Amandine

Which is better? ToC or Zhardoom? According to Leulier's spreadsheet Zhardoom is giving slidely more DPS, anyone could confirm this?

 

Kordansk

In reference to the noticeable internal cooldown, it was basically a GCD everytime you spammed the button when a cast wasn't done at a viable time, and the reasoning was the client was checking with the server if the shadowbolt had been cast. It has been since changed so it is all done client side. I believe it was changed a while ago, and what you would see on the client end is a GCD start to tick around the button mid cast appearing to restart, well now it does it but it just cancels immediately and allows you to cast as soon as you are completed with the previous cast.

Also, Zhardoom is better as long as you maintain your hit cap switching from ToC and Rage offhand, to the staff, due to the haste rating on it, and the way haste ends up scaling better when you reach certain points in crit and spell damage.


edit: Torq did you get a chance to model Quag's Eye? I was wondering what the effective haste on it is, compared to the use of Skull of Guldan every 2 min.

 

Deathwing

Precise timing is still better than button mashing. As kordansk said, GCD is now done client side, BUT, if you send that request to the server too early, it will cancel your GCD, but the time it took for your message to go to the server and back may have been more time than it would taken to press the button at the right time.

Basically, button mashing approaches precise timing as your latency lowers.

 

Arelenda

I don't get this. You need a LOT more than 6% haste to get down to 2.2s casting time. You need over 140 haste rating to even come under 2.3s. Did I misunderstand something, or are you just wrong on this?

 

Torq

I don't have a Quag's eye to test with, personally (never had the luck of it dropping for me), so I'm going to have to assume that the numbers in this thread are valid: Procs with/without internal cooldowns

Given the longer internal cooldown and lower proc chance, I'm going to go with it being worth far less than one might think. The following graph applies only to lolsbspam locks, as I use a 2.5 sec cast spam as the basis for calculating the cutoffs:



Note that this is calculated without any latency concerns. Each 10 ms of latency will shift that point right by about 7-8 passive haste.

If you want to calculate your exact value of how much the effective haste it's worth for you, just go plug in your numbers to the formula I posted earlier. Again, the formula keeps only destro locks in mind; if you're affliction, you may want to look into the suggestions Leulier posted in the lock spreadsheet thread.

For reference, with my 87 haste, it'd be worth ~80 (79.95 to be exact) +dmg for me. Oddly enough, this is slightly more than my Darkmoon Card: Crusade. Hmm. Most likely, that's due to me having hit the first breakpoint. [E] By comparison, the Skull is worth +128 damage, if it is contributing to your hitcap. If not, it's still worth ~88 +dmg or so.

In case anyone's wondering, there is a second breakpoint, but it's in the 600-700 passive haste range, for the Blade, anyway. I'd expect the Eye to be similar in value. I don't think it's possible to hit this second breakpoint (even with BL+IV), so I'm not really concerned about it.

 

Jipakazoid

Regarding previous question of using an imp as additional dps, there are several fights where it is quite useful, namely Brutallus. Our affliction warlock is setting his imp free and he is doing his thing just like the hunter pets. It may take you a few tries to learn where to set him, but in the end you are looking at additional 100-150 dps.

Also make sure he gets all the raid buffs, it will help him sustain his fire bolts much better.

 

Presarc

The imp's positioning doesn't matter much for Brutallus anyways as far as I've seen as the affliction warlock in the tank group. None of the abilities can affect him if my memory serves.

 

Faldrath

Does anyone know whether DoTs applied during Kalecgos persist between realms? Yesterday I tried casting CoD on the demon just before I left the shadow realm, and when I checked WWS this morning the results were inconclusive. I'm pretty sure I didn't see anything in the combatlog during the fight, and WWS doesn't register any CoD damage for me - although it does register Sathovarr being afflicted by the CoD debuff (but, again, in his shadow damage taken summary there isn't the expected 13k or so hit, so maybe it just registers the debuff being applied). Of course, CoS and CoE do persist, so either this is just a combatlog bug, or damage dots are cleared when you leave a realm.

