Merin

I've read a lot on the other Warlock-theorycrafting thread in this section. But I haven't been able to find a good cast-rotation for us Affliction-specced warlocks. So this is why im posting this.


Dots available: UA, Corr, Immo, Siphon Life and CoA (dipends if your assigned to non-dot buff or not)

To start with, Immolate is too good to leave out of the rotation. Mainly because you need to have unreachable +shadowdmg to afford skipping it (acording to the other thread about warlock dps)

After a bit of testing I've found out the following cast-rotation for max sustained dps in a long (boss) fight: (may be wrong though)

Apply curse first, wait for the GCD to finish, then I do as below
UA -> Corr -> Immo -> SL -> DP -> SB -> SB -> UA -> ... (apply new curse when needed)

This rotation is mainly focued on loosing as few GCD's as possible, and with this rotation the only GCD you will be waiting for is after the initial curse, wich is kinda natural for me cause of tanks initial agro. The other GCDs runs out while casting UA and Immo.
I've added DP in this rotation to help healers the most, and to keep my imp regenerating mana throughout the entire fight.

The thing is, dots obviously dont shine on trash, because they have to run all out to gain the maximum benefit. So for shortet trash-fights i just use Curse -> UA -> Corr -> SB -> SB.

I'd like some feedback on how to make a better cast-rotation, so please share your thoughts, oppinions and advices on this subject.
Thank you.

 

Demi9OD

I'm new to this but unless you are taking consistent damage I don't believe SL is worth the global or mana to cast.

 

Merin

hmm... interresting. Since you dont "waste" a global on it, the only issue would be the mana. The question though, is if the rotation gives more dps with or without SL...
Wich I dont have the answer to

 

cocidius

You usually aren't taking consistent dmg but life tap takes away life and SL helps recover that life faster. It helps out the healers and allows you to maintain a good health/mana ratio. On boss fights it is 100% necessary. Without SL you would need to rely on Healers, Pots or DL, all of which are either lowing your dps or draining healers mana. It is also instant so there is no reason not to work it in the rotation.

 

Kruthal

What do you base that on?



This is a screenshot of my main hotbar with DrDamage showing average values for what the different spells will hit for. As you can see, my shadowbolt will average for less than SL, despite taking around 1 second longer to cast, assuming 1.5sec GCD. Note that the numbers for Shadowbolt factor in crit. Now, I don't have Devastation (trying to combine pvp- and pve-specs ftl) but that wouldn't push my average Shadowbolt much higher than 1703.

So for me, the Damage Per Second Per Cast for SL is ~1213, but only 665.6 for Shadowbolt, which is what you would of course fill the time you suddenly had to spare if you didn't use SL.

I chose to use a picture for this because DrDamage is a great addon, and it's values are very consistent with my calculations as well as my in-game parses, so I really want to promote it's use. And also because a picture says more than a thousand words ;-).

This assumes that SL will tick it's entire duration of course.

A bit off-topic: With SL and DP with a buffed pet, you are more or less self-sustained, barring AoE-damage. The only healing I recieved last Prince was when I had the axes on me, no Drain Life either. With 3-piece Frozen Shadowweave an affliction lock is just disgustingly good for sustained single-target dps from range (it more or less negates your need for a beefed up pet).

 

Kahra

Siphon life should definitely be included in any spell rotation (well, unless the target dies quickly) - it constitutes a significant dps boost.

With 1000 spell damage, a single SL does (63*10+30/15/2*1000)*1.10 = 1973 damage before target debuffs have been taken into account, which is quite a bit more than you get from a shadow bolt (which takes longer to cast). If one does a simulation of a sustained dps cycle where spent mana is regained by LT/DP, one finds that overall dps is increases by roughly 4% by including SL.

By the same token, immolate shoud never be omitted from the rotation despite inferior +fire damage stats.

Edit: and someone else was faster replying making this post somewhat superfluous.

 

cocidius

I couldn't agree more Kruthal. My bar is extremely similar. i think my SB is at 1666 with the other spells scaled appropriately. A good affliction lock can dps non stop 24/7 even on holidays.

 

Demi9OD

My mistake, thanks for letting me know

 

Merin

back to the cast-rotation. any suggestions how to improve/change it ?

 

Mondragon

Mine is the same, but I only use Siphon when on long (i.e important) fights.

Hello fellow Grim Batolian!

I also try use Dark Pact whenever its 'up' and Lifetap if I know I wont be taking damage.

I guess I just try and minimise the wasted GCD's relative to the length of the fight.

