At 66% uptime ISB+Bane should = Emberstorm, nerfed Imp. Scorch = Shadow Weaving. The new Winter's Chill looks interesting, I wonder if we are going to see it consistently along with Scorch in 25mans, I am not familiar with WotlK Mage theorycrafting.
One small problem here, your assuming shadowbolt and incinerate are the same spells.
Shadowbolt has a 105.71% coefficient over 2.5 seconds. 42.284% per second.
Incinerate has a 91.43% coefficient over 2 seconds. 45.715% per second.
On top of that incinerate has a slightly higher base damage. Since winter's chill is going to add almost 15-20% spell crit to destruction warlocks(10% to imp, which is given to the lock, and 10% to the lock itself) Aswell as 10% crit to every mage/moonkin in the raid I think it is likely a mage would be forced to spec it even if it wasn't their ideal spec.
Originally Posted by Drakh
Can't Haste reduce the Global Cooldown below 1.5s ?
So Backdraft Haste would likely improve every spell until its casting speed would fall below 1s ?
Because a lot of ppl always say that Immolate would be capped by gcd. Would a backdrafted Immo drop below 1s ?
It would take around 20% passive haste to make it go below 1 second. Which is of course quite easy to get. I am over 20% on live right now and that is when drums, heroism, skull are not up, and there is no 10% haste totem or improved moonkin aura. Even incinerate could be taken below the global, but only under heroism+backdraft+totem+lots of haste.
Last edited by Flamingcloud : 08/06/08 at 11:46 AM.
Please check my math I might made a mistake somewhere
Conflagrate rank 8 base damage = 860
2800 spell power x 0,4386 = 1228
Multipliers = CoE (13%), Scorch (10%), Misery (5%), Emberstorm (10%)
Together makes 2998 normal hit
Ruin makes crit do 200% damage = 5996 crit
58% crit chance makes avg damage = 4796
Please check my math I might made a mistake somewhere
Conflagrate rank 8 base damage = 860
2800 spell power x 0,4386 = 1878
Multipliers = CoE (13%), Scorch (10%), Misery (5%), Emberstorm (10%)
Together makes 3931 normal hit
Ruin makes crit do 200% damage = 7862 crit
58% crit chance makes avg damage = 6211
One of Affliction's greatest strengths has always been its mobility. The other thing is that Improved Corruption is really the only option on tier one, since we'd need to hit-cap ourselves anyway (Demo doesn't have the hit talent, and we need Soulshatter to hit; Destro has the talent, but we don't have the spare points to get it and still get Haunt), and 2% mana reduction per rank is just not that great of a benefit. Imp. CoA would be good, except that if you're affliction, you're dropping Malediction CoE, not Agony, and if you happen to be the second Affliction Warlock in the raid then CoD will serve for damage.
Ok so soulshatter needs to hit, I can see that you'd want to hit cap outside of talents for that. But saying you don't have the spare points to get destro hit I don't see.
So Backdraft Haste would likely improve every spell until its casting speed would fall below 1s ?
Because a lot of ppl always say that Immolate would be capped by gcd. Would a backdrafted Immo drop below 1s ?
As you can see I didn't calculate GCD at 1.5 seconds. I used 1.25 seconds. Why? Because 20% haste reduces GCD with 0.25 seconds.
Backdraft is not haste. It is reducing cast time.
Example: 3 seconds shadow bolt. Reducing the cast time with 30% would mean: 3 x 0.7 = 2.1 second cast time.
30% haste means: 3 / 1.3 = 2.31 cast time.
Haste reduces GCD, "reduces cast time" effects do not. So in my calculations a 1.25 Immo stays 1.25 Immo, even with Backdraft. If you gain more haste, GCD is lowered again to for instance 1.24 or less.
As you can see I didn't calculate GCD at 1.5 seconds. I used 1.25 seconds. Why? Because 20% haste reduces GCD with 0.25 seconds.
Backdraft is not haste. It is reducing cast time.
Example: 3 seconds shadow bolt. Reducing the cast time with 30% would mean: 3 x 0.7 = 2.1 second cast time.
30% haste means: 3 / 1.3 = 2.31 cast time.
