Affliction in Cataclysm (4.3 Release) - Page 5

PetiteMort · 01/16/11, 3:52 AM

Originally Posted by Muenze

I´m sorry to interupt your discussion, but I would like to know if Drain Soul profit from Haste in having more ticks?
Is there any simulation or calculation that shows me if I should use Drain Soul at <25% or with massive haste from heroism and other buffs i should switch back to SB?
The Excel Sheets show at how much haste I get extra ticks from my dots, but it doesn't show how haste work with drain soul.

Thanks for any answers

EDIT: Apparently I'm not a reliable observer in the whee hours of the morning... my apologies.

• Zakalwe · 01/16/11, 4:21 AM

Originally Posted by PetiteMort

Haste reduces the channeling time, but the number of ticks will always be 6 (if you complete the entire channeling). Just verified it with/without Dark Intent.

This is not true at all. Time between drain soul ticks are reduced by haste, but the number of ticks will be increased at certain thresholds just like dots.

But since we don't tend to channel drain soul for the full duration anyway, it doesn't much matter. The relevant answer to the other post is that drain soul does scale with haste, so you should use it below 25% no matter how much haste you have.

Callandor · 01/20/11, 8:29 AM

Thought I'd copy-paste my thoughts on Soul Swap from my guild forum and see if there are any errors in this:

Soul Swap is a case of Soul Swap damage + 1 gained GCD every 24 seconds versus lost BoA damage, since you spend 2 GCDS fully refreshing all DOTs on the off-target where you would otherwise have spent 3. Looking at the top Aff log available for Valiona & Theralion: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

'Soul Swap' does an average of 4.26K damage
'Soul Swap Exhale' does an average of 3.75K damage
Since each GCD gained could be spent on better uptime of DOTs on the main target, keeping Shadow Embrace or Haunt up, Drain Soul etc. we can only assume each GCD is worth 28.5K damage (since he's doing 28.5K DPS)

That's a total of 36.5K damage gained.

Soul Swap is used in an ideal situation roughly every 18 seconds (duration of Corruption) and absolutely can be used without clipping either UA or Corruption, meaning that BoA will only tick for 18 seconds so you are losing 6 seconds of its highest damage.

Now calculating BoA's damage is a bit more messy and I'm not sure how to do it 100% accurately, but if you assume it ticks roughly every 1.5 seconds (and that's assuming a lot of Haste) then it will tick 4 times in that space of time.

4 ticks of BoA vs 36.5 K damage = BoA would have to tick for ~9K damage each time. BoA never ticks/crits for that much, not even close.

Even though these are rough figures I think the maths swings so far is Soul Swaps favour that I have a hard time seeing why it wouldn't be worth it.

Ektoplasme · 01/20/11, 9:10 AM

Originally Posted by Callandor

we can only assume each GCD is worth 28.5K damage (since he's doing 28.5K DPS)

The GCD is not 1 second. It's 1.5 / (1 + haste%)

So the damage value of 1 GCD is higher than 28.5K in this case.

Anyasha · 01/26/11, 7:31 PM

Maybe I'm missing the maths somewhere in here, but has there been any definitive answer as to whether the DoTs applied by soulswap exhale use the haste buffs on you at the time of the exhale, or from when that set of DoTs were applied to the primary target?

Also - and especially with the upcoming iSF removal - is it worth it to recast Corruption if eradication procs? Assuming it would push you to another plateau (which is almost a definite case) and you can then keep it up via Drain/Haunt, seems like, int he long run, it'd be worth the GCD. Thoughts?

Evarella · 01/27/11, 4:47 AM

Originally Posted by Anyasha

Maybe I'm missing the maths somewhere in here, but has there been any definitive answer as to whether the DoTs applied by soulswap exhale use the haste buffs on you at the time of the exhale, or from when that set of DoTs were applied to the primary target?

As far as I can tell, the spellpower and haste used by by a DoT use the values the last time it was refreshed (e.g. by recast, or refreshing corruption by casting haunt). Looking at logs the time between ticks for corruption is fairly consistent between haunt-procced refreshes, and can change significantly when a haunt cast hits and causes a corruption re-apply.

Same applies to damage per tick with caveats - spellpower procs from your own trinkets etc. work the same way as timings; your spellpower or int when the spell was last refreshed is used. But the damage done uses the current debuffs on the target (e.g. shadow embrace) so the damage per tick can change between DoT refreshes due to these debuffs applying / expiring.

I've heard rumours that crit sticks with the value when the DoT was initially applied, but that is more complicated to check and I haven't got around to it. I'd be very surprised if that were the case though; I'd expect it to work the same way as haste and spellpower (and damage modifiers).

(Which does now make me wonder if there is much to be gained for the haunt/corruption combination for casting haunt on cooldown or waiting for closer to the debuff expiry depending on current spellpower procs. If you have one of those nice +1710 int in procs (I'm thinking 5-man heroic trinkets here admittedly) active, then recast haunt on cooldown to improve the damage per tick of corruption as soon as possible. If you have no int procs active, delay haunt as long as you can without losing the debuff in the hope that one of them will proc before you refresh corruption, and/or to keep the corruption ticks high for as long as possible from the last proc that might still be active. If you can keep track of trinket ICDs to know when procs might be coming then more power to you

TankknSpankk · 02/04/11, 2:17 PM

Regarding pets, how much more dps does the succubus actually do than the felhunter?

