Hi

I'm trying with my guild Sinestra at the moment. During the tries I asked myself if BoA is the better choice for P3 instead of BoD, because of the haste scaling. I'm not at home atm so I can't use simcraft but only some basic math with a lot of assumptions.
I don't know the spell coefficient for the 2 casts so I went with the basic damage:
BoD: 1947 every 15 sec
BoA: 1524 over 24sec
To make it easier I assumed that the BoA ticks are evenly strong which means: 1524/12 = 127 dmg per tick.
So for DPS we have:
BoD: 1947/15 = 129,8
BoA: 1524/24 = 63,5
Of course the DPS from the Ebon Imp are missing here because I don't know the values for that but I think it's safe to assume that the Ebon Imp if you include the proc chance for him is not above 30 DPS which gives an estimated DPS value for BoD
BoD: 159,8
For BoA we can calculate the new DPS with haste included the following way:
(#Ticks * 127)/24
This assumes we have exactly the haste threshold for the new tick and the duration is at 24 seconds.

# Ticks	Haste	DPS
13	1,0417	66,15
14	1,125	71,44
15	1,2083	76,73
16	1,2917	82,02
17	1,375	87,31
18	1,4583	92,60
19	1,5417	97,90
20	1,625	103,19
21	1,7083	108,48
22	1,7917	113,77
23	1,875	119,06
24	1,9583	124,35
25	2,0417	129,65
26	2,125	134,94
27	2,2083	140,23
28	2,2917	145,52
29	2,375	150,81
30	2,4583	156,10
31	2,5417	161,40

I have ~2500 Haste Rating with my char and managed to get to 159,26% (=2,5926) haste during P3 without eradication proc. So from the table above with all the assumptions it seems that there BoA overtakes BoD.
Of course the next step is to refine everything and take the assumptions out.
That would include:

• DPS Ebon Imp
• Spell coefficients
• Further DPS increase with BoA Glyph?
• BoA ticks do different damage
• Does haste scaling with BoA work correctly?

Also crit chance may also influence the comparison. With 25% crit for both spells you get 1 crit per minute for BoD. Of course you need a larger number of crits for BoA to compare to that but with 31 ticks per 24 seconds (equals to 77,5 ticks per minute) you would get 19,375 crits per minute. Of course it also depends if you get crits with high damage ticks or low damage ticks.

I think it would be interesting if the hastethreshold for using BoA could be lowered when the assumptions are taking care of so that maybe you could also use BoA for an DPS increase during Bloodlust with an Eradication proc?

We're progressing on nefarian hm, and yesterday i tried to use soul swap efficiently (doh!). I'm sitting at 2456 haste, so i get 6 UA ticks, and i have the T11_4PC bonus. An extract from yesterday's log ("Affliction instable" = UA, "Echange d'âme" = SS) clearly shows that i can't manage to refresh UA with soulswap (even if corruption/boa always got refreshed before expiration, and soulswap got used exactly on cd).
As far as i know, i have two solutions to enhance my dual-targets multidot efficiency :

• #1 : reach 2589 haste to get a 7th UA tick even, and still use soulswap
  • Pros : UA still expires but still get the 7th tick, thus not "wasting" the additional UA "beyond-6th" haste that i'm currently wasting
  • Cons : BoA gets refreshed at ~16s, its ramp-up damage gets surely "clipped" thus nerfing BoA (+ i'm losing 4PC bonus)
• #2 : stay at 2456, use manual just-in-time refresh, thereby voiding the haste-threshold concept
  • Pro : no specific haste threshold required, each dot is refreshed in due time, no BoA Ramp-up problem
  • Cons : wasting GCDs, cannot to refresh UA while moving on two targets instead of one

I'll try both of these tomorrow anyway, and i have a saddening feeling #2 could be the better option. But i love soulswap, it has very neat "warlockery" feeling in itself and the mechanic is cool. So i'd hoped i could keep using it, especially in a 2-target scenario where it should really shine ! I'd love to get some feedback/insights on what you think would be the "best practices" in that 2-target case. Thanks in advance !

edit: typos

Per the official PTR notes, Drain Life's damage has been reduced by 25%. If 4p T12 put a death sentence on the drainlock spec, this nerf pulls the trigger. Those with latencies >100 should breathe a sigh of relief.

netsach, you forgot 1 more thing. SoulSwap cast damages a bit too. 2 cast of SSwap(copy, paste) = +x2 SSwap damage

Refreshing dots during trinket procs is not worth it, you can time the BoD refresh with some of the procs, because the window is 15 sec long, but that's about it. Same thing when you don't refresh dots during Bloodlust.

Patch 4.1 Hotfixes - May 19 - World of Warcraft

Hmm the drain life nerf was a hotfix and not a 4.2 patch note.
Considering that in the past it was more efficient to use Drain Life during felhunters Demon Soul instead of shadow bolt, is it no longer worth it after the nerf and you should stick to shadow bolt?
Also in the simcrafts here UA glpyh is used as the 3rd affliction glyph, but i recently noticed that some of the warlocks from top end guilds prefer BoA glyph, because it outshines the UA glpyh on multitarget fights (althought you still clip BoA with soul swap making the glyph useless). Thoughts ?

It seems that when Eradication procs, recasting UA, agony, & Corrup benefit from this haste increase. What I have been trying to figure out is, do I need to recast every time Eradication procs or do my dots automatically scale?

For corruption since it automatically refreshes, does it refresh just the duration or would it refresh with the haste bonus from Eradication? And if it does refresh with Eradication, when Eradication falls off does Corruption lose that haste bonus?

If I soul swap, will those dots also hold the haste increase on the second target?

Also, with the Doomguard, would it be more beneficial to summon him just before blood lust or after?

Your dots do NOT scale automatically with eradication (or any other haste buff for that matter) so yes you do have to recast or update said dots.
Whilst soul swapping: The soul swapped dots will benefit from the haste even though the original dots won't as the haste calculations are applied when the dot is applied not at each tick. Soul Swapped dots are technically new dots (therefore get the current haste values)

Your dots will maintain the haste levels of when the originally were cast when (haste buff) wears off. I have no idea about whether drain life and haunt just refreshes the dot time (at the hasted cast time) or renews the dot at the current haste level (un-hasted cast time).

AFAIK haste effects refreshing with dots was fixed back in ICC because too many locks ( and spriests I think) were just stacking as many haste buffs as they could in the beginning of a fight to get some absurd numbers. Your dots should calc the haste effects each time they are refreshed.

Wrong. On every cast or refresh.

Mod Edit: Removed parent post due to the above.

There are several ways in which this might lower your DPS, two of which spring to mind.

Firstly, even though you've tried to avoid spamming, with haste (i.e. like that provided by Eradication!) or if you've glyphed UA then the cast time will be less than 1.5 seconds (almost certainly GCD capped in 359 gear in fact), so using an 8.5 second condition could cause the sim to cast UA twice within the window as specified.

Secondly, what you gain by recasting the UA early for Eradication may be lost from a previous buff that has just ended. For instance, say you've just recast UA at the end of a Volcano proc and then your Eradication procs: your conditional will cause a recast of UA meaning on top of the wasted casting time you lose the benefit of a Volcano empowered UA to gain an Eradication empowered one.

As I've said before: it's very difficult to work out when it's beneficial to clip a DoT to take advantage of a proc because you need to weigh it against the conditions the DoT was already cast under, how much you're clipping it and what else you could be doing with the time. Even if it were possible to write a Simcraft conditional complex enough to take these factors into account, I seriously doubt it would be possible to correctly make that judgement in-game.