I just tested it myself, and Conflagrate is definately not critting for 200% damage.
This must be a bug, and if not, I'd love an explanation. Maybe someone should write a thread about it on the official beta forums?
By the way, was my warlock just being bugged or can anyone else confirm that Soul Drain does not do 4x damage in the newest build when the target is below 25%?
Tested both and both are broken,
I'm getting around 170% dmg on crit and drain soul is still broken. Another pointless several days on the ptr testing a broken affliction spec.
Side question, I haven't gotten on the beta yet, are affliction locks viable at 80 in 25 man raids with the debuff cap?
Last edited by amz370 : 10/04/08 at 5:04 AM.
Reason: spelling
I was thinking a little bit about profession. When I was looking at the new Metagems it came to my mind that I would probably choose Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (21 Crititcal Strike Rating & 3% Increased Critical Damage). But does it work with Pandemic ? Is Pandemic also increased by 3% ?
If I was into PvP I would get really annoyed because all of the problems that made us drop behind melee a year ago are still there. There is a freak chance Destruction PvP will somehow prove to work of course.
I seriously doubt a spec that relies on spells with a cast time and has all its abilities to stop enemies from hiding behind pillars / outranging on a procrate and/or low duration can be successful in arena. You also do not have any defenses against melee lockdown still. Nether Prot is op though, but casters were never the problem.
I seriously doubt a spec that relies on spells with a cast time and has all its abilities to stop enemies from hiding behind pillars / outranging on a procrate and/or low duration can be successful in arena. You also do not have any defenses against melee lockdown still. Nether Prot is op though, but casters were never the problem.
There shouldn't be that many casts. The biggest weapon is backlashed shadow bolts. It should be up pretty much once every 10 seconds since we are melee magnets. There are lot of other weapons that are instant:
Shadowfury
Shadowburn
Shadowflame+conflag
Deathcoil
Corruption (with the possibility of instant shadow bolts with Glyph)
CoA
I really think Destruction is the build with most mobility in arena for us now. The problem is that for all the instants and burst I am not sure we have all that much damage to show for it at the end of the day. Resilience and the high hp of other players might just be too big an obstacle. Another advantage to destro PvP is that we aren't that sensitive to school lockouts. Instead we could probably use fire until locked if we want to get a fear off.
I think it should be a fun play style compared to SL/SL at least. Anyway, PvP discussion is kinda off topic here.
How is mana working overall as demonology, ie is Replenishment, JoW, BoW etc enough to prevent constant life tapping. How much mana do you gain from an average life tap?
Mana's fine, you lifetap a little less than on live due to lifetap scaling bigger than our spell's mana cost. Its really not that much more lifetapping than Destruction, and only 20% more than Affliction.
Just under 4k per lifetap, but with 4 piece T7 (lifetapping give you a 300 spirit buff for 10 secs) it shoots to around 4.6k. Goes as high as 5k as Affliction.
A fully buffed Felguard won't be going oom with 1/3 Mana Feed.
Bad news for Affliction warlocks, ISB officially no longer affects periodic sources (Source). The thread itself has since been deleted, so I can't get any more context here, but the post seems clear enough.
Not even when they're cast with the buff active? If that's true then I'm probably done with imp shadowbolt, and will be using incinerate with molten core as my primary nuke with demo. Five points is just too much for what the talent has been nerfed to.
Edit: Spelling
Last edited by PyroTEK85 : 10/04/08 at 9:44 AM.
Reason: Spelling
On PTR against Dr.Boom I see Conflagrate critting for 150%. Ruin bonus appears missing. Also Conflagrate damage on tooltip isn't modified by Emberstorm.
Not even when they're cast with the buff active? If that's true then I'm probably done with imp shadowbolt, and will be using incinerate with molten core as my primary nuke with demo. Five points is just too much for what the talent has been nerfed to.
Edit: Spelling
yeah, if you read the posts in the thread from the second link, the original poster asks for the tooltip to be corrected to specify it if that's the behavior, and Maaven responds that they'll do that. I'm hoping that, now that it became much more limited, they'll buff it's numbers back up.
To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.
yeah, if you read the posts in the thread from the second link, the original poster asks for the tooltip to be corrected to specify it if that's the behavior, and Maaven responds that they'll do that. I'm hoping that, now that it became much more limited, they'll buff it's numbers back up.
