The Mage Equivalent: The Destruction Warlock - Page 49

Warlocomotif · 02/25/09, 8:36 AM

Originally Posted by Orgath

That's pretty much the same spec i posted in the Patchnotes Disco Thread.

- You only need 1 point in Fel Synergy. 50%*50% = 25%, the second point only ups that to 30%
- I'd rather go with 10% more stamina than 1k more heal from the cookie
- Pyroclasm if intended as MC replace is a joke. Seering Pain is way to much agro for the low DPCT just to get a 6% damage buff for 10 seconds IF it crits, so the Talent mostly relies on Conflag crits to proc (50% uptime, rather less)

I kind of get the feeling that there is more coming for destro, as Pyroclasm mixes up everything that's wrong with F&B as a Tier 10 Talent and makes it worse. And seeing Decimation and Molten Core deep down in Demo feels like beeing on the wrong side of a Gnome Punt. Removal of Conflag Glyph inc....

50% * 50% is a tooltip error, the talent functions as a 50% chance to 15% of your damage as healing.

It could also be the talent not working as it's supposed to, but I find it a lot more likely that the tooltip is simply off.

Krazen · 02/25/09, 9:01 AM

Originally Posted by TangoDigital

Let's hope that they decide to remove the threat component from Searing Pain and maybe even reduce cast time or raise base damage a bit. This would justify spamming the spell during Backdraft in order to force Pyroclasm. It would also result in a very interesting rotation. Provided that the Glyph of Chaos Bolt actually happens you would basically go "CB, SP, SP" or "CB, SP, Incin" if Pyroclasm triggers on the first SP. Uptime in that case would be much higher, 80-95% depending on player skill.

Let's use a backdraft charge on a low damage cast that goes below the 1 second GCD to get a minimal spellpower increase, and on top of that, lets use our top damage spell BEFORE we get that minimal spellpower increase.

Sounds like the greatest idea since HDTV.

jahvor · 02/26/09, 11:39 AM

How is this possible?

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warl...0&version=9614

Fel Synergy as a first tier talent? What am I missing?

Orgath · 02/26/09, 11:50 AM

MMO-Champion shows a Talent derivate of the PTR files.

See this discussion.

Emolate · 02/26/09, 11:59 AM

deleted

rei-gouki · 02/27/09, 10:48 AM

Tangodigital, you ideas are nice but is unlikely to happen. As I mentioned in the 3.1 comment thread, spamming Searing Pain trying to proc Pyroclasm is a DPS loss. Improved Searing Pain is a PvP/warlock tanking talent so it is very niche use in raiding. Removing the increased threat from Searing Pain may not be a bad idea as other classes can now tank the old 60 and 70 raid bosses which were fairly dependent on having a warlock tank, but if there are any bosses on the drawing board once again requiring a warlock tank, you can forget about Searing Pain losing that extra threat.

Backdraft is a % reduction in cast time. Mathematically and logically, to get the most out of it you use the charges on spells with the longest cast times. If it's a fixed time like Nature's Grace (0.5 seconds) on the Druid's Balance tree, you would use the spells with the shortest cast time without coming up against the GCD.

With Fel Energy, I have found that usually only one part of the talent increases as you put points in. Some all go up together. Those numbers are quite odd and there's probably a typo in there but I don't think it's too presumptuous to think that there's fall off for the 100% chance of healing. The talent has definitely raised the question of whether my imp will be in any danger of dying with what will be about 800-1000 HPS for my current DPS. If this stays as it is, it could be an indication of Blizzard really wanting warlocks to have their pet out and in combat.

supplicium and Exiss, I see that as it stands, priority refresh of DoTs is the way to go rather than the convenience of a rinse and repeat rotation. However, if Pyroclasm actually becomes a viable talent, it will be necessary to have a rinse and repeat rotation to get the 2 Conflags in per Immolate. The DPS lost in such a rotation in current builds would have to be made up by Pyroclasm if not surpassed by its presumed 3%-odd increase.

The current 3.0.9 has an execute that kicks in at 20-35% mob health for Affliction. There have been some observations that Destro and Affliction are par until this point when Affliction shoots ahead. 3.1 is promising Decimation (a new execute talent) for Demonology but there's nothing apparent for Destruction as yet. One would presume that the balancing in 3.1 may show that Destruction will have a steady DPS with the other 2 trees making up the difference in the last 35% since there isn't an execute ability being implemented.

