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11/30/07, 2:44 PM
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#451
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Don Flamenco
Human Warlock
Argent Dawn (EU)
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Well, I've been gone for a week (AD-EU real life meet) and now this.
First of all: haste calculations
To get more reasonable results, you should incorporate some kind of mana consumption rate. Life Tap causes global cooldowns and therefore lowers your dps. E.g. If you need to tap once per 4 bolts, then you need to add 1.5s per 4 bolts to your casting time when calculating sustained damage.
total_casting_time = base_casting_time / (1 + haste_rating / 1577) + 1.5s / shadowbolts_per_tap
Note that how much mana you get depends on your spell power (80% coefficient), and Shadow Bolt cost can be talented to a 5% reduction.
Second:
I've had more than enough of the spec jyhad.
Some people like affliction. Some people like demonology. Some people like the 30/21/10 spec. Each and every one of these specs can top a raid's damage meter, and they can be fun to play and require skill to perform optimally. These are all facts.
Debating without solid evidence is very counterproductive and against the spirit of this board. Due to the nature of these specs (all have a different playstyle), objective results are almost impossible to get.
I've already went as far as to list some specs that I don't particularly think are raid viable (destro fire, for example) to avoid bruising egos. The compendium mentions the relevant debate. I will leave it at that.
Third:
To the warlock that claims not to use Life Tap: I'm very interested in seeing how you can keep up good dps without using it. Can you elaborate? I tend to go out of mana in less than two minutes. Mana potions are spent in less than half a minute. Am I missing something?
(was edited shortly after posting for clarity, resulting in a small crossquote)
Last edited by Arelenda : 11/30/07 at 3:06 PM.
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11/30/07, 2:47 PM
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#452
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Piston Honda
Gnome Warlock
Earthen Ring
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Originally Posted by Arelenda
People have reported affliction to produce better results at low levels, others (myself included) have experienced 21/40 outperforming it on all gear levels. Some people have reported it to depend on the fight more than anything.
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Indeed. I'm one of those who saw an increase at the tail end of the T4 gear level.
Originally Posted by Arelenda
The compendium already answers this: it depends more on lag, raid setup, player skill and play style then on gear levels. Your mileage will vary.
Optimal raid setup has at least one affliction warlock because of malediction, shadow embrace and an imp, regardless of gear.
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Of course there is a huge YMMV tag to this whole thing. However, I was merely curious if the additional scaling of destro would eventually overtake the raid advantage provided by malediction. Obviously this depends entirely on your raid composition, since you need to estimate the benefits that 3% shadow damage has to all shadow damage-using raiders. (I was secretly hoping someone would hit it with a math bat so that I could calculate the break even point with some raid composition inputs, but alas.)
Originally Posted by dakalro
To be honest, from my own experience, the difference between a token affli lock in a tank group and a destro in a support group (spriest + resto shaman + mana pots, if still needed) is so huge atm that it's not even worth having one just for malediction. When in need of an imp a destro lock (which could easilly have 1-3 pts in imp imp) can give up saccing for a fight and still maintain respectable dps, at least close to an affli one in the same position.
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At what gear level are affliction locks around 85% the DPS of destruction? No Touch of Shadow is a huge DPS loss.
Originally Posted by dakalro
Removing Life Tap from a destro lock's life is simply the biggest dps upgrade and at this point it's quite easy, on some fights even possible to give up 1-2 pot cooldowns to destruction potions and still never need to Life Tap. That in turn translates to a huge dps boost that an affli lock can't get because of improved Life Tap and Dark Pact already getting them a lot closer to their max. And for my own experience it's normally 300+ dps diff, going up to 5-600 on a let's say Patchwerk fight where I got to a so so 2380 dps (he has no partial resists). And Malediction can't make up for that difference.
On another note, Tried Oomkin + Ele combo on a Gruul kill recently and would like to say I'd never give up batteries for crit, maybe just the resto shaman once spriests get another 2-300 dps boost. 8% lucky extra crit still doesn't come close to always getting 10% more dps time from Life Taps (average I'd say).
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Leuiler tells me I'm spending 15% of my time life tapping, so this is somewhat true. However, the fact is that there are much better DPM places to put that spriest mana to use: hunters are fairly mana starved and their spells don't cost much, so the difference an spriest makes is significantly larger; mages can convert pretty much any quantity of mana into damage, given threat ceiling. The main reason I liked spriest is so I could "dip" from VE healing, so healers wouldn't have to top me off from LT. But that's not enough to justify me retaining the spriest over others. Much much much much more important is WoA. Spelldamage is almost always a warlock's best scaling stat, and a static 100 more is a pretty huge buff.
