So I've been trying to plan out my upgrades from ICC as far as tier upgrades and such. Being a huge destro warlock fan since prebc, I like the look of the stats on all the tier10 pieces, sans the no spirit. Since I havent really seen any discussion on which 4 pieces to use and why, I wanted to know what others thought.

Also, I've been away too long from these forums and did not realize that because of the high ammount of spirit on our gear now that the glyph of lifetap had overtaken the glyph of immolate as being the superior glyph. My quesion, unless someone can point me to the math in a previous post, is at what level of spirit does the lifetap glyph outdps the immolation glyph?

It really depends on what spec of destro ur going to play. None of the set pieces are "weak"(Like the robes in t9). Really comes down to spec. So far from wat I've seen the leggings and gloves are the best 2 slots to put an non-set item in.

3/13/54 +1 spec the leggings seem to be a better pick since the hit cap is lower.
0/13/58 or 0/18/53 the gloves would be the best slot to put a non-set item in.

The amount of haste on gear is really astounding 30% haste unbuffed won't be uncommon.

Was also wondering on people opinions concerning frost badges. Do we think buying a tier piece is best even if we aren't going to use it, just to save to upgrade? Or is buying the belt / cape a better option at the moment as an actual current upgrade.

Personally Rhadatip is telling me belt / cape is an increase while tier is a decrease.

Tier piece will probably be a decrease until you get to 2-set bonus. See the SimCraft thread for set boni weights.

Watch out for "stacking" spirit and ignoring pure sp.

"wlockdemot10x4" Profiler - Wowhead

867 spirit=289sp (passive fel armor sp) + 173.4 (life tap glyph)= 462sp
2951sp + 462 = 3413

"Vicieus' Profiler - Wowhead


370 spirit. 123.33 + 74 = 197.33
3394 + 197.33 = 3591.33

difference ~ 178.33 sp

not to mention a ton more crit and slighty more haste. Would love to have that chest instead of the crafted pants, but oh well.

p.s. some of your gems on the profiler got knocked out. I replaced them with straight sp (even though it can leave you under hit cap--more to prove a point, I guess.)

also didn't use reign of the dead or another sp trinket to beat your sp.

I created that profile when Wowhead didn't have half the items it has now, the items selected were simply best in slot at the time.
[edit] I also created it as a Demo raid DPS BiS list (Now outdated) [/edit]

Mind you, you are doing something wrong in your calcs.
867 spirit is 512 sp before kings and before human racial- if you account for both you end up with 580 sp from that spirit.

I'm not saying my profile is better, it's outdated and im pretty sure I could make a better one now. What U an saying though is that I wasn't hogging spirit at all costs- I simply made a gear profile based on raid dps scale factors. I think I assumed 9 casters; even if you don't get 9 dps casters in your raids- 7 dps casters is reasonable, then there's a handful of melee that gets some benefit, and there are healers who get a benefit. ie; 9 is probably a reasonable number, possibly low.

I'll work out a new profile.

My calculations were off, but I think these should be correct. This is all self buffed (minus felpup) without human racial (Not all us locks are alliance humans = P)

Your gearlist:

Fel Armor

Surrounds the caster with fel energy, increasing spell power by 180 plus additional spell power equal to 30% of your Spirit. In addition, you regain 2% of your maximum health every 5 sec. Only one type of Armor spell can be active on the Warlock at any time. Lasts 30 min.

30% of 867 spirit is 260.1sp

Glyph of Life tap

Use: When you use Life Tap or Dark Pact, you gain 20% of your Spirit as spell power for 40 sec.

20% of 867 spirit is 173.4sp

260 + 173=433 sp

2951 sp + 433 sp = 3384sp

mine:

50% of 370 spirit is 185sp

3394sp + 185sp=3569sp

~185 sp difference.

