evilhacker

I think something that needs to be reworked is that the damage model in the simulations reflects a sub-optimal damage cycle (which is emphasized by the graphs). For an affliction heavy warlock, siphon life and immolate don't really pay for themselves in terms of damage - they do less damage/time and mana than shadowbolt. I would imagine a full destruction warlock wouldn't optimize damage around corruption as much as an affliction warlock would.

Can you explain more about why DP is better than LT? I thought they both triggered the global cooldown in the same fashion and they should return about the same amount of mana. Even if it was significantly better, this would IMO skew the damage output numbers towards a DP/Dev build at 60 more than a 41 point affliction build.

I'm also skeptical about nightfall being a 4% damage boost - you still have a global cooldown after cast, so in my opinion, it's an improvement of 1 second on shadowbolt cast or 60% additional shadowbolt damage with a 4% proc rate. I would value this as a 2.4% improvement in shadowbolt DPS, not 4%.

I'm also skeptical about a 7% crit rate on CoD (it's never crit for me in 150 casts) and I'm pretty sure immolate has a 2 second cast.

I've got to tell you, I find the spreadsheet difficult to follow because field headings aren't carried through to the scenario tables and I'm not seeing how talents are applied to damage output.

 

nenad

For lvl 70 builds, you can see them all in XLS file. For lvl 60 I dont have them in XLS, but I did not consider every possible build ;p
BTW, demonology benefits in damage part mostly from talents that are above 20 points, like MD, Demonic Knowledge, SL and Demonic tactics, that is why i considered 41pts. That does not say 9/21/21 would not be valid for good DPS too ;p

I did not include pet DPS in any calculation, since I dont know how to accuratelly calculate, and it is situational damage (can not use it against all bosses)

Crit % was same on items for all builds in comparition, I dont think it was 'stacked' for affliction

Improved SB was taken into consideration.

CoS was not accounted, nor were CoE or mage/priest buffs. Like I explained in above post, they all benefit fire.shadow similary.

 

nenad

As I posted with pie-chart showing damage/cast time, it is not damage/time that you need to look when you want to find max DPS, it is damage/cast time.
Siphon Life has about 1485 dmg with all talents/modifiers, and you use 1.5sec to cast it. That means you produced 999 damage for 1sec used casting SL. Shadow Bolt has about 1568 damage with all talents/modifiers/crits on average, and you use 2.5 sec to cast it. That means you produced only 627 damage for 1sec used casting SB. That is why using SL does increase affliction lock DPS.

as for above, even if corruption for destro lock tick for less than for afflic, it still has mode damage/cast than SB or incinerate. Prctically every DoT has better damage/cast from every nuke.

I did not count Nightfall as 4% damage incrrease, i counted it as 4% reduction of SB cast time.

I dont have info that CoD crits differently than other spells. I was not sure if CoD crit since it is DoT, but since I think I saw some CoD crits, I included it as possible. If you have some correct numbers about CoD crit, i could fix in XLS - but again, CoD was not used in any "max DPS" builds ;p

I agree with that, it is not ideal to follow, but I didnt have time to do more ;p When I want to work on scenario, i always do copy/paste from scenario sheet to main calculation sheet, and then check field headings.

 

deathmancer

This was answered in the warlock theorycrafting thread: CoD is higher DPS because you gain 2.25 extra seconds per minute to dps with and if you fill that extra time with Drain lifes over multiple minutes for instance, it costs less mana total then refreshing CoA instead and does more damage regardless of whether or not you have improved CoA and Contagion.

Also am I correct in reading that your accounting of Improved shadowbolt is to increase shadowbolt damage by 1.6%??, even a conservative probabilistic model would show that a poorly geared Destruction lock is at least gaining 5% more shadow damage to corruption/cod/coa/shadow bolts in his cycle yet the multiplier isn't included in any of the dot calculations.

I haven't been able to test it yet, but I was under the Impression that S&F was additive to the spell damage to damage ratio. ie. 3/3.5 = .857 then getting shadow&flame adds .2 to this result changing the ratio to 1.057 spell damage to damage for shadowbolt. I'll test this next time i'm able to though.

