[BETA] Destruction Warlock Discussion

[Baconeggcheese]

I still have no idea what made them drop it from 1500% spellpower to what it does this build, was it really that OP? Why not 1250... or heck 1000%?

Every time I use it it's something around 10% of my dmg, and its CD is reduced by haste and it doesn't have a terribly long cd in the first place. It would have been silly OP at 1500. With its current spellpower its basically a free chaosbolt that can crit.

[Deleted]

Yes, let's throw away all of the things that enhance Chaos Bolt out of equation such as Artifact damage boost trait, Eradication and Reverse Entropy. It's quite a bit worse than Chaos Bolt and let's not even mention what Soul Conduit does for things like AoE.

comparing a shard spender with what is essentially a filler seem kinda pointless, either way, channel demonfire is significantly better than soul conduit for single target by quite a margin, soul conduit tends to be significantly overvalued, not saying its bad, its just far from being as good as ppl say it is.

[Gaidax]

Now take Soul Conduit, and 20% of whatever you did with shard spenders is its damage plus whatever you milked with increased Eradication uptime. Pretty much same thing minus the hassle and scales quite a bit better.

Point is simple, Channel Demonfire means directly less Chaos Bolts/Rain of Fires/Shadowburns with all that it means.

[Deleted]

Now take Soul Conduit, and 20% of whatever you did with shard spenders is its damage plus whatever you milked with increased Eradication uptime. Pretty much same thing minus the hassle and scales quite a bit better.

Point is simple, Channel Demonfire means directly less Chaos Bolts/Rain of Fires/Shadowburns with all that it means.

well you still gain a benefit from eradication even if you dont pick soul conduit and you know as well as i do that soul conduit depends entirely on how fast you can generate and spend shards, saying that soul conduit simply adds 20% dmg to spends is a gross oversimplification of what it actually does and how you actually gain a benefit from it, ppl tend to, as i wrote in my previous post, to greatly overvalue soul conduit.

yes, taking channel demonfire will mean less chaos bolts/RoFs/shadowburns, but that doesnt mean that its less overall dmg bcoz you simply dont gain as many chaos bolts/RoFs/shadowburns that it will overtake channel demonfire in ST, when it comes to cleaves, you'd take wreak havoc anyway and for aoe where Rain of fire does good dmg(finally) you'll have a reason to take soul conduit, imo soul conduit is solely an option for aoe, ofc i cant rule out the possibility that im wrong but i simply cant see soul conduit being the go-to choice for destro, i feel the gain is too small.

[Baconeggcheese]

Now take Soul Conduit, and 20% of whatever you did with shard spenders is its damage plus whatever you milked with increased Eradication uptime. Pretty much same thing minus the hassle and scales quite a bit better.

Point is simple, Channel Demonfire means directly less Chaos Bolts/Rain of Fires/Shadowburns with all that it means.

I think you're overvaluing the concept without looking at what CDF is really doing.

If you want to distill it down to shard values in a super oversimplified manner, CDF is basically worth 2+ shards every 15- seconds. In order to generate that on average with SC you'd need to spend 10 shards every 15- seconds. You obviously cannot both produce and spend 10 shards every 15- seconds on any consistent basis. So CDF will always be better than it until you're in a situation where you can produce shards fast enough to beat out CDF.

At no point during raid testing have I found a time where it was really appropriate to take SC over either of the other options. I think its best case scenario is on heavy sustained AoE, but the problem is that aoe does not increase our shard generation rate outside of the 15 seconds that immolates are rolling after a cataclysm and it's unlikely that you'll be sustaining aoe in many situations where you're using cataclysm for SC to be worth it.

[Uzkin]

I think you're overvaluing the concept without looking at what CDF is really doing.

If you want to distill it down to shard values in a super oversimplified manner, CDF is basically worth 2+ shards every 15- seconds. In order to generate that on average with SC you'd need to spend 10 shards every 15- seconds. You obviously cannot both produce and spend 10 shards every 15- seconds on any consistent basis. So CDF will always be better than it until you're in a situation where you can produce shards fast enough to beat out CDF.

At no point during raid testing have I found a time where it was really appropriate to take SC over either of the other options. I think its best case scenario is on heavy sustained AoE, but the problem is that aoe does not increase our shard generation rate outside of the 15 seconds that immolates are rolling after a cataclysm and it's unlikely that you'll be sustaining aoe in many situations where you're using cataclysm for SC to be worth it.

Here are some results for single target from an AMR simulation:

Channel Demonfire - 154243 DPS
http://beta.askmrrobot.com/wow/simul...f05478abdbdb60

Soul Conduit - 155267 DPS
http://beta.askmrrobot.com/wow/simul...c35455b069a1b6

I just randomly selected some of the predefined options and pressed 'Simulate' so take these with a huge grain of salt. Still, the CDF simulation shows approx. 10% of the damage coming from CDF itself which seems to match with your observations. Perhaps SC is quite competitive with CDF once the artifact is fully upgraded (as assumed by the simulation).

