I seem to have misplaced the math. For some reason they aren't on my own forums anymore, I must have purged them unwillingly when I was cleaning the forums.

I tested it on PTR approximatly a month ago in badlands. In my dot rotation it allowed me to send an extra shadow bolt as well. I will test it again once I get home tonight and post the data.

I'm at work right now so I don't have time to do elaborate math but:

Corruption: http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=27216
900 dmg over 18 secs. 150 dmg every 3 secs.
The new corruption (with t4 4pc) would be 1050 dmg over 21 secs. 150 dmg every 3 secs.

Shadow Bolt: http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=27209

Tetra and nenad are the pro's at math so they would be able to specify it better.

t5 4 piece over 20s:
assuming 1200 self-buffed shadow
0/21/40 shadow spec

base corruption dmg: 900 + .93(1200) = 2016 ..or.. 336/tick
base shadowbolt dmg: 572 + 1.0571(1200) = 1841

2206 with procs over a full duration....
2206 - 2016 = 190 overal dmg increase over 20s...
+9.5dps increase.


WOW that sucks....UNLESS:
Reapplying corruption before the previous ends would keep the proc stacking (it works for talented drain life keep in mind...) -- in which case you get roughly 3% increase every 3s or 1% per second.

In that case a long fight over several minutes would make this set bonus extremely amazing... for a 5 minute fight where corruption is kept up, that would increase corruption damage by 300%!!! meaning that ticks at that point would get up over 1k easily with NO damage modifying debuffs... =/ thats insanity. Let's hope that is how it works.


Things that could throw this off:
- hit/crit not factored in
- human error (slow casting, lag, whatever)

Feel free to point out errors in my math or if you know something I dont please speak up..
-Shag

Well, and this is just off the top of my head, but here it goes anyway...

Without bonus

900 + .93(1200) = 2016

900 + .93(1201) = 2016.93

With bonus

(7/6) * (900 + .93(1200)) = 2352

(7/6) * (900 + .93(1201)) = 2353.085

So, from .93 to 1.085

Assuming it works the way everyone says it works that is.

No matter how you slice it, no matter what talents you have, if the bonus works by adding an extra tick of equal damage it's a flat 16.6% total damage increase without changing the overal DPS of corruption at all. The longer DoT is meaningful for DPS gains in other contexts however. The most obvious is more SB spam time, which is always a plus. The less obvious is higher average uptime. Basically if a DoT lasts longer and it takes you x amount of time, on average, to get it back up then over the course of a fight you are counting a fewer number of x's as a result of casting corruption less often.

Just playing around with my current stats on the warlock sheet suggests a realized DPS gain of around 1.1-1.2% remaining farily consistant from pre-kara gear levels all the way through black temple.

yes, my XLS shows about 8 DPS increase (or about 17 +dmg equivalent) for similar stats on lock (1200 shadow...).

Although you didnt take into consideration few issues, some of them increasing effect of bonus set, others decreasing it:

1) you used best theoretical situation to cast SBs in chain, so you managed to cast 7 SBs during 18sec of orruption. On real raid you would need to recast some other DoT in meantime, or use LT or something else, so rarely (almost never) would you cast 7 SBs during one corruption time of 18sec. In my XLS i modeled it using exact number of casted SBs in period to determine average number of SBs per 18sec. It depends on build and spells used (if CD or CoA, UA or not etc), but average time between two SBs for demo or destro who use CoD,corr,immo and SBs is bit under 4sec. That makes 4.5 SBs on average per 18sec of corruption [this will reduce effect of bonus set]

2) you didnt count possible talent modifiers for Corruption damage (like 10% SM or MD+SL), nor effests from ISB on Corruption during raid boss fight. That could get total damage of corruption from 2016 to 2300ish [this will increase effect of bonus set]


But even while i considered above things in my XLS, i end up with similar numbers, ie 8 DPS, or +17 dmg equivalent. So, unless buff count is not reset when new corruption is applied, those are numbers we could expect.

It doesnt look much, but it is comparable with other set bonuses I included in XLS. For demo lock with 1150 shadow on gear, i get following values of sets, expressed in equivalent of +dmg,:

- Spellstrike : 16
- Voidheart 2pc: 17
- Corruptor 4pc: 19

That's some interesting math for the t5 4 piece. An interesting conversation came up last night after seeing some claims on other forums.

Has it been considered that the 4 piece T5 increases "raid" corruption damage? (ie: Does it increase everyone individually by 8 DPS?)