A buff or a point reduction would be nice, but honestly it's less appealing to me now that it isn't a debuff. I like how it works on live, where existing dots get the damage boost until the debuff expires, I'm not looking forward to refreshing dots while its active to gain the bonus. The only benefit to having it as a buff that I see, is that you gain the increased damage against any target, not just the one that you were casting at already. We'll see though, they're not finished yet.
yeah, if you read the posts in the thread from the second link, the original poster asks for the tooltip to be corrected to specify it if that's the behavior, and Maaven responds that they'll do that. I'm hoping that, now that it became much more limited, they'll buff it's numbers back up.
I haven't heard of Maaven before, and since when they originally added the non-periodic comment, it was stated that ISB was intended to affect all shadow damage, could this just be another case of one blue being wrong (both sources are from Maaven)? If it only affects shadow bolt, it's a useless talent.
I haven't heard of Maaven before, and since when they originally added the non-periodic comment, it was stated that ISB was intended to affect all shadow damage, could this just be another case of one blue being wrong (both sources are from Maaven)? If it only affects shadow bolt, it's a useless talent.
Maaven is the new bug report guy, Hortus2.0. He's a little new and doesn't always know the game backwards and forwards (classically, he asked a hunter which legendary ranged weapon he was using), but he's only on his own when he's asking players for further testing or clarification on an issue. He's basically the pointman for the bug team in talking to players, which means all of his replies are either getting stuff to tell the team, or coming from the team. When he replies with Working As Intended or Will Be Fixed (with or without details), he's consulted the team and has his facts straight. Which doesn't mean it won't be changed in the future, just that it isn't intended at the moment.
While it is a nerf, it's nice not having to need filler crits in your low-crit DoT spec to get your DoTs to full power so I think the gameplay is better. It does lower the interaction between the two trees which I think is bad, and basically makes you wonder what ISB is for anymore.
***DISCLAIMER : Despite my best efforts, I'm largely horrible at math. The same could be said of my theorycrafting ability.***
I've seen our Death's Embrace talent referred to and lightly touched upon in multiple posts throughout this thread, but I have yet to find any real in-depth discussion about it's mechanics and true value. I'm hoping to get some clarification. This topic/question applies to DE in a raid setting, not PvP.
Death's Embrace - Rank 3
Increases the amount drained by your Drain Life by 30% while your health is at or below 20% health, and increases the damage done by your Shadow spells by 12% when your target is at or below 35% health.
In totally dumbed-down terminology, Death's Embrace appears to be a personal and passive extra Curse of Elements (of sorts) when a target hits the 35% health mark. - Would this be a semi-accurate understanding of the talent?
This is the part where I frustrate the math-whizzes, I'm sure:
I'll use a 10,000,000hp Brutallus as an example, with a fight duration of exactly six minutes. This assumes the warlock is using only Shadow-school spells (no Immolate). Suppose a warlock without Death's Embrace produces 2,000dps over the course of the fight, simple enough. Now add in a fully-talented (3/3) Death's Embrace. The same warlock would do 2,000dps for the first 65% of the fight, increasing to 2,240dps for the last 35% of the fight. To me and my rudimentary math abilities, this appears to be a rough increase of ~80dps over the duration of the fight. - Would this be a semi-accurate understanding of the talent?
Is Death's Embrace considered to be a "no-brainer" in any deep Affliction build at level 80? Is it a wise way to spend 3 talent points, or would those 3 points be better spent elsewhere?
The last thing I seek clarification on is the basic mechanics of how our spells are affected and modified when Death's Embrace is applied to the target. I have no idea if and how debuffs such as Haunt and Shadow Embrace would be altered once Death's Embrace becomes active. Would they be altered at all, or need to be reapplied at the 35% mark? Would existing DoTs (UA, Corruption, CoA, SL) gain the 12% benefit immediately or need to be reapplied to take advantage of DE? This all escapes me. Any insight or clarification would be greatly appreciated.
As our talents currently stand, I'm looking at Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft as my level 80 build. I really don't see any better way to spend the 3 talent points in question, but perhaps I'm missing something obvious.