 

niska

Your cycle has UA, Corruption, and immolate falling off within 1.5 seconds, and SL falling off with them every other cycle, resulting in a point where all your dots are not applied. You'd get better results by staggering them and using a dot timer to refresh each one as they fall off.

The only drawback to SL is its DPM, but that can be mitigated by throwing a life tap after casting it.

 

Lamaros

*****

I use DoTimer and recast dots when they need to be recast. Resists/lag/movement makes a rotation mostly stupid.

*****

Also, if you're running up against the debuff limit (use dfilter to check this) then Immolate and SL might be things you want to consider dropping (yes I have had it get to the stage where things were dropping off). Esp if you're in a group with a shadow priest the gain from SL is kinda of negligible.

 

Deathwing

Since we're talking about Siphon Life and healers...has anyone managed to condition their healers NOT to heal you after a couple of lifetaps. I used to have a 60 priest in MC, and I can certainly understand the healer's position. It is damn near impossible to tell if that was some incedental damage that the warlock is expecting you to heal or if it was a lifetap. And even then, with the amount of attention a lot of fights require besides your main role(tanking, dps, or healing), requiring a healer to tell what type of damage one person is taking would be ridiculous.

So, one of the major advantages of an affliction build(self-sustainable), seems to be negated because the healers are going to heal you anyway. I've tried affliction spec(felguard now), and almost every time I used SL and DL, it was 80% overheal.

 

Demi9OD

In Kara our healers seem to be much more lenient in correcting small dips in HP, I can usually stay down 15% under max and not get their attention. In 25 mans it all depends on the content. During Mag I easily stayed under max HP (not always at my own will) while channelers were up, but as soon as it was just Mag I couldn't dip even 500 without being topped off.

 

Vodrin

you have 4 different durations.

24/60 Curse
30 Siphon Life
18 UA/Corr
15 Immolate

it doesn't matter how you stagger them, if they are to have 100% overtime there will be times when more than one needs refreshing at once. (particularly immolate with ua/corr).
theres nothing you can do to stop them overlapping over any reasonable length encounter.
just have a general priority with your dots by the dps they do, (corr/ua/curse/sl/immo)

always try to keep ua/corr casted together and use a decent dot timer so you can start casting ua at around 1.6s. shadowbolt between dots and save dark pact/lifetap for when you know you can't fit a 2.5s cast in before something needs refreshing.

 

Kruthal

I tend not to life tap till I need it, or if it fits into my cast-cycles, i.e. I want to refresh a DoT shortly, so I don't have time to cast a Shadowbolt. Excepting of course the first Life Tap which I do early, just like the first Dark Pact, to get the hp/mana regen going. This generally leaves me at a low hp-deficit, and since I generally have the most hp in raids and I've told my healers I can take care of myself, I recieve little to no heals. SL actually ends up being decent effective healing this way. DL ends up being mainly overhealing for me too, since I rarely use it unless I'm so low on hp a healer is already winding up a heal =P

Not much of an answer perhaps, I just don't feel that affliction leans towards life-tapping in big chunks, so I guess I'm never down enough hp that our healers bother =P

 

• frmorrison

This is very true and this is how I play, but having having a rotation of spells you normally cast helps (i.e. it is good to cast UA/Corruption first).

Gambling: The sure way of getting nothing for something.

 

spronk

It would be funny if the castsequence macro command would take resists into consideration, warlocks could then just change their hotbar into two buttons - trashseq and boss-seq.

yes, just kidding! Although castsequence is great when grinding, you can just mash on one key while browsing the web on another window.

 

niska

just get a drinking bird on it and go see a movie. what could possibly go wrong?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King-Size_Homer

 

Draele

I start with highest damage per cast time in a longer fight. On a short fights I start with longest duration first, and on really short fights I just UA/Corr/Imm/Bolt

Here's mine on a boss fight. Note: we have no shadow priests and only 1 other warlock who is fire and keeps elements up for the Mages so I do use Agony/Doom.

ampDoom
UA
Corruption
Siphon
Immolate
Bolt a few times
UA
Corruption
Immolate
Bolt some
Siphon
Bolt some

...and so on.

EDIT: If there happens to be 1-2 second after a bolt but before DoTs need refreshed I make sure to work in a DP/LT in there.

 

TheOnly

Siphon Life has a Damage per Cast Time greater than shadowbolt. Thus, like Immolate, as long as it will run most of its duration, it increases your dps.

It does more damage than a shadowbolt (including crits) and takes 1 second less time to cast. If you are not using it on long boss fights, you are losing dps.


Here is a better question.
How many ticks does it take for dot (X) to become more useful than casting shadow bolts instead?

