The Mage Equivalent: The Destruction Warlock - Page 17

Tinava · 01/09/09, 10:30 AM

I cheered at when I saw the new conflag glyph. Anyone on the PTR been able to see if it works as it's supposed to? My biggest fear is yes it refreshes, but no backdraft proc.

EDIT: Also, any comparisons at this time between the new conflag glyph and immolate?

TommiHelm · 01/09/09, 11:46 AM

I'm playing with a 0/20/51 type spec' atm, no conflagrate. I seem to get more dps this way than with backdraft, is that just cause it's easier to use, and I'm not able to get the most out of the backdraft spec'?

Also I'm wondering about the placement of a few points. This is the spec' I got atm exactly : Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

There's two things I'm wondering about :

1. Should I change 1 point in Intensity into Destructive Reach?
2. Improved Soul Leech / Empowered Imp / Unholy Power . I can't have them all maxed, so right now I'm missing 1 point in Improved Soul Leech, but I'm wondering if that 1% mana might be worth more than 1 point in one of the other two? Mabye go 0/19/52?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers.

Montegomery · 01/09/09, 11:54 AM

Originally Posted by quke

I believe the new rotation is immolate-conflagrate-soulfire-soulfire-soulfire-incinerate-incinerate. /facepalm

I'm not convinced that Soul Fire is the best option. The equation to determine the difference in damage between Incinerate and Soul Fire is as follows:

Soul Fire Damage * 3 - Incinerate Damage * (3 + (Soul Fire Base Cast Time * .7 * 3 / (1 + Haste%) - Incinerate Base Cast Time * .7 * 3 / (1 + Haste%)) / (Incinerate Base Cast Time / (1 + Haste%)))

Obviously this equation can be simplified somewhat via the distributive property, yielding the following.

Soul Fire Damage * 3 - Incinerate Damage * (3 + (Soul Fire Base Cast Time * .7 * 3 / Incinerate Base Cast Time - .7 * 3)
Soul Fire Damage * 3 - Incinerate Damage * (3 + ((Soul Fire Base Cast Time / Incinerate Base Cast Time) - 1) * .7 * 3)

Notice that Haste is completely removed from the equation. Barring GCD pinging no level of haste is going to change which spell is mathematically better. Plugging in the cast times the equation resolves to this point.

Soul Fire Damage * 3 - Incinerate Damage * 4.63

So in order for Soul Fire to be a superior its three casts must be better than 4.63 casts of Incinerate. Soul Fire does ~1490 damage + 115% of Spellpower. Incinerate does ~786 damage + 86.76% of Spellpower (I believe Shadow and Flame was changed to be multiplicative rather than additive, correct me if I'm wrong). If we assume 2500 Spellpower it comes to 4365 and 2955 damage respectively. Plugging these in we get:

13095 - 13681.7

The difference is 586.7 damage in favor of Incinerate. Note that this gap only widens as Spellpower increases and is only affected by Haste once you have enough to reduce Incinerate past a 1.0 second cast time during Backdraft (requiring 57.5%+ Haste). Effectively, there is no conceivable gear level where Soul Fire is a better option during Backdraft than Incinerate, save perhaps during Bloodlust/Heroism.

Historically Soul Fire was a better option because Backdraft did not affect the GCD and Conflagrate consumed Immolate. As these two factors are purportedly changing the remaining benefits of Soul Fire are mana cost and human error.

hbalsack · 01/09/09, 12:55 PM

I agree with your math, and using around 15% haste i come up with very similar numbers. The only thing i don't follow is that incinerate gets better with more spell power. Soulfire has a 115% spell power modifier which is larger than the 86% for incinerate (which includes S&F, 71% without).

Also for the extra 600 damage u are using a ton more mana.

Soulfire mana = 3*9% of base mana = .27% x 3856 = 1041
Incinerate mana = 4.68*14% of base mana = .655%x3856 = 2525
the difference is about 1500 mana, which is 1/2 of a life tap.

I would look at taking .75 sec off of your numbers leaving you with 4.28 incinerates for every 3 soul fires.

3 soul fire = 13095
4.3 incinerate = 12479

The numbers look close, but 600 damage over 7.2 secs is 85dps.