 

Morwen

Your combat log won't register anything happening in the other realm since it is too far away, so wws won't be anywhere near accurate unless you can merge multiple logs. I don't see debuffs vanishing when I'm in the demon realm and people are ported up, so presumably the damage still happens.

 

LockApologist

I've actually found the opposite to be true. We're just learning the encounter atm, but I've gotten data from demon realm on attempts where I have not made it through a portal.

 

Faldrath

I know, but the WWS I saw consisted of 3 logs (mine, and two people who weren't in my group so they weren't at the shadow realm when I was). I'm leaning towards a combatlog bug, actually - it might be something like "Unknown's curse of doom does 13k shadow damage" in other people's logs.

 

LockApologist

I've found that Zhardoom is about 10-15 dps loss from ToC + Rage OH. If you look at just ZD vs ToC, ZD looks to be higher, but the sheet does not take into account your OH when comparing MH to 2hd.

 

Rozzenwyn

Best way to compare it is to play with the gear_buffs area. Put ToC & choose your offhand and then look at the dps scrreen and see what the final number is then go back and put Zhardoom and choose "none" for offhand and go look again. For me its a neglible difference. Zhardoom comes in 1.04 dps more but that's using ToC & Fetish of the primal gods. Using one of other offhands (Chronicle of Dark Secrets is about 3dps less than ZD, Blind Seer's Icon is aobut 7-8 dps less) it is even less because I am already hit capped. So its an upgrade over ToC & any of the good off hands avaiable for me right now but its only marginally better. It's really gonna depend on your other gear and whether or not the hit rating on the sword helps you out.

 

Nicarras

Does anyone else find it funny that we still get questions like 'is itemX better than itemY' when it varies lock to lock, spec to spec....and we refer people to the spreadsheet every single time?

Spreadsheet people, its not perfect, but its pretty darn close.

 

Krazen

Is there any mathematical benefit to stacking [The Skull of Gul'dan] alone with Power Infusion/Heroism?

At first, I didn't think there was, since both of them are haste benefits. But since the Skull is a linear increase in spell haste, while the other 2 are multipliers, I am now thinking that I was mistaken.

 

Anexus

If you dont want to use the spreadsheet you can always compare items "the old fashioned way".

MH + OH (rage winterchill):

46sta
34int

34spellhit
47spellcrit
301spelldmg

Staff:

70sta
47int

36spellcrit
55spellhaste
259spelldmg

Personally, I would take MH + OH because:

- Sunwell gear lack hit
- you always want more spelldmg
- there are more yellow than red sockets allowing for gemming of crit/haste/hit and still get socket bonuses
- you will most likely kill Rage and Archi alot more than Illidan (when you down Illidan Sunwell seems to be the next priority)
- staffs have high stamina and intellect which take up alot of the itemlvl for the weapons but contribute very little to the dps as suppose to pure dmg/hit/crit/haste

Regardless, it is a close call and depends highly on the gear you already have.

 

Flamingcloud

While there is clearly a benefit to stacking hexlord with heroism.. My assumption is that since haste does not scale perfectly linearly is that it is actually worse to use guldan during heroism.

Quick math.. (assuming its 2.5/[1.haste*30%])
0 passive haste
40sec of heroism 20.80 bolts @ 1,923
20 sec of guldan 8.89 bolts @ 2.25
29.69 bolts

20sec of both 11.54 bolts @ 1.733
20sec of hero 10.4 bolts @ 1.923
20 sec of nothing 8 bolts @ 2.5
29.94 bolts

200 passive haste
40 sec of heroism 23.43 bolts @ 1.707
20 sec of guldan 9.9bolts @2.019
33.33bolts

20 sec of both 12.87 bolts @ 1.554
20 sec of heroism 11.716 bolts @ 1.707
20 sec of nothing 9.01 bolts @ 2.219
33.59bolts

Edit fixed a mistake in my division.

