Furio

For starters, there is not a 2.3 Crit Bracer. It's a Glove. If it was a Bracer, it'd be the hands down best in slot. So, definitely go for the Haste Bracer. While Bracers of Nimble Thought are strictly better, the difference isn't much. As for the OH, you'll want use Leulier's spreadsheet to determine if the Haste and Crit are worth the loss of damage. As your gear improves it will be; it may already be a good trade.

 

Theurgie

yeah sorry i meant the gloves. thanks i think i will have to use the dps spreadsheet and find out.

 

Arelenda

Shadowseer will tell you just that: total cast time gained, and transferred into Shadowbolt damage, including the extra time lost due to life tap to obtain mana for said bolts.

It tells me that for me, 0/21/40, with 10% hit, 28% crit, 50ish haste and 1350damage (non boss gear), haste rating is superior to crit or +damage, varying from haste = 1.6 to 2 damage, roughly. Crit rating is about equal to damage. For affliction, I reckon haste is way less useful, since my spec makes the maximum use of spell haste.

 

Arelenda

Do pay in mind that the original poster meant "on Theron, when the tank engages, I cast CoW while running to my spot". Using CoW for the sole benefit of upping your stacks of Crusade is terrible in all other circumstances. If you can cast any useful spell, you should be doing that instead. The total benefit you get Darkmoon from COW spam is at best 90 damage per CoW (10x8 = 80 spellpower, 1.06% coefficient on Shadow Bolt).

Sure, it beats doing nothing while running to your position.

 

Antoine

It's also useful while waiting for tanks to get a nice threat lead.

 

kbd

Treatment of the Nightfall calculation.

sorry to take this "back in time" a little - but I just wanted to share with you my own method of considering the value of "Nightfall".

Firstly though I have to make a point which most probably already know - and that is sitations where mana is not constrained (i.e. you are free to life tap or dark pact as much as you want), the appropriate method of deciding which is the best spell to cast (at any one instant) is to calculate it's "Damage pet Cast Time". Any class has to decide what it's critical resource is - and then to compare everything against utilising that resouce.

So having covered that, what I do is to take any spell - calculate it's "DpCT" and also factor into this the amount of time needed to lifetap that spent mana back. This is to calculate the sustained dps for a boss fight. This ofc assumes that you start and finish a boss fight on the same mana - which obviously isn't the case - but it's then trivial to factor that in after calculating the sustained dps.



So here's how I would calculate the "DpCT" of a plain shadowbolt. For simplicity I'm going to assume 100% hit rate and 0% crit, +1000 spell damage, no improved lifetap.

1 Shadowbolt - Cast time 2.5 seconds, Damage:1429 (average), Mana Cost:420
0.4 Lifetap - Cast time 0.6 seconds, Mana Cost: -420

So the sustained dpct of shadowbolt is 1429 over 3.1 seconds = 461 dps.


Now - with Nightfall - the only change you need to make to this calculation is the cast time. A 4% chance of a proc - reduces the average shadowbolt cast time for 2.5 to 2.46 seconds.


So the sustained dpct of the new shadowbolt is 1429 over 3.06 - which is 467



Obviously - 1000 spell damage, 100% hit and 0% crit - are completely arbitrary values I used for simplicity - but you could easily modify what I have done to take real conditions into account.

As an affliction warlock I calculate all my spells this way. At anyone point in time that I am free to cast - the spell selection criteria is based on giving me the biggest "Damage per Cast Time".


Anyhow, I hope this helps anyone who was interested in the Discussion of the appropritate treatment to apply to Nightfall.


\kbd.

 

Ele'

You are right, I'll try to include Cataclysm in there. I'm not fond of this talent so I didn't really think about it.

I never tried Shadowseer but will take a look at it, it's not the first time that I hear about it so it could be worth a try.
But what I really wanted was more like a "strict rule" to know when someone should benefit more from haste than damage, rather than just knowing that "for now, I should stick to damage". It's a good way to plan my stuff evolution, as well as giving advices to my fellow warlocks who are not really fond of maths ^^.

 

• frmorrison

Assuming a raid only build, you will have cataclysm (399 mana shadow bolts).

In addition, Haste rating is 15.77 per 1%, not 15.7 like you had on your page. Note, your numbers do not take into account crit (with haste, you will have a higher imp SB uptime) and do not agree with the Warlocks dps spreadsheet's value for haste (around 1200 damage it says haste is better).

 

Gman12

Your DpCT does not take into account mana from other sources, notably mana pots.

Also the concept of best spell to cast at any one instance, needs to take into account that you would like to end a fight with close to zero mana as you have then not wasted time on that last lifetap.

 

Ele'

While I see what you mean, I don't understand something.

Let's say that you have, for example, a 30% crit rate. If you gain some haste, you will cast more bolts, thus having done more crits at the end of the day. However, you will not crit more often, you will still have 30% of your bolts that did critical hits.

So, assuming that every player that can produce or consume Imp. SB debuffs gains haste stuff at the same rate, you will not have a better Imp. SB uptime. You will proc more imp. SB, but you will consume it faster, too.

Am I missing something obvious here ? o0

 

KnThrak

Nope.
If all gain haste equally, the percentual uptime is the same.

