This post is rather misleading. With Pandemic you have a ~7 second window to refresh UA, ~9s for Corruption and a mighty ~12s for Agony. Also, it's not that refreshing within the Pandemic window doesn't cause "any significant dps loss": except where you are overwriting a buffed DoT with a non (or lesser) buffed one by refreshing early, it doesn't cause *any* DPS loss, that's the whole point.

I don't know if it is less important in other raiding tiers, but right now in Mogu'Shan Vaults that wouldn't be such a good idea, you have to be careful when using your cooldowns on almost every boss if you don't want to lose them (You should try not to use your cooldowns on a Stone Guard's transition phase/ Elegon Pillars / Feng's Tremors...)

hello to all

first sorry for my bad english.

I asked several questions

first one: must we re apply a dot if we get a buff ? (like enchant proc)

second: thanks pandemic that can extend a dot, the haste cap that allows us to have extra tick as it does an interest in knowing that the majority of cases we re apply the dot under 50%?

thank you in advance for explanations.

Yes. Buffs are applies on dot application; debuffs are applied on each tick, and thus will update dynamically.

That is assuming you're asking "must we reapply a dot if we want it to reflect the buff we just got?". If your question is more general, namely whether it is beneficial to spend the GCD to reapply the dot if a buff is received, then there's no general answer. If the dot is below 50%, then obviously yes; otherwise, it depends on the buff. Normally you wouldn't do that, but some buffs may warrant it. For strong buff that can be anticipated (such as Hero and Dark Soul), you can prepare by allowing your dots to get under 50% so that all three can be updated once you get that buff.

Not sure I understand what you're saying. Perhaps you could rephrase?

I hope I understood you correctly

The point of reaching a haste breakpoint, even with pandemic, is to get an increased duration of the dot and therefor less time spent recasting the dot. Admittedly the timeframe is huge thanks to pandemic, but you still have to recast the dot less often if you hit a haste breakpoint.
I'll try and give you an example:
You are just under a haste cap with your dot ticking X times and the time between dot ticks is 2.5 (not sure about the actual values but for the sake of the example it should be sufficient). By going over the haste breakpoint your dot will tick X+1 times with a time between ticks of something like 2.4. This will result in an overall longer dot which you will have to recast less often because it is active for a longer time.

Hopefully this helped you.

Affliction Rotation Questions:
1) Should i begin casting haunt prior to a previous haunt expiring or should i continue to malific grasp until it wears off, then recast haunt?
2) In the unfortunate instance where you run out of shards mid fight; what is the correct course of action?
3) Lets say agony has 30 sec left, corruption has 8sec, unstable affliction has 5sec and haunt has just expired. In this case i usually recast unstable affliction, and corruption, then haunt. Is this wrong?
4) What are the normal use cases for soul burn soul swap? I always use it to start a fight, and I sometimes use it in situations like #3.
5) When we are multi dotting 2 targets. Should we only be haunting one target?
6) When multi dotting 2 targets. Should we be hard casting all dots on target 1, and glyphed soul swapping the dots to target 2?

Im an ilvl 473 lock just looking for tips to squeeze out some higher dps.

Sorry forgot one. I have the heroic flashfrozen resin globule (on use 4232int for 25sec) it has a 2.5 min CD. DS has a 2min CD. Should i wait and line them both up, or should i cast them both on CD? Or is it too situational to make a hard fast rule?

Makes sense! Thanks for the response. Any comments on the post above that one? All help is obviously appreciated!

1.) In a buffed situation (dark soul, blood lust, trinkets, etc) you want to keep haunt uptime as high as possible. Otherwise, finishing you MG channel is fine and more mana efficient, since over the course of any boss fight you will have some haunt downtime no mattter what you do.
2). It's expected. Just keep dpsing normally. Try to align your haunt uptime as noted in my answer to #1. 60% haunt uptime on single target is about the best you will do, so get the most out of it.
3). If you are at range, yes. Due to Haunt's travel time you want to refresh one dot after you finish casting it, then straight into MG so that it hits right as haunt does. THis will allow for maxium MG uptime while the haunt debuff is on the target. If you are close to the boss then refresh your dots before haunt if they have time remaining < Haunt debuff+cast time.
4). The two basic cases are: 1) whenever you need to get dmg rolling on a target quickly, and 2) to refresh dots during Drain Soul Execute. Obviously part 1) has a lot of angles to it (target swap burns, when procs are up, etc). Use your best judgement. Effectively every time you use soul swap outside of execute, it reduces haunt uptime, so make sure the tradeoff is worth it (it often is, but not always).
5.) Depends on how fast they need to die and how many shards you have (if you have 4 shards and haunt is already up on one you should haunt the other in order not to waste the next potential nightfall proc)
6.) Depends. See advice above.

new change in 5.1 " Pandemic no longer smooths the damage when extending dots with different amounts of spellpower. "

Im not sure what exactly they're trying to say with this. Does this mean we can prolong our good dots infinitely, we cant prolong them at all or something else entirely?

Wierd.... does anyone have any specific information on how Pandemic is 'smoothing' our dots for the remainder of this patch and does it change how we should try to react to spellpower procs until 5.1?