 

• probiscus

CoD's inferior DPS might derive from the baseline 100s duration - which would ignore any damage from the 2nd CoD. Up the baseline to 120s could solve for that particular item.

In any case, I'm going to have to dig into this tread later on this evening - how do you guys have time to digest this stuff at work? X_x

 

Dinadass

Dark Pact invokes the caster global cooldown, not the pet. For example, I can not Dark Pact and Lifetap at the same time, but I can Dark Pact and Devour Magic at the same time with a felhunter.

For 100 seconds, the most DPS you can do is Amp CoD, followed by 1 and 2/3 CoA. If Amplify curse isn't working with CoD, you're still best off with a CoD, an Amp'ed CoA, and 2/3 of a normal CoA.

If Affliction is out-damaging destruction on single targets, while not needing any heals, there is some unbalance there I think. Although warlocks are one of the only classes that can easily raid with heavy investment into 2 different tress, I still think it might be better if Incinerate had it's DPS put back to where it was before the nerf, or at least slightly higher than it is now. I'll still be Affliction, but destro warlocks deserve their time to shine too.

 

Myonax

A couple of things from level 70, You would never use SoC on a single target.
1) It doesn't stack with corruption (SoC over writes it)
2) As far as I have seen the explosion of extra damage doesn't happen to the mob you cast it on.
3) Its 800 mana a cast.

Are you adding all the right +damage coefficients for demo. At 70 they get +150 damage from fell armor (affliction/destroy get 100).
How much damage did you give full destroy for demonic knowledge? On TBC Beta I am getting +150-180 depending on what pet.
Are you adding 5% damage from soullink in TBC? With Succubus you should have a total of 20% additional damage from demonology buffs and those bonuses are after the additional +200-230 damage from improved armor and demonic knowledge. Also if raw DPS is your goal you would stop at 40 points in demonology and not 41. The build I am using on TBC is 21/40/0. I get instant corruption/siphon life/nightfall improved life tap and improved drain life along with the phenomenal raw boost in damage demonology gives you. I clock in at just shy +1000 shadow damage and a 20% damage multiplier. With the proper talent choices I cannot believe improved corruption/shadow mastery and the few other damage bonus you get from affliction overcome that many raw damage upgrades you get from demonology.

 

• ka

+130 not +150.

 

nenad

It is true that CoD has only slightly lower DPS than CoA, and for total DPS over time, considering its lower damage/cast, it yields slightly larger theoretical values. For example, if i use 120sec cycle, i get around 99k dmg from afflic using CoD and 97k if using CoA.
But there are few reasons why in reality, and even theoretically, CoA should still yield more damage:
- CoD deliver full damage only if boss mob dies after full minute or close. In one minute period CoD deliver about 1k more damage that CoA (if we consider damage added casting other spell). That 1k damage is something that CoA will produce in about 10sec, so if CoA tick 10sec longer, it result in more damage. It accumulate over time, so for long fights it has less negative effect on CoD if last CoD was not used, but for fights under 4min, CoD would win in about 25% cases (if fight end randomly with equal distribution)
- CoD is still musch more prone to being removed from buff list. 40 slots are not infinite
- CoD potentially has more risk of getting mog aggro on lock

you are correct here, I included imp SB effect on SB itself, not on DoTs. And on SB, i used more conservative value, since only way to get full 5% on SB, is if you cast only SB once effect is up, which would ignore need to LT/DP if low on mana, need to recast DoTs (which potentially can lower DPS) etc.
But I will add more accurate effect on both SB and DoTs, which will not be 5% fixed, but will be linked to number of SBs actually used and actual crit chance in build.
I do not expect that it will change relation in damage between builds, since most lvl 70 builds have imp. SB ;p

I expected that S&F adds to same thing to which Demonic Knowledge adds, ie to +dmg ( to bonus damage from items), rather than to *dmg% (to spell cast time modifier). If that would be different, I believe same would hold for Empowered Corruption, and would indeed change numbers a bit.