Quoting the T5 4 piece:

(4) Set: Your Shadowbolt spell hits increase the damage of Corruption by 3% and your Incinerate spell hits increase the damage of Immolate by 3%.

Note how it says "of Corruption" or "of Immolate" therefore not specifying for example, "of your Corruption" or "of your Immolate". I personally was not going for Corruptor set bonus' but if this is the case, would it not be efficient to have a Shadow Destro Lock for Corruption increase and a Fire Destro Lock for Immolate increase?

I recently compiled a gear wishlist and it was deemed to scale more with Shadow, but if this 4 piece would actually give us the chance to increase raid Immolate and raid Corruption (since we have a Shadow Destro and a Fire Destro), then I would not respec for Shadow Destro quite yet. Does anyone have experience with this? Or some way to prove or disprove with math till we can prove it in practice.

thanks for elaborating on my post nenad, you definitely covered more bases than I did =), that's interesting to see how minimal the set bonuses are in TBC.

There is a way to test if the 4pc affects other warlocks' corruptions fairly easily on raid trash and on mobs in the world, so as soon as I or someone I know gets 4pc I would love to test that out. If it turned out to work that way, it would increase the value of 4pc over instead taking some other gear with better general stats (cowl of engineer over t5helm etc)

The 2pc set is proving quite useful in very many situations though-- keeps my succubus alive more often than not (0/40/21) on fights like tidewalker, leotheras, VR where there is alot of raid damage but it is controlled and not targeted at pets.

/me goes back to lurking until he has another revelation
-Shag

Some of those numbers may be misleading, since they do depend on warlock stats (like +shadow). Generally we have two types of effects - those that produce some % effect, and they scale better with gear, and those that produce some fixed +dmg effect, and they are usually betetr for low gear but scale bad with gear.

Thats why I added 'DPS % increase' indicator in my XLS, along with already existing 'equivalent +dmg'. If we look at above mentioned 3 sets, but for different stats:

Demo Warlock with ~ 800 shadow, 10% crit and 10% hit on gear, :
- Spellstrike : 16 +dmg or 0.91% DPS increase
- Voidheart 2pc: 17 +dmg or 0.96% DPS increase
- Corruptor 4pc: 16 +dmg or 0.91% DPS increase

Demo Warlock with ~ 1200 shadow, 10% crit and 10% hit on gear, :
- Spellstrike : 16 +dmg or 0.77% DPS increase
- Voidheart 2pc: 17 +dmg or 0.82% DPS increase
- Corruptor 4pc: 20 +dmg or 0.94% DPS increase

Afflic Warlock with ~ 800 shadow, 10% crit and 10% hit on gear, :
- Spellstrike : 17 +dmg or 1.08% DPS increase
- Voidheart 2pc: 19 +dmg or 1.16% DPS increase
- Corruptor 4pc: 13 +dmg or 0.81% DPS increase

Afflic Warlock with ~ 1200 shadow, 10% crit and 10% hit on gear, :
- Spellstrike : 18 +dmg or 0.90% DPS increase
- Voidheart 2pc: 19 +dmg or 0.97% DPS increase
- Corruptor 4pc: 17 +dmg or 0.86% DPS increase

We can see few interesting things from above:
1) for demo, Spellstrike and Voidhearth have almost fixed effect in +dmg, with small or no change with better gear (ie, scale bad), while Corruptor has almost fixed effect in DPS % increase while its +dmg equivalent increase with better gear (ie it scale good)

2) same holds for afflic, Spellstrike and Voidheart almost fixed with +dmg, Corruptor almost fixed in DPS%, so in theory it scale better.

3) Spellstrike and Voidheart have slightly better effect for afflic. Explanation is due to fact that demo with same +shadow on gear has effectively 150 more +damage due to improved fel armor (30) and pet (120). Therefore, any fixed +dmg increase will have slightly less benefit.

4) Corruptor has noticeably worse effect for affliction. That is explained by fact that in addition to CoD, corr, immo, SB and LTs that Demo cast, Afflic cast UA and SL, thus making average time between SBs longer, ie less 3% buffs during corruption time

is there any buff icon when that bonus is applied? Ie some icon like ISb has, with counter 1,2,3... ?

If there is such buff icon, where it appears - on mob or on player?

