Remember, in order to overcome the 15% of DS it can come from a combination of switching elements, using the pet, and spending those talent points elsewhere. My intuition is that 11% crit from the imp is enough that Chaos Bolt, Molten Core, and 20 points in affliction can close the gap, even without the imp's personal DPS.
17 in affliction, don't forget about improved imp!
Edit: I don't really see where you gain a significant bonus to damage from affliction, for seven points you can pick up improved corruption and lifetap which are useful talents but after that it moves into utility or cooldowns and procs which aren't significant bonuses to DPS. My gut tells me that Demonic Aegis will end up being better for sustained DPS than anything past 7 points in affliction.
It is mostly utility, but it works with molten core to be just a bit better than demo's early talents. I used the spreadsheet to a little comparison. I set Gear_Buffs tab to T6, took out all the group buffs that we don't normally get(so no spriest, shaman, or hunter buffs), and changed the weapon enchant to major spellpower. I also add 8.8% spell crit to the second two builds to represent Empowered Imp. Since the builds in competition here use mostly existing talents with the exception of:
Those last two are easy enough to calculate, and I did so. So the only things strictly left out of these final tallies are Eternal Flames and Chaos Bolt. I think Eternal Flames helps each build equally, so I think that's moot. I don't think Chaos Bolt's mana cost is high enough to offset it's dps increase through more time spent lifetapping. So I don't know Chaos Bolt's benefit, just the two last build's dps should be higher with it.
If you ever get to cast CoA, 18/2/51 will be the clear winner because of molten core and improved CoA.
Either way, at those margins, the imp better be damn near unkillable, and still going to need a shadow priest to keep those numbers up. Or Chaos Bolt better provide a hell of a boost.
In your calculation did you remove 5/5 Improved Shadow Bolt? Remember, in WotLK it's merely 15% and does not increase periodic damage. That would have a significant effect on your Corruption damage as well as your Shadowbolts and CoA.
Also, when calculating the Empowered Imp uptime, did you account for the un-scalable 16% miss rate that his Firebolts will have against bosses?
Chaos bolt is a 1.5 second cast, so its pretty much guaranteed not to scale well. Do you mind running down exactly how you calculated molten core? I'm not seeing how 8.8% crit (you most likely will have molten core in all builds) is better than 15% fire damage for 0/20/51. Especially since you didn't account for chaos bolt. Which kind of makes me question the 18/2/51 numbers as well. Also, what spells were you using for each build?
Keep in mind, i'm not sure there's a spell hit penalty for pets in the spreadsheet, and i believe it assumes the pet never goes out of mana.
Chaos Bolt won't scale well, but it's base damage will probably make it relevant for several tiers of raids. The level 60 base damage gives DPS on the order of naxx-geared shadowbolts. It will become outscaled eventually, but "eventually" may not even mean before the next expasion pack.
Modeling Chaos Bolt in the spreadsheet is going to be a bit of a pain, since the 8-second cooldown is going to butt up against other cast times. You're basically going to have to add in a separate "Chaos Bolt gap" field for how well you think you can lifetaps to work it into your rotation. But we can't do anything with it until we get higher-level base damage becomes visible.
I'm pretty sure ISB still affects DoTs and that rumor got started by someone misreading the tooltip.
The exponent is amount of ticks for those spells in 6 seconds, and if the names themselfs if they were used themselves.
Yes, all builds can get molten core, but only 18/2/51 will be dependably using Corruption. I didn't check the other builds with molten core on, hold on, I'll edit my post in a bit. But as it is, using corruption for 0/21/50 or 0/20/51 is a dps loss.
EDIT: No, those two builds don't benefit from Corruption + Molten Core, still a net loss.
Also, do we know if the Imp's attacks are on a two-roll system?
Right, assuming a 16% increase in base DPS for chaos bolt, about what shadow bolt gets, chaos bolt is worth casting well into sunwell. Until you account for its high mana cost, and 1.5 seconds lost on an incinerate, then it really doesn't look too good. I'd say you're slightly worse off replacing a incinerate with a chaos bolt, but will need to go model it properly. Either way, its a pretty tiny gain.
We still have no clue if immolate procs molten core right?
Scratch that, i forgot to include demonic sacrifice for incinerate. With that, chaos bolt falls short of incinerate DPS at the tier 4 level. And in the absence of proof otherwise, i'd just go with a 2 roll system on the imp, it should function like any other caster.
Why does the number of corruption ticks (is it worth using CoA over CoD just because of molten core?) in 6 seconds matter? Sorry for multiple edits, but i'd rather not make 2-3 posts.