Also, do not discount the extra crit. One of detro's primary goals is increasing ISB uptime. Crit helps you do that. Checking assessment post most raids, crits make up about 40-50% of my damage done with SB.
Also, if you can guarantee the ele shaman, you can pick up gear w/o hit (or dump gems with it) to grab more damage, a very good trade-off. Assuming perfect itemization, that 4% hit you drop could be another 50-60 damage or another 2-3% crit.
Originally Posted by Katinsha
When looking at warlock damage, you should firstly ignore the damage done by CoD/CoA, since other locks will put up a non-damaging curse, skewing the damage done in favour of the former. Former is often a destro lock.
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I would hope everyone is discounting CoD/CoA here. If you are running any of those, you already are in a luxurious 4+ lock raid and likely will have debuff problems anyway. Some T5 raids might ditch CoE if enough of their mages go arcane, but I'm assuming that's going away now due to the recent mage buffs WRT fire/frost. A raid without 4-5 of (rogue, hunter, dps feral, dps warrior, lolret, enh, tank) is not going to be very common.
Originally Posted by Katinsha
Secondly, destro locks receive more benefit from group buffs such as from the shaman (heroism, mana totem, wrath totem) and shadow priest (vampiric touch). Raid leaders know this and tinker caster groups with destro locks in it. Other locks often provide an imp to a tank group/are placed in a random spot outside the caster group. These buffs highly influence the ability and effectiveness of shadow bolt spamming. Not only for destro, also for affliction. You can't say: "oh but you have imp life tap and dark pact, you don't need it" since affliction actually requires more mana spend per second, seeing dots are mostly instant and bolts take 2.5 seconds.
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This is true, and likely the reason why T4 locks report higher than the "spreadsheet" says they should, because of the artificial scaling of the group buffs. This is why you should always tinker your simulations assuming full normal raid buffs (AI crit, DS damage, flask, food, oil, etc.) and come up with a couple of difference scenarios involving possible raid buffs (shaman, spriest, moonkin, etc.) Always do apples-to-apples comparisons with numbers if at all possible.
This still doesn't change the fact that destro does scale better and that past a certain point, is doing more damage. Even when you give the affliction locks all these benefits, they cannot catch up, as they just don't scale as well. Since you have limited buff slots, you use them where they benefit the raid the most.
Originally Posted by Katinsha
Realise that destro locks in most circustances need (way) more healing to keep spamming shadow bolt. This may or may not be efficient for your raid group on a certain encounter. Like on Kaz'rogal and Naj'entus it seriously cripples you. Destro is just inferior on those healing-intensive fights.
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This is a sensitivity for destro, as has been noted. Do not discount Soul Siphon (I know, I laughed too when I first heard it), however. Glancing over a few healing intensive encounters, I find I'm healing myself with that to the tune of 2/3rds what the affliction locks are healing themselves with SL. Will it entirely make up for it? No. But good healers, smart LT timing, and that talent make up for a lot more than you're granting here.
The only situations I've run into where this was a major liability (i.e., holding up the encounter) was when I was tanking T5 stuff. The extra healing stress does matter for Leo or Capernian.
Originally Posted by Katinsha
Lastly, it simply takes more concentration (and skill! :P) to keep up DoTs and spam shadow bolt than it takes to spam shadow bolt alone. It is possible people get higher results due to the easier game-play destruction offers. When affliction locks seem to underperform, perhaps their dot uptime is low and/or their number of shadow bolts (which should not be lower than 80% of a destro lock).
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Wait, 80% of destro? How many dots are you juggling again? That's a 68% cast ratio of SB with 4 dots to maintain as well as a LT/DP cycle to keep up with. The best I'm seeing with UA builds in the spreadsheet is a 55% cast ratio of SB with no haste gear and no immolate. That's a 13% difference.
Originally Posted by Katinsha
In my opinion, most people see a jump in DPS because the game-play is that much simpler as Destro. Not because it is a hugely superior damage spec. It is better, I won't deny it, but not 400-500 dps with equal gear levels, except at the very high-end, where, you have to agree, dps is not a big issue anymore, since you farm the bosses at that stage. The relevant stages are when you still struggle on them (working on Vashj, Kael, Reliquary of Souls, insert other road-block).
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Even with perfect dot rotations and equivalent gear, I'm still seeing spreadsheet numbers on the order of 100-150dps ahead by the time you're kitted out in T5. That is not the very high end. The earlier performance (in T4, for example) is most likely due to what you're claiming. However, the scaling does win out shortly thereafter: affliction scales with damage, destruction scales with damage, crit, and haste.