I'm not trying to--like they say in England; have a go at you or take the piss or anything like that. I understand this was made before real loot lists were out, but i'm just trying to get a grasp of a "best in slot" pre-hard modes--not just for destro, but demo and afflic as well (10m hard modes don't count) loot list while staying at 14% hit. I think its a lot harder to determine a true bis list for warlocks than most other classes (it's a lot easier to find one for my feral tank. thinktank is amazing.)

on a lighter note Warlocomotif you've gotten me interested in demo--that and looking at my sp for 10m totgc the other day and seeing myself with 3880sp with flask, life tap, spirit, 8% kings, shaman totems (obviously wouldn't translate over if demo) as destro. Id probably be at or break 4k with demonic knowledge.

Also id go demonology to mainly benefit healers because the way Icecrown is going they'll need all the benefits they can get.

P.S. Going to use crafted gear to get geared faster, spend less dkp, and most importantly improve my dmg/dps to help with soon to come progression.

Are you putting in the Tier set bonus values? But either way, buy the tier. So even if the 251 is a smaller upgrade than the cape or gloves, all you will need is a token to upgrade those in the future. Frost badge farming is a little slow right now, so I would save them for tier. You can get a really nice cloak off of saurfang 25 that is better than the badge cloak. And once the new voa boss comes out, the gloves will tier gloves will be pretty easy to get, as well as the gunship gloves.

Indeed Warlockmotif, SoC over RoF for higher average dps is now fairly clear to me, but previously it wasn't.

To complete the discussion, I'd like to verify how the final spell damage is calculated. Calidus nicely worked out a formula in
Dots and you: The Affliction Warlock Thread of

non crit spell damage = (Average Base Value + (Coefficent * Spell Power))*talents*(% dmg multipliers like CoE)

is that formula correct? I would be more than happy to check in game but I won't be able to for several days.

There is a possible flaw in this, as we have ignored the probability of using Demonic Aegis in the Talent tree. That being said, the base effectiveness of your Fel Armor, which was 30%, is now increased by 30% (of that 30), making it equivalent to 39% of your Spellpower.

869 Spirit x .39% (which more than likely, most warlocks spec Demonic Aegis), would = 338.13 SP (unrounded).

That being said, 867 x.20 (Assuming LT Glyph) = 173.4 SP(unrounded).

These 2 would be equivalent to 511.53 (or 512) SP, and assumably the same math that drove motif's conclusion in the original comment.

A good way to calculate this is spirit being = to 59% rather than 50%.

No, a good way to calculate spirit is to not only factor in Demonic Aegis, but also blessing of kings (10%).

It's not 59%, it's 64.9% (Or 66.847% for humans)

Any serious group that did not include a paladin would have the Drums of Forgotten Kings at only 8% but still better than nothing.

with 0/13/58, what is the magic border of spirit at which it's better to replace the LT glyph with the Immo glyph, looking at the massive loss of Spirit with the t10 gear

Could you include your spelldamage for this calculation?
SoC has a base direct AoE damage of 1785, so a damage of 2777 would imply a SD of 4629
RoF has a base damage per tick of 375, so 1842 would imply a SD of 2567

If this is wrong, it implies a change in the spell power coefficients, which would be a serious change, and well worth documenting. I just noticed Wowwiki says under Spell power coefficient that RoF gets 57% damage bonus per tick, but under the notes of Rain of Fire only 33%. I assume the first page is accurate because it says it was last checked 3.2.0, but I can't check it myself now at work

I believe your RoF AoE DpS should be 4390 (which doesn't change your argument in the slightest, I wouldn't mention it if I weren't anal retentive)



Everything else you've written is quite clearly laid out and appears accurate.

Removing similar terms






Which shows that even with a large change in crit, for example an extreme case of a base crit of 40% the gap in the multipliers for the damage would only increase by 0.1545 for RoF over the increase of SoC (which supports bastetswarrior's argument)

Please clarify what spell damage produced your and

I did a VERY rough calculation on this earlier. Warlock: Simple Questions/Simple Answers

As your Spell Damage increases, the switchover point increases. I've actually stopped using Glyph of LT because

• the benefit was so minor,
• I would sometimes fail to maintain the buff,
• it required more healing for the increased use of LT,
• and not using it makes my life simpler.