If it appears on player, it would probably be player-only buff. If it appears on mob, there is chance for it to be raid-wide buff, but then I'm not sure how it would exactly work. For example, will then Sbs from other locks influence buff numbers on one lock corruption? If that is case, we could have not 5 Sbs casted during one corruption, but 15 SBs (if 3 locks tith set are in raid) - which in itself would increase hugely effect. And if such increased effect also affect corruptions of other locks.... it would be huge ;p

I have 4/5 T5 on my Warlock.

You cannot reapply Corruption after casting at least one Shadowbolt with Corruption active; you get the "A more powerful spell is already active" message when trying to do so. Can't recall if it works the same with Immolate/Incinerate combo.

The bonus stacks with each casting of Shadowbolt/Incinerate, but resets once the initial Corruption and/or Immolate end.

The bonus only applies to you, not to other Warlocks in the party/raid (/cry).

No buff or dubuff or icon that you get when spamming Shadowbolt/Incinerate with Corruption/Immolate active.

Hope that helps some.

As far as I know, there's nothing visual to the effect, neither on the player or the target. It's just a passive increase.

That said, I have a rather silly question about this: Does this effect proc only off Shadowbolt HITS, as the tooltip says? Meaning it won't proc off SB crits? I suppose imp SB with this effect would account for some pretty imba Corruption ticks, so it would make sense if those 2 things don't 'stack'.

Thanks for the info Maalaki, much appreciated.

In order to crit, you have to hit, so I'm pretty sure the crits will qualify as a "hit" for this bonus.

I was looking at spells on wowhead trying to find how certain effects are applied but when I came in to post some ideas, Maalaki answered most of them. I would like to add them anyway for discussion purposes as I still have one question.

Imp Corr & Immo (T5 4pc)
Effect
Apply Aura: Dummy
Value: 3
Server-side script

Imp Corr & Immo (T4 4pc)
Effect
Apply Aura: Add Flat Modifier (1)
Value: 3000

Recurring Power (Eye of Mag)
Effect
Apply Aura: Proc Trigger Spell
Value: 1
Proc chance: 100%

Improved SB
Effect
Apply Aura: Proc Trigger Spell
Proc chance: 100%

Both Recurring Power and ISB have icons with the effect on wowhead, but the two 4 pieces don't. Confirming that T4/T5 4 piece don't provide an "active" buff on either the player or target. Makes alot of sense that it's a server side script with value of 3 (+3%) that modifies the corruption, the only thing it did not directly confirm was the raid wide or self increase. Does anyone know what the "Apply Aura: Dummy" is? Is it just applying an extra script to your character to send to the server on each shadowbolt hit? Are there other "buffs" out there with this Dummy effect?

nice data ;p

BTW, when you say "bonus stacks with each casting ", does that means you have checked that when you cast several SBs during Corruption, Corruption ticks change after 2nd and 3rd SB? Ie does those 3% stack so we have 6%, 9% increase?

I expected some buff that would show count of those buffs - without buff, it would be possible that it only apply 'Aura' that gives flat 3% after first SB, and stay that way untill end of Corruption.

Thus my question from above - if more SBs are applied, does Corruptio start ticks with 6%, 9% or more increase?

If yes, then my current model in XLS is correct ;p

Yes.

For example, I cast Corruption on a mob then proceed to Shadowbolt it. Once the 1st SB lands, the next tick of Corruption will be increased by 3%. After the next Shadowbolt lands, the next Corruption tick will be increased by another 3%, and so on, until Corruption expires. Once Corruption expires, the "stack" resets.

Hope that's the answer you're looking for.

Tnx, that is the answer i was looking for ;p

Basically, it means my model in XLS for that set bonus is correct.

But one side element that you mentioned, and that can not be easily included in any model, may have slight negative impact on DPS with this set bonus:

In general, reapplying any DoT before it expires is bad practice and reduce DPS - if corruption has 1sec to go, it is still better to cast SB for 2.5sec, and reapply Corruption after that. Those 1.5sec that Corruption was not up and running is still less of DPS loss than if we reapplied Corruption on that 1sec before expire - since that means we wasted 2sec of last Corruption tick, compared to only 1.5sec wasted if SB was used. For CoA (with best ticks at end) reapplying before end is even worse.

