Moonfire

[Watto44]

I've recently been thinking of respeccing my druid and going balance. Wanting to know more about how +spell damage works with the various druid spells, I wandered into SM and did some very brief tests.

These tests are in no way conclusive, as the sample size is far too small, but they produced a result that I can't really explain.

I started out doing a quick run without any +damage gear on. Everything was as it should be after twenty spell casts, with average damage on each spell (wrath, starfire, moonfire and the moonfire DoT) corresponding with the tooltip.

I then threw on some +damage gear, which added a total of 110 spell damage. After 23 and 25 casts both wrath and starfire were receiving the bonus they should have been. (99.09% and 57.27% for startfire and wrath respectively. Close enough to the theorycraft, given the sample size.)

Moonfire, however, was not what I expected it to be. I'd assumed that my +damage would be split between the initial hit and the DoT and then adjusted according to the cast time for the initial hit, and the duration for the DoT. Theoretically, this would give me a result of about 21% to the initial damage and 40% to the DoT. However, the actual result I got was 17.27% of my +damage was applied to the initial damage and 52.36% was applied to the DoT.

I'm at a loss to explain this, and would appreciate some help. :)

On a bit of a side note, can someone tell me how talents that increase spell damage interact with +damage gear?

Thanks.

PS. Incase anyone wants to know, I tried moonfire for 32 casts, with 38 ticks for the DoT.

edit. "I'm at a lost to explain this" doesn't sound very nice. :P

2nd edit. For those of you who are very curious, it appears that entangling roots gets about 29% benefit from your spell damage gear. :shuriken:

[Luminon]

Moonfire is a so called "binary" spell, and therefore has its bonus damage devided between the two parts of the spell and modified by casting time.

So the direct damage part receives 50% of 43% (because it's an instant) = 21,5% benefit from spelldamage. The DOT receives the other 50% spread over it's duration. This is not exactly what you found, but i think that's due to the low sample size of your research.

As for talents, most of them are applied after gear, one notable exception being Gift of Nature.

[Watto44]

Moonfire is a so called "binary" spell, and therefore has its bonus damage devided between the two parts of the spell and modified by casting time.

So the direct damage part receives 50% of 43% (because it's an instant) = 21,5% benefit from spelldamage. The DOT receives the other 50% spread over it's duration. This is not exactly what you found, but i think that's due to the low sample size of your research.
[right][snapback]101812[/snapback][/right]

That was the result I got with my theory craft for the initial damage. For the DoT, I assumed that the damage it received would be adjusted because of it's duration. (Twelve seconds instead of fifteen.)

While the small sample size can explain the disparity in burst damage results, the sample size doesn't really explain the difference in the DoT result. Given that the DoT is a fixed number, a smaller sample size should produce reliable results.

Ideally I'd like to be able to test this with higher +damage gear, but 110 maxed me out. :) Either way, I'm going to do more testing today to both increase the sample size and vary the amount of +damage I'm using.

[Watto44]

Did more testing. 101 casts of moonfire, endeavoring to let the DoT run full course with each cast. The results were pretty much the same. The DoT received 52% of my +damage, while the initial burst got a measly 15.91%.

I also did a brief test with only 62 +damage gear. The DoT still received around 52% while the burst was still well under the theoretical 21%.

Summation: I don't have the patience for this sort of thing. :blush: One hundred casts of moonfire nearly drove me insane. I'm pretty confident that the DoT received around 52% of your +damage gear, but the figures are varying too much for me to make any sort of guess on the initial bust. Suffice to say, it seems to be less than the theoretical 21%. :)

[teske]

You have to remember that there are no hard rules about how +spell damage works. These rules are only guidelines for the developers. They can change where and how much +spell damge is applied. For example they changed the spell damage bonus of many paladin spells in the last patch. And IIRC a few priest spells have rather odd bonuses.

[Rinnhart]

On a bit of a side note, can someone tell me how talents that increase spell damage interact with +damage gear?

[right][snapback]101806[/snapback][/right]

All the warlock +% damage talents and abilities have been proven to be applied after +damage from equipment. I would guess that it's the same for everyone else- but as teske mentioned, the rules for how +damage is applied vary so much from spell to spell and class to class that I wouldn't be shocked if it worked differently for others.

[Skandranon]

Moonfire is a so called "binary" spell, and therefore has its bonus damage devided between the two parts of the spell and modified by casting time.
[right][snapback]101812[/snapback][/right]

What Blizzard calls binary spells are spells that have a damage and a non-damage component, causing them to be either fully resisted or not resisted. Moonfire is not what Blizzard terms a binary spell.

[Watto44]

You have to remember that there are no hard rules about how +spell damage works. These rules are only guidelines for the developers. They can change where and how much +spell damge is applied. For example they changed the spell damage bonus of many paladin spells in the last patch. And IIRC a few priest spells have rather odd bonuses.
[right][snapback]101909[/snapback][/right]

I'm glad I did at least a little testing on the theorycraft, just so I have some vague understanding of how much +damage I'm getting.

If I ever get around to respeccing, I'll do some more dodgy tests to check - just to satisfy myself - how the talents work.