no, it doesn't.

assuming 900 +shadow (reasonable if you're a frozen shadoweave tailor):

drain life gets +450 spread over its duration. it gets full affect because it has 5 ticks, and is halved because it's a leech effect. max rank DL does 108/tick, totaling 990 over 5 seconds. when the +dmg is added in. add in shadow mastery (10%) and full soul siphon (60%) for 1742 damage over 5 seconds.

shadow bolt gets 783 from +dmg as it's a 3 second cast. max rank SB has an average base damage of 572. add in shadow mastery (10%) for 1490 damage over 3 seconds. over 5 seconds, this is 2484 damage. if you add in bane, it becomes 2980 damage in those 5 seconds.

even with full soul siphon and even without bane, shadow bolt does more dps than drain life. the only time you should be using drain life is when you actually need the healing component.

I use Shadowbolt much more than DL, but Drain Life is good when you are near the aggro cap or for cheap mana gains (Tap then DL).

1. Drain life gets 5/3.5 times the bonus you list.
2. DL is affected by suppression. Thus, on a raid boss you can stack less %hit and more damage.
3. DL, when it does get resisted, loses 1.5/5 of its dps for that cast, shadowbolt loses 100% of its cast.

In total, DL ends up about = to non-bane, non improved SB if full soul siphon aganinst a +3 mob.
That just doesn't happen much.



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Even if you are the only shadow damage dealer in the group, improved shadow bolt and bane will help you. I gained a lot of dps from switching from my leveling build (49/10/0 at 68) to 45/5/11. An improved shadowbolt proc increases my dps of all the dots by 20% and I make sure to use up all but one charge to maximize the time it is on. Those 11 in destro don't help my soloing or farming, but they do make a big difference in groups large or small.

If there is positioning required, you can move while casting 2 or 3 of your dots, and life tap / dark pact. On trash mobs, bane/shadowburn is essential for dps if focused fire is important.

I played a lot of 30/21/0 in the 'old' days, as well as some 9/21/21 for raiding later. The reason bane is so important for the dot playstyle now is simply that you give up _so little_ to get it. And its not just bane, but iSB along with it.

If you don't have it, IMO you should make sure you get some other raid or group useful debuff like 5/5 shadow embrace, imp. CoW, or malediction.

I'm curious what dps cycles people are using as affliction. In order to maximize DoT efficiency, is there a specific cycle that allows for DoTs to be reapplied the instant the last tick fires?

I could see bane not being essential if the difference in cast time did not grant a full extra bolt without sacrificing the cycles of the DoTs.

I guess if you figure a cycle of UA, SL, CoA, Corr, you have 6.5 seconds of global cooldown, and another 1.5 if you life tap or dark pact. That leaves you with 10 seconds before the UA expires. If you want to time it so your UA is applied the instant it fades, you have to start casting just under 2 seconds from the end of the DoT. This would put you at 8 seconds of shadowbolt spam time. You would have enough time for three talented shadowbolts, that consume 7.5 seconds, or 2 untalented shadowbolts that consume 6 seconds.

With latency, can you reliably get those three shadowbolts to land before you eat into the UA timer? That would be the only way I could see Bane not being worthwhile.

Spell duration.

(3.5/5)/2 for Drain Life.

At least at the 25-person level most warlocks won't be casting CoA on bosses, they'll just be applying curse of shadows/elements/whatever at the beginning of a combat and so the cycle won't include that 1.5 seconds. So you'd have 9.5 seconds of shadowbolt spam time, in which you certainly wouldn't be able to get in 3 untalented shadowbolts unless you have virtually no latency, but you can definitely get in 3 talented ones.

The other thing to consider is that for those warlocks who don't have frozen shadowweave (and thus have most of their damage in generic +damage rather than +shadow) immolate is good dps as well, and bane also reduces the casting time of immolate. At least for myself I find that including immolate in my DoT application cycle increases my dps.

You're also forgetting the time between Corr/UA and Coa, and then CoA and SL. Additionally, I think it's better to cast a shadowbolt if you have 1s before CoA finishes rather than just wait around for it.

