The DPS boost of immolate from movement fights is basically a function of how much larger a fraction of your cast order it can become as a result of your cast order becoming sparse with respect to time. Jones, your scenario is that which maximizes the benefit from immolate, but it isn't the only case where you'll see an increase. You always have a cap on the number of immolates you can cast: 1 per 15 seconds. If movement cuts the number of shadowbolts you can throw in between in half, then the proportion of your damage that is immolate doubles. If immolate has a higher DPCT, which it tends to except in extreme cases, then the increase it has on your dps, as a percent, roughly doubles in the above situation. What you describe is what it requires for immolate to become better when the DPCT is lower, because it's comparing an immolate to no shadowbolt rather than 60% of a shadowbolt.
Of course, with immolate there's still the ISB uptime problem. It's up to you to figure out on your own what this reduction in SB cast time measure ends up being in terms of raid ISB... I have a feeling it's not much because ISB uptime is relatively robust to initial conditions, but if it's close you should be concerned.
If immolate has a higher DPCT, which it tends to except in extreme cases
I inserted stuff in the spreadsheet to prove you wrong. Turns out you're right, given CoE, Imp Scorch, and talents. Compendium updated to reflect this.
I inserted stuff in the spreadsheet to prove you wrong. Turns out you're right, given CoE, Imp Scorch, and talents. Compendium updated to reflect this.
I believe the issue is that, while Immolate may have a better pure damage per cast time than Shadow Bolt, it doesn't have a chance to proc the ISB debuff. This is difficult to quantify, but it is certainly significant both for your own dps and for the dps of the raid.
Regardless whether Immolate is a dps increase, not using or using it will only make a few dps difference unless you have Tier 5+ gear as Destro then it starts to drop your dps since you have less imp SB uptime and you don't dip into the synergy of imp sb, CoS, and Shadow weaving. As Affliction it is decent anytime.
At some Tier 6 level with another Lock and 2-3 Shadow Priests in the raid, the only time I have cast it (as affliction spec) is on RoS phase 2, because I can't cast SB due to pushback. As destro I used to cast it at the start of the boss fight so I wouldn't get a huge crit and pull aggro.
The spreadsheet models it pretty good if pay attention to OOM time, DoT gap time, and raid buffs.
Well, I just noticed that when I plug my fully raid buffed numbers into the spreadsheet, it tells me that using Immo is a 30dps loss for me.... yet Immo is still higher DPCT than shadowbolt. I'm no math major, nor an excel expert, but this seems counter-intuitive to me and I cannot figure out why that would be the case.
As far as I can tell, the spreadsheet appears to be properly taking haste into account for the effective cast time?
Well, I just noticed that when I plug my fully raid buffed numbers into the spreadsheet, it tells me that using Immo is a 30dps loss for me.... yet Immo is still higher DPCT than shadowbolt. I'm no math major, nor an excel expert, but this seems counter-intuitive to me and I cannot figure out why that would be the case.
As far as I can tell, the spreadsheet appears to be properly taking haste into account for the effective cast time?
Immolate costs more mana per second, so you have to lifetap more. It probably also takes into account the effect of ISB.
Immolate costs more mana per second, so you have to lifetap more. It probably also takes into account the effect of ISB.
I modeled ISB, mana-cost-to-lifetap, and all talents that are involved (ruin, emberstorm, imp immolate), given 28% crit and 1200 damage (equal fire/shadow) and found a significantly higher DPCT for Immolate. This is assuming CoE (untalented, 10%) and imp scorch (15%), and CoS (untalented 10%), Shadow Weaving (10%), a Sacced Succubus (15%) and Misery (5%)
Mind you, all factors are needed (talents, and both debuffs) for Immo to come out on top. Leave them out and SB is plain better. And if you improve on that gear (especially with haste) the gap closes, too. And of course some of the best available gear only has +shadow damage and no fire. The real answer is: it depends.
