Reuse vs. Casting Speed - Page 2

Arcanemundi · 08-07-2008, 05:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by profe

Your example is flawed in determining whether casting or reuse provides a larger benefit.

This is because in your reuse scenario, you are not calculating reuse at all. (I understand where your coming from, but there seems not to be a real world way to calculate this, since even though a heal comes back quicker, if you are still casting another spell then it has to wait for you to get to it. Plus a 10% reduction in recast usually results in a half second improvement, which is not that big.) You are just using base casting speeds in one and enhanced casting speeds in the other, both for a fixed amount of time. Also, all of your abilities are reset and able to be cast. In that case, you will always gain more from casting speed when all of your abilities are ready to use, especially if the chunk of time you observe is relatively short. I think you missed my point. The casting cycle I proposed is a hypothetical of being in a heavy fight where your wards fall almost as quick as they are cast, since this is when casting speed and reuse matter most. The length of time a healer is in this state is irrelevant. But what is very important is that you understood the main advantage of casting speed over reuse speed. You gain more from casting speed than reuse since you cast more spells in a shorter period of time with casting speed improved. If reuse is really high it might give you more spells to choose from, but casting speed is what gets you from the start to end of a heal cycle quicker, not reuse speed.

I've done this study on my own and just happen to have never shared my results. But, reuse speed is by far more advantageous than casting speed. 3.5% reuse is approximately equal to 1% casting (and it holds whether you are at 0% casting/reuse or 99% casting/reuse).

In order to accurately measure your scenarios you need to apply casting, recovery, and reuse bonuses, then convert each ability into a value of "Reuse HPS". Remember that for each ability you want to use, you have to cast it, recover from it, and then wait for it to be reusable.

The formula is... Reuse HPS = healed/(casting+recovery+reuse).

Note: This is not to be confused with "HPS efficiency" which would only take into consideration healed, casting, and recovery. This is not to identify a casting priority. This is to measure overall healing prowess.

Thanks for the correction, and I really appreciate you not getting arrogant like some in other threads on EQ Flames. However I am not sure what you mean by "recovery". As soon as you cast a heal the recast timer starts ticking, so there is no "recovery" period as far as I know in between casting and the recast timer starting. Inspecting my wards and heals I don't see a number labelled "recovery" either, just "Power" "Casting" "Recast" "Duration" "Effect Radius"

I am sure a few of us are curious how you got the conversion ratio 3.5% Reuse = 1% Casting Speed in you study. It would help us if you could provide the reasoning proof or mathematic steps from this study that allowed you to arrive at that conclusion.

Thanks for the formula for Reuse HPS. Since I am not sure what is meant by the term "recovery", I added the casting speed and reuse speed only and divided it by the healed amount. I know this is what you called HPS efficiency, and not Reuse HPS, but since I don't know how to get the "recovery" figure, I thought it was close to what you meant at least.

I applied your formula to my example above, and more accurately ordered the spells considering reuse speed, and this is what I came up with:

Using the formula: HPS Effeciency = healed/(casting+reuse)

10% Casting Speed Scenario
Format: Spell Name - Cast Time - Recast Time - Amount Warded - HPS Formula
Ancient Aegis 1.8 - 6 - 2630 = 2630/7.8 = 337
Umbral Warding 4.5 - 15 - 3902 = 3902/19.5 = 200
Rejuvenation 1.8 - 5 - 1300 = 1300/6.8 = 191
Ancient Aegis 1.8 - 6 - 2630 = 2630/7.8=337
Ritual Healing 2.7 - 10 - 2100 = 2100/12.7 = 165
Transcendant Aid 2.7 - 7 - 1650 = 1650/9.7 = 170
Stoicism 1.8 - 10 - 2079/3532 (Heal/Ward) = 5611 = 5611/11.8=475

BONUS SPELL
Rejuvenation 1.8 - 5 - 1300 = 1300/6.8 = 191
*REPEAT*

In 18.9 Secs HPS Effeciency = 2066

10% Reuse (There is no change in spell order since improved reuse speed does not effect the spells enough.)