Thanks in advance for your patience, feedback, and insight. No matter how hard I try, theorycrafting and spell mechanics are not something I easily grasp.
Shortly after making my previous post, I jumped on the PTR to do some more testing, and something else caught my eye. The DD portion of Immolate appears to be affected by both Haunt and Shadow Embrace debuffs.
My understanding of these two debuffs is that they:
- "increasing all periodic damage dealt to the target by you" (Shadow Embrace)
- "increasing all damage done by your damage-over-time effects on the target" (Haunt)
Isn't the initial damage caused by Immolate considered "direct damage", and not "periodic damage" or a "damage-over-time effect"?
On a level 70 target dummy with no other debuffs active, I observed the following on multiple attempts:
Immolate : 604 direct damage (non-crit)
Shadow Embrace x1, Immolate : 635 direct damage (non-crit)
Shadow Embrace x2, Immolate : 665 direct damage (non-crit)
Shadow Embrace x2, Haunt debuff, Immolate : 798 direct damage (non-crit)
In the two instances where only Shadow Embrace was applied, it was done so with Shadowbolts, providing no other debuffs.
Working as perceived and intended? Would this change anything about the way Immolate may or may not fit into an Affliction rotation?
This is the part where I frustrate the math-whizzes, I'm sure:
I'll use a 10,000,000hp Brutallus as an example, with a fight duration of exactly six minutes. This assumes the warlock is using only Shadow-school spells (no Immolate). Suppose a warlock without Death's Embrace produces 2,000dps over the course of the fight, simple enough. Now add in a fully-talented (3/3) Death's Embrace. The same warlock would do 2,000dps for the first 65% of the fight, increasing to 2,240dps for the last 35% of the fight. To me and my rudimentary math abilities, this appears to be a rough increase of ~80dps over the duration of the fight. - Would this be a semi-accurate understanding of the talent?
Not quite, since, the way I see it, the real power of any execute-like talent comes from stacking cooldowns in its duration. In warlocks' case, popping trinkets, a destro pot and a shaman's heroism would add significantly more than 80 dps.
Not quite, since, the way I see it, the real power of any execute-like talent comes from stacking cooldowns in its duration. In warlocks' case, popping trinkets, a destro pot and a shaman's heroism would add significantly more than 80 dps.
Even ignoring trinkets, at the most basic level you are stacking "cooldowns", far more powerful than a trinket: the "super-drain-soul-as-filler" buff which kicks in at <25%, and the death's embrace buff which kicks in at <35%.
Simple calc for the value of death's embrace, if
(a) you assume DE is multiplicative
(b) max affliction debuffs to feed soul siphon (for example, if the raid as 2 afflic locks)
(c) you trust that a rotation with drain soul as filler and max debuffs does ~50% more dps than a rotation with sb as filler
Normalizing to the dps of an sb-as-filler rotation:
Without DE, dps is
(75% * 1) + (25% * 1.5) = 1.125
With DE, dps is
(65% * 1) + (10% * 1.12) + (25% * 1.12 * 1.5) = 1.182
That is,
65% of the fight (100%-->35%), you use sb as filler
10% of the fight (35%-->25%), you continue to sb as filler but you get the DE buff
25% of the fight (25% --> 0%), you switch to superduper-drain-soul and continue to get the DE buff
So Death's Embrace multiplies overall dps by 1.182 / 1.125 = 1.051, in other words, 5.1% extra dps for 3 talent points.
In reality the low-life region is probably shorter because everyone gets to use their execute abilities...
Last edited by nom : 10/04/08 at 10:04 PM.
Reason: clarity
I finally sat down and compiled SimulationCraft for the Mac because I wanted to check it out personally and because some of the sample results seemed off for Destruction.
The latest release has a Shadow Bolt ratio of 22% for the rotation which is way too high. The consensus so far points to casting Immolate / Incinerate * 2 even under Backdraft and not Shadow Bolt * 3. After a lot of fiddling I found the culprit. In order to maximize Molten Core uptime the raid_80.txt default configuration contains a modifier for Incinerate to only cast it under the influence of Molten Core.
