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Old 10/25/10, 8:00 PM   #226
dunka
Glass Joe
 
Orc Warlock
 
Whisperwind
Originally Posted by Neddie View Post
I was testing out destruction on a training dummy the other day, and with this priority list, it seemed like a lot more work than any other class I've played since 4.0.1 came out. I felt like I never really had an opportunity to use Incinerate because keeping up all the other buffs / debuffs took up all my time. Soul fire every 15s, immolate every 15s, Conflagrate every 8s, Bane of Doom every minute, Corruption every 18s, Chaos Bolt every 12s, and then responding to Empowered Imp procs for extra Soul Fires.

In comparison, the "filler" spells for Elemental Shamans (lightning bolt) was probably 60% of my casts, and the filler spells for a fire mage was upwards of 80% of them. Demonology is also less busy even though it seems to have a longer priority list mostly because Hand of Gul'dan refreshes Immolate, and most of the other high priority items are either responding to procs (molten core) or using cooldowns (soul burn, metamorphosis).

Am I missing something, or is the current Destro playstyle very John Madden?
I find that using something like buttontimers makes this pretty manageable. Be sure to set conflag/chaos bolts to be cooldowns, and track the rest as auras. I find I get a lot of incinerates in doing it that way.

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Old 10/25/10, 11:00 PM   #227
Krasher
Von Kaiser
 
Worgen Warlock
 
Laughing Skull
Has anyone researched if Axe Toss shares a DR with any other stuns? If so which? Trying to figure out if it's safe to actually throw in an extra stun for LK valks to just make it easier some times.

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Old 10/26/10, 12:25 AM   #228
Paranon
Glass Joe
 
Human Warlock
 
Dalaran
Originally Posted by Krasher View Post
Has anyone researched if Axe Toss shares a DR with any other stuns? If so which? Trying to figure out if it's safe to actually throw in an extra stun for LK valks to just make it easier some times.
I'm not exactly sure which category of stun Axe Toss falls under, but it is NOT a controlled stun and thus does not interfere with the DR of the stuns typically used for valks. Aura of Foreboding, on the other hand, IS classified as a controlled stun. Which seems strange since Axe Toss is far more controlled, but hey, whatever. Regardless, it's been quite handy for keeping valks from dropping people over the edge on HLK.

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Old 10/26/10, 5:38 AM   #229
Krasher
Von Kaiser
 
Worgen Warlock
 
Laughing Skull
Originally Posted by Paranon View Post
I'm not exactly sure which category of stun Axe Toss falls under, but it is NOT a controlled stun and thus does not interfere with the DR of the stuns typically used for valks. Aura of Foreboding, on the other hand, IS classified as a controlled stun. Which seems strange since Axe Toss is far more controlled, but hey, whatever. Regardless, it's been quite handy for keeping valks from dropping people over the edge on HLK.
That is pretty bad, considering HoG is a pretty significant nuke. Fortunately Aura of Foreboding is really just a filler talent so I guess I can just put a pt in either DE or Imp Health Funnel.

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Old 10/26/10, 7:40 AM   #230
zoom
Glass Joe
 
Tauren Druid
 
Sinstralis (EU)
I wrote a module for Raven designed to help with warlock spell rotations.
My addon only works for destruction and demonology at the moment. I'll add affliction later.

All info, download and video demos available here

I'm looking for beta-testers and feedback

Last edited by zoom : 11/13/10 at 5:45 PM.

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Old 10/26/10, 12:05 PM   #231
Tiffara
Von Kaiser
 
Night Elf Druid
 
Cenarion Circle
Dots are best refreshed shortly after the before last tick
Perhaps this could be less confusingly said as

Dots are best refreshed between the second to last and final tick.

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Old 10/26/10, 4:00 PM   #232
JojoTheJester
Glass Joe
 
Orc Warlock
 
Ner'zhul
Why Bane for Demonology?

Having tested this naked with the same amount of shots fired (with bane ) my incinerate consistently comes up for more damage and has over 500 more base damage if you include immolation on the target (which should almost always be up because of Hand of Gul'dan anyway), this has the same amount of casting speed as shadowbolt does with bane un-specced, so I'm wondering if there is a reason bane is included in the Demonology talent tree that is attached to this thread. If you have another warlock in your group who is affliction or is still applying the improved shadowbolt debuff, wouldn't it be more effective to put 3 points into shadow and flame and 2 points into improved immolation? , is including shadowbolt on your rotation simply because its more mana efficient so you wouldn't havto life tap as much? without Shadowbolt in your rotation you'd never havto swap bolts and would probly edge some more DPS just spamming incinerates that automatically make use of every molten core proc the second it activates. Furthermore the benefit to casting immolation faster only applies on the first cast and then any time you need to re-cast it which isn't that often if you prioritize HoG every time its up.

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Old 10/26/10, 4:50 PM   #233
Neddie
Von Kaiser
 
Human Death Knight
 
Smolderthorn
Originally Posted by dunka View Post
I find that using something like buttontimers makes this pretty manageable. Be sure to set conflag/chaos bolts to be cooldowns, and track the rest as auras. I find I get a lot of incinerates in doing it that way.
Using power auras and NeedToKnow, I can manage the rotation at a training dummy, but it might be harder in a raid where a lot is going on. I set it up so NeedToKnow shows countdown bars to monitor myself for Improved Soul Fire, monitor my target and show countdown debuff timers for Bane of Agony/Doom, Immolate, monitor the spell cooldown for chaos bolt. With those as bars I know what I'll need to cast soon. Empowered Imp can proc anytime so there's no point having a bar for it, so instead I use power auras for that, and although Conflagrate has a cooldown, it made more sense to me to use power auras to monitor when the spell is usable, because it doesn't help if it's off cooldown but immolate isn't up.

