krilz

I think his question was more "Should I cast Corruption instead of UA/Immo after SB+Haunt?"
I say: yes (that's what I do).

 

duhwhat

Is there any evidence that Imp builds are doing better than FG builds at around 2000 spell damage? Also, any thoughts on what spell damage level FG/Emberstorm will start to be outscaled?

 

Daidai

This spreadsheet was improved.

 

◊ voy1d

I need to stop replying to these boards early in the morning when I'm still asleep.

I actually believe that using the following is most likely a better use of abilities when putting dots up for the first time;

Shadow Bolt, Haunt, Unstable Affliction, Immolate, Corruption, Curse of Agony, Siphon Life

The SB and Haunt are there to get Shadow Embrace up.
UA/Immo both have cast times, so take 'longer' to get up and allows for clipping the cast and casting the next in the "latency window".
Corruption follows right after as it takes a GCD and is easy to stick up in the lag time on the Immo cast.
CoA because with Imp Curse, has a shortened GCD.
SL last because its where it is on my keyboard.

Given with next to 0 haste you'd expect as soon as you have finished casting that combination Haunt should have just come off cooldown, allowing a cast there followed by a quick Life Tap.

I personally see greater value in Corruption to be mid rotation as NF is unlikely to proc on the first tick (3 seconds after cast) and if it does you should still have it available after the Haunt/LT at the end of this rotation. Additionally correct me if I'm wrong, but you need to account for travel time for SB/Haunt and getting Corruption up too early will mean that it won't receive the SE bonus (note I'm a kiwi so I am more affected by latency)

Assuming 0 Haste and a standard 56/0/15 build

Shadow Bolt: 2.5 seconds
Haunt: 1.5 seconds
Unstable Affliction: 1.5 seconds
Immolate: 1.5 seconds
Corruption: 1.5 seconds (factoring GCD)
Curse of Agony: 1 second (imp Curse)
Siphon Life: 1.5 seconds
Total Time: 10 seconds

Essentially now you can use another Haunt as it would've come off CD (or be very close to it) or Life Tap.

 

Evyle

ah thanks I did not think of the travel time, I do want the Haunt to hit before the corruption is up there. Thanks for the reply

So anyone know if 3/3 eradication gives any significant bonus over just 1/3 eradication?

 

nikitabanana

http://wowwebstats.com/hr6fiun3zdxu3?s=327504-364328

5332 dps on patchwerk as 53/0/18

 

dcpwns

47% crit as afflic seems kinda high what are you running at before buffs.

 

crd

He has 16% in character window on armory. Feels like a little RNG in this parse. But nice results nevertheless.

 

Cepha

Anything new about our Debuffslots discussion? Maalakai did your raid had any debuff issues while you were affliction?

 

nikitabanana

Well, the 2 piece bonus pretty much procs all the time, so add in a near static 10% crit (let's just say, when I'm ready to shadowbolt, the bonus is up. Add in raid buffs (scorch for 10% more, 3% from ele shaman, 5% from moonkin) and I have another 18%. So, 16+17+10 = 44.

Doesn't look very rngish to me when you investigate it a bit more. This doesn't account for other intellect based buffs as well.

 

Alithia

Rydya, what glyphs do you use?

 

Zasz

*wave*

@ali: What spells activate your first trinket?

 

Turbo Moses

What about Nightfall procs sub 25%? I assume it's better to use those than keep draining, but I wouldn't be surprised if just holding down a +60% drain soul would outdo the GCD of using a nightfall proc.

 

Namnalia

Using the NF procs below 25% is a (very slight dps) improvement. If you are able to manage the stopcasting for dot refreshing, you should do the same for nf procs.

 

krilz

Very explanatory but as of now my starting rotation is: SB+Haunt -> Corr -> CoA -> SL -> UA -> Immo because I'm hoping for not only an early Nightfall but also an early Eradication as well as Molten Core proc before the Immolate. That's a lot to hope for so I'm wondering if your starting rotation isn't just simply better since it doesn't factor in any RNG.

 

DiamondTear

If you are casting shadow bolt first, you are putting SE up for 0 dots. If you cast corruption first, you would get almost a full tick more damage out of it.

