretty bad. I hope you understand it anyway and perhaps you can correct me if an fault occurred.

Unknown said...

lal nerds. can't belive u guys even going to calculate this...

Unknown said...

lal nerds. can't belive u guys even going to calculate this...

Anonymous said...

Hm, very interesting, one think I need to point out is that in the end, you say:

To factor:

BF multiply 1.2
SnD multily 1.3
both multiply 1.5

The first to are acurate, but the third one is not

Since Speedbuffs do not add additive, they multiply within themselves.

so 1.2 + 1.3 = 1.5 is not the acurate way to go about.

1.2 x 1.3 = 1.56 however is.

Chuck_Diesel said...

I would like to see you run numbers for combat potency with a shiv build.

I have considered it for a while now, but am not willing to respec b/c shiv spec could prove useless. I figure the extra damage from poisons constantly being applied, more guaranteable combat potency procs since shiv uses the offhand to attack, and daze possibly being useful since shiv has a lower cooldown on use.

I realize i'm posting a bit late in response to your post, but feedback from anyone on their thoughts would be appreciated.