Also when you factor in a 40% crit doesn't the gap widen to as much as 120 dps?

Feel free to critique these numbers. I am just tryin to find the answer

Dirich · 01/09/09, 1:20 PM

The gap widens since what you compare is 1.15*3 and 0.8676*4.63. Since the second is higher than the first, than spellpowers favors the incinerate solution... in an endless mana pool test, as you pointed out.

Haste have been proven to not affect calculations from darian formula. Unless it puts Incinerate under the 1 sec GCD treshold (refer to darian post).
Crit is a multiplicative parameter which is applied at the end of darian calculations, and since both spells have the same crit multiplier and crit chance, it changes nothing in our comparison (since the actual damage dealt is not relevant, we could easyly work with their ratio).

The mana concern, tough, is really major. 1 Life Tap every 2 backdraft cycle seems huge. To evaluate what's better we need, indeed, to analyze the dps time lost because of the additional life tap in the 3xincincerate case.

dedmonwakeen · 01/09/09, 1:36 PM

This is the highest performing Destruction profile that I could find via simulation:

warlock=Warlock_2_13_56
level=80
talents=http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IbZcLc0cZVcGVd0uVsAfct
actions=flask,type=frost_wyrm/food,type=tender_shoveltusk_steak/fire_stone/fel_armor/summon_pet,imp
actions+=/chaos_bolt,backdraft=1/soul_fire,backdraft=1/curse_of_agony/immolate/conflagrate/incinerate/life_tap
tier7_2pc=1
tier7_4pc=1
chaotic_skyflare=1
# Glyphs
glyph_conflagrate=1
glyph_imp=1
glyph_curse_of_agony=1

Results:

Player=Warlock_2_13_56  DPS=5193.4 (Error=+/-8.9 Range=+/-429)  DPR=24.3  RPS=213.7/166.4  (mana)
  Core Stats:  strength=59  agility=61  stamina=934  intellect=998  spirit=608  health=13452  mana=21178
  Spell Stats:  power=2200  hit=11.1%  crit=17.7%  penetration=0  haste=13.8%  mp5=91
  Attack Stats:  power=49  hit=8.8%  crit=13.2%  expertise=0.0  penetration=0  haste=13.8%
  Actions:
    chaos_bolt            Count= 20.5|14.2sec  DPE=9057|12%  DPET=5764  DPR=34.5  Miss=0.0%  Hit=5891  CritHit=12313|12850|49.3%
    conflagrate           Count= 24.9|11.5sec  DPE=4822| 8%  DPET=3356  DPR=10.7  Miss=0.0%  Hit=2982  CritHit=6237|6492|56.5%
    curse_of_agony        Count=  9.9|30.6sec  DPE=6976| 5%  DPET=4834  DPR=18.1  Miss=2.7%  Tick=582
    immolate              Count= 14.4|20.3sec  DPE=8234| 8%  DPET=6094  DPR=12.9  Miss=0.0%  Hit=2122  CritHit=4435|4622|46.1%  Tick=1137
    incinerate            Count= 20.4|13.2sec  DPE=7634|10%  DPET=4093  DPR=14.6  Miss=0.0%  Hit=4728  CritHit=9880|10256|56.4%
    soul_fire             Count= 62.2| 4.5sec  DPE=10790|45%  DPET=4606  DPR=32.0  Miss=0.0%  Hit=6916  CritHit=14447|15465|51.4%
   imp
    fire_bolt             Count=148.0| 1.9sec  DPE=1136|11%  DPET= 590  DPR= inf  Miss=3.0%  Hit=1052  CritHit=1578|1606|22.0%

Montegomery · 01/09/09, 1:50 PM

Factoring in mana regeneration is more complicated than calculating damage. For example, the 1.3-1.68 additional Incinerate casts have a chance to proc Imp Soul Leech and Judgement of Wisdom. Life Tap may be cast at a point where DPS is impossible (or inadvisable) regardless. It gets complicated very quickly.

Given the non-trivial mana cost difference I think the answer is going to be very fight dependent. In a pure tank and spank the better option will almost always be Soul Fire (unless you have the 4400 Spellpower required the bring the two spells even using hbalsack's 4.3 approximation). In any fight where there are opportune moments to use Life Tap Incinerate will be better.

