Dont you have to get 8 casts off in 10seconds to get the full 80dmg bonus? Is that possible or am I misreading it? I'd think the passive 54 on the eye alone would be better.
No, as you progress through a long boss fight it will eventually stack at 10 and stay there until you stop casting (presumably at the end of the fight). The only part this will suck for is bosses with long phases where you are either doing nothing or splitting your attention, Mag for instance will not be fun as you have to banish/fear and DoT up the channelers at the same time. I don't see it being very fun for Lurker either during his Dive phase depending on how you guys run that part of the fight. But keep in mind that this trinket you'll have to cast 7 times in order to get the same static benefit as the Eye and then keep casting after that. If I remember right though the 10 seconds restarts every time you cast a damage spell.
But keep in mind that this trinket you'll have to cast 7 times in order to get the same static benefit as the Eye and then keep casting after that. If I remember right though the 10 seconds restarts every time you cast a damage spell.
Worded another way, after only 10 casts it's almost 50% better than the eye .
Yes there will be some fights where it's not useful. I still think it will be more useful in general, and sufficiently useful to get it. We'll see though.
Can anyone that actually has the trinket comment on how good the Darkmoon Fair Trinket is or provide some numbers? Upon inspection, it seems ridiculously good for an affliction lock.
I'm looking for some like actual mathematical comparisons or testimony from people that actually have the card, not just theory on it.
Well it shouldn't be difficult to go just off the theory of it, like someone else said in comparison the Eye gets worse with gear despite its static buff (because after 16% hit you're not likely to resist a lot which takes away the primary benefit of the trinket).
Here is the description of the card:
Each time you land a harmful spell on an opponent, you gain 8 spell damage for the next 10 sec., stacking up to 10 times.
For an affliction spec you're going to be dotting up repeatedly, CoS/CoE if you're curse bitch, UA-Corruption, Immolate-Siphon Life, Shadowbolt, Shadowbolt, Shadowbolt etc, thats 8 casts already and if what they say on WoWhead is true about it being refreshed every time you cast it will perpetually refresh itself over the course of a fight so long as you are casting.
Now, where I was wrong was that it would be difficult to reach max potential on a fight like Magtheridon. If you read the description on the card "Each time you land a harmful spell on an opponent". This seems to imply that it will work with fear and banish as well, though until we actually have one in hand I am not willing to put that down as fact.
But, if it "does" refresh itself every time you make a cast it is 27 damage higher than the Eye's static damage, and since it's highly likely that you'll be casting at least two dot rotations on a boss, and often on trash mobs in SSC and higher, you should easily see the maximum benefit of this card UNTIL you stop your rotation. But in that case it again only takes one more full rotation to match up with the Eye.
The only one it would be difficult for is mages and possibly destruction warlocks, theres such a long cast time on their spells that it wouldn't reach it's full potential until quite a ways into the fight and if you have to do something else I.E. Evocate, use a mana gem, bandage etc the debuffs will wear off and you'll have to start again.
Last edited by ReverendSin : 06/01/07 at 12:12 PM.
The only one it would be difficult for is mages and possibly destruction warlocks, theres such a long cast time on their spells that it wouldn't reach it's full potential until quite a ways into the fight and if you have to do something else I.E. Evocate, use a mana gem, bandage etc the debuffs will wear off and you'll have to start again.
I'm almost certain that (although I admit to not modelling it) it's worth, if you do happen to be in that situation, throwing on an instant right afterwards, somewhere, to refresh the stack. That's at least what my plan is.
I can't personally think of any 10 seconds on mag where I'm not casting something, somewhere. I don't have tons of instants as a destruction warlock, but I still throw out a CoA on a channeler as I run past (we assign channelers to locks for CoT.) If I'm waiting for my banish to drop (so staying in range of my infernal), I dot whatever is near to me. If I'm just plain waiting for something to happen, I'm always in range of *something* I can dot (and often shadowbolt.)
Is the spell damage only against that target or can you COT 1 channeler, then move to a different one and COT that one and now have +16 against everything?
From the discussion in the card thread, it is a self-buff that does *not* depend on target (so switch away!).
As well, given that a dps caster should *never* go 10 seconds without casting *something*, I would think that ~ 20-30 seconds into the fight, this becomes > Mag's, and never drops below again, unless there's some *serious* down-time. Once some people get the card, we'll see if Lifetap, Evocate, and other non-damaging spells actually refresh the timer -- if so, it's entirely worth the work to get it.