Originally Posted by Katinsha
Your own game-play (what spells to cast, keeping up most important dots, casting as many bolts as possible, when to life tap/dark pact, how to move, not to die, when to use what consumable, how to choose the best gear, how to tweak your build, etc.) is soo much more important than your talents, that generalizations like this are just false. Fresh destro locks with +6% to hit are absolutely terrible (on say, Gruul).
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How is "tweaking your build" more important than talents? Seems to be the same thing to me. :-P
EDIT:
Originally Posted by Arelenda
I've had more than enough of the spec jyhad. Some people like affliction. Some people like demonology. Some people like the horribly inefficient 30/21/10 spec. I have no doubt that each and every one of these specs can top a raid's damage meter, and all of these can be fun to play.
I've already went as far as to list some specs that I don't particularly think are raid viable (destro fire, for example) to avoid bruising egos. The compendium mentions the relevant debate. I'll leave it at that.
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Well said. If someone has hard numbers to share, I'm all for them. Comparing on stuff other than data is what intarweb flame wars are made of. :-P |
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11/30/07, 3:31 PM
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#453
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Don Flamenco
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Originally Posted by dakalro
To be honest, from my own experience, the difference between a token affli lock in a tank group and a destro in a support group (spriest + resto shaman + mana pots, if still needed) is so huge atm that it's not even worth having one just for malediction. When in need of an imp a destro lock (which could easilly have 1-3 pts in imp imp) can give up saccing for a fight and still maintain respectable dps, at least close to an affli one in the same position.
Removing Life Tap from a destro lock's life is simply the biggest dps upgrade and at this point it's quite easy, on some fights even possible to give up 1-2 pot cooldowns to destruction potions and still never need to Life Tap. That in turn translates to a huge dps boost that an affli lock can't get because of improved Life Tap and Dark Pact already getting them a lot closer to their max. And for my own experience it's normally 300+ dps diff, going up to 5-600 on a let's say Patchwerk fight where I got to a so so 2380 dps (he has no partial resists). And Malediction can't make up for that difference.
On another note, Tried Oomkin + Ele combo on a Gruul kill recently and would like to say I'd never give up batteries for crit, maybe just the resto shaman once spriests get another 2-300 dps boost. 8% lucky extra crit still doesn't come close to always getting 10% more dps time from Life Taps (average I'd say).
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How are you not Life Tapping? Are you lucky enough to always have a Shadow Priest + pots? Do you sac fel pup? |
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11/30/07, 3:53 PM
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#454
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Von Kaiser
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Even with an Ele Shm and Spriest at some point your going to have to use LT to maintain top DPS. Other than stacking Int and saccing a lot of everything else I see no way for this to be possible and top meters.
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11/30/07, 6:51 PM
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#455
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Don Flamenco
Human Warlock
Frostmane (EU)
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If you paid attention to what I wrote you'd see, good spriest + RESTO shaman + mana pots (acquired and required addiction for this). Sometimes, if spriest gets nice dps I can even skip a mana pot. In a 5 min fight, no Life Taps, no stat stacking, sacced succu ofc. Ele shaman ... never tbh, resto seems way better as support for locks.
And we have a weird-ish setup that started with our all out on haste shaman. He always gets spriest. Since then caster groups (2x) are spriest + resto shaman + casters, rarely a healer among those or on some, few fights, healers get in. So yeah, on most of the fights, if I'm in range of the Mana Tide/Mana Spring, I don't need to LT.
And all this is pretty much dependant on how good your shadow priests' dps is, the better they do the less LT you need.
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11/30/07, 6:54 PM
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#456
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Protector
Ashstrike
Human Paladin
No WoW Account
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You may be getting by without Tapping using an abnormal group and possibly suboptimal gear with regen stats, but you would do more damage sacing Succy and Life Tapping.
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11/30/07, 7:04 PM
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#457
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Don Flamenco
Human Warlock
Frostmane (EU)
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Why abnormal, 5k mana return from shaman helps a lot on top of the ~5k from pots and whatever the spriest can squeeze out.
And re-reading my previous post I should have probably said I've only consistently managed to go without LTs on 3 T6 fights and Patchwerk, where spriests get a prety nice boost in dps due to no partial resists. That's Naj, Teron and Rage, but it's getting there, many of the other fights actually have movement you need to do so you get no loss from LT and in any case the shadow priests won't have the required regen.
Didn't quite intend to make it sound like I completely removed LT from my bars  just came out wrong.
