But a targeted shadowfury is limited to one target and those 8 yards around them. With the circle you can get 2+ targets 16 yards apart.

I think the only method you could use would be castrandom (cb, incincerate). Obviously that wont 100% cast chaos bolt when the cooldown is finished but I don't see another way.

SF's damage is barely more than an Incinerate and the difference in cast time is huge. Plus the shard cost. You might want to use it in small scale PvP a lot though for the stun proc which is worrying from a shard-farmer pov. In fact the removal of the cd doesn't make any sense without Chaotic Mind which was scrapped.

On a different note, Destruction AE channel times are not affected by Backdraft, is this considered a bug?

If you do out the math casting soulfire during backdraft is only beneficial if you can guarantee that it will crit in PVE, other then that its better to just cast incinerate

Soul Fire does alot more damage then Incinerate (with Immolate up) with SF you can crit for almost as much as SB used to pre-3.0
simple fact is that it has a higher base damage and higher spell power coefficient
also with 300+ haste(pretty much SWP gear only i guess tho) and using the immolate -> conflag -> 3x SF rotation you can pull off with almost no down time to SF'ing

in fact the only down side to a SF dps spec is the fact you need 50-70 shards per fight

Math will come later......

After further testing, I've seen a few Chaos Bolt partials as well. I'll change the original post. Thank you.

Looking at our latest WWS report, data for supremus suggests that Chaos Bolt only sees level based resistances, but no normal resistances (we had no CoE). In addition, I have not seen Chaos Bolt missing the target even if significantly above in level. Also, full resists due to normal magic resistance seem to be gone for all spells.

I was aware of this bug and noticed that my felguard was kinda "porting" around (latency was fine at the time) instead of following after I jumped down into Brut's area. I tried sending him in to attack while we were buffing but was unresponsive so I summoned another FG and he seemed just fine afterwards. Had no trouble with him with either Brut or Felmyst.

edit: oh and this took place last Wednesday.

Here's the math.

At level 80 Incinerate averages 786 base damage and scales with 91.4% of your Spell Power over a 2.25 second cast time. Soul Fire averages 1490 base damage and scales with 115% of your Spell Power over a 4 second cast time. Thus, the DPS those spells are as follows:

Incinerate: 349 + 40.6%
Soul Fire: 372.5 + 28.8%

Per cast Soul Fire does more damage, but per second it is drastically behind Incinerate.

Now, theoretically Soul Fire benefits from Backdraft more than Incinerate due to the longer cast time. Here's the math for that assuming that we don't recast Immolate right off the bat.

Soul Fire has a cast time of 2.8 seconds under Backdraft, and Incinerate has a cast time of 1.575. Thus, in the 8.4 seconds it takes to cast 3 Soul Fires we'll be able to cast 4.63 Incinerates. The raw damage is as follows (assuming no Immolate on the target.

Incinerate: (629 + 91.4%) * 4.63 = 2912 + 423%
Soul Fire: (1490 + 115%) * 3 = 4490 + 345%

At level 80 with 2k Spell Power Incinerate wins out. If Immolate is already on the target due to another Warlock that number drops to 1.1k Spell Power. Interestingly enough, Shadow Bolt is a minuscule improvement over Incinerate if Immolate and Molten Core are both down (accounting for 15% Emberstorm).

In conclusion I think that for now the case is fairly solid that Soul Fire is not worth casting in a Destruction DPS cycle. This could change with Glyphs, or if Blizzard has changed the coefficient on Soul Fire (If it were 6/3.5 things would change drastically).

Umm, or if your Incinerate is haste capped with backdraft/bloodlust/other haste factors going on? I think most people in decent gear cap their Incinerate right now just with backdraft.

Without any haste Incinerate is a 1.575 cast during Backdraft, which is to say it isn't capped. Unless I am very much mistaken, any Haste you pick up will lower both Incinerate's cast time under Backdraft and the GCD proportionally.

Depending on your Haste with Bloodlust you could be correct, but I think it's likely to be a marginal benefit.

No I think that would be a pretty big nerf. Unless you're a clicker? With your fingers on your hotkeys, it shouldn't be a problem to keep the mouse over the mobs that are aggroed at all times. Also, I love the new Shadowfury, I think it will be an amazing tool for Warlock AOE in the future. Especially solo AOEing.

You should be able to use it as a spell interrupt just fine as it is, just target the ground under the mob you want to interrupt.

Ooh! Those bear repeating. These macros seem like they will be very useful in keeping the Imp alive. (Honestly I don't even have defensive stance bound for my Imp since I haven't used a pet in so long.)

Does anyone know if you can use the same spell multiple times in a Macro to increase the chance of it activating? For instance, putting Incinerate in there once, and Chaos Bolt 4 times. Would that mean you have an 80% chance of using Chaos Bolt every time you hit the button? That would *probably* make it get used very shortly after coming off cooldown.