The way i consider molten core, i use just corruption and don't account for CoA because you're most likely on CoE/R. I also assume it doesn't buff the immolate ticking, we don't have it on hand so we can't be sure either way. I'm basing this on the fact that right now, if you sacrifice your imp while a immolate is active, the damage done by immolate does not change, no one can really be sure how refreshing immolates will work however.
Molten core will proc an average of 3 times over a 90 second period assuming perfect corruption uptime. Assuming you can fit 2 incinerates in (with haste it could be more) you have 6 incinerates in 90 seconds doing 10% extra damage.
Using 1573 damage, 32% crit and 16% hit (and no DS), this adds about 2534 damage to your incinerates over a 90 second period. Considering corruption is doing ~3000 damage with 0% ISB uptime, and incinerate is doing 3977 on average, molten core is a DPS loss for 0/20/51 using corruption. It probably would look a bit better with CoA, but need to model the 2 second ticks + 3 second ticks.
And of course, we don't know if the ISB rumor is true or false either. If it was false and your affliction lock was using ISB however, even with roughly 40 % uptime assuming one spriest and one affliction warlock, corruption still isn't worth the cast.
The amount of corruption ticks in the last 6 seconds counts because that's how long the molten core buff lasts. That's how you determine if there was a corruption or CoA tick in the last 6s that procced the buff. You do it here by raising the chance for it to not happen to all corruption and CoA ticks in the buff time frame, then subtracting that from 1.
I updated the empowered imp for the imp's miss rate, which lowers it down to 7.5%(reminder: this is for T6 geared warlock, 33% crit). I also forgot to include the improved FB. So, assuming everlasting mana(shadow priest maybe?):
And no, CoD is still better than CoA with molten core. That's assuming immolate doesn't proc molten core, and you're not using shadow bolts(but why would you?).
What rotation are you using as 0/20/51? Can you explain the mechanism of this spec? I'm not seeing how this could compete to 0/21/50. Do you mean 20/0/51?
Are you also assuming immolate damage is increased during those 6 seconds? Considering what the average proc rate is, i think you might have overvalued molten core, which is probably because you're using CoA and i'm not.
0/21/50 is simple immolate and incinerate, so is 0/20/51. 18/2/51 just throws in corruption.
These are all stipulated on never ending imp dps, btw. That might be where you're getting lost.
Sorry I meant 0/20/51. I'm not seeing what that spec is bringing to the table to compete with DS:Imp, or a 20 point sinkn into affliction. There's no real DPS increasing talents sub 21-Demo. In terms of DPS increase, 0/20/51 seems to offer as much as 0/0/51.
What are those 20 Demo points spent in to account for such a large DPS increase to compete with Sacrifice?
EDIT: Pardon the stupid. It just dawned on me that 0/20/51 is 2/2Imp. Imp, 5/5 Unholy Power and Empowered Imp, while using the imp for active DPS.
Last edited by TheDrDroppedMe : 06/15/08 at 2:32 AM.
Are you also assuming immolate damage is increased during those 6 seconds? Considering what the average proc rate is, i think you might have overvalued molten core, which is probably because you're using CoA and i'm not.
Is Immolate's tick size determined dynamically, or is it fixed at cast time? Example: if you cast Immolate while an Imp is sacrificed, and it's ticking for 115, then click off the buff, is it now ticking for 100 or does it stay at 115?
If it's determined at cast time, then you would want to cast Immolate on an MC proc, and then simply maintain it with Eternal Flames with the 10% higher tick damage permanently established.
I just tried sacrificing my imp after a immolate cast about 30 minutes ago, and the damage done by the immolate DoT did not jump. Ditto clicking it off. I vaguely recall something about rolling lifeblooms getting nerfed because of the mechanic you described (refreshing lifebloom with maximum procs/buffs up), but i have no clue how the healing done by lifebloom is treated now. I would need to ask a druid, it might indicate how molten core and immolate would be treated.
Unholy power has no effect on the imp i believe. Well according to the wikidot....not sure if that's true or false.
According to the local druid, once temporary effects used before a lifebloom cast wear off, the healing done by lifebloom drops. Using a trinket while lifebloom is up however, does not increase the healing done by lifebloom. Can't really tell if that will translate into how molten core works.
Is Immolate's tick size determined dynamically, or is it fixed at cast time? Example: if you cast Immolate while an Imp is sacrificed, and it's ticking for 115, then click off the buff, is it now ticking for 100 or does it stay at 115?
If it's determined at cast time, then you would want to cast Immolate on an MC proc, and then simply maintain it with Eternal Flames with the 10% higher tick damage permanently established.
I assume it's a combination of both.
Immolate's damage is determined entirely at time of cast. BUT... When the debuff is refreshed, it is refreshed based on whatever the current coefficients and modifiers to the spell are.