Haste reduces GCD, "reduces cast time" effects do not. So in my calculations a 1.25 Immo stays 1.25 Immo, even with Backdraft. If you gain moer haste, GCD is lowered again to for instance 1.24 or less.
Pretty sure it was confirmed by beta testers to reduce the global cooldown a few pages back.
Pretty sure it was confirmed by beta testers to reduce the global cooldown a few pages back.
Strange, I read reports Immo was still bound to the same GCD, back to the math then.
Still, if that is true it would make Backdraft more appealing not less, correct?
About Conflagrate. You are right I wrote a number wrong. Re-calculating it becomes 4736 after 58% crit. Still 3789 damage per second cast time if you consider 1.25 GCD with 20% haste.
Strange, I read reports Immo was still bound to the same GCD, back to the math then.
Still, if that is true it would make Backdraft more appealing not less, correct?
More appealing overall, less appealing to follow conflag with immolate though. All the talents are contradictory. Backdraft makes you want to conflag every 10 seconds, and fire & brimstone make you want to conflag either not at all or with only one tick left. Wish we knew all our glpyhs small changes could radically change everything. Maybe their plan all along was to give destruction warlocks more than one ideal cast rotation. All these changes are certainly going to increase destructions required skill level, especially when the rotation drastically changes under a heroism, or if movement time is involved.
Last edited by Flamingcloud : 08/06/08 at 12:06 PM.
That is indeed a problem, that Immo needs to follow Conflag to get it up again asap. I was fiddeling a bit with Soul Fire even, but turned out that spell is not even worth it when hasted by Backdraft. Not to mention it's ludicrous shard cost and CD. Only thing you can do after a Conflag is Immolate + two speeded up Incinerates.
If it's worth it mana-wise is still so unclear. Will the mana values stay? How will mana regeneration be? How much will Life Tap return?
I just chose to leave it out for now, but I agree it may completely overthrow any theorycrafting. But so could glyphs and so could a blue post about talent changes. Still fun to think about what we will do for optimal DPS in the expansion.
Also the Empowered Imp can be taken with all these "immo talents". So not sure what you mean by the cost of these talents? You mean you cannot put up a slightly stronger CoR then?
Ok so soulshatter needs to hit, I can see that you'd want to hit cap outside of talents for that. But saying you don't have the spare points to get destro hit I don't see.
This has both hit talents and 4 points to spare that could go into Shadow Embrace, Devestation or other talents.
Points in both Frailty and Maledection mean that you have waste no matter which curse you're using. Also, if you're running Improved Shadow Bolt, you really want Devastation maxxed. This is where the point squeeze comes in.
EDIT: wow, that came out harsher-sounding than I'd intended. Sorry about that
Last edited by PsyBomb : 08/06/08 at 12:30 PM.
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.
That is indeed a problem, that Immo needs to follow Conflag to get it up again asap. I was fiddeling a bit with Soul Fire even, but turned out that spell is not even worth it when hasted by Backdraft. Not to mention it's ludicrous shard cost and CD. Only thing you can do after a Conflag is Immolate + two speeded up Incinerates.
If it's worth it mana-wise is still so unclear. Will the mana values stay? How will mana regeneration be? How much will Life Tap return?
I just chose to leave it out for now, but I agree it may completely overthrow any theorycrafting. But so could glyphs and so could a blue post about talent changes. Still fun to think about what we will do for optimal DPS in the expansion.
Also the Empowered Imp can be taken with all these "immo talents". So not sure what you mean by the cost of these talents? You mean you cannot put up a slightly stronger CoR then?
If you had something absolutely nutty going like backdraft, heroism, moonkin aura, totem, drum, guldan, and lots of passive haste it would possibly make throwing a soulfire worth doing, but it could only be worth doing in situations where incinerate is brought way below the global cooldown. You actually need to bring it down from 4 seconds to like 1.3-1.4 to make it better than a 1 sec incinerate. It would require 187% haste if everything worked like item haste, not sure how things would work out with all the multipliers not working the same though.
