Flexing

Patch 6.2 for WOW is dropping on Tuesday.  I am excited about this primarily because I am sick of the current dungeon and am thoroughly ready for something new and exciting.  New monsters, new story, new stuff!

Of course the *really* interesting part of it is the math.

My new set bonuses look simple enough at the outset but they are designed to reward clever play.  Right now I have a buff called Avenging Wrath (AW) that gives me a 20% damage bonus and allows me to use a nasty attack for 20 seconds.  It has a 2 minute cooldown.  My new set bonuses read as follows:

1:  AW now has 3 charges.  (This means that I can use it 3 times and I get a new usage every 2 minutes.  I can also store those uses up, with a cap of 3.)

2:  After AW ends gain 6% extra damage every second for 10 seconds. (I model this as 30% damage for 10 seconds, which is hopefully the way it works out but I won't know for sure until I see it.)

These two things in combination are fairly easy to math out.  This new set is absolutely amazing in a short fight of course, because you just get 2 extra uses of a big cooldown right away.  The longer the fight goes the worse that effect is, but it still matters.  However, the key to the bit is that now I will have flexibility about *when* I cast AW and that is very hard to math out.

For example, my guild is currently bashing on Heroic Blast Furnace.  I really want to have AW available for every Channeler but exactly when we will have a Channeler up is not clear.  They also don't come on predictable 2 minute timers.  This means that with my current setup I either use AW every two minutes and often don't have it available for a Channeler or when it comes up I save it for a Channeler.  I have to choose between using it as often as possible and using it at the exact time I want but wasting possible uses.

With the new set bonus I won't have to face that choice.  I can just save up a couple AW uses and hit it as soon as I am about to get my 3rd use back.  Every time a Channeler comes up I will have AW to hit no matter if they come up 90 seconds apart, 3 minutes apart, or some other time.  The ability to save up charges and use them intelligently is difficult to evaluate in terms of raw damage done but it is considerable.  Even on a fight where there are no mechanics to force particular cooldown usage I can save up my AW uses for when I get a big buff from a trinket or Heroism.

The math I did suggests that the raw dps benefit of these set bonuses is roughly 8%.  That was modeled on a 9 minute fight with no consideration given to timing of AW nor syncing it with trinket procs, though I did assume Heroism cast at the start of the fight.  With the ability to stack up to 70 seconds of massively improved damage at once or to spread that damage out as necessity dictates I am certain the benefit will be drastically larger than that in practice.  (The 70 seconds can be 100 seconds with a particular talent, which I expect to be using when I get my 4p together.)

My feeling is that I can probably squeeze at least another 5% effective damage out of using AW intelligently with the new set bonus.  There won't be pressure to use it in suboptimal situations and I will always be able to line it up with phases that demand extra burst.  Even the ability to wait a few seconds to pop it to max out my Holy Power first without wasting any cooldown time is huge.

I am really looking forward to trying it out.  My current set bonus is powerful enough and required tinkering with my mod to optimize it but once that was done I pretty much ignored it.  This new one will really let me flex my brain to crush the enemies in the face and I ready to rise to the challenge.