I've never seen the point in 'Fire-Destro' and 'Shadow-Destro'. Just get generic +magic damage and use every tool at your disposal. Corruption and Immolate do a lot of damage for their cast time no matter if you're not specced for Empowered Corruption or Imp Immolate or whatever build you go for. Just think of them as instant cast nukes for 2-2.5k damage on a 15-18s cooldown.

Sorry, I should have been quoting Phelot in that post, not you, my mistake. While it sounded right when I wrote it, I see completely what you mean now and agree.


Kyth, our raid leader is a warrior so I don't think he has any real bias in SP pairing, although the GM is a SP and really likes to be paired with another SP :P. If I were setting up groups I'd probably just split the priests up and tell them to use a more conservative rotation. It would lower their personal DPS but mana batteries in two groups would be worth it.

Our Hunter's switch specs alot but have been BM pretty consistently lately and say they dont even need VT mana with a fast weapon and an auto/steady rotation. Plus we've just so rarely seen them breaking into top 5 with unlimited mana that the RL is reluctant to group them.

Our mages don't really seem to have allot of mana issues with pots/gems/evoc but we very well could be shortchanging them and I would not know it.

I think the main reason for grouping the way we do is the 2 SPs in the same group. I may be wrong on this but I think no one can use all that mana except for warlocks at around -840mp5 and 0 natural regen. We just eat it faster than anyone besides AB spamming mages (which we tried, but the results were not really stellar). Of course this isn't all fights. On Bloodboil I threw about 5 shadowbolts and spent the rest of the time channeling DL to heal myself through the dot, Shadow Priests were exclusively for healers in that fight, since we only had 7 and most seem to do it with 8-10.

As far as the Crusade Trinket is concerned, I often spam CoE for 4-5 stacks at the start of the fight till the tank establishes some threat, and use searing pain or immolate if I am at risk of losing a stack after moving or switching targets. The 1.5s cast of Immo/SPain and instant travel time make them allot better than Shadow Bolt at getting the proc back up to 10 seconds. If you are on CoS/CoE of course the answer is already clear.

My build might seem a little weird, and I will probably swap it around again in the future. I guess I just wanted an excuse to stop casting Immolate and reduce myself to a 1 button mashing monkey.

No no, the break point is 1700 spell damage. Do the math, with all available raid buffs and a 0/21/40 spec, shadow can get a total of +40% damage(15 DS, 10 SW, 10 CoS, 5 Misery). Fire can get 55%(15 DS, 15 Scorch, 10 CoE, 10 Emberstorm, 5 Misery). For scaling purposes, SB has a cast time of 3 seconds(~86%) while incinerate, 2.5 seconds(~71%)

So the equation for average damage of incinerate is y=(598.5+0.91x)(1.55)(1+crit/100)
SB is y=(572+1.06x)(1.4)(1+crit/100). Since we can assume equal amounts of crit, we can equalize the two equations as (598.5+0.91x)(1.55)=(572+1.06x)(1.4).
So then, 927.675+1.4105x = 800.8+1.484x
Therefore 126.875 = 0.0735x
x = 1726.19

This number used to be 1111 spell damage, however, the change to shadow weaving pushed it back to 1726.

Normally, you could assume that Imp. SB is up all the time, which would push the multiplier for SB to 1.6. In this situation, SB overtakes incinerate at -539.62 damage(ie, always). However, as I previously stated, my guild has few raiding warlocks, most(if not all) are affliction, and no shadow priests. We do however have plenty of fire mages. This means that I will have ample access to imp. scorch but not shadow weaving. My question was if anyone had any experience with the build in that sort of a situation.

Regardless, this is just my proof for what I was saying before.

Damage multipliers are multiplicative, not additive. Shadow gets a 1.15 (DS) * 1.1 (CoS) * 1.1 (SW) *1.05 (Misery) = 1.461 multiplier, Fire gets a 1.15 (DS) *1.1 (CoE) *1.15 (Scorch) * 1.1 (Emberstorm) * 1.05 (Misery) = 1.68 multiplier.

Furthermore, Imp. shadowbolt uptime from just one destro lock and one affliction lock is at least 40%, for another 1.08 damage multiplier for shadow.