Correct about Immolate, I also have way more shadow than fire but the difference in cast time between Immolate and Shadowbolt makes Immolate better DPS. As for CoA, I assume you are talking about Kara. I used to use CoW until our tank picked up imp. Demo Shout, now I use CoE if there are 2 or more mages or CoA if there is 1 or less. I usually don't have a shadow priest in my Kara group.

I see a huge problem with the logic of this statement. If the fight requires you to move quickly, you want your spells to cast faster so you're casting more of them before you have to move. Someone with Bane will outdamge someone without Bane in the example you're using here because the person with Bane can pull off the Shadowbolt before moving that the second person could not.

I want to maximize the number of spells in each window of opportunity for damage on a los-based fight. I want to burst down those Curator adds with some quick bolts, not some dots.

On a boss, if you're not assigned to a utility curse, you should consider using Doom instead of Agony. Agony will do more damage than just Doom over the same time period, but Doom takes less than half the casting time (2.5 GCDs vs. 1). The difference in GCDs used almost allows for another Shadowbolt, so after considering the extra SB damage in addition to Doom's damage, the use of Doom comes out ahead for DPS.

1.5 * (2.5-1) = 2.25 seconds saved from using Doom instead of Agony in a minute. Agony is slightly easier to model over 2 minutes than 1 since in 2 minutes, you get an integer number of CoAs, so I'll assume a 2 minute window during which you'd get 5 Agony vs. 2 Doom. Using Doom over this 2 minute window gives you 4.5 extra seconds to cast Shadowbolts.

Curse of Doom (plus the extra SB damage):
2(4200 base + 1000 damage * 2.0 coefficent) + (4.5/2.5)(572 base + 1000 damage * 0.857 coefficient) = 12400 + 2572.2 = 14972.2
Multiply by 1.1 for SM and you'll get 16469.42

Curse of Agony
5(1356 + 1000 * 1.2) = 12780
Multiply by 1.15 for SM + Contagion = 14697
Multiply by 1.25 for SM + Contagion + Imp CoA = 15975

So there's a bit of a difference in damage done in favor of CoD even with Imp CoA, and this is before considering the crit chance of your shadowbolts and Imp SB procs. I have a feeling Imp SB procs increase the gap in CoD's favor, but that's a calculation I feel is beyond my ability to model. Also Amplify Curse adds more to Doom than Agony, as it's 50% of the base of a CoD vs. 50% of the base of a CoA.

PS: I realize 4.5 seconds saved doesn't really allow for an exact number of shadowbolts, but if you double this time frame to 4 minutes, you'll get 3 extra Shadowbolts and an extra global cooldown using CoD instead of CoA. Every little bit helps.

IMO Warlocks make the mistake of assuming 5 mans, heroics, karazhan, and 25 man raids all require the same spec.

Regular 5 mans - whatever you want, any build works great.

Heroics - CC, burst DPS is important. Affliction is ok, but not great since you cant dot multi-mobs most of the time. Burst DPS is also lacking, and some bosses you really don't want to leave DOTs on. Destro is great, shadowfury is nice as a lifesaver sometimes (mages have the same issue btw, ice is really nice with ice block/imp blizzard/etc for heroics). Not really sure about demo, don't see the felguard surviving long frankly.

Karazhan - Demo isn't bad here, some bosses can't have pets out DPSing but most are ok. Affliction and destro are very good here too. If you have a spriest, affliction is great, with fire mages destro is better.

25 man raids - You pretty much should have a shadow priest now, your guild is not very smart trying 25 man raids without at least one that is geared. Once you get to the point where you are only doing 25 man raids, some variation of 41/0/20 is the best build.

I am currently 7/5/49 which allows me to go sbolt when grouped with shadow priests or immo/incin/conflag when grouped with fire mages. I'll respec to 41/0/20 once I've hit exalted with everyone, don't find myself running heroics at all, and the guild gets into a more dedicated 25 man raiding schedule. FWIW I've also juggled sets of gear, I have a very crit heavy (~900 dmg, 22% crit unbuffed) gear load out at the moment, but have in the bank certain pieces that would lower crit but up +dmg when I respec.

PVP - having the most trouble here, in 2v2 or 3v3 affliction or demo works great. In 5v5 no build really works well, good teams train onto the warlock and we die very, very, very fast.

Why?