If so, then once 25% is breached you'll probably want to switch back to CoD to free up gcd's, since the turbocharged-Drain-Soul is an incredible filler. For the same reason, locks might end up preemptively lifetapping to full before 25%, while lifetap opportunity cost is low. Does SimulationCraft do this?

Technically that was already the case, if you Death Coil a low life target on live you will only get as much life back as it had. However it Pandemic functions like Death Coil in Live, Absorb shields will "double-dip" on it, so I hope it's not the case.

Tested this again & all direct damage spells (Haunt, Shadowburn & Deathcoil) gain 10% boost from ISB and consume a charge. Curse of Doom is a DoT as has been pointed out.

Hmm, Has any one figured out if CoD works with DE if applied BEFORE the mob is below the 35% or only after?

I've seen various people link several builds they find suitable for raiding when patch hits us, and I fail to understand something that seem to be in commen with all: Why do people prefer to invest points in Soul Siphon and Fel Concentration, instead of investing those points in talents like Suppression, Amplify Curse, Shadow Embrace, Malediction or Death's Embrace? What's so useful about those 2 talents that justify the points invested in them? When I raid 25 man instances as a warlock, getting hit is not really an option I'm even considering, cause usually it doesn't end well on a clothie, so taking on a talent that depends on me being hit? It sounds more like a PvP talent then a raid one... And Drain Life/Soul are spells you really use in your DPS cycle, that you take talents to buff it? When I was Affliction, my spell rotation was to DoT all I could, and then SB until DoTs were about to expire, reapply them and so forth... The only rare times I had to use Drain Life were on a very specific fights like tanking blue beam on Netherspite and healers slacking, or when I really wanted to take some load off the raid healers in a healing intensive fights like the council or something, but it's never a planned part of my DPS cycle, not to mention that I only use Drain Soul to harvest shards at the last sec of the mob's life, so nothing to really justify the points in the talent... Why not use Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft?

I dunno, maybe I'm missing something here, but I rather take talents that will support my DPS cycle, rather then support minor DPS spells or prevent a pushback if I'm getting hit (which I really shouldn't if I know how to play, unless it's PvP)...

If Drain Soul keeps getting its quadruple damage for targets under 25%, Soul Siphon will let it outpace Shadowbolt for DPS. Personally I don't like the thought of that so for a pure raiding build I would skip it, but strictly speaking it is a DPS increase. Fel Concentration, you're thinking of melee hits. The real benefit in raids is AoE. But, then again, considering our casting rotations Intensity would be a better talent for that purpose. It would help you maintain perfect Haunt coverage but it's not even really useful for Drain Soul because at full interruption, it's still going for 6 seconds (7.5 but ticks every 3), and I think you'll need to re-apply DoTs at least that often. Are they worthless talents, even for strictly raiding? No. Are they good? No.

From what I can understand tank threat will be very high in the expansion so I have the feeling Soul Shatter might fade into the background. And to be honest I would probably switch 45 +hit for 45 +haste today if the only thing that gave me problems was an extra 3% resist on soul shatter. I would benefit much more in the long run and in the few cases I would be threat capped and had to slow down a bit would probably be compensated by higher max dps all other times. It is not like i am using Shatter after pulling aggro. I am using it when I am at 125% threat on sensitive fights (Brutallus). So the only problem is slightly lower dps for a few minutes on one try in 33. I'd survive and take my extra 3% haste every time.

Secondly, don't forget both +hit talents give mana reduction for the most mana inefficient class in the game. I need it. I want it. I will hump the leg of mana reduction. So it is almost worth it for that alone.

Besides, sooner or later Blizzard will come around to fix resist on Soul Shatter. We just have to moan about it for a few months, if we do it good and loud enough.

I don't know if I want to gear around Misery though. It would almost be like rewarding Blizzard for mocking Shadow Priests by turning that talent into something like that.

Your talent tree is ... interesting. If you are affliction, you will probably using CoE, so improved CoA IMHO has no meaning.
Without selecting CoEx, Amplify Curse is ... nearly nothing. Gaining 0.5 sec every 5 min (casting CoE), every 1 min (casting CoD), or every 24 sec (casting CoA, sorry, if the time is wrong) is not a big gain in my eyes.