Format: Spell Name - Cast Time - Recast Time - Amount Warded - HPS Formula
Ancient Aegis 2 - 5.4 - 2630 = 2630/7.4=355
Umbral Warding 5 - 13.5 - 3902 = 3902/18.5=210
Rejuvenation 2 - 4.5 - 1300 = 1300/6.5 =200
Ancient Aegis 2 - 5.4 - 2630 = 2630/7.4=355
Ritual Healing 3 - 9 - 2100 = 2100/12=175
Transcendant Aid 3 - 6.5 - 1650 = 1650/9.5=174
Stoicism 1.8 - 9.2 - 2079/3532 (Heal/Ward) = 5611 = 5611/11=510

In 19 Secs HPS Effeciency = 1979

It seems like there is a 4.3% difference, or 87 point, HPS efficiency difference between the two scenarios, once again favoring Casting Speed instead of Reuse. This percentage is a little more narrow that the difference in my initial post since I changed the order of spells to more accurately consider reuse speed, and used your formula which was a completely different method in adding the amount healed, but the original gap is still there. I think part of the difference is that 191 Reuse HPS that you get with the extra spell you get to cast with faster casting speed.

Ironically I used to think the exact same way and use the same formula you used, (absent the recovery) so I understand how if you just add up the casting speed and reuse speed and divide the actual healed amount by that sum, you get a very straight forward numerical result per heal that leads you to believe Reuse Speed is better. This only makes sense in an abstract and theoretical way on paper though.

If you instead lay out the "Real World" order of spells cast you might realize what I did, that you will still cast the same spells in the same order with or without better reuse speed, even though some heals are up a little quicker. Reuse provides more options to healers since some spells will come back a little quicker than before, but when we are spamming heals there are only a few spells we cast in a cycle over and over, so reuse will not make a significant impact on that cycle unless it is a large reuse modifier. The only way reuse speed would significantly increase heals is if the big spells came back around 30+% quicker so you would replace weaker heals and wards with the bigger ones. Since I don't think most of us are even close to that kind of reuse, (The highest I can get currently is 25%), casting speed seems to be the way you get from the first spell to the last in your cycle quicker, and get off that extra spell in the end of the repeating cycle. I know there are some group buffs from Enchanters and Utility Classes that increase reuse, casting, etc, so if you are always in the same group with the same people with the same buffs, maybe reuse gear matters more, it would be hard to quantify it though. Luckily the raid gear I have come across so far has not made me choose Casting Speed over Reuse Speed yet, and while both are great to have, I still don't believe Reuse Speed is "...by far more advantageous" than casting speed as you claimed.

Arcanemundi · 08-07-2008, 05:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rosalyn

Any tips on how to get more +reuse (assuming that aa is maxed)?

You can get the Mace of the Imprisoned by doing an easy quest in Maiden's. The Gauntlets of the Animator drop in Chardok I think, and you can buy them on broker usually. The other items below drop off raid mobs in SoH and PR.

Arcanemundi · 08-07-2008, 05:31 AM

Some casting speed gear to consider:

profe · 08-07-2008, 07:59 AM

You are duplicating spells in your scenario. Instead, calculate each spells' Reuse HPS for both scenarios and sum up each set. You have an extra Ancient Aegis and Rejuvenation in the casting scenario. This is not to examine a fixed block of time, but rather to determine one's theoretical HPS over an infinite amount of time. You are calculating how much healing each spell would give you if you recast it as soon as it's available.

Given the spell list you provided here are the results:
- Your casting scenario yields 1527 HPS (337+200+191+154+170+475).
- Your reuse scenario yields 1624 HPS (355+210+200+175+174+510).

Regarding recovery, there is an additional 0.5 second delay after you cast each spell unless you are under the influence of enhanced recovery. Try casting Umbral Warding and queue up Transcendent Aid, you will see a half second delay between those two spells. This amount is significant enough to require that it be included in the reuse formula; it will make a difference in measuring the value between casting and reuse bonuses. Try adding in a 0.5 second recovery to your spell list and recalculate the "Reuse HPS" for both scenarios.

