Very noob questions. Extending dots.

[Iax]

I keep seeing people talk about extending dot duration to maximise on procs, but I haven't seen anything like a 101 on it. So I have some questions, really basic, probably very obvious questions.

1. Why would you want to extend a dot duration?

2. Is there any benefit in letting a dot drop off before applying again?

3a. How do you extend dot duration?

3b. Is there a difference in method between extending dot duration between Affli, Demo and Destro?

4. When trying to maximise the potential of a dot what should you as the player look out for?

5. Are there addons that can help you manage dot timing, extension and optimisation?

Thanks for your time.

[striderZA]

This should answer your queries.

[Turturin the Warlock]

I keep seeing people talk about extending dot duration to maximise on procs, but I haven't seen anything like a 101 on it. So I have some questions, really basic, probably very obvious questions.

1. Why would you want to extend a dot duration?

2. Is there any benefit in letting a dot drop off before applying again?

3a. How do you extend dot duration?

3b. Is there a difference in method between extending dot duration between Affli, Demo and Destro?

4. When trying to maximise the potential of a dot what should you as the player look out for?

5. Are there addons that can help you manage dot timing, extension and optimisation?

Thanks for your time.

1. Dot's "snapshot" your stat values at the time you cast or refresh them. So if you refresh and extend your dot's with good temporary buffs/procs (trinkets, bloodlust, legendary meta gem, etc....), they will retain that power for an extended time, which increases dps significantly.

2. There can be situations where temporary buffs cause your dot's to be up to 5x stronger than your base cast strength. you would want to wait for that last tick to occur before refreshing in that case. The add-on affdots can help you see this in game quite easily. In the situation I described it should be obvious that 1 tick of a dot @500% strenght is 5 ticks of a dot at normal strength...that's extra damamge you don't want to throw away.

3a. We have a passive talent called pandemic, that allows dots to be extended to up to 150% of base duration. So if you have a 14 second UA, it can be extended up to 21 seconds. Ignoring procs for a minute, if you had your first UA tick down to 7 seconds, you could recast and the new UA would have a duration of 21 seconds, so the total duration of the two casts would be 28 seconds regardless. This gives you greateer flexibility as to when to reapply your dots. Again, affdots can help, get it.

3b. Nope, same concept applies equally to all three specs. Of course it will have a greater impact on the more dot reliant specs from an overall dps standpoint.

4. Procs. When you get good ones extend the dots to the max, and also get haunt up and MG/Drain soul as affliction, as both of those scale in value based on current dot strength, (haunt multplies ticks, mg/DS have extra tick damamge based on current DOT power).

5. Affdots. All in one solution, elegant, easy to set up.

Good luck