BOOM! The Corpse Explosion thread - Page 3

Foxx2405 · 01/22/09, 9:29 AM

Yea, I did some soloing today, and a quick heroic. And i have to say in trash this can be pretty awesome.

You can fit it in your rotation pretty seamless now.

Volrath50 · 01/22/09, 9:50 AM

Since the patch I've done a few heroics and some Naxx10. I'm really loving the new CE. It hits for just a little less than Death Coil, but obviously is AoE. With a second unholy DK in my raid, and both of us with the CE glyph, we had corpse exploding the moment they died, with body parts flying left and right. It was beautiful.

The damage is respectable for AoE situations, and it's a ton of fun. Defiantly worth the talent point, at least from a tanking PoV.

Although it's sort of hard to tell, it appeared to me that sometimes, with the CE glyph, it would simply blow up two recently killed targets, instead of only blowing the second one up if the CE killed it. Anyone else observe this?

slant · 01/22/09, 10:17 AM

It's flat-out amazing on trash. Just looking at exploding ghouls, my fully talented/glyphed/raidbuffed ghoul has 33,000HP, so the AE does an incredible ~8200 damage to each member of an AE pack, and I have NoTD so I can always resummon another ghoul.

Even ignoring the ghoul explode, CU does ~1000 damage per member of the pack every 5 seconds and is well worth the 40RP. My trash DPS is competitive with the mages now.

Now that's just trash and I know that many raiders don't care. I disagree with that standpoint to some extent as clearing trash takes precious raidtime before naxx becomes unplayable due to lag around 8PM. But ignoring all that, most importantly, corpse explosion is fun!

raremage · 01/22/09, 10:25 AM

Originally Posted by Squished

There's no way a ghoul is going to do more dps in 3 (1.5?) seconds, than by exploding and being immediately resummoned, especially when there's more than one mob.

It's at least 3 seconds, I suspect it is longer. In my experience the resummoning doesn't mean the ghoul is ready to take action, it then goes thru the summoning animation, and that takes a second or two. Admittedly I have not timed the process, so this is based on my observation only - at work at the moment and cannot test it.

Not at all suggesting the damage total is not more than can be done by keepig the ghoul alive, but I also wanted to be clear that the turnaround on ghoul exploded/summoned/reapplying ghoul DPS is not instantaneous by any means.

Squished · 01/22/09, 10:49 AM

Originally Posted by Foxx2405

Ok I ran a very quick test, unfortunately I cant do more at the moment because I got the glyph bug now so I cant summon ghouls anymore.

Same here, I got to explode my ghoul twice before the bug set in. I was looking forward to testing all this stuff. :-(

Originally Posted by Foxx2405

- It takes the ghoul 3 seconds to explode.
- During that time he still keeps attacking. Which is pretty interesting.
- Exploding the ghoul costs 40 RP

That all doesn't seem to bad, but the bad part is. Summoning a new ghoul takes too long. You're losing ~5 seconds because of the slow summoning.

Also after you cast your summon it takes the ghoul a little while to climb out of the ground and start hitting something. Or is that what you were talking about?

Can you still attack and use an ability during the 3 seconds it takes for your ghoul to explode?

Originally Posted by Kantri

The main problem I saw with it was that by the time there was a corpse available to blow up, most everything else was dead as well so it would hit maybe only 1 or 2 mobs in a pack.

I figure the following should work well to address that problem:

1. Tank gets initial agro on an aoe pull
2. immediately Leap your ghoul into the aoe
3. immediately explode your ghoul
4. asap explode your ghoul's corpse
5. IT > Pest > Howling blast, or whatever your aoe rotation is

Foxx2405 · 01/22/09, 11:17 AM

Originally Posted by Volrath50

Although it's sort of hard to tell, it appeared to me that sometimes, with the CE glyph, it would simply blow up two recently killed targets, instead of only blowing the second one up if the CE killed it. Anyone else observe this?

I've heared about this, I hope this is an intended change, as it would actually make the CE glyph worth using over say the Horn of Winter one.

Now that HoW generates RP and you usually have enough free GCD in a 2H unholy spec you can switch those.

Originally Posted by slant

It's flat-out amazing on trash. Just looking at exploding ghouls, my fully talented/glyphed/raidbuffed ghoul has 33,000HP, so the AE does an incredible ~8200 damage to each member of an AE pack, and I have NoTD so I can always resummon another ghoul.

Even ignoring the ghoul explode, CU does ~1000 damage per member of the pack every 5 seconds and is well worth the 40RP. My trash DPS is competitive with the mages now.

Now that's just trash and I know that many raiders don't care. I disagree with that standpoint to some extent as clearing trash takes precious raidtime before naxx becomes unplayable due to lag around 8PM. But ignoring all that, most importantly, corpse explosion is fun!

Ill probably keep it once they fix the ghoul bug.

What talent points are you guys dropping for it ?

The only thing I can do is drop 1 point out of Necrosis for it ( 4/5 -> 3/5 ), since i fear that dropping BCB or Virulence is a bigger dps loss.

