However, the majority of an affliction lock's damage (60% or so, I believe) comes from dots, or less than 60% of their casts. Has anyone bothered to math this out, or is the impact small enough that I shouldn't even bother thinking about it?
From looking at damage breakdown from fights, you can see dots account for 40-70% of the afflicion warlock damage, range depending on the fight. That is still a rather high percentage of damage coming from Shadow Bolts, therefore /stopcasting remains benefitial. Also, once you get use to it, it becomes as a mindless routine as button mashing was so the question is: why not?
Yeah I found /stopcasting usefull as affliction, however I could not time it around the global nearly as tightly as button mashing, so I left all my 1.5/instants with no stopcasting attached, and only used it for SBolt.
Yeah I found /stopcasting usefull as affliction, however I could not time it around the global nearly as tightly as button mashing, so I left all my 1.5/instants with no stopcasting attached, and only used it for SBolt.
Forgive me for asking. I know macro language well and use stopcasting for a lot for other things (like with soulshatter to stop mid-spell if needed and dump aggro)
I've read this thread from the day it started and I am still a touch confused.
How does one determine the right time to press SBolt again with the /stopcasting to begin the next bolt as soon as possible? That confuses me. Is it just a matter of judgement and experience?
Forgive me for asking. I know macro language well and use stopcasting a lot for other things (like with soulshatter to stop mid-spell if needed and dump aggro)
I've read this thread from the day it stared and I am still a touch confused.
How does one determine the right time to press SBolt again with the /stopcasting to begin the next bolt as soon as possible? That confuses me. Is it just a matter of judgement and experience?
It purely depends on your lateny. On average that is 0.3 seconds left of cast time. I'd advise you to look into casting bars that display your latency on them, these help for getting the right feel of when to use it. After a few raids I don't even need to look at the casting bar anymore.
Forgive me for asking. I know macro language well and use stopcasting a lot for other things (like with soulshatter to stop mid-spell if needed and dump aggro)
I've read this thread from the day it stared and I am still a touch confused.
How does one determine the right time to press SBolt again with the /stopcasting to begin the next bolt as soon as possible? That confuses me. Is it just a matter of judgement and experience?
Get a mod like Quartz or SuperCast which shows your latency at the end of your cast bar. You want to press the SB button again when you get to the latency section of the bar.
Quartz is nice but it can read some pretty wildly varying latency settings (anywhere from 100-600), and my ping does not really fluctuate that wildly on any given night. I set my cast bar up so that any time between ToT and Target is safe to cancel my cast. See how the small red part at the end of the bar lines up pretty well with frames, thats when I press it again.
All right my only issue with a /stopcasting macro is that my castbar breaks sometimes. My castbar will just disappear but I'm still casting the spell. This usually negates any advantage I'd get from a stopcasting macro. Does anyone else have this problem? Any helpful suggestions would be great too. I'm using quartz for a castbar.
Quartz is nice but it can read some pretty wildly varying latency settings (anywhere from 100-600)
Im glad to see im not the only one who found this, although i have to say even with a value which was quite above my current latency the stopcasting time given is usually fine.
Problem with /stop casting is that if you hit it too early and stop a cast the benefit of using it is minimal.
With a 500 ping, it would take 5 Casts (with bane) of perfect timing to gain one Shadow Bolt. Now realistically it's around 7.
So if you hit it too early (if you leave it too late, what's the point?) and lose a Shadow Bolt. If you do this more than 1 in 7 times it becomes worse than not using it.
I'm specced 43/1/17 and according to our last Mag WWS, Shadow bolt was ~37% of my damage. With that number I'm just not sure that the pros outweigh the cons.
However it would be amazing for a Destruction/Demo Warlock as you can get very much into a pattern. When you only get 5 casts between DoT applications, factoring in things like Lifetap/Dark Pact I'm just not sure it's worth using them.
Obviously you should err on the side of caution, as a canceled bolt is hard to make up for. However, if you have a 500 ping, if you cast slightly late and get it off 300 ms late rather than 500 like you normally would, that's still a big improvement. The mod will be an increase for anyone that doesn't 1) have 0 ping and 2) suck at timing.
But yeah, the mod seems to calculate your latency at the time of the cast rather than just taking an average. It'll take a day or so to learn what your normal latency is and become accustomed to that timing.
With Quartz I've found that it's mostly mounting up and Immolate that have these wildly fluctuating (and rather high) lag times. I'm usually fairly stable at around 250 max, not spiking beyond 350 unless something's up. Mounting I already knew about without needing the mod, mounting up constantly in BGs has taught me that well enough, but Immolate almost always shows up with massive lag for some reason (and it's not wrong, I've been chaining into the next spell as it hits the red bar).
Hello everyone, first post here - a very interesting discussion.