If you assume only your own greedy damage and compare incinerate to shadow bolt, you must at least factor in another 7% boost (35% ISB uptime minimum for a destro lock, probalby more) to shadow. That throws off your "when does SB overtake Incinerate" calculation.

Far too much guessing and too little excel, let's try again:

Average damages raidbuffed / debuffed mob, disregarding crit / hit etc with any given +dmg value with 0/21/40 build:

Shadow bolt:
(572+1.2*3/3.5*+dmg)*(1.1*1.15*1.05*1.1)=
(572+1.2*3/3.5*+dmg)*(1.461)

Incinerate:
(598.75+1.2*2.5/3.5*+dmg)*(1.1*1.15*1.1*1.15*1.05)=
(598.75+1.2*2.5/3.5*+dmg)*(1.680)


Thus, when does shadowbolt catch incinerate?:
(598.75+1.2*2.5/3.5*+dmg)*(1.680)=(572+1.2*3/3.5*+dmg)*(1.461) -->
(598.75+1.2*2.5/3.5*+dmg)*(1.680)/(1.461)=(572+1.2*3/3.5*+dmg) -->
688.5+0.9856*+dmg=572+1.2*3/3.5*+dmg -->
688.5-572=1.2*3/3.5*+dmg-0.9856*+dmg
116.5=0.04297*+dmg
+dmg = 116.5/0.04297 = 2711.1

Thus, Shadowbolt with no ISB proc is not going to catch Incinerates DPS with gear available in TBC unless maybe under very extreme proc conditions. (2/5 T4, Nightbane Robe, 2 proc trinkets, Hyjal exalted ring, etc. all procing at the same time.). Unless my equations are off. (Later part shouldn't, just plotting the first two equations in excel gives the same +dmg break even point)

Ok, now the real question. How's that with ISB? How much ISB uptime is needed for shadow bolt to deal more DPS than Incinerate with any given +dmg?

(598.75+itmod*+dmg)*(imod) = (572+stmod*+dmg)*(smod*ISB), where stmod = 1.2*3.0/3.5, smod = 1.1*1.15*1.05*1.1 and imod's in a similar way.
-->
(598.75+itmod*+dmg)*(imod)/(smod) = (572+stmod*+dmg) -->
(imod)/(smod*ISB)*598.75+(imod)/(smod*ISB)*itmod*+dmg = (572+stmod*+dmg) -->
(imod)/(smod*ISB)*598.75 - 572 = stmod*+dmg - (imod)/(smod*ISB)*itmod*+dmg
[(imod)/(smod*ISB)*598.75 - 572] / [stmod - (imod)/(smod*ISB)*itmod] = dmg


I made a graph. Read your +dmg from Y-axis, and check how much ISB uptime is required for shadow bolt to deal more DPS than incinerate. Or the opposite, choose your ISB uptime and check how much +dmg you need for shadowbolt to have more dps.

This assumes that you never have to lifetap, so it's not really practical, but this is the minimum ISB uptime needed to even get a close call. In real raiding situations uptime has to be much higher, because you'll lifetap 18% more with shadowbolt than incinerate. (Actually shadow bolt needs to do about 6% more DPS than Incinerate for not to loose due to increased lifetapping, assuming 0 manaregen while casting, with 50% ISB uptime that means about +dmg of 1175 to be on par...)

Which gives more raid-dps in different scenarios? Much harder question. Incinerate lock need less healing, but doesn't increase ISB uptime. Again, you are trading a HoT or two for increased shadow dps. Is it worth it? Most probably.

Interesting work, Zepi. My last calcuations showed a much lower number than what you have here (possibly because they were before the SW nerf, but they could also have just been wrong).

A more interesting question: is SnF additive or multiplicative? If it's additive, the answer is much worse that what Zepi's calculated, something over 20k +damage. Anyone have any data to prove one case or another? I'm flying to Dr. Boom to get some data right now.

I think the improved ISB uptime is a good argument, though, since with a 24% uptime you're breaking even again. You're also still improving the DPS of the other warlocks and shadow priests. However, with non-shadow gear, you can easily swap to fire-destro with 0/21/40 to be less of a healing burden.

Ok, I just killed Dr. Boom with nothing but SB, took a good few minutes. :-P For reference, I had 1284 shadow gear, capped hit (for Dr. Boom, anyway).