(Plus: even if it's *only* equal to Mag's ... DKP being what it is, free > dkp, always)
From my testing last night, target switching doesn't matter, the buff is on you so it's constant.
If you are in danger of running out of something to cast, and don't have time for a SB or even a full 1.5 second spell, you have options too:
-- re-apply your non-damaging curse (including throwing it on a CC'd target)
-- drain soul something for just one tick
-- shadowburn / deathcoil if you're close enough
Affliction locks have it easier of course with instant corruption which can be re-applied instantly to kick the buff up and with minimal dps loss.
What will hurt is things like doing cubes on mag, especially if you're too far away from mag to be tickling him with a spell right before and after you click. I don't expect you'll have issues during the channelers, since there's plenty of targets you can tickle to keep the buff rolling.
I use debuff filter, and after playing around with drboom, I immediately turned on "player buff filtering", set my only buff as "Aura of the Crusader", and moved it front and center on my screen so I can watch it to make sure it doesn't drop.
Lifetap and felarmor do not refresh it. Nor do Rain of Fire or Hellfire. SoC does but only on the initial cast. Dot casts and drain life/soul casts refresh it, the ticks do not. Fear and Banish do. Howl of Terror increases the buff count by the number of targets that it hits.
I recently respecced to affliction. I was previously an SM/Conflag build which actually worked really well. I didnt have a problem keeping up with the other locks (affliction) although sometimes they would pull away from me pretty badly especially on longer than usual fights.. Most times however I was able to keep up and battled for the first slot on the dps meters.
I wanted to try Affliction in a raid so I have a question for you affliction locks. Whats the typical cast rotation you use?
Is there any way you can program in the buff from the card into DoT timer so I could see the refresh timer next to all my actual DoTs?
Debuff filter, as I posted above. But it won't display it as a bar, it just uses numbers.
I'm sure there are mods that will however; you just need one that allows filtering (unless you also want to see timers on backlash, nightfall, etc., in which case it might be good -- I think Quartz is what I have that does that.)
I wanted to try Affliction in a raid so I have a question for you affliction locks. Whats the typical cast rotation you use?
There is no true cast rotation for affliction because of the variable dot lengths. You always want to be putting up any dot just as the previous cast fades. You do this by paying attention to your timers and using a combination of shadowbolt and dark pact/lifetap to fill in the in-between dot casts time. If you have 2 or more seconds before a dot is going to fade, shadowbolt, and if you have 1.5 seconds or less, lifetap/dark pact. If you have to move around, take that time to reapply your instant casts even if they aren't finished yet becuase it saves your standing-still GCDs for applying the non-instants or shadowbolting. Use clicky trinkets before it looks like a couple of dots are about to fade so they all get the benefit from the clicky damage. That's basically it.
Thanks Kestrel. I'll give that a shot, I'm a bit nervous because I was doing well and always have been in the dps department but I wanted to see if I could squeeze more out with this build.
I use Power Auras which displays a graphic around me when stuff procs such as the shadow flame buff or the buff from the nightbane robe. Its really nice when both proc at the same time. Its not a timer but the graphic fades when the buff does so its easier to time things like stacking trinkets etc etc.
Thanks Kestrel. I'll give that a shot, I'm a bit nervous because I was doing well and always have been in the dps department but I wanted to see if I could squeeze more out with this build.
I use Power Auras which displays a graphic around me when stuff procs such as the shadow flame buff or the buff from the nightbane robe. Its really nice when both proc at the same time. Its not a timer but the graphic fades when the buff does so its easier to time things like stacking trinkets etc etc.
If you want a timer on those procs, Power Auras has an option to display timers as well as the graphic. I find it to be very useful.
Saethar/Cronjob, you can also set up Debuff Filter to filter player buffs, and I'm sure you can pretty easily set it up to show the Shadowfury and other buffs (if you can remember their names!). It also shows timers on your timed buffs. And of course you can just filter the special buffs like Shadowfury, procs from your Spellstrike, etc, make the icons fairly big, and put them in a reasonable place so that you have a big visual cue. Now that I think about it, I'm gonna go run off and try to set that up in my UI!
really? I'll have to look into that I didnt realize it did that. I find it very useful for my Druid too to catch the clear casting proc. Overall its a very useful mod for things like this.
I spent a bit of time fiddling with DebuffFilter to use it to show my buffs. It works, but all in all I didn't like it for the following reasons:
- the scaling of the buffs is universal - so if you have your target/focus debuffs scaled fairly small, your buffs are scaled fairly small. I wanted my buffs to be BIG and the others to be small
- the icons used are the buff icons that appear in the general UI, and I wanted something different.
