castsequence lowers dps big time. 500dps loss

[Kicksome]

I was wondering why my dps was low compared to other elemental shaman. So I spent some time at the training dummies.

Just to cut to the chase, castsequence has some sort of lag with it, compared to using a direct /cast macro or clicking on the actual spell.

A very simple test:
Manually clicking /cast macros, I am able to easily click my 5th LB before lava burst is off cooldown, but when I use a castsequence (spamming the key), by the time my 4th LB cast is over, LvB is off cooldown. (which means I lost at LEAST 1 second of DPS) I can even notice slight delays between each cast with my castsequence macro. Maybe only .25 seconds, but they add up compared to non-castsequences. These delays are not there when I spam a /cast macro.
It almost seems that the delay between casts, using a /castsequence = my latency, which is about 220ms. The delay isn't there with /cast.


I did a few tests with my shaman (I did each rotation 4x with a full mana bar and was within 100 dps).
When I manually clicked on the cast rotation of Flame Shock, LvB, LB, LB, LB, LB, LB, LvB, LB, LB, LB, LB I did a solid 2.5K dps
When I used my castsequence to do it - I did a little less than 2K dps.
(/castsequence reset=6 Flame shock, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt)

(To keep this simple, I didn't use chain lighting)
My Lightning Bolt has about a 1.7 sec cast time.
4 lighting bolts = 6.8 seconds
Lava Burst = 8 second cooldown
Since Lava Burst has a 8 second cooldown, that means I need to cast 5 lightning bolts before I cast another Lava Burst. (If I cast 4 LB, then I'd have to wait 1.2 seconds for LvB cooldown)

Result: net loss of 500dps in each test.

Has anyone else noticed the /castsequence lag???

EDIT: This is confirmed, you can try it yourself with /cast lightning bolt vs. /castsequence lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt macros. DPS loss and delay between casts with /castsequence is very noticeable vs. /cast. The higher latency you have, the bigger the difference. Very low latency might not notice any substantial difference.

-Kicksome

[Catamer]

I had a similar cast sequence that started with a flame shock and I feel like i get a HUGE delay from the flame shock and when my girls start casting lava burst or lightning.
i feel like they are stop casting for 3 seconds when they should only delay 1.5 seconds for the global cool down.
I'll have to do some more tests, I'll try some of your ideas at the test dummys.

[Bigfish]

How much testing are we talking here, and how long were your trial times? I've seen some pretty hefty discrepencies in DPS based purely off a lucky string of crits or a poor string of non-crits. Given that we're talking training dummies here, there wasn't anyone else around dropping a 13% increased magic damage, or a trinket going off at some point, or procs, or the like?

[genocyde]

When I manually clicked on the cast rotation of Flame Shock, LvB, LB, LB, LB, LB, LB, LvB, LB, LB, LB, LB
When I used my castsequence (/castsequence reset=6 Flame shock, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt)

I'm not exactly sure how the parameter reset=6 works but wouldn't that reset your castsequence well before it finished? Or does it only reset if your not casting?

Edit: NvM i /searched. Reset=6 would be 6 seconds without triggering the macro.

[TheBigBB]

When I manually clicked on the cast rotation of Flame Shock, LvB, LB, LB, LB, LB, LB, LvB, LB, LB, LB, LB
When I used my castsequence (/castsequence reset=6 Flame shock, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt)

I'm not exactly sure how the parameter reset=6 works but wouldn't that reset your castsequence well before it finished? Or does it only reset if your not casting?

Yes, the "reset=6" ought to be resetting the sequence after 6 seconds. There may be a problem with the macro. OP, it's possible that you're flame shocking way too often and then waiting another second doing nothing while Lava Burst is on cooldown. I think that's what would happen with this macro.

[Mokoi]

makes me wonder if maybe /castsequence denys access to your next spell until the cast of your old is complete on both client and server?

Quartz is an addon that gives you a rough estimate of when you can cast your next spell based on the lag you are experiencing and the time it takes for the signals to cross, and you are able to start casting the next spell before the old one has finished, and maybe a /castsequence denys this overlap of spells, and given enough casts, this can be significant loss of DPS.

[Kicksome]

I did the dps test 4 times each with a full mana bar (level 80 dummy). No one else was at the dummy, as I did it this morning and it was dead. (I also ran it about 4-5 times after this post)

This is after I did about 5 tests and was thinking WTF is wrong with my macros.

Even a very simple test of casting Lava Burst, LB, LB, LB, LB manually (and watching the lava burst cooldown)
vs putting it in a castsquence (and watching the lava burst cooldown)
shows there's lag in the castsequence every single time.

i.e when you cast it manually, LvB still has a cooldown. When you use a castsequence, LvB cooldown is up. Which means there is a delay in there.

[Kicksome]

Yes, the "reset=6" ought to be resetting the sequence after 6 seconds. There may be a problem with the macro. OP, it's possible that you're flame shocking way too often and then waiting another second doing nothing while Lava Burst is on cooldown. I think that's what would happen with this macro.Take the flame shock out, you still have the same lag issue. It's also not waiting on Shock to be up since I'm casting it once every 15 seconds max. Also, reset=6 doesn't matter in this macro [unless you wait 6 seconds before hitting it again, then it starts over]. Once the castsequence is over, it just starts it again.