Throwing out bolts that had ISB up (which was quite a bit, sadly) and/or Lesser Spell Blasting, I got a total of 27 data points for SnF over the course of the fight. The average was 1935.

SnF, if additive, gives an expected value as follows:

572 + 1284 * (0.2 + 3/3.5) = 572 + 1284 * 1.05 ~= 1929

If SnF is multiplicative:

572 + 1284 * (1.2 * 3 / 3.5) = 572 + 1284 * 1.02 ~= 1893

Loosely, the variance in SB damage from the tooltip is 607 - 544 = 63, or +/- 31.5. So, this is far from definitive, but it still seems to support the additive theory more. If someone with more statistics background than I can help out in judging the accuracy of the data based on sample size, variance, etc., that would be helpful.

For the curious, the data set:

1949
1935
1942
1947
1930
1918
1928
1946
1904
1909
1927
1962
1948
1947
1963
1911
1957
1910
1958
1904
1959
1904
1923
1911
1956
1952
1954

I can provide the combat log if anyone wants to double check my work. Note that I was retarded and thought I could use SWS to do most of the recording, so I only turned the combat log on in the 60% range.

The easiest way to demonstrate the things is to go for the larges possible shadowbolt with the multiplicative model and if you get a Shadowbolt higher you can safely assume additive.

With a range of 607 - 544 thent he highest with multiplicative is 607 + 1284 * (1.2 * 3 / 3.5)= 1927.7 Which was clearly beaten many times the largest of which I have included above. Additive max is 607 + 1284 * (0.2 + 3/3.5)= 1964.3 which is what we have almost observed. So we can safely assume additive. You have to use the exact formulas not the 2 digit approximations to get these results.

Healing spells have also been demonstrated to be additive( I can't find a link >_<). Also improved corruption is definately 93%+ 36%= 129% not 0.93*1.36=126.5%. Finally the druid talent Wrath of Cenarious gives 20% to starfire but only 10% to wrath which doesn't make any sense for a multiplicative system but does for an additive system.

As a more reader than poster i´d like to throw a question in between regarding ISP uptime.
Ive only been brainstorming this topic, not calcing it widely so im highly interested in this.
Current raiding often shows me that all other shadow casters are leeching from my ISB proccs in the long run.
As a (shadow)-destro lock of my own, 25% crit would give me, in optimal case, 100% ISB uptime.
worst case: 29%(25 crits in a row) ?
best case: 100%(crit, hit, hit, hit) - repeat
average: 64%
The pretty obvious thing is, the more affliction locks/spriests a raid has, the WAY lower the uptime per player should be - and that should factor in the calculations, shouldnt it?
Seeing that a generic aff lock SB or a Spriest spell does lower damage than a Destro/Demos SB - the raiddps should infact be lower than if the Destro/Demo lock would consume all his ISB proccs, or am i mistaken?

Reposted the graph with additive SnF coefficient. Now 30% ISB uptime means that shadow bolt scales over Incinerate at around 1200 damage.

There's a lot more numbers and theory crafting about raid ISB uptime here: [Warlock] UA vs. Ruin Overall Raid DPS Comparison

Basically, you will never have 100% ISB uptime on your own and affliction locks, even those with 15-20% crit, are more than likely adding to ISB uptime. Shadow priests are another matter but frankly the extra mana regen in worth a little ISB leeching.

Shadowpriests gain a small ammount of dps from mind blast, and should not use it at ALL in raids with warlocks because it decreases ISB uptime thus decreasing dps of SWP, VT, and MF.

I don't want to go too off topic here but another thing to avoid is using shadow wands. Unfortunately, while WoW 1.0 had wands of all sorts of magic schools blizzard decided that 80% of all wands in TBC are shadow ....

Gaining the 20% on a Mind Blast is worth losing it for the few ticks of VT/SWP/MF. Mind Blast is a far superior DPS boost than 20% of those spells, and it would be an utter waste to not use it if mana allows. The extra 20% mana back for the party for this spell will cause more damage than the extra damage done by a warlock's shadowbolt taking it instead.

Regarding SB uptime, will start from simple scenario and then start working upwards to the more complicated:

Single warlock:
25% crit means chance for imp shadowbolt to NOT be up is 0.75^4 (4 last shadowbolts not critting), which leaves you with 69% of imp shadowbolt uptime.