If I get gear with alot of spirit, I'll switch back.

- Glyph of Life Tap essentially gives you an amount of spellpower, the DPS value for spell power is relative to the amount of haste, crit, and to some extend- spirit that you have. Additionally in the real world this glyph has a very real opportunity cost in the shape of requiring additional lifetaps to gain the buff. The oppertunity cost of this glyph to an extend inversely scales with the amount of intellect and spirit you have (More intellect = more mana regen = less lifetaps needed, more spirit = bigger life taps = less lifetaps needed).

- Glyph of immolate increases the periodic damage of immolate by 10%, this by itself is only effected by spellpower, however this glyph also translates into extra damage through conflagrate. The extra damage through conflagrate does scale with critical strike rating.

Basically what this means is... There is no magic border that will hold universally true for everyone, you're just going to have to try and run simcraft and see where the relevant border is for your gear specifically. Also consider the type of fight simulationcrat simulates, you might want to compare the glyphs on both a patchwerk and helter skelter settings as the oppertunity cost of glyph of lifetap is a lot more relevant when you're not fighting patchwerk.

Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding what your saying but:

Backlash increases crit chance, not crit damage. And its for all spells, not just destro spells.

Empowered Imp increases your crit chance for all spells, not just destro spells.

You understand me completely. (In that I totally let that 'all spells' go over my head.) :p Good catch. I'll have to carve that out.

If that's so, it more or less removes Backlash as a contribution.

EDIT: Checking how EI works, I just went ahead and tested this out in an instance, and each tick and explosion are indeed considered to be a separate spell hit chance (EIs that proc mid-ROF crit the next tick, and EIs that occur when a seed's in flight cause crit-plosions.) This actually boosts the DPT for both spells considerably because it makes full use of the EI procs (it also makes it necessary to model EI uptime to figure out how much it does so). That means that the only consideration turns out to be mana usage, which is significant in a long AE pull or boss fight but not necessarily a deal-breaker.

Greetings
You are correct that I prematurely rounded, thank you for the correction!
Now that I can verify in game the spell coefficients, at sufficiently high levels of spell power, RoF will do more damage than SoC. With that said, those levels are not sustainable levels in game at this time.

I have 3041 spell power with no procs, self buffed with Fel Armor. I took off any trinkets and did not life tap. I left the imp on passive.

My gear has changed slightly since the original post.
Collecting a small sample, I obtained (after removing crits) on an 80 target dummy.

2648
2562
2760
2672
2610
2672
2591
which averages 2645. This isn't enough to verify the spell power coefficient, I just wanted to verify I had given accurate numbers.

1779 was my dmg for RoF with that 3041 spell power

Base RoF is 3112/4 = 778 (not 375). I confirmed this in game by testing it's damage naked on a target dummy.

Using the assumption of actual spell dmg being calculated as
non crit spell damage = (Base damage + (Coefficent * Spell Power))*talents*(% dmg multipliers like CoE)

we obtain coefficient = (non crit spell damage - base damage)/ spell power since I had no damage multipliers up, and no talents boosting the damage.

This calculation confirms RoF coefficient is indeed 33% per tick. I corrected the wowwiki RoF article I linked in my original post to specify 33% / tick.

The same calculation gives 28-31% as a rough estimate of the coefficient of SoC, which is in the same region as the previously mentioned values.
I realize that Spell power coefficient - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft lists the spell coefficient of SoC as 25% for the AoE, but this can be seen to be slightly incorrect using the process described on that wowwiki's discussion page. Restating the process, using the maximum damage and working back to the spell power coefficient gives a lower bound for the coefficient of 28%.
Similarly, we can find an upper bound using the minimum damage of 31%.

