Demonic Pact and rDPS vs Personal DPS - Page 8

TheRabidSniper · 04/14/09, 12:42 AM

I tried searching through this thread and the SimCraft thread to see if this question was answered. Couldn't find one...

Would it be better for overall raid DPS if the Meta/Ruin DP-specced lock were to use the 3/3 Master Conjuror Firestone over the Spellstone? Note that the DoT/DD damage % modifier doesn't benefit from the talent.

Briio · 04/29/09, 1:48 PM

Originally Posted by TheRabidSniper

I tried searching through this thread and the SimCraft thread to see if this question was answered. Couldn't find one...

Would it be better for overall raid DPS if the Meta/Ruin DP-specced lock were to use the 3/3 Master Conjuror Firestone over the Spellstone? Note that the DoT/DD damage % modifier doesn't benefit from the talent.

Personally I would say that Master Conjuror Firestone would be better for the extra crit regardless of the DD (which is still pretty nice) especially if you dropped points into Improved Demonic Tactics it will help the uptime of Demonic Pact

Netfelix · 04/30/09, 5:16 AM

Originally Posted by Briio

Personally I would say that Master Conjuror Firestone would be better for the extra crit regardless of the DD (which is still pretty nice) especially if you dropped points into Improved Demonic Tactics it will help the uptime of Demonic Pact

I don't remember where, but, there was a simcraft run on it and every spec has spellstone>firestone. We just scale so much better with haste.

Lephturn · 04/30/09, 10:56 AM

Originally Posted by Netfelix

I don't remember where, but, there was a simcraft run on it and every spec has spellstone>firestone. We just scale so much better with haste.

While this is correct, the measurement was personal DPS, not raid DPS.

The question is, does Firestone increase raid DPS at the expense of personal DPS. The increased personal crit if you have the Improved DT talent translates into improved pet crit, which increases Demonic Pact uptime. While this is true, DP uptime is high enough, and the talents reduce the added crit so much, that I believe you will see very diminishing returns on DP uptime by increasing personal crit rating by using the fire stone. The question becomes, how much does 196 crit for the firestone actually add to rDPS from DP?

If I do this right, it's 8.7% more crit from the firestone with 2/2 Master Conjuror. Imp DT passes 30% of that on to your demon so 2.6% increase in your demon's hit rating. I can't believe that's going to be worth a measurable amount of rDPS based on the current DP uptimes we already enjoy.

Warlocomotif · 04/30/09, 1:58 PM

I'm not sure how you're getting 8.7% crit for 196 crit rating, it's 45.91 crit rating per %.
196*0.3/45.91=1.2%.

The pet gets 5% crit from agi, 10% crit from demo tactics, 8% crit from raid buffs, and around 1.65% from critical strike rating on gear through improved demonic tactics. You also get Imp MotW and BoK, which results in 37*1.4*1.1/45.91=1.24% crit and 0.5% crit (through innate agility+kings) respectively. For a total of 26.39% crit.

The Felguard attacks every 2 seconds before haste, however gains 23% haste from raid buffs, reducing that to a 1.62 swing timer.Cleave is on a 8 second cooldown.

If I understand the melee combat table correctly, a crit can not be dodged, and lack of expertise should not reduce your chance to critical strikes. Every 15 seconds you perform on average 9.26 melee swings and 1.875 cleaves, resulting in 11.135 melee attacks per 15 seconds.

The likelyhood for Demonic Pact to not be up equals 100% - the likelyhood for there to have been 0 crits in the past 15 seconds. Or: 1-((1-0.2639)^11.135) = 96.7%

If we add the crit gained through the spellstone, we get:
1-((1-0.2759)^11.135) = 97.3%

In total we get + 0.55% more demonic pact uptime.
If we assume 320 spellpower through demonic pact- 8 spellpower dps, with an average 1.5 spellpower modifier, we get to a total raid benefit of:
0.0055*320*8*1.5=21.12 rDPS.

-- Someone please tell me if there's something horribly wrong with this math.

Impowitz · 04/30/09, 9:15 PM

Originally Posted by Warlocomotif

The pet gets 5% crit from agi, 10% crit from demo tactics, 8% crit from raid buffs, and around 1.65% from critical strike rating on gear through improved demonic tactics. You also get Imp MotW and BoK, which results in 37*1.4*1.1/45.91=1.24% crit and 0.5% crit (through innate agility+kings) respectively. For a total of 26.39% crit.

-- Someone please tell me if there's something horribly wrong with this math.

The tooltip for improved Demonic tactics reads as % of your chance to crit, not % of your critical strike rating. Either you have underestimated the benefit of Imp DT by excluding your crit chance from int, DT, and 5% aura (e.g. moonkin aura), or the tooltip is inaccurate.

Warlocomotif · 04/30/09, 9:58 PM

Originally Posted by Impowitz

The tooltip for improved Demonic tactics reads as % of your chance to crit, not % of your critical strike rating. Either you have underestimated the benefit of Imp DT by excluding your crit chance from int, DT, and 5% aura (e.g. moonkin aura), or the tooltip is inaccurate.

