We are thinking about getting a nightfall crafted, and im looking for a deeper understanding of the debuff system, as far as i know some debuffs are protected and won't get pushed off by fireball and deep wound dots (curses, sunder for example). while others will just fly off when 10 fireballs/deep wounds land. Does anyone know how far along the debuff priority system is, i read in another thread here that winters chill can be knocked off.

here are the debuffs im intrested in, and if having 8 fireballs and 5 deep wounds is going to effect there viability in raids.

Edit: after more research heres how my current list is coming along

Unknowns
- Gift of Arthus
- Ignite
- Expose Weakness
- Hemo
- Winter's Chill
- Warlock Shadow Vun
- CoA
- Priest Shadow Vun
- Vampiric Embrace
- Curse of Weakness
- Immolate
- Insect Swarm


Highest Priority Debuffs List
- Sunder Armour
- Fairy Fire
- JoW/JoL
- Demo shout
- Thunderclap
- Fire Vun (Imp scorch)
- Curse of Reck
- Curse of Elements
- Curse of Shadows
- Hunters Mark

Medium or High Priority
- Corruption


Not Protected - Trash Debuffs - Lowest Priority
-Serphent Sting
-Deep Wounds
-Fireball
-Rupture
-Garotte
-Deadly Poison


Not Protected - Good Debuffs
- Nightfall (only lasts 5 seconds)

thunderclap and demo shout are definitely high priority debuffs. I imagine fairy fire and ignite and the judgements are, too. Nightfall is most definitely not protected and will be pushed off pretty often

I'd imagine that Gift of Arthas would have a relatively low priority given its high proc-rate and long duration.

Both winter's chill and the nightfall proc will keep dropping off pretty often. Apparently stuff you cast directly (such as curses) has higher priority than stuff that procs off something else (such as nightfall), and this even applies if the proc has a 100% chance of happening, such as maxed out winter's chill.

good information thx, looks like nightfall wont be worth us making.

I think we would need word from Blizzard for this - I think it's more intelligent than just "direct on versus procs". Serpent Sting never seems to last any length of time on our mobs - whilst winters chill and the scorch debuff seem as sticky as sunder armour almost. Have never once seen either of them pushed off.
Same with ignite - it seems to have a much bigger priority than you would think for a 4 second DoT, as we've never had one pushed off yet.


Maybe we're just lucky or the warlocks are slacking... :)

They've given up long ago.

just did some testing on golmag with CoR, FF, fire vun and having everyone spamming serphent sting, SW:P ect to try and push them off and they all stayed, so id say the priority system is fairly tuned ATM

Nightfall has a very short procc duration so I dont think it falling of before its run out is a major problem.

There's never much danger of FF getting pushed off during our raids. It's keyed to one of my mouse buttons and I compulsively hit it once every 20 seconds or so.

Pardon my ignorance, but the value of FF is not immediately apparent. Would someone mind explaining?

I guess I never really considered the armor reduction to be that significant. Actually, I thought it was pretty INsignificant, especially on bosses.

It will add more dps than any DoT you could throw on.

Bosses have around 4000 armor, so sunder takes care of about half, so anything else that further removes armor is useful (like Curse of Reck and FF). With hunters, warrior, and Rogues around, those debuffs do more damage than any other debuff by virtue of those classes all hitting much harder than before.

From now on our druids are gonna keep it up. You learn something new every day. Always another opportunity to feel like a total noob.

Errrr

Decreasing boss armor is probably the most significant dps increase you have available to your raid.

edit: If you don't know about FF does this mean you don't use CoR either?

keep the info comming guys, ill update the list accordingly, if you know and debuffs ive missed please post and ill add them. Aswell as any from the unknown list.

as for curse of wreck and FF, they make a massive differencve to hunter,rogue and warrior dps, keep them on almost every mob.

Curse of "Wreck" is not protected, at least I recall it getting knocked off once. Rogue debuffs, Rupture/Deadly Poison, are also not protected.

I am pretty sure corruption is protected , have to test more to be sure.

We tested Curse of Recklessness on Golmag last night, 1 wreck application, everyone spamming debuffs for 2 minutes and we couldn't knock it off. At 2:00 it needed to be reapplied. Maybe they upped its priority recently along with winters chill and fire vun, some people have reported those being knocked off while others say they never will get knocked off.

edit:
if corruption is protected, and has the same priority as other protected debuffs it could easily explain the results we are seeing above. (we only had 2 locks in the raid)

There were 2-3 blue posts explaining how it worked like one month ago, but I can't really remember all the details anymore. Here's what I do remember:

Priority works like this: 1) passive important debuffs like COS,COE,Sunder,Imp scorch/winters chill and so on. There's lots of debuffs that qualify for this but I guess some were left out/forgotten.
2) Controlled dots
3) procs/uncontrolled dots

Ignite is NOT high priority. It should be, but it's being treated like any other procced debuff - contantly getting bumped off.

In my eyes the fireball dot is working under the "controlled dots" part, allowing it to bump off ignite and such. It stays for long.

Ignite is pretty low. Not sure, but I think it keeps on the uncontrolled list, without it refreshing every cast to the top of the pile.

Can anyone else confirm this?

I know it's irking a lot of mages.