Beast Master - DPS Theorycrafting.

Hello,


This is my first guide in the game, i have done theorycrafting for other games before (WoW, LoL, BFG/ROI etc) and quite a few guides. I am preparing a tanking guide, but in the meantime i wanted to maximize my farming/DPS so i prepared this and decided to share it.


Contents

• Beast points - Mechanic Explanation.
  
• Beast Master DPS - Detailed info and thoughts.
  
• DPS rotations - DPS comparison, Additional thought and info.
  
• DPS stats - Thoughts on vigor, haste, hit, agi, str, frenzy.
  
• TL:DR - Which rotation maximizes DPS.

1 - Beast Points


Beast Points is a unique Beast Master mechanic.

• The amount of beast points that we have appears as a yellow bar next to our hero and can be anything between 0 and 100.
• Some of our abilities can generate beast points or use them.
• Abilities that generate beast points are: Rage Smash - 8 to 12, Wild Crush - 16 to 24 and Beast Charge - 8 to 12. You can notice the amount you take is random. For my calculations i will use the average amount we take from each ability.
• Abilities that use our beast points are: Cruel Bite - 30, Brutal Strike - 50 and Fury Strike - 0 to 50. For this last skill i will take 2 options in mind, using it as a filler in your DPS rotations with 0 beast points, or using it with 50 points to use your additional beast points when Brutal Strike is on cooldown.
• Frenzy is a skill that doubles the amount of beast points our skills generate for a set amount of time. Usually i will calculate this as generating 100 more points in its duration (you can use around 12 skills in that time, so i assume that with 3 you use points and with the other 9 you generate them, this will allow you to not pass the 100 points mark at any time).
• Caution: If we remain out of combat for a set amount of time our beast points reset to 0.

This means that in our DPS rotations we have to manage our beast points, make sure that when we plan to use a skill we have enough points available. Tanks may want to use their beast points in other ways than just maximizing DPS and the same applies to PvP, but the point of this post is DPS and nothing more. You should manage your beast points according to what you are doing, like farming, PvP-ing, tanking or DPS-ing in raids and dungeons.


2 - Beast Master DPS


First of all. I assume you get every DPS ability at maximum rank, something quite possible with a DPS oriented spec but not exactly possible with a tank oriented spec. As this is not exactly a guide on how to spec but mostly a comparison that helps you make your own decisions i will let you decide what you take for your build, at least until i bother making a tanking or DPS guide.


Things you should take into account:

• Our auto attacks have a 2.6 second delay in normal form and only 1.6 second at our bear and grizzly forms, so you should always DPS in bear or grizzly forms!
• Using BEAR FORM(5) will increase your DPS by 30% but won't change anything else. If a skill A is 20% better than skill B it will be that much better in bear or grizzly form. The same applies to any DPS rotation.
• Even instant spells without cooldowns take 1.5 second to be used because of the animations our abilities have. Fury Strike animation seems to be 2.5 seconds and Brutal Strike animation 3 seconds. If i find any specific info about this i will have to update the guide, this is from personal testing only
• Our auto attacks DO NOT affect our rotations at all, they just happen automatically and you should not worry about them messing with your rotation.
• Our auto attacks do between 10 and 12% of our attack power. If you see lower numbers it is because enemies mitigate some of that damage with their defense.

So, here is a list of all our abilities:



As previously stated Fury Strike is counted twice, for 0 and 50 beast points usage.

Wild Crush has 15% initial damage and 10 ticks of 14% damage every 2 seconds, i will calculate it both for using it on cooldown and every 20 seconds to keep the dot up.

We will be needing cooldowns to see how many times we can use our attacks in a given time
and beast points to make sure our rotations don't use more resources than we generate.
Frenzy will be used in some rotations to check if it increases our DPS or not, and by how much!


