Drain Life instead of Shadow bolt ?

[Chaoslux]

Wait...did i miss something... Drain Life being a channeled spell benefits from "Increased Periodic Damage" ? Because Channeled spells dont count as periodic damage.

Proof: Try to proc http://www.wowhead.com/item=40373 using Drain Life alone. Unless they're changing that in cataclysm....

[allforone]

Yeah it seems to be periodic now.

It's affected by Haunt and SE, both of which only apply buffs to periodic dmg. It doesn't reduce the crit chance on nevermelting ice either, which is listed as reducing on non-periodic spells(So easy way to use it is to get full rotation, then hit NMIC)

EDIT: It might be something to do with how they supposedly fixed the lag issues with channeled spells.

[alexw]

Wait...did i miss something... Drain Life being a channeled spell benefits from "Increased Periodic Damage" ? Because Channeled spells dont count as periodic damage.

In patch 4.0 it does

[shade3891]

At 0% mastery SB spec is 700 dps higher than DL spec as currently modelled on EJ forums.

However SB gets zero benefit from mastery while DL benefits substantially.

You'll have to sacrifice other crit/spirit/haste/hit for mastery but mastery has a very high scale factor increasing all periodic damage by 1.68% for each % point of it.

So its still not known which spec is better. Whether at high levels of lvl 80 gear you can get enough mastery to make DL spec better.

Either way it'll be close.

I hope it will be very close, so everyone can play what they like the most. We'll see when we are 85

[ComputerNerd]

It is not a case of wanting the playstyle, it is for game mechanics purposes.
Shadowbolt is meant to remain the filler for most purposes, with drain life being "competitive" to be used instead if survivibility is an issue.
It is meant to be close enough in numbers that it will not gimp your dps, but it is not meant to be superior to shadowbolt.

[Daggy1111]

Wait...did i miss something... Drain Life being a channeled spell benefits from "Increased Periodic Damage" ? Because Channeled spells dont count as periodic damage.

Proof: Try to proc http://www.wowhead.com/item=40373 using Drain Life alone. Unless they're changing that in cataclysm....

Drain life (and for that matter drain soul and mind flay) are all dots, and have always been dots. The thing is that while they have always been dots, they are not included in certain item procs not because they are not dots, but because item procs only occur for certain spells, not for a general mechanic(things like extract actually have a set list of abillitys that will proc them).

[Affectionate]

the 90k drain soul tick crits would like to have a word with your "channeled spells arent dots so they shouldnt get affected by mastery/haunt/SE" ideals

[ComputerNerd]

Technically the spell is not a dot, but for the sake of game mechanics and in order to calculate the effect it does place a dot aura on the target.
That may be why they sometimes act like dots, despite not meeting the proper definition of what we would normally describe dots as.