[genocyde]

Hey, can you do a simple test quick. I would but i'm working. Just throw /castsequence LB,LB at the target for a bit and compare it to a regular spammed /cast LB and let us know if this is a lag/GCD lockout issue. I imagine if it's the /castsequence command you might see a significant dropout of LB's / min just spamming that one spell

[Kicksome]

Hey, can you do a simple test quick. I would but i'm working. Just throw /castsequence LB,LB at the target for a bit and compare it to a regular spammed /cast LB and let us know if this is a lag/GCD lockout issue. I imagine if it's the /castsequence command you might see a significant dropout of LB's / min just spamming that one spellGreat idea!

I just tried it. The difference is VERY noticeable and it's really silly. I did 1200 with /castsequence lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt etc... and 1750 dps with /cast lightning bolt

Just a massive difference.

The server is definitely waiting for the cast to end before it takes the next spell in the /castsequence.

[genocyde]

Edit: wow my work comptuer and too fast of clicking just blew up my posting attempt :P

[genocyde]

From my poor understanding of the mechanics involved, the /castsequence command sends the 1st spell to the server and *waits* for a confimation before casting the second spell. The /cast command merely sends off the spell to the server without the delay in waiting for a reply before going to the next line and sending that request.
Just pulled this off of TKAsomething.com's macro section. This could be the problem.

[zanthor]

Yes, the "reset=6" ought to be resetting the sequence after 6 seconds. There may be a problem with the macro. OP, it's possible that you're flame shocking way too often and then waiting another second doing nothing while Lava Burst is on cooldown. I think that's what would happen with this macro. reset=6 will reset 6 seconds after you stop mashing that button... if you press the button once every 5 seconds it will never reset. If you spam the button over and over it will never reset.

[Bigfish]

Well, this is going to be problematic.

[genocyde]

If it is true that the /castsequence command has to wait for the server to respond before firing the next spell then we can semi-confirm this by doing something like

Shaman /castsequence LB,LB,LB this should see a lag issue and slow down dps

Mage /castsequence Ice lance, Ice lance, Ice lance Since they are all instant spells you should still be waiting on GCD even after the server tells your macro the spell completed. I would expect no slowdowns here.

Anyone got a mage and a shaman the can test on the same box?

(test both /castsequence runs vs just spam casting the spell with no macro. let us know how close each macro was to the dps of the spell etc.)

[Kicksome]

If it is true that the /castsequence command has to wait for the server to respond before firing the next spell then we can semi-confirm this by doing something like

Shaman /castsequence LB,LB,LB this should see a lag issue and slow down dps

Mage /castsequence Ice lance, Ice lance, Ice lance Since they are all instant spells you should still be waiting on GCD even after the server tells your macro the spell completed. I would expect no slowdowns here.

Anyone got a mage and a shaman the can test on the same box?

(test both /castsequence runs vs just spam casting the spell with no macro. let us know how close each macro was to the dps of the spell etc.)It's confirmed. I tested this above.

[Bigfish]

Ok, this is just me thinking of a work around, so I have not had a chance to actually test this. By putting a number of commas in castsequence, you can effective run two castsequences in one macro. exampe:


/castsequence Flameshock,,,,,,,,,, Lightning Bolt,,,,,,,,,, Lightning bolt,,,,,,,,,,,, Lightning Bolt,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Lightning Bolt,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Lightning Bolt
/castsequence ,,,,,,Lavaburst,,,,,,,,,,,,Lightning Bolt,,,,,,,,,,,Lightning Bolt,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Lavaburst,,,,,,,,,,,,Lightning Bolt,,,,,,,,,,,,,Lightning Bolt

Now the commas will naturally have to be adjusted based on your keypresses per second and where in the rotation the spell is supposed to go off, but they basic idea goes that only 1 sequence should be "up" at any given time, and shouldn't be subject to the "get an answer back" lag found in castsequence.

[genocyde]

Is it really possible to run two /castsequences or two /castrandom in the same macro?

[genocyde]

As much as I don't wanna think about naked people all over an inanimate replica of a person... maybe we should try this with zero talent points spent, no gear on, etc. to take out any random factors.

[Bigfish]

Pretty sure. Its definitely possible with /castrandom, and the only problem I can think of with 2 castsequences is when you may have both with a potentially firing spell. Like I said, I haven't been able to test it yet. Just brainstorming.

[Kicksome]

Tested again. No totems and I'm not spec'd for lightning overload.

I kept casting until 1000 mana

1) /cast lightning bolt 262,142 damage, 1948.3 dps
2) /castsequence lightning bolt, lightning bolt,lightning bolt,lightning bolt,lightning bolt,lightning bolt,lightning bolt,lightning bolt,lightning bolt 291,531 damage, 1675.1 dps

I only had 125ms lag. When I tested it before I had 233ms lag (horde were in IF and I didn't know it). It seems like the better your latency, the less delay. So make sure to add that to your tests.

Naked test (only tabard, no totems):
1) /cast 18,238 damage, 459.3 dps
2) /castsequence 16,314 damage, 372.0dps

[Bigfish]

I'm not convinced this is a problem. I just did some test myself...

