I'm looking at ways to raise the dps of my raid, simply by improving our current practises.
We were a late starter in Naxx, and I now worry about things I didn't really have to before (since pushing dps boundaries wasn't as important). One of the agonizing things for me is trying to justify having more than two warlocks in a raid. Our debuff stack just cycles through and knocks their dots off, totally raping their dps. Situationally they do OK on some fights (anub, noth), but once the whole raid starts attacking their dps just plummets.
Here's what I see as being an ideal debuff stack, given common talents:
1: Sunder/expose
2: CoE
3: CoS
4: CoR/CoA (depending on boss)
5: Warlock DoT reserve 1
6: Judgement of Light
7: Judgement of Wisdom
8: Mortal Strike
9: Thunderfury slow debuff
10: Thunderfury NR debuff
11: Demoralizing shout
12: Ignite (Could be a warlock DoT, but for fire mage)
13: Winter's Chill
14: Improved Scorch (Could be a warlock DoT, but for fire mage)
15: Gift of Arthas
16: Faerie Fire
Now, the problem is, this ideal stack gets absolutely raped by proc and dot components of spells and talents. eg: fireball dot component, deep wounds, etc.
As a result of the above, I'm not really convinced fire mages are all that crash hot anymore (no pun intended). We have to sacrifice a lot of debuff slots to keep an ignite stack going, and it has a measurable impact upon performance of other classes. Our best frost mages usually manage to keep fairly close pace with the mage that owns the ignite stack anyway. Basically to make ignite effective, we're giving up 3 debuff slots from warlocks which amount to 300dps owned by another class. The mage also gives up a lot of utility and survivability (imp blizzard, iceblock, nova).
How does everyone else deal with this in your raids? Do you just leave the debuff stack up as a free for all? Have any of you told people "you can't have suchandsuch talent because of the debuff stack" (eg: deep wounds)?
Rupture on raids is a big nono. Sure, the dps of the rupture is high. Higher than other rogue finishers? Maybe situationally. Higher than other finishers by enough that you can afford to remove a 90-100dps dot from a warlock? No way.
A couple you forgot (or intentionally left off?) are rupture/rip. Those two dots were buffed in 1.12.
Deep wounds is one debuff I wish all warriors would avoid.
Only problem with that is your warriors are lowering their dps by a good 3-4% if they drop it. That means if you have more then 1-2 good dpsing warriors, you really have to see how much warlock dots really tick for so that they outweigh every warrior's solid 3-4%. Locks and DPS warriors aren't all that common so I guess it depends on your guild's class selection.
On a positive note, ima probably spec out of it cuz if you don't, you lose a good 3-5% parry which is quite noticeable while offtanking.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xi6WsB8dZcE
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Due to how deep wounds get overwritten its not exactly optimal for DW'ing. It is better for 2h warriors. Still lets say 700 dps and 4% of that is 30ish dps. In no way does that even come close to the dps given by corruption from a warlock. And its not like those deep wounds will be staying up. They will be overwritten just as well.
A warlock dot does 100 dps? Ignites are commonly 1000+ dps. You're barking up the wrong tree.
But you can't really credit that to one mage. You have to see how many mages collectively add to it don't you? So if you had 5 fire mages going at it, it'd be more like 200 dps.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xi6WsB8dZcE
Raiding music that gets things done.
The best Theorycraft and Mathcraft happens after a raid and before the sun comes up.
You will probably never get a rolling ignite going unless you control reapplication of debuffs like a nazist regime i.e. Patchwerk. Ignite is pretty low on debuff priority and gets bumped off very easily. With a full 16 debuffs on the mob, an application of something like Deep Wounds will probably knock it straight off. You're just NOT going to get an Ignite going on for very long if you let people apply debuffs in a free for all.
In this day and age, 2-3 Warlocks should choose their strongest DOT and 1 of the important Curses and use only that one DOT and Shadowbolt spam (or Searing Pain if threat isn't an issue and they want better mana efficiency) to DPS with. The other Warlocks should use COA and bolt spam. When TBC comes out, its hammer time! Throw out those debuffs like your life depended on it.
If every Warlock tries to use both Immolate AND Corruption (and if their mana pool is feeling suicidal, Siphon Life) then they're going to run into serious mana efficiency and DPS problems.
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Currently Fire mages can put out more dps than frost mages/warlocks, and don't have many aggro issues, I think that fact justifies the Fire mage DoT usage.
Also, I don't think many guilds use Arthas's Tears, and is JoL used that much?
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But you can't really credit that to one mage. You have to see how many mages collectively add to it don't you? So if you had 5 fire mages going at it, it'd be more like 200 dps.
We're talking about debuff management here though. Ignite takes 1 debuff slot, even if you had 30 fire mages in your raid. In terms of dps from a single debuff slot, ignite wins hands down.
Due to how deep wounds get overwritten its not exactly optimal for DW'ing. It is better for 2h warriors. Still lets say 700 dps and 4% of that is 30ish dps. In no way does that even come close to the dps given by corruption from a warlock. And its not like those deep wounds will be staying up. They will be overwritten just as well.