[Baconeggcheese]

Perhaps SC is quite competitive with CDF once the artifact is fully upgraded (as assumed by the simulation).

Artifacts are fully filled out during raid testing.

The AMR sims are wildly off and not at all optimized. The guy making them has said he fully expects people to be going in there and fine tuning them. They're nothing to go off of right now or to even mildly humor.

[Fallensaint]

Yes, let's throw away all of the things that enhance Chaos Bolt out of equation such as Artifact damage boost trait, Eradication and Reverse Entropy. It's quite a bit worse than Chaos Bolt and let's not even mention what Soul Conduit does for things like AoE.

First, I did say single target. Channel Demonfire is definitely the inferior option if you've got more than one target since it's damage is split instead of multiplied. It's also not as effective for high mobility fights, as Soul Conduit has synergy with Shadowburn and you can't move while channeling Demonfire without losing damage.

Second, let's look at the math.

Soul Conduit's effectiveness is dependent on your shard spending, which is dependent on your rate of shard generation assuming you aren't overflowing. Thankfully, both shard generation and Channel Demonfire's CD are affected by haste, so the math is actually pretty easy since we can mostly ignore haste.

Your rate of shard generation is determined by Conflagrate and Immolate. Conflag has a 12 second CD (reduced by haste), so over a minute it'll generate 5 shards. Immolate has a 15% chance per tick and 30% chance per tick crit to generate a shard. So, on average and depending on crit, it will generate between 3 and 6 shards per minute. Let's assume 60% crit (not that unreasonable with the artifact trait) for 5 Immo shards per minute, for a total of 10 shards per minute. 20% of that is 2 shards per minute, or 1 Chaos Bolts per minute.

Channel Demonfire has a 15 second cooldown (reduced by haste), so you'll get four of those per minute.

Even with all the effects boosting Chaos Bolt, I don't think one Chaos Bolt per minute and a handful of Incinerates will beat out four Channel Demonfires per minute. I'll freely admit I may be wrong, but you'll need some strong evidence. Those unoptimized AMR sims posted earlier by Uzkin definitely aren't going to cut it.

[Dastey]

Using your conditions, and completely ignoring stats the damage per minute would be this:
Channel demonfire: 2621 % of Spell power
Chaos Bolt: 746 % of Spell power
Incinerate: 1076 % of Spell power

Difference in favor of CDF: 799 % of Spell Power

This is while ignoring backdraft, eradiction, dimensional ripper and chaos bolt artifact refund.
If we include the backdraft as 41 % uptime on the above spells which is 12 second cast time that will reduce them and the difference in spell power to 632 % of Spell power

[Gaidax]

You are missing quite a few facts, first of all, Soulsnatcher exists, secondly as soon as you have 2PCT19 your Conflag is 9 seconds cd. Both these give you 2 Chaos Bolts gained in pure single target from Conduit and extra 12 seconds of Eradication uptime. Chaos Bolt by itself is quite a bit better than Channel simply because of supporting artifact and talents. And heck, don't forget that these 2 Chaos Bolts can refund you more shards further, so 3rd Chaos Bolt is not out of question here.

And that is pure single target.

Heck, looking at the comment above if you ignore just about every possible advantage and talent that exists with Chaos Bolt and extra Incinerates and go with only 1 Chaos Bolt gained, which is quite pessimistic. Difference is exactly 1 Chaos Bolt. So basically if we raise number of Chaos Bolts to 2 which is reasonable as I showed and then take into account extra Eradication uptime, then it's clear as day that CDF is inferior or at best a wash and that is at the best possible scenario for it, thus I can safely declare it as a trash alternative to Soul Conduit.

Add all I am talking about and it's not hard to see how CDF is a waste of time EVEN in conditions that favor it.

[Baconeggcheese]

You're talking about hoping that these lower % chance refunds are going to beat out 2 guaranteed shards every 15- seconds on a spell that is basically a chaosbolt that can crit.

Again, you'd basically need to generate 2+ shards every 15- seconds for soul conduit to be better. Which simply isn't going to happen.

[Deleted]

this whole CDF vs chaos bolt discussion is quite pointless as it literally doesnt matter, CDF is a filler and chaos bolt is a spender and there is no situation where CDF will replace chaos bolt.

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You're talking about hoping that these lower % chance refunds are going to beat out 2 guaranteed shards every 15- seconds on a spell that is basically a chaosbolt that can crit.

Again, you'd basically need to generate 2+ shards every 15- seconds for soul conduit to be better. Which simply isn't going to happen.

aye, its literally impossible to generate and spend enough shards to make soul conduit a gain over CDF on ST.

[Gaidax]

CDF is also a spender, you simply do not realize that - it spends shards you would otherwise have by having Soul Conduit.

Finally, why don't you use math? You have it above your heads.

[gruxxar]

A bit besides the "which one is better", I find it quite annoying to fit in CDF sometimes (at least if you run with Roaring Blaze & Eradication), at least if you wanna play it to its full potential,as in , get some nice immolates rolling on time & keep eradication up

[Gaidax]

Well that too, thinking you can just perfectly use CDF on CD without losing out elsewhere is quite optimistic.