As you add warlocks with equal crit, the imp shadowbolt uptime will be exactly the same (as been tested as well but can be seen very easily with the same mathematical model of a single warlock). Warlocks with less crit will then naturally lower it (but you will increase theirs), while warlocks with more crit will increase it (but you will decrease theirs). Overall the imp shadowbolt effect remains the same for the purpose of shadowbolts remains quite the same assuming you're not better or wosrse than the other warlocks - a difference of gear/skill will obviously make it so it's worthwhile to have the bad skilled warlocks not reduce imp shadowbolt uptime ;p but enough with discussing skill/gear issues, all your raid should be skilled and geared anyway.

The thing is, imp shadowbolt uptime doesn't only affect shadowbolt damage, which is the main error here when comparing imp shadowbolt to incinerate. You're missing on all the SW:P, mindflay, UA and corruption damage done during the time until the bolts are consumed.

For shadow priests that don't eat your imp SB, there's not much needed to be said. Add 20% X imp SB uptime to your own DPS when you calculate it. After all bosses don't really care who did damage to them other than aggro issues, which again I won't be going into here.

Where it really gets complicated is when shadow priests start eating your buffs, which they probably will as MB and SW:D are major DPS increases. However if a shadow priest ate your imp SB it just means his MB/SW:D did more damage, count that damage for yourself when calculating. However regarding wether SPs should or shouldn't eat your buffs is a lot more complicated. After all while a MB/SW:D will get the 20% damage bonus, it'll also mean 1 less shadowbolt will possibly not get 20% increase, while ALSO one of their mind flays may not get an increase. If they mindflay, not only it will get the 20% increase but also it means another shadowbolt will possibly get the 20% increase as well. Add to that the fact that SW:Ps and warlock dots will do more damage if the SP sticks to MF when imp SB is up and it gets really hard to tell if MB/SW:D should be used when imp SB is up.
The reason I say "possibly" is because the shadowbolt uptime formula for a single warlock was taking into account overlapping procs. However if shadow priests are eating your procs, the overlapping time will be reduced, thus even if you have a mind blast/SW:D casted for every shadowbolt that is casted (which is an extreme because it requires the SPs to outnumber the warlocks), your imp SB uptime will be MORE than 1/2 of what it would've been if you were in the single warlock scenario. If you want to get more accurate you have to know the SB to MB/SW:D ratio in your raid...

Most useful conclusions I can reach without going any deeper into numbers:
-Imp SB uptime is a lot more useful than what shown in the above posts. It is far more than an increase to SB DPS.
-Shadow priests really need to do a serious comparison of MF to MB/SW:D. First check if MF with 20% damage increase is more worthwhile than a MB with no damage increase. Then check if a MB with 20% damage increase + shadowbolt with no damage increase is actually better than a shadowbolt with 20% damage increase + mind flay with 20% damage increase (obviously checking the effect of the bonus on the single cast over long-term DPS and not just looking at the single cast, as cast times are different). Then if you still think you should mind blast, check how much imp SB time is lost by you mind blasting (as it WILL drop the imp SB uptime long-term), and calculate how much DoT damage is lost by the raid because of that.

My guestimations based on that (may be possible to prove otherwise if you do the numbers but I have serious doubts):
-Imp SB uptime is very important and one of the main reasons to consider a destro spec, ESPECIAlLLY on a SP heavy raid and even more with more affliction locks.
-SPs should probably save their MB/SW:D for when there is no imp SB up and with imp SB use MF so they don't eat up the imp SB and it stays up to give a greater benefit to the enitre raid's DoTs and MFs.

I did some testing with 2 of my locks on Dr. Boom. All tries were done up to when the shadow priest was OOM.

