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Old 03/16/07, 1:45 PM   #16
doogless
Don Flamenco
 
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Draenei Shaman
 
Kil'Jaeden
Originally Posted by Vazu View Post
Depends how many other Warlocks are in the raid, keeping DOTs up. (Soul Siphon)
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.

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Old 03/16/07, 2:04 PM   #17
Deathwing
Bald Bull
 
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Orc Warrior
 
Black Dragonflight
Actually, it gets more than full bonus. 5/3.5*.5 is the bonus it gets. Even then, it doesn't match shadowbolt. Only time even comes close is if you focus strictly on +damage and have poor +hit and +cit. If itemization was more catered to that style, it might be a plausable high dps build. Certainly a high survivability build. Too bad only focusing on one stat(+damage or +shadow) suffers heavily in the item budget rules.

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Old 03/16/07, 2:37 PM   #18
 frmorrison
Protector
 
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Ashstrike
Human Paladin
 
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Originally Posted by doogless View Post
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).

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Old 03/16/07, 3:01 PM   #19
TheOnly
Don Flamenco
 
Gnome Warlock
 
Dragonblight
Originally Posted by doogless View Post
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.
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.



-------------

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.

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Old 03/16/07, 4:18 PM   #20
Twid
Bald Bull
 
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Beepz
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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.

Originally Posted by Kalman View Post
Get you some purple drank and slow yo roll.

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Old 03/16/07, 4:54 PM   #21
doogless
Don Flamenco
 
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Draenei Shaman
 
Kil'Jaeden
it appears I'm a noob, I thought channeled spells were treated like DoTs, where the damage you get is dependent on the number of ticks rather than the casting time of the channel.

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Old 03/16/07, 5:01 PM   #22
Draele
Don Flamenco
 
Human Warlock
 
Thunderhorn
Originally Posted by doogless View Post
it appears I'm a noob, I thought channeled spells were treated like DoTs, where the damage you get is dependent on the number of ticks rather than the casting time of the channel.
Spell duration.

(3.5/5)/2 for Drain Life.

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Old 03/16/07, 5:02 PM   #23
 Kestrel
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None
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Originally Posted by Twid View Post
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.
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.

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Old 03/16/07, 5:07 PM   #24
Deathwing
Bald Bull
 
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Orc Warrior
 
Black Dragonflight
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.

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Old 03/16/07, 5:18 PM   #25
Draele
Don Flamenco
 
Human Warlock
 
Thunderhorn
My shadow is 1093 and my Fire is only ~700ish and Immolate is still worth casting. And I do cast CoA, actually. Our only other regular Warlock is Fire, and he keeps Elements up for himself and the Mages and I use CoA.

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Old 03/19/07, 11:05 AM   #26
Antoine
Piston Honda
 
Night Elf Druid
 
Black Dragonflight
Originally Posted by Draele View Post
My shadow is 1093 and my Fire is only ~700ish and Immolate is still worth casting. And I do cast CoA, actually. Our only other regular Warlock is Fire, and he keeps Elements up for himself and the Mages and I use CoA.
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.

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Old 03/19/07, 1:14 PM   #27
Gumibear
Piston Honda
 
Goblin Warlock
 
Turalyon
Originally Posted by Draele View Post
1- Firstly, and most importantly, this isn't Molten Core! Fights since BWL have been getting progressively less "tank and spank" and from what I've seen this trend isn't going away. Thus, the ability to load out direct damage spells .5 seconds faster loses much of it's appeal when you have DoTs ticking round the clock. Bane isn't as much of a %DPS boost as one might find on paper when you're working with Line-of-sight, add control, movement and other varieties of gimmicks in the dynamic encounters we've been getting the past year.
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.

Originally Posted by Twid View Post
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..
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.

Last edited by Gumibear : 03/19/07 at 1:52 PM.

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Old 03/19/07, 1:43 PM   #28
spronk
Don Flamenco
 
Orc Death Knight
 
Blackrock
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.

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Old 03/19/07, 1:53 PM   #29
Antoine
Piston Honda
 
Night Elf Druid
 
Black Dragonflight
Originally Posted by Gumibear View Post
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 3 Shadowbolt and an extra global cooldown. Every little bit helps.
The only thing I would say about this is that Doom can pull way ahead if it has certain debuffs up when it goes off, but Agony can do more damage. You're more likely to have an on-use trinket up when you put up Agony. You're more likely to have ISB up when Agony ticks. With just 1 warlock, I'd go so far as to say that Agony would do more DPS, but if you get ISB up more reliably Doom will be better.

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Old 03/19/07, 1:56 PM   #30
Mearis
Mr. Sandman
 
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Dwarf Priest
 
Defias Brotherhood (EU)
You're more likely to have ISB up when Agony ticks.
Why?

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