I don't think it'll make a big difference either way, though. I'm not a big fan of investing 10 talents points to make a spell I'll use only every 15s only marginally better than SB unless I have all debuffs present.
It's definitely a good opener, for less threat risks at the start of a fight.
Hello guys i had a question some of my guild mates called me a idiot/moron for using Immolate into my dot rotation as Affliction, is it pointless to use immolate as a affliction warlock on a dot rotation?
Hello guys i had a question some of my guild mates called me a idiot/moron for using Immolate into my dot rotation as Affliction, is it pointless to use immolate as a affliction warlock on a dot rotation?
Try reading the original post in this thread. Not only will it answer this question, it will also probably answer many more questions that you haven't thought of yet.
Question?
How much Spell Damage should I give up for HIT?
I have Plenty of different Combo's of gear I could use. I can't seem to give up Frostweave boots, even though I have Boots of Foretelling and Ruby Slippers the damage is too Nice!
Atm My Spec is 7/44/10 Seems i get more Shadow damage and Crit with this build vs 41/?/18
Guild just Killed Mag so we should be moving into SSC soon
Question?
How much Spell Damage should I give up for HIT?
I have Plenty of different Combo's of gear I could use. I can't seem to give up Frostweave boots, even though I have Boots of Foretelling and Ruby Slippers the damage is too Nice!
Atm My Spec is 7/44/10 Seems i get more Shadow damage and Crit with this build vs 41/?/18
Guild just Killed Mag so we should be moving into SSC soon
*sigh*
Maybe someone should make a nice post detailing warlock builds, gear choice, and how to tell what stat to prioritize. They should call it "the big warlock post with all answers" or "the warlock's cookbook". That sure would be convenient.
Thanks for all the immolate comments. I'm running with 4 pieces of tier 6 as destruction (21/40) and I always took the extra fire talents (imp. immolate and emberstorm) because I thought it would increase my dps.
Now I can spec out of it in favor of soul leech or whatever.
Question?
How much Spell Damage should I give up for HIT?
I have Plenty of different Combo's of gear I could use. I can't seem to give up Frostweave boots, even though I have Boots of Foretelling and Ruby Slippers the damage is too Nice!
Atm My Spec is 7/44/10 Seems i get more Shadow damage and Crit with this build vs 41/?/18
Guild just Killed Mag so we should be moving into SSC soon
None of the two boots you mentioned are good enough to replace FSW. Since you'll be hitting SSC soon, I'd recommend going for the boots from Hydross. Depending on your gem choices it will be a loss of around 10 or more shadow damage for an increase of 11-18 hit rating. Worth it, imo.
Failing that, Boots of Blasting gives a nice increase to both hit and crit for a rather substancial sacrifice in damage.
I'm an Afflition lock who has a minor in destro(enough to hit range increase/threat reduction) and have recently managed to crest the cap on hit rating. That, of course, allows me to start playing the numbers game more intently on just how to maximize my DPS through new gear. With my guild pushing into BT and Hyjal, a lot is soon to open up to me.
One thing I've been told recently by a friend is that the higher your personal damage gets, the more crit works for you rather than pure + spell damage. This was prompted when I spied a warlock in our top horde side raiding guild and saw that his gear had a lot of +crit/spell damage gems included.
I've always thought hat crit wasn't something affliction locks should pursue in and of itself, but should accumulate by osmosis. To that effect, I've been planning to socket my gear with runed rubies/spinels. However, if the crit would do me better(and add to my ISB uptime), I'd probably for that instead.
My question is as such.. is it true that crit can start to outweigh pure damage for gemming purposes? And if so, at about what point is it that I should consider gemming for crit?
Well, the hybrid gems may be because they didn't have enough [Runed Crimson Spinel]s to go around. Also, even for destro (which gets a lot more out of crit than affliction), gemming for pure crit gems is always a bad idea. However, the hybrid ([Veiled Noble Topaz] and it's BT/MH equiv.) gems may win out through combination of rounding errors and the ease of hit capping.