No totems, only Flametounge Weapon, lvl 70 target dummy. (i'm 75)

1) /cast LB only = 1400 DPS
2) /castsequence Lb, LB = ~1050 DPS
3) /cast [target=focustarget] LB = 1100 DPS
4) /cast LB only = 1100 DPS
5) /cast LB only = 1200 DPS

Thats where I stopped.

Are we sure thats its a macro problem and not just a randomness problem with Shaman? Remember shaman are all sorts of procs (like lightning overload) that makes them very random....

What about clear casting (randomly making the test longer but increasing your mana pool). And how about elemental Oath?

I'm going to test this over lunch. More later tonight as well.

[Kicksome]

Remember, I said I was casting until 1K mana. NO totems or buffs at all.

When you cast slowly, you use less mana - since you cast less. And you also benefit from casting MP5, since combat is longer. This means you run OOM slower.

When you cast more quickly, you use more mana.

I'm testing to confirm the delay in /castsequence. The debate on DPS vs. more total damage is something different.

[genocyde]

Or, for that matter, just cast LB a set # of times and time it. take procs/damage out of the test all together. If it takes you an extra 2.2 sec to get off 20 spells then you know you've got a 110 ms delay or something of the sort.

However, I beleive there has already been sufficient testing for me to agree this is the case and by default if your waiting for a server response; the worse your lag the worse it's effect on you will be.

[Kicksome]

naked test - 30 seconds (using wow stopwatch) (116 latency)

try 1
/cast 13654 damage, 434.8 dps
/castsequence 12667 damage, 396.8 dps

try 2
/cast 13610 damage, 434.5 dps
/castsequence 12835 damage, 405dps


try 3
/cast 14731 damage, 467.7 dps
/castsequence 13817 damage, 409.4 dps

try 4
/cast 15635 damage, 494.2 dps
/castsequence 13689 damage, 440.0 dps

[genocyde]

Sounds like it's time to start looking for another solution for anyone interested in maxing dps. Might be the only way is to multi task your own rotations. Anyone give Bigfish's two /castsequence idea a shot yet?

[Bigfish]

working on it right now. Will report soon.

[Fuzzyboy]

Your results will vary a lot because of crits. Even with only 10pct crit chance, you'd need something in the line of 10000 casts to get a near-reliable figure. If, however, we're talking about determining a variance in the 15 pct area, less might be enough to get an indicator, but keep variance in mind when testing :-)

[Bigfish]

Ok, here are the numbers I got, based on 20 fireball samples and their dps, crit rate, and time to complete:

Alternating castsequence macro:


/castsequence Fireball,,
/castsequence , Fireball,

DPS Crit Time
820 4/20 1:03
956 8/20 1:03
954 7/20 1:04

pure /cast

773 3/20 1:03
921 6/20 1:03
843 6/20 1:03


/castsequence fireball, fireball, etc

984 10/20 1:09
967 9/20 1:08
957 9/20 1:08
676 2/20 1:07



Castsequence came out with the generally higher dps, but I blame this on my stupid freaking crit streaks when I got to that point in testing. It was still taking an extra 4-6 seconds to get the same number of casts in. Take that as you will. Good news is the alternating castsequence macro works. And now I have to actually get back to work. Be abck later.

[genocyde]

Your results will vary a lot because of crits. Even with only 10pct crit chance, you'd need something in the line of 10000 casts to get a near-reliable figure. If, however, we're talking about determining a variance in the 15 pct area, less might be enough to get an indicator, but keep variance in mind when testing :-)

There might be a way around this inconsistency as well. Find yourself a friend (your other toon sitting next to you) and put on his full pvp gear and talent him for less % chance to be crit and duel yourself! If your dps'r is naked and your target is pvp geared or talented as such I doubt you'll ever see a crit. Just make sure you aren't specced in to any reactionary procs.

The other solution to this is to run a good dps meter like recount and run two toons on the same target dummy. On one toon run the /castsequence macro on the other run the /cast macro. You should be able to tell quite easily who is getting off more casts/min just be looking at the number of instances of your chosen spell on recount when the fight is over. doesn't matter if they hit / crit / miss it will know.
Also if your running cast bars on everyone you should be able to see a toon falling behind

[Kicksome]

I just took my gear off to test, but did not respec. I'm probably not going to run anymore tests, I'm positive it's making a difference, for me at least. Along with all the other tests I've run that convinced me, I've gotten my dps up to 2.7k manually running the rotation - never under 2.5k. I never got above 2.3K before this with the /castsequence I used. This is in line with what the other ele shaman in my guild is doing, so it answers my question on why my dps was low when I had almost the same gear.

It's really clear when I switched between the /cast and /castsequence there is a delay between casts. It's really apparent. The cast bar disappears for a micro second with /castsequence but with /cast it never goes away. I'd bet that many people who use /castsequence felt something was a bit off, but might not known what it was. I know I felt that way.

I'm pretty sure that before the next part of the castsequence is sent to the server, the server needs to tell your wow client that the other spell is done, and it's okay to send the next in the castsequence (otherwise the sequence would jump ahead). That's what's causing the lag. With /cast it just sending requests to the server.

