Is the ideal affliction opening rotation not so ideal?

[plun]

Hi, long time lurker, first time poster here.

I had a question about the affliction opening rotation seen here:
Shadow Bolt * > Haunt > Bane of Doom > Unstable Affliction > Corruption > Shadow Bolt

Now, I agree with opening with shadow bolt and haunt first, but I wonder if it would be better to reverse the order of our dots to: corruption > unstable affliction > bane of doom.

Reasoning is that I've notice (for my character at least), proc buffs do not activate until later in my opening rotation. Now this may vary for everyone, but for me, these buffs include: power torrent 500 int, lightweave embroidery 580 int, bell of enraging resonance 1926 SP, & DMC: Volcano 1600 int. Usually for me, I will have most, if not all of these active at the same time somewhere between the third and fifth spell in my opening rotation. With corruption being refreshed the most frequently, followed by UA then BoD, would it be a DPS increase to cast corruption, UA, then BoD? This would make BoD be the dot that benefits the most from all my procs rather than corruption, which would just be refreshed by haunt after all my procs have fallen off.

[Penguin FTW]

That's what I do, Corruption first because I'll get the benefit shortly when I recast haunt, and the UA > Doom in an attempt to proc everything

[plun]

Do you find it to be a noticeable dps increase? And I assume Boa is the last dot casted on multitarget fights for you also?

[Penguin FTW]

noticeable? lolno. but yes @ boa

[mistuhbull]

I do SB-H-Demon Soul-UA-Corr-BoD

This way I have the demon soul buff on all dots and a guarantee for the SB and haunt debuffs on the target. Not like opening sequence really matters in the long run though

[Penguin FTW]

Not like opening sequence really matters in the long run though

Honestly this, applying your first dots in a different order won't have any earth-shattering effects on your dps or rotation.

[plun]

Honestly this, applying your first dots in a different order won't have any earth-shattering effects on your dps or rotation.

Well every little bit would help no matter how small. And why do something inefficient when for the same amount of effort, you can do it better?

[Manguadi]

The opener depends more on need for movement than anything. I find it hard to believe that if even simcraft isn't sure if crit bonuses are additive or multiplicative, then it's a stretch to beleive somebody else knows that shadow and flame doesn't apply as you would expect. Also I don't think the 5% buff is really worth the difference in power between a dot and a shadowbolt opener. As far as unstable affliction before corr I don't know why you would ever do this. Besides corr triggering multiple talents it's better dpet than UA. (better dpet means better spells, because it means that if had enough targets that you could just pass around corruption for an entire fight, you would do more damage than if you only passed around unstable affliction for the entire fight).

I open with demon soul, and if I'm running in I will apply corruption, jynx, and anything else instant I can do while getting into position. Once I'm stationary I do unstable affliction, then haunt, then shadow bolt until my procs are all up (sometimes they are already up by this point and my 4th spell is BoD). My logic for putting haunt behind is this (stationary start example) with 1.2 second gcd guess and 2.5 second corr/ua tick guess:

0 seconds: apply corruption, demon soul
1.2 seconds: cast UA (lands at 2.4)
2.4 seconds: cast Haunt ~7k (leaves at 3.5 seconds 20 yds/sec)
2.5 seconds: corr ticks ~3300
4.9 seconds: ua ticks ~4400

14,700 damage total approx, ~3000 dps

versus

0 seconds: cast Haunt ~7k, demon soul
1.2 seconds: cast Corr
2.4 seconds: cast UA (lands at 3.6)
3.7 seconds: corr ticks ~ 4k
6.1 seconds: ua ticks ~4400

15,400 damage total approx, ~2524.6 dps

I also feel like corr and UA ticks will get my procs activated sooner, and with the dots already active my chances of getting a non-clipped refresh of corr and UA, and not waiting for a shadowbolt before I cast doom, are much better.

