Presarc

Maybe I'm missing something, but to me a 68% Shadow Bolt critical rate seems exceptionally high. Is this the level you're typically seeing? I know you have Demonic Tactics, but my Devastation + Empowered Imp should more than counter that. Could you break down your critical strike chance percentage and see what it comes out to raid buffed for that fight?

 

kaib

Well, it's doubtful there is more then 25% on gear/int. Then there are 10% from talent, 5% moonkin, 10% scorch. I'd think anything over 55% is just random luck. A single brut fight that lasts probably 3 minutes with a 25% higher crit rate (13% more crit then you are supposed to have, you crit roughly ~25% more of the shadow bolts you cast then you should have) is hardly a valid indicator for the dps of a spec.
Atm from what I have seen from various WWS parses, ours and others, full destro is simply the highest dps spec. That is obviously subject to change on 80 as the full destro spec gains minor improvements from more talents while for example full demon gains a lot from going deeper into destro.
Plus full demon actually supplies a very good raid buff while full destro is just an ego shooter spec.

 

BeerBelly

Too bad that raid buff gets cancelled by shaman's spell totem at 80 though. Would be nice if they stacked, since it would make demo a much more viable raid spec.

 

kintarooe

This is my first post on this forum, and i would like to share with you some experience and maths.
Build: 00/03/58
Glyph: corruption - Improved imp

if i do a good rotation and don't loose timer... the dps is very good.
empowered imp proc very often (with Demonic power, it cast fireball every 2 sec... about 450-500 for any hit).
Casting Corruption (and if any other lock cast CoE or there's a moonkin in raid ... you cast agony) for proc Molten core (another 10% fire damage).
if i can cast CoA and corruption , the molten core proc is still always up.
cast chaos bolt every time you can... is the best dps spell for a destro lock, now. (imho).
conflagrate with backdraft help a lot in trash mobs but is a must on boss (if you can do right rotation).
i have made an equip for this spec with proc (the two trinket with proc on crit and 10% haste rating...)... grant me a very good dps (best then pre patch) if i do all right.
my current rotation on boss is: (Curse of Agony or CoE)... corruption... chaos bolt...immolate... incinerate x X (depends my latency ), conflagrate (in raid this spell have a crit chance > hit chance with fire and Brimestone), incinerate, chaos bolt, incinerate and repeat.
naturally i cast Sb when nightfall proc (from glyphs) and i take a look to the cd of ChaosBolt for cast it every time i can.
For Aoe fight... shadowfury and RoF is very good.
First cast shadowfury (that proc Moltencore) and 2 channeled RoF (hit for about 1k, crit for 2).

base on wws i put some numbers...
(my stats is about 1160 damage , 30% crit, and 10% haste...all selfbuffed - not very good gear ).
Corruption : Avg Tick: about 400 (corr must be up as much time you can to proc Mc)
Immolate Initial damage: Hit 1046 - Crit: 2221 /// Tick about 490 (good dps for a 1,5 sec - haste )
Incinerate: avg hit 2400- crit 4800
Chaos Bolt: avg hit 2600 - crit 5200. with 2 sec cast (with no haste) it's a very good dps (i think is the best dps spell for a destro lock)
Confla (yes, i know, i lost a tick of immolate, but is a very good dps for a spell that have only Gcd and proc Backdraft) : Avg hit 1600- crit 3100
sb (when glyph proc)... 2300 and 4200 crit. (it's not bad if consider that is affected only by gcd and can help to proc mc).
My last comment on this spec it's: "this is a funny spec... more and more then old 0/21/40... and with same equip (i know, now there are many buff in raid) i do more dps and damage than before".
This is a raid boss spec . heroics don't math... mobs blow up too fast... and sometimes, raid trash too....
Sometimes i think to change the cast after backdraft. After chaos bolt i use incinerate x 2 (if any immolate of other lock are up, is a good choise, if not .. i can try Shadowbolt or if i have many shard... soul fire).
what do you think about?

 

Nicsnock

I have around 37% character sheet crit% with my firestone. 10% mage debuff, 5% boomkin, 3% elemental shaman / retribution pally ( Am I correct in thinking this stacks with other buffs? ), toss on elixirs, foods, and raid buffs and I am close to 60% crit. I do agree that 68% was a little bit of luck but not out of the realm of possiblities, and not a 25% luck streak as the poster above me stated.

