My apologies..... I've added links to the player profiles used in the simulations.

An overview of the whole system can be found here: SimulationCraft - Shadowpriest.com Wiki

Ah.... all the gory details. I'll put up a much more rigorous description later this evening.

Am I the only one to notice the "crappy" talent specs that Dedmonwakeen chose for his calculations?

(tl:dr? Crappy talent choices demonstrate a lack of knowledge towards the simulations which may conclude that these simulations are flawed to a an extent)

There are couple talents that are useless for raid dps in both the affliction and destro tree. If a warlock was to choose a pure shadow destro build (since this discussion is surrounded by Shadow only), he would not take Imp Immo/Conflag.

His chosen affliction tree is good for one lock, but to assume that all affliction warlocks have the same spec is flawed. If you suppose two affliction locks have Mal, then those two won't have impCoA. If you suppose that you have 5 warlocks, 3 affliction and 2 destro, you would then have the 3rd affliction lock with impCoA and SE, but not impMal as well. Even further, the lack of imp Drain Soul signifies the lack of attention or knowledge that was used to make these simulations.

Finally, the destro specs lack the same knowledge. Reading up in this very thread would have allowed someone to conclude a better talent choice than this. Fire talents should have been omitted from this simulation entirely. There are couple other bad choices but they do not impact raid dps specifically. Taking Unholy Power in a Sacrifice build proves even further the lack of knowledge that was used for this simulation.

You should review your conclusions in order to find if sone of these simulations would alter your calculated compositions. Depending on the gear/stat choices you used, both those destro locks could end up using Corruption (Corruption, depending on the stats, is still worth casting for some locks - ie: In my case, since I still have 4/4 T4, the extra tick on Corruption gives it a higher Damage Per Cast time than SB) which would increase the "ISBNoMD/SWD" raid shadow damage simulation significantly. I'm suggesting you release more info on the data used for these simulations in order to correctly justify your results.

You just did a pretty good job of bashing his work without really offering much constructive criticism. I mean seriously, why bicker over his choice on master summoner? He's hardly missing anything spectacular, and it makes zero impact on his calculations. Same with the fire talent comments, whats wrong with casting a spell with better DPCT than SB? Saying you don't believe in it and would like an alternative simulation is fine, but absolutely bashing it like your word is law is a bit meh.

Almost every talent you take will change ISB uptime. First there are the obvious ones, cast time reductions and +crit talents, then there are the not so obvious ones like fire talents, maldiction, improved life tap, improved CoA. If it wasn't a conglomerated simulation package and you were just supplying inputs for the ISB calculation itself then that would be all that mattered but when you have to derive ISB from merely a talent spec and a gear set then you really do have to know literally everything about every decision that is being made in order to assemble all the inputs you would need for an ISB uptime calculation.

I'm not saying the simulation doesn't work because I can't run it on this machine and I'm not saying every decision that was made in the talent specs was wrong. I am saying pretty much every decision in the talent specs and cast logic on every single spell is going to be meaningful for ISB uptime. Wrong or right it's all still very signifigant.

I understand stuff that involves ability usage (anything that detracts from shadowbolt spam obviously).

But how does some scaler-based fire-talent like emberstorm effect ISB uptime? I understand the template talent specs are not absolutely optimal for the simulation, itself, but this is beside the point. Consider this question an education question for myself =).

I should've said that I understand knowing the exact underpinnings of the simulation and the inputs is vital to the heart of the ISB Uptime discussion. Perhaps, I should have better worded my previous post in such a way that indicated that we not jump down his throat until all those details were made available to us.

The only reason to take fire talents is to buff immolate to the point where it is worth using. So, if the build has fire talents it will use immolate and that will change SB/sec which will change % of SBs coming from that particular lock which will change the overall ISB uptime. ...who was in footloose with Kevin Bacon.

Honestly every calculation I have ever done has showed that it was worth casting immolate in every spec. The only time I could see affliction not casting immolate was in kara with a shadowpriest, no fire mage, and 400-500 more +shadow than fire.

This is one of the strenghts of theorycraft over simulation craft in my eyes. Simulations can only draw conclusions on the inputs they are given but if the equations for theorycraft are accurate you can make very accurate generalized statements.

Given what I know about the mechanics of a raid ISB model I am willing to state flatly, and in no uncertain terms, that the conclusions drawn in the ISB article are accurate for every raid situation no matter what specs and gear are taken. There will always be diminishing returns with additional locks to ISB uptime eventually going to 0 and as the number of sources of direct shadow damage with no chance to proc ISB goes up the number of locks needed to max ISB goes up right along with it.

My main point of contention is the actual number that are generated by the simulation, which I cannot compare anything to until I have more complete information on the inputs. The relative differences between them are definitly accurate to the raid ISB models that have been developed.

Arguing over MDSWD usage based on gear and spec really seems like grasping at straws to me, there really are not many situations in actual using where you can change your casting behavior simply based on the presence of a debuff that lasts a couple seconds. Once you factor in lag and reaction time I would be very suprised if you can ever improve on just keeping up the standard rotation.

Righto, I understand the cause and the effect. My point was that even if he has the fire talents, it matters more on the ability usage (in this specific example), not on the presence of talents or not (whether or not he has conflag, I won't assume he's using it unless directly stated). I want to see the underpinning data, and not assume it based off the spec. I think we're in agreement here. =)

Ah.... my ignorance revealed...... To be honest I simply picked talent specifications that would allow me to plug-and-play with the profiles in interesting ways. My intent was to ensure I had the proper talents for the particular experiments that interested me. The easiest way for me to do this was to simply get as many dps-related talents in each profile as possible.

I 100% agree with your assertion that a serious raider will know what subset of spells he will be using so that he can limit his dps talents in order to free up points for threat reduction, survivability, etc, etc.

I should (and will) re-word the article since it claims that these are "common" talent specifications.

The key thing I was missing was the cost of LT/DP gcds and that is added now.
(LT was in the spell priority list, but unused due to infinite_mana=1 being set.)
If there are other glaring errors, please let me know.

I suppose I could produce detailed spell break-downs of a few of the Warlock-Priest combinations.....

Is that what you are looking for?