People keep saying Fire destro costs less. I'd like to bust this myth. Fire _used_ to be cheaper before the changes to Emberstorm.

Calculation
Shadow Bolt is 420 mana and cast time is 2.5s. SB spam is 420/2.5 = 168 mana per second (MPS)
Incinerate is 375 mana and cast time is 2.25s. Incinerate spam is 375/2.25 = 166 MPS
Immolate is 445 mana and cast time is 1.5s. cost = 296mps.

Updated apparently this needed clarifying.
Let's assume a spell rotation with Immolate, Incinerate x 6.
total mana = 445+ 6 x 375 = 2695. cast time = 1.5s + 6 x 2.25s = 15s. cost = 2695/15 = 180MPS

Assuming 7 Incinerates per immolate, which can be done with enough haste, gives us 178mps. Note that the actual mana cost will be higher due to the haste but this is irrelevant, it'd be the same for shadow.





Conclusion
Shadow Bolt rotation = 168 MPS
Fire rotation = 166 MPS if not keeping up Immolate
Fire rotation with Immolate = 180 MPS

So fire is only cheaper if you're not keeping up Immolate. Raidwise fire is more expensive, unless you're counting on an affliction lock to keep up Immolate at all times. Even assuming this, the difference is marginal at best.



I'm ignoring cataclysm, since I'm assuming both builds have it. If Fire destro doesn't have it, SB spam is definitely cheaper. If fire has it, they need to drop ISB to get it.

I'm ignoring haste since I think it affects both builds equally. Exception is that Immolate becomes less frequent as more haste is obtained. For this reason I'm assuming one Immolate per 6-7 Incinerates. I also don't know how haste interacts with Emberstorm's speed. I don't think the difference will be substantial either way.

In addition, shadow destro can use +shadow damage, which increases Life Tap gains. How much difference this makes depends on the length of the fight and the difference in power between both.


I'd very much like to see the math for stating that optimal strategy is having one warlock for ISB and the others fire. It's true that multiple destro locks will have diminishing returns on ISB uptime, but they will be adding to the raid's shadow damage, resulting in a larger multiplier on the other side. ISB uptime is completely useless as a measure. You want to look at total damage boosted.

I'm in the process (pre-alpha) of writing a Warlock combat simulator (Kemi's warlock simulator and gear comparison list ). While it's most definitely incomplete, there's enough there for me to have some minimal degree of confidence in the general trend of its results.

According to my simulations, haste doesn't get worse the more you have of it--spell damage just gets better the more haste you have, so it looks like haste gets worse (since everyone uses "spell-damage-equivalent" as the standard of comparison). In other words, 15.7 haste rating will always increase your damage from Shadow Bolt spam by 1%, no matter how much haste you already have. But if you're an unhasted 0/21/40 Warlock, a point of shadow damage gives you .423 DPS...and by the time you're hasted to 2-second shadow bolts, that same point of shadow damage is giving you .529 DPS. So you've increased the value of Shadow Damage to you by 25.1%, while the value of Spell Haste has held constant.

I'm open to being proven wrong, but that's what both my number-crunching and my simulator have shown me.

What I'm still uncertain about (and if someone who is better at math could answer this question, I'd be most grateful) is whether increasing levels of spell haste also increase the benefit of spell crit and spell hit. My intuition says, and my preliminary simulation results seem to concur, that spell crit and spell hit are not improved by increasing levels of spell haste in the same way that spell damage is improved, and so sufficient spell haste just makes spell damage far and away the best of the four stats. But I've been unable to prove this to myself (not being good at math).

I'd be very grateful if a more mathematically inclined theorycrafter could establish this one way or another.

Question for T6 affliction locks--

Do you drop immolate from your rotation once you get 4 piece T6 in favor of more shadowbolts?

When I said haste gets worse, I did indeed mean in relation to +dmg as you said.. There is no point comparing a stat to a dps increase. There really is no difference between saying haste gets worse with more haste, or saying +dmg gets better with more haste.

As to the other question.. I believe you do not drop immolate unless you are having debuff issues.

So does end game lock itemization consist of Hit>haste>dmg>crit?

That would depend on gear, spec, raid setup and encounter. Roughly, I'd say you're correct. Fill your data in the spreadsheet and you'll get a good estimate of what kind of tradeoffs apply to you.


To the person writing the simulator:

For SB Spam for destrolock (excluding ISB and mana issues)

dps = (bolts-per-second) * (average-non-crit-bolt-damage) * (hit chance) * (1 + crit chance)

Common sense tells you that increasing any of these will make the contribution of all other 3 factors larger.

You should probably log out in your PvE gear if you want advice on it.

Ya noticed that, amory should be fixed by now, i'm logged off in test gear. i was using noose socketed for bonus, shifting nightmare boots, and gift other than current stuff on.

For Brutallus you should use Hex-Shrunken Head and the crusade deck. Put a Lionseye or Pyrestone in your bracers, yellow socket bonuses are very much so worth getting. Do you have Ring of Ancient Knowledge, Mana-Attuned Band, or Loop of Forged Power available for ring slot? Depending on which of those you have you probably want to switch rings. Otherwise looks fine.

edit: and you should leave footpads of madness and belt of blasting on instead of using noose and shifting nightmare.

I'm waiting for the pyrestone for bracers, Was planning on reckless for that. As for rings i have Mana-Attuned. Passed the RoAK to other casters that wanted them first.

Wouldn't Immolate be 1,5s cast time + 15s duration be 16,5s total, meaning it would be 16,9 MPS? Since you won't spam it like Shadowbolts and Incinerate I mean.