Another thing I would like to point out is that my spell power raid buffed is extremely high with the changes to spirit and demonic knowledge having 1800 raid buffed now isn't out of the picture.

I am not an expert as I know some of you are, I am just wanting to get the word out there that Demo is almost good as deep Destro and the difference that I have seen is very very minimal.

 

bladehawk

Target dummies only show 1 hp of DPS from some of our abilities and are notoriously bad for measuring affliction. We really need "real world" testing. Blizzard won't even accept bug reports based on using a target dummy for testing, so I wouldn't rely on any data from them.

 

Kalku

This is pretty easy:

Conflag ->

a) Immo -> Incin x 3 (Last incin has no BD)
b) Incin x 3 Immo (Immo has no BD)

are the two options.

a) takes ~6.9 seconds, b) takes 6.7 seconds (both with no haste rating). So a) takes 2.5% more cast time than b), and does ~360*115%(emberstorm)*130%(imp immo)*1+crit% * whatever other modifiers I've missed. Ignoring extra modifiers, and assuming a 30% crit rate on destruction spells (pretty low), thats 700 extra damage, in 0.2 seconds (3500 dps for those extra 0.2 seconds).


Regarding Conflag during Heroism: Don't.
What I do is cast incin until immo has less than 1 second left, then recast immo (of course ignoring both when CB's cooldown is up).

 

Akj

The difference between a) & b) is basically one backdrafted incinerate or 2.25*0.3 = 0.675s. How did you get a 0.2s difference?

 

Fulgurite

Um, what? Why are you multiplying the extra damage on an Incinerate by Imp. Immo? Both rotations get the same damage of the initial hit of an immolate.

The extra damage Incin gets is ~140 per cast, so its about 420*1.15*(1+crit rate). Assume 41% crit rate (18% buffs, 8% talents, 15% base, pretty low), that's 681 damage.

Oh, and Backdraft is a 30% reduction in cast time, not 30% haste. So the cast times are 1.575 and 1.05 (multiply by .7 not divide by 1.3) without haste under backdraft. Doesn't affect too much, but the math is 3.3s vs. 3.075s, or 0.225s saved with no haste (I discounted the 2x Incin that are under backdraft in either case).

The issue is with, say, 20% haste, the Immolate cast will be GCD capped by .125 seconds, meaning that option is still 3.25 seconds, while the 3x incin option is down to 2.8125s, or 0.4375s difference. It depends now on your spell power too, because the 3x Incin option gets more incinerate time, or 23% of an Incinerate with 20% haste.

So if 23% of an Incin with 20% haste is more than 681 damage you shouldn't recast Immolate in Backdraft. In other words, if your average Incinerate is over 2918 and you have 20% haste, don't cast Immolate in Backdraft. (0% haste is 6810 average Incinerate, almost impossible).

More bad math. His a) is this:
Backdraft charge 1:
Immolate - 1.05s
Backdraft charge 2:
Incinerate - 1.575s
Backdraft charge 3:
Incinerate - 1.575s
No Backdraft:
Incinerate - 2.25s

And b) is this:
Backdraft charge 1:
Incinerate - 1.575s
Backdraft charge 2:
Incinerate - 1.575s
Backdraft charge 3:
Incinerate - 1.575s
No Backdraft:
Immolate - 1.5s

With 0% haste, the casts are this:
a) 6.45s
b) 6.225s

For a difference of 0.225s.

 

Akj

No its just bad understanding on your part. Backdraft is a 30% reduction in cast time and the GCD is not affected so immolate in case a) should be counted as 1.5s even though it goes off in 1.05s.

 

dcpwns

I get you at 55% fully buffed unless the elixirs and food add more. 37+18 then whatever you get from food.

 

LCN

Pardon me if it's been discussed, but I've missed it then.

What about shadowbolt x3 while under the effect of Backdraft? This is presuming you're the only one casting immolate in the raid.

 

Kobal

What should also be considered is, that in b) it takes longer until the next Conflag, and therefore longer until the next 30% cast time reduction.

 

oddvay

I think that you need to add at least one tick of Immolate to the 681 damage and maybe even the increased crit chance of Conflagrate from Fire and Brimstone. Otherwise you would need to consider the different length of the rotations.

 

Darian_TruBlade

The first problem is that for Shadow Bolt to be remotely competitive with Incinerate you need Imp ISB, which immediately starts taking valuable talent points away from other applications. The second problem is that ISB needs to be up during the chain cast.

