Razzo

Hey u guys,

I've been reading your forums lately and sees ome interesting things. Now I have a question about one of my Curses and what the title revealed, its the the Curse of Weakness.

Actually I want to know what impact 350 lesser AP has on a boss encounter on lets say Maiden of Virtue. I havent been able to pick up a formula which explains what the diffrence between Boss AP and player AP is, but I heard there is a difference.

Reason I ask is because my MT ask for CoW on Maiden and i think to myself, I've always used CoA, why this sudden switch in curses. I understand the Maiden would hit less hard and spare some heals from the healers, but is it that much of a difference?

Hope u can help me out

Thanks in advance!

 

Nezralix

It should be somewhere in the neighborhood of a 10% damage reduction.

 

Demi9OD

Tests at 60 proved the maximum amount of damage reduced by AP debuffs was around 30%. I've not done any formal testing but my guess is that while that has not changed, the amount of AP needed to reduce 30% of a mobs melee damage has increased by quite a bit.

Clearly a talented demo shout is the AP debuff of choice, but on pulls, and when establishing agro on very hard hitting mobs, CoW can save lives. Since it generates no threat, outside of putting you on the mob's agro list, it's primary use in PVE is applying it right as the tank pulls, to lessen the damage he takes for the initial few seconds, when all his rage and universal cooldowns need to be spent generating enough threat to hold the mob through the initial heals. After those first few precious seconds though, you can easily let the tank know to start demo shouting as you apply a more dps friendly curse.

 

Razzo

My MT has specced in Imp. Demo Shout, so does that one stack with CoW?
And what about fast hitting mobs vs. slow hitting mobs. Any advantage in using it on either?

 

Demi9OD

They do not stack, the more powerful debuff will overwrite the weaker one. AP debuffs have anyways been a flat % reduction in damage, and the speed at which the mob attacks plays no part in that. AP debuffs are particularly powerful against targets with instant attacks though, such as mortal strike, cleave, and whirlwind. I remember in early Gothik attempts the difference demo shout made on dead side whirlwinds was absotely massive, reducing the damage on leather from 2300 to around 1700.

Here is the original demo shout thread: Demoralizing shout et al.

 

Dots

edit: included false info.

 

Insect

I had an experiance with the stacking of CoW and Demo shout on our early attempts on Maulgar (i've respecced since and havn't been watching to see if it still works this way).

I don't know if the debuffs were accually taking effect but the debuff icons were definitely on there at the same time.

How it worked was(I had 5/5 imp demo at the time)
If CoW was up first, Demo would knock it off.
If Demo was up first, you could apply CoW and they would both stay up for thier durations.
I could even keep reapplying Demo before the 30 second duration was over and it wouldn't not knock off CoW.

 

Razzo

That could be true. I havent had the time to check it, but my MT says it stays on, but sometimes have to reapply it before the timer is out on CoW. If they stack when both applied I don't know, but it might be worth finding out!

 

Demi9OD

Insect did you mean Demo Shout instead of TC? Of course Thunderclap and Curse of Weakness should stack.

 

Myonax

I have currently Spec Improved CoW to help out the raid until we catch up in progression. None of our tanks are speced Improved demo. For the record it will immediately overwrite Demo shot but TC stays up as it obviously should. One of the down side of me having imp CoW is now our tanks get a bit lazy, they don't even bother with demo shout. This can be problematic if I am dead or otherwise engaged with other responsibilities. My opinion is from a raid perspective it seems silly that warlocks should give up raid DPS (CoE,CoS, Agony/Doom) when a warrior only has to give up a little rage. I wish improved Demo wasn't a 5 point talent vs a 2 point talent for a lock.

Someone should write a Mod for healers/raid leaders that checks if the main tank target has all the useful raid debuffs on him. The downside of the new debuff slots is it can be difficult to identify at a glance if the important debuffs are active.

Demo/Weakness
TC
Misery
CoS/CoE
Shadow Weaving
Serpent Sting (your Mutilate rouges will love you)

 

Insect

Blah, yes replace all the TC with Demo shout lol.