As for who gets shadow priests ... I saw mages get a much larger return from having 8% crit rather than the extra regen. And with seeing a restro druid use his offspec gear for moonkin, not even full +dmg and getting 1700 dps, I can't say what I used to ... that I don't like moonkins, they simply seem to work in the right hands. Not top dps but certainly close. But why shouldn't I get shadow priest? Only ones left out are usually 1-2 casters (affli lock + maybe another one, varies, including myself) and the hunter who gets the 2nd feral in the odd group.
Last edited by dakalro : 11/30/07 at 7:16 PM.
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11/30/07, 7:13 PM
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#458
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Piston Honda
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Originally Posted by Cohren
Even with an Ele Shm and Spriest at some point your going to have to use LT to maintain top DPS. Other than stacking Int and saccing a lot of everything else I see no way for this to be possible and top meters.
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Dakalro, please post some parses were you aren't life tapping. Like the above poster, I can't fathom how it's possible to maintain high DPS without Life Tapping. Lately I've been having a Resto Shaman and a T6 geared SP in my party (the ideal mana regen you cite in your posts), but I still run out of mana on everything but RoS (only because each phase is so short). Granted, I run with 145 Haste Rating (increasing the rate at which I consume mana). Still, though, I don't see how it's possible to avoid Life Tapping without multiple Shadow Priests stacked in your group.
Rough Calculations for Mp5:
Gear: 0 Mp5
Consumables: 0 Mp5 (no DPS consumables)
Demonic Sac: 0 Mp5 (Succubus sacrificed)
SP: 325 Mp5 (assumes 1,300 DPS SP)
Mana Spring Totem: 72.5 Mp5 (assumes 5/5 Restorative Totems and T4 bonus: ticks for 29 every 2 sec)
BoW: 49.2 Mp5 (assumes 2/2 Imp BoW)
Mana Tide: 40 Mp5 (assumes 10,000 raid buffed mana pool)
Super Mana Potion: 100 Mp5 (assumes average mana return)
Total: 586.7 Mp5
Shadow Bolt: -798 Mp5 (assumes 5/5 Cataclysm and 0 haste rating)
Net: -211.3 Mp5
With the assumed 10,000 raid buffed mana pool, your total time spamming solely Shadow Bolt is a paltry 236.6 seconds of casting (94 Shadow Bolts). [Note: With 0 Mp5 and a 10k mana pool, you will be oom from SB spam after 63 seconds.]
Dakalro, initially I was skeptical that you can DPS without Life Tap, but after doing (and re-doing) some basic mana regen math, four minutes without a Life Tap is feasible, although it does group compositions that may be sub-optimal for overall raid DPS.
Edit: In the time it took me to post this you posted two clarification posts. Still, your clarifications do not change any assumptions from this post (and I even grant you a larger raid buffed mana pool than you likely have). In one of your clarification posts you claim no life tapping over a 5 minute fight. If that's true, then you are not continuously casting (as the Mp5 math above proves).
Edit 2: Fixed SP Mp5 (can't believe I messed that up) and adjusted other values based on the replies from Dakalro. Conclusions changed drastically. Still, though, shows that Life Tapping is required on all but the shortest fights.
Last edited by Furio : 11/30/07 at 8:07 PM.
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11/30/07, 7:24 PM
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#459
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Don Flamenco
Human Warlock
Frostmane (EU)
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Unless I'm completely blind I didn't LT here . Ignore the rest of the spells cast, it was fooling around, an almost wipe and I died only a couple of seconds before boss, forgot to CoD after the 2nd one and overall not so awesome when all you get is "Aggro from Shadowy Construct" with 4-5 around you  . True, kind of short fight, will try and find an older one if I still kept the log. |
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11/30/07, 7:24 PM
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#460
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Don Flamenco
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Shadow priest returns 5% of damage, 1200 DPS * 5 seconds * 0.05 = 300 mp5, not 60.
Last edited by Trickykid : 11/30/07 at 7:32 PM.
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11/30/07, 7:29 PM
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#461
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Don Flamenco
Human Warlock
Frostmane (EU)
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It doesn't have to put you on 0 mana usage, just enough to keep you going for the length of the fight though. Then there's this where I ended up with way more mana than I needed, around 60% or so after 3 min.
Last edited by dakalro : 11/30/07 at 7:36 PM.