They're not gone, they're just called "misses" now that hit rating is shared. I've seen many "misses" on spells since 3.0 hit when I'm under the hit cap (17%).

Seems to me that Backdraft will be a very marginal increase in cast time DURING Bloodlust/Heroism (especially if incinerate is already 1.575 without it). Given that, I don't see why you would want to use conflag at all with Bloodlust up. Especially with decent haste already. (Why? Well look at the testing I did below, even with a significant increase in cast time Backdraft wasn't giving a big increase in DPS.)

----------------------------

Also, I've been doing some rotation testing, though my sample size is still way too low to be conclusive.

In general, I was testing solo DPS on the level 70 dummy. Gear used was about entry level T6, 150 haste 200 crit 1370 spell power, and a firestone. Buffs were just the Imp and Fel Armor.

I couldn't test for more than ~3 minutes at a time without losing all my HP. I also tried to stop about when the Imp ran OOM, just for consistency's sake.

Spec was 2/3/56. I don't have Fire & Brimstone, I have Backdraft and Imp. Soul Leech.

So far I've only tested the DPS of 3 rotations multiple times:
1) Corr/CoA/Immolate up at all times, Use Chaos Bolt on cooldown, Backdraft with less than 3 seconds left on Immo, Incinerate/Life Tap for filler. Backdraft charges were 1xImmo 2xIncin.
2) Corr/CoA/Immolate up at all times, Use Chaos Bolt on cooldown, Incinerate/Life Tap for filler.
3) Just Immolate up at all times, Use Chaos Bolt on cooldown, Incinerate/Life Tap for filler.

Results:
Surprisingly, both rotation 1 and 2 came out to about the same DPS (nothing scientific, recount said they were within 50-100 DPS of each other, both around 1350). No CoE on any of these tests, obviously. Also, I checked the Incinerate crit rate and only used the tests where the crit rate was close to what it should be according to paper doll % + 5%. Couldn't do much about the Chaos Bolt crit rate since there were only a few casts of it.

Rotation 3 was far, FAR behind. Note that I have 0/5 Imp. Corr, just 2/2 Imp. CoA in Affliction. I tried it multiple times, and it was 200 DPS (about 82% of the DPS of 1 & 2) or more behind 1 & 2 every time.

Conclusion:
So it looks to me like Molten Core and CoA/Corr are both VERY worth it for Destro. I want to get a lot more samples between rotations 1 & 2, but if they continue to be equal, it looks like the kiss of death for Backdraft in PVE for me at least. Because if I can get equal DPS without Backdraft, why shouldn't I remove those 5 points and put them into Fire & Brimstone or Imp. Corr?

So far I've specced Imp. Soul Leech in every build, but I'm wondering if it's worth it at 70. Seems to be not *terrible* at 80, but I'm just wondering if JoW is enough to keep us from life tapping even without Imp. SL. Personally I've still been using Life Tap occasionally, but I will be the first to admit that I sometimes keep my mana TOO full. I've been trying to time my mana to go OOM right after the boss dies more and more, and as a result haven't been lifetapping more than once or twice per boss.

Oh, and I haven't done any numbers, but it definitely felt like I was running OOM (and running out of health) significantly faster when using Conflag/Backdraft in rotation 1 compared to rotation 2. No hard data on that yet though.

I run with a second destro lock, which means that Immolate is almost always up (he is running a straight coa, corr, immo, incin, cb on cooldown rotation)

I have F & B, also took Nether Protect this week to try it tanking twins, so i am short points on imp imp.

I am running currently a rotation of Immo, Incinx7, Conflag, CB, Incinx2, Corr, Immo, repeat and using CoD.

EDIT: we have the full range of buffs, btw. mage, boomkin, elem shaman, shadow priest, ret pally, which is a huge boost to these numbers.

What I am seeing on damage is that he is way more consistent than I am. He is hitting 1975 almost every fight in sunwell, peaking at 2100 on Brut (way, way down from pre patch, btw, where he was 2400 on brut and 2200 everywhere else)

I range from 2340 on Felmyst kill, (a horrible Brut mainly because I tried to use a Doomguard and it bugged and wouldnt attack), 1725 on one Muru pull, 2300 on another.

Note also that I was 2300+ on most fights pre-patch. My crit has gone insane, I am now critting 60% on CB and Incinerate and almost 70 on Conflag and my damage is still significantly down. I have been 11th-12th on most bosses.

I seem to be hitting about hte same average but with no consistency. Movement at the wrong time, Lust coming at an odd spot in my rotation, etc.. seem to effect my rotation a lot more than his.

I am looking forward to the Conflag change to allow me to blow up with his immo up, which will help my rotation a lot and make F & B completely worthless.


Also, note that my tanking on Twins was horrible. I have only done it a few times, so I am still getting better, but after Sacrolash died, a prot warrior pulled my mob off of me by the time it hit 50%. There is no way this ever happened pre-patch. I just dont generate near the threat relative to a real tank that I used to.