I have a question: Recently I installed Mik's Scrolling Battle Text, so I could watch my damage more carefully. Now it seems that quite often, depending of course on whether I'm fighting normal trash, a boss, or trash with apparently high magical resistances, i get a partial resist on my spells, both DoT's and shadowbolts. From what I understand the only way to counter this is to get spell penetration on my gear. My question is simple: Is spell penetration worth the investment? For example, should I choose spell penetration or subtlety for my cloak enchant? Should I opt for spell penetration gems?
Hello everyone, first post here - a very interesting discussion.
I have a question: Recently I installed Mik's Scrolling Battle Text, so I could watch my damage more carefully. Now it seems that quite often, depending of course on whether I'm fighting normal trash, a boss, or trash with apparently high magical resistances, i get a partial resist on my spells, both DoT's and shadowbolts. From what I understand the only way to counter this is to get spell penetration on my gear. My question is simple: Is spell penetration worth the investment? For example, should I choose spell penetration or subtlety for my cloak enchant? Should I opt for spell penetration gems?
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
From what I understand Spell pen is more of a PVP stat. Spell Hit is more of a PVE stat but I think that only counts towards the initial landing. I'm not sure how to combat partial resists. I am also very interested to see what other folks think regarding this.
The quesiton of 'what enchant should i put on my cloak' is probably the easiest to address.
Are you threat capped in boss fights i.e. do you ever have to scale back your DPS at all to avoid pulling agro even after using soulshatter sucessfully?
If you find ourself answering yes to this question with any amount of frequency then subltey is probably best for you. If not then subltey will probably do nothing for you so spell penetration would be better because you'd actually get some use out o fit.
Other than the cloak enchant there are really no places in the typical raid PvE gearset where you can gain DPS from spell penetration without giving up more DPS from losses to +hit, +dmg, or +crit. This is due largly to the fact that raid bosses rarely have resistances that can be reduced beyond the level already provided by the various DPS utility curses, curse of shadow and curse of elements.
I have a question: Recently I installed Mik's Scrolling Battle Text, so I could watch my damage more carefully. Now it seems that quite often, depending of course on whether I'm fighting normal trash, a boss, or trash with apparently high magical resistances, i get a partial resist on my spells, both DoT's and shadowbolts. From what I understand the only way to counter this is to get spell penetration on my gear. My question is simple: Is spell penetration worth the investment? For example, should I choose spell penetration or subtlety for my cloak enchant? Should I opt for spell penetration gems?
Bosses have a small amount of spell resist that is not reducable in any way. Spell Pen on cloak is decent mainly because there really isn't anything else to get (other than threat reduction, which is also an incredibly small benefit). Spell Pen gems for PvE would do nothing and is a terrible idea, though.
Has any research been done to evaluate the "spell penetration is sexy-sounding but worthless in raids?" mantra since 2.0? I remember seeing some figures on BWL mobs around the time the stat came out, showing that it wasn't worth gearing for.
I suppose this data could be pulled from a few WWS parses: see the partial resist % of various bosses, assume normal warlock curses, figure out how much resistance is left, then figure out what the cap for penetration is.
I didn't really read through most of this thread, but there are many things Warlocks forget to do that can increase their DPS. I've recorded myself on Gruul before and showed the video to a Warlock that was 100,000 damage behind me with a similar spec (sightly inferior gear) and his response was: "I do the same thing."
Obviously, he didn't. I think a lot of the time, the little things are missed and actually add quite a bit of damage (some more than others):
Begin casting UA with your last spell has 1.5 seconds left.
Make sure all DOT's are up before any sort of incapacitate (e.g., Ground Slam on Gruul).
Use Death Coil. It works like a small potion. Still, the DPS is slightly lower than a Shadowbolt.
Dark Pact whenever your pet has mana. It returns more.
Use your DOT's when you have your trinket or some other damage buff up. They get a large benefit.
Other than these things, DPS'ing as a Warlock (Affliction at least) is pretty much a matter of DOT maintenance. Aggro can be an issue, but with fights these days, it's rare.
Has any research been done to evaluate the "spell penetration is sexy-sounding but worthless in raids?" mantra since 2.0? I remember seeing some figures on BWL mobs around the time the stat came out, showing that it wasn't worth gearing for.
I suppose this data could be pulled from a few WWS parses: see the partial resist % of various bosses, assume normal warlock curses, figure out how much resistance is left, then figure out what the cap for penetration is.
Unless CoS/CoE is completly broken and aren't reducing resists that spell penetration can, the partial resist percent would be significantly higher when the curse was missing. Anecdotally I've never noticed a difference, and glancing at the WWS thread, posts that mention no CoE don't show an inflated resist rate for the mages. In order for spell pen past CoS/E + cloak enchant to be useful, you'd have to have about a 25% chance for a spell to be resisted with neither.
