Dots and you: The Affliction Warlock Thread - Page 102

Naforce · 02/23/10, 1:01 PM

Originally Posted by Burberri

I like to start with corruption on fights where I am going to use NMIC to juice it. That way I know its spell power is low since I have 0 stacks of muridan's, and lightweave/AV ring haven't proc'd. It removes the need to SoC. That however, is not true if you are doing a refresh sub 35% to get the extra 12%. You might need to SoC at that point.

EDIT: I might add that outside of Festergut, Rotface, and blood queen I find NMIC to be more trouble than its worth.

Let's not forget marrowgar, lady deathwhisper and saurfang as other bosses where NMIC is useful. These are not all cases, of course, but the easiest ones in addition to the ones you mentioned.

Shock3r · 02/23/10, 2:07 PM

About the blood queen, it really depends on when you are getting bitten: if you are getting the debuff quite soon I suppose its fine to keep NMIC until it happens, but after that you have to wait for the 4pct10 proc and - eventually - refreshing corruption another timer under 35% for Death's Embrace. Now, if as i supposed before you are getting bitten quite soon, it's possible to refresh another time with NMIC corruption under 35%, but in the opposite case the situation gets tricky because probably you won't have enought time for the cd. How are you handling this? Do you prefear in an encounter like B.Q heroic casting your crit-empowered corruption as soon as the bite happens and refreshing it under 35% (with another use of the trinket, if possible), or just wait for the 4pcproc also?

Mokhtar · 02/24/10, 4:48 AM

I was informed that you guys suffer from a strange bug due to which you cannot refresh Corruption because "a most powerful spell is already active". Can someone confirm the mechanics of this bug? For the moment I have been told the following: if current spell power (as displayed in character sheet) is less than the spell power when corruption was last cast then the error will crop up.
This seems strange to me as shadowpriests do not have this bug at all on SW:P...

PS: forgot to announce it there but ShadowGreenLight with warlock support is at release stage

Eiffeltower · 02/24/10, 5:49 AM

Hey Mokh,

Thanks for all your good work.
Indeed, we cannot always refresh our corruption by just reapplying another one on top of it. If our current SP is not as high as the SP we had when casting the original corruption, then we get the 'a more powerful spell is already active message'.

In order to work around this and reapply a corruption with the maximized effect (4pt10, NMIC etc), if the corruption is not 'over writable', we use the spell 'seeds of corruption' to clear the corruption (those 2 spells cant be on the target at the same time) and then we simply recast corruption.

Hope that makes sense.

Zaleiria · 02/24/10, 4:52 PM

In the latest PTR patch notes:

Life Tap: This spell no longer scales with spirit, and instead scales with spell power.

I'm curious if dark pact will be intended to have identical scaling as life tap now (with the change to life tap).

Burberri · 02/24/10, 5:21 PM

Originally Posted by Eiffeltower

Hey Mokh,

Thanks for all your good work.
Indeed, we cannot always refresh our corruption by just reapplying another one on top of it. If our current SP is not as high as the SP we had when casting the original corruption, then we get the 'a more powerful spell is already active message'.

In order to work around this and reapply a corruption with the maximized effect (4pt10, NMIC etc), if the corruption is not 'over writable', we use the spell 'seeds of corruption' to clear the corruption (those 2 spells cant be on the target at the same time) and then we simply recast corruption.

Hope that makes sense.

Point of clarification. It is not from the time that corruption is originally cast. It is from its current spell power. Spell power is recalulated every time the timer is refreshed (as is haste).

So it looks like this

My spell power is X

1) cast corruption dot is based on SP X
<--- could cast corruption
2) Lightweave procs my spell power is now X+295
<--- could cast corruption
3) cast shadowbolt, corruption time is reset and corruption dot is recalculated with X+295 SP
<--- could cast corruption
4) lightweave falls off
<--- casting corruption here will result in "MORE POWERFUL SPELL ACTIVE"
6) cast shadowbolt, corruption time is reset and corruption dot is recalculated with X SP
<--- could cast corruption

The issue is in combat because there are all kinds of SP procs, lightweave, DP, AV ring, DLO, phlac, LT, blood fury, etc.

