min/max affliction damageFollow

Folks;

I'm one of those 'research it till you find the 'best' spell rotation/cast order/stats to improve, etc. My armory.

I thought that I had found my max damage casting rotation on bosses in Kara. I'd go: CoS -> UA -> Corruption -> SB x 6 (though realistically, I probably do 5 and a dark pact), rinse & repeat.

I went to maxdps.com and found that it said that if I use siphon life that my dps would increase. So, I plugged the numbers into the warlock dps spreadsheet from EJ and it concurred (though the numbers were different as to the actual amount of difference). I plugged in immolate into the spreadsheet and it said that'd be an increase in dps as well (which shouldn't be, I don't think). The reason is that the uptime of the DoTs is very important to their overall dps, which decreases shadowbolt spamming time, which should reduce the overall damage. I'm wondering if either the spreadsheet or the website take 1.5 second GCD into effect or if they say "ohh, casting Siphon life... assume it's up 100% of the time, divide by length of spell and that's your dps!".

Does anyone have any good data on this? Also, the warlock spreadsheet says that I should be doing around 1200 dps and the best WWS I've ever posted is around 700.... Is this just bad DoT uptime/having to move around type stuff? (e.g. on nightbane, you have to run to the tank before rain of bones, then back out).

Any help would be appreciated.

Edited, Apr 29th 2008 1:12pm by ktangent

definitly add in Immolate to your castoration.

When I put immolate into the rotation, I lose dps according to both the spreadsheet and the website.

If I was to guess I would think it has to deal with resist. Since your hit rating is fairly low SB loses more dps due to being a 2.5 sec cast rather then a 1.5 sec for siphon life, due to GCD.

So once you get more points in hit rating or crit siphon life won't be worth it but right now it probably is.

On a long boss fight, as affliction, keeping all your DoTs up will increase your DPS, especially on fights where there's lots of movement. Your DoTs, even Immolate are still ticking while your moving, while your Dark Pacting, While you Life Tapping or While your Dead. As Affliction you should keep ALL your DoTs up ALL the time for maximum DPS. On trash, yeah, Immo is a waste, as the mob will be dead before it ticks. On trash, CoS(or whatever your curse is) Corr then SB spam, with a UA thrown in if it is tougher trash.

I have tested these theories using recount, one week using Immo, next week did not. Same group make-up both times as I have a very static badge run group. It does not make much sense to me either, I guess it just has to do with the movement thing, or maybe mana efficiency, since you Life Tap/Dark Pact less. I dunno why it works out like it does, but it does.

Edited, May 1st 2008 8:46am by Lathais

As far as I can tell from running my own numbers and the post I've seen the +hit enchant is superior to the +dam glove enchant as long as you are under the hit cap.

This will give some help with selecting gear, gems and enchants. http://wowmb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=23586.

Keep in mind that, by nature, DoTs do more damage per mana and per cast time than most other spells. If the damage rates were even, everyone would take the damage up front via direct damage and DoTs would be considered useless. With this in mind, your keys for affliction dps are DoT rotation efficiency and getting as many SBs off as you can in between.

For DoT rotation efficiency you need to keep ALL of your DoTs up (Immolate included. This has been tested to death). This also includes CoA. Alot of people will argue for CoD in it's place but most of the responsible comparissons between the two have shown that they are very comparable. I go with CoA due to the more predictable and less spiked agro generation. Get a DoT timer and refresh your DoTs as soon as they expire, not before. This takes some practice to get right. Every second a DoT is down you are losing damage for obvious reasons. If you refresh a DoT too soon you are also losing damage for 2 reasons. First, you'll be losing the most powerful tick of CoA. Second, if all five of your DoTs are running, you would be much better served throwing in a SB instead of cutting off the efficiency of one of your DoTs.

Once you get this down, the rest of your dps will depend on what you do with the time you have when all your DoTs are running. Sometimes you have to run around for a specific fight. Sometimes you have to use Life Tap or Dark Pact. But your max dps will come from fitting as many SBs in between you DoT cycling as possible.

This is of course assuming that this is a boss fight and will last long enough for your DoTs to cycle. I hope this helps.

Well, I went to kara this weekend and concentrated on keeping all my dots up. My shadowbolts used to be around 70% of my damage with CoS up and such. I was sitting around 4th-5th in the damage meter. My 'sustained dps' during any fight (including time to wait for the tank/time running around/dark pacting/life tapping, etc) was around 650.

After trying to keep my DoTs all up, shadowbolts now made up only about 20% of my damage, but my sustained dps went to 840. I was #2 damage in the raid 2nd only to the *uber* geared hunter we have and I passed our well-geared rogue. So, I was a very happy lock.