[Bigfish]

Well, for OP's macro:


/castsequence Flame Shock,,,,,,,,, Lightning Bolt,, Lightning Bolt,, Lightning bolt,, Lightning Bolt,, Lightning bolt,,
/castsequence , Lavaburst,, Lightning Bolt,, Lightning Bolt,, Laveburst,, Lightning Bolt,, Lightning Bolt,

MIGHT/SHOULD work. Assuming laveburst isn't instacast or anything.

[Kicksome]

Well, for OP's macro:


/castsequence Flame Shock,,,,,,,,, Lightning Bolt,, Lightning Bolt,, Lightning bolt,, Lightning Bolt,, Lightning bolt,,
/castsequence , Lavaburst,, Lightning Bolt,, Lightning Bolt,, Laveburst,, Lightning Bolt,, Lightning Bolt,

MIGHT/SHOULD work. Assuming laveburst isn't instacast or anything.This doesn't work like the original macro. It just goes through the first castsequence that you listed.

[Bigfish]

This doesn't work like the original macro. It just goes through the first castsequence that you listed.

Are you using Macaroon?

Edit: I'll look in to it later and let you know what I come out with. Chances are its an issue with the commas. Things are so freaking hard to work out unless you're looking at how the macro runs when you're writing it.

[maxel]

So this explains it. I was noticing something very similar on my lock and mage dps comparisons. The mages with just a /cast frostbolt macro were far outpacing my lock in the conversion of Gear to DPS while he was using a castsequence.

Perhaps the solution lies in more fancy macros with branching? What I mean is maybe make the macros simple and without castsequence altogether, but have the last line hit a new bar or move back to the start. Let's say we want a 3 sequence spell rotation Flame Shock >> Lava Burst >> Lightning Bolt >> LB >> LB. We could do the following:

Bar 1 - Button 1:
/cast [target=focus] Flame Shock
/changeactionbar 2

Bar 1 - Button 2:
/cast [target=focus] Lightning Bolt

Bar 2 - Button 1:
/cast [target=focus] Lava Burst
/changeactionbar 1

Assuming you've bound the keys for Button 1 and 2 to 1 and 2 your sequence would now be spam 1 > 1 > 2 > 2 > 2 > etc

I'm at work and unable to test and throwing out some brainstorming. Would this work?

[Bigfish]

I considered something like that myself. I think the problem you run in to is that the command to switch action bars will still run even if the spell assigned in the macro doesn't.

[genocyde]

That's a very good idea. Unfortunately I have all 10 of my available action bars full on my druid due to a bar for caster/bear/cat and a bar for caster/bear/cast for mboxing and for pvp and well you get the idea :P Are there any addons left that allow you to add more than 120 action bar buttons or more specifically more then 10 bars?

[Harem]

I'm at work - but here's two ideas.

1) How about casting for ~65secs and using combat log to upload to wow webstats or just opening in a editor and counting how man LB in exactly sixty seconds starting from the first cast?

We are saying the dps loss is the result of casting less often - so lets actually count the number of casts we manage to get off in a certain period of time. (this eliminates crits etc. causing the dps difference)


2)Why can't we solve this with /click?
/click lavaburstbutton
/click chainlightingbutton
/click lightningboltbutton

This would bypass the need for server response (which is what we are theorizing is causing the /castsequence slowdown) and essentially spam 3 buttons at once in the order of largest cooldown to smallest. (I'm afraid this functionality will be nerfed).

[genocyde]

2)Why can't we solve this with /click?
/click lavaburstbutton
/click chainlightingbutton
/click lightningboltbutton


I guess the problem is does that
A) cast the best dps rotation?
B) refresh flame shock for you?
maybe:
/castsequence reset=target/combat/6/etc. flame shock,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,
/click lavaburstbutton
/click chainlightingbutton
/click lightningboltbutton

Edit: holy fail at quoting

[Harem]

/click flameshockbutton
/click LVBbutton
/click CLbutton
/click LBbutton


how about that?

[maxel]

So this explains it. I was noticing something very similar on my lock and mage dps comparisons. The mages with just a /cast frostbolt macro were far outpacing my lock in the conversion of Gear to DPS while he was using a castsequence.

Perhaps the solution lies in more fancy macros with branching? What I mean is maybe make the macros simple and without castsequence altogether, but have the last line hit a new bar or move back to the start. Let's say we want a 3 sequence spell rotation Flame Shock >> Lava Burst >> Lightning Bolt >> LB >> LB. We could do the following:

Bar 1 - Button 1:
/cast [target=focus] Flame Shock
/changeactionbar 2

Bar 1 - Button 2:
/cast [target=focus] Lightning Bolt

Bar 5 - Button 1:
/cast [target=focus] Lava Burst
/changeactionbar 1

Assuming you've bound the keys for Button 1 and 2 to 1 and 2 your sequence would now be spam 1 > 1 > 2 > 2 > 2 > etc

I'm at work and unable to test and throwing out some brainstorming. Would this work?FWIW I used the above code on my warlock and mages and it did in fact work and add about 500dps to both sets of characters. Here's what I have:

On each toon I have my primary bar and my switch bar (action bar 5) as well as 2 buttons we'll call them setup 1/2 and primary 1/2 for a total of 4 buttons:

Warlock:
Bar 1 Button 1: (Setup 1)
#showtooltip curse of the elements
/assist party1
/use 13
/use 14
/pet attack
/castsequence reset=300/combat/target Curse of the Elements, GarbageSpell
/changeactionbar 5