It's natural to feel that you're going out of mana faster with Fulgurite's first rotation because you are.

CoA/Cor uptime should be roughly the same, so I ignored those when calculating the difference between the two rotations. Very roughly, you're spending 7% base mana/sec with the first rotation (no glyph) and only 6.35% base mana/sec with the second. Each cycle should take approximately 16-17 seconds to execute, which means there's a net difference of ~12% mana expended. This will vary with DoT refreshes and Life Taps, but the bottom line being that Conflagrate and Backdraft result in a larger drain on mana.

So i've been testing out a 0/40/21 done a lot of testing via the dummies. and it seems to be quite effective i don't have data for you. But i have noticed it gets about the same results as 0/46/15 with a lot less of a rotation.

I guess my point was getting Incinerate down to the 1.0 GCD cap is pretty easy and most people with any haste gear at all will hit this cap with backdraft. Hence if I have 400 haste on my gear it may be a better option to use SF when backdraft procs.

So, with 400 haste rating + backdraft you're looking at like 1.72 second soul fire cast?

There seems to be a bug with Improved Demonic Tactics.

Sample Size: 1000 melee hits on a level 70 target dummy.
Crits with Gear: 16.3% (25.14% self crit, 276 critrating)
Crits naked: 17.2% (8.35% self crit, 0 critrating)


I know that my sample size was low (there was a server restart), can anyone recheck?

400 Haste Rating, Bloodlust and Backdraft.

I was thinking of testing a build like this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft 44/0/17

Which gives a spell rotation like this:

CoA/SL/UA/Cor/SB*8



Working with the modest figures below, I came up with some numbers. I have made some assumptions about how some of the things play out in the calculations (discussed below).

With 1000 Spell Power and 25% crit

CoA = (1356 + (1000 * 1.2)) * 1.25 = 3195 (includes SM, Imp CoA and Contagion)

SL (truncated by 3 ticks) = ((630 + (1000 * 1.0)) * 1.1) * 0.7 = 1255.1 (includes SM and excludes 3 ticks)

UA = ((875 + (1000 * 1.0)) * 1.1) * 1.25 = 2578.125 (includes SM and Pandemic)

Cor = ((900 + (1000 * 1.2975)) * 1.25) * 1.25 = 3433.59375 (includes SM, Imp Corruption, Emp Corruption, Contagion and Pandemic)

SB = ((572 + (1000 * 0.857)) * 1.1) * 1.25 = 1964.875 (includes SM and crit)

I'm not much of a theory crafter and so was wondering if someone could help me out on a couple of things:

1. Is it correct to apply Pandemic after everything else? Is it really that powerful?

2. I have left out ISB, I can't work out how to add it in reliably... Where do you stop trying to figure out the long term chance of it being up (particularly during the time when you are recasting dots rather than SB spam as that has the greatest effect on DPS)?

I played around with the above spell rotation for a while before settling on it, it gives the flexibility to pop in a LT or DP at the end of the cycle (which although lowering DPS, does have the silver lining of giving an extra tick of SL).

I think that although it may be a more tricky to pull off than the traditional SB spam it is still perfectly doable (there are certainly more efficient cycles, but they seem unrealistic in the real world). Having no specific pet talents gives the consolation prize of always being able to use the best pet for the fight without mourning the loss of some lost talent points.

For a single cycle of the above, all things being perfect:
3195 + 1255.1 + 2578.125 + 3433.59375 + (8 * 1964.875) = 26180.81875 Damage
26180.81875 / 24.5 Seconds = 1069 (rounded) DPS

Seems like pretty poor DPS (compared to other classes at the moment), even when taking into account your pet should do a few hundred DPS and things might be multiplied a little (CoE, Shadow Weaving).

Also I’ve left out any haste effects as I’m not certain how to take them all into account, theoretically it should all scale I guess, and as I am really interested in finding a high DPS build rather than drawing comparisons with other classes I figure it’s easier to leave them out, is this daft?

Any suggestions on how to tweak the above rotation or build? Or any evidence of a noticeably better build / rotation someone could suggest that I can play with?

(I'm going to do the same for a similar build to the old traditional destro SB spam build... Because I had higher DPS with that, without access to 51 point talents and pre 3.0 though).

Now the remaining question is how much of that DPS difference is due to CoA and how much is due to Corr. Since CoA has a higher tick frequency than Corr netting more Molten Core procs and also has a significantly higher DPCT, I could imagine that the DPS stays roughly the same if you drop Corruption from the rotation and use only CoA.

Of course this needs testing, but if you plan to conduct further tests you might as well try a rotation with only CoA.

With the inc damage buffs to emberstorm and DT I have to wonder if hybrid specs will be more viable at 80. Like the following spec:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...21500135000000

While it lacks the scaling of SnF you do get 21% crit from talents and 20% extra fire damage(plus MC procs). This is all assuming an imp as a pet obv. I haven't been able to get on beta to do any dps tests as of yet.