Arcanemundi · 08-07-2008, 02:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by profe

You are duplicating spells in your scenario. Instead, calculate each spells' Reuse HPS for both scenarios and sum up each set. You have an extra Ancient Aegis and Rejuvenation in the casting scenario. Both the casting and reuse scenarios are identical. The Ancient Aegis spell is not extra, it's reuse timer allows it to be cast in both scenarios. The Rejuvenation heal is available since the 10% casting speed boost allowed me to get through the cycle of heals quicker than the reuse scenario, so within 19 seconds I can cast 8 spells with casting speed improved 10%, and only 7 spells if reuse speed is increased 10%. This is not to examine a fixed block of time, but rather to determine one's theoretical HPS over an infinite amount of time. While theory might give you a quantitative answer, the realistic application of your method does make sense qualitatively.You are calculating how much healing each spell would give you if you recast it as soon as it's available.But it does not follow that as soon as a spell is available it can be cast. Other heals might be in the process of being casted. Larger heals might come before the smaller ones, etc...

Given the spell list you provided here are the results:
- Your casting scenario yields 1527 HPS (337+200+191+154+170+475). (Hmmm, without explanation you removed the 4th heal Ancient Aegis, even though it could have been recast, then you changed the HPS from 165 to 154 for Ritual Healing without providing a reason. Then you completely remove the last heal Rejuvenation? Rejuvenation can be cast in the casting scenario since we are looking at a 19 second heal casting cycle that repeats. By removing two heals from the scenario we went from 8 spells cast to 6 spells cast, so i am sure we are now in the 15 second range of total casting time for the heal cycle. This makes the comparison disingenuous. Both of the scenarios are identical except that with 10% casting speed you get through the cycle quicker which allows the Rejuventation spell to be cast within the 19 seconds, so why did you decide to omit it?)- Your reuse scenario yields 1624 HPS (355+210+200+175+174+510).You removed Ancient Aegis again in this scenario which would make the total casting time of the cycle not match the casting speed cycle. The whole point of using a repeating cycle of spells was to make this an apples to apples comparison. In addition, you keep missingmy point that the theoretical adding of HPS does not have a real world value. When you actually cast the spells, you realize that you can only cast the spells which matter most and are available. Reuse makes some more available than others, but most spells come back only half a second quicker and still have to wait in line to be cast. I wish I could cast heals at the same time, so as soon as their reuse timer had expired I cast the spell, but you can only cast one spell at a time, that is why you have to lay it all out and figure out which spell is cast when, then make a cycle of the spells you cast. Take a step back and think about it and reread everything I have wrote on this thread again, maybe then you might start to get what I am saying...

Regarding recovery, there is an additional 0.5 second delay after you cast each spell unless you are under the influence of enhanced recovery. Try casting Umbral Warding and queue up Transcendent Aid, you will see a half second delay between those two spells. This amount is significant enough to require that it be included in the reuse formula; it will make a difference in measuring the value between casting and reuse bonuses. Try adding in a 0.5 second recovery to your spell list and recalculate the "Reuse HPS" for both scenarios.

profe · 08-07-2008, 03:50 PM

I'm going to try this from a different angle. I think it will really illustrate the fundamental concept of a shaman in synergy with the other healer archetypes.

First, we must accept one principle. Unless your tank is a complete ninja, when you cast either a single target ward or a group ward, those will almost always be completely depleted before those can be reapplied. We are talking about extreme high-end encounters here.

Now let's examine a moment of time in an encounter. You just cast a group ward. The group ward was depleted. At this exact moment the minimum amount of time you have to wait in order to reapply it is the remaining reuse+casting time. It will not be reapplied until you wait for that entire duration. You are now at the mercy of your timers. Based on our casting timers relative to our reuse timers, you will remove more "waiting time" by enhancing reuse speed than you will by enhancing casting speed.

