Dr Boom, I Presume?

BRK » 08 April 2007 » In Spec »

What in the blue-blazes is Dr. Boom? you might be asking yourself. You saw that mentioned in a previous article, but are ignorant as to its relevance. Well, we at the BRK Who’s Who of WoW NPCs and Otis Spunkmeyer Cookie Museum have you covered. Let’s run down a list of tools commonly used for dps research, shall we?

Paperdoll - A theoretical analysis of damage over time based upon stats and talent specs. Used as a foundation for justifying/degrading a specific piece of gear or talent build.

DamageMeters and SW-Stats - Addon tools used to record in-game damage.

Dr. Boom - An NPC in Area 52 with 650,000 health who does not aggro based upon damage, but by proximity. If you stay 20 yards away from him, you can blast at him all day long.

BRK has shown you Paperdoll analyzes of BM, MM, and SV talent builds. He has shown mathematically how Serpents Swiftness is the bomb-diggity; how BM does more damage over time than MM in a theoretical setting. Nobody has looked at the math and said, “those numbers are wrong”. That warms BRK’s heart; nobody is saying we cannot add or multiply.

But many folks decry Paperdoll testings as irrelevant, that real-WoW fighting is what matters. Shot rotation, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot, etc. must be included or the analysis is flawed and worthless.

Well, that’s bullpucky, but we’ll continue.

So how does one test one’s actual maximum-dps in a real-WoW setting? Well, our buddies the Vending Machines have Dr. Boom. They can fly to Netherstorm, sit outside his 20 yard aggro radius, blast until their mana is gone, and report their findings about talent specs. For them, there’s only one problem: crits.

Eliminating random chance is one of the tenets of the Scientific Process. So what the fire-squishies do is run the Dr. Boom tests over, and over, and over…

and over.

They attempt to lessen the effect of random crits by multiple runs. If a mage has a crit percentage of 20%, and during one Dr. Boom test he crits only 15% of the time, his dps is gonna be lower than he expects. If he crits 25% of the time, it’ll be higher. If he runs Dr. Boom 100 times, his crit average per run should approach his tooltip measurement of 20%, and thus be a more accurate representation of his real-WoW dps.

And that’s 100 runs per talent spec. That’s a lot of time to figure out if a 10/48/3 generates more dps than a 34/25/2. But you do it, you go through all that and find the numero uno dps spec for your gear… and then you get a drop in Mechanar that replaces gear, changes your crit percentage, decreases your mana… and it’s back to Dr. Boom for another 200 runs.

OMG, and that’s just the testing duration. Let’s talk about testing methodology.

Mana pots, popping trinkets, shot rotations, and macros all play a huge part in arguing whether or not a test was run “properly”. You want to have a real boring time learning about mages, go read the mage forums and their “discussions” of how a Dr. Boom test should be run. Then go to Eye of the Storm and kill them just make them shet ep and pay for all the aspirin you had to take to relieve your Dr. Boom headache.

“But it will give you a more accurate real-WoW analysis of how a MM hunter will beat a BM hunter in a ranged-weapon-only contest,” you might say.

Horsedung.

It gives you a more accurate real-WoW analysis of how a MM hunter will do against a BM hunter in a ranged-weapon-only contest against Dr. Boom. What about Arcane Resistant mobs? Any RAP-advantage a MM hunter would have with a more-powerful Arcane Shot goes out the window. What about Physical Resistant mobs where Steady Shot becomes irrelevant? How about those super-high armor mobs where Arcane Damage will give a huge advantage?

“Well, each situation is different, of course…”

Quiet you. And if you really want real-WoW damage, BRK needs to use his pet. We don’t want to count his damage, (we know MM don’t stand a bloody bleeping chance in BRD if we count our pet damage,) but the BM tree has talents that boost our dps based upon pet crits, and we want that counted.

But oh, that’s right. Dr. Boom has a 20-yard aggro radius; I can’t use my pet without destroying my ability to fire without aggroing him. That both blows and stinks; a BM-test with Dr. Boom is always going to have inaccurate results because we cannot count the hunter-damage that would be gained with a pet-crit talent proc.

For hunters, BM especially, Dr. Boom isn’t a very accurate test. Frankly, it sucks, and BRK disregards any Dr. Boom test results for hunters, period.

Are you interested in reading some BM Dr. Boom posts? Go here. Here are some snippets for those looking for troll-ammo:

“This is without pet. Which means I’m not getting my Focus Inspiration buff (3% extra damage) and my pet’s damage (at 160 paperdoll dps).”

“I guarantee MM hunters could not keep up with sustained DPS over 200k damage self buffed only.

“I’ve raided as 4 specs so far. BM, MM, SV, and 31/30 hybrid. I can truthfully say that in Karazhan BM is superior.”

BRK would really like to put this subject to rest, but if you’ve got something to contribute on this subject, go right ahead.

Some upcoming posts:

What the heck is the difference between Arcane and Steady Shot.
Is Survival Viable.
Slow Gun vs Fast Gun and How To Do Your Talents.
What Happened to Barby, and How Is Amanna Involved.
Does 12-Grain Bread Have Higher DPS Than 7-Grain, Or Is That Just a Paperdoll Stat.

Stay tuned.

Comments