Most of this crap you can notice on your own so knowing when to SoC or just hit corruption is done on your side. However, DP refreshes every few seconds sometimes and you aren't in a position to know what the demon locks SP is. Now with DP being up 45 seconds, and being stable for at least 25 seconds you are much less likely to encounter this problem.

Fablez · 02/25/10, 9:32 AM

Originally Posted by Burberri

Point of clarification. It is not from the time that corruption is originally cast. It is from its current spell power. Spell power is recalulated every time the timer is refreshed (as is haste).

So it looks like this

My spell power is X

1) cast corruption dot is based on SP X
<--- could cast corruption
2) Lightweave procs my spell power is now X+295
<--- could cast corruption
3) cast shadowbolt, corruption time is reset and corruption dot is recalculated with X+295 SP
<--- could cast corruption
4) lightweave falls off
<--- casting corruption here will result in "MORE POWERFUL SPELL ACTIVE"
6) cast shadowbolt, corruption time is reset and corruption dot is recalculated with X SP
<--- could cast corruption

Where are you getting this information from? This has never been my experience in a raid. Even though the spellpower and haste is recalculated on every refresh, it will not let you overwrite your corruption if you have less spell power than when you originally cast it. This has always been my experience though, and to my knowledge nothing official has ever been said about it.

trey8 · 02/25/10, 11:42 AM

If This question has been asked and/or answered i aplogize. But in regards to Shadow Mastery and our "opener". The opener, or at least the one i've been using was SB,Haunt, Corr,UA,CoA. With the change though in 3.3 with shadow mastery now having 3 charges instead of 2 is it worth throwing an extra SB before or after Haunt before I cast Corruption?

P.s i almost always NMIC before Corruption to start

Burberri · 02/25/10, 12:16 PM

Originally Posted by Fablez

Where are you getting this information from? This has never been my experience in a raid. Even though the spellpower and haste is recalculated on every refresh, it will not let you overwrite your corruption if you have less spell power than when you originally cast it. This has always been my experience though, and to my knowledge nothing official has ever been said about it.

I tested at a target dummy right before posting it. Using Lightweave, life tap. Casting corruption at higher spell power, letting them (edit: sp buffs not corruption) fall off. refreshing with sb, and then casting corruption again. It will stick. I might add you can also test it by clicking on and off fel armor if you don't want to wait for random procs. Or 40 seconds for LT to wind down. Make sure you don't have something like muridan's equiped though since it stacks SP.

Originally Posted by trey8

If This question has been asked and/or answered i aplogize. But in regards to Shadow Mastery and our "opener". The opener, or at least the one i've been using was SB,Haunt, Corr,UA,CoA. With the change though in 3.3 with shadow mastery now having 3 charges instead of 2 is it worth throwing an extra SB before or after Haunt before I cast Corruption?

P.s i almost always NMIC before Corruption to start

The answer to this question depends on fight length really. If by doing SB->Haunt->Cor are you going to gain an extra dot tick? If yes then you want to do it that way if not, then you want to do SB->haunt->SB.

+% damage (applied to a target which is different from yourself) gets rolled into dots when it is applied (or falls off). +% crit gets applied on initial cast only. Hence the need for SB before Cor/UA. Also, since Imp SB takes travel time + a little bit to be active on the target and you want to give the ele shaman/ret pally additional time to get +3% crit debuff and haunt increases dot damage by a lot, you cast it next. At this point the question is do you want to lose

5% damage off the top of 1 tick of each dot before the 3rd stack of SE goes up, or do you want to potentially lose the entirety of 1 tick of each dot when the mob dies because you didn't apply them for an additional 2 seconds?

Random chance on waiting 2 seconds would indicate that you would lose essentially 66% of those last ticks. Since 66% is greater than 5% one would gather based on not knowing when a mob is going to die, you would be better off only 2 stacking SE before applying dots. Now its more complicated than that because you tend to stop casting dots when a mobs time to die gets low. Which would need to be factored in.

turturin · 02/25/10, 3:45 PM

It's best to start with UA now if you have 4pcT10, in order to allow for the possibility of devious minds proc and a chance at 10% extra dmg on corruption for the rest of the fight. I haven't yet calculated how long one should "wait" for devious minds before casting the first corruption. The basics should be the difference in dmg between a UA tick w/ Haunt and SE vs one without (for a 5 tick max), plus the dmg lost (as a function of time) due to corruption not being on the target for the duration, needs to be less in total than 10% extra dmg on corruption for the fight (once applied).