After that you could do almost anything, but there is certainly no guarantee that cookie cutter 0/13/58 is going to beat,
7/13/51 imp lt/aegis/chaosbolt 22/3/46 sl/empowered corruption/molten core... I assume molten core would proc alot with sl, coa, and corruption up 11/13/47 amp curse/aegis 0/20/51 unholy power/chaosbolt 0/26/45 1/5md (which should be 2% crit and 1% fire instead of nether protection if chaos bolt sucks)
Most of these specs get the very good new nether protection and other goodies by sacrificing immolate/conflag. Nether Protection basically cannot be reached by any F&B spec unless you sacrifice backlash, chaos bolt, shadowfury, etc.
Last edited by Flamingcloud : 08/06/08 at 12:51 PM.
More appealing overall, less appealing to follow conflag with immolate though. All the talents are contradictory. Backdraft makes you want to conflag every 10 seconds, and fire & brimstone make you want to conflag either not at all or with only one tick left. Wish we knew all our glpyhs small changes could radically change everything. Maybe their plan all along was to give destruction warlocks more than one ideal cast rotation. All these changes are certainly going to increase destructions required skill level, especially when the rotation drastically changes under a heroism, or if movement time is involved.
Though frankly being forced to use a glyph to make a certain talent be worth it isn't a good fix in my opinion. We equated it to the swiftmend glyph, but swiftmend is a good talent even when taking off the HoT.
Though frankly being forced to use a glyph to make a certain talent be worth it isn't a good fix in my opinion. We equated it to the swiftmend glyph, but swiftmend is a good talent even when taking off the HoT.
Well whats the point of glyphs if not to create interesting interactions and change cast rotations and talent evaluations. Glyphs would be pretty boring if all they did was effects like +50dmg to incinerate. It's not like these are bad talents we are talking about improving, just that maybe the talents aren't the best use of points. We aren't talking about improved enslave demon.
Conflagrate and Backdraft are worth it without a Glyph. The problem is they're also very awkward.
In order to maximize the usefulness of Immolate you want as many of its ticks to go off as possible. This is contrary to Backdraft, where the more often you Conflagrate the more time you spend with the buff.
In order to maximize the usefulness of Backdraft you want to spend it on your best damage spells (Incinerate and potentially Chaos Bolt). This is contrary to both Incinerate and more importantly Conflagrate, where delaying Immolate will probably reduce Incinerate damage and delay the next Conflagrate (and thus Backdraft).
Then there's Fire and Brimstone. To get the full effect of the talent, you need to wait an extra gcd before casting Conflagrate or else miss out on the 25% extra crit chance.
Thus the whole thing is awkward, but despite the necessity of blowing your first Backdraft charge in Immolate it's all still worthwhile (and would be moreso if Imp Immolate was worth something).
What would remove the awkwardness would be for Conflagrate to refresh Immolate. That's a little much to ask of a Glyph given what we've seen, but that's the obvious solution. If Conflagrate simply didn't consume Immolate we'd only be adding more awkwardness (refreshing Immolate would fall at different times in the DPS cycle in respect to Conflagrate, at times screwing up both Backdraft and F&B).
I am not sold yet that those 14 points are not best spent somewhere else.
If conflag refreshed immolate instead of consuming it, backdraft would be extremely powerful. It would be like conflag became the new initial immolate portion, and then gave you almost a free incinerate(both mana and time wise), that would be a huge gain and would truly make the 0/13/58 build the only real valid one. They would almost certainly need to nerf destro in a different area to accomplish this change(probably empowered imp, which is just silly if you can keep your imp alive)
Personally my preference would be those entire 14 points scrapped and something completely different done than what they are trying to do now.
Well whats the point of glyphs if not to create interesting interactions and change cast rotations and talent evaluations. Glyphs would be pretty boring if all they did was effects like +50dmg to incinerate. It's not like these are bad talents we are talking about improving, just that maybe the talents aren't the best use of points. We aren't talking about improved enslave demon.
Well to create interesting interactions yes, to fix talents because the developers won't fix them directly no. Lower tier talents shouldn't just make up for one talent to make it worthwhile, they are meant to be an overall increase, and all that F&B and Backdraft are doing right now is leaning towards fixing something that should have been fixed ages ago.