Edit: Fixed, ty

 

• Necrotoid

There is a mod called Debuff Filter which allows you to display (in a separate window / frame) specific debuffs you wish to monitor. I use it to make sure Curse of Tongues is up on Mag adds, for example.

DOT and rot.
Travian: Phased Weasel, -144 | 61, Damascus.

 

◊ Lord BEEF

As tiring as it is to type out the extra two letters I'm amazed you lacked the endurance to spell it out as your second word of your first sentence

Check out my friend's bitchin' Lord of the Rings Art

 

◊ Kyth

It also optionally shows you the debuff count; useful for those times when you have a lot of locks and shadow priests show up, and you need to know when to tell the raid to stop using lower-priority debuffs/dots.

 

Darkmgl

The following is with 5/5 Improved Demo and non upgraded CoW.

I've experienced the same situations of CoW and Imp Demo stacking. From the tests we did, as long as the CoW is on before the demo, Improved Demo will go on without knocking off the CoW. What we found is it does not work the other way around, if you Imp Demo before CoW is on, CoW will not apply. As for refreshing, you can refresh the CoW as long as you recast it before it fades, as once it fades it will not let you reapply CoW.

The real test someone needs to do is determining if they are actually both decreasing damage. I haven't had the chance to parse damage with stacked CoW + Demo vs unstacked to tell if they are both working or just one is working.

 

• frmorrison

This is a similar bug as the old Mongoose/Agility pot, where if you used the agility then mongoose pot it would give you 2 buff icons, but only buff agility once.

While you see 2 buffs/debuffs, only the highest effect is actually doing something, because they are the same type of buff/debuff.


If your tanks don't like putting up Demo Shout, then imp CoW is a nice talent.

Know Thy group function; Thy DPS shall avoid aggro, Thy tank shall not attempt to DPS, and Thy Healer shall not go AFK without notifying Thy group.

 

Ikajo

Recently, I was doing some own tests on this matter (using Beast Lore to observe effects of Demo Roar, Screech and later Improved Demo Roar) - basically to predict the effect of an added CoW on Maulgar. Surprisingly, my tests seemed to indicate a possible hardcap for AP reduction on mobs. (Test was done on Uvuros - level 70 elite quest mob in Shadowmoon Valley.)

* Base Damage: ----------------------------- 2272-3214 --------- Average: 2743
* Screech (-210ap): ------------------------- 2002-2944 --------- Average: 2473 [-9.84%]
* Demoralizing Roar (-248ap): ------------- 1953-2895 --------- Average: 2424 [-11.63%]
* Improved Demoralizing Roar (-347ap): - 1881-2823 --------- Average: 2352 [-14.25%]
* Screech + Demoralizing Roar: ----------- 1881-2823 --------- Average: 2352 [-14.25%]
* Screech + Improved Demoralizing Roar: 1881-2823 --------- Average: 2352 [-14.25%]

This goes in line with the results from some less intensive testing on a regular level 70 and a regular level 73 mob indicating a maximum reduction of ~14.4% with stacked Demo Roar and Screech - CoW alone yielded the same damage reduction.

I hope there's a flaw in my experiment and no hardcap of ~300ap reduction as this would render Improved CoW or Imp. Demo Shout/Roar useless of pve. If there are other tests that gave higher results, please post them here.

Thanks in advance

 

dojke

The previously observed caps at 30% wasn't exactly a true 30% cap, it could also be explained by "reducing more atk than the mob actually has".

You could kind of see it via pets at level 60 (pre-scaling). About 30% of their dps came from atk, the rest came innately. This could be concidence, maybe wasn't, and actaully was related to the npc formulae, I donno. Anyhow if you look at the same thing now at unscaled level 70 pets, atk contributes for 18.5% of their dps.

Which could mean that the "% dmg from atk" ratio got changed in tbc. Or, more than likely, it's different for different models. I wouldn't discard your data, but unfortunately I cannot confirm/deny since my dru and hunter are on the same account.

And lastly, the one big bonus for using cow instead of demo shout has to do with model size. Demo is near impossible to keep up on certain fights due to hitbox + strange resists. On huge models with huge hitboxes, demo shout has to hit the "center" of the model (don't ask why, maybe it's an ae-specific thing), whereas cow only has to hit the "edge". I haven't raided in tbc for various reasons, but Maexxna was the textbook example of this.