From what I have read, using DC is not mana efficient when you look at mana vs damaged caused vs cast time
It certainly isn't a good for DPS or mana efficiency, but it's useful to use as an effective health potion. For example, you accidentally take a tick of a Cave-in or something and are at low health and mana. Death Coil can be a quick, great way to get your health back up enough to Tap. It does have minimal PvE usage, but still some use. I rarely see Warlocks use it effectively in PvE.
Unless CoS/CoE is completly broken and aren't reducing resists that spell penetration can, the partial resist percent would be significantly higher when the curse was missing. Anecdotally I've never noticed a difference, and glancing at the WWS thread, posts that mention no CoE don't show an inflated resist rate for the mages. In order for spell pen past CoS/E + cloak enchant to be useful, you'd have to have about a 25% chance for a spell to be resisted with neither.
Correct. Even if we're only talking about CoS/E, you'd need 21% (or thereabouts) base partial resist chance for the cloak enchant to be useful (this is not taking into account unmitigated boss-level partial resists, see below).
Now, as to whether penetration is worth the item budget (assuming it will provide DPS value, i.e. the mob has resists higher than what the curses reduce), I did some math. Assume:
r = mob's resists right now with CoWhatever
p = your spell penetration
q = your base DPS before partial resists (derived from d)
d = your DPS right now
d' = your DPS with the extra penetration
delta_d = the difference in d' and d
d = q * 3/4 * (r/350) = q(1-3r/1400) -> q = d / (1-3r/1400)
d' = q * (1 - 3/4*(r-p)/350)
Applying this formula: Say Bossy McBosserson has a base resist of 120 to all schools. With CoS/E, this gets reduced to 32. According to our basic spell penetration formula, this means that no cloak enchant gives us a DPS loss from out baseline damage of 0.75*32/350 = 0.069 = 6.5%. Assuming our cloak enchant can mitigate those resists, our 1000 DPS mage would get 3(1000)(30)/(1400-3(32)) = 69 DPS out of that cloak enchant.
This is substantially more than I thought. This barely mitigated by the fact that +damage is slightly cheaper than penetration in the itemization forumla (stat mod is 0.9 vs. 0.855 for damage according to wowwiki).
This means the real key is how much room does penetration have to grow? If there's always going to be around 26 resists on a boss that's not mitigatable, the boss would need base resists around 144, or 31% base partial resist chance, for the cloak enchant to be fully useful. Further, the linked posts in the mage thread seem to indicate that frost spells aren't effected by penetration at all (i.e., a hit-capped frost mage doesn't even need CoE)?
Interesting stuff. Almost makes me want to switch my cloak enchant except for the fact that I'm threat limited so much. Mebbe I'll get the heroic one and put penetration on that.
It certainly isn't a good for DPS or mana efficiency, but it's useful to use as an effective health potion. For example, you accidentally take a tick of a Cave-in or something and are at low health and mana. Death Coil can be a quick, great way to get your health back up enough to Tap. It does have minimal PvE usage, but still some use. I rarely see Warlocks use it effectively in PvE.
That's because it's use is fairly limited. It has a short range, horrible DPM, DPS, and DPCT. You're only getting extra mana from the Fel Armor and (if you have it) Improved LT bonuses. If you're not getting heals and you're about to take damage, you've either done something stupid or your healers aren't on the ball. Most other situations can be resolved with candy and/or pots.
It does have PvE use in heroics: I use it to buy 3s to reapply a resisted fear or get a mob off a healer. In a raid setting, I'm almost always better off casting something with a higher DPCT.
. Further, the linked posts in the mage thread seem to indicate that frost spells aren't effected by penetration at all (i.e., a hit-capped frost mage doesn't even need CoE)?
Nobody is exactly sure how the first roll works with binary spells anymore. Frost mages in theory should see the same mitigation as fire mages. Frost mages should see mitigation through miss (since resistance is a function of hit/miss for binary) and fire through partial resists. I agree it is seeming to trend towards frost not seeing this, but maybe the -resist from CoE is helping in this first roll. As in it we hit the min for partials (boss resist) but this min is not in for the binary check.
At any rate, there is more than the -resist modifer on CoE to make it worthwhile for a frost mage.
As a side note: Affliction locks could think of every 25 hit rating after 6% as the ability to buy a talent point. (Granted there are not many sexy alternatives)
Frankly, I was a bit disappointed seeing 11% of my shadowbolt damage being resisted - am I understanding that statistic correctly?!? Assuming that I *am* understanding that correctly, is this a simple case of the RNG screwing me - being that my sample size for that kill was relatively small. My current hit rating is 209, I figured w/ that kind of hit and 3/3 maledicted CoS I'd be seeing 99% of my bolts do 100% damage (that sounds like a ron burgandy line...).
Adding insult to injury: http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...11-10771&c=wrl
I think the under-geared affliction warlock that topped my DPS (slightly) had a resist rate close enough to mine that it makes me want to /facepalm when I think about how much of a pain it's been getting all the hit gear I have.
06/14/07, 12:23 PM
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