Second, in the 19 second block of time you present, it is impractical to spam straight heals in that manner. In fact even if the tank's health were less than 100% by the time you get to Rejuvenation in your order, you should have cast a second Ancient Aegis anyway because it does more in the same amount of time. Remember that wards and health are the same. And you are not the only healer. If everyone did their highest efficiency spell at that moment, you would have provided the tank with the largest ward and others would have healed the tank to 100%. If you spent the time casting Rejuvenation instead your tank would be at 100% with no ward, which means now your tank is more vulnerable. Furthermore, you account for no debuff time. It is just an endless cycle of spamming heals, which is highly inefficient.

I realize that you have appeared to construct an order of a fixed block of time that shows more healing in one scenario than the other, but it simply wouldn't work in an encounter. The tank would die within 30 seconds every time and its because your priority of casting is not based on the efficiency of your spells. They are just arbitrarily thrown together in a way that fits your block of time.

This is an appropriate priority order (after prewarding and incoming):
1) Stoicism
2) Ancient Aegis
3) Umbral Warding
4) DPS Debuff
5) Stamina/Mit Debuff
6) Transcendent Aid
7) Attack Speed Debuff
8) Strength/Stamina Debuff

This is not a casting order, this is a priority order. It means that if anything with a higher priority is available and it needs to be cast (as in, the ward is almost depleted or the debuff is falling soon), cast it. You will find that through application of this list of priority, your actual real world casting order will be much different than the one you presented and it is more sensitive to reuse than anything else.

I really appreciate the effort you have put in to analyzing this. Very few people ever put in the effort anymore. Usually I just let everyone chit chat about whatever they want and rarely help anyone. You caught my attention because you really took the time to put it all together and have a genuine desire to understand it. I just want to make sure that your effort is channeled correctly.

Arcanemundi · 08-08-2008, 12:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by profe

I'm going to try this from a different angle. I think it will really illustrate the fundamental concept of a shaman in synergy with the other healer archetypes.

First, we must accept one principle. Unless your tank is a complete ninja, when you cast either a single target ward or a group ward, those will almost always be completely depleted before those can be reapplied. We are talking about extreme high-end encounters here.

Now let's examine a moment of time in an encounter. You just cast a group ward. The group ward was depleted. At this exact moment the minimum amount of time you have to wait in order to reapply it is the remaining reuse+casting time. It will not be reapplied until you wait for that entire duration. You are now at the mercy of your timers. Based on our casting timers relative to our reuse timers, you will remove more "waiting time" by enhancing reuse speed than you will by enhancing casting speed.

Second, in the 19 second block of time you present, it is impractical to spam straight heals in that manner. In fact even if the tank's health were less than 100% by the time you get to Rejuvenation in your order, you should have cast a second Ancient Aegis anyway because it does more in the same amount of time. Remember that wards and health are the same. And you are not the only healer. If everyone did their highest efficiency spell at that moment, you would have provided the tank with the largest ward and others would have healed the tank to 100%. If you spent the time casting Rejuvenation instead your tank would be at 100% with no ward, which means now your tank is more vulnerable. Furthermore, you account for no debuff time. It is just an endless cycle of spamming heals, which is highly inefficient.

I realize that you have appeared to construct an order of a fixed block of time that shows more healing in one scenario than the other, but it simply wouldn't work in an encounter. The tank would die within 30 seconds every time and its because your priority of casting is not based on the efficiency of your spells. They are just arbitrarily thrown together in a way that fits your block of time.

This is an appropriate priority order (after prewarding and incoming):
1) Stoicism
2) Ancient Aegis
3) Umbral Warding
4) DPS Debuff
5) Stamina/Mit Debuff
6) Transcendent Aid
7) Attack Speed Debuff
8) Strength/Stamina Debuff

This is not a casting order, this is a priority order. It means that if anything with a higher priority is available and it needs to be cast (as in, the ward is almost depleted or the debuff is falling soon), cast it. You will find that through application of this list of priority, your actual real world casting order will be much different than the one you presented and it is more sensitive to reuse than anything else.