You're probably right about that, I'll re-runn the numbers again later, but the difference already was too little make the firestone worth while. With higher crit% before the fire stone it will only get worse.

Aberon · 05/03/09, 2:50 PM

About the mage, yes they still spec in imp scortch but they can swap to an other glyph and not worry about scorch in there rotation increasing there dps slightly.

Elemental shaman can use other totem like fire elem and such without worrying about raid loosing the +SP dmg

the crit part of the totem is covered like other said by the pally. it's rare you have multiple boss in a fight.

about the melee unfriendly fight, with Fel synergy and natural pet 75% avoidance, i can leave my pet in 99% of the time on every boss fight and not worry about him. I rarely have to resummon him.

I would say Demo in 10 man is not realy worth it. In 25 man if you have someone to cover the 3% crit, even if you have an elemental shaman if your lock has enoght SP to overcome the shaman +sp 1 Demo lock in the raid is more beneficial since your mage also gain from not having to keep scorch and can glyph out of scorch.

the exact dps gain/lost can't realy be calculated, it's more of a, will it benefit the raid enoght or not question.

hbalsack · 05/04/09, 10:36 AM

I am hoping you guys can help me figure something out, I have read the entire thread and you have convinced me to make the spec switch.

I have switched over to Meta/ruin for Rdps. I have notced that Demonic Pact on WWS is up anywhere from 50% to 95% of every boss fight. The FG crit is anywhere from 23% to 30% on each ability in any given attempt. How are you guys measuring the uptime of this ability. It's odd to me that i get to the expected 90% on a single attempt and then it drops to an unacceptable level the next attempt.

I played FG/destro thru MH and BT, and was just FG/ember until i swithced to Meta, so I know how to manage my felguard, and Demonic Empowerment abiltiy, so it isn't a question of pet control. My raid buffed spell damage is at around 3150 with the Dragon Soul trinket. Is fel Armor still being ignored? We have a ele shammy who continues to provide ToW until we can prove it's ok to drop it.

My only guess would be that on occasion i have no procs up (lifetap/dying curse/lightweave) and Demoinc Pact does not overwrite ToW due to Fel armor still not working with the buff.

Warlocomotif · 05/04/09, 10:39 AM

Originally Posted by hbalsack

I am hoping you guys can help me figure something out, I have read the entire thread and you have convinced me to make the spec switch.

I have switched over to Meta/ruin for Rdps. I have notced that Demonic Pact on WWS is up anywhere from 50% to 95% of every boss fight. The FG crit is anywhere from 23% to 30% on each ability in any given attempt. How are you guys measuring the uptime of this ability. It's odd to me that i get to the expected 90% on a single attempt and then it drops to an unacceptable level the next attempt.

I played FG/destro thru MH and BT, and was just FG/ember until i swithced to Meta, so I know how to manage my felguard, and Demonic Empowerment abiltiy, so it isn't a question of pet control. My raid buffed spell damage is at around 3150 with the Dragon Soul trinket. Is fel Armor still being ignored? We have a ele shammy who continues to provide ToW until we can prove it's ok to drop it.

My only guess would be that on occasion i have no procs up (lifetap/dying curse/lightweave) and Demoinc Pact does not overwrite ToW due to Fel armor still not working with the buff.

There's currently a somewhat awkward bug with demonic pact sometimes not critting, see the "warlock bugs" thread for some slightly more accurate but still vague information.

fallenman · 05/08/09, 10:28 AM

Originally Posted by Netfelix

I don't remember where, but, there was a simcraft run on it and every spec has spellstone>firestone. We just scale so much better with haste.

The simcraft thread uses firestone for any deep destruction builds.

tusaki · 05/11/09, 6:06 PM

Just a quick question, I might have missed it in this thread, I apologize in advance.

If you have the 4pc t7 + lifetap glyph, does that work with (increase the spelldamage buffed by) demonic pact for the raid?

över · 05/18/09, 8:26 PM

The 30% spir=sp from Felarmor works with DP, but the extra sp from Demonic Aegis and Glyph of Life tap doesn't.

Peppermort · 05/28/09, 10:55 PM

I'm not much of a theorycrafter, but I'm going to have a go at this, and hopefully others can correct and build on it.

Inspired by the report of Lrac (from the compendium thread), I did some testing with an elemental shaman, and my conclusion, same as Lrac, is that when the demon crits, the DP buff is calculated from your current spell power minus your current DP buff, rather than your current spell power bonus category buff (including totems). That is, totems boost DP, but (obviously) DP does not feed off itself. The only buff that does not contribute to DP is DP itself (excluding bugs).

However, due to the non-stacking nature of totems and DP, when your demon crits, if DP is already up, the calculation arrives at a reduced value, because it subtracts the DP buff, and you don't have a totem buff anymore because DP replaces it. So you will notice that if you have a totem, when your demon first crits, your spell power will go up (assuming you have enough sp to beat the totem and get the DP buff), but when your demon crits again before DP fades, your spell power will go down by 10% of the totem (or possibly less if your DP buff without the totem is less than the totem, in which case the totem buff will replace the reduced DP buff).