 

◊ manly

If Bloodlust reduced the skull of guldan (fel infusion) buff time, then you would be correct. However, since fel infusion stays at 20s no matter what else is going on, then it is to your advantage to stack them together.

 

Morwen

Problem found.

In fact the benefit of Gul'dan doesn't scale with your haste at all.

With the following variables:
C = base cast time (2.5s for Shadow Bolt)
H = haste (rating/1577)
G = fel infusion (175/1577)

Then you get
(1/C)*[20*(1.3)(1 + H {+G if you pop it during hero}) + 20*(1.3)(1 + H) + 20*(1 + H {+G if you pop it outside})] for total casts in the 60 second window. Popping Gul'dan somewhere in the initial 20 seconds makes it 1.3 times better and the benefit has no dependence on H.

Edit: of course in a real situation you don't get fractional casts since haste is locked in at the start of the cast, so results may differ from up-rounding.

 

richard

Sorry, I made an error. 2.2 seconds is what I get with Drums of Battle up, without it quartz shows 2.3. Also, the character sheet rounds up the percentage, without drums I have 103 haste.

 

Cronjob

Sunwell loot lacking hit??? Really once you're into sunwell you should be pretty good on hit especially if you have the skull. Also the belt and boots that drop there for (set pieces) have hit. I'm already at 10% haste and this week should be at 12% with boots maybe a 14% haste with Neck from Twins if it drops. Also chances are you wont be socketing for hit, mostly damage/haste or crit/haste..

I took ZD and it increased my dps by a bit although I didnt have ToC before.

 

Flamingcloud

Could you make your math any less readable? Your math seems to be identical to mine tho, and I plugged in real numbers and got those results. The simple fact is the more haste you have the less useful it is. (the whole 1% haste is 1% off your cast but 100% haste is only 50% off your cast mechanic, thus 30% haste all the time is better than 60% haste half the time.)

 

Nicarras

Keep in mind that however you did it, you geared your character pretty quickly. 7/8 already?

Outside of the set items there isnt much hit there. So if you have the staff and dont gem for hit, maybe you missed a skull, theres a chance you are running into sunwell not at hit cap. Or possible that you wouldnt be at the hit cap if you swapped an item.

I'm close enough hit cap and are 10% haste shadow and 12% fire, so it is doable, but you just have to micromanage your Lock.

IMO if you get a Moonkin and/or Ele sham in your group consistently you should not gem for crit and just gem for haste. I keep going over the numbers and if you get those two it's pretty nice. You dont have to gem for hit since you will be over hit cap as long as the Shaman is alive and you can stack more haste than crit as you are getting a ton from group buffs.

So always try to keep track of what your raid buffs are also, as they should impact how you max/min your toon.

 

Morwen

The part I quoted is the arithmetic error.

Haste increases the number of casts in a fixed timeframe in a linear manner no matter how much haste you have already. This makes it sublinear with respect to your actual dps but it's still linear to the number of casts:

In a fixed timeframe T, with fixed base cast time C and variable haste H,
each cast is C/(1+H)
so the total number of casts is (1+H)(T/C), and that's linear in H.

 

Anexus

Seems like you misunderstood my point. You should by all means be hit capped when you enter Sunwell. There are loads of hit items in BT and MH so that should not be a problem. But when you replace those BT/MH items you will most likely start loosing hit. And I know there is hit on some of the tier gear, but I am not sure if there is enough hit around to keep the cap that easily. I dont know all the loot that drop in Sunwell either, but knowing that there is less hit on several of the items there I would make sure I had my hit rating on those MH/BT items that I am not likely to replace anytime soon. I also consider this staff vs mh+oh a "what gear should i start out in sunwell with"-type of question.

I personally never gem for hit (I try to get it off the item stats themselves), but I know some people do so I just mentioned that for the sake of completion. I dont know what you are trying to say with that haste you got. That you have alot of haste doesnt change the fact that there is less hit on drops in Sunwell. As for gems I will go for dmg in red, dmg+haste in orange unless my crit drops below 25% (tooltip) in which case I will go dmg+crit.