Waagaa · 02/27/09, 11:13 AM

Originally Posted by rei-gouki

Backdraft is a % reduction in cast time. Mathematically and logically, to get the most out of it you use the charges on spells with the longest cast times. If it's a fixed time like Nature's Grace (0.5 seconds) on the Druid's Balance tree, you would use the spells with the shortest cast time without coming up against the GCD.

Not entirely true. It should read:

Backdraft is a % reduction in cast time. To get the most out of it, you use the charges on spells with the highest DPCT which do not get pushed under the one second GCD cap. The only reason why soul fire is so good under hero & backdraft is that the filler, incinerate gets pushed under the gcd cap and thus you "lose" part of the haste effect by casting incinerate as filler instead of a slower spell.

Akj · 02/27/09, 11:39 AM

Originally Posted by Waagaa

Not entirely true. It should read:

Backdraft is a % reduction in cast time. To get the most out of it, you use the charges on spells with the highest DPCT which do not get pushed under the one second GCD cap. The only reason why searing pain is so good under hero & backdraft is that the filler, incinerate gets pushed under the gcd cap and thus you "lose" part of the haste effect by casting incinerate as filler instead of a slower spell.

This makes no sense. Were you thinking of Soul Fire instead of Searing Pain?

On a related note, I wonder if its possible for Soulfire to get pushed under the GCD cap with current gear & buffs using a decimate build.

rei-gouki · 02/27/09, 12:16 PM

Thanks Akj, that helps a lot. I was lost a bit back at the bit about DPCT. "Highest DPCT" would be after applying all the haste effects. As it's a % reduction and my thinking that DD spells appeared to be pretty even on DPCT (I actually should go look it up now...), the ones with longer cast times should fetch the highest CT reduction and thus increase DPS the most. Not by itself as the DPCT would remain similar as the CT reduction is a % but that it frees the most time per charge of BD to shoot again.

That said, there were references that BD reduced GCD as of a patch or 2 ago and wasn't bound to the 1 sec cap. However, there was a thread on the WoW forums showing Immolate being cast under 1 second intervals but not with Searing Pain indicating that they triggered different GCDs... which is a strange concept.

I haven't been that attentive to the GCD during Heroism plus BD - always been a little frantic refreshing DoTs and doing my rotation like normal, but I haven't hit the GCD with my Incinerates or my Immolates and Quartz has flashed up sub 1 sec cast times.

EDIT: Regarding bringing SF down to the GCD cap, there's testing going on over in the 3.1 discussion thread. And no, it takes 77 points to access (79 to fill out) both BD and Decimate so you're stuck with just gear + Heroism + pots+ auras.

Waagaa · 02/27/09, 4:59 PM

Originally Posted by Akj

This makes no sense. Were you thinking of Soul Fire instead of Searing Pain?

On a related note, I wonder if its possible for Soulfire to get pushed under the GCD cap with current gear & buffs using a decimate build.

Yes sorry, I meant soul fire, I'll adjust.

Warlocomotif · 02/27/09, 10:43 PM

Originally Posted by Waagaa

Not entirely true. It should read:

Backdraft is a % reduction in cast time. To get the most out of it, you use the charges on spells with the highest DPCT which do not get pushed under the one second GCD cap. The only reason why soul fire is so good under hero & backdraft is that the filler, incinerate gets pushed under the gcd cap and thus you "lose" part of the haste effect by casting incinerate as filler instead of a slower spell.

This is simply not true, a longer cast simply benefits more.
Consider this example:
You have a spell name Onconerate that has double the cast time of incinerate, double the base damage, and double the modifier (IE: Double cast time+Double Damage).

DPCT on both spells would be identical, however when it comes to backdraft it would be something like this:
[Backdraft]Incinerate Incinerate Incinerate[/Backdraft] Incinerate Incinerate Incinerate
Or:
[Backdraft]Onconerate Onconerate Onconerate[/quote]

Without backdraft, both wouldv resulted at equal total damage and cast time, however with backdraft Onconerate benefits far more from backdraft. This is, as said above- because longer cast time spells benefit more.

If Backdraft had a duation instead of a number of charges, it wouldnt matter. Since it's a number of charges you gain more benefit from longer casts.