I played with a /cancelaura Demonic Pact macro, and with this macro, I was able to keep the higher DP buff on my shaman friend always, at the cost to myself of the loss of the DP buff, dropping back to the totem.

Those were my observations, and I'd appreciate if someone with more experience in all this could verify my conclusions, since the rest of this theory depends on it.

With this macro'd to your main spells, you should be able to maintain an extra 28sp to the rest of the raid if you have an elemental shaman using ToW, at the cost to yourself of the difference between your unboosted DP and the totem. That loss will become larger as your spell power increases, but I think not large enough to outweigh the 28sp to the rest of the raid at currently attainable gear levels.

This thread has been using the metric of 8 casters multiplied by an average 1.5 dps increase to convert SP to rDPS. Using that maths, and assuming that one of the casters is the DP lock, the ToW boosted DP would be worth an additional (7 * 1.5 * 28) = 294 (call this bDPrDPS, for boosted DP raid DPS gain, to be used in calculations further down).

The cost to the DP lock is (ubDP - 280) * SPScaleFactor, where ubDP is the sp of your unboosted DP (ie. Your DP calculated without a totem). For the DP lock, the value of spell power seems to be less than 1.5, judging by the simcraft thread, which has sp scale factors for 3/52/16 of 0.99. I will use 1.0 for SPScaleFactor (is this a reasonable figure?). So to cancel out the benefit to the other casters, solve the formula:
bDPrDPS = (ubDP - 280) * 1.0
294 = (ubDP - 280) * 1.0
294 / 1.0 = ubDP - 280
(294 / 1.0) + 280 = ubDP
ubDP = 574
So 5740 sp (without totem and excluding DP bugs such as with demonic aegis and life tap glyph). At some more reasonable gear levels (again, without totems or demonic aegis or LT glyph), the net gain of this trick in terms of raid dps is:
ubDP = 3.0k SP: bDPrDPS - (ubDP - 280) * 1.0 = 294 - ((300 - 280) * 1.0) = 274
ubDP = 3.1k SP: bDPrDPS - (ubDP - 280) * 1.0 = 294 - ((310 - 280) * 1.0) = 264
ubDP = 3.2k SP: bDPrDPS - (ubDP - 280) * 1.0 = 294 - ((320 - 280) * 1.0) = 254
ubDP = 3.3k SP: bDPrDPS - (ubDP - 280) * 1.0 = 294 - ((330 - 280) * 1.0) = 244
ubDP = 3.4k SP: bDPrDPS - (ubDP - 280) * 1.0 = 294 - ((340 - 280) * 1.0) = 234

On the shamans side, this requires the use of ToW, which comes at the cost of any potential dps gain from the use of other damage totems, but does cover the small DP downtime, and covers the absence of a ret pally. If your elemental shaman can drop a damaging totem instead of ToW, then this trick may be nullified.

Also, if you do not have an elemental shaman, the numbers from flametongue, even talented, significantly reduce the value of this trick. With a talented 165 flametongue:
bDPrDPS = (7 * 1.5 * 16.5) = 173.25
bDPrDPS = (ubDP - 165) * SPScaleFactor
173.25 = (ubDP - 165) * 1.0
173.25 / 1.0 = ubDP - 165
(173.25 / 1.0) + 165 = ubDP
ubDP = 338.25
Or approximately 3.4k sp without totem and DP bugs to negate the raid dps gain from the extra 16.5 sp on DP with the personal dps loss. With an untalented 144 flametongue:
bDPrDPS = (7 * 1.5 * 14.4) = 151.2
bDPrDPS = (ubDP - 144) * SPScaleFactor
151.2 = (ubDP - 144) * 1.0
151.2 / 1.0 = ubDP - 144
(151.2 / 1.0) + 144 = ubDP
ubDP = 295.2
Or about 3k sp without totems and bugs - very achievable, and beyond that point, the trick becomes a raid dps loss.

The real gains depend, obviously, as with all this discussion, on your raid composition. And many of the numbers are vague. I haven't factored in DP uptime into these calculations, but since with this trick, DP downtime is covered by ToW, the difference will be small (DPDowntime * (DP - 280)). Also, there is, again, no mention of the gains of the extra 28 spell power for healing.

There used to be an addon, TankBuddy, that had the ability to remove BoP and salv on tanks immediately as soon as they were applied, I believe (never used it myself). It hasn't been updated for a long time and I don't know if it is still possible for an addon to do that, but if it is, that could help make sure you maintain the totem boosted DP.

Just don't forget to remove the /cancelaura macro if your elemental shaman is away

So, how did I go? Any errors or oversights? How useful in practice is this likely to be?

Warlocomotif · 05/29/09, 8:20 AM

That's a really interesting post, and you did well :p
A DPS totem would outweigh the benefit of this gain, however in a number of fights our Ele shammy is still dropping their totem due to DP uptime not working out quite as desired. In those fights this could be a worthwhile thing to do.