But yes, casting Shadowbolts for 1 minute will use 168DPM*60s = 10080MANA

While casting Incinirate + Immolate for 1 minute will use (166DPM*60s = 9960MANA) + (3,5Cast*445MANA = 1557MANA). Making a total for mana usage for that minute 11517. Meaning you will use 1437 more MANA with Incinirate and Immolate.

The mana cost for fire will be more since you use more then 1 immolate during a 1min fight ?

Most t5-t6 geared Destruction locks will be able to cast the SB for 1min using that calculation , while u need to cast immolate 4 times during that minute.

Its 200mana more over 1 min if i counted correctly.

Kind of looks to me that Fire still is not the way to go as warlock ( as always people should play anyway they like ), since as far as i can tell you will be life tapping more , but not gaining the same amount of mana back since going fire probably means u will use pure +fire items dropping your shadowdmg.

Im going back to shadow /sad face

Im not gonna claim that fire is a bad choice.. Shadow is just better.
Its dps is higher (not much) and its mana efficiany is better (I though this would be one of the advantages with fire)

But what really tips the scale for me is.. You get more survivability with shadow for free.. With nether prot and soul leech.
Its really sad that SB spam destro is so powerfull.

If you keep Immolate up for the entire minute you will have to cast between 3 or 4 times, depening on your own timing. I haven't done any math about the DPS for fire, I more or less trust the Warlock DPS spreadsheet for that. But yes, fire isn't more mana efficent if those are the spells you compare with. What produces the most damage per mana is to me a more important issue, and something I haven't looked much into with detail at this point. Even though my gut feeling tells me it is fire. (Sadly guts aren't very good at math.)

The MPS number for Immolate was there not because you'll ever spam it, but to show the huge difference between the cost of Immolate and the other two.

I updated the original post to clarify this.


As for fire being better on trash, I have my issues with that. Here's what I experienced during my stint as fire in ZA:

a. Immolate sucks on trash.
b. Incinerate is clearly inferior to Shadow Bolt without said Immolate.
c. typically mages won't bother with scorch on trash.
d. on trash packs that live long enough, putting CoA on the offtanked adds is clearly superior, and Shadow destro does this better.
e. Conflagrate is nice but generally you want to move to the next target instead of wasting a GCD on a target that will die anyway. The exception is when you want things to die that second, but generally, on trash, this isn't an issue




As to fire vs shadow:

I'm pretty much convinced at this point that the raid benefits most from having all destro warlocks spec Shadow Destro. Fire is definitely higher personal dps if you can juggle your way around the Immolates, but Shadow wins out to group synergies and being easier to play. The difference isn't that high, though, and dependent on raid setup.

Fire's prettier though.

I'd love it if the person writing the simulator would run some tests for this. Writing a computer program to simulate 3 warlocks + 2 shadow priests is rather trivial, and could be used to compare damage outputs. This would be very hard to do with a spreadsheet.

Haste is so hard to "calculate" for me.

For example.. A simple question that dont bring spellhit into the math to mess things up even more ^^

Fathomstone
Binds when picked up
Held In Off-hand
+16 Stamina
+12 Intellect
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves spell critical strike rating by 23 (1.04% @ L70).
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 36.

Fetish of the Primal Gods
Binds when picked up
Held In Off-hand
+24 Stamina
+17 Intellect
Requires Level 70
Equip: Improves spell haste rating by 17 (1.08% @ L70).
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 37.,

What would you choose and why?
(SB Destro spec ofc)

There is no myth to be busted. There was no change to emberstorm that lesser effectivity of fire . Only meaningfull stat in which u can measure mana effectivity of spell is damage done per mana point spent and there is no change in that.

MPS doesnt say anything about mana effectivity, who cares if i go oom sooner while dealing same dmg ? I do becouse it means my dps increases and im even more effective than before !

Fathomstone vs Fetish question is not answerable. It depends not only on your own gear, how highly you rate stamina, but it also depends on how you setup your raids shadow users in the improve shadowbolt tab of the spreadsheet.


And who cares what costs what mana, all that matters is dps AFTER lifetap is factored in.

Wow, I wish I had spinels to throw around like that!

If you are going to use destro pots, though, I'd macro it into my hexhead and pop them together at around the 1, 3, and 5 minute marks, preferrably with heroism on 2 of these.

This is very much possible to figure out on the spreadsheet. It has the option to let you put the shadow users in the "RAID ISB" tab and check the "RAID ISB TNS" so that extra DPS from ISB to the raid will be included when it calculates the value of crit rating. And these values generally work just as well for increasing stats as they are for decreasing stats, so if it tells you 1 crit rating = 1 spell damage, and you have a lot of items that will increase spell damage by 1.1 points per crit rating lost, you can start switching your stats to as if you were wearing those items until you see it shift to 1 crit rating = 1.1 damage, at which point swapping more of those items isn't worth it (but swapping items that will give 1.2 damage isntead of 1 crit rating will be still worthwhile).

In other words, there are no minimum values of any stat you should be looking for, and the spreadsheet does have answers to all your questions.

I normally don't nitpick spelling or grammar, but I'm having a hard time trying to figure out exactly what you mean. Can you clarify?

You can figure out the amount of raid DPS lost from going Shadow->Fire on the spreadsheet. The number depends largely on the number of shadow dealers and the ratio of the classes. Spreadsheet fire damage beats shadow for personal DPS, and for many raid groups will beat personal DPS + raid DPS through ISB.

At the end of the day, they're both very close in terms of total Raid DPS contribution and comes down to a choice of consolidating DPS (in you) or spreading it to other shadow users and slightly buffing the SP's group with slightly more regen.