If you attempt to make use of F&B, then there are 11.5-13.5 seconds between Backdrafts, which is long enough that you won't be able to benefit from any ISB buff from the last set. If instead you ignore F&B it can work as that gap is reduced to ~5 seconds. The issue there is how long you wait before you Conflag again (doing so as soon as possible only leave 1.75 seconds free in the rotation).

Overall this was a better idea back when Chaos Bolt did Chaos damage and thus benefited from ISB.

"A man's IQ, yearly income, sexual prowess, ingenuity, physical appearance and generally every other aspect of his character can be condensed down to four digits: his Arena rating." - Zechsy [70 Rogue - Skullcrusher (EU) - 10/23/2007]

 

• fallenman

Unfortunately, you will find yourself 500dps behind the other specs at 80. This is based upon beta testing by others, as well as myself, testing and researching all of the specs in depth.

 

nikitabanana

I'd say, if it comes down to -1pt in imp coa (which is where you'd take it from) for shadowfury - it's a pretty good tradeoff. Shadowfury has a lot more uses then say gluth - it can be a fairly clutch spell in a lot of cases. That said, you wouldn't be losing that much dps. The real reason to use CoA isn't that it's amazing dps - it's that you get a slight dps boost from the spell itself for very little mana cost and longer uptime then corruption, giving you 60% molten core uptime. 5% on the actual dmg itself is less dps loss then rng screwing you a bit would be...

I'll most likely get shadowfury for the same reason I'll get imp healhstone over a bit more sta - because I'm smart enough to recognize the raid matters, not me personally.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

(swap out imp coa for nether protection or pyroclasm as well depending on the encounter). Rain of fire is now useful as well, in case anyone missed that particular memo as well. I'm glad the 2/3/56 build is working for some people. I did a ton of dummy testing to figure out what exactly is worth doing xD.

 

Unir

I've followed the Affliction work you and Clearly have both done - it's informative and well-done.

I know your beta testing was done earlier on, though. How much, if at all, is that 500 dps difference you guys found affected by the changes that were recently made (i.e. coefficient changes to Corruption and Immolate, extra damage on Emberstorm / SM and the extra crit in Demo)?

One of the things a few have pointed out is that a Demo spec can make use of both the raised coefficient on Corruption and Immolate with an optimized spell priority setup, whereas the other two specs tend to favor one or the other more.

GC also indicated at one point that in beta a fully raid-buffed Felguard could do something in the neighborhood of 1000 dps, how accurate do you find that in terms of what you saw at 80?

 

• fallenman

Well I don't think any testing has been done at 80 raiding with the new coefficient changes, mainly because they were implemented after beta was shut down.

The extra crit in demo is essentially negated by the nerf to melee damage via armor mitigation. Also, affliction does benefit a lot from the immolate change, mainly due to the fact that Haunt and Shadow Embrace both affect the DoT portion of immolate.

While I never saw 1000dps on a buffed felgaurd, I do recall seeing some in the 800dps range. But, I'm sure that their internal testing allows them access to more gear, setups, etc.

 

Sydane

Felguard demo dominated the charts in T5 and then fell off in T6 primarily because it had very poor scaling, the pet dps started off overpowered but didn't increase at nearly the same rate once the exponential multipliers kicked in and dps started jumping way up. Ghostcrawler keeps pointing towards Felguards doing 1k dps in Naxx, but Felguard builds are at their best when the pet can do at least 25-30% of the total damage. That's 1k dps for the pet when total dps is at 4k, which seems to be about mid to late T7 levels. That would mean even in the first tier, it is already falling behind in scaling, something we didn't see in BC until the last tier.

They always seem reticent to push warlock pet dps up towards the levels where hunter pet dps is, probably because warlock self dps is still high in a demo build. The buffs they've given to demo all fall towards raising self dps (more crit, bigger coefficients) rather than the pet. If this continues to be the case, and they are comfortable with demo being a "pvp/survivability" spec, expect demo to consistently (and increasingly) lag behind, at least in standard point and shoot fights.

