Originally Posted by
Gistwiki
Lets take the lava burst vs searing totem comparison again, using simc. The tradeoff will be 1 searing bolt, versus (I'm including haste here, as with the current simc setup we have 31.83% raid-buffed haste which puts lava burst at a 1.51 second cast, and both searing bolt & lava burst have a 2 second cast time that is decreased in the same way by haste) 1.5/10 = 15% of a Lava Burst. I use 10 seconds as that'd be the approximate interval between lava bursts under optimal conditions if lava surge didn't exist (which heavily weights this comparison in favor of Searing bolt, but I do that on purpose to prove a point.)
The DPET of a Lava Burst is 13,802 which makes losing 15% of that ~2070.3 damage.
If you prefer to use the reduction in DPCT that Bink provided of 9%, that's still ~1242.18 damage.
The DPET of a single Searing Bolt is 1094 damage.
This means that even if Lava Surge did not exist, you'd lose more from delaying the lava burst than you would from delaying the searing totem. Add in Lava Surge, and it's a no-brainer.