Also, you don't want to use Haunt when it comes off CD, since shadowbolt has better DPCT. You want to use it when the debuff is about to fade.

 

Patches

I dont see allot of talk about the "0/13/51" spec, or 0/20/51 as i spend my talentpoints.
So here's my opinon of it, after raiding for 10 days with this spec:

There are ups and downs with this spec as there are with all specs. The downside of this spec is that you lose a ton of dps if your imp dies, with my gear as it is at the moment, my imp accounts for roughly 650dps as i'm specced unholy power. This means that if my pet ever dies in a fight, i lose 650 dps, and it's well hard to keep the little bugger up on any fight that applies auras of different kinds, like for instance Sapphiron in Naxx, and on other fights it demands a heck of allot of micro management to keep it up (or allot of time Health Funneling).

That's the downside of it. The upside is that it's super fun to play, or at least i think so. It's definately a viable raid spec damage wise, and on pure nuke fights like for instance Patchwerk (25 man so i have all the buffs), i hit around 4k dps, running the rotation:
CoE (i'm lone warlock in my guild at the moment), Corruption, Chaos Bolt, Immolate, Incinerate .... Conflagrate, rinse and repeat. Conflag whenever it suits my rotation and Chaos Bolt whenever its off cooldown, otherwise just keep those 2 dots running.
When doing a fight where you have to move a bit, i obviously try to use my GCD as smart as possible (life tap when running, Corruption, etc etc) but as my pet dies allot its hard for me to keep on on fights where i have to move too much.

With that info, im turning to you guys. I would like to know from others running this spec, how they keep their imp alive, doing dmg, in fight with heavy aoe etc.
And a bit of additional info from the Felguard guys, how a Felguard is to keep up compared to an imp.

 

Woggle

I don't get why everyone is so fond of starting off the rotation with a shadowbolt. Doing so delays ALL your subsequent DoTs by (SB-casttime)/3 of a tick (SB-casttime/2 for CoA), which should generally be more than half a tick each(assuming you won't have any significant haste effects up in the beginning). Putting Shadowbolt to the end of the rotation makes you lose 5% damage on ~3-4 corr, ~3-4 UA, ~3-4 CoA, 2 SL and 1-2 Immo ticks, which should overall be much less of a loss than losing half a tick of each overall, even considering pandemic in the case of corr und UA (this can be hard to model in the case of CoA, but it definitely holds true for the others).

The thing to consider is the rise of the first shadowbolt's DPCT (in contrary to following shadowbolts, which do not have increased DPCT) in comparison to the DoT-spells, as it will boost the dmg of all subsequent DoT-ticks. Consequently, the first shadowbolt might be best cast, i.e., after applying Corr, UA and CoA, but before applying SL and Immo (this is just an example and does not have to hold true in a real scenario). This should not be to hard to model and I will try doing so later on, if noone cares to do so beforehand.

edit: beaten to it.

Regarding when to cast Haunt, i had recently made a post somewhere. Don't cast it whenever it comes off cooldown, cast it so that you lose as little uptime as possible without significant overlaps.

 

Medieval

the felguard normally stays up. AoE heavy fights might kill it, but generally the big guy takes care of himself well in my opinion.

 

nikitabanana

I think you're worrying way too much bout things. If it's a run in fight, I get instants off, haunt, ua, immolate, siphon, start sbing, haunt, etc.

I mean, dots take priority over shadowbolt, haunt takes priority over everything, etc. It's fairly straightforward and I find affliction to be really easy when you drop the notion of a strict rotation and instead look at it as a prioritization of abilities. I generally let dots fall off to get their "last tick" and finish whatever I'm doing (shadowbolt or whatever), then reapply them. 100% uptime isn't a huge concern to me because you can't do it perfectly, and you risk losing that last tick of a dot to keep 100% uptime, essentially losing dps overall since you wasted time not casting sb or doing something else to achieve that, and inadvertently losing the final tick of something.

This may sound counter-intuitive and wrong, but I don't do really high dps by trying to line everything up perfectly. I do it by getting a feel for things and reapplying things how I feel they should be while fitting in shadowbolts >.>. If UA is down for 0.5s cause I delayed slightly and I lose a slight bit of dps, I don't sweat it - cause I know I'm making it up elsewhere.