Thanks for all-y'all's help (ps, got the mindblade from prince and such this weekend. Just got the wand too, don't kill me cause I haven't gemmed it yet). Next week is getting spellstrike mats. (I hate farming).

This is what you do :

1) Download "Leulier's Warlock Dps Spreadsheet"

2) Enter your gear, gems, raid buffs, consumables, talents, etc.

3) You then use the spreadsheet to look at effects of including different dots in your "rotation". If you follow my advice you will see that this is pretty easy to do. You simply select each dot one by one and turn it on or off - and look at whether your dps increases or decreases.

4) Once you've done this, you then calculate the dpct - damage per unit cast time of each spell. The spell with the highest dpct is the most important and the one with the lowest dpct is the least important.

5) There is no rotation in the sense of a hunter rotation for example - but I think we all know pretty much what we mean when we say "rotation" from a warlock perspective. Basically you cast the highest dpct spells, if a dot resists, you recast it in preference to a different dot with a lower dpct.

Of course, there are small factors which change your "rotation" - such as if you're nearing the end of the fight - or you're in the middle of a bloodlust etc etc.


If you've gone to the effort of downloading and configuring the spreadsheet - you might aswell play around with looking at different specs and whether they improve your dps or not.

People often leave changing to 0/21/40 suprisingly late - despite the crap churned out by the "Zam-xperts" regarding not switching to destruction until you have "enough" hit rating.

The decision of whether you can change to 0/21/40 from an affliction based setup is all down to the ** DPS FIGURE ** you get out of Leulier's spreadsheet, and nothing to do with some pet theory put forward by some guy who isnt even looking at the end of BT.

The biggest reason why alot of warlocks see improvements with 0/21/40 is because of the simplicity of the "rotation".

Anyway, whatever you decide to do - there are some excellent tools out there that will give you "hard and fast" answers - and you can really improve your dps by using them.

The most irritating thing about these forums is when you have to come back to clarify the obvious.



....



"No **** sherlock" ..........



Clearly a warlock raiding in Sunwell is not gonna be speccing 0/21/40 because of the simpler rotation. The whole scaling issue of dots is well known.

But - to clarify - with regard to warlocks who are similarly geared to this guy and doing the raids that this guy will do - the simplicity of the 0/21/40 build itself will improve the dps of alot of warlocks - regardless of the scaling issues.

It's a fact that some warlocks just don't get all the juice out of a 5-dot affliction build simply because they lack the focus to keep all the dots refreshed.

After plugging in the numbers into the spreadsheet, the theoretical *best* dps build is the felguard build (1515 dps 7/43/11) followed closely by the other felguard build, 1/44/16. Then comes the classic shadow destro build at 1330. My current UA build gets around 1248.

I'm not completely convinced that the Felguard build would do as high a dps as the spreadsheet says as the felguard cannot necessarily have cleave up, which is a significant damage loss. Also, the felguard has to be managed quite closely in some fights, or he will die quickly (e.g prince/maiden/nightbane). Not sure if he would ***** up the beams for netherspite as well, so... I guess I'll be trying out the destro build to see how my damage does this next week. I'll also be regemming to get the max +hit while keeping my CSD active.

I have a +hit set of gear that brings me up to 149 +hit. I am also doing some regemming to add more +hit and enchanting to bring it up as well. My gear on right now is not the gear I have that I use to kill in raid. I think I logged out doing dailies after PvPing.

Just thought I'd repeat that for another rate down. Those of you who are relatively new will be aware of a couple of big-mouth locks who profess to be the theory-craft kings. Locks who until the doors were flung open to BT had barely got past Lootreaver. Heh they know who they are.

Like I said - don't listen to them - download the spreadsheet and do the theorycrafting for yourself, because otherwise you'll be stuck with an inferior dps build while you try to reach some magical hit rating.

Why am I so passionate about this ? Because there are a couple of quack doctors on these boards. People in need come here for advice, and on the whole it is good. In fact I've hardly ever seen bad advice for all topics all the way up to raiding level. But that's where it ends.

Where it comes to matters of raid theorycrafting - I would never advise anybody to listen to the quack theorycrafters here, I would send them straight to Elitist Jerks and Leulier's spreadsheet. I'm not saying people shouldn't compare raid experiences, but the raw theorycrafting, don't come here.

So I'm expecting another rate down from the self-professed theorycrafters - the locks and spriests who put "Master of Theory" in their sigs, but riddle me this batman "We would all like to write our own reviews would we not".




Edited, May 8th 2008 10:09pm by kbd