Bar 1 Button 2: (Primary 1)
#showtooltip Shadow Bolt
/assist party1
/use 13
/use 14
/pet attack
/cast Shadow Bolt

Bar 5 Button 1: (Setup 2)
#showtooltip Corruption
/assist party1
/use 13
/use 14
/pet attack
/cast Corruption

Bar 5 Button 2: (Primary 2)
#showtooltip
/cast Life Tap
/changeactionbar 1

My tapping sequence is now 1 > 1 > 2 > 2 > 2 > 2 (Repeat until corruption is falling off then start over

I also have 2 frost mages their sequence is as follows:
Bar 1 Button 1 (Setup 1)
#showtooltip Ice Lance
/assist Party1
/use 13
/use 14
/petattack
/cast Icy Veins
/cast Ice Lance
/changeactionbar 5

Bar 1 Button 2 (Primary 1)
#showtooltip FrostBolt
/assist Party1
/use 13
/use 14
/petattack
/cast Icy Veins
/cast FrostBolt

Bar 5 Button 1 (Setup 2)
#showtooltip Summon Water Elemental
/castsequence reset=144 Summon Water Elemental, Cold Snap

Bar 5 Button 2 (Primary 2)
#showtooltip FrostBolt
/assist Party1
/use 13
/use 14
/petattack
/cast Icy Veins
/cast FrostBolt
/changeactionbar 1

This uses the same castsequence as the warlock and bumped their dps from 1200ish to 1700 on a good streak. Keep in mind when I say bumped I really mean bumped. I have been performing the same benchmarks over the last year trying to maximize my dps and in 5 minutes of testing alone I can tell already that there is a ton of merit to the statement that castsequence does in fact lower dps.

[heffner]

A quick test with my L60 shaman on target dummy. I used 1) lightning bolt directly bound to a key, 2) /castsequence with five lightning bolts and 3) /castrandom with five lightning bolts.

Castsequence definitely waits until the cast ends. I do not get any error message with button spamming - "Another action is in progress". With Quartz, the "red bar" never really changed. Also, the next cast never went off before the Quartz cast progression bar hit the end of the bar (hope that makes sense).

Using Cast or Castrandom does not wait until the cast ends. I get an error message with button spamming and with Quartz the "red bar" changed often and the next cast went off before the moving cast progression bar hit the end of the bar.

I am not sure if /cast was better than /castrandom or not.

Not very exhaustive, but it is very obvious to me that the total number of casts over a specified time period would be less for the /castsequence macro. The difference between casts is visually noticeable.

[Sam DeathWalker]

In general, you cannot cast more than one spell with a single click of a macro. Most spells and some items trigger the global cooldown (GCD) which keeps you from taking too many actions at once. Even if a spell fails to cast, if it would trigger the GCD, it prevents subsequent /casts in the macro from running. This was not the case prior to patch 2.0 which is why you may still come across macros like the following:
/cast Overpower
/cast Execute
/cast Mortal Strike
/cast Sunder ArmorMacros like this do not work anymore. As soon as Overpower fails to cast, the game will block all the other spells from casting as well, even though the GCD is not actually triggered.

There is a bit of good news, though. Certain spells can actually be cast at the same time in a single macro. Any spell that is instant and does not trigger the GCD can be followed by another cast ("Next Melee" abilities like Heroic Strike fall under this category too). The spell's tooltip will tell you if it's instant, but you have to use the spell (or check a spell database site like thottbot.com) to know if it triggers the GCD. Example:
/use Talisman of Ephemeral Power
/cast Arcane Power
/cast Presence of Mind
/cast Pyroblast

Humm I don't know if using

/click
/click
/click

to get around the /cast limitation is umm.. At any rate thats a nerf waiting to happen and bad practice to get into.

Why would two /castrandom or /castsequence be usable in macros? Once there is ANY failure to cast a spell that triggers the GCD that failure will stop the WHOLE macro (including the 2nd /castsequence or /castrandom) correct?

And if your first one dosn't fail then why do you need to put in the 2nd anyway?

So if line 1 fails you dont get to line 2, if line one 1 works you dont get to line 2. Thus you never get to line 2.

Humm so the game checks for a failure with /cast but dosn't with /click, /castrandom or /castsequence? Meaning you can just use any of those three instead of /cast? ... well pffttt

/castrandom Flame Shock,
/castrandom Lightning Bolt,
/castrandom Fire Nova Totem,

Well ...

[heffner]

Ok, did a small amount of testing.

Scenario: L60 Draenai Shaman, Naked, No Talents, Had some 1% to hit buff the whole test time (not sure where it was from)
Cast Rank 10 Lightning Bolt at the L60 Target Dummy
I used Recount to calculate the Total Damage and DPS etc..

Macros:
1) /castrandom Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt - I will call this RM
2) /castsequence Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Lightning Bolt - I will call this SM
3) just Lightning Bolt place on Hotbar - I will call this CN

Performed 10 trials for each macro. I spammed the key as consistent as I could, quite quickly (this is a variable however). I remained the same distance from the dummy each trial.