No, given the swiftmend glyph that we have seen it wouldn't be asking too much of glyphs, i just don't think pretty much forcing us to take a glyph to fix a talent that should have been fixed long ago is a proper answer. Basically it's saying that if you want this talent to work you have to use up a glyph slot just to do so. We never really needed conflagrate to actually refresh immolate, just not consume it thus messing with that last tic of Immolate.
Keep in mind that conflag is meant to be a 31 point talent, a milestone in the tree, and it never was and is still very lackluster to me for the investment. Not to mention as it is now, i would rather spend an empowered imp charge on an incinerate even if it didn't have the immolate bonus than a conflag or even an immolate.
You should keep in mind that if Immolate is not eaten by Conflagrate and not refreshed by any mechanic we are back to the TBC problem of keeping an Immolate up 100% of the time for Incinerate to deal its damage. With varying amounts of haste (gear, totems, Backdraft, auras) it is really impossible. One of the reasons why fire destruction is underperforming right now is even the best player cannot do it. If your cycle has a 1 second gap or you missed your window by 0.1 seconds you "wasted" your Incinerate cast.
So we either need an Immolate eating mechanic like it is now in beta (with all its drawbacks) or we need it to be refreshed as it was before.
You should keep in mind that if Immolate is not eaten by Conflagrate and not refreshed by any mechanic we are back to the TBC problem of keeping an Immolate up 100% of the time for Incinerate to deal its damage. With varying amounts of haste (gear, totems, Backdraft, auras) it is really impossible. One of the reasons why fire destruction is underperforming right now is even the best player cannot do it. If your cycle has a 1 second gap or you missed your window by 0.1 seconds you "wasted" your Incinerate cast.
So we either need an Immolate eating mechanic like it is now in beta (with all its drawbacks) or we need it to be refreshed as it was before.
I disagree, with the death of shadow destro and their place taken by affliction and demo locks, we can safely assume immolate is kept up by them. Also our dmg is more haste oriented(backdraft, emberstorm, and totem changes) and less coefficient oriented(scorch 5% and imp sac 15% gone) so a single incinerate not having immolate up will be a smaller issue than it is atm.
I am not sold yet that those 14 points are not best spent somewhere else.
If conflag refreshed immolate instead of consuming it, backdraft would be extremely powerful. It would be like conflag became the new initial immolate portion, and then gave you almost a free incinerate(both mana and time wise), that would be a huge gain and would truly make the 0/13/58 build the only real valid one. They would almost certainly need to nerf destro in a different area to accomplish this change(probably empowered imp, which is just silly if you can keep your imp alive)
Personally my preference would be those entire 14 points scrapped and something completely different done than what they are trying to do now.
The WotLK destro tree is clearly an attempt to make the spec more interactive. If conflag refreshed immolate then it would go against that.
There is also more to talents than just pure out and out dps calcs. I haven't raided too much in TBC, but on a fight like Vashj the current backdraft would be great for add killing- an instant finisher that makes killing the next spawn simple which can be repeated every 2-3 adds. It would also be useful at Kael in bringing down this 100k HP shield as well as during Curator's weakened phase. From a PvP PoV casting times are a killer so shorter is always welcome!
The WotLK destro tree is clearly an attempt to make the spec more interactive. If conflag refreshed immolate then it would go against that.
There is also more to talents than just pure out and out dps calcs. I haven't raided too much in TBC, but on a fight like Vashj the current backdraft would be great for add killing- an instant finisher that makes killing the next spawn simple which can be repeated every 2-3 adds. It would also be useful at Kael in bringing down this 100k HP shield as well as during Curator's weakened phase. From a PvP PoV casting times are a killer so shorter is always welcome!
I am not sure I agree that adding immolate/conflag into a elemental killing rotation is an improvement over consistent damage.(If you haven't done elementals as destro, it is quite easy once you reach the point of 3 bolt = kill, or 2 bolt = kill if one crits) Would certainly benefit on kael/curator or any other situation where you want to have the majority of your damage fit in a small window(
As to pvp, it seems like the point distribution on the talents were designed for a pvp spec in mind. pvp fire destro
The WotLK destro tree is clearly an attempt to make the spec more interactive. If conflag refreshed immolate then it would go against that.