 

dojke

Ergh, hate two posts in a row, but I now think I may understand some of the confusion.

atk debuffs were never a flat %. As in, you cannot come up with a formula that shows X atk = 1% less dmg, or anything like that. The reason behind this is, just like for players, npc damage seems to come from two stats, a "base damage" stat, and then additional dmg added from atk. A quick look at any pet window will tell you this.

Thus, there's no reason to believe that -300 atk will do the same thing across different mobs. For example, one could create a mob with basedmg 1000 and 0 atk -- demo shout would do 0. One could also create a mob with basedmg 0 and 10000 atk -- demo shout would reduce dmg by 3%.

The tests at 60 pretty much proved this. Doing identical debuffs to two different mobs resulted in two different %'s mitigated, the differences being outside rounding error. It just so happened that just about all mobs were in the same ballpark at 60.

Thus the data on Ulvros and the data from lurker below really don't disagree with eachother. Especially in 5-man grpmobs, which clearly had to go through a 2nd tuning cycle, whereas raidtrash generally would not (you can expect demo in a raid, you can't in a 5man).

Lastly, even if there were a global cap of -300atk (which I don't necessarily buy), that still would not render imp demo/cow useless. As good as screech is, it's really not useable on most fights out there. So you'd still be getting a bonus (248 -> 300), though possibly you'd only need 3/5 instead of 5/5.

 

dawgg

On a related note, I feel like I am having an "Onyxia Deep Breathes More" experience with demo shout. What I "remember" is that demo shout resists were rare until the last rolling maintenance window. I get an SCT notice for resist, and also use debuff filter, so it's very very obvious. And no...I haven't empirically tested it. I thought I might camp on this thread and ask:

Has anyone noticed a more frequent resist rate on demo shout, but no apparent change on TC? Said another way, I'm looking for some confirmation (or lack thereof before I go spool up a test).

 

Lavode

Improved Demoralising shout, Screech, Curse of Recklessness = still more than 300 ap down.. and CoR is pretty huge for physical damage. hmm.

 

Ikajo

This is an interesting assumption giving the almost linear AP-to-Damage_reduced ratio. I can also mention that the differences between Uvuros (70, elite) and the tested cat (70, normal) are within a range of 0.1%, while the reduction for the tested scorpid (73, normal) was significant lower (the ceiling appears at the same point though [Screech -9.5%, regular Demo -11.0%, CoW -14.4%, stacked Screech + regular Demo -14.4%] - interpolating yields a needed AP reduction of ~325 at that point).
I have to admit that the damage range on those regular mobs was rather narrow, so the actual values might be a bit off, but i still feel that the tendency is observable.

I might have picked an unlucky sample, so i'm looking forward to some other values from different mobs/encounters.

And while druids might still profit from Imp. Demo Roar, warriors (and warlocks) would not

 

dojke

Perhaps I phrased it wrong. My tests at 60 shows that for a particular mob, it is linear. This is quite expected, going along with the "stat multiplier" idea of elites. So this agrees with what you have.

However, although linear, the slope of this line is not the same across different mobs. The reason behind this is due to the example I gave earlier, that it depends on exactly what proportion of dmg is sourced via atk, vs. base_dmg.

So in summary, a clarification:

You can easily come up with a mob-specific X atk = 1% reduction ratio, it is linear.
You cannot come up with a non-mob-specific X atk = 1% reduction, since it is mob dependent.

 

Ikajo

Would the data still support the existence of a cap way below the old 30%-ceiling you observed for level 60 (regardless of how much ap reduction would be needed to reach it)? Just wondering if its worth to talk with tanks about speccing Imp. Demo Shout when its only effect would be to even CoR out

Maybe i can get some hunter to join up for some heroic Underbog and check how the effects work on Ghaz'an.

 

Roana

One particular issue with the Maiden of Virtue is that it can be annoying to get in a Demoralizing Shout between the brief silences from her Holy Ground ability. It isn't impossible by any means, but is more maintenance-intensive than a warlock keeping up a two minute curse.