900 shadow damage
800 fire
10% crit
6% hit
fully talented DoTs

2/5 suppression.
5/5 bane

CoS, misery, and such are factored out, since they amplify everything by the same amount and don't change the calculation.

Corruption and UA will deal about 390 per tick (more for corruption, less for UA, but similar for this approximation)
Shadow bolt does 1440 damage. But it takes 5/3 as long to cast. So corruption and UA need to deal 3/5 of the SB damage to be at least equal. So, this is 864 damage.
If they have only 2 ticks, they are not as good, and if they have 3, they are more valuable.
Corruption takes 9 seconds from time of cast to get 3 ticks, UA takes 10.5.
The dps loss is small if there is only 2 ticks, if you factor in the shadow bolt travel time.

Roughly, the break-even boundary is between 2 and 3 ticks.

CoA: this is harder, since the first 4 ticks are diminished. We would have to reach that same 864 damage before the Mob died to be better than shadow bolt. CoA does 3230 damage with this gear/spec. the middle 4 ticks do 3230/12 = 269 damage. The first ticks will be about 60 damage less each. I am not sure if imp. CoA affects the base damage and the dot damage difference or not (+spell damage is spread evenly over each tick).
Anyhow, that takes about 4 to 5 ticks, or 8 to 10 seconds.

Much like Corruption and UA, if a target lives for 10ish seconds after a cast, it is better than shadowbolt.

What about immolate? Well since its damage is front-loaded, it is even easier to reach the 864 damage barrier compared to a 1440 shadow bolt. However, it will vary depending on curses, shadow weaving, and improved scorch debuffs. Assuming none of these:
The initial damage is about 500, and the ticks are about 225. So, it would take 2 ticks or so to equal shadow bolt. This takes 7.5 seconds.

Ok, lastly siphon life.

1.5 second cast time, 10 ticks 3 seconds apart, and 1634 damage. Each tick does 163 damage. It takes 6 ticks (18 seconds) for it to be more damage per cast time than shadowbolt, unless you had a siphon / shadow and flame build -- which would be odd.



The basics are, for all your Dots and in almost any spec, if the target lives for 10 seconds after you start casting the spell, DoTs are better dps than shadowbolt. The only exception is Siphon Life, which takes 18 to 20 seconds to pay off.

If a target lives between 12 and20 seconds, the most dps is:

CoA>UA>Corr>Immo> SB >SB >SB >SB

Add Siphon if it will run its duration, and switching to another curse doesn't hurt much, especially since you can often do it before you could otherwise dps due to aggro issues.

 

TheOnly

One of the key facts that came out of the warlock dps spreadsheet here (another) DPS Spreadsheet
was this:


"Dot Gap" (missing time between dot refreshes due to casting shadow bolt instead) is a minor dps loss. If you are refreshing your dots a little bit late, it isn't that important (on the order of a couple seconds). However, missing your sequences by 0.1 seconds (taking say, 1.8 seconds per global cooldown action rather than 1.7 -- lag, button timing, etc affect this) is a much larger loss in dps.

Thus, it is most important to make sure you are doing _something_ with as little gap as possible between casts rather than having that particular something be super-optimal. If some dots fall off for a couple seconds, don't stress, just keep working at doing everything with as little pause between actions as possible.

 

◊ Kyth

Pfft. That's one of my two favorite pve builds. Shadow-based destruction build. Very powerful.

 

Lamaros

I expect with a high crit rating, Bane, Ruin, Imp. SB, Shadow Weaving, and high +shadow damage Immole will cease to be worth casting.

As it is I have 1125ish shadow, 825ish normal damge, a little under 20% crit and Quags Trinket. I feel like I'm pushing close to the point where I can drop Immolate if needed (and as I have said with certain raid makeups it is needed sometimes due to the debuff cap), though I havn't really done any testing to be sure.

 

• GokieKS

My sequence is as follows:

If I'm doing CoE/CoS/CoR, apply that first:

Corruption -> UA -> SL -> Immolate -> Drain Life/Shadow Bolt cycle -> Corruption -> UA -> Immolate -> Repeat.

Technically, for the absolute best/most synergistic cycle, UA really should be casted before Corruption. But Corruption has the advantage of being able to cast on the move, and able to trigger NF procs, so I've grown into the habit of almost always casting that first (having NF proc on the first tick of Corruption is delicious when soloing)

If I'm using CoA, I just cast that first, and then re-apply it whenever it falls off, during a DL/SB cycle. When Amp Curse gets fixed to work with CoD, the same will apply to that.