Try #1 affliction + affliction, drakana CoD, lane CoS:

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=dy44wkxwkxmoq

Drakana: 973 dps, Lane: 925 dps, Disht 1036 dps: Total = 2934 dps


Try #2 affliction + affliction with some improvements in the dps cycles, drakana CoA, lane CoS:

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=jxd5bqqrke1cm

Drakana: 882 dps, Lane 916 dps, Disht 985 dps: Total = 2783 dps


Try #3 affliction + demo, drakana CoA, lane CoS

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=xitnkrrgyvyi1

Drakana: 871 dps, Lane 824 dps, Disht 899 dps: Total = 2594 dps


Try #4 affliction + demo, drakana CoA, lane CoS

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=j3bjm66v2kmfs

Drakana: 937 dps, Lane 846 dps, Disht 941 dps: Total = 2724 dps


The results are a bit counter intuitive in terms of the Imp. SB debuff and the effects on the shadow casters. The lock that switched from affliction to demo gained 5% more crit (being at 30% crit on the test being specced demo). Even so that resulted in both the affliction lock and the shadowpriest to drop in dps.

My intuition says that given a non affliction lock the frequency of shadowbolts hitting the target is higher hence the average duration of a single Imp. SB debuff (all 4 charges) is lower. On the other hand you have more Imp. SB debuffs to start with with a demo lock. What happens though is that they do not compensate for the loss in DoT damage from the shorter Imp. SB debuff durations. I am going to try to get the combat logs for this and figure out if this is the case or not.

Definitely. They hardly make an exhaustive analysis. I will try when I have the time to take 2 shadow priests and 3 locks so that the shadow priests can go on for longer so that each run is longer so there is less variance between each test. One interesting thing to note about the above results is that the Demo lock didn't really know how to do dps rotations and he was refreshing dots before they expired (practically doing dot,dot,dot, sb, sb, sb, sb and repeat). This fact hints a bit towards me thinking that more crit but more sbs don't usually give you more raidwise dps.

Unfortunately I deleted the logs through the command line and I can't extract the information I want from them.

Another approach that I just thought about, would be to write up a script to simulate this with multiple locks + shadow priest casting everything in a perfect rotation and having the program roll for crits on each cast. That way you can simulate for long enough, for data to be meaningful and avoid shadow weaving build up time and human error on the cast rotations. WTB more free time please :-)

For a single lock how often you cast shadowbolt has NOTHING to do with imp SB uptime. How often you cast in relation to the other warlock does though - the more often you will cast lower crit% shadowbolts the less SB uptime there will be. After all if you look at the original basic formula the chance for imp SB to be up at any given time is the 1-x where x is the chance for the last 4 shadow spells to have not applied imp SB. Everything else is derived from this. If SPs don't eat your debuffs, then SB uptime has nothing to do with having or not having a SP. If SPs eat your debuffs, the more SB casts the more uptime you will have - but the actual difference depends on how much the SP is actually eating it - this can possibly be a small difference, and as I've already said in my above post, it may very likely be worthwhile for the SP to MF instead of MB just so that he doesn't consume the imp SB - both for his own good and the warlocks' good.
Also remember that destro spec also gets a lot more from being in the moonkin/shaman group, if you have one. In my guild the raid leaders usually put in that group wheover I ask them to, and a destro lock would gain a lot more by being in that group than an affliction lock, because of both 8% extra crit, 3% extra hit and shadow priest VE/VT. Since we don't have destro locks though, that group is usually filled with 2 mages instead, as affliction DPS doesn't scale as much with crit. However I am seriously considering having an affliction lock there when no destruction lock is present for simply increasing imp SB uptime - but that's hard to figure out (the imp SB uptime and minor DPS from 8% crit 3% hit compared to giving a mage major 8% crit 3% hit but no increase in imp SB uptime).

The math on ISB uptime in this thread is way way off. ISB uptime as a percentage of total time is most certainly not 1-x^4 where x = 1 - crit rate. You have to factor in that SBs are going to fade early when sex/SB > 3 and that criting with ISB already up resets the time are 4 charges, essentally ending the last ISB early and starting a new one.

Actual % ISB uptime is:

total ISB uptime / total time = % ISB uptime
%ISB uptime * total time = total ISB uptime

total ISB uptime = total time * ISB/time * average duration of ISB

%ISB uptime * total time = total time * ISB/time * average duration of ISB
%ISB uptime = ISB/time * average duration of ISB

ISB/time = SB/sec * crit rate = %time casting ISB * 1SB / cast time SB * crit rate

Average ISB Duration = ISB/SEC*(CRIT*MIN(SEC/SB, 12)
+CRIT*(1-CRIT)*MIN(2*SEC/SB,12)
+CRIT*(1-CRIT)^2*MIN(3*SEC/SB,12)
+CRIT*(1-CRIT)^3*MIN(4*SEC/SB,12)
+(1-CRIT)^4*MIN(4*SEC/SB, 12)

If you folow the math you will notice very quickly that crit increases ISB/sec (obviously) but also decrease the average duration of the debuff (not as obvious). Basically the riddle is this, the best case scenario when ISB is not up is to crit and make it go up, the best case scenario after ISB is up is to not crit 4 times in a row. The end result is that as crit goes up ISB uptime goes up but the more crit you have the smaller the gain is on ISB uptime.