Fel Concentration has a meaning even in RAID environment: think on fights (Najentus, Felmyst, and so on), where you get hit constantly, causing spell pushback all the time. Yep, I am aware of the change of pushback mechanism, but ... casting all of your UA 2 sec for example is not a good idea.

Maybe Soul Siphon is not so RAID designed, but if it affetcs Drain Soul the below-25%-area ... hmmm ... should be calculated well, how much percent of your DPS you got from it (regarding to the whole fight).
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Please vorfige me for rgammar miskates; ingiliz not is ym tanive ganluage.

CoD benefits from Death's Embrace only if applied after a mob is below 35% just like any other DoT.

You will be using CoA. Our beloved b00mkin druids will replace CoE with Earth and Moon and CoA is currently the highest DPCT curse (SampleOutput - simulationcraft - Google Code).

Fel Concentration is more of personal preference. I for one would not pick any points in it because you only cast two spells as affliction. The majority of the time will be spent dotting / casting Shadow Bolt / lifetapping, and you don't have points in Intensity yet do fine without it. We'll always have the pally aura of awesome so .

You will be using DS a lot as a filler however, and I would appreciate if someone could take the time to calculate how many percent of pushback reduction you need to get an extra tick of Drain Soul.

Alot of your DPS will come from DS, at 70 I gained around 400 DPS by using DS instead of going without it in SimulationCraft. As such, the Soul Siphon talent will be mandatory for your Affliction spec.

I wouldn't count on that given the current state of Holy. Ret + Devo aura seems way more likely.

Moonkin however is almost guaranteed in a 25 man at this point, they have very good personal damage numbers and ridiculously good support value. Their only defect is the lack of an aggro dump but from the reports it seems threat is not an issue in WotLK so far.

Sure, Ill test that out today.

What kind of aff specs are people using on the beta? Im not able to test myself and I'm curious where people are spending their points outside the aff tree.

To dedmonwakeen :
Before everything else, i want to thank you for this excelent tool named simcraft which takes the optimal way to have a good theorical DPS by simulating thousand of fights with a rng.
There is some little issues in the way some calculations are done for warlocks, so i'm gonna post here what i found.

My character stats on the PTR at lvl 70 :
1350 spell power with fel armor (208 spirit with felhunt)
54 shadow spells
149 hit rating (11.81%)
21.51% crit
370 haste rating (23.46%)

Every single test was done against a lvl 60 or 70 target dummy, that's why i'm at only 11.81% hit (i swapped some items)
- No spell stone used
- felhunter out but not attacking
- fel armor up (+spell damage already included in the previous stats)
- no potion/flask/buffs
- no other debuff on the target than mines

I intentionally lowered my stamina/intellect, because it seems a buff is automatically applied to them.
So my sta/inte/spi/crit%/hit%/haste%/spell_power perfectly match the ones in the results.txt

Corruption

In your code you wrote : tick_power_mod = 0.93 / num_ticks;
Untalented (0/0/0) my corruption does 2214 damage instead of the ~2206.
Conclusion : The multiplier seems to be 0.936 as written on wowwiki (Spell damage coefficient - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft)

In your code you multiply the corruption damage by (shadow_mastery + contagion) * (improved_corruption)
after maxing improved corruption and empowered corruption, corruption is ticking for 498,6 damage (more 499 than 498 ticks)
after maxing shadow mastery too, my dot is tiking for 544 instead of 548-549
Conclusion : every + damage for corruption are additive (verified for contagion too) : base_multiplier = (shadow_mastery + contagion + improved_corruption)
Malediction is a final player multiplier as already taken into account

Immolate

The base direct damage is 331-332 damage instead of 327 (as written on the spell tooltip itself)
This spell direct damage on the ptr is modified by both Shadow Embrace and Haunt (bug ?)
Instead of getting 700 direct damage with CoE up, i get 924

Improved Shadow Bolt

As already stated, it does not increase DoT's damage, only direct damage spells (at least SB and Haunt from my tests)

Siphon Life

In your code, the siphon life glyph is a final base_multiplier
With everlasting_affliction and shadow mastery my siphon should tick for (0.15*1404+63)*1.1*1.03 ~= 310, which is exactly the case
With the glyph on siphon life, it should tick for 310*1.2 = 372 but only ticks for 366-367.
If we make shadow mastery + glyph of siphon life additive, it gives us (0.15*1404+63)*1.(0.1+0.2)*1.03 = 366,3504
Conclusion : shadow mastery + glyph of siphon life are additive

Soul Siphon

Currently Soul Siphon seems to be bugged for both drain life and drain soul, i'm finding a +4.9% damage per affliction instead of 4%, but i cannot test if the max limit is still 15 affliction debuff or a flat 60% (12 debuff)


Maybe there are some other mistakes for demonology or destruction, but i didn't get to test them for hours, as most of the damaging abilities are based on ranged damage, and would require a lot of casts with some statistics.