Waiting on procs to cast doom is probably an improvement. I don't really know for sure but I do it. At base damage doom does around 60k for me, or about 1000dps. Volcanic destruction will add 5632 damage to the spell, making it 1093.86dps. If I have to wait 6 seconds from the earliest point I could have applied it, the dps drops to under 1000. The more procs you have, the larger the window of waiting, but the less significant the gain.

Serious napkin math here, but I think the gist is that I believe your dots need to be up and going and waiting around for anything but doom is probably going to cost you some dps.

[plun]

Also I don't think the 5% buff is really worth the difference in power between a dot and a shadowbolt opener. .

Well 5% crit may or not matter, but with a countdown from the tank, pre-casting shadowbolt comes out to a free +5% more crit (which to me is substantial because it applies to all the casters in the raid). I am also considering dots applied before the debuff do not adjust with the additional 5% crit, so your fully proc buffed BoD may not be ticking to its fullest potential.

I do see where you are coming from with haunt though. 23% additional dot damage with 1.x cast time and long travel time vs actual dot ticks. Haunt does damage, but I feel it never hits that hard for me unless the boss is stacked with debuffs.

[Hugoh]

So do you have time to precast a shadow bolt and pre pot or are you leaving the prepot out...?
If your not prepotting that's a pretty substantial dps loss

[frshovinstuf]

I open my dots with haunt, corr, UA, bane. I'd imagine since you want the 1st tick of BoD to happen as early as possible is the reason for other spell priorities, but that only gives you a small advantage over a long duration fight. Just get the dots up and keep them rolling, no clipping except haunt, and your dps will be great. My opening creates a very easy rotation for me and dps is tops!

FR

[Qtica]

I open SB => Haunt => BoD => Corr => UA

I like doing this, especially because some fights I move at the start (ex: Sinestra while running to position).

[Ippoliti]

So my opener is SB =>Demon soul/Blood Fury =>Haunt =>SF(if in range) =>Corru =>UA =>Boa/Bod. I don't get why poeple say BoD as your first dot. Since BoD scales with your spell power, wouldn't you want to put it up when you peak? It seems to work well for me but I'm no sure what other poeple think about it.

[skitzin]

To quote Jmickey and EJ:

"The optimal opener for Affliction is as follows:

Shadow Bolt -> Haunt -> Bane of Doom -> Corruption -> Unstable Affliction -> Shadow Bolt."

---------- Post added 2011-07-02 at 12:03 AM ----------

Well 5% crit may or not matter, but with a countdown from the tank, pre-casting shadowbolt comes out to a free +5% more crit (which to me is substantial because it applies to all the casters in the raid). I am also considering dots applied before the debuff do not adjust with the additional 5% crit, so your fully proc buffed BoD may not be ticking to its fullest potential.

Prior to 4.0.1 this was true, hence why there was the SBx2 and a haunt cast prior to loading up DoTs to ensure maximum benefit. However since then Blizzard has updated DoTs to react on the fly to such changes and so far it would seem to hold true hence why we no longer push for 3 stack shadows embrace at the expense of our other DoTs

[plun]

So do you have time to precast a shadow bolt and pre pot or are you leaving the prepot out...?
If your not prepotting that's a pretty substantial dps loss

Well I prepot before I start casting shadowbolt, which loses me 2 seconds of the pot but we're a dot based class so its not a big deal.

Prior to 4.0.1 this was true, hence why there was the SBx2 and a haunt cast prior to loading up DoTs to ensure maximum benefit. However since then Blizzard has updated DoTs to react on the fly to such changes and so far it would seem to hold true hence why we no longer push for 3 stack shadows embrace at the expense of our other DoTs

Because its bugged; Dots are not adjusted on the fly with the 5% crit debuff, only dots applied after the debuff will receive the crit bonus.

[kornoth]

The best opening is : Shadow bolt -> Bane of Doom -> Demon soul-> trinket on use if it's the case->ua -> corr-> haunt-> Bane of Doom.

