Nostrum

Apart from it been new I think DK's are the only class that needs real thought once your main priority list is nailed down. Anytime you use a non standard threat/dps ability the rune setup for your next few abilities can be changed severely depending on what you just did. I can't see it taking long to figure out the common detours but for now it's a lot of fun working it all out.

 

Pheus

Certain specs of rogues and feral druids who need 5 point rip/rupture as well as ferocious roar/slice and dice and mangle have a pretty high ramp up time before their full dps cycle gets going.

 

PSGarak

I had forgotten about rogues and combo points, although I think it's not quite the same. You can do a low-point S&D to last you long enough to pull a 5-point S&D. This smaller S&D is basically the ramp-up, and then you start on the normal rotation of 5s/5r or whatever. The problem is more accurately a very long cycle with some backloaded damage (Rupture) than actually a high ramp-up time. Nonetheless, in practice this ends up having the same effect: your damage is much more affected by movement, since you may never advance to the high-damage move in your cycle. How it's changed is an issue of granularity, rather than ramp-up, which means that it's less affected by periodic movement (if you switch to a cycle that fits in the period).

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

songster

I think this is a meaningless distinction. Moreover, there are significant aspects to rogue DPS that are genuine "ramp-up" issues even by your restricted definition. Stacking of Hunger for Blood, initial stacking of Deadly Poison, and the ratcheting from a single point S'n'D to a full length one are all ramp-up issues.

 

PSGarak

The distinction isn't extremely production but it's not entirely meaningless. When your fight has period interruptions and the window of contact time is the length of a cycle, the rogue cycle doesn't have much trouble (assuming they run in with 5 CPs for an immediate S&D) while the warlock's ramp-up is more dependent on time off-target than time on-target. It's also easier for a rogue to deal with different (smaller) window sizes, as they choose the S&D that fits. On fights with random interrupts, the distinction is not productive.
To summarize: On fights with periodic interruptions of DPS, needing to ramp-up is a function of time off-target, while long cycles are a function of time on-target.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

DeimosXI

I definitely try and maintain the optimal rotation and as a mage this can be hard at times as mobile DPS isn't our strong point. If I get a chance to plant my feet and simply DPS, I do.

As stated previously in this thread, the key is knowing your abilities inside and out and prioritize them when jumping back into your rotation after being interrupted.

The rule set I follow is as such:

If hot streak buff active - Pyro
If living bomb not up and no chance to break CC - Living Bomb (When mana is low, ignore LB).
If scorch debuff not @ full stacks and no frost mage in the raid - Scorch

Else Frostfire bolt.

*Note rotation for single target DPS on bosses only, solo pve is situational and aims at killing the mob before it has a chance to damage me.

With this in mind I can usually get back into my optimal rotation and maximize damage.

 

Morwen

Let me try to justify my position a bit, since I still don't think affliction suffers more from interrupts than any other dps spec. Basically the argument is that you lose comparatively less overall dps because frequent movement will mean that you lose a lot of your low dpct fillers, but you still cast the high dpct spells often enough.

I ran a quick casting simulator through the conditions that every time you attempt to cast a spell, there's a 20% chance that you get silenced for 5 seconds -- pretty unfriendly caster conditions. If you are a caster with a single nuke like TBC destruction warlocks, then your dps would go down to about 66%. If you chaincast a shorter spell like Scorch, your dps goes down to 55% since in this model you get more chances to be silenced.

Under the same conditions, with a straight affliction priority queue (not factoring in lifetap), you:
* Cast Haunt 87% as often
* Manually refresh Corruption using 1% of the overall time
* CoA uptime decreases to 92% of original
* UA uptime to 87%
* Immolate uptime to 77%
* Siphon Life uptime to 84%
* Cast 43% of original shadow bolts

A huge amount of the loss comes not from your DoTs falling off, but from not casting nearly as many fillers; you end up with about 70% of your former dps which is just as good as the complete non-ramp version. I didn't include lifetap as a filler in the simulator, but that should also swing in movement/interrupt's favor since people can and do tap while not dpsing.