"•We nerfed Drain Life because Affliction was forsaking Shadowbolt in PvE, which wasn’t intended. We want Drain Life to be for utility, not primarily for damage, and we want all casters to have to hard cast at least some of the time. This was done via hotfix and players won’t see a change in 4.2." -From blue text (Explanation of 4.2 Balance Changes - World of Warcraft)

I came across this today searching for a preview of the 4.2 patch notes and wondered if perhaps that alters what the compendium still says about drain life having higher dps sim than a shadow bolt filler.

OP has been updated for the release of patch 4.2. Will be working on Best in Slot and Trinket information over the next week.

Would like to apologize for being slow to update the threads of mistakes/inaccuracies over the past month or so, things have been hectic, this should no longer be the case.

Drain soul now appears to refresh unstable affliction sooner than on the first tick of damage.

I noticed this as well. I started thinking that this might be a faster DPCT approach to refreshing UA. Unfortunately it seemed that this refresh-when-DS-lands only works when the target is <25% health?

I think it'd be worth considering adding some commentary in the "glyphs" section of the original post discussing alternatives to Glyph of Soul Swap, considering just how minor an impact it has on player DPS at this point even on multi-target fights.

Also, someone might have the gall to bring it up again and get warned by the forum staff for it. And others might get warned by the forum staff for thinking it's still a reasonable topic of discussion and responding to it. Not that I'm bitter or anything about that kind of ludicrous behavior.

Ok I do not see this anywhere on these forums - can someone give me a rundown or put it in the OP what to do like precisely on multi target fights?

I'm thinking like bethilac for example if you are on the bottom. Or the last boss in the troll instance where you have to kill the ghosts and then the chains.

Soul swap now is no use with 30 second cooldown. By the time you put your dots on the mob they are dead. If you have 3 of them coming, do you put dots on one then the other then the other and no swap? What about shadow embrace?

If we have a 2 or 3 target fight - think the first boss in firelands with rageface. Are we better UA Corruption COA Haunt when available, then tab taget? Better UA corruption COA Haunt then 2x shadowbolt for shadow embrace then tab target?

On single target fights my dps is competitive with everyone else in the raid - hanging out at like 20k or so, but when there are multiple targets my damage just blows and I don't know exactly where else to find some breakdown of what to do in this circumstance. Also how many targets do I need to hit with seed of corruption before its better to do that?

Thanks for your help.

The reason that there is no "precise" description of what to do in multi-target situations is that the correct strategy is different based on a large number of rapidly changing factors: there is no standard multi-target situation that you can use as a reference, so there is no generally correct answer.

Problems such as how spread out the targets are, how fast they will die, how fast they need to die and whether there is mix of such targets available all change the answer.

To use Beth'tilac as an example you'll want to do different things for the Spiderlings and the Spinners, and indeed for spread out groups of Spinners and bunched up ones, and even the Spinners that need to be used for ascending to the web (that are killed very quickly) and the Spinners that spawn at other times (which you can usually afford to kill at a more leisurely pace).

I realise that this isn't a satisfying definite answer, but unfortunately you'll simply have to try different approaches for your raid setup, strategy and circumstances to find the one that works best.

This is a good question and one I've wondered myself. Contrary to the guide here indicating to use soul burn with seed of corruption on fights with more than 2 targets, that is far less dps than when I dot up each one. I would say the minimum to make SoC viable would be at least 4 or 5, but I can't say exactly which one would be the cut-off point.

As far as your other questions for multiple targets, like others have indicated, it is a tough call because of how many variables there are. For example, with Shannox I toss haunt on one dog and dot it up, soul swap to get it to the other dog, then do dots on Shannox including BoD (since the swap prevents me from using it on the dogs). After that honestly it is very chaotic. The best I can say is I try to monitor all three and refresh as many of my dots as I can and try to keep shadow's embrace on the two dogs. Trying to keep shadow's embrace on more than 2 targets at once while watching everything else we need to keep on top of (procs, cd's, raid mechanics, etc.) is extremely difficult and not something I'd recommend in a fight with a lot of movement involved like with that fight.

With fights that have more than 2 targets, our rotation gets very sloppy. A large part of the problem is that dot timers will only watch your primary and focus targets, and you are still left with one other target you need to keep an eye on. It definitely takes some getting used to. Beyond what I've said here, the best I can tell you is the same as others have, which is experiment and see what works best.

I've found that the most consistent and maintainable strategy for multi-target dotting and maintaining of Shadow's Embrace is to first DoT a target as you normally would (a focus target), and maintain SE via haunt (this means at any reasonable distance you MUST use haunt immediately as the cool down returns, else SE will fall). The second target then becomes your nuke target, with your DoTs up and Shadow Bolt nuke maintaining SE on the second target. The third target is similar again, just try to alternate Shadow Bolts between the second and third targets.

Unfortunately this strategy did seem a lot stronger in the back end of WotLK, not certain why; perhaps increasing haste levels playing a large factor.

I don't think I'm understanding you Ascendant: casting two Corruptions always takes longer than casting one Seed of Corruption, therefore one Soulburn:Seed of Corruption that will hit two targets is strictly better than casting two Corruptions. The same is certainly not true of a plain Seed of Corruption, but that isn't what the guide is talking about.

Much to my surprise Ajedrez it appears from reading the simcraft output for T12 that Haunt has higher DPET than Shadow Bolt, so it would indeed be worth casting Haunt on cooldown in preference to a Shadow Bolt if you suspect the target will die quickly enough that it's not worth DoTting up.

The Simcraft output does answer some of our questions about the relative worth of our spells, but care must be taken when reading the standard output because some abilities derive a lot of their power from other their interaction with others (the DPET of corruption is essentially infinite for example, which it won't be in a multi-target situation).

At this point, I'd say the decision to use the Soul Swap glyph is up to the player. Either way, you'll be manually reapplying dots on secondary targets, it's just a matter of whether or not you find saving 1 global every 30 seconds worth it over the other options available to you. I also agree with Ascendant that it doesn't appear to be worth it to use Seed of Corruption on 3 mobs. I don't consider the use of seed until I see at least 5 within reasonable range.

I have managed to work around this with the use of Tidy Plates. You can add debuffs to the debuff widget which makes them visible with a timer on the nameplate. It doesn't completely circumvent the problem on hectic encounters but I've found it helpful.