For detailed information about each ability you can check the following:

• http://www.ro2base.c...tor/beastmaster >> Talent Calculator, seems to be the only one that has the numbers right.
• http://forums.warppo...stmaster-guide/ >> A nice Beast Master guide, you can find more information about our abilities (with images etc) there and also reading the whole post is certainly not a bad idea. Credit to Belegnir for posting it.
• http://forums.warppo...ter-tank-guide/ >> Another beastmaster guide, mainly focus on tanking with some personal insight/opinions about our abilities. Worth a read. Credit to Sera for posting it.

3 - DPS Rotations

First of all for a single target rotation:

• You should never use Beast Tornado. (Got an example to prove that it actually reduces your DPS).
• Cruel Bite should only be used for regaining health as it is always a DPS loss in every scenario, you can use your beast points much better with Fury Strike or Brutal Strike.
• Beast Charge should only be used for utility. It is not available in melee range, provides no damage and a minimal amount of Beast Points. Use it to get to your target, and never again.

I will add multi target rotations soon, but the rule of thumb is use Beast Tornado on cooldown, use Wild Crush on cooldown and on different target every time and fill in the gaps with a single target rotation (this is the part i will try to calculate soon).


Back to single target rotations, i will calculate 11 different rotations, try to keep up with the acronyms, you can check them all at the previous table:

• Beast Tornado (BT) + Rage Smash (RS) Spam just to show that BT is quite bad for DPS, add it to any rotation and it reduces DPS because it doesnt generate any beast points.
  
• Fury Strike (FS) Spam.
  
• RS Spam and Brutal Strike (BS) on cooldown.
  
• RS Spam and Fury Strike with 50 points (FS50) whenever possible.
  
• Combination of the above. BS on cooldown, RS Spam, FS50 when possible.
  
• Wild Crush (WC) every 20 seconds at the first graph, and every 10 at the second, BS on cooldown, RS spam.
  
• WC, FS spam, counting the extra beast points at random FS50, actually its many FS20 but damage calculated is the same.
  
• WC, BS on cooldown, enough RS to get the desired beast points, FS fillers.
  
• Same as above with frenzy on cooldown.
  
• WC, BS on cooldown, RS spam, FS50 to use the extra beast points.
  
• Same as above with frenzy on cooldown.

If you can find a better rotation or an interesting different one tell me to add it.

So...

Rotations Tables:

• Damage = Damage done in the given time.
• DPS = Average damage per second.
• Time = 600 seconds, balanced the damage at 10 minute fights.
• Beast Points = Points remaining after your rotation is done. If its 0 it means you use all the points you get. I did try to calculate possibilities where you can't use the points the way you want (Like skill cooldowns etc). If you find some mistake tell me!
• Skill Name = Amount of times you used the skill in this 600 second period.
• Auto = Amount of auto hits done in the same period.

DPS Comparison table:

• First column is the rotation.
• Second column is the DPS based around the FS spam. For example the last rotation is 45.43% more damage than simply spamming FS.
• Third column compares the DPS between the normal rotations and those with Frenzy used, as you can see the difference is minimal, especially for 5 points at the skill, i wouldn't be surprised if taking 1 to 3 points resulted in actual DPS loss when you use the skill.

DPS difference at rotations from using WC on cooldown rather than every 20 seconds:




Important:

• We get 6.88 DPS from our auto hits.
• Wild Crush on cooldown is 8.5 DPS and also provides 2 Beast Power every second (so another 0.7 to 0.9 DPS depending where we use it).
• We get 4.5 DPS from Brutal Strikes on cooldown.
• Assuming 30 DPS, 28% is from Wild crush, 23% from auto hits and 15% from brutal strikes! The rest of our DPS depends on the combination of RS/FS/FS50 and Frenzy usage.

4 - DPS Stats

Judging from the above it becomes quite obvious that half our damage comes from our DOT and auto hits even in near- perfect scenarios for the rest of our DPS! This alone should give a very high priority on hitting those skills every time, losing a dot and not noticing could really ruin our DPS.


On the other hand since our dots can't critical it reduces our desire for critical. I haven't run the numbers yet but i suppose this should make us prioritize strength over agility and hit over vigor or haste.

