I was wondering if the 4 piece T5(Corruptor) should change my DoT rotation from:
UA -> Corruption -> Immolate -> Siphon(depends on fight)
to
UA -> Immolate -> Corruption

My reason for switching Corruption and Immolate is that the 4 piece Corruptor does this:

Your Shadowbolt spell hits increase the damage of Corruption by 3%
it stacks but im not sure how much

Would casting Corruption last get me more Shadow Bolt hits to increase its damage than my first DoT rotation or is it not worth it even if it does?

afaik you want to cast the highest damage per cast time first regardless of duration... But it all gets pointless pretty fast as the dots wear off in different times especially when you add some movement etc.

well, I think we can not have 'rotation' for warlock, since we are talking about 5-6 spells on different timers.

what we can talk about is 'priority' of spells. I noticed that when I made simulator application to check real effect on number of used spells in different 'rotation' scenarios - basically, what I could set for simulator, and what I also really use in game, is 'priority'.

Basically, all DoTs should be used to maximize DPS. So if you only have one missing, next free time (ie when your current SB ends) you recast that one - no need for any 'priority' there. But it is needed if two DoTs expire before you get chance to recast. Now you need to decide which one to recast first, and there you use your priority list. Same goes for occasion when you miss 3 DoTs.

Someone might ask "if we want all DoTs up, and if 2 or 3 are missing, we will recast all of them one after other anyway, then why is it so important in which order we do it, or with what 'priority'? ". Answer is - those DoTs with higher priority (that we recast first) will have noticeably more "uptime" than those with lower priority. So it may happen that your #1 DoT is up about 95% of fight time, whwile your #3 DoT is up about 80% of time.

Now, 'priority' of spells could be:

1) longer duration spells first, as tetracycloide suggested,
2) best damage per cast first as suggested galzohar
3) best 'effective' DPS spells first
4) best 'single' DPS first


What is 'effective' DPS? It is DPS of DoT reduced by lost DPS from SB due to time lost casting this DoT and also time lost casting additional LTs if needed. Easiest way to find 'effective DPS' is to use XLS calculator. After you set all your stats, set to use only SB and LT, and write down DPS. Then check CoA for use and difference between new DPS and old one is CoA's 'effective' DPS. Check off CoA and repeat same for CoD, immo, UA etc.

While above 'effective' DPS will be different for different builds, it may come suprising for some ppl that it also greatly differs from perceived DoTs DPS. Some example for one affliction build:

CoA/CoD ~ 107 DPS
Corruption ~ 93 DPS
UA ~ 87 DPS
Siphon Life ~ 27 DPS
Immolate ~ 19 DPS


While above list may be unexpected for some, it shows how much total warlock DPS will increase if that spell is used (or decrease if not used), not what is actual DPS of one of those spells.

Now, personally i think that 4th method should be used to decide priority list. Above 3rd method is suitable do decide which spell is worth using (ie, if effective DPS is above zero, you should use it), and it shows that ALL warlock DoTs should be used.

But once we decided we want to use all DoTs, time lost to recasting DoT is not so important. Imagine situation where we have 3 DoTs missing: CoA, immolate and Siphon Life. We are going to recast all 3 in next 3*1.5 sec , regardless of priority order. Therefore we are not going to cast SB in that period, regardless of what priority we use. That is why we should recast first those DoTs with most 'single' DPS. That is simple DPS as 'average damage of one DoT / Duration of DoT'. In above case that would be :

Corruption ~ 174
UA ~ 168
CoA ~ 167, or CoD ~ 133
Immolate ~ 115
Siphon Life ~ 74

Order here is noticeably different from one with 'effective' DPS, but this order is one that shoul dbe used as 'priority' order to refresh DoTs.

Like it's been mentioned in this thread, after your initial DoT applying, and if you intend to keep all dots refreshed there isn't a rotation so you'll end up getting Corruption as last casted in some cycles and not in others.

When I got the 4 set bonus, and to attempt to get the most out of this I changed my cycle to:

UA, Immolate, Corruption, SL (only once every two cycles) and SB spam till all run out. This basically allows a rotation, with Corruption cast last to benefit the most from the set bonus. I'm not sure which one offers higher DPS though, seemed quite similar to me.