BUT, there are few reasons why not being able to reapply DoT like Corruption can be bad for DPS:

1) in cases when we know inactivity time is imminent (for example, we are knockbacked in air on Gruul just before shatter, or we get warning that Maiden is about to silence etc) and we see our Corruption is 1sec before end, it pays off to refresh it - we will lose those 2sec of last tick, but we will gain 10sec of corruption ticking while we are unable to (re)cast

2) if we are trying to keep DoTs on multiple mobs, while nuking primary target. When you 'steal' time to change target from primary to add to reapply Dots, if you can not reapply Corruption you will lose DPS, either by waiting for last few sec to pass, or by changing targets back to primary and again few sec later back to that mob to reapply


Above cases are situational, and it is hard to model or calculate potential DPS loss due to those, but I certainly would need to get used to not being able to refresh Corruption before end ;p

Very unlikely you will notice this case. As Maalakai said, the "More powerful spell" message is gained only if you try to reapply the dot after shadowbolting the mob.
If you are keeping DoTs on multiple targets, generally you won't be casting any shadow bolts on them, so you can reapply it when ever you wish.

true - but that brings another interesting question: is buff counter due to corruptor set tied to specific corruption on mob, or to player?

Or more precisely, if you have two corruptions on two mobs, and you nuke one mob, will only that corruption get 3% bonus, or both corruptions? It would be logical to be only one corruption on nuked mob, but since there is no visible buff counter on mob ....

anyway, I agree that we would probably not notice case #2, but I'm sure I would notice case #1 ;p

ISB uptime is a value that changes with the more crit you have and when you use the models on the spreadsheet it automatically factors in the changes in ISB uptime that adding crit would provide. Since ISB uptime improves overall shadowdamage when the model is used the value for the next +crit rating is including the damage from extra crits as well as the damage from extra ISB uptime.

When you set the ISB uptime to a fixed amount by using a custom ISB uptime you are telling the spreadsheet that ISB will always be up for a precise percentage of the time. When the sheet calculates that value for the next +crit rating with the ISB uptime set to a fixed percentage it only calculates the increase in damage from extra crits. It does not include the increase in damage from extra ISB uptime becuase, by setting the ISB uptime to a fixed percentage, you told the spread sheet that increasing your crit will not change ISB uptime.

I don't know why the two sheets would be putting a different value on crit because, as far as I know, they have both always yielded fairly similar results for me. Is it possible you are comparing the wrong stat weights? Perhaps you're looking at +crit as a percentage of 1 +damage on one sheet and +crit as a direct DPS contribution on another?

So if i need to calculate weight values of +crit rating with max accuracy - i need to use one of the predefined ISB models. And if i need to calculate DPS with max accuracy - i can enter ISB uptime manually. Now i understand how it works. Thanks.

Folks may find the following tables helpful:

SimulationCraft/Trinkets - Shadowpriest.com Wiki

It converts trinkets, set bonuses, and other procs into +dmg equivalents for various class/talent combinations.....

Hum well i got a question that might have been asked in the previous 30 pages but i dont feel like reading everything ^^' so here it is

My problem is most likely aggro, I tested myself on Dr.Boom and had around 900 constant dps(a bit more if i dont mess up cd), (1100 spell dmg gear, 42/1/18 spec) that goes withouth any raid buff, but no interrupt by movement either.

If i go all out against mob or some boss (i also let tank get base aggro befor starting dps), even with salvation, I have time of inactivity (stop dps) otherwise I would get the aggro. Is it the tank's fault for not generating enough aggro or its normal for me to have to slow down the dps?

If it IS normal, is there any build that would generate (alot if possible) less aggro with nearly same dps?

The only way a warlock can lessen their TPS, is by utilising their pet...so full Demo tree. The other lock thread 'How do you do high dps' has some nice posts from Nyarla(cant spell the name) talking about Felguard performance.

I assume you have threat reduction in both affliction/destro trees

A tactic I found on trash pulls was to spread your dots across multiple mobs ( at least ones with no agro reset). this lessens your dots getting bumped as the dps is being applied non raid focus targets. It Is dps whoring...but hell, its what affliciton locks are best at.just keep up all dots on all mobs..you might not even have time to shadowbolt...but you are using all your highest dps per cast time spells.

This will split your dps across multiple mobs, lessening single target threat.

Also depends on your tanks gear, and his rottation to maximise his TPS(threat per second). Maybe point him to Elitist Jerks threads on it, to try boost it D

Well i was already spreading dots when theres more then 1 target being tanked, im most likely only doing karazhan now (id do 25 mens but were not enough in guild) so we have like 2 or 3 mob at once only being tanked and the demo spec isnt the best when fighting AoE bosses i suppose