I know what I can do with UI addons to keep track of all the buffs, debuffs and procs that matter to me. I'm more wondering if other people who have played other caster classes and specs post 4.0 think that destro has a lot more to monitor, or if it's just me.

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Old 10/26/10, 6:20 PM   #234
pfooti
Von Kaiser
 
pfooti's Avatar
 
Gnome Rogue
 
Wyrmrest Accord
Originally Posted by Neddie View Post
I know what I can do with UI addons to keep track of all the buffs, debuffs and procs that matter to me. I'm more wondering if other people who have played other caster classes and specs post 4.0 think that destro has a lot more to monitor, or if it's just me.
I also use buttontimers to track everything (with the new inbuilt poweraura clone to cover soul fire procs), which seems to work well. But it's definitely odd- my destruction timerbar is actually bigger than my affliction one- I have the same number of DoTs to track (Bane, Corruption, and Immo/UA), a cooldown-nuke (conflag or haunt) but also a bonus cooldown-nuke on destro (chaos bolt) to track. On top of all that, maintaining the ISB buff means weaving a bonus shadow bolt in every so often, which affliction doesn't need to worry about. Overall, it's a fairly hectic rotation. I'm not complaining, mind you- I like the complexity and its ability to reward good play, but Affliction used to be the complicated rotation, and now that spec has a much simpler rotation.

http://www.castrandom.com - we're not sure what it's about either.

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Old 10/26/10, 8:24 PM   #235
Kyth
Professional Windmill Tilter
 
Kyth's Avatar
 
Kythra
Orc Warlock
 
No WoW Account
Originally Posted by Neddie View Post
I know what I can do with UI addons to keep track of all the buffs, debuffs and procs that matter to me. I'm more wondering if other people who have played other caster classes and specs post 4.0 think that destro has a lot more to monitor, or if it's just me.
It's not just you (I have been looking pretty seriously into my warlock alt.)

But, at least when it comes to mages, they'd love some of the complexity in fire at least (frost has more going on and arcane has problems in its own special snowflake way.) There's a fair bit of frustration over how boring fire's rotation will be because the class is 100% dependent on crit for all of its cooldowns, procs, and complexity outside of a single dot.

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Old 10/26/10, 10:07 PM   #236
matornot
Von Kaiser
 
matornot's Avatar
 
Gnome Warlock
 
Hydraxis
Originally Posted by JojoTheJester View Post
Having tested this naked with the same amount of shots fired (with bane ) my incinerate consistently comes up for more damage and has over 500 more base damage if you include immolation on the target (which should almost always be up because of Hand of Gul'dan anyway), this has the same amount of casting speed as shadowbolt does with bane un-specced, so I'm wondering if there is a reason bane is included in the Demonology talent tree that is attached to this thread.
Despite what the tooltip tells you, Shadow Bolt does more damage. The reason your Incinerates have higher damage per cast is likely because of MC procs buffing them by 18%. I had wondered this myself so I did some testing with the same spec that you suggested, and found the SB spec to be better in about 90% of my tests. The only time Incinerate would out-perform is when I got an unusual number of MC procs.

I don't know why there is a discrepancy in the damage displayed in the tooltips, but my guess is that it has something to do with the extra Immo damage being added afterwards and not receiving the bonuses from stats/talents/buffs correctly.
Edit: this discrepancy is explained by the post below

Last edited by matornot : 10/27/10 at 10:04 PM.

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Old 10/27/10, 3:48 PM   #237
Mousekewitz
Glass Joe
 
Human Warlock
 
Darkspear
@JojoTheJester & matornot

This is because of the difference in spell power coefficients (Incinerate = 71.43% & Shadowbolt = 85.71%). So, at a point toward higher gear levels, Shadowbolt DPCT begins to outweigh that of Incinerate. Although, even at these higher levels, Incinerates under the effect of Molten Core have a higher DPCT than Shadowbolt and even Soul Fires under the Decimation effect. Stick to the priority list in the OP.

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Old 10/28/10, 2:45 AM   #238
~Thalia~
Von Kaiser
 
Gnome Warlock
 
Mar�carge de Zangar (EU)
Actually, using Incinerate as a filler messes up with MC procs more than using SB. If you're casting Incin while MC procs, a stack will be consumed, but the actual cast won't benefit from the cast time reduction and dmg modifiers.

Edit to Naforce : I may be wrong on the dmg modifiers, however the cast time isn't updated (logically).

Last edited by ~Thalia~ : 10/28/10 at 7:43 AM.

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Old 10/28/10, 5:07 AM   #239
Naforce
Piston Honda
 
Human Warlock
 
Frostmane (EU)
Originally Posted by ~Thalia~ View Post
Actually, using Incinerate as a filler actually messes up with MC procs more than using SB. If you're casting Incin while MC procs, a stack will be consumed, but the actual cast won't benefit from the cast time reduction and dmg modifiers.
It should recieve the damge bonus, since the damage of a spell is calculated when the cast is finished.

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Old 10/28/10, 11:00 AM   #240
hertzuk
Glass Joe
 
hertzuk's Avatar
 
Human Warlock
 
Outland (EU)
if you have above 1406 haste, and could change some int+haste gems, would it be worth it to go +20 int in these slots instead (i personally am on around 1450 haste atm, with a few int/haste gems).

basically, after 1406 haste how much SP does the socket bonus need to give to make me keep the int/haste gem? Rather than replacing with 20 int and losing the bonus.

How little is haste really worth after that 1406 point?

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