Haste seems to affect our auto hit DPS. (Needs testing, for some classes it doesn't seem to work that way).
Vigor affects frenzy, BS, WC and our survival cooldowns.
Haste is probably better purely for DPS (only if it works as intended) and Vigor for hybrid/Tanking.

Thoughts on frenzy

If you can manage to use frenzy on its cooldown, just before wild crush and not have to move for its whole duration you may notice a slight DPS boost ~1% with 5 points in the skill. I believe this is almost pointless for a DPS for 5 points in the skill, so either just use it before you start a fight for a starting boost in DPS and then ignore it or spend your points elsewhere.

It seems like this ability needs a huge boost to be useful for DPS and its actually DPS loss if you use it in combat with less than 5 points in it. Its situational uses are also really low, i can only think of using it to generate more points to self heal faster with cruel bite, but you would only get 2 more bites every use, making feral defense much better for the same taking-lots-of-damage scenario (13secs not taking damage vs 20% self heal).

5 - TL:DR

The best rotation for single target DPS is the following:

• Charge to your target with beast charge. Don't use the skill again unless your target dies and/or have to change target and he is at nearly max range.
  
• Keep Wild Crush DoT up Use it as close to every cooldown as possible.
  
• Use Brutal Strike on every cooldown possible.
  
• Spam Rage Smash for additional beast points.
  
• If you have more than 50 beast points and Brutal strike is not coming up soon use Fury Strike. You should generally use slightly more fury strikes than brutal strikes in long battles.

Close Alternative: Only use Rage smash to get enough points for Brutal strike, just before its CD is off (learn to count how much time you need to have 50 Beast points). Use fury strike even with 0 points left the rest of the time!

The Highest DPS you can get:
31% of your attack power, not counting crit rate, haste, vigor and bear form and assuming you don't miss! Just from your rotation!

(If i get the chance i will calculate the effect of crit at our DPS, haste and vigor might be harder).

Stat priority
If you die with one skill/hit from bosses get vitality. If not:

• STR > AGI
• Hit until maxed > Haste (Needs testing about affecting auto attacks, animation or nothing) > Vigor for pure dps
• Hit until maxed > Vigor > Haste for utility/hybrid .

How does that compare with other classes
No idea but it seems low. If i do this for more classes i 'll tell you.

Final Thoughts

• Frenzy is really bad. Needs a generous buff.
• We could really use a small utility boost. Maybe each of our forms giving a buff in raid (Bear: Atk Power, Grizzly: Damage reduction, Tiger: Move speed) or cruel bite returning overheal to nearby wounded members. Right now our DPS seems low and our tanking decent but with lack of a raid buff to make us desirable in raids.
• Pie > Cookies.

Edited by Ethismos, 10 June 2013 - 10:25 AM.

Nice setup... I don't really like these kinds of calculations or I'd try to do some myself...

Some thoughts:

It might be interesting to see what would happen if you would actually use wild crush as soon as it's off cooldown. Its initial damage is only slightly lower than rage smash and it gains twice as much beast power. If you spend that extra gained beast power on a fury strike, then basically the extra 10 BP average you gain per wild crush over rage smash is an extra 7% damage, easily overcoming the 3% lower initial damage.
Also, since you do need to heal from time to time, it allows you to get it out of the way faster and get back to your more damaging skills (unless you intend to guzzle potions or sit down between fights eating food...)

Also, since the difference between RS+FS50 and RS+FS50+BS is so low, an interesting rotation might also be WC+RS+FS50, not even putting points in BS. Of course, if you go full DPS, then you might as well take it, but if you want to be able to switch to tank as well it might be a good compromise if the DPS difference is so small.

I'm quite surprised about frenzy. It could still be a good skill for emergency survival situations, but I figured it would also help you do more damage (and thus gain more threat).