With my mana I was able to cast 13 LB's every time

Mean Total Damage (n=10)
RM - 5638.1
SM - 5800.2
CN - 5862.4

TTest (2-tailed) comparing mean Total Damage between RM and SM to CN and RM to SM (sorry I don't have ANOVA - or at least I don't know where it is in OpenOffice)

P-values
RM vs CN - 0.13
SM vs CN - 0.60
RM vs SM - 0.32

Total Damage was not significantly different. This is expected and indicates I can keep all data in the analysis (includes Crits and Misses).

Mean DAMAGE PER SECOND (DPS) (n=10)

RM - 166.12
SM - 154.92
CN - 172.49

TTest comparing mean DPS between RM and SM to CN and RM to SM (sorry I don't have ANOVA - or at least I don't know where it is in OpenOffice)

P-values
RM vs CN - 0.16
SM vs CN - 0.000022
RM vs SM - 0.026

There was a significant difference in mean DPS between the Castsequence (SM) Macro and the Castrandom (RM) Macro and Standard straight casting hotkey (CN). There was not a significant difference between RM and CN.

I will do some more testing later on and exclude all trials that have crits and misses. If I exclude them I lose half the data, but the p-values for the mean DPS become 0.000035 and 0.000038 for the SM vs CN and RM, respectively; while the mean total damage remains not different.

Out of 130 LB's:

RM - 1 Crit, 5 Misses
SM - 5 Crits, 3 Misses
CN - 5 Crits, 3 Misses

[heffner]

Well, for some reason I couldn't log in my other toons so I did 10 more trials for each macro type.

The same scenario as above.

Total casts = 260 LB's for each of the three "macro types".

Mean Total Damage:

RM - 5759 (8 crits, 10 misses of 260 total)
SM - 5765 (7 crits, 7 misses of 260 total)
CN - 5835 (10 crits, 7 misses of 260 total)

TTest comparison of means were not significantly different between all groups (p-value > 0.05).

Mean DPS:

RM - 170.1
SM - 153.5
CN - 173.4

TTest comparison of means:

RM vs. CN p-value = 0.274
SM vs. CN p-value <0.000001
RM vs. SM p-value = 0.000015

If I remove all trials that had at least 1 miss or 1 crit:

Mean Total Damage (n=# of successful trials of 13 LBs each):

RM - 5884 (n=7)
SM - 5816 (n=9)
CN - 5912 (n=9)

TTest comparison of means were not significantly different between all groups (p-value > 0.05).

Mean DPS:

RM - 173.9
SM - 154.1
CN - 174.0

TTest comparison of means:

RM vs. CN p-value = 0.90
SM vs. CN p-value <0.000001
RM vs. SM p-value <0.000001

So, there is a significant difference in mean DPS between the /castsequence macro (SM) and the /castrandom macro (RM) and simple hotkey (CN) for LB spam. The difference may not seem large but I don't know how it scales at higher levels and with gear/buffs.

[Kicksome]

This needs to use damage over time, not damage per lightning bolt(s). You're missing the time piece which is what we're saying is off.

We're saying there is a delay between casts with castsequence, that lowers your avg. damage per second because you're not doing anything between casts.

If you just take "100 lightning bolts" it doesn't take this into account.

The problem is with castsequence 100 lightning bolts may take 220 seconds to cast, vs /cast might take 200 seconds. But the total damage should be almost the same.

[heffner]

I used DPS. Damage per second. Recount provides this. I show this to be different between the macro types. Unless I am mistaken with what Recount provided.

Total damage was not different. The only reason I compared this was to determine if the crits/misses made a big enough difference in the data set. I expected this to be the same.

So, based on my observations with LB spam in this scenario: for a 10 second fight I would lose about 200 total damage, and for a 30 second fight I would lose about 600 total damage using /castsequence vs. a hotkeyed spell or /castrandom. This works out to be a ~11-13% loss of damage if you use /castsequence vs. /castrandom or the hotkey for LB spam. So, I would imagine that the faster the cast time of a spell the more DPS that will be lost and vice versa.

[Fuzzyboy]

/click flameshockbutton
/click LVBbutton
/click CLbutton
/click LBbutton


how about that?That would cast FS every time its up, meaning once every six seconds. We really dont want that :)

Ideally, we would cast FS in the following scenarios:

- When the old FS expires (every 18 secs)
- When we change target, but only if LavaBurst has cooled down

Ideally we would cast lava burst in the following scenarios:

- Whenever its up, but only if FS has been applied

Ideally we would cast chain lightning (this is only true until they patch in the changes to lightning bolt)

- Whenever it's up, but only if one of the following conditions are true: a) lava burst is on cooldown b) it will hit multiple mobs

When lightning bolt changes are patched in, it becomes:

- Whenever it's up, but only if it will hit multiple mobs.

Ideally we cast lightning bolt:

- When lava burst is on cooldown AND chain lightning is on cooldown AND flame shock isn't about to expire

Unfortunately it's not really possible to macro those conditions.

A 2-button setup would work with /click, ie. one button for flame shock (you manually apply flame shock and make sure it's always on before casting lava burst) and one button for the macro /click lava burst /click chain lightning etc.