 

nenad

I think that Amplify works only with CoA, CoW or CoEx - at least according to tooltip.
Also, I did not include in DPS talent effects that are on long cooldown timers, like 3min Amplify. I will think if there is some valid way to include them too ;p

I also find that strange, and i still suspect my calculations more than build balance on that one. But so far noone posted some correction to my original calculations that would increase destro damage or decrease afflic. Well, unless i count above thing about DP being on caster cooldown - when i verify that, it would have big impact on afflic DPS ;p

 

• Kruthal

When you are comparing builds for max dps, you don't consider aggro, that argument is moot. 40 debuff slots are not infinite true, but it should be enough for 25-man raids with minor restrictions on debuffs. And if you are modeling around an interval that is not a multiplicative of 60 seconds, the remaining seconds should be used for CoA, but the first n 60 second intervals should be used for CoD. So for your 100 second interval, you should model one CoD and 40 seconds of CoA (as has already been mentioned in this thread), as this is what gives you the highest dps.

And really, you should exclude CoD/CoA anyway for single target sustained dps. The times you will be able to use one of them instead of CoS/CoE/CoR are likely to be rare, unless Blizzard starts making lots of bosses with specials that scale with AP, or are immune to fire and frost or some other gimmick. 4 warlocks in a 25 raid is a bit excessive to expect I'd think.

Other than that, thanks for taking the time. And I'd really like to know how Shadow & Flame/Empowered Corruption works, I think most casters would ;-).

 

Vazu

I seriously doubt Warlocks will be using CoA in 25-man raids, and almost never in 10-mans.

Consider that CoE, CoS, CoR and CoW are all perfectly viable/good debuffs that impact your raid far more than CoA does, 95% of the time. Say you bring three Warlocks to a 25-man raid. Which two debuffs would you like to drop, so this Affliction 'lock can use CoA? Will this Warlock's total overall damage from CoA be greater than CoR for melee, or CoW for healers to keep up? In a 10-man, how do you justify using CoA with one Warlock in the raid? The only debuff I can see raids considering a loss of would be CoW. Which means for a pure Affliction 'lock to benefit from CoA, you'd be bringing 4 Warlocks. Now, let's see an Affliction max DPS build without CoA or a Demonology build with at best, a sac'd pet. Consider that demo lock pets may not survive longer fights with constant AoE damage. What if this Affliction 'lock is taking damage? Now your nukes are getting interrupted. How does that impact your final raid DPS on a boss fight? Destruction 'locks don't worry about that. Throw a Paladin in our group and we're at 100% uninterruptable nukes. Did you factor that into your numbers?

Now, if you're talking about a single-target max DPS build where you literally just stand there taking no AoE damage, and your raid doesn't need the benefit of alternate debuffs to CoA.. ok.. I just think that discussion is pretty moot, because Warlock DPS is largely situational. To say that "X" build is better than "Y" build can be discussed based on specific raid encounters, but for the most part, I don't see one spec as drastically better than others. I'm speaking generally of course. This assumes that a Warlock is picking up useful talents in their primary tree and good supporting talents in others. Also, gear selection.

 

nenad

yes, in all scenarios where SoC was used, Corruption was not used.

oh.. this detail i didnt know, and it would change DPS on single mob, basically resulting in Corruption being better than SoC in my calculations. It will still not change difference between builds, since SoC was 'used' for all 3 builds instead of corruption.

on thottbot it says 882mana. Is that wrong, or ..?

you are correct here, for demonic i did not include 30% increase due to Demonic Aegis ..will fix that ;p

I'm adding 140, since now at lvl 60 i'm getting from 130 to 160 when pet has all buffs. If your numbers are from effect on lvl 70 (when pet may have more HP/mana), then i will change to 165

no, i count 3% for soul link. Will it change to 5% in TBC? if so, i can change in calculations ;p

yes, succy would give 10%, although i counted 5% from felguard. While felguard adds ressists, and gives better +dmg bonus due to more HP, I will try to calc with succy too. Btw, are your above numbers for 150-180 for succy or for felguard?
I did not calculate for 21/40/0 but I will check it in my calcs for "max DPS" ;p

 

nenad

True - if we know that boss will not die in first 60sec (and we know that ;) , 1xCoD and then few CoA would be better - only hard to fit 60sec+2*24sec into 100sec, so i would have to use fractional part of CoA or change period from 100sec to something else ;p

I agree with this. But at start i mentioned that "max DPS" scenarios are not exactly usual for boss fights, since for some builds they also require additional healing. I should probably change that "no heal" scenario include also "no CoA/CoD", and it would be realistic raid scenario ;p

 

Lamaros

Didn't view the xls yet [viewed now], but a quick question:

Why are you using CoA in a Destruction build over CoE (With Incinerate)? Surely the 15% there would make a difference given CoA does so little of the damage output.