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11/30/07, 7:43 PM
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#462
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Don Flamenco
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So... to go without LT (with 2.5s bolt and no curses...):
base_mana + mp5*fight_length/5 = fight_length*399/2.5
mp5 necessary = 798 - 5 * base_mana / fight_length
or
fight_length possible with no LT = 5 * base_mana / (798 - mp5)
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11/30/07, 8:10 PM
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#463
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Piston Honda
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Originally Posted by Trickykid
Shadow priest returns 5% of damage, 1200 DPS * 5 seconds * 0.05 = 300 mp5, not 60.
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/boggle I can't believe I neglected a factor of 5. Above post is edited with correct number and a drastically different conclusion. Still, though, the fact remains that Life Tap remains necessary for most fights (as most fights last longer than four minutes) even if you happen to be in a mana regen party. |
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11/30/07, 9:48 PM
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#464
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Bald Bull
Roywyn
Gnome Mage
No WoW Account (EU)
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How much extra damage is one charge of Shadow Vulnerability worth?
If I'm out of mana and everything is on cooldown, I can either wand or lie down (as a mage or whoever really). Now the last option doesn't feel very satisfying, especially when a boss is on very low health.
So, how does wanding (1.5s speed, 177 base DPS wand, shadow damage) compare to just standing around?
How much is one charge of shadow vulnerabilty worth in a typical raid setting?
Bear in mind that all endgamge wands are 1.5s shadow wands, non-shadow wands are from arena (1.9s, fire) or under 100 DPS, and the slower wands regenerate less mana from JoW. Not wanding also would regain no mana from JoW.
So, you see it's all pretty complicated, so I'd love to obtain a figure on the value of one Shadow Vulnerability charge to work with.
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11/30/07, 10:37 PM
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#465
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Don Flamenco
Human Warlock
Argent Dawn (EU)
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Originally Posted by Roywyn
How much extra damage is one charge of Shadow Vulnerability worth?
If I'm out of mana and everything is on cooldown, I can either wand or lie down (as a mage or whoever really). Now the last option doesn't feel very satisfying, especially when a boss is on very low health.
So, how does wanding (1.5s speed, 177 base DPS wand, shadow damage) compare to just standing around?
How much is one charge of shadow vulnerabilty worth in a typical raid setting?
Bear in mind that all endgamge wands are 1.5s shadow wands, non-shadow wands are from arena (1.9s, fire) or under 100 DPS, and the slower wands regenerate less mana from JoW. Not wanding also would regain no mana from JoW.
So, you see it's all pretty complicated, so I'd love to obtain a figure on the value of one Shadow Vulnerability charge to work with.
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It is downright impossible to tell for sure. Spreadsheets can't come close due to horrible ISB hidden mechanics discussed in previous posts. ShadowSeer tries but can be horribly off if you're out of range to receive debuff messages. There are variables one can change to increase range on damage messages, and most mods do. It's been reported that debuff messages aren't affected by these. ShadowSeer has been put on hold until 2.4 for this reason, with me hoping that the much needed cleanup will fix these things. Currently its ISB data is 100% reliable only when staying within 30 yards of a boss at all times.
It also depends heavily on the fight and amount of shadow users. The kind of fight where you go oom is typically going to be a boss fight, so let's assume that.
In my experience, ShadowSeer has recorded values of about 1500-2000 added damage per crit with around 6-7 shadow users fighting a boss, on the rare occasion where I could get what I consider reliable figures. One could very roughly estimate that a charge is worth 400 on average in that raid.
Even if we halved this, wanding with a shadow wand seems to be very ineffective. Very low shadow damage hits every 1.5seconds are the Warlock's worst nightmare, and the reason I recommend not using Lash of Pain on a Succubus. Intuitively, I'd shy away from anything that reduces Shadow Priest dps. Almost 25% (=5x5%) of their damage done goes to mana starved people in a long fight.
For optimal results, make a "swap to spirit weapon and non-shadow wand and start wanding" macro. This would allow you to benefit from spirit, non-shadow damage, and JoW. The only wand that has high dps and doesn't do shadow damage is [Merciless Gladiator's Touch of Defeat] and it's cheaper younger brother [Gladiator's Touch of Defeat], according to wowhead. You might still have a pre-2.3 Evocation staff lying around.
One should be realistic, though. We're talking low numbers in a small portion of a long fight, it'd be very hard to measure. Obtaining a pvp wand for the sole purpose of increasing your raid dps contribution when wanding is pushing it quite far. But then again, that's what these forums are for.
If you really want to do your own research, have a melee person (like a MT) run ShadowSeer, they'll be producing reliable data about ISB damage contribution per crit in your raid. I haven't tested this in a while myself, but it ought to still work in 2.3.
Last edited by Arelenda : 11/30/07 at 10:56 PM.
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