(Also, zomg someone from ER. The ArrPee-Errs are invading.)
I was running some trials with Leulier's ISB simulator today to look for patterns in uptime: WOW ISB Uptime Simulator
These trials were mostly to see what effects are brought by relatively large changes in raid composition and specific specs. I took as a baseline of 20% untalented crit rate, so that affliction has 25% (Devastation) and destruction has 28% (Backlash), and assumed everyone is hit capped. 20 trials were run for each situation. The casting styles modelled are UA (41/0/20), SM-Ruin (40/0/21), Dest (0/21/40). 'SP' are shadow priests. A couple of the situations were run again with every warlock's crit rate raised by 3% or 6% (representing possible buffs from elemental shamans, ret paladins, etc.).
So those are some starting estimates. It surprised me to see that switching the affliction warlock's spec from UA to Ruin didn't result in much of a change in ISB uptime.
Maybe someone should make a nice post detailing warlock builds, gear choice, and how to tell what stat to prioritize. They should call it "the big warlock post with all answers" or "the warlock's cookbook". That sure would be convenient.
Well all this can be achieved by yourself using a spreadsheet and wowdigger.com
Gear planning is an important part of raiding and comparing 2 peices of gear can be tedious at times but I find it easier to compare whole gear profiles with each other while using the dps spreadsheet. Sure you can find DPS of a single item but what if half the hit on the item is wasted when looking at your overall profile?
As for the FSW boots question using a 21/40 destro spec Boots of Blasting will give you a better dps increase over something like FSW assuming all the hit in being used (IE your not over 202). Now the problem lies with wasted hit something you wont run into till late game but it becomes a huge problem. Wasted hit devalues all your items with hit so to compensate you must find items without hit. Most noteably Haste and Crit are the two stats traded for to "balance" your gear setup for maximum potential.
It's ironic that hit will actually devalue to 0dps at 202, but while not at 202, hit is quite possibly your most important stat because of this going over the cap will net you wasted potential dps that could have been earned in the long run with a alternative non-hit item. Regemming is a nice fix for this problem for awhile but even that will become unhelpful at BT/Hyjal level when you dont even need hit gems.
Here is an example...In these 2 lists I was comparing a almost identical gear setup but the major changes between them came to the weapons Tempest/Rage vs Illidan Staff and belt.
Now note I had to switch items around because of the abundant hit given by the MH/OH combo and still you will be over cap. The two items themselves give almost identical preformance DPS wise however this assumes all the combos hit is in use. It devalues when the hit is not used pushing the Staff higher when looking at highest potential DPS. Imagine if I didnt swap Belt of Blasting with Anetherons Noose in the first gear list? I would be at 234 hit or 32 over the hit cap and guess how much hit the MH/OH provides 34 hit so without swaping other gear slots the useful hit on the combo would be 2... a large dps loss.
What do you guys think about having one warlock gear/gem/enchant for pure crit (at the cost of damage) to try and maximize ISB uptime? Most guilds bring 3/4 locks, assuming one is Affliction for the utility talents would it be worth the nerf to one of the destro locks personal DPS to stack pure crit? I'm talking 10 crit rating gems and such, basically as much crit as possible while still being hit capped and maintaining semi-respectable damage level.
Looking at Morwen's post, with 3 locks one being Aff and two being destro about average crit rating the uptime is 57.43. Seems to me you could boost this a substantial amount having a third lock with tons of crit, which should in turn increase raid DPS by a decent margin.
What do you guys think about having one warlock gear/gem/enchant for pure crit (at the cost of damage) to try and maximize ISB uptime? Most guilds bring 3/4 locks, assuming one is Affliction for the utility talents would it be worth the nerf to one of the destro locks personal DPS to stack pure crit? I'm talking 10 crit rating gems and such, basically as much crit as possible while still being hit capped and maintaining semi-respectable damage level.