You have to consider impale as well tho. I'd say 5% is a healthy amount that includes both talents since deep wounds do get overwritten quite frequently. But if you have four fury warriors going at it, each at 600 dps, that means you just lost 120 dps. Not too bad but it's asking for quite a bit considering most wars like pvping with it as well (impale that is).
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xi6WsB8dZcE
Raiding music that gets things done.
The best Theorycraft and Mathcraft happens after a raid and before the sun comes up.
But you can't really credit that to one mage. You have to see how many mages collectively add to it don't you? So if you had 5 fire mages going at it, it'd be more like 200 dps.
We're talking about debuff management here though. Ignite takes 1 debuff slot, even if you had 30 fire mages in your raid. In terms of dps from a single debuff slot, ignite wins hands down.
OK. We only recently started to play with fire mages, so please excuse my ignorance. How do you build your ignite stack? Do all your mages just scorch spam? It's appearing to us as if there's an inefficient cost to it on our debuff stack due to the fireball DoT component. We also find that one fire mage will get much higher dps than the others, but averaging the fire mages vs the frost mages, the frost mages still win by a significant margin (our fire mages are supposedly geared appropriately for fire, having high spell crit).
But you can't really credit that to one mage. You have to see how many mages collectively add to it don't you? So if you had 5 fire mages going at it, it'd be more like 200 dps.
We're talking about debuff management here though. Ignite takes 1 debuff slot, even if you had 30 fire mages in your raid. In terms of dps from a single debuff slot, ignite wins hands down.
OK. We only recently started to play with fire mages, so please excuse my ignorance. How do you build your ignite stack? Do all your mages just scorch spam? Because there's an additional cost to it on our debuff stack due to the fireball DoT component
For getting ignites rolling, you usually need atleast 2 mages with combustion and one with imp scorch. The guy with imp scorch starts it off by applying 5 applications. Then the mages must talk with themselves and negoiate when to start combustion. Most mages tell me, the combustion mages start with scorch spam with the other mages scorch as well, and as soon as you get a good 2-3 applications, the non combustion mages just start fireballing. This process is probably much easier with more combustion mages but it's nice, not necessary.
Edit: I don't really think rolling ignites is possible unless you have ATLEAST 3 very good fire mages. Usually the minimum is 4. 5 is when it gets really amazing.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xi6WsB8dZcE
Raiding music that gets things done.
The best Theorycraft and Mathcraft happens after a raid and before the sun comes up.
You have to consider impale as well tho. I'd say 5% is a healthy amount that includes both talents since deep wounds do get overwritten quite frequently. But if you have four fury warriors going at it, each at 600 dps, that means you just lost 120 dps. Not too bad but it's asking for quite a bit considering most wars like pvping with it as well (impale that is).
None of our fury warriors have wasted points on the impale line. We have two off tanks spec'd 31/5/15, and they are the ones that hit deep wounds.
You will probably never get a rolling ignite going unless you control reapplication of debuffs like a nazist regime i.e. Patchwerk. Ignite is pretty low on debuff priority and gets bumped off very easily. With a full 16 debuffs on the mob, an application of something like Deep Wounds will probably knock it straight off. You're just NOT going to get an Ignite going on for very long if you let people apply debuffs in a free for all.
In this day and age, 2-3 Warlocks should choose their strongest DOT and 1 of the important Curses and use only that one DOT and Shadowbolt spam (or Searing Pain if threat isn't an issue and they want better mana efficiency) to DPS with. The other Warlocks should use COA and bolt spam. When TBC comes out, its hammer time! Throw out those debuffs like your life depended on it.
If every Warlock tries to use both Immolate AND Corruption (and if their mana pool is feeling suicidal, Siphon Life) then they're going to run into serious mana efficiency and DPS problems.
Thanks for the feedback :)
I guess what I'm trying to get across is the whollistic perspective. Let's say we have 3 fire mages (which we do)
To get ignite going, they will use:
1 debuff slot for scorch
1 debuff slot for ignite
3 debuff slots for fireball
Someone claimed a common scenario of a 1000 ignite tick (so 333 dps).
So, we're looking at 5 debuff slots that could be 400-500dps in DoT's. When our fire mages are only performing on average equally to our frost mages it seems like a waste to me.
In addition, I have to reduce our raid to 3 warlocks, as a fourth or fifth warlock basically has significantly reduced dps due to no space for debuff allocation.
Raid-buffed, a hemo rogues Rupture can hit 100 DPS.
Most other rogues shouldn't generally be using Rupture anyway.
(Note: this is neither in favor of nor against Rupture usage, simply pointing out that Rupture improved significantly w/ 1.12)
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Uhh, Rupture/Rip is more than 90-100 DPS (since 1.12). It's stronger than any warlock DoT, currently. Btw, I'm a resto druid, so I'm not saying this because I want to use a finisher. ;)
Deep wounds requires how many talents points? 8 talent points if you get 2/2 Impale. If you're a fury build, it's a waste to spec into the impale line, imo, especially if you are DW fury. 8 talents points is alot, 3 of which are a complete waste (Improved Rend), 3 which give you a terrible DoT that annoys other DPSers. I just don't see how it's not worth it.