I'm making this assumption based on a similar change in patch 2.2 (I think, it's around there). Druids were using "On Use" trinkets for healing spells on the initial Life Bloom, then maintaining the Lifebloom stack which continued to use the coefficient of the original cast. That exploit was changed so that each cast "overwrites" the previous to prevent limited duration buffs from lasting well over their intended duration.
Problem is, without Mana Feed, you won't see anywhere near those benefits since he'll be spending so little time casting.
There is some basic research about this issue made just a bid above (post 683). Untalented Imp should deal 10% of your DPS while his mana lasts, that is fully justified by 15% of spell damage coming to pet. The mana issues show that over infinite period of time the same untalented Imp will spend about 48% of time casting around T5/T6 gear level and without raid buffs. Intellect buffs to you, all Intellect/Spirit buffs to Imp will raise Imp's activity time. The same happens if he gets some totems, Vampiric Touch, Judgement of Wisdom, maybe something else I missed.
Originally Posted by calisti
I would love to see an imp that can survive in a raid setting, but this idea would never work due to PvP. A source of damage that can't be crowd controlled, interrupted, killed, or dispelled is unbalanced.
You can kill a Warlock, which will either kill his Imp through Soul Link or will be easier to kill due to lack of Soul Link. Making Imp unpreventable damage is nowhere near unbalanced, because Imp's PVP utility is lacking. Though a better setting might be that Imp will be able to DPS while Phase Shifted targets afflicted by your Immolate. Also it's hard to crowd control, interrupt, kill, or dispel Bleed effects after they are applied. Firebolt spam doesn't really look like considerably better than Bleeds. On top of that even if he is able to Phase Shift in combat in PVP he'll die to some random AoE happening around faster than he can PS, or will be DOT'ed.
Originally Posted by Suggestive
Considering this is incinerate we're talking about, and not shadowbolt with the current ISB, 11% crit increase is a drop in the bucket. Quick napkin math with my gear shows it to be about a 6.5% damage increase, and this is all assuming you have a moonkin, and elemental shaman in your group, and a ret pally somewhere in the raid. It brings dependence on group buffs to another level entirely, and just screams gimmick.
11% crit is 6.5% damage increase? Do you have like 69% crit and no CSD? Anyway Destruction won't quite work if it doesn't get more powerful crits. It will be fully haste-based in PVE and all usefulness of crits will be eaten by Resilience in PVP.
As for Chaos Bolt: considering the only currently available rank (1), at level 70 it should deal about as much damage as SB/Inci, but cost more Mana. It should be gain of about 0.5 seconds anyway, every 9.5 seconds, which translates into just above 5% benefit. This will be slightly lowered since you will likely be casting something when it becomes available, so it gets delayed, but the talent is positive for PVE DPS. With alive Improved Empowered Imp with Demonic Power and bonus crit from Emp. Imp this should go right above 15%.
This 5% benefit wasn't calculated for topmost gear unfortunately, so at that point (full Sunwell gear) it should still provide about 3% DPS increase. Assumind also that current level 60 value is really intended for level 60 we may assume that Rank 2 should have about 30% more damage and similar increase in mana cost. Still I believe that extra Life Tap overhead will be lower than DPS gain, so R2 would be better for PVE DPS.
Unholy power has no effect on the imp i believe. Well according to the wikidot....not sure if that's true or false.
Unholy Power increases Fire Bolt damage by 20% on live servers.
Just curious are you guys doing your modeling with the alpha fel armor and some assumption of spirit? That's a pretty fundamental change to the class, and I think the extra 9% of spirit regen will make Demonic Aegis a stronger talent that what we are used to.
Right, assuming a 16% increase in base DPS for chaos bolt, about what shadow bolt gets, chaos bolt is worth casting well into sunwell.
Thats a dumb assumption, you got to compare it to similar spells as chaos bolt and not the real bolt spells. A good example is mind blast, 1.5 sec cast 8 sec cool(Exactly the same as chaos), it got a 40% increase in damage lvl 59->69, so if you count on anything count in chaos bolt dmg increasing by roughly 40%.
Mind blast is not a talent, and has nowhere near the base mana cost or damage either, not to mention the special effect. Moot point, i probably should have just left it as is and waited till we actually know more. There's really no point guessing and arguing over how much it will improve...i almost deleted that portion entirely earlier.
Just curious are you guys doing your modeling with the alpha fel armor and some assumption of spirit? That's a pretty fundamental change to the class, and I think the extra 9% of spirit regen will make Demonic Aegis a stronger talent that what we are used to.