Looking at Morwen's post, with 3 locks one being Aff and two being destro about average crit rating the uptime is 57.43. Seems to me you could boost this a substantial amount having a third lock with tons of crit, which should in turn increase raid DPS by a decent margin.
Theoretical modeling suggest the increase in ISB uptime wouldn't improve that much, so it's not likely to be very effective.
I like the concept though, it sounds fun.
You might want to use the succubus destro build, which has even higher crit and relies less on having high spellpower. (demonic tactics&knowledge vs backlash and SnF)
Has anyone tried prioritising crit over other stats? How high could you get a warlock's crit chance? I'm guessing 50% might be achievable, given ToWrath, Moonkin Aura, Retri Pala Judgment.
It's possible, though a raiding moonkin is extremely rare in my experience. I'd have about 42% crit in raids w/ a moonkin. If I could get the Kazrogal legs, Vashj chest, anatheron belt and gem them with Crit I might be able to reach 50% lol.
After doing a ZA where I was the only shadow priest, and I was with a single destruction lock, I found my dps had improved quite a bit compared to normal. When I next did it with a affliction lock, my dps was lower, I concluded that this was due to the fact that even though the maledicted CoS was adding an extra 3%, it was outweighed by the extra ISB uptime from having just me and one destro lock....
This got me thinking, if a lock can increase ISB uptime by 15% then they would increase shadow damage, on average, by 3% whilst at the same time probably doing a decent bit more dps than an affliction lock.. however this is where my thinking may well fall down, as Im just assuming that,
Shadow damage % boost = 20% * ISB Uptime
Is that completely wrong? Ive looked through a few threads and couldnt find a great deal of info regarding use of ISB, just discussions regarding calculating uptime.
Anyway, assuming my theory is roughly correct, and assuming the following,
2 Destro locks with 25% crit
1 Affliction lock with 15% crit
1 Shadow priest
I get an ISB uptime of 54% using Lueliers sim (duration of 300s). When I change the setup to,
3 Destro locks with 25% crit
1 Shadow Priest
I get an ISB Uptime of 67.5%, an increase of 13.5%, which by my poor math works out to roughly 2.7% more shadow damage on average. So that almost balances out malediction, then on top of that the destruction lock will probably do more dps (They do in my guild, and from reading wws parses and this thread it seems to be the case for others).
Now of course this just applys in certain cases, as if you run with more locks/priests you arent going to get such an uptime boost, and also if theres more than one mob, as you cant bolt more than one at once but you can keep CoS on them all. And of course, CoS also applys to arcane, though in my guild we only have a boomkin that uses arcane atm, who isnt always on raids, and all the mages are fire. So yeah, this is only going to apply in special cases/raid setups, but that aside, what are peoples thoughts on this, is my math completely off the mark?
While a bit odd to have a chicken in raids I was quite amazed at the dps on could put out given close to the right gear (quite a bit undergeared compared to me but still in around T6 level). Was a resto in our guild that went moonkin for a bit of Naxx fun. He did 1700 - 1800 to my 2390 on Patchwerk, both of us in the same group with 1 spriest, he didn't pot too much, I had all. Also he doesn't go moonkin too much so it's also a matter of getting used to. Guessing pushing 2000 shouldn't be too hard at the same gear/buff level.
Managed to reach 40.6% with moonkin, ele, adept's, AB, BoK with gear being gemmed mostly with Spinels and using 5/5 T6 so no nice crit items posted previously (damn that Vashj chest is sweet). There's also Council cloak for a nice 1.x% boost in crit, regemming for a few more %, Anetheron belt, crit trinkets ... 50% should be possible but dunno if only 1 crit buffed warlock would up the uptime too much. Maybe if 2-3 like this, who knows.
Last edited by dakalro : 12/06/07 at 12:16 PM.
Reason: shpeeeelling ... and fixed spelling in edit reason :))
12/03/07, 11:07 PM
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