Once I removed Shadow Bolt and the modifier, Molten Core Uptime went under 40% even though I changed the curse to Curse of Agony. My last dealings with C were over 10 years ago but I think I found a "bug" in sc_warlock.cpp method trigger_molten_core. The event is rescheduled to 6 seconds (probably meaning the old tooltip value of 6 seconds) where in reality the buff and the new tooltip is 12 seconds. After changing it to 12.0 the Molten Core uptime goes up to the expected 80%.
I also specced the simulated Warlock out of Improved Shadow Bolt as it no longer benefits DoTs and serves no purpose in a Destruction rotation. With the new found points I specced into Intensity and 1 point in Destructive Reach for at least a little aggro reduce and 2 points into Improved CoA. As far as we know that should be the current maximum rotation.
That leads to the following result (this includes my Molten Core 12 second fix):
SimulationCraft's measure of uptime is a bit strange as it seems to count the uptime while casting a spell. As Shadow Bolt is only cast when the Corruption glyph triggers it has of course a "100%" uptime.
The contribution from Corruption is really bad and I guess it will be removed from our rotations soon after Naxxramas. I do not know if this will prove to be true but if you remove Corruption from the action list, Molten Core uptime goes down to 63% and DPS is virtually unchanged (roughly 8 DPS loss).
@Mugandra: Thanks for the detailed review. I've checked in the fix and I'll probably put out another Windows download tonight. Sadly, I do not have a Mac at my disposal so you will have to continue to build it yourself.
Regarding up-time....
I have two types of statistics: "procs" and "up-time". The procs just keep track of the average time between procs. The up-times is as you noted not the actual TIME the buff is present, but the percentage of time the buff is "useful". I moved Shadow Trance tracking from being a proc to an up-time, but as you noted this isn't very helpful when you ONLY cast Shadow Trance'd Shadow Bolts. So.... I now keep track of "proc" and "up-time" data for Shadow Trance.
I was thinking a little bit about profession. When I was looking at the new Metagems it came to my mind that I would probably choose Chaotic Skyflare Diamond (21 Crititcal Strike Rating & 3% Increased Critical Damage). But does it work with Pandemic ? Is Pandemic also increased by 3% ?
Perhaps somebody with Beta access could test it ?
I tried it on my own on the PTR (with Skyfire Diamond), but my combatlog was bugged and so I couldn't see the exact results.
So does somebody else know if it works with Pandemic ?
The buff has to have been present at least "reaction_time" seconds for the conditional to be true, where reaction_time is a global parameter that defaults to 0.5sec.
EDIT: This reaction_time delta is only necessary for "proc-based" buffs. For example, some Destruction spells have a "backdraft" conditional. Since the proc of Backdraft is (nearly 100%) under the control of the user, I do not require a reaction-time check.
Would it be possible to have a user-defined check on the buffs (particularly Molten Core)? It would be nice to specify for example
if molten_core(2.5 seconds from now) = 1 , chaos bolt
Actually, do we know for sure when the MC buff is applied? Is it 1) at the start of the cast 2) at the end of the cast or 3) when the spell lands?
I tried it on my own on the PTR (with Skyfire Diamond), but my combatlog was bugged and so I couldn't see the exact results.
So does somebody else know if it works with Pandemic ?
It does not, sorry to say. Chaotic Skyflare only affects stuff that has the (Critical) tag. I don't know what Pandemic's damage is counted as, but Critical is not part of it's definition. I'm about to start looking at some of the other ones, as there are several that could be far better for Affliction even in standing theorycraft-style fights, like the Beaming Earthseige or Ember Skyflare. Others (like the Bracing Earthseige or Tireless Skyflare), may become better if certain conditions start becoming very common (Threat-capping and lots of movement, respectively).
If anyone wants to give the ideas a whirl, be my guest, but I don't have Beta access and my pet tester is a Mage/Druid guy.
To teach and to learn, to laugh and make others laugh. This is my purpose, and any day in which I don't wasn't worth the time it took to get through.
I mean, when is the damage buff to fire spells applied? Is it 1) at the start of the cast 2) at the end of the cast or 3) when the spell lands?
Oh sorry, misread your post. Yeah if you're in the middle of an incinerate cast and you gain molten core, it'll receive the buff. This also applies if immolate is on the target but fades while the spell is flying. Buffs and debuffs are factored into the spell at the moment it completes, generally speaking.
10/04/08, 4:37 AM
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