A 1-button setup only works with a castsequence or castrandom, both of which are inefficient. At the moment I'm using:

/castseq reset=combat/8 flameshock, lava burst, LB x 4-5

Which works ok (flame shock is applied more than necessary but I'm ok with the dps loss). However, add to that the problems with sequence and I might have to change some stuff or at least spend some time with the dummies :)

[Bigfish]

Ok, here's what I found out with cast-sequences last night. If you have differing spells, 2 castsequence will alternate. Example:


/castsequence Fireball, fireball, fireball
/castsequence frostbolt, frostbolt, frostbolt

will cast fireball, frostbolt, fireball, frostbolt, etc.

If you have identical spells in the same firing position in both castsequences, one cast will count as a cast for both sequences, with the exception of the first spell. Example:


/castsequence scorch, fireball, fireball, fireball, pyroblast
/castsequence scorch, fireball, fireball, fireball, pyroblast

will cast as scorch, scorch, fireball, fireball, fireball, pyroblast, restart. 1 or 2 scorches will go off at the restart of the sequence. Not sure what the contributing factor is.

Instant cast spells do NOT trigger the ~.2 second lag, but this is because their response from the server for a successful cast falls in the GCD anyway.

The classes the most affected by this are the ones with castsequences that use spells that aren't instant cast, ie shamans, firemages trying to juggle hotstreaks, etc. The more casts with a cast time you try and fit in to a period of time, the more it will affect your dps. Shamans in particualr, as LB with a 2 second cast time means you add a lot of dead space when spamming it.

Now, there ARE work arounds, depending on what sequence you want to get out. Personally, I'm going to just live with the dead space on my mage. I get more out of my fire rotation from instant cast pyroblasts than I lose from lag times. I may look over my other rotations to see how many extra seconds I'm adding in, but bottom line I'm not too worried about it at the moment.

For the issue at hand, the shaman macro. I'm not going to get that worked out for myself until I actually hit 75. Another potential fix that probably won't work:


/castsequence Flameshock, lava burst, lava burst
/cast Lightning Bolt

Should cast Flameshock, Lava burst, LB, LB, LB, LB (a 5th one if you have the spell haste), Lava burst, Lightning Bolt, restart at flameshock. By attaching some Lightning Bolts to the end of the Lava burst line, you should be able to delay the next application of flameshock until Lavaburst is up again. Once more, I can't test this myself; just theory craft on my part.

[Bigfish]

Ok, worked out my castsequence for my mage.


/castsequence reset=target scorch, Fire Blast, Living Bomb, Fire Blast, Pyroblast, Fire Blast, Living Bomb, scorch, Fire blast, Pyroblast, Fire Blast, Living Bomb, scorch, Fire blast, Pyroblast, Fire Blast, Living Bomb, scorch, Fire blast, Pyroblast //repeat
/castsequence reset=target scorch, null
/cast Fireball

which should run as:


0 Scorch
1.5 scorch
3 fire blast
4.5 living bomb
6 fireball
7.5
9 fire blast
10.5 pyroblast
12 fireball
13.5
15 fire blast
16.5 Living bomb
18 scorch
19.5 fireball
21
22.5 Fire Blast
24 Pyroblast
25.5 fireball
27
28.5 Living bomb
30 scorch
31.5 fireball
33
34.5 fire blast
36 Pyroblast
//repeat from 25.5

This assumes my crit rate is high enough to generate instant cast pyros 100% of the time (which its pretty darn close to). A Fireball gets inserted in to the sequence every time the castsequence lag should kick in after a scorch, as well as any point where the initial sequence is waiting on the fire blast cool down.

Edit: I have approximately a 90% chance to generate an instant cast pyroblast every sequence once the sequence gets running.

[DLoweinc]

How did this work?



I was wondering why my mage with a /castsequence reset=target/10 scorch, scorch, fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball, fireball

macro was SO far behind dps on my shaman and moonkin (who both have just /cast LB or /cast starfire macros)

i mean my shaman and moonkin are doing 700-800dps at lvl 64 and my mage is doing just under 400.... (my mage gets 1st gear priorities too)



Ok, worked out my castsequence for my mage.


/castsequence reset=target scorch, Fire Blast, Living Bomb, Fire Blast, Pyroblast, Fire Blast, Living Bomb, scorch, Fire blast, Pyroblast, Fire Blast, Living Bomb, scorch, Fire blast, Pyroblast, Fire Blast, Living Bomb, scorch, Fire blast, Pyroblast //repeat
/castsequence reset=target scorch, null
/cast Fireball

which should run as:


0 Scorch
1.5 scorch
3 fire blast
4.5 living bomb
6 fireball
7.5
9 fire blast
10.5 pyroblast
12 fireball
13.5
15 fire blast
16.5 Living bomb
18 scorch
19.5 fireball
21
22.5 Fire Blast
24 Pyroblast
25.5 fireball
27
28.5 Living bomb
30 scorch
31.5 fireball
33
34.5 fire blast
36 Pyroblast
//repeat from 25.5

This assumes my crit rate is high enough to generate instant cast pyros 100% of the time (which its pretty darn close to). A Fireball gets inserted in to the sequence every time the castsequence lag should kick in after a scorch, as well as any point where the initial sequence is waiting on the fire blast cool down.

Edit: I have approximately a 90% chance to generate an instant cast pyroblast every sequence once the sequence gets running.

