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Slam question (New Warrior)
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Post by
147881
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Post by
silverd
Essentially, the use of Slam is for Slam rotation with a 2 hander where you basically cast Slam (with Imp Slam) right after a white hit, followed by an instant attack like Mortal Strike or Bloodthirst. I won't go too deep into that since I'm no expert, but basically the concept is that you're doing big damage since Slam is another skill that doesn't wait for your next hit to cast. I don't use Slam with fury/Dual Wielding since there are other talents that are more useful than Imp Slam in deep Fury builds and without that, Slam is kinda useless since you need to be next to your target and moving will cancel it automatically.
Post by
Zalambar
Right, slam effectively gives you a 1.5s (or down to 0.5s with points in Improved Slam) attack which can be a real benefit if your normal attack speed with a big two handed weapon is up around 3.5s. A good slam rotation will allow you to land at least a slam and probably some other special attack between each of your auto attacks.
This can be useful at low levels but generally only if you are using a two hander and not getting hit (ie in a group and prefer not to dual wield due to available gear, spec, or whatever).
Post by
warhead0
problem is that in pvp people dont generally stand stillor in your range long enough to get a a few good ones off
Post by
Sakkura
Recently hit 32 on my warrior and I trained the first level of slam.
Is this an improvement over heroic strike? It seems HS does more damage and costs less rage (I also chose the talent to decrease the rage cost), so I'm not seeing the benefit of slam at the moment. It also has a "timer" before it actually lands.
Heroic strike looks like it costs less rage, but in reality it costs a lot more. It also looks like it does more damage, when in reality it usually does less. The thing with heroic strike is that it consumes your next autoattack - which means you lose the rage that autoattack would have given you. It also means you would have been doing much of the damage anyway, and the heroic strike just makes the hit a little bigger (and makes it somewhat more likely to hit).
Post by
129690
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Post by
45840
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Post by
Frederic
It will cost you 15 rage and if used correctly
you should be able to only lose about .2 - .3 seconds
waiting for your next swing. If your white hit does 1000 damage, slam would do 1140.
The underlined portion is not correct, though a lot of people do not realise it. The problem is that people assume that because their slam and white attack happen near simultaneously on their screen that they are actually happening nearly simultaneously. This is false, the excercise of timing your slams before your white attacks is designed to ensure that the packet telling the server to slam arrives at the same time the server processes your white attack, at which point the server begins your slam and next white attack simultaneously, your slam cast finishes .5 seconds later and resets the swing timer, and then your white attack begins again as per usual.
Post by
45840
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Post by
Frederic
You're misunderstanding, with my latency around 40 I can begin to cast my slam with about .2 seconds left before my swing timer and it will go off right after my white attack coming off, so I reset my swing timer .3 seconds into it. I may not have illustrated that clearly enough. On my swing timer if I use it at 3.4, I hit at 3.6 and then my slam goes off .3 seconds into my next swing timer, reset it and I swing again in 3.6 seconds, any earlier than 3.4 or so it will go off before my next white attack and reset it before the white attack goes through.
You're still not getting it.
The packet "containing" your slam is not a packet telling the server you are slamming, it is a request for the server to begin your slam if it figures you should be able to. Your computer is not in control, it does not dictate to the server when your slam begun, it is the other way around, and according to the server your slam began when it first got the packet saying you want to slam, at 3.6 seconds into your white swing, otherwise your attack is clipped off. When you begin slam on your computer before the white swing occurs you are not timing it so that it begins before the white swing arrives, you are timing it so that it arrives at the server the same time your white attack is being processed.
All of WoW's calculations for attacks will be held on the game server, otherwise the game will be susceptible to hacking from the client side, and since your auto attack is automated it requires no network travel in order to occur, wheras your abilities must be triggered from your computer and are only processed as they arrive at the server. This is why you time your slam before the white swing on the screen occurs, because your slam request takes time to reach the server.
Furthermore, the mechanic of slam is that it pauses your white swing as it is being cast, then resets it once it is actually cast. So when your packet reaches the server ahead of your white swing the white swing is paused then reset, clipping the attack. You physically cannot have your slam arrive at the server before your white swing has been completed and still have your white attack go through.
One last note: the latency reported by your game is not the exact time you require for your slam to go through correctly, it is actually your round-trip time. Most people can cast slam just after the fancy swing meter with a latency overlay tells them to because the processing overhead at the server makes up for it, and because it's a very small window anyways. For a person with a ~800 ms connection it becomes very apparent that there is no exact coorelation between your latency and when you should cast slam. Last night I was in a Kara and if I had slammed whenever the meter told me to I would have clipped every single white attack I made until I rage starved myself.
Post by
53090
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Post by
45840
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Post by
Frederic
I'm not arguing that my slam begins casting before my white hit goes off on the server, however going by my swing timer I only lose about .3 seconds of a white attack.
...Which means you are saying that your slam begins before your white attack occurs, because your white attack is stopped dead when you slam cast begins, and when the slam ends it is reset without finishing even if it is due.
You should not ever trust a UI mod to give you exact statistics. Case in point: the other night my meter said I should slam .8 seconds before my white swing to synchronize the packet arrival at the server with my white attack being processed. In the meantime, my white attack went off, the next swing began according to my meter, and then my slam landed 3/4 of the way through my next white swing.
These mods do not update latency on a continual basis, they do not account for spikes, they do not account for processing time once stuff reaches the data centre. They are a flawed mechanism that only work because imprecision is introduced into the swing / slam cycle by latency. They cannot reduce the actual clipped swing time beyond what is introduced by latency in the first place, thus at best you are getting .5 seconds clipped off of your next attack, each and every time.
This leads us back to the math, which is fairly easy: the best case scenario for a slam rotation results in 200% Unnormalized Weapon Damage + every swing rotation at a cost of increasing your swing time by 0.5 seconds and scaling your DPS appropriately.
Post by
45840
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Post by
89415
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Post by
184879
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Post by
Frederic
on your client
before my swing timer is reset.
Your original statement was that you only lose .3 seconds, which is false. Your ammended statement is true. Now if you'll just tell me how it is relevant to anything I'll be on my way.
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