Perfect 100% dot uptime doesn't really get you anything, is impossible, and will cause stress, headaches, poor raid awareness, and overall bad dps.

 

Nicarras

You are mostly right, but your first line is wrong. I still think its best to get your initial cast down, rather than just landing your 3 instants.

Initial cast order should be, for affliction.

(CoE/R) SB -> Haunt -> UA -> Immo -> (CoA) -> Corr -> SL (SB spam and refresh time)

[edit]

Didnt want my post to sound like I was slamming you. I do agree but just wanted to point out the initial cast order for him. Also I agree with your point about uptime. 100% isnt reasonable to strive for. What I do is track my uptimes on certain bosses each week just so I can guage if I'm improving or getting worse on my uptimes. Since DPS/Damage Done will keep getting better as gear gets better...what you need to look at is how well you are doing at keeping your Dots on the target.

 

Zaleiria

Yeah, this is a common misconception. It is implemented almost exactly the same as Demonic Sacrifice (except it affects all schools).

 

nikitabanana

Eh, that's if I have to run in really. I can't get anything but instants off initially on a lot of fights so I choose that first. The difference, even if you optimize the initial cast sequence, will be so minute that it doesn't really matter (that much). I'm not even in amazing gear or anything right now - it's pretty boring t7 stuff and heroic items - but I was a shadow priest for a super long time and even then, I still preached that doing exceptional dps was about reacting and prioritizing and knowing when to ignore uptime for higher dps casts (aka middle of cast, clipping, etc). I don't know - maybe I'm insane, but my results are generally very solid so I just stick with it :P.

 

Nicarras

No I agree, and you bring up clipping. While we all preach 'clipping is bad', some people do need to realize that there are times that it is better to clip. Predictable/Expected movement that you can clip a dot so it ticks while you move instead of running out while you move works out better.

Its all the little things that add up.

 

nikitabanana

I'll post some wws's from next week (the previous raid I was this spec as well and did close to 5k dps on patchwerk) Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'll probably end up being that spec for a few reasons (shadow embrace is still broken and I'm always in the raid and the other 2 locks prefer affliction, so if they swap more then it's logical to be destro, 2pt healthstones are nice, and I like the feel of destro raiding).

I'm fairly certain I can meet the same dps levels in this spec (I realize I can eek out a little more doing 2/13/56 but I like shadowfury for the clutch moments it has ). I think I did 4800 before some upgrades I got from 10 mans, etc last week, so assuming that I can break 5k, the extra 200ish dps, even if I lost it, raidwise would be an increase since two affliction warlocks don't work well atm.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft (that'd be optimal single target destro dps, but as I stated, the other spec has slight raid advantages). It should be close, but affliction may slightly win out. However, on other fights destro is superior (3 drake sarth where burst matters far more then sustained dps for instance). I can't wait for dual specs as well as shadow embrace being fixed because it gives me a lot of per fight flexibility.

Gearing wise, I'm glad haste is turning out to be just fine for affliction (at least as far as my empirical tests go) because it makes spec changing very easy and well, it just makes us more versatile. I also used the crit/+dmg meta gem instead of dmg/int. The int doesn't give me much, and 24 spell dmg really is comparable to 21 crit strike rating in general - so I go the more versatile route...(if not the better route, I've yet to see anyone really show that the int/dmg meta is vastly superior in any way). Not every spell as aff benefits from 3% increased spell dmg, but quite frankly, 20 more int isn't really worth that much either :P.


edit: A lot of dmg for affliction in simulations might be upwardly skewed as well due to drain soul. I'm not entirely sure yet. It may turn out that under the most optimal circumstances, affliction scales the best - but right now, assuming you take more then 1 warlock, I don't see a reason that more then 1 be affliction due to lack of imp healthstones (will matter more later then it does now), shadow embrace being broken, etc. As much as I hate the gameplay, I may try out demo just because buffed I peak at close to 3800dmg with procs, etc - it'd be a fairly large raid dps increase if the self dps keeps up. I still like the current destro gameplay the most, though =D.