While an argument could be made for a class-agnostic thread dedicated to analyzing the mechanics of the legendary staff, there's currently no logical forum to put it in. And given how complex the interactions between the proc and various abilities and class mechanics might get, I think there's room for a thread dedicated to analyzing it from a Warlock perspective.

Personally I won't have the staff for another month at the earliest, but there are warlocks who already have it, and I found a WoL log featuring one of those: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

The above link crops the time interval to the portion of the raid during which he had the staff equipped. One of the simplest ways (and really the only practical way outside of controlled testing) to get an estimate of the proc rate is to count dot ticks and Wrath of Tarecgosa ticks: Over the full BoT clear in the log this works out to 1298 / 8697 = 14.92%.

It's immediately apparent that Wrath of Tarecgosa actually double dips from damage taken debuffs on the target, so dot heavy classes have an inherent advantage - in a normal raid environment WoT causes 108% rather than 100% of the damage of dot ticks that proc it. Of course this has hilarious effect on a target like Halfus:
There's not much more interesting info to glean from this single log. Affliction doesn't have a lot of direct damage spells, and the few it does have are pretty straightforward. Procced Haunts and Shadow Bolts refresh/update their relevant debuffs on the target, but that's pretty unimportant since those debuffs should be up 100% of the time anyway.

So I'd like to invite any other locks who have the staff to post their logs here, either from raids or from controlled testing on dummies. Of particular interest is logs from the other two specs, to see if the proc rate is different. I'd also like to see if immolate can proc a copy, and what exactly happens when it does - I don't expect it to spawn a second immolate dot on the target, but it might count as a refresh, resulting in an extra tick at the end.

The staff seems a "bit" overpowered right now :o

Had a quick look at the log, what the hell happened when he was mind-controled on Cho'gall oO

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Huh, that's an interesting bug. The WoT is probably caused by a proc off the BoD tick that occurred right before the mind control hit. I guess this is a similar mechanic to BoH and how it behaves when its current target becomes unavailable, like on Magmaw and ODS - the damage has to happen, so it picks a different target for it.

I have no idea why it would pick that druid, Thejuice, though. I guess because he was the last target to be affected by one of Dangles' spells - the Jinx: CoE that went out as soon as he got mind controlled.

Bout to head in to bed for the night, but if you would like to talk tomorrow about other tests and logs, I'll be on. I did some testing of the other specs I'll link them below.

Affl - World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Demo - World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Destro - World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

These were all done with ~2000 BoA ticks each.

Our GM just got it tonight and he going out of town on vacation and I can't even go on his account to do testing because he has an authenticator! /facepalm

Has anyone figured out a way to really analyze the procs? Wrath of Tarecgosa is a proc that only comes from dots. The ~15 min he spent on the dummy this evening we noticed that procs from direct damage spells are being counted as another shadowbolt/haunt/whatever, and only the dots are WoT. So are you saying this 15-16% proc amount is based on just WoT procs from those logs? It seems kind of weird that a class has a supposed 10% proc rate and has a pet doing 10% or less of their damage whereas demonology could have upwards of 40% of their damage be from pets and the proc rate only be 15%.

That's pretty brutal the way double dipping for dots works. I know that with Hellfire the proc is individual for each target it hits. On the 3 dummies in Orgrimmar we were seeing 6-11 extra hellfire hits per hellfire cast. At 45 hits per hellfire that's a 13.3%-24.4% proc rate which seems to fall in close range with what we're seeing already.


Also I just found out that the proc on the staff works even if you are silenced. I was dueling my GM for fun and I spell locked him but a previous cast proc'd the staff and it hit me anyways. OP! Can help noobs on Rag in melee range!

I'll also mention that HoG proc's give a second crit aura for warlock pets. I am willing to say that those aura's don't stack though, right? Otherwise you'd just have all locks as demo and let felhunters crit like crazy, then with the staff have like 60% more pet crit at times, which sounds ridiculous.

I can't think of a good way to estimate proc rate on DD spells just from WoL, short of counting manually. Having access to the raw log would probably let you write a script to count the procs by looking at time between spells, but you'd have to be careful to take into account other ways to cast instant spells, like shadow trance.

I have no idea where the idea that mages have a 10% proc rate comes from. The Premo mage's WoL has a 12.9% proc rate in fire spec. In frost spec it's 11%, but with a really low sample size due to a lack of dots. I hear initial reports suggesting priests get around a 13% proc rate as well. 15-16% proc rate for locks and 13% for the other classes sounds reasonable, but I'm still hoping it'll turn out to be differentiated per spec and not just per class.

If we get a procc on shadowbolt, can that procc then procc 4set bonus or is it just damage ? Think it would be kinda good boost if it does.

The backlash on Shadow Word: Death is generally pretty minimal: It's 51% of the damage dealt, and even in execute range, it's typically just in the 30k crit range. So the worst case of two back-to-back 30k crits is only 30k damage taken. If you get a Dragonwrath proc on both, it's still only an extra 30k damage (for 60k total), which is still just 40% of your life total. It's nothing to worry about.

I don't care about SW:D itself or whether players think it's anything to worry about, I'm referencing what devs (supposedly, this is via a friend of a friend) are saying about it. If their preferred solution to the SW:D issue would be to remove the staff proc chance from the spell entirely rather than removing the backlash proc chance from the duplicated SW:D, that says something about how inherent the proc-from-staff-proc mechanic is.

Here's a demo log on 1 dummy. - World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis -

Now I'm not very good at looking through logs, but I did notice that I would be halfway through a Incinerate cast on the last proc of molten core, when the 2nd Incinerate would proc WoT. Now this eats up the last charge of MC, but will the "4th" Incinerate still have the damage increase?

Damage is calculated at the end of the cast, so the proc incinerate benefits from the increased damage, but not the 4th. However, since you are mid-cast when the buff fades, you at least get the benefit of the reduced cast time. I'm not sure where a shorter cast but normal damage incinerate falls on the DPCT scale. It may be worth casting 2 incinerates then casting another spell before the 3rd to see if one of them procs and uses the last molten core stack.