That said, demo does have a lot of things going for it. Eventually (late T8 or T9), Demonic Pact will return to its current spot as the best spelldamage buff, as it is the only one that scales. Metamorphosis will have a strong advantage in fights that are short or bursty in nature being able to stack the cooldown, especially ones where you can get into melee range for Immolation Aura. Any fight where melee gets to stand still but casters have to move or change targets will also favor Demo (think VR or Anatheron). Demo is also able to pick up 2 point healthstones with minimal sacrifice, and will have advantages when it comes to any potential warlock tanking. I think fight to fight demo can be competitive as long as it is played well. Pet survivability is excellent now and not the burden it was for much of BC. You may not see people on top of the charts on Patchwerk, but I don't think the spec will be an automatic retard cap either.

Empathy does not imply approval.

 

turturin

The buff to DT is essentially 5% crit for the master and 6.67% crit for the demon (assuming imp DT would be taken for a meta raiding build). How did you determine that this is roughly equivalent to the melee dps nerf in armor mitigation. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. It certainly seems like the buff would outweigh the nerf substantially. I'd be interested to see math here if anyone's done it.

We'll also have to see at live 80 (since this build wasn't available on PTR), but with the buffs, I expect 0/41/30 will do some very competetive dps, especially at early gear levels in T7 where crit will be lacking and the effect of 15% from talents will be magnified. Of course, since it doesn't bring the DP buff, it has to at least equal, and probably surpass afflic and destro (since its total dps will be reliant on a pet without fel synergy talents) to be worth it.

 

Pach

One thing I have not seen anyone talk about is specific gear, much like T6x4 set bonus was huge for sb spam the 2 piece T7 set bonus looks like a huge buff for destro over aff. This is just intuition and not hard math but it seems that due to destro spamming Incin a lot more than aff gets to SB it would have a much greater benefit...not to mention the large amounts of haste which helps destro more

 

Soulcaster

I have recently been raiding as 0//46/15 and have been loving the spec, with running huge amounts of crit raid buffed and seeing a crit almost every other shot of the shadowbolt if not every shot sometimes. Once 80 comes around i will be running a 0/50/21 build, this is 15% crit from talents alone. In demo if you decide to go 0/41/30 at 80 you are loosing some key talents that you need to have to for one keep the pet alive and for two you need to give him some of your crit if you are running high amounts. Demo may be able to pull the numbers together at 80 but as it stands now i see it being one of the raid specs that could be possible.

 

Fulgurite

In my defense, that *was* what he did to get a ~.2s difference. So I'm gonna pull a politician and retcon my statement to say I meant *his* math was bad, not yours. Sorry for forgetting that Backdraft doesn't affect the GCD. Man, and I even said it doesn't work like Haste in my post....

Both rotations use Conflag with less than 5 seconds left on Immo, so they both have access to Conflag's increased crit chance.

Let's see. We'll assume you Conflag at exactly 1.5 seconds left each time, that way I have some exact rotation times. Also 0 haste for now.

a)
0: Immo.... 13.5 seconds of other spells...
13.5: Conflag <---sequence starts
15: Immo
16.5: Incin #1
18.075: Incin #2
19.65: Incin #3
30: Conflag <---sequence finishes
...Repeat

b)
0: Immo.... 13.5 seconds of other spells...
13.5: Conflag <---sequence starts
15: Incin #1
16.575: Incin #2
18.15: Incin #3
19.725: Immo
34.725: Conflag <---sequence finishes
....Repeat

So a) casts Conflag every 16.5 seconds, while b) casts Conflag every 21.225 seconds.

a) has 81.8% Immo uptime, and
b) has 63.6% Immo uptime

However the difference in speed is .675s like Akj said, not the .2 to .4 we were working with before. So is 30% of an Incinerate more than 681 damage and 18.2% of an Immolate? That's the question you have to ask yourself to decide between the two rotations.

That would only be the case if the set bonus was constantly up, like T6 4 piece is. Since it's a proc from DoTs that proc a set number of times, that means it will only be up on a certain percentage of filler nukes. The more filler nukes you cast, smaller and smaller percents of them will be affected by this set bonus. Of course, Destro's filler nukes hit harder, so 10% crit is a boost to a bigger piece of their damage than Aff, which might offset that drawback of always getting only 2 DoT ticks every 3 seconds to proc it.

 

Sydane

If you are going 50 deep into demo, Metamorphosis is going to be a bigger dps boost in most situations, as well as far more useful overall, than just another 5% crit talent. If you are strongly against Meta, dropping those top tier talents like the pet crit and fel synergy for deeper destro or even top affliction is probably more worthwhile.

Empathy does not imply approval.