[Deleted]

CDF is also a spender, you simply do not realize that - it spends shards you would otherwise have by having Soul Conduit.

Finally, why don't you use math? You have it above your heads.

that is some seriously flawed logic there, CDF being a spender coz you dont get the shards from SC, the flawed notion that SC is a gain over CDF.

well math shouldnt be needed, extremely simple logical thinking should be enough, in order for SC to be equal to CDF for ST, you'll need to generate 10-15 shards(im using 10 shards here to create the best possible situation for SC) and you also need to spend them as well, if we assume decent rng then you'll spend atleast 25 secs spending the shards(im not adding haste coz that would only put it in favor of CDF due to the fact that it double dips in haste) and assume you generate 3 shards every 14 secs(2 from immolate procs and 1 from conflag) which means you'll have to spend something like 67 secs to get 1 free chaos bolt which is greatly inferior to 4 CDF, showing that SC is rarely, if ever, the talent to pick for destro as its too minor a gain for you, CDF will be better most of the time. SC would prolly need a 40-50% chance to refund shard for it to be equal to CDF. the old soul harvest talent that generated shards is actually significantly better than SC, its sorta sad when a discarded lvl 60 talent is actually better than 1 of our lvl 100 talents.

[Uzkin]

that is some seriously flawed logic there, CDF being a spender coz you dont get the shards from SC, the flawed notion that SC is a gain over CDF.

well math shouldnt be needed, extremely simple logical thinking should be enough, in order for SC to be equal to CDF for ST, you'll need to generate 10-15 shards(im using 10 shards here to create the best possible situation for SC) and you also need to spend them as well, if we assume decent rng then you'll spend atleast 25 secs spending the shards(im not adding haste coz that would only put it in favor of CDF due to the fact that it double dips in haste) and assume you generate 3 shards every 14 secs(2 from immolate procs and 1 from conflag) which means you'll have to spend something like 67 secs to get 1 free chaos bolt which is greatly inferior to 4 CDF, showing that SC is rarely, if ever, the talent to pick for destro as its too minor a gain for you, CDF will be better most of the time. SC would prolly need a 40-50% chance to refund shard for it to be equal to CDF. the old soul harvest talent that generated shards is actually significantly better than SC, its sorta sad when a discarded lvl 60 talent is actually better than 1 of our lvl 100 talents.

FYI, logical thinking =/= a bunch of random numbers.

[Deleted]

FYI, logical thinking =/= a bunch of random numbers.

well the guy asked for math rather than using logical thinking himself, basically, it is impossible for you to generate 10 shards and spend them in order to get the shards necesary for SC to be superior to CDF within 15 secs. also its hardly random numbers, generating 3 shards pr conflag recharge isnt exactly improbable but is rather greatly in favor of SC, in fact most of the numbers i used were greatly in favor of SC and it still didnt come out ahead, you can claim random numbers all you want, it still doesnt change the fact that it is impossible for you to generate 10 shards and spend said 10 shards within 15 secs, you'd literally have to be able to generate 10 shards within 2,5 secs. even if you factor in haste, you'll still get 3-4 CDFs for every 2 shards you get refunded from SC.

with that said, it should be 55 secs instead of 67 secs, but it still puts CDF significantly ahead of soul conduit.

[Gaidax]

FYI, logical thinking =/= a bunch of random numbers.

Literally what I was thinking reading that amusing story... +1

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well the guy asked for math rather than using logical thinking himself, basically, it is impossible for you to generate 10 shards and spend them in order to get the shards necesary for SC to be superior to CDF within 15 secs. also its hardly random numbers, generating 3 shards pr conflag recharge isnt exactly improbable but is rather greatly in favor of SC, in fact most of the numbers i used were greatly in favor of SC and it still didnt come out ahead, you can claim random numbers all you want, it still doesnt change the fact that it is impossible for you to generate 10 shards and spend said 10 shards within 15 secs, you'd literally have to be able to generate 10 shards within 2,5 secs. even if you factor in haste, you'll still get 3-4 CDFs for every 2 shards you get refunded from SC.

with that said, it should be 55 secs instead of 67 secs, but it still puts CDF significantly ahead of soul conduit.

Where did you take this 10 shards number and what does it represent exactly?

[Baconeggcheese]

CDF is also a spender, you simply do not realize that - it spends shards you would otherwise have by having Soul Conduit.

Finally, why don't you use math? You have it above your heads.

I'm not sure why you think I don't get that or what's not to get about what I've repeatedly said.

CDF is effectively worth 2+ shards every 15- seconds since CDF hits for slightly less than a fully buffed CB crits but CDF can still crit.

SC gives you back 20% of your shards, which means you need to spend 10 shards every 15 or less seconds in order to break even with the "shard generation" you're getting from CDF. This obviously will never happen with any level of consistency as you can't generate and spend 10 shards in 15 seconds without ridiculous luck.