SQUEAK.
-- (The Death of Rats, Terry Pratchett, Soul Music)

 

Arelenda

No.

Shadow Priests instant spells are on cooldowns, so they can't cast them more often.


But "if all gain haste equally" doesn't hold, really.

If you hit BT, Shadow Priests will begin stacking haste, but won't be consuming more charges.
Affliction warlocks won't be stacking much haste, as it does very little for them.
Destruction warlocks will be obtaining more haste, generally increasing uptime.

Not sure about Demonology. They have a good good crit chance anyway, so _if_ they stack much haste, I doubt it'll affect ISB uptime much.

 

kbd

I think I had that base covered already - quoting from my original post :

 

Crepe

What haste gear are BT warlocks finding useful? From looking at the spreadsheet, the [Bracers of Nimble Thought] look very tasty compared to the other available loots for that slot. [Mantle of Nimble Thought] isn't as good as other available shoulders, though - if you can use the hit rating, even T5 shoulders seem to be better.

 

Arelenda

[quote=kbd;509734Now - with Nightfall - the only change you need to make to this calculation is the cast time. A 4% chance of a proc - reduces the average shadowbolt cast time for 2.5 to 2.46 seconds.[/QUOTE]

I fail to follow this reasoning, can you elaborate?

Nightfalled Shadow Bolts are 1.5s casting time due to GCD, I'm not sure if you're taking that into account.

 

Eph

[Ring of Ancient Knowledge]
[Zhar'doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer]
[Bracers of Nimble Thought]
[The Skull of Gul'dan]
Are generally considered the 'good' haste items, with the belt and shoulders not as strong.

A similar question, has anyone seen if any new ZA/2.3 loot is worth wearing above anything in bt/hy? I saw a nice upgrade to [Icon of the Silver Crescent], but haven't looked at all the other items yet.

 

Aslin

This is exactly how it works in 2.3.

I was playing around with it a little bit in Zul'Aman. I kept my Quartz bar with latency, but removed the /stopcasting part of my Shadow Bolt macro. If you hit Shadow Bolt when the cast bar hits the latency part, you will chain cast the next one as if you are using a /stopcasting macro. If you hit it a little early, you won't chain cast. So, it works exactly the same but without the worry of cancelling your spells (and you don't need to use a macro unless you tie in trinkets too).

It's basically possible to just spam the Shadow Bolt button and you can just continually chain cast as if using a pre-2.3 /stopcasting macro.

edit: wording

 

Nas

Ah I see, I was under the impression that you can queue a spell while your current one is casting. I guess the way it actually is happens to be slightly better, but I still prefered timing rather than mashing the button I guess.

 

Aslin

You can still do it using timing.. that's actually the way I prefer to do it as I've been using stopcasting for a few months now.

I was just saying that, for the less attention-inclined, the option is available.

 

rochan

The ZulJin trinket looks amazing, about 25% better than the badge trinket. It ranks near the top (probably only rivaled by Guldan and Crusade). Other gear that interested me was the Dmg/Haste neck, Dmg/Haste offhand, and Dmg/Haste boots because those are the first haste items in those slots.
There could be some other good items in there...rings maybe?

 

Sardaukar

Theres also three, count em THREE, +damage/healing 1 handers in ZA - a +damage. +haste rating and +int sword, a +damage, +crit, +hit, +int dagger and a +damage, +hit, +int mace. It looks like blizzard finally realized that having a grand total of 4 caster 1 handers spread across 2 tier 5 and 2 tier 6 instances (with the mace from Hyjal being a recent addition) was not cutting it. As far as the haste gear from ZA and badges, theres a piece in quite a few slots but many of them seem to be inferior to T5 level gear (since all the cloth armor seems to be straight +damage and +haste with no sockets). Of course, theres a few items that could potentially be quite nice for T5 lock like the haste cloak and haste neck and the haste ring looks to be as good as the hyjal trash haste ring if you can make use of the +hit.

 

• frmorrison

[Tiny Voodoo Mask] looks really good and the 20 slot bag for killing the first boss, although those don't help raid dps .


There a quite a few +haste items that can help tide you over until you get the powerful Tier 6 bonus, and the new +damage trinket is worth 88 damage, which is very nice.

The [Footpads of Madness] is better than my FSW boots, and [Shadowcaster's Drape] isn't too bad. There are also lesser equivalents to the crafted BT shoulders/bracers.

 

Telkster

oh nice, that means healers will finally benefit from what used to be stopcasting? (cuz now there's no risk of cancelling the heal)

i cant count the number of time after a wipe i've heard, "WHAT??!! I TOTALLY GOT THAT HEAL OFF!!!"

Boo creepy foot doctor! Hooray beer!

 

kbd

Sorry for not explaining that in depth a bit more.

2.46 was the average shadowbolt cast time for a shadowbolt if you have the 4% chance of a 1.5 second nightfall proc.

(2.5 x 0.96) + (1.5 x 0,04) = 2.46

 

Raithlin

Further to the 'raiding demo lock' discussion heres a quick question - do Felguards benefit from Windfury, or any other synergy related effects/abilities other than SPs?