Finally, I think you may have the wrong idea about haste? Haste only works on casting time (the bar filling up on your screen). Since every BM skill is instant, haste does exactly nothing. Vigor would probably be more important in a tanking situation, giving you more survivals and feral defenses. I think haste and vigor are usually on the same piece of equipment though, so the point is probably moot.

Edited by Finraziel, 10 June 2013 - 08:31 AM.

Added WC on cooldown calculations.

I will try WC+RS+FS50 also. (Seems to be about 30.2 Dps without frenzy and 30.55 with frenzy, probably second best rotation, will add it probably later/tomorrow.) Would really help to have the actual global / animation cooldowns, the differences are minimal and if for example FS is 2 seconds animation or BS 2.5 it would make huge difference.

As for frenzy, i was quite skeptical when i saw it, 1.5 cast time, for 20 seconds on double BP. Especially with the limit of 100 points you will HAVE to use 2-3 more skills to use your BP's. Kind of waste one CD to get 100 BP. Its 120 sec cd and its effectiveness is MUCH lower than our 20 sec CD's, and more situational (If you have to move, miss or use more BS or FS it becomes much less valuable). To compare it from a DPS PoV it is roughly 1.5% of our DPS at ideal situations, WC is ~30% of it and BS ~15%. Totally imbalanced? I guess so!

Haste according to its description should increase your attack speed. With vigor affecting frenzy (Bad), BS(Mostly depends or BP gen and not cd's) and WC(Minor difference) cooldowns and haste affecting our auto hits i would go for the second. But i guess they come from the same gear so .. yeah, might be pointless and its pretty hard to tell without proper descriptions.

As for tanking it might be a whole different idea as the rotation should be closer to RS+CB spam and since you don't care about auto hit threat haste would be horrible while vigor lets you use survival and feral defense more often, so it should be much better. Again pointless since your gear will have parry and dodge !

Edited by Ethismos, 10 June 2013 - 10:36 AM.

Hmm, I never really noticed the fact that it says general attack and casting... Of course, there's some nice translation -_-up again, it says it reduces the speed... that would make it slower
Anyway, I tested it on my sorc because wind emblem lets me easily add 20% haste, and it does absolutely nothing for my auto-attack speed. Sorc's speed is at 4 seconds, and that's exactly what I measure when I time it, with the 5ish % haste I get from my gear, or with 25% when I add wind emblem. Now I guess it's possible that it works differently for different classes, but I doubt it. Unfortunately I don't have enough haste equip for my bear to test it on him.

Nice informative post, I like it. The skills are all maxed in these calculations since it's about a DPS point of view, but as a tank perspective; we usually have to choose between Lv.5 BS + Lv.1 FS or just Lv.5 FS. Could you do a DPS run down between these rotations?

- WC + RS + BS (level 5) + FS50 (level 1)
- WC + RS + FS50 (level 5)

I can see how Frenzy isn't significant in adding DPS over a long time period because of the long cool down. However, as a tank, you need to build up threat quickly at the beginning of a boss fight. If the time frame used was 30s instead of 600s, the difference would be more noticeable.

Good point on the cooldown, however, since the difference is only 1% and frenzy is up 1/6th of the time (20 out of 120 seconds), wouldn't you get the damage increase during the 20 seconds of frenzy (or well, 21 seconds, including the casting of frenzy itself) by multiplying by 6? 6% still is pitiful.
You might activate it at the start of a fight before engaging and then it might come out better because you don't lose the time casting it, however, if the point is threat then you might as well tell the DPS to wait 3 seconds longer before attacking. If you use it halfway through a fight to get attention of adds or something or if you run the risk of losing threat on the boss, then if the calculations are right it shouldn't be more than the 6% increase... Or am I missing something?

edit: Actually, along with my thoughts about leaving out brutal strike, how about leaving fury strike at 1? The damage increase is really quite bad, FS50 goes from 60% to 71%... I know these are all more tanky considerations though, so I might try to reproduce your calculations myself, but I probably wont have the time for at least a week.

Edited by Finraziel, 11 June 2013 - 08:19 AM.