As you will often have to have CoE up, at the cost of CoA, it should be also be factored.

What are the numbers like with no CoA and CoE. That's a big swing to Destruction.

Also, you are assuming a very low crit level, which affects Destruction the most. Probably not a substantial difference, but if you crit three times more often (My crit chance in crappy gear is currently 18% in destruction) it will be worth mentioning.

Pretty sure S&F applies to Damage %.

So SB becomes 103%ish
Incin becomes 91%ish.

There are many more problems that could be raised too. I think you need to remodel from scratch. I get the impression you don't play a warlock? There are many considerations that you might miss because of this.

Your spreadsheet is very hard to follow and seems to use hard numbers in places for no reason I can understand.

Did you factor less LT because of Incins better Mana efficiency compared to SB? Etc.

 

Dastardly

I'm confused (quite possibly) in your calc you have the Rank 7 CoA (level 67) but compare it against the level 60 CoD? At 70 you would have CoD rank 2 which out DPS's CoA

At 60 CoD out DPS's CoA and with the new spells @ 70 continues to. Only point where CoA out DPS's CoD is between level 67 and 70. (Please correct me if I'm wrong!)

 

nenad

I presumed same conditions for all builds, and I did not count raid buffs like CoS/CoE for 10% and mage/priest for 15%. But I included raid buffs in new XLS.

I will compare main builds in "no CoA" scenario, and will check if destro gets better ;p

But "no CoA' will reduce damage similary to all builds, just as considering CoS/CoE and other raid damage buffs will increase damage similary, so i expect difference between afflic/destro to remains

Is that 18% with talent crit bonuses like Devastation and Backlash, or only from items? I assumed conservative 7% on items, so DS build would have 15%.

Is this based on some test in TBC beta, or it is you interpretation of talent description? ;p

well, ignoring other remarks, i'm curious what gave you impression I do not play warlock? ;p

yes, as you can see i calculate total mana used separatelly for Sb and Incin, and when I was comparing incin vs SB, I changed needed LT number to in both cases use just under 6k mana. Then I selected option with more damage ( in that case, SB)

 

Lamaros

Compare the % of total damage CoA is for Affliction and for Destruction in your charts. Why would you assume they stay the same if CoE is used instead?

You took the base crit chance (Around 6-7%?) and added 7% for items, then 8% for Destruction talents?

Based off Live. Have not tested to be sure. I assumed it was self evident and didn't see numbers that looked out of place when I had it.

Because of the assumptions you make.

I can't see that. Your spreadsheet is very hard to follow. :)

 

whi

Sadly, it does trigger gcd and obviously cant be used when 1 is triggered already. :/

Btw with +625 sdmg/sm/contagion/emp corr my corruption ticks for 344-345, which would mean it gets a 1.56 modifier.

 

nenad

Due to some comments in thread, I slightly modified general conditions:
- set cycle to 108sec, to better include CoD/CoA comparitions
- increased %crit before talents to 10%
- included 3 +hit%
- included raid damage buffs, 10% CoS/CoE and 15% mage/priest
- added "no CoA' scenarios in addition to "max DPS", "no heals" and "sustained", and removed use of CoA in all but "max DPS"
Also, I did following corrections in calculations:
[things that influence all builds]
- removed AE element from SoC, which made Corruption better choice overall
- added to calculations effect from raid buffs like CoS/CoE
- made improved SB math more accurate. It now depend on number of used SB and actual crit chance, and is not added if Incinerate/SP used
[things that influence demonology- generally increased DPS]
- add