I really appreciate the effort you have put in to analyzing this. Very few people ever put in the effort anymore. Usually I just let everyone chit chat about whatever they want and rarely help anyone. You caught my attention because you really took the time to put it all together and have a genuine desire to understand it. I just want to make sure that your effort is channeled correctly.

Well it's too bad that we are butting heads here, but oh well. I did prioritize wards above heals in my casting scenario just as you did in yours, except for one heal spell that I used to illustrate the option of casting it if needed. Waiting for a ward to come back up is not my style, I throw a heal/debuff while I wait instead, and It's hard to believe that other shaman's only cast wards when they should be spamming all their heals like other healers in the raid. Tanks I heal in raid do not die in 30 seconds as you seem so certain of; depending on what group I am in, I am always top of the heal parse, or rarely second place, with my crazy ideas of healing by using both wards and heals.

The casting order of the spells I used really doesn't matter, and I am sure we both do not want to split hairs over this subject. i know that in an actual raid we cast other spells when we can, and there are times when we spam, and other times when we can use debuffs and augmentations...the point I was making was that if you compare one 19 second chain of heals to another (apples to apples) there is a significant difference in actual amount healed. Maybe I am wrong to try to simplify a complex subject like this, but hey its better than not talking about it and guessing we are right. In addition, within the casting scenario I presented the largest heals (wards) are recast as soon as they are up, except when casting speed allows the option of a debuff, heal, or other spell to be cast as the bonus spell. The bonus spell could be Aegis or a dubuff like you said, but then the cycle would not repeat the same and we would have another subject to debate there! Anyways, I am convinced both reuse and casting speed benefits healers, unfortunately, we are both not convincing each other exactly how much each helps healers very well, and believe me I am really trying to understand where you are coming from....So ya, I still have some questions you never cleared up about the claim you asserted of 3.5% reuse being approximately equal to 1% casting, and the quantitative/qualitative conflict in reasoning, but it sounds like we're done, so thanks for the debate.

profe · 08-08-2008, 02:06 AM

You will always show casting as superior for extremely small blocks of time; that is not a real world example. The following is precisely how one quantifies spells:

Let's only examine one spell. We will calculate the single target ward HPS. If during an encounter all you did was endlessly spam this one spell over and over and it was entirely consumed, you would do exactly that much HPS (for simplicity forget about procs). The beauty of this is that you can quantify a spell's healing prowess for encounters of any duration, whether the fight lasts 20 seconds or 2 hours.

Ancient Aegis: 2.0 second casting, 0.5 recovery, 6 second reuse, 2100 ward. If you had 0% casting and 0% reuse bonus, its HPS = [2100 / (2.0+0.5+6.0)] = 247.

If you had 10% casting and 0% reuse bonus, it would be 1.82 casting, 0.5 recovery, 6 second reuse. Its HPS = [2100 / (1.82+0.5+6.0)] = 252.

If you had 0% casting and 10% reuse bonus, it would be 2.0 casting, 0.5 recovery, 5.45 reuse. Its HPS = [2100 / (2.0+0.5+5.45)] = 264.

Comparing relative gains from each you find that 252 - 247 = 5; 264 - 247 = 17; and 17 / 5 = 3.4. Therefore, you get a 3.4:1 ratio of benefit from reuse over casting for this one spell.

Study that in-depth for all of our spells and I promise it will all become crystal clear. I'll leave it at that.

Jorp · 08-08-2008, 03:19 AM

my favourite option for reuse is: Cloak of Unrest

LootDB.com | EverQuest II Item Database - Cloak of Unrest
\aITEM 335179912 262979273:Cloak of Unrest\/a

Verrie77 · 08-08-2008, 06:52 AM

Btw...while we are talking about reuse and castingspeed. Ive wondered about this chest here.
It says +4 ability casting time...is it castingspeed...or recastspeed...or both ?
Cause usually items have :

* reduce casting - speed
* reduce recast - speed

And they are casting abilities...

\aITEM -2063891112 -2000127676:Mist Covered Chestguard\/a