I installed Power Auras, and it does just what I want - I like the fact that you can use big animating graphics to show your buffs. I like the amount of control you have over your buf displays. So I think I'm gonna use that.
I wanted to try Affliction in a raid so I have a question for you affliction locks. Whats the typical cast rotation you use?
If I'm curse bitch CoE/CoS, if not Amp CoD or CoA, UA-Corruption, Immolate-Siphon Life, shadowbolt, shadowbolt then lifetap/DP and refresh as necessary. I prefer putting UA and Corruption up together as they have the same DoT time and can then be refreshed together indefinitely. The more you stagger your dots the less time you're going to have to do other stuff as one will always be down at an odd time and as time goes on you'll end up doing less DPS.
I'm also a fan of UA>Corr>Immo, as they will fall off at roughly the same time. Be sure to let your dots fall off before you cast; its more important to let them complete than to have them up at the instant they go down.
If I'm curse bitch CoE/CoS, if not Amp CoD or CoA, UA-Corruption, Immolate-Siphon Life, shadowbolt, shadowbolt then lifetap/DP and refresh as necessary. I prefer putting UA and Corruption up together as they have the same DoT time and can then be refreshed together indefinitely. The more you stagger your dots the less time you're going to have to do other stuff as one will always be down at an odd time and as time goes on you'll end up doing less DPS.
What if I did Corr -> UA instead of UA -> Corr.. My thinking is that Corr will tick atleast once while I cast UA so thats one tick of DPS not wasted. If I do UA first then during that cast time I am wasting time where I could possible get a tick off from Corr. I'm probably over thinking this but just a thought. That has always been my thinking for all my other builds, get your instants on so that they will tick while you do the longer casting ones such as Immo and UA.
What if I did Corr -> UA instead of UA -> Corr.. My thinking is that Corr will tick atleast once while I cast UA so thats one tick of DPS not wasted. If I do UA first then during that cast time I am wasting time where I could possible get a tick off from Corr. I'm probably over thinking this but just a thought. That has always been my thinking for all my other builds, get your instants on so that they will tick while you do the longer casting ones such as Immo and UA.
Doing Corr->UA makes re-applying more of a hassle, imo. Your Corr will run out after 18sec. UA will be cast 3 sec after Corr (GCD + 1.5 cast), so run out at T = 21. Since Corr is instant, you have to cast at T = 18. at T =19.5 you can cast UA and re-apply at the same time.
If you do UA -> Corr, they both are applied at T = 1.5 and both expire at T = 19.5, reapplied instantly.
Basically, doing Corr first gets you a tick of Corr faster, but pushes your UA tick back.
Because our guild had started running with 4 (or more) warlocks in addition to 2 shadow priests recently, I really felt annoyed by the debuff limit issues we started running into. Having to re-apply a max-priority debuff like CoE/CoS 3 or more times in a 5 min fight is absolutely ridiculous.
So I figured I'd give Destruction a try. I specced 0/21/40 for a few days, but the only raiding I managed to do was one Magtheridon kill (which was a poor test, as that day I had a click a cube that was farther away from his tanking spot than usual and thus cut into my DPS rather severely) and one Karazhan clear (which was another poor test, since the group had a fire mage and no shadow priest, so I went with Fire damage gear, including 2 pieces of Plagueheart XD). After that, I respecced for PvP (after losing something like 8 arena games in a row as DS/SnF).
And then last night for SSC, I respecced back to Destro (1/21/39 this time), because we started running with a more feasible (as far as debuff slot usage goes) 3 warlock raid. We did Hydross, Lurker, and Karathress. And after the raid night was done, I had some very mixed feelings. I'll post my experience/thoughts.
My character: my current Armory profile is my PvE boss-fight gear set. With +130 from Fel Armor, I'm sitting at 183 hit rating (14.51%), 1132 shadow damage, and 166 crit rating (16.64%). (Side note: was the in-game display of crit chance updated to include Devastation? I hadn't paid attention to it much recently since I've been deep Affliction for quite some time, but I seem to recall that it was much lower than 16% when I was Affliction, and my +hit gear set has not changed much since then). There really isn't a whole lot of upgrades for me as far as boss-fight gear goes - I want to get the ring from Magtheridon head, and if Attumen/Doomwalker drops their gloves, I might take that to pair with the T5 pants (will be able to get it relatively easily as most locks/mages are sporting 2pc Spellstrike and thus don't want it - I passed on Spellstrike because I wanted to use the Engineering goggles). Beyond that, I'd love to have a Neltharion's Tear, but it's not going to happen (oh how I hate myself for passing on it back then), and I'd like to get a Belt of Blasting, but the recipe hasn't dropped for us yet. I could also resocket my weapon with Veiled Noble Topazes, but I'm reluctant to do so because I'm already way over the amount of spell hit I need for soloing/PvP/heroics even in my non-hit-emphasis gear sets.