The only warlock DoT that is worth casting is Corruption, if you have Nightfall. The proc, along with the DoTs actual damage justifies it's casting.
Raid-buffed, a hemo rogues Rupture can hit 100 DPS.
Most other rogues shouldn't generally be using Rupture anyway.
(Note: this is neither in favor of nor against Rupture usage, simply pointing out that Rupture improved significantly w/ 1.12)
Whollistic perspective though. That hemo rogue has the opportunity to use eviscerate instead. Not sure what the dps is like on the new eviscerate rank, but hypothetically let's say it's 80dps. That means the DoT is then only worth 20dps, so it's more effective to give that debuff slot to someone else.
Uhh, Rupture/Rip is more than 90-100 DPS (since 1.12). It's stronger than any warlock DoT, currently. Btw, I'm a resto druid, so I'm not saying this because I want to use a finisher. ;)
Deep wounds requires how many talents points? 8 talent points if you get 2/2 Impale. If you're a fury build, it's a waste to spec into the impale line, imo, especially if you are DW fury. 8 talents points is alot, 3 of which are a complete waste (Improved Rend), 3 which give you a terrible DoT that annoys other DPSers. I just don't see how it's not worth it.
The only warlock DoT that is worth casting is Corruption, if you have Nightfall. The proc, along with the DoTs actual damage justifies it's casting.
The usefulness of deep wounds really depends on the encounter. If an encounter is straight spank and tank, it will almost never tick and be useless. However, if an encounter requires movement or dps breaks, deep wounds will tick somewhat. It can pretty much be anywhere from 1-4% of your overall dps. Impale depending on how many special attacks you cycle thru while dpsing, can be anywhere from 3%-5%. So yes it's an expensive talent to have, but it's not exactly a waste.
So far after scanning thru the sustained dps thread, almost every single dw fury warrior above 700 dps has had impale. Would the encounters be possible without wars with impale? Of course, but impale just means that you have less of those unbearable 1% wipes.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xi6WsB8dZcE
Raiding music that gets things done.
The best Theorycraft and Mathcraft happens after a raid and before the sun comes up.
Raid-buffed, a hemo rogues Rupture can hit 100 DPS.
Most other rogues shouldn't generally be using Rupture anyway.
(Note: this is neither in favor of nor against Rupture usage, simply pointing out that Rupture improved significantly w/ 1.12)
Whollistic perspective though. That hemo rogue has the opportunity to use eviscerate instead. Not sure what the dps is like on the new eviscerate rank, but hypothetically let's say it's 80dps. That means the DoT is then only worth 20dps, so it's more effective to give that debuff slot to someone else.
The same can be done with any skill/talent. You could say a warlock would be better off casting Searing Pain than Immolation, or that a warrior would be better off specing Improved Heroic Strike than Deep Wounds. I'm not saying that either are viable just that the same can apply to others, as well.
Frost mages shouldn't be coming close to fire mages in a straight nuke-fight, given equal gear, ability and level of "trying." They shouldn't even be sniffing the primary ignite holder. I'm pretty sure that fire mages make their debuff slots count.
Mortal strike shouldn't be up there IMO. Nor should winter's chill if you're maximizing your mages.
Some of those debuffs are just unrealistic with the deep wounds spam.
I think a previous poster said it best in that the warlock isnt' going to be able to use all their DoTs. Theres ISB and all sorts of nonsense that will be up there knocking stuff off.
I think you need to look at this from a practical standpoint:
Sunder, demo, Curses... stuff that increases raid DPS
Everything else minimize, so the ignite doesn't fall off.
Maybe that means no more dots for warlocks?
Corrent Lokoki, but the question is not whether rupture or rip is better than corruption, it is if either is better than eviscerate/ferocious bite plus corruption. Not sure those dots are better than corruption, but I'm pretty sure overall raid dps is higher with the second.
Nightfall increases DPS by a VERY small margin. Its essentially 1 second off a Shadowbolt about once a minute.
On the other hand Nightfall is SUPER HAPPY MEGA FUN. The number of times I've blindly run straight into shadow vulnerable Chromaggus and caught an ignite flesh just to get a Nightfall proc off...JOY!
Ignite takes a LOT more than 1 debuff slot to enable and maintain. First off, those Fireballs leave DOTs. Really, really useless DOTs which they themselves can knock off an Ignite. Second of all, you need to leave a 'buffer zone' in the debuff slots to ensure that your 'zomg 8k ignite' isn't going to get bumped off by proc-based debuff applications like deep wounds or Improved Shadowbolt. This is because Ignite is low on priority. They probably haven't increased its priority yet because they don't want those massive ignites ticking for very long. This is probably more advantageous than a hinderance because it equates to more aggro on one guy and potential pulling of aggro. Very high DPS has its drawbacks...
We had a fire mage (who wasn't specced Burning Soul for whatever reason) continuously pulling aggro through 4k Ignites. Because the output DPS of a corpse is somewhere around the region of zero point nothingty zilch, I was not impressed.
There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.
09/06/06, 5:51 PM
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