There is another thing which seems a little strange : the theorical dps is ~5% lower than the one i really get on those target dummies, while my damaging habilities are a little lower than the ones calculated in the results.txt (because haunt is not 100% uptime, but 99%)
I ignored the pandemic damage of course (1 dmg per proc on 1hp targets), and leveled the possible crit deviation (30% crit instead of 21.5 = x damage to ignore)
I will do further test to confirm this.


One word for the different spec i tested on ptr : affliction really does some sick dps, while destruction is pretty disapointing (and demonology even more it seems, but i'm gonna test it more later).

With fel armor and my spellstone, i'm doing 1950-2000 dps without coa, averaged on multiple 4-5mn fights, not counting the pet nor the 0dps pandemic, with a 280-330 ping.
The felhunter is doing 130dps, pandemic 130-150, which would gives ~2250 dps without coa (which does 250 dps with coe -> ~2500dps), only self buffed, no flask/potion, without any debuff on the target appart my own coe. That's a rather impressive up !

My test in destruction with an immo->chaos->inci*x->conflag with coa and corr up get me to a maximum of 1700-1800dps, without coe and in 1mn-1mn30 fights limiting the number of lifetaps. The imp is doing 150 dps (without coe too). This would give me a 2150dps with coe up.

My belief is that destruction would benefit a lot more in a raid, by having a minimum spirit to get some decent lifetaps and mana regen.

I'm just not seeing this in the beta - my DS does around 1300 damage per tick with 4 affliction DoTs (16%) or 5200 damage over 14.7 seconds. That means best case, at 80, with 1742 spell damage, I can get 353 dps out of the spell, compared to 850dps from untalented shadow bolts.

Edit - I think I found your problem:

drain_soul Count= 4.1|70.5sec DPE=71365|20% DPET=7122 DPR=140.4 Miss=1.3% Tick=16288

I think you've missed a decimal on your Tick calculation.

First of all, thanks for the detailed analysis. It very much appreciated.

Perhaps it is the ~6% spell resistance on bosses? (cannot be mitigated)

The resistance calculation code:

Would be interesting now for you to take these numbers, spec 5/5 Soul Leach and spam nuke a target to see how much longevity is gained by Imp Soul Leach.

Does the Imp have any passive regen inside the 5SR?
Does its spirit regen behave exactly like a player class?

I'd love/kill to see some reports of mana regen ticks for an Imp.

That's pretty much not the case, because the player and boss level are both set to 70, so the delta_level is 0 as shown in your above code.
I'll try to test this tomorow and i'll post some screenshots if it's confirmed.

I ran some Imp-tests with 5/5 Soul Leech. All tests were made with 3/3 Improved Imp, 3/3 Fel Vitality, 2/2 Demonic Power and 3/3 Empowered Imp. Imp has 3493 mana.

Time until oom: 144 seconds
Average DPS: 166
Mana gained from SL: 1118

Without passive regen or Soul Leech the Imp would be oom in ~48 seconds. The extra mana from Soul Leech bought it ~16 seconds more. That leaves 40 seconds of casting that was supported by passive regen alone.
It translates into 100 mp5 while casting.

With this coming patch, what do you all think about the warlock's Ashtongue trinket? Will it provide more dps than Hex Shrunken Head? I am trying to see which of these 4 trinkets should i use for 56/0/5:
1. Timbal's focusing crystal
2. Skull of gul'dan
3. Hex shrunken head
4. Ashtongue talisman

My first slot will most likely stays the same -> Skull,
however for the second slot i'm still confused which one to use =X

@ Dedmonwakeen, if possible can you include test cases where a lock has to use CoE/CoR instead of CoA/CoD? There might be situations where CoE/CoR are better than its counterparts and I'd like to see how much of a deviation the sim shows in such a non best case scenario.