It gets more complex when you consider that a waiting time of >10 secs (which will occur around 73% of the time) precludes you from pre-potting effectively. For those of you lucky enough to get a ToTT (or FM) at the start, those are additional considerations.

Of course it's ideal if it procs somewhere during the sbx2, haunt, and coa that you do directly after opening with UA. Assuming 2 ticks during that timeframe, this will happen about 19% of the time.

rutiene · 02/25/10, 3:53 PM

Originally Posted by turturin

It's best to start with UA now if you have 4pcT10, in order to allow for the possibility of devious minds proc and a chance at 10% extra dmg on corruption for the rest of the fight. I haven't yet calculated how long one should "wait" for devious minds before casting the first corruption. The basics should be the difference in dmg between a UA tick w/ Haunt and SE vs one without (for a 5 tick max), plus the dmg lost (as a function of time) due to corruption not being on the target for the duration, needs to be less in total than 10% extra dmg on corruption for the fight (once applied).

In my experience, on single target fights it typically takes 10+ seconds to get Devious Minds to proc. With Corruption's high DPCT, I see no reason why you wouldn't cast Corruption normally, then wait for Devious Minds to proc to refresh with NMIC and Potion of Wild Magic.

Bartramp · 02/25/10, 3:55 PM

Originally Posted by Mystearica

You treat it the same way as if it weren't in our execute range. If the cast time on UA is 1.1 & there's 1.5 left on the dot, you would cast another SB instead of clipping or waiting to refresh the dot by doing nothing. During DS you would just continue until the next tick letting the dot fall off, then recasting after the next tick. As both clipping or doing nothing to wait for the right time to refresh a dot are both dps losses.
You could also LT/DP if you need the mana & refresh the LT glyph.
Regarding Corr, there's no reason why you can't recast DS after a tick to keep corr up, as long as you let DS tick at least once. Haunt, depending on your distance from the boss, you want to cast as soon as its off CD after the next DS tick to keep SE from falling off. Assuming you haven't had a nightfall proc to refresh it.

Does the shadow damage over time buff from haunt also buff drain soul? If so would that 20% extra damage should be worth clipping DS to reup in most cases?

zacheryah · 02/25/10, 5:55 PM

The best way to do it in my opinion, is the following :

- Precombat pot, start the fight
- Normal rotation

when 4PT10 procs

- Cast seed of corruption to instandly remove corruption,
- use Nevermelting icecrystal
- Reapply corruption

Like this you avoid the "there is allready a more powerfull spell on the target

Practice it and you lose allmost no time

Rolling NIC+4pT10 on corruption like that, is quite powerfull

turturin · 02/25/10, 6:20 PM

Originally Posted by rutiene

In my experience, on single target fights it typically takes 10+ seconds to get Devious Minds to proc. With Corruption's high DPCT, I see no reason why you wouldn't cast Corruption normally, then wait for Devious Minds to proc to refresh with NMIC and Potion of Wild Magic.

As I already noted, yes, that will occur 73% of the time. The reason not to do what you suggest is that other procs you can't control (rep ring, lightweave, demonic pact, etc) may give you the "a more powerful spell is already active message". It also eliminates prepotting, or rather it eliminates the benefit you'll get from potting during BL later in the fight.

The DPCT of corruption for those first ticks gets a lot worse when you have to add a SoC + (a potentially unnecessary LT, depending on rotation/travel time) as impacting that denominator.

It's quite possible zacheryah's method described above is the best one. I guess one would have to compare that scenario vs the one I suggested. As noted there are a bunch of tradeoffs to consider in both cases.

Isarac · 02/26/10, 5:11 AM

Originally Posted by Warlocomotif

Source: MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Warlock Buff 3.3.2

I decided to math that out a bit; results from the simulationcraft thread:

What does rolling corruption give us:
Weapon swapping heroic enlightenment: 182 critical strike rating
...

I'm interested in adding a weapon swap for crit rolling to my rotation. However, I was wondering would enchanting Heroic Enlightenment with Accuracy give us effectively 207 extra crit rating?

I would test it out, but it's an expensive enchant, so I thought it's better to ask first. Someone may have already tested it out.