There is also more to talents than just pure out and out dps calcs. I haven't raided too much in TBC, but on a fight like Vashj the current backdraft would be great for add killing- an instant finisher that makes killing the next spawn simple which can be repeated every 2-3 adds. It would also be useful at Kael in bringing down this 100k HP shield as well as during Curator's weakened phase. From a PvP PoV casting times are a killer so shorter is always welcome!
Interactivity depends on where Chaos Bolt fits in. If Chaos Bolt becomes sufficiently raid worthy it would represent interactivity on a similar level to Immolate, without the mass of confusing talent conflicts a non-refreshing Immolate represents.
Backdraft is potentially useful for the situations you describe, but if it's to be a worthwhile raiding talent it needs to be more than that. Shadowfury had similar situational uses, but ultimately wasn't taken by raiding Warlocks because the benefit of other talents was simply that much greater. If Backdraft is only useful for a handful of specific boss encounters it won't be worth the talent points spent on it.
I'm seeing some crazy shizzum with the Imp's crit rate. With my Sunwell gear on he has around a 27% crit rate (yes, its really that high). If I take my gear off, he drops down to ~11% crit (yes, apparently his crit chance is scaling directly with my own crit rating). If I put my gear back on, he goes DOWN to about 7% crit (yes, that makes no sense whatsoever). This has happened to me twice now, doing the same thing with my gear.
There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.
There's an obvious bug in there, the question is whether the scaling is intentional and the gear reequip is a bug, or whether this was an accidental side effect of them adding scaling with hit rating.
Nope. His bolts are always 1.5s. I've been fiddling a little more and I'm butt-naked with an Imp with 30% crit chance. I guess there's a bug where gear-swapping sometimes doesn't factor into the Imp's crit chance? I don't freaking know.
Either way, 30% crit is just nuts. Absolutely batshit bonkers. I got 55% crit when I tried an Immolate/Incinerate/Conflag rotation with the Imp firing away and my base crit after Devastation is 30.5%. I had nearly 2k DPS just me and my imp. I didn't even put CoE up.
There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.
I'm seeing some crazy shizzum with the Imp's crit rate. With my Sunwell gear on he has around a 27% crit rate (yes, its really that high). If I take my gear off, he drops down to ~11% crit (yes, apparently his crit chance is scaling directly with my own crit rating). If I put my gear back on, he goes DOWN to about 7% crit (yes, that makes no sense whatsoever). This has happened to me twice now, doing the same thing with my gear.
What happens if you mount up and dismount? is it possible that scaling of gear is done when he is summoned and the odd results you are getting are a result of gear swapping bugs after he is alive and well?
Edit to avoid 2 posts for 2 topics: I have spent a fair bit of time today catching up on this thread, as well as hours the last week browsing all lock related forums I can get access to and see the same major humbuzz around destro. Being that destro was our dmg spec this expac, it is naturally a tree many are putting the brunt of their focus on right now.
It is very refreshing to once again be able to brainstorm with the community about the possibilities and not just be told to check the spreadsheet. New possibilities and unknowns, love it.
Anyways, useless intro aside.... The major issues seems to be around how using one talent to its max potential, reduces the others max potential and vice versa. I have seen many great suggestions, however what would people feel about just removing the dmg modifier to incin from immolate and adjusting incin base dmg some to compensate. This could help remove the conflict between when its best to use conflag, as well as which spells are best cast under the backdraft effect.
I think there are enough buffs to immo to have its DPCT competitive enough to warrant keeping it in a rotation for the ability to conflag. Backdraft really does look appealing, however with all the raid wide auras and buffs coming unless they change the GCD cap, all the stacking haste effects run a good chance making the haste effect of backdraft far less powerful. If thats the case will 30% mana reduction on 3 spells be enough of a DPCT increase to keep the tallent useful to some degree? I guess we will see.
TBH with all the haste effects being tossed around I don't see how they could keep the GCD at 1 sec, as we wont be the only class that starts to clip low cast time spells. I am not overly educated in haste stacking effects and how they meld, however it seems entirely possible to hit GCD cap without haste on gear at all with some of the WOTLK buffs we will have avail
08/06/08, 11:38 AM
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