[MoP] Demo: Most complex spec -> least complex rotation?

[Josh Yaxley]

Just pulled this from the latest SimCraft model of Demo in MoP:



Note: Shadow Bolt and Demonic Slash are the same move


Looks fun, right?

[ArekuD]

Arcane mage 2.0

[Josh Yaxley]

I really hope they add some complexity to it.

A lot of people who play Warlock probably do so because they enjoy having lots of abilities :S they should at least keep the same style of play when they revamp a class, otherwise people who enjoy the class might not enjoy it anymore

[Brauhm]

What version of simcraft are you using and how did you obtain it? or did you modify your own? I would love to see Destruction and Affliction's numbers.

Edit: Also, two button rotation. That seems... lovely.

[n0n3]

I really hope they add some complexity to it.

A lot of people who play Warlock probably do so because they enjoy having lots of abilities :S they should at least keep the same style of play when they revamp a class, otherwise people who enjoy the class might not enjoy it anymore

Who enjoys it, 6% of wow population? we're the least played class atm.

[Inactivity]

A complex spec does not necessarily have to have a complex rotation... right now it seems rather simple, granted, but consider live:



If you notice that soul fire and incinerate are fillers (one is execute), then an equal amount of time in live as beta is spent doing filler. That doesn't mean that the spec is easy to play at all, since a huge amount of variables can affect how effective your "1" move is.

[Josh Yaxley]

Who enjoys it, 6% of wow population? we're the least played class atm.

100% of Warlocks?

[Inactivity]

100% of Warlocks?

I'll make a point, I think that a big misconception I see is that "complexity" somehow equates to "lots of buttons" - the two are mutually exclusive. Complexity is a good thing - you can have complexity in a two-button rotation (even arcane mages have a limited degree of it - managing mana with arcane blast). There is a big difference between good frost death knights (who can use runic power, runes, and KM procs effectively) and bad death knights who just go through the motions.

Buttons are not - the more buttons, the more reliant a person is on having a gaming mouse and keyboard. Right now, buttons take up over half of my entire keyboard space and I'm feeling like I need gaming hardware to be competitive, something I don't think should be required at all.

Hopefully MOP decides to reduce the amount of buttons used by every spec and class (especially in PvP, where not only are abilities used, but macros as well) and retain the complexity of a well-thought rotation.

[Paraclef]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Two buttons are inactivity

[Tehterokkar]

I welcome this change, previously I couldn't play my Warlock because it was just an alt, and I didn't feel like I wanted to spend ages trying to perfect the rotation on an alt that I maybe play in LFR once a while.

[Josh Yaxley]

I welcome this change, previously I couldn't play my Warlock because it was just an alt, and I didn't feel like I wanted to spend ages trying to perfect the rotation on an alt that I maybe play in LFR once a while.

As nice as that may be, I would prefer that they catered to people who already play Warlocks than to those who would want to play Warlocks if they made them simpler.

[Paraclef]

Josh, please give up now, it's useless, hopeless. This is the end.

[Nivrax]

The graph Inactivity posted is from Incinerate filler demo, which is used only on Ultraxion for minimum gain, expected Demo live rotation splits Inc with Shadowbolt. Normal Demo rotation takes cares of proc (Molten Core), 2 cooldown nukes (Shadowflame + HoG), 1,5 of a dot (Corr and 1 min Doom) and 3 fillers.

Beta seems like consist 85% of 2 fillers, with one cooldown nuke (HoG) that you can actually hold over. I don't mind trimming a bit Demo, since it was bloated, but this at the moment is castration.

[Josh Yaxley]

Josh, please give up now, it's useless, hopeless. This is the end.

I'm just hoping that they haven't finished implementing their design for Demo ;D

[Inactivity]

The graph Inactivity posted is from Incinerate filler demo, which is used only on Ultraxion for minimum gain, expected Demo live rotation splits Inc with Shadowbolt. Normal Demo rotation takes cares of proc (Molten Core), 2 cooldown nukes (Shadowflame + HoG), 1,5 of a dot (Corr and 1 min Doom) and 3 fillers.

Beta seems like consist 85% of 2 fillers, with one cooldown nuke (HoG) that you can actually hold over. I don't mind trimming a bit Demo, since it was bloated, but this at the moment is castration.

Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that there is one more button to press for multi-target (which is what I play in live for all fights) - and that adds minimal complexity with molten core proc switching. 2 fillers (3 if you count 2 on one button, which are different due to cast times - and soul fire appears to still be an execute filler) still account for roughly the same percentage of DPS. Not to mention who knows if we find that other rotations/buttons (I'm looking at you, Carrion Swarm/Immolation Aura) become more efficient with more targets. Yes, my graph is for single-target rotation/spec. But so is Josh Yaxley's.

Bane of Doom adds complexity due to the one-minute cooldown which has to be timed with procs to snapshot. The same will probably happen with Wild Imps which appears to be a DPS gain - but you don't see it in his graph, because his graph completely ignores minions. Same goes with Grimoire of Service, which does not exactly line up with a 1:20 Dark Soul giving yet additional complexity - but again, since his graph ignores minions that is totally unnoticed.

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Two buttons are inactivity

I'm not saying Demo is "too hard" in beta or even that it is "good" - the class feels like it is a one-button nuke. But that's not to say the one-button nuke is the "part that matters" - usually, timing the other stuff is - nor does it say that the class will be easy to optimize at all. You can take words out of my mouth and say that I just want a "two-button spec" (which don't exist in live) - but I still see the complexity in the rotation which evidently some are too ignorant to notice.


[add]

The buttons increase by 1 for the multi-target rotation, but the complexity increases by much more (since you now have to time shadow trance procs and molten core procs mostly). This means buttons isn't always linearly scaled with complexity.

[Biiru]

Since when demonology is the most complex spec?

[Valyna]

Do you really think the hard part of playing demo on live is the amount of skills we use? oh god...

100% of Warlocks?

I don´t. So maybe the 100% isn´t true at all

[Paraclef]

Inactivity leave the Complexity word alone !!!! Stop raping it.

[Inactivity]

Do you really think the hard part of playing demo on live is the amount of skills we use? oh god...

I love how I am accused of "raping" the word "complexity" by some ignorant ones who think that it equates to "complexity" in hardware requirement.

Number of skills adds mechanical difficulty - being forced to allocate more keybinds and possibly purchasing new hardware. In my opinion, this is bad design.

One of the hardest specs, in my opinion, to actually do well in is actually a fire mage. You have a 2-4 second window to decide whether to use Combustion, and this has to line up with as many procs and as favorable of a phase as possible (due to double-dipping). While the buttons necessarily aren't numerous, you really need a split-second reaction time, which might not in-and-of-itself be good design. Yes, you can do well with poorly timed combusts. But you won't be top of your class. Arcane on the other hand, is actually extremely difficult even up to being nearly impossible to play 100% perfectly, but the cost of making small mistakes is very small, so you can get very close very easily, thus despite being hard to be literally 100%, it's not a terribly hard spec to play.

Warlocks on the other hand have simpler but much more numerous ways of losing DPS making it a more unforgiving spec. It's not terribly hard to do everything right, but there are a million ways you can do things wrong for patchwerk (clipping one of many DoTs, not snapshotting one of many long-CD abilities, not lining up several big cooldowns that make a large % of DPS, not using multiple short-CD abilities on cooldown, and not using the correct filler out of 3 of them).

At the end of the day warlocks are poorly designed as a class, not because of Ultraxion DPS (which is actually quite good, and easy to do well), but because we don't react well to Burst Phases (look at Spine and Hagara). While Spine is the poster-child example of warlocks being badly designed, people don't notice how poor we are of a class on Hagara, simply due to the fact that the fight was never tuned to be terribly difficult in the first place.

[Josh Yaxley]

Do you really think the hard part of playing demo on live is the amount of skills we use? oh god...

Having to pay attention to more abilities (Hand of Gul'dan, Shadowflame, DoTs, Incinerate procs, all our cooldowns (Soul Burn, Demon Soul, Meta, Doomguard)) in addition to the trinket procs etc that every other class has to pay attention to, is undoubtedly going to make the spec harder to play, as it requires more focus. In addition to Pet-Twisting and Gear-swapping (both of which won't be used in MoP) this gives us more to think about than every other spec (every other dps spec I've played anyway).

People can argue all they want that it isn't the amount of abilities needed to be used that makes the spec complex, but the actual timing of abilities etc, but it is clearly both that affect it. A class that has to pay attention to procs etc is easier than a class to has to pay attention to procs in addition to using a load of extra abilities.

I don´t. So maybe the 100% isn´t true at all

It might've been safer to say 90% then, but my point was that Warlock's have lots of abilities, therefore you would assume that people who play Warlocks enjoy playing a class with lots of abilities.