Edit: Do you have numbers for the DPS lost by swapping Glyph of CoA for Immolate, or the loss from dropping the two points in Imp CoA from Affliction?

amz370 · 01/09/09, 2:09 PM

Is glyph of CoA Going to be superior than immolate now? I would think with all the destro multipliers etc, Immolate would still be superior to glyph for dmg wise.

Also with dropping corruption, how would that affect my uptime of 2pc t7? after all that a lot of crit, and my average up time in combat (according to procodile, which is probably a little low as I don't reset it as often as I should) is about 23% corruntyl using both agony and corruption.

At the moment I'm glyphed Imp, Immo, and Courruption playing 31/40. Come patch Corruption would be dropped for Conflag, but would Immo be better swapped for agony for a DPS increase (not a rotational thing?)

Dirich · 01/09/09, 2:16 PM

EDIT: answering to post #249
It's actually not that difficult.

I put a modifier for the life tap in your formula, darian (GCD*haste factor*X, where X = "number of life tap done to compensate the additional mana used for the incinerate cycle" and turns out to be lesser than 1, of course).

During calculations haste turns out to be non relevant if (1+Haste%)>>0.29.. which is easyly achived.

The result is that X = 1484/3000, thus the modified coefficient for the incinerate damage is lowered by X*1.5 (remember that haste is semplified during the calculations). 1484/3000*1.5 = 0.742 which means the coefficient is 4.63 - 0.742 = 3.888

With a second easy modification I added the imp soul leech proc, which slightly modifed the numbers. I assume it works like I analyze in case 2, but since I'm not 100% sure and since case 1 is still useful for the JoW evaluation, here are the 2 cases:

1) In case imp soul leech returns 2% of our base mana (like JoW), than it turns out to be not relevant in this calculation).

2) In case imp soul leech return 2% of our total mana
If (1+Haste%)>>0.33... than, provided M is our mana pool:

X = (1484 - 1.63*0.3*0.02*M)/3000

for a 20k mana pool X =0.429, thus the coefficient for the incinerate case is 4.2.

JOW
I have no idea of the proc rate for the judgment of wisdom debuff, and there's the internal cd to consider, but due to the acutal percentage of mana that it grants, it's of a magnitude comparable with our imp soul leech effect in case #1, and thus not relevant.

What I didn't model was the possible effects of 2p7 since that would really be difficult to evaluate, and it favours the incinerate option of course (since the GCD usage has already been taken into account).

Anyway, the values to use are either 4.2 (12411 total damage) or 3.888 (11489 total damage), and both of them give lower total damage than the 13095 value for the Soul Fire case.

Of course, in some fights there can be moments when you can't dps, so you can freely life tap. In such fights an Incinerate rotation is better. But on fights like petchwerk it's the SF version the one we should use. On the other fights it depend if we will be soon forced to be on the move or not.
So yes, it's like you foresaw, but we have the numbers now.

P.S. (Explaination of my calculations)
I put the GCD*X*haste factor variable in the original formula in order to account for the use of Life Tap.
I evaluated X by using an equation where on one side I put the mana difference from SF and incinerate cases, plus the procs for JoW and Imp Soul Leech and the mana the X life tap award, while on the other side, of course, there's 0. Since I'm balancing the mana for the SF and Incinerate cases.

ninielin · 01/10/09, 7:01 AM

ISL is total mana: I have 15K6 unbuffed, return 312 mana.

FallenPie · 01/12/09, 2:37 AM

I have a question/request for those more intimate with simcraft and the like. In simply searching and scouring the forums I've been unable to locate a definitive answer on the subject specifically, so here goes:
It's been posted a number of times (and is actually my personal belief) that the 2/13/56 chaos bolt/BD/ISL spec is the technical champion among destro builds. I've come up against a lot of contention claiming that a variant which swaps the points in Soul Leech and Improved Soul Leech for Unholy Power performs better due to ISL being "a waste of talent points", "not worth it", etc.
Have there been any calcs performed weighing the two talent point placements? (SL + ISL vs. Unholy Power)
As I mentioned I have seen posts from some of the forum's most reliable regulars that "2/13/56 is the best", but most or all of these were in the context of comparing it with the demo hybrids (0/31/40, 0/41/30), and I could not concretely infer that the Unholy Power variant was among the contending specs.
Personally, I'm reasonably certain the saved LT GCD's from ISL outweigh the bonus to the imp's firebolts on any fight of reasonable length (which is to say nothing about fights where the imp is a dead man if not phased, but we'll leave that matter to the side,) but some hard numbers/simcraft spit-outs would be nice to back it up if anyone has the time and/or data handy. I'm quite sure the difference between the two is going to be moderate at best, so anecdotal answers one way or another aren't going to be of much help.
To those able to respond to my request, please excuse my brain-leeching.