When you calculate the chance for ISB to NOT be up you already take into account the overlapping procs. It's a lot more simple that way. Note that I assume you will cast 4 shadowbolts before the 12s duration, which is more than reasonable to assume at least when you have more than 1 warlock, that the 12s duration will never be an issue. Then at any given shadowbolt cast the chance for it to not be up is if you didn't crit the last 4, which is (1-crit)^4. Therefore the chance for it to be up is 1 - (1-crit)^4. The way you calculated it is a lot more complicated and unnescessary - trying to actuall figure out how much you would get from an actual cast, while possible, is a lot more likely for error, while calculating the chance for imp SB to not be up is a lot easier. Even in a complicated scenario, given a specific spell rotation, calculating imp SB uptime is extremely easy by calculating the chance for it to not be up.
The reason you got that more crits reduce the time of the debuff is becuase like every overlapping proc, the more you proc it the more it's going to overlapp. However overlapping was already taking into consideration with my much simpler calculation, which shows more clearly how more crit increases imp SB uptime regardless of the fact that the actual time per proc gets reduced a little.

For example: 3 SB + 1 MB rotation (as in, what the mob is getting hit by kind of rotation, not what you cast yourself), with 2 SBs being 20% crit and one of them being 30% crit:
Chance for SB to not be up at a given time: 0.8*0.8*0.7=0.448. Therefore imp SB uptime = 1-0.448=0.552.
If the rotation is different than 4 spells it gets harder but not that hard - you just gotta take into account the chance for the last 4 spells to be A-B-C-D for example, then the chance for them to be B-C-D-E etc and multiply each chance by the imp SB uptime that combo gives and sum it all up...

I didn't totally check your math. It's probably right though, but why do things the hard way?

Because the 1- x^4 formula is wrong. Try both with 25%. One says 69% no matter how often you cast SB, one says 69% only if you are casting nothing but SB. The latter is useful for modeling overall DPS, the former is not.

Again, you can use the same idea as the 1-X^4 to model anything, like I showed with 3 SBs+1MB with different crit rates - the idea remains the same - the chance for imp SB to not be up is the same as 1 - the chance for it to not be up, no matter how you look at it. How you calculate the chance for it to not be up depends on the spell rotation you choose, but given a spell rotation, calculation imp SB downtime that way is extremely easy and from that you get the imp SB uptime.
Another example: 1 warlock using 1 shadowbolt every 2.5 seconds with 25% crit and a shadowpriest using a MB every 7.5 seconds and a SW:D every 12.5 seconds (to make things easier):
Rotation looks like: SW:D-SB-MB-SB-SB-SB-MB-SB-SW:D-SB-SB-MB-SB-SB-SB-and back to start. If you give a number for each cast (1~15), you sum up the chance for it to not be up on each of them and average it out (and multiply by the damage if you want actual effect, or multiply by time between each 2 spells in that rotation (which varies) to determine how much of the time it's not up to help DoTs).
Chance for it to not be up (chance for MB/SW:D to not apply imp SB is 100%):
1. 0.75^3 * 1
2. 0.75^3 * 1
3. 0.75^2 * 1^2
4. 0.75^2 * 1^2
and so on...
Of course the more classes you add the more complicated the rotation becomes to calculate especially regarding how much of the time it's up for DoTs and when trying to take into account the actual damage increased (as MB, SW:D and SB don't all do same damage), but the basic idea remains - chance for imp SB to not be up is the chance for the last 4 shadow spells to have not applied shadowbolt.

The 1-x^4 already takes into account the fact that they fade early - in fact the DOWNTIME doesn't care if it faded early or not - if it wasn't applied in the last 4 attacks it had faded and is no longer active. If it isn't inactive, then it is active, so 1-downtime=uptime.