Help with soulfire plz =(

[asheer1991]

Hi, i'm recently getting into the cataclysm warlock style of raiding and i keep seeing this improved soul fire prock all over guides and such. My question is, how do i incorporate this buff 100%, i mean isn't hard casting a serious DPS loss? and using soul burn every 15 seconds isn't really much of long lasting solution. Any suggestions or ideas?

[EventHorizon]

The idea behind this is :

Ignore it or hard cast it...

reading around; a lot of people just plain ignore it, it IS unfortunately a DPS loss due to the talent proving useful to all 3 specs atm - hence the reason for blizz reworking it (as per latest blue posts). I don't think using Soul Burn for that is useful as after 1/10th of a boss fight you'll be out of shards.

[asheer1991]

how significant of a dps loss would that be?

[my ledge ends]

Yes, the buff is huge. It basically gives you the first extra tick for your DoTs, which is a pretty big DPS increase (especially for Destro since it scales Conflag damage upwards). If you have a problem with remembering to recast Soul Fire then I'd recommend downloading PowerAuras or something similar and give yourself a timer/visual indicator for the buff. When it hits about 2 seconds you'll want to hard cast (unless Soulburn is up).

[asheer1991]

lol my bad on the soulburn every 15 seconds, i was thinking of the proc. Ok so hardcast is a must now, how do i mix soulburn and soulfire together? just everytime its up or how would these work properly?

[Khadjid]

I use Soulburn for the occasion where the timing with other spells are bad and I'm not able to hard cast Soul Fire during the last few seconds of the buff. So if the buff runs out or there's < 1sec left, I use soulburn if possible.

[Bakis]

Harcast and hardcast.. you're suposed to start casting before the current 15sec duration runs out.
That is not really a problem as long as its a Patchwerk kinda fight, BLZ will now redo ISF to properly reflect the actual windowframes that players got available in heroics and raids to keep it up.
Smooth things up a bit, making debuffs/buffs a bit easier and smooth to maintain.

[kosuko]

My vote goes to atleast 30 second duration on imp SF buff, than it'll just be like the Shadowbolt destro used to cast

[gerni]

When it hits about 2 seconds you'll want to hard cast (unless Soulburn is up).

Keep in mind travel time as well. Max range you can begin hard casting this at around 3.5ish seconds. As affliction you can pull off another shadow bolt/haunt/UA with the haste buff as ISF is being refreshed.