Looking at current Mana costs our WotLK spells have, and making some rough assumptions about scaling of Spirit, and Intellect, and Mana regeneration in general, Demonic Aegis MR bonus maybe will provide you with a DPS increase as neglectible as 1%, maybe slightly more, more likely less, maybe far less.
Originally Posted by Suggestive
Mind blast is not a talent, and has nowhere near the base mana cost or damage either, not to mention the special effect. Moot point, i probably should have just left it as is and waited till we actually know more. There's really no point guessing and arguing over how much it will improve...i almost deleted that portion entirely earlier.
We know that right now Chaos Bolt has only 1 rank. 30% estimate is comparable with our other spells, with Shadow Bolt being the only real exception. Meanwhile they added second typo to its description faster than second rank...
Speaking of Mana costs: apparently Incinerate Rank 4 costs so much for so little damage increase, that PVE-wise Rank 2 is better even DPS-wise.
We know that right now Chaos Bolt has only 1 rank. 30% estimate is comparable with our other spells, with Shadow Bolt being the only real exception. Meanwhile they added second typo to its description faster than second rank...
Speaking of Mana costs: apparently Incinerate Rank 4 costs so much for so little damage increase, that PVE-wise Rank 2 is better even DPS-wise.
There will almost certainly be 3 or more ranks. So I don't think a 30% increase from the level 60 version is a fair comparison, Shadowbolt has went up 52% over that time frame.
Rank 2 will not be better, you take a coefficient hit for downranking and there will be far stronger lifetaps and far greater passive regen.
There will almost certainly be 3 or more ranks. So I don't think a 30% increase from the level 60 version is a fair comparison, Shadowbolt has went up 52% over that time frame.
Rank 2 will not be better, you take a coefficient hit for downranking and there will be far stronger lifetaps and far greater passive regen.
For Chaos Bolt 30% difference is estimated to level 70, not 80.
Incinerate Rank 2 is learned at level 70, based on current formulas it should start receiving downranking penalty as late as at level 82, so that's an extra expansion away. (numerator is 81, denominator is character level). Stronger Life Taps are accounted for, but no new rank of LT is known. The first estimate (slightly incorrect) gave less than 1% difference in favor of R4, which is slowly going down all the way to favor R2 at 5532+ damage (unreachable), however the missing part of equation was base value increase for Rank 2 which comes from leveling. It is expected to be 14 and additional 3.5 if Immolate is up. This 17.5 damage appear to be enough to bring the breakpoint from 5532 to somewhere under 1500. As for passive regeneration according to math it doesn't matter at all, as long as you lose at least 1 damage point to Life Tap. Talents like Cataclysm and Improved Life Tap will favor R4 slightly too. It seems I need to solve my equation relative to bonus spell damage in variables instead of in numbers to have those calculations easier...
UPDATE: Rank 2 is "level 77", not "level 75" as was previously assumed. That adds another 5.6 damage plus 1.4 if Immolate is up. This extends its full coefficient for 2 more levels as well. This data is gathered from live client and may not match WotLK data.
There will almost certainly be 3 or more ranks. So I don't think a 30% increase from the level 60 version is a fair comparison, Shadowbolt has went up 52% over that time frame.
Rank 2 will not be better, you take a coefficient hit for downranking and there will be far stronger lifetaps and far greater passive regen.
Keep in mind there are no new ranks of life tap. It could just be the developers think with currently scaling with spell damage there doesn't need to be one, and I would concur. But the possibility is they may also want to resurrect Life Tap v2.0, which went off strictly % health/% mana. For PvE it would probably mean a buff as we would be getting considerably more mana back in our 'one size fits all' non-tiered PvE gear. If they wanted to do this, I think we would see it by now though. But there is a lot of experimentation going on you can tell from the shifting of Emp. Imp from one tree to the other. Something needs to fill the hole now left in Demonology--maybe a talent that benefits the felguard as it would be deep enough in the tree.
I still think 0/21/50 is going to be necessary. While it is true there are a lot of raid boss effects that will not hurt pets (spout from Lurker Below being one), a lot do. I think the flexibility of being able to choose to sac the imp for 15% is to great to pass up.
To add to the Imp discussion, I did a quick test with trying to macro the Imp's casts:
1. Using "/cast Firebolt" caused the Imp to use his max rank Firebolt normally
2. Using "/cast Firebolt(rank 1)" caused nothing
Simply put, it will not be possible to downrank Firebolt for the sake of saving mana.
That seems unlikely. Couldn't one re-roll, never train higher than rank1, and exploit? It's probably a bug or perhaps you entered the command incorrectly. AFAIK downranking has always been allowed on every spell with lower ranks recieving coefficient nerfs to compensate for unreasonable efficiency gains.
06/14/08, 11:00 PM
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