The reason for asking is, if you were able to keep dots up on 2 targets (that need to die) and a 3 stack of the sbolt buff (I was able to manage this on target dummies, haunt refreshed main target while mouseover sbolts refreshed the swapped target) would a felhunter + demon soul outweigh the loss of the succubus dps? Even if maybe for short term, and then soulburn succubus when 1 of them died?

Halfus comes to mind.

Or would it be too close to normal dps to be worth changing pets?

Gnawty · 02/04/11, 9:30 PM

Originally Posted by Chaley

With the changes that were posted regarding Soul Fire by Zarhym on the official forums, what kind of talent spec should we be looking at? I'm figuring that those 2 extra points would just move over to demonology or soulburn: soc or other utility talents in affliction. Also I was wondering what exactly the impact on dps would be when we no longer have this 15% haste as affliction warlocks.

4 points, with the changes there is no need to have the 2 points into emberstone anymore either, as all it does is decrease casting time of SF and incinerate. SF will no longer a part of the rotation so my guess would probably be a spec like 32/3/6 where you go 2/2 pandemic (if you had chosen to go 1/2 to pick up SB:SoC), and 3/3 Dark arts for a minor dps gain when switching to felhunter for demon soul.

Scathbais · 02/07/11, 11:05 AM

Originally Posted by Acro

Given the changes in 4.0.6 and the miscalculation (according to the simcraft thread) of the succubus' dps, I was wondering what best to use soulshards on. I am assuming everybody will use the imp as the dps pet, so the last soulshard seems to be quite obvious: at 25% pull out a felhunter and get the demon soul buff.
However, the other 2 seem ambiguous. Is it still worth instant casting soulfire? Or is it more beneficial to use 1 shard to start with a felhunter for demon soul and then instantsummon an imp?

Spec would seem to change as well to: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft with 3 points to spend on Bane if you want to cast SB or get Mana Feed otherwise (or possibly soulburn for SoC).

Going to try to run simcraft on my work computer (wish me luck), but I cannot see how getting 20% dot buff for 20 seconds from switching to felfunter at 25% could be worth losing the superior dps of the succy (pre patch)/ imp (post 4.0.6). I think you might be on to something with your suggestion of saving 2 shards for execute phase.

Let you know if I can figure something out.

niknar · 02/15/11, 7:34 AM

Originally Posted by Scathbais

Going to try to run simcraft on my work computer (wish me luck), but I cannot see how getting 20% dot buff for 20 seconds from switching to felfunter at 25% could be worth losing the superior dps of the succy (pre patch)/ imp (post 4.0.6). I think you might be on to something with your suggestion of saving 2 shards for execute phase.

Let you know if I can figure something out.

I was of the understanding that the Succubus was still a superior Affliction pet to the Imp...

Regardless, I'd be very interested to see the results of your Simcraft testing of summoning a Felhunter for the execute phase.

Elmi · 02/17/11, 9:25 AM

1. BoD is an increase over BoA for both Affliction and Affdrain if not using glyphed Soul Swap (exhale removes BoD from the inhale target).

2. Useful Macro for Affdrain:

#showtooltip Shadow Bolt
/use Demon Soul
/cast Shadow Bolt

3. Is it better to use a /cast [nochanneling]Drain Life macro for Affdrain? Using the quartz "lagbar" I seem to skip the last tick most of the times.

Densar · 02/17/11, 11:39 AM

Just wanted to share the macro I found on AJ forums for soulswaps since it really makes life so easy on fights like Halfus hc where you have thousands of nameplates. I've added a 18s stopwatch command altho in reality that 18s starts counting soon as you exhale but the dot might not get applied for 1-2 seconds due to travel time.

Really makes soulswapping easy on fights like chogal or nef.

/cast [nomod] Soul Swap
/cast [mod:shift, @focus][] Soul Swap
/sw 18
/sw play

Ghabryhell · 02/21/11, 10:15 AM

Originally Posted by Chardos

Extra Ticks	Total Ticks	Haste %	Haste Rating
1	4	16,67	2134,2835
2	5	50	6402,8505
3	6	83,33	10671,4175

There ya go

are these numbers correct?

Drain Soul is a 15s duration, 3s base tick speed channeling dot, so according to haste mechanics is like UA/Immolate dot.
/w Dark Intent + 5% Aura

Extra Ticks	Total Ticks	Haste Rating	Haste Rating(Goblin)
1	6	218	90
2	7	2589	2437
3	8	4951	4776

only /w Dark Intent

Extra Ticks	Total Ticks	Haste Rating	Haste Rating(Goblin)
1	6	870	734
2	7	3359	3199
3	8	5839	5655

tested in live.

Stevensegall · 02/23/11, 11:57 PM

When did Bane of Doom replace Bane of Agony in the standard single target rotation?

Also, does Bane of Doom during execute phase also buff Drain Soul the same way that Bane of Agony does?

netsach · 02/24/11, 4:56 AM

BoD replaced BoA on single target fight starting here and a few following posts.

There is no reason BoD should not buff Drain Soul on execute phase :
- Soul siphon takes the number of affliction effects into account
- Death's Embrace increases damage to shadow spells on execute
- BoD is an affliction spell, same as BoA
- BoD does shadow damages, same as BoA
=> conclusion : Bod buffs execute DS the same way as BoA.