Originally Posted by Squished

Also after you cast your summon it takes the ghoul a little while to climb out of the ground and start hitting something. Or is that what you were talking about?

I kinda mean the whole transition from explosion until your ghoul starts attacking again. The whole process of waiting for GCD + Summoning Ghoul + summoning animation. All added together you're looking at 4-5 seconds without ghoul dps.

Can you still attack and use an ability during the 3 seconds it takes for your ghoul to explode?

Yep, it starts casting explosion but it will continue doing auto attacks and claws. My combat log had a melee attack 1 second before the explosion and a claw in the same second as the explosion.

So the cast time of explosion on the ghoul doesn't subtract from its DPS, unlike how you stop attacking when you use explosion with Shadow of Death.

I figure the following should work well to address that problem:

1. Tank gets initial agro on an aoe pull
2. immediately Leap your ghoul into the aoe
3. immediately explode your ghoul
4. asap explode your ghoul's corpse
5. IT > Pest > Howling blast, or whatever your aoe rotation is

Probably, although it might be best to do step 5 first, seeing as the damage is probably affected by Ebon Plaguebringer and Rage of Rivendare

slant · 01/22/09, 12:15 PM

You probably won't have any choice in most situations. Remember CE costs 40 runic power.

Optikalusion · 01/23/09, 10:33 PM

Ran Naxx10 tonight, and this just became my new favorite ability.
With the glyph, if there are two corpses at your feet, it will blow both of them up. My average hit tonight on only trash was ~1500 (my gear is far from decent). So that's upwards of 12,000 damage for 40 RP on the bigger (4+) aoe packs, provided you have some corpses around to work with. And with the fast nature of AOE pulls, it really shines compared to the long drawn out damage of UB and diseases. I would say it's worth using at 3+ mobs unless you are certain you have 2 corpses and the glyph, then even with 2 mobs it's probably a dps gain over a death coil.
You can blow up pretty much anything except for skeletons on Noth. And it never gets old turning flying axes and little slimes into piles of meat.

But the absolute best part is blowing up the boss you just killed right as the ML goes to loot, scaring the bejeezus out of him. I only wish I knew this earlier so I could turn every first killshot into a meaty pile of vengeance!

Foxx2405 · 01/24/09, 5:02 AM

I personally love CE, I think it feels a gap that both UB and DC couldn't quite fill.
Namely that of burst AoE that you would want on trash aoe and grinding/soloing.

I think CE is a bit of a two sided something.
Min/maxers won't take it. It practically does nothing for boss fights, nor does it for pvp.

For everything else however it is great. Trash / Questing / Grinding, and hell the ability is just fun.
It weaves in nicely on aoe trash. And it has what UB lacks: AoE burst.

Waterboard · 01/25/09, 8:51 AM

CE as a tanking tool is amazing. In both 25 and 10 man Naxx I am the ot with either a paladin or a warrior or both. I already am the king of AE tanking (unholy spec) but this ability is amazing, If we get a 2nd pack of trash I can CE one of the bodies for the snap aggro before DND comes back up or just to give me time to IT/PS/Pestilence. Also i find I will be in an AE pack with 10 seconds left on unholy blight and 50+ RP, there isnt a better dmg:runic power ability.

in 5 mans it has it's uses too, you can drag the last guy of a pack with you to the next pull and use his body immediately.

I think after writing this I realize CE is really useful for chain-pulling groups regardless of raid or instance.

Tharvos · 01/25/09, 12:23 PM

I stil don't understand, why it has a cooldown.

- it can not crit
- it requiers a corpse
- it costs 40 RP, so you can't use it more often than twice in a row

Pre patch it had no cooldown, but did only 50% of the dmg it does today, but you were able to use it more than twice in a row, which was more total dmg than it is now or am i wrong?

I still think they should remove the CD and/or let it crit. It is still a talent and not a baseline skill.

slant · 01/25/09, 1:04 PM

CE would be a great baseline skill. Frost and especially blood could use the help. They could even add another talent, preferably in blood, to improve it further. As others have posted here it's almost exclusively a trash-clearing ability, and that's where blood falls short.

I don't have a major problem with cooldowns on skills fed by runic power. In this case, it takes 3-4 GCDs (4.5-6s) to generate 40RP, so it's not a huge inhibitor on using CE as part of a rotation, it just limits burst. The cooldown isn't necessary, but it's not anything I felt compelled to complain about.

Talamare · 02/01/09, 5:21 AM

Recount says this can crit

http://i44.tinypic.com/i6xdhc.png

Foxx2405 · 02/01/09, 11:07 AM

Originally Posted by Talamare

Recount says this can crit

http://i44.tinypic.com/i6xdhc.png

The crit chance on that makes no sense though. I'm actually more thinking something else is causing recount to think CE critted. Or maybe they borked up somewhere with the numbers on blizzards side.

Davia · 02/07/09, 11:19 AM

Perhaps Corpse Explosion only crits on the percentage granted by debuffs (winter's chill/improved scorch and totem of wrath/heart of the crusader) like Gargoyle.