So, Seed of Corruption does scale slightly less well than Rain of Fire. Thus, my previous statement that SoC would always dominate RoF (ignoring mana considerations) is incorrect. At sufficiently high levels of spell power, RoF will do more damage than SoC. I used an estimate of 29% for the spell coefficient to Seed of Corruption to find the threshold, but the expression is easy to derive in general which I will do below.
The threshold decreases (nonlinearly) as crit increases, but is up in the spell power 7000+ range for crit about 40% and 5000 spell power range for 70% crit. The base damage for RoF is just so low, and coefficients sufficiently close, that even at the extreme case of 90% crit, about 4390 spell power is still needed for the threshold.

Rough supporting mathematics:
Let be the spell power coefficient.
Let be the base damage (per tick for RoF, explosion for SoC).
Let p be the spell power.
Let be the multiplicative talent modifiers, and multiplicative damage modifiers.
Observe is the non crit damage from spell i.

We also define a few intermediate variables to ease notation.
Let - weight including the talent and damage modifiers
- weight excluding talent and damage modifiers.

So, the AOE dmg for spell i is
.
We seek to find the spell power value p at which .
Setting the two expressions equal and solving for p, we have


Scanning the list of talents and damage modifiers, it looks like . With that assumption as a special case, we have

giving the desired threshold for spell power for RoF to dominate SoC.

Going through some examples




Plugging in c_s = .3 and c_r = .35 gives
and , and so p = 8920 would be needed for RoF to do more AOE dmg than SoC.

The threshold is nonlinear as a function of c_s though, so c_s = .4 gives p=7166 as the threshold and c_s = .5 gives p = 6328. This reaffirms that certainly in 5 mans and solo, SoC > RoF. As far as I know, these are not currently attainable gear levels for spell power. Empowered Imp effectively increases the crit rate, although it's not immediately clear by how much, and that indeed that lowers the threshold value for spell power. Even with a massive c_s = .7 as the crit rate, we still have p=5161. Correct me if needed, but 5161 spell power is only achievable with full raid buffs, near BiS gear and trinket procs. On the bright side for Rain of Fire, if any talents or buffs give a multiplicative boost to Rain of Fire but not Seed of Corruption, that brings the spellpower threshold lower. Further work on pinning down more precisely the spell power coefficient for SoC would also be useful.

I'm holding off on considering mana until we have the pure damage situation clarified. As always, corrections and feedback are welcome.

Thanks for answering my questions and for going so much further. I haven't read through your answer with the thoroughness it deserves because I'm at work, but I will.

I got the 375 from the spell's tooltip, and then screwed up my math. According to what I read it was 2700 base damage for 4 ticks, which should have been 675 If I could divide properly (why I got 375 I don't know). This is of course before all of the talents that boost fire damage, which explains why you got 778, or the spell's mis-documented.

N.B. A basic failing of mine: When I read or reply to messages here, I'm not near my game machine, and tend to answer based on numbers from wowhead and wowwiki which I usually accept as gospel, and simcraft and other posts here which I usually accept as "Very likely true" or "True enough"

Good catch, I had somehow missed that Emberstorm changes the tooltip, even though the multiplier is actually applied to spell damage as well. With that said, testing naked on a target dummy with 0 spellpower standard destro spec gave about 778.5 damage/tick. This is odd, since (778.5/1.15)*(4 ticks) = 2708. While certainly different from wowhead, thottbot, it is a pretty small change. I could use some help in explaining the change from 2700 to 2708 if anyone has any ideas?
I changed specs to my demo spec as well, and the tooltip listed 2708 as the base damage for RoF as well. No pet was out.

The correction to RoF's base damage and including Emberstorm implies a spell damage coefficient of about 29% for RoF instead of 33%, so I was wrong earlier about confirmation of RoF's spell coefficient. As before, since RoF has better scaling (due to Emberstorm) there is a spellpower threshold (inversely dependent on crit rate) at which RoF will outdamage SoC.

Since we have the formula set up in general, I went ahead and plugged in the revised values.




The other root values are unchanged. Plugging and chugging again, we can input various crit values to graph once again out how the needed spellpower threshold changes.

Similar to the initial post though, the gear levels needed for RoF to dominate SoC are not currently achievable.
At the spellpower thresholds are 7848, 6812, 6033, and 4941 respectively.

source

Would it be a nice buff?