The debuff priority system does not work at level 70, only level 60 spells are affected by it.

Ok, I was lucky and took me only 3 runs to get Bashguuder, I test it out on a few of the ogres right above Shattrath.

Using it in the main hand, I could reliably get 3 stacks up before the fight is over by spamming hamstring and devestate (seems to proc more on hamstring for some reason, maybe I need a larger sample size) However, it does not seem to proc much if any in the offhand, so you are looking at a loss of some 60 personal DPS just from autoattack, so the only fight I'm going to use it for is Illidan if I'm tanking the flames, and if you are on Illidan, chances are your physical DPS are at or close to the armor penetration cap already, so the debuff is pretty much wasted.

If debuff priority no longer functions at 70 then do Fireball dots push off other stuff all the time ?
I have not really looked into it since it was never really an issue yet.

I'm curious to know if anyone's put together a formula for getting fairly accurate stats for Nightfall RDPS. I have mine crafted and am no algebra wiz. Help would be appreciated!


taking into account on a boss
- Length of fight
- # of Nightfall procs
- Caster deaths
- and possibly individual Caster 15% bonus
- whatever else I may have neglected

Does anyone have a formula already created, that is tried and true, and makes sense?

I think it's simpler than you're trying to make it. At least, this is what I've been using:

1) Look at how much magical damage a boss took, divide that by the overall length of the fight to get your Magical RDPS.
2) Then look at total Nightfall uptime based on how many times it procced, divide that by the total length of the fight to get a % uptime.
3) Multiply that % of uptime by .15 to find the percent of DPS that Nightfall's bonus accounted for.
4) Multiply that resulting percentage with your Magical RDPS to get the amount of DPS that Nightfall contributed.

NightfallRDPS = (TotalMagicalDmgDone / FightLength) * ( ( (#ofProcs * 5) / FightLength) * .15)

It's sort of folly to try to account for caster deaths in a formula, since the number of casters you have is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is how much magical damage the boss is taking.

Using this formula I worked out that Nightfall added ~115 RDPS on our last Illidan kill, I was a flame tank using Nightfall for the rest of the fight. It's pretty tough to be accurate here, what with phase 2 and demon phases but I think this is right. Personal DPS difference was pretty negligable - I kept TC and demo up all fight both times, so even using decent dual wield weapons my dps was poor. Overall I estimate Nightfall added about 100 RDPS on Illidan compared to the previous week, which is lower than I had predicted.

I will continue to use it on Illidan as there is no reason not to, but there are few other bosses it has a use on: it could be used by an offtank on Mother Sharaz I think, though I haven't tried that yet. It works for the last few moments of Akama, for kite phases of Supremus, Fel rages on Gurtogg, and depending on your strategy it could work on RoS. I can't think of a use for it in MH. It's probably worth using on trash pulls too.

dur, I fail at math. Delete.

I do not recommend using it on Mother. The one pass that I tested it out, my lash damage spiked ~2-3k per lash from the lack of armor from the shield, and my health drops ~1k from the missing stamina that was on my MH + Shield. So the lash is very risky and potentially deadly at this point,

I do use it every time on the rest, including RoS after I finish my round of block-tanking in phase 1, and all of phase 2, Teron (dedicated decursing), the big trash guys before BB/RoS (Legionaires?), and the 1-shot robots before Council, and Illidian non-Phase 2.

For Hyjal, I use it on Rage (Though full ret set) and Kaz'Rogal (full SR, rest ret gear), since our healing is more than capable.

Nope. Our formulas are the same, its just that your formula gives total magical damage contributed by nightfall. Mine gives DPS contributed by nightfall. Both are useful things to know, it just depends on what info you're looking for.

Lets look closer: Dividing overall debuff uptime by fight length tells you what percentage of the fight the debuff was active for. So, 4 procs are 20 seconds of total uptime, which in a 6 minute fight would mean ~5.56% uptime. If you have a 15% buff for 5.56% of the fight, you have an overall increase of .834% (just: .15 * .0556 = .00834).

Now we can use real numbers to show the difference between the two fomulas. Lets say you had 6.12million magical damage in 6mins, for 17k magical raid dps. Using my numbers above, 4 procs (~5.56% uptime) Nightfall would contribute ~141dps.

Now, Lets use your formula:
(6120000 /360) * (4 * 5 * .15) = 51000 RDPS ... what?

Obviously, Nightfall did not contribute 51000 dps in a fight where you only did 17000 magical dps. But if you divide your number by 360 (the fight length), you get ~141, which is the dps contribution, and the same as what I obtained above. Clearly, knowing how much extra raw damage you did is still a useful thing, so lets just say we're both right =)

Right, I realized my mistake and thus removed my post. Can the debuff refresh itself? If so, theoretical uptime may be inflated due to possible refreshes.

Right on, I see that now. Probably not necessary to remove it though, in my opinion. You still made a valuable observation that may not have been obvious to some of the folks reading this thread. I certainly find dps to be a valuable factor in planning raid set-ups, but total damage done is what actually kills bosses

Either way, moving on. The debuff can refresh itself, which would make your calculated Nightfall uptime (Based on WWS observation) lower than your actual in-game uptime. Not sure how you could hope to account for that in a formula, unless it simply suffices to say that your calculated Nightfall contribution is valid as a lower-limit, and that actual contribution might exceed what you calculated.

I was under the impression that it failed against targets above 60 anyhow? And wouldn't spamstring help counter that?

It would appear this change is just like the other changes when TBC was released to more or less end the need/reliance on vanilla WoW weapons/armor.

One can only hope they put in a weapon in WotLK to replace it at the 80 level of raiding, just pray it isn't a boss drop (i.e. something that takes the spot of a useful loot drop), a trash drop from a blue dragon would be awesome (hint hint).

Unless we see the incoming 2.4.2 change being rolled back (unlikely), I think this thread has run its course. Testing on the Protection Paladin revealed a proc rate of less than 0.1% on a level 68 Basilisk (1 proc in 1084 hits).

I wouldn't hold your breath on them making another heavily scaling, borderline impossible to replace item. At least, not on purpose XD

QFT. They were pretty emphatic on removing it from the [Slayer's Axe] TBC quest reward much earlier on, and probably figured nobody would bother with [Nightfall] until the resurgence of doing everything to maximize raid DPS on Brutallus (I've heard of precasting [Commander's Badge]s prior to the pull to squeeze out some damage from the minion).

They certainly encourage raid synergy in a number of cases, but I wouldn't be surprised if they want to avoid the model of forcing players to significantly cripple their performance for "the greater good". This is certainly one of those cases where the personal impact is large, creating situations where you want such a player in your raid, but nobody wants to *be* that player.

That's a nice idea actually. Due to the difference in opportunity cost we're proably talking about 1% instead of 15, but that would actually be fairly cool if balanced well.

Speaking purely theoretically, while I realize that the actually damage boost from Nightfall is negligible, I wonder how much of a difference it would make in the sense of who is doing the damage. For example, a prot pally's threat would be upped impressively by it, and spriests would return more hp/mana.

I used this last night on Kaz'Rogal

Not one single proc out of 32 swings

Looks like I'm vendering it :-(

Yeah, I used it on illidan a few weeks back after the nerf (phase 2, on the elementals) and didn't get it to proc on either of them for the whole duration of the phase, spamming hamstring/whirlwind. It's bad and completely useless now.

One of our off tanks on Brutallus tried it out last week as well. Not one proc the entire fight.

Time to vendor.