12.06.2006

Patch 2.0: Day 1, Blade Twisting

Patch 2.0 finally arrived yesterday and I log on right after getting home from work. The spec of choice is 10/41/0 Combat Mace stun/daze build. I have tried 41/3/7 mutilate build on test servers for couple of hours, but I figures that its time for me to change. I have been in the various SF builds for majority of my time in WoW, or at least 100 days out of the 130 days played, including new and old builds like 30/0/21, 30/8/12, 31/8/12, 30/20, 31/15/5. Misplaced Servo Arm remains to be the weapon of choice as it is currently the second hardest hitting SS weapon besides Gressil. Despite I have access to Kingsfall but the chance of me getting it before expansion is very slim. :(

The focus of the build is to annoy the shit out of people in PvP with Mace Spec Stun (5% chance) and Blade Twisting (20% chance) while maintain a certain degrees of PvE/farming viability with Combat Potency (20% chance to gain 15 energy per OH attack). I also want to investigate what weapon skills have become after the nerf with my decent +8 mace skills (5 from mace spec, 3 from Anubisath).

Here's some thoughts:

Blade Twisting - 20% chance per SS/BS/Shiv/Gouge to daze target for 8 seconds; targets will have a daze debuff when it procs. Sounds perfect on paper but it doesnt deliever. Assumes all SS lands, it should proc:

(SS / 40 energy) * (20 energy / 2 second) * (60 second / minute) * (1 proc / 5 SS) = 3 ppm.

Compare to my Crusader MH (1 ppm):

(1 proc / min) * (min / 60 sec) * (2.8 sec / swing) * (swing / 0.80 hit) = 5.8% proc / hit

which translate into (0.058 * (60/4 + 60/(2.8/0.8))) = 1.86 ppm.

Compare to Mace Spec stun (5% proc/hit)
(5% proc/hit ) * (2.8/0.8 + 1.8/0.8 + 4 hit/s) * (60s / m) = 2.94 ppm

So theoritically, Blade Twisting should proc as much as Mace Spec and a lot more than Crusader. However, from 4 hours of PvP and PvE, it's proc rate is definitely less than either of them. The problem with it is it proc only off special attacks, which has a 4 second cooldown, so the larger interval offsets some of the proc chances.

So in summary:
  • With 2.8s MH, 1.8s OH, SS, +5% hit, Blade Twisting will proc roughly 3.00 ppm, compare to Crusader's of 1.86 ppm and Mace Spec Stun of 2.94ppm.
  • Despite similar theoratical proc rates to Mace Spec, Blade Twisting will proc less than Mace Spec and even Crusader due to the large time intervals between special attacks (4 second cooldown for SS, 6 second cooldown for BS).
  • My feeling is that Blade Twisting procs less than Crusader after 4 hours of PvP/PvE.
  • Blade Twisting needs to be buffed, to roughly 30% proc chance to offset the large time interval between specials.

EDIT: Oh and btw, the Crit Scaling post is still TBC...

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sound like the link is not the template you talk about but a 5/41/5 template

Anonymous said...

The link points to a 5/41/5 dagger-build, that's not what you're talking about.

BTW thank for you're blog

VitaminC said...

fixed

Anonymous said...

I dunno to say that 20% isn't enough from what I've seen in pvp it procs quite often.

Anonymous said...

Your Blog is, bookmarked since long ago, just wanted to let you know :) Keep up the extremly good work :)

Anonymous said...

VitaminC, i to love mace spec. I am a similar build (17/34) and didn't bother picking up combat potency assume my MH Castigator would eventually become my OH Replaced by a MSA which i believe is to slow for combat potency.

I must say im not impressed by Blade Twisting either, but on the other hand Mace stun effect is great and vitality is also.

My question though is this MSA hasn't dropped once and my guilds 13/15 in naxx.. today i bought a Gm mace and offhanded it yet i feel i might have made the wrong choice as its rather slow for what i assume a good offhand should be. Should have i bought a different weapon to OH or was my purchase suitable for my spec?

Anonymous said...

Seams that it doesnt proc when you apply Crippling poison on the target.

Anonymous said...

Hi there.

Referring to your crit rate comment:

I've read some posts about how Mutilate is less affected by resilience than Imp Backstab. From a crit damage point of view I can understand this, but from a crit % point of view this sounds wrong to me.

I am assuming that each of the Mutilate hits use their own crit %, and that each of those crit%'s will be individually reduced by resilience.

If this is how it works, then Mutilate will take a much larger hit to crit % than Imp Backstab against targets with high resilience, which means that Mutilate scale down faster than any other ability we have, as opponents gear up.

Comments?

Anonymous said...

Mace spec is 6% maxed out..

bbr said...

Blade twisting used to work on bosses, but it's been fixed sadly.
It's a pure pvp skill now.