Anyway, here are the fights:
Hydross (WWS report): We only had 1 shadow priest, and I was not in that group. I was, however, in a elemental shaman group (with 2 mages and another warlock), which means I should have been at/over the hit cap (I was running into UI issues yesterday, so didn't take the time to adjust gear so I'd be right at the hit cap with ToW). We use the AoE strategy, and are usually pretty conservative on the timing of the transitions (lower DPS, sure, but post-2.1 he's really a piece of cake regardless). I was using a DSed Succubus, and had some pretty severe mana issues (spamming SoC tends to do that). Still came in a respectable 3rd - the other two warlocks are both 43/7/11 I believe. Overall I didn't think the fight was too bad, and felt I did well considering that 40%+ of the damage done comes from SoC, a spell that doesn't gain anything from 2 of the big advantages my spec offers (Ruin and Shadow and Flame).
Lurker (WWS report): Pretty much same group compositions as previously. The fight started off horribly for me as I was messing around in fire-damage gear during the trash, and while I was in the right gear for the fight, I forgot to switch my actions bars back - so after one incredulous cast of Incinerate instead of Shadowbolt, I went to fix it, only to have my Succy (which I was waiting on the fight to start to DS) get killed by a geyser. So then had to Fel Domination another one to DS, and finally get back to DPSing. Anyway, on this fight, the warlocks are assigned to the islands where the naga spawn to CC/kill. Sheep the Guardians, kill the Ambushers, kill 2 Guardians and leave one sheeped to be killed after Lurker re-emerges and finishes Spout. I think I managed to kill the Ambushers a little quicker as Dest, but it wasn't a hugely-noticable difference. And I died to a loose Guardian towards the end of the fight, so this wasn't a fantastic measure of my spec's performance, but glancing at SWS every once in a while during the fight still showed me that I simply wasn't getting the DPS that Affliction locks are. I've always been competitive when it comes to DPS amongst the locks, and when I was deep Affliction I'm almost always at or near the top (unless I do something stupid like forget to switch to the right gear set for a fight), so I know that it's not an issue of me sucking.
Karathress (WWS report): This was our guild's second kill (first one came the night before), and my first (I sat out the previous night). As such, I'd say it was still a somewhat sloppy kill (or in my own case, a VERY sloppy kill, as I was screwing up left and right). But the mechanics of the fight remains the same - you want to be staying at or near full HP always, which is something that is MUCH more difficult to do as a Destruction warlock than an Affliction one. Yeah, I could DS a VW (and I did try it), but then my DPS really suffered (on the kill, I went back to DSing a Succubus). I felt I was unlucky when it came to the Gusting Winds, but since I haven't had too much experience on this fight (this was the 2nd night that I've worked on him), I can't really say. But regardless, I was out-DPSed by the warlock (Vikky, who is an excellent player) that was assigned to keep CoT on the priest.
So we did the 3 most advanced encounters (for us), and I find myself debating whether this spec is worthwhile to keep going into the future. On one hand, the spec is easy, very easy, to play, and the damage is competitive with Affliction (maybe better on certain situations? I'll have to wait until this week's Gruul to see how it goes for a DPS-a-single-stationary-target fight). And I like it much better than Affliction for 5/10 mans, since there's a lot more burst damage, and you get more flexibility in maximizing your damage depending on whether you have other warlocks/shadowpriest or mages (vast majority will be fire if they're into PvE content). On the other hand, I'm not so sure that the majority of future encounters will play into the strength of this spec (our goal this week is to get both Morogrim and Leotheras, and Morogrim at least won't be much fun unless we switch to a Hellfire-tanking strategy; looking to start TK probably next week) - maybe someone with experience with the fights in TK/Hyjal/BT can chime in on this. And lastly, Affliction is a MUCH better all-around spec - farming as DS/SnF isn't bad (DSing a VW does wonders), but still doesn't come close to being the farming machine that Affliction is; and I won't even start on the PvP viability of each.
Comments/suggestions are more than welcome.
*insert joke about wall of text here*
05/31/07, 8:16 PM
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