After you have determined that a DoT is worth casting becuase it's effective DPS is > 0 or it's damge/cast time are higher than SB (basically the same thing), there are really only two cases to consider when you're applying a DoT: applying when you know your DoT will last the full duration and applying when you know the mob will die before the DoT is finished ticking.

In the first case it does not matter what order you cast your DoTs in you will always get the same DPS from your DoTs because they have a fixed duration and a fixed amount of damage. The only consideration, in this case, is how divisable the blocks of leftover time are by the cast time of you shadowbolts. If you cast order often results in spam windows of say, 4 secs, then you're missing a lot of possible SB casting time because you can't cast 2 full SBs and if you do you end up with DoT gaps both are a drop in DPS. As a general rule casting longer duration DoTs first will result in longer casting windows because you are not spending part of the duration of your short DoTs casting your long DoTs.

In the second case things get a lot more complex, effective DPS and damage per cast time will change based on when your DoT expires due to the untimely demise of your target. In these cases it can be very difficult to properlly apply DoTs at all because you're never 100% sure exactly when the mob will die nor are you really able to dynamically calculate the dmg/cast time of all of your skills. If you had a mod that showed estimated time till death based on average raid DPS AND a mod that dynamically adjusted damage/cast time based on this number then it would yield the optimal spell to cast.

The best rule of thumb is to treat a boss mob that is this close to death the same way you would treat ordinary trash, whatever that may be. For me it would mean refreshing UA and Corr, which are my highest DPS DoTs and also provide a chance at NF procs. After that I would just cast SB until the target died which is going to be within the next 15 secs.

I'll ignore the LT for a sec here because it's really hard to figure out - and if you're not figuring out LT doing the "effective" DPS will be much harder and give the exact same results as calculating the highest damage per cast time. Highest damage per cast minus the damage lost by shadowbolt in that same casting time will sort your spells in the exact same order as you're just subtracting a constant from all of them.
Of course when mana starts being an issue LT time needs to be taken into account as well, and I never really looked into DPM of warlock spells.

This is not exactly correct, at least not according to simulator that i made to check effect of different spell orders. You didnt take into account that spells that are last on priority refresh order will have noticeably less "uptime", especially if you use lot of dots like afflic. Then you will often have case with 2 dots missing at same time, and sometimes 3 too - and if you always refresh Dot1 as first and Dot4 as last, it may result in Dot1 being up and ticking over 90% of time, while Dot4 being up and ticking under 80% of time.

Now, it would not matter if all our DoTs have same damage per tick (ie actual DPS - damage per second). And in fact, CoA, UA and Corr are very close in that area. But imagine that you have Dot4 that has 4 times better damage per tick as Dot1. Then if you refrest Dot1 first you will lose noticeably on your damage due to Dot4 being up only 80% of time. It would be better to cast Dot4 first.

Again, in real warlock situation, differencies are fairly small for our main DoTs, since they are close in DPS, although Immolate (at ~115 dps) is better to be cast after Corruption (~ 174 dps)

Well, I'm not sure about that ;p you are ignoring DoT duration, so you are ignoring fact that one DoT may have tick damage twice as high as other DoT, and still have same "damage per cast".

Lets immagine that you have "super corruption SC" that does 4000 damage total in 15sec , and you have CoD that does 4500 damage in 60sec. Cast time for both spells is 1.5sec (global cooldown or cast itself,doesnt matter). In your case, you would put CoD as first spell since it has better 'damage per cast'. But you are ignoring fact that SC is doing 4 times more damage per tick (or per second). And if you apply reasoning from above comment on "uptime" of spells, it pays more to have better uptime on DoT with better damage per tick, in this case that is our "super corruption", even if its "damage per cast" is lower.

Will get 4 pieces T5 in a few weeks probably so just wondering how exactly does the bonus work? corruption > SB ( 3%) > SB (6%) > SB (9%) etc till corruption wears off then it start over a 0 when you recast corru?


Sounds like crap to me so hopefully I don't understand the concept ^^

I'm curious opinions on if 4 piece T5 > 2 piece T4 + 2 piece spellstrike (particularly in terms of set bonuses). I don't have 4 piece T5 and don't quite understand how the set bonus works, so it's hard to evaluate.

I find throwing doom/siphon when the fight begins, then UA->Corruption followed by immolate and a dark pact while all dots are ticking, then a few bolts & repeat to be most effective. With the 3 sec bonus on corruption i'd just put corruption before UA since when you recast them both they're right after the other.