That doesn't mean every longer cast is always better than shorter casts, it just means that when it comes to backdraft longer cast time spells have that extra thing going for them.

Also as I posted before it *looks* like backdraft can push certain spells below 1sec gcd, this was succesfully tested for immolate, searing pain however wouldnt go below 1s. I don't think Incinerate was tested, but when I was destro I never felt like I was waiting for it.

Akj · 02/28/09, 12:59 AM

Originally Posted by Warlocomotif

Also as I posted before it *looks* like backdraft can push certain spells below 1sec gcd, this was succesfully tested for immolate, searing pain however wouldnt go below 1s. I don't think Incinerate was tested, but when I was destro I never felt like I was waiting for it.

Tests based on the combat log or quartz can be misleading due to lag & the server side queue. This issue was tested using APIs in the Simple Questions & Answers thread (page 30) and it was observed that the cast time did not drop below 1s.

Waagaa · 02/28/09, 9:15 AM

Originally Posted by Warlocomotif

This is simply not true, a longer cast simply benefits more.
Consider this example:
You have a spell name Onconerate that has double the cast time of incinerate, double the base damage, and double the modifier (IE: Double cast time+Double Damage).

DPCT on both spells would be identical, however when it comes to backdraft it would be something like this:
[Backdraft]Incinerate Incinerate Incinerate[/Backdraft] Incinerate Incinerate Incinerate
Or:
[Backdraft]Onconerate Onconerate Onconerate[/Backdraft>

Without backdraft, both wouldv resulted at equal total damage and cast time, however with backdraft Onconerate benefits far more from backdraft. This is, as said above- because longer cast time spells benefit more.

If Backdraft had a duation instead of a number of charges, it wouldnt matter. Since it's a number of charges you gain more benefit from longer casts.

That doesn't mean every longer cast is always better than shorter casts, it just means that when it comes to backdraft longer cast time spells have that extra thing going for them.

Also as I posted before it *looks* like backdraft can push certain spells below 1sec gcd, this was succesfully tested for immolate, searing pain however wouldnt go below 1s. I don't think Incinerate was tested, but when I was destro I never felt like I was waiting for it.

You also have to consider opportunity cost, which makes this a bit more complicated.

in the time that you can BD cast 3 soul fires, you could have BD cast 3 incinerates and cast some other spells. What haste % modifiers basically do is that they give you a 30% modifier to the DPS of the spell you're casting, by lowering the cast time. In your example, with BD giving 30% haste, your Onconerate cycle is 6 / 1.3 = ~4.6% Incinerate cast times. 3 Incinerates under BD cost 3 / 1.3 = 2.3 "incinerates" to cast. that leaves 2.3 incinerates.

So your 3x onconerate under BD has an opportunity cost of 5.3 incinerates. Still a 13% DPS increase, but it'd be interesting to see how this works out for other spells.

Warlocomotif · 02/28/09, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by Waagaa

You also have to consider opportunity cost, which makes this a bit more complicated.

in the time that you can BD cast 3 soul fires, you could have BD cast 3 incinerates and cast some other spells. What haste % modifiers basically do is that they give you a 30% modifier to the DPS of the spell you're casting, by lowering the cast time. In your example, with BD giving 30% haste, your Onconerate cycle is 6 / 1.3 = ~4.6% Incinerate cast times. 3 Incinerates under BD cost 3 / 1.3 = 2.3 "incinerates" to cast. that leaves 2.3 incinerates.

So your 3x onconerate under BD has an opportunity cost of 5.3 incinerates. Still a 13% DPS increase, but it'd be interesting to see how this works out for other spells.

Backdraft is not a haste effect though, backdraft is *0.7 not /1.3

@ Akj, I'll have a look at that.
[edit] I'm reading stuff about backdraft changing to /1.3 in 3.0.8, I need to check more into this >_<
[edit2] Still *0.7, ill try some testing on backdrafted spells.

rei-gouki · 02/28/09, 11:46 AM

Waagaa, BD gives a 30% cast time reduction, not 30% haste like what your calculations are suggesting.

Not that it matters all that much since you accept that there's time gained either way. You only have 3 charges per BD. To make the higher DPCT last longer, you use the longer casts. Clipping due to hitting GCD hard cap is a good reason to use a longer cast but it doesn't apply unless you have a good bit of haste.