quick barrage question

[Earthbound]

Hi there,

Are there any circumstances which make it advisable to cast Barrage against a single target?

It feels like I shouldnt just be sitting on it. Im Survival btw.

Maybe under the effects of RF or Lust?

[Azortharion]

There are no fights in SoO where this is the case, because all the fights you wanna use Barrage for are consistently multi-target. :s

But unless multiple targets are coming up within 10 seconds or so just use it single-target but I don't see this being used in any situation except Galakras.

[Raugnaut]

Barrage should always be used on CD. It has significantly better DPF then Arcane Shot.

You need 100% mastery for Arcane Shot to beat Barrage with Thrill of the Hunt up, and like 600% mastery for Arcane Shot to beat Barrage without it.

[Earthbound]

Thanks for the quick replies, guys.

I knew something was up.

[Deleted]

Barrage should always be used on CD. It has significantly better DPF then Arcane Shot.

You need 100% mastery for Arcane Shot to beat Barrage with Thrill of the Hunt up, and like 600% mastery for Arcane Shot to beat Barrage without it.

But it wouldn't be a question of barrage vs arcane shot wouldn't it be barrage vs glaives? As thats what you'd be losing if you take Barrage and Glaives has proven better single target damage than Barrage.

[Glurp]

But it wouldn't be a question of barrage vs arcane shot wouldn't it be barrage vs glaives? As thats what you'd be losing if you take Barrage and Glaives has proven better single target damage than Barrage.

If you can change talents during the middle of a fight sure.

[Illana]

DPF isn't really the important thing though, it's DPS. Especially for survival since it's overflowing with focus

[Trictagon]

To answer your question, yes, barrage is much better than arcane shot to cast if you already have the talent and cannot change it. Barrage is 640% weapon damage in 1-2sec, arcane shot is 125% in 1sec, both costing the same focus (there are other factors like sv mastery, barrage canceling autoattacks if it still does that, and haste reducing the cast time of barrage. None of these factors outweigh the significant damage difference).

DPF isn't really the important thing though, it's DPS. Especially for survival since it's overflowing with focus

This. If it was only about DPF we would be spamming cobra shot for its negative DPF. If you actually wanted to do math for this you would need to effectively find the DPET for both scenarios (barrage vs arcane) including the extra time spent casting cobras to re-gain the focus.

Random example with made up numbers for anyone who cares to end the old DPET vs DPF discussion:

In this example you regen 6 focus per second and don't have any source of focus except cobra and passive regen.

Baby Shot costs 20 focus and deals 50,000 damage (50K DPET, 2,500DPF)
Super Shot costs 100 focus and deals 200,000 damage (200K DPET, 2,000DPF)
Cobra shot generates 14 focus and and deals 10,000 damage, takes 1 second to cast.

Casting Baby Shot would require 1 cobra shot to recover from
Casting Super Shot would require 5 cobra shots to recover from (14 per 1sec cast plus 6 per second passive)

Including cobra shots:
Baby shot is 60.00K DPS
Super Shot is 41.67K DPS

Conclusion: DPF (generally) is very important with lower focus regen, but more focus regen = more DPET importance.

A very rough equation to find which is more efficient:

(Damage of spell in question + (Total damage for cobra shots required to account for lost focus)) / (Time spent total including cobra shots)

This equation would need to be made much more complex for real-wow application, but hopefully it gets the point across. I'll edit this to make it easier to read later.

[Earthbound]

Thanks so much for the answers guys. If this isn't in the FAQ or a sticky I would suggest adding it, and if it already is, I am sorry for asking it again.