[Bigfish]

Well, my cast rotation is based on having a 50% crit rate, proccing hot streak, and getting a lot of instant cast pyroblasts. If you're looking for a more traditional fireball spam, I'd go with:

/castsequence reset=target scorch, null
/castsequence reset=target scorch,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
/cast fireball

Ideally, it should get off the first two scorches, and then spam a few fireballs before refreshing scorch. But my macros suck before testing them.

By the way, the above macro (in my previous post) depends on fireball casting when fire blast is on cool down, which it in practice doesn't do, so scrap that whole thing.

[DLoweinc]

so I changed my /castsequences (to cast scorch on my mage, to cast insect swarm on my druid) to straight

/cast fireball and /cast starfire

holy cow the dps difference is insane.

even losing 7%-10% crit against targets doesn't matter, it is still a net dps gain. now i'm only lvl 65 atm so most things don't live longer than 20 seconds (even bosses).

but my guys are doing 1000-1200 dps on bosses at level 65 and that seems ridiculously high to me

[DLoweinc]

ut my guys are doing 1000-1200 dps on bosses at level 65 and that seems ridiculously high to me

That is really high for 65.

At 75, I'm doing about 1400 with my Shaman using a /castrandom LB, CL, LvB macro, and manually applying FS on bosses.

Ya that's what I was thinking. i only do that on bosses (and not always)

i can sustain 800dps during the entire instance which i think is pretty insane for that level. so I guess what I am really saying is "Thanks for telling me about /Castsequence Lowering dps!"

[Vicker]

I'm seeing very little difference. I get about 1100 dps on my 70 mage with his castsequence macro. Perhaps I just have a really good connection.

Edit: I do see the difference in the time it takes to start casting when I watch closely. With pyroblast and fireball in my rotation I spend a large amount of time charging up long casts, so it doesn't seem to be affecting me very much.

[neen]

I don't mean to resurrect this thread if it's a dead issue, but the error in just about all these tests is using dps as the metric. I know the original question is whether castsequence results in a lower dps, but the problem results in whether or not castsequence allows less casts over a span of time. So the proper metric has to be the number of casts over a span of time.

To test this ideally, I would set it up like someone else has posted and do 3 different tests:
/castsequence lb, lb, lb, lb, lb, lb /castrandom lb, lb, lb, lb /cast lbRun each test 5-10 times for 1 minute (or however long is a reasonable time to continually cast) and see if there's a substantial difference in number of casts. One issue that could arise however is that even 1 extra cast over the span of a minute can result in the amount of dps loss the OP was talking about (~500). I don't think I'd be convinced this is a verified issue until a test along these lines has been completed, there's just too much randomness to using DPS to measure this.

Just for ease of use, flameshock/lavaburst macro makes my playing much much easier to manage and I would probably use this unless it was shown to be a huge profit to measure this otherwise. There is a hunter in my guild that had absolute atrocious dps, absolute last in any run. Someone set him up with a decent cast sequence macro to manage steadyshot for him and he was instantly competing for top dps on any run. Just pointing out there's lots of value to things that let you not have to think about the small stuff.

[Harem]

I posted earlier in this thread and it seems to have been ignored.

If there is a difference in DPS its because of a difference in when the next cast in the /castsequence is allowed to take place.

So...

We do the 3 tests Neen above mentions and do it for a few seconds more than a minute. Then we take the log apart and see how many times we were able to cast in EXACTLY 60 seconds.

This removes crits etc. and breaks it down to the only thing that could be causing a REAL difference in DPS which is the possibility of added delay/lag when using one method over the other.

[heffner]

That's exactly the test I did and posted already.

I have also been playing around with using a series of /castsequence events with commas. So far, this appears to resolve the problem as long as you have the proper reset timing in the macro. I am still trying to work this out though, but I am sure it's possible with at least two different sequential /castsequence lines in the macro.

[DLoweinc]

/Castsequence must wait for acknowledgement from the server of a completed cast before it casts the next in the sequence, where /cast doesn't care if the original spell went off or not.

this is the same reason that if you have a cooldown spell in a /castsequence that the sequence won't go past that spell while it is on cooldown.

here is an example.

on my mage i have this:

/use 13

/use 14

/cast combustion

/cast fireball

this allow me to spam this key and it will fireball until i run out of mana, works great. uses trinkets every time the cooldown is up, uses combustion each time the cooldown is up, and when they aren't, just spams fireball.

-----------------------

if i were to change it to:

/use 13

/use 14

/castsequence combustion, fireball

it would cast combustion and one fireball, then get stuck trying to cast combustion until the cooldown is up. it would not "bypass" the spell on cooldown. therefore, /castsequence waits for a successfull cast before moving to the next one in the list where as /cast does not check, it just keeps running down the line.

where this becomes a problem is that you can start casting a spell very briefly before the last one is finished (this is why mods like quartz show latency, so you can cast a bit early). with /cast you can cast as soon as the client believes the spell is done, but with /castsequence, it waits until the cast is finished, verifies from the server that the spell was successful, then moves to the next one. (i may have gotten my client/server operations mixed up as i don't know where the operations really lie, either on a server check or client check, but that really isn't the point and the logic is relatively sound).

i hope that answers some questions. switching to straight /cast macros really increased my dps by an order of magnitude.