Dirich · 01/12/09, 5:08 AM

I was thinking about our priority list for the next patch.

Losing a backdraft is deneftly what I think is going to be the worst thing, and losing a chaosbolt is probably right next to it. So, by sheer feeling, I guess our priority will turn out to be:

1) Keep Immo up (needed for the Incinerates during backdraft, this is why it's 1st)
2) Conflagrate
3) Chaosbolt
4) Backdrafted Incinerate
5) Keep CoA up
6) Incinerate

If someone can help with the math, it's turning out to be a bit tricky for me 'cause of Molten Core and CoA.

krilz · 01/12/09, 5:25 AM

I think you're right on the money with that one and once the patch goes live I'll update this thread.

If people have some math for a lot of aspects which they would like to contribute to the main post (or something that's already present that I've missed) then please let me know. I'm not really good at it and haven't got the time to do any testing myself (which is mainly the reason why I've gotten lazy and specced Affliction).

EDIT: I'm also starting to seriously doubt the value of ISL. In the beginning it was mostly good for keeping your Imp going wild from start to finish with never going OOM but if your Imp is fully buffed than you'll rarely see that happen (which I do as Affliction now, but I haven't got 2/2 Demonic Power which could be a factor). I'm however told that ISL is still very good for YOU since it means lesser Life Taps. How good is it really? Anyone got something?

Lrac · 01/12/09, 6:59 AM

Here's a WWS post of a patchwerk kill where you can see mana gained from ISL. Looks pretty nice to me.

Wow Web Stats

Dirich · 01/12/09, 12:33 PM

From the look of that you save 1.777 life taps every 117 seconds with your gear. Which means 1.777 GCDs.
We need to evaluate what those GCDs would be spent on. Of course the only thing we can spend them on, in a ideal enviroment, is our filler (we are keeping up dots and using cds everytime they are up even when we are specced for ISL. We need to consider the standard dps of our Incinerate (not modified by haste, since the GCD too is modified by haste), referring to #245 calculations we have 2955 average damage for 2500 spellpower (Shadow and Flame specced). We need to add the crit factor (let's say 30% crit chance with our usual 2.53 multiplier from talents + meta):

2955*(1+0.3*2.53) = 5197.845

So our Incinerate averages

5197.845 / 2.25 = 2310.2 dps

A GCD is 1.5, so, speccing ISL, you do 2310.2 * 1.5 = 3465.23 damage per GCD. And since you saved 1.777 GCDs without ISL someone with your int and spirit and with spellpower and crit I used, would have lost 3465.23 * 1.777 = 6157 damage.

Seems strange to use your int and spirit but not your spellpower and crit, but I don't know your stats raid buffed and the gear you have on armory may not be the one you used during the run.
If you could provide those numbers I could be more accurate, in this case I'm using an approximation by excess, so we are sure that ISL is worth less than what I find here.

On all the fight you did 527,525 damage, 6157 is 1,17% of such damage. And since we need 5 talent points to have 2/2 ISL, this means that everyone of those points is worth less than 0.234% dps.

Approximation is a bit strong, I know, but considering that if CoA is 10% of our dps than 2/2 imp coa means +1% to our dps, than I guess I have to accept the fact that ISL isn't worth it because of the 3 points we need to spend on Soul Leech to reach it, and would probably need some rework anyway.

EDIT: of course those numbers are even lower in a fight where you are forced to move, which means you can life tap without losing damage done.

To be honest if SL+ISL isn't worth, considering that Fire and brimstone doesn't seem so appealing after the patch (if my assumption that the best dps is to be backdrafting as much as we can is correct), than I guess an hybrid demo/destro is going to be more dps?