I use frenzy as a lead-in because DPS never wait. Ever.

Hello,

As i said i am preparing some kind of a guide for BM tanks, that will include comparison with other tanks AND DPS rotations. This is mostly about leveling and/or DPS Beast Masters. From a tank PoV a realistic 20s rotation is:

• Wild Crush - Rage Smash - Cruel Bite (4.5 seconds)
• Rage Smash*3 - Cruel Bite (6 seconds)
• Wild Crush - Rage Smash - Cruel Bite (4.5 seconds)
• At the remaining 5 seconds - either survival cooldowns (Survival, Potions) or a Taunt and if you re just fine additional Rage Smash.
• Any excessive Beast Points should be kept for additional Cruel Bites after boss critical hits or cooldowns, if you reach 90-100 and see a boss miss using Brutal Strike for maximum Threat with 1 CD is your best bet. (Not to mention its awesome for PvP and getting threat on single target adds that just spawned / someone pulled by mistake)
• Unless your healer is keeping you at 100% all the time, something that has never happened to me at 30+ level, using fury strike will NEVER happen at AoE situations and is very unlikely to happen at bosses because again your beast points are better left at high values to allow you to spam self heal after boss critical hits or heavy damage cooldowns, and if you really MUST dump some of them BS is better for threat, adds and PvP perspective.

As for frenzy, using it before the fight as DPS seems to be its main use. Using it in the fight has major issues as even with 5 points its a 1-1.5% increase at its best, and with 1-3 the cooldown use makes it a DPS loss, also any kind of movement and it becomes a DPS loss. Getting a skill to use just for when you have to run away from boss and you have nothing else to use while you re not in melee range is... sad, for me at least. I 'd rather spend those points in feral defense and be able to tank the boss for 13 seconds while its enraged, something other tanks/DPS CAN'T do, or survival to help my healers or even wild impact to stun adds / big trash pulls when my tank takes to much damage.

From a tank PoV i think threat is the least you have to worry about the way potion threat works. You can pull, hit a pot and AFK and you still have the highest threat for a while. This hasn't caused me any gold issues till my mid 30s so i doubt it ever will. Assuming now you use frenzy pre-pull, then beast charge and the rotation i described above the main difference will be that you get your cruel bite 1 CD earlier and/or a brutal strike instead of your first cruel bite. In AoE scenarios, no difference, you should spam Tornado all day long and your fillers should be pots and wild crush and if you do get some beast points in between keep them incase you get low.

Now, lets say 3k atk power and 800vit at endgame.

• Getting 4 additional points in frenzy gives you every 120seconds a ~60% of your attack power (BS instead of cruel bite early on) threat boost, 3 seconds after pull. 60/100*3000*4=7200 threat. Assuming you hit 100%.
• Using a 1.230 hp pot (10 points vitality = 1% increased effect) = 1230*1.8*4=8856 AOE threat, instantly, no skill points or beast points spent, can use it again at 10 seconds instead of 120. You still get the threat if you are at 100% health at the time you pull.

In my opinion if your DPS doesn't wait before you gain threat on the boss having 10-15 pots in your bag for every dungeon, just for those silly pulls, big crits, or boss early threat boosts is a much better option than getting frenzy. Spending those points at Survival, Feral Defense, Wild Impact, or maybe even a couple points at beast roar is a much better option for me and in the long run any of those will reduce the amount of potions you spend AFTER pull, hence negating the extra cost of using that pot for the initial threat.

I hope i explained all this properly, i am a bit tired atm.

PS: Indeed frenzy is a 6 to 9% DPS boost depending on rotation and in ideal situations during the 20sec spike, and 0 DPS the rest of the time, but if farming at same level takes 15-20 seconds per creep you can understand that at ANYTHING else assuming 3-5 minute fights grants much better results, things such as chain pulling at dungeons or farming and boss fights will most likely provide that much DPS, or less because of the movement involved.

Edited by Ethismos, 13 June 2013 - 02:00 AM.

Quite insightful, thank you