In this opening, you'll loose 1 gcd reaplaying BoD but you'll gain one great tick of BoD that is more pwerfull than a shadow bolt ( or even 2 shadow bolt) , so it's a dps gain . And the first bane of doom is to start the countdown to the first tick , there the first tick of the second doom ( that will have 5 ticks) will happen 11sec after and not 15 sec.
if you're trinket didn't proc after you cast haunt, wait for BoD and cast a shadow bolt till you have all you're proc , you have 10sec to reapply BoD so take the more profit .

[plun]

The best opening is : Shadow bolt -> Bane of Doom -> Demon soul-> trinket on use if it's the case->ua -> corr-> haunt-> Bane of Doom.

In this opening, you'll loose 1 gcd reaplaying BoD but you'll gain one great tick of BoD that is more pwerfull than a shadow bolt ( or even 2 shadow bolt) , so it's a dps gain . And the first bane of doom is to start the countdown to the first tick , there the first tick of the second doom ( that will have 5 ticks) will happen 11sec after and not 15 sec.
if you're trinket didn't proc after you cast haunt, wait for BoD and cast a shadow bolt till you have all you're proc , you have 10sec to reapply BoD so take the more profit .

Well the problem I see with this is even though the BoD ticks may be huge, you are essentially cutting the DPCT of BoD in half by wasting another global on it. And even if you happened to have all your procs up at once, it would still not double the damage of a BoD that had no procs active and only used 1 GCD for.

[Manguadi]

I still don't think there's any reason to believe that shadow and flame does not work like a debuff. It's asserted in a lot of places, but I haven't seen anything beyond that.

Plun is right about the double bod opener. Say normal bod does 15k, and buffed bod does 25k. You'd do a total of 115k damage in 75 seconds, for 1533dps, or 57500dpct. If you just waited your bod would be doing 1667 dps for 60 seconds, with 100k dpct. Open with corr and ua and haunt and then do doom when your trinkets proc.

[Jmickey]

I still don't think there's any reason to believe that shadow and flame does not work like a debuff. It's asserted in a lot of places, but I haven't seen anything beyond that.

Multiple people have tested it. Provided you are always refreshing Corruption with Haunt, then the 5% crit debuff will not be counted unless it was already applied. It's been proven, so there is plenty of reason to believe that, and unless you have evidence to actually prove otherwise then I don't think there is any reason to believe you.

Applying the 5% crit debuff before applying Corruption is, in my opinion, fairly important. Personally due to my latency (250ms) I like to make sure my client is fully aware the S&F debuff is up, so I go:

SB > Haunt > UA > Corr > BoD.

But the opener in my EJ thread is still just as optimal, I'm just overly cautious.

[Manguadi]

Multiple people have tested it. Provided you are always refreshing Corruption with Haunt, then the 5% crit debuff will not be counted unless it was already applied. It's been proven, so there is plenty of reason to believe that, and unless you have evidence to actually prove otherwise then I don't think there is any reason to believe you.

Applying the 5% crit debuff before applying Corruption is, in my opinion, fairly important. Personally due to my latency (250ms) I like to make sure my client is fully aware the S&F debuff is up, so I go:

SB > Haunt > UA > Corr > BoD.

But the opener in my EJ thread is still just as optimal, I'm just overly cautious.

Can you provide a link to the testing? I'm suspicious only because you would need more than a thousand ticks of corruption where you cast shadow bolt at long distance, and landed a corruption before the bolt lands to test the crit rate as a buff. Then you would need to do it again where you apply shadow and flame before landing corruption. And then to make sure that it worked as a buff and not just a wonky debuff, you'd have to make sure that the crit rate didn't change when shadow and flame was applied before corruption, but faded before corruption ended. You could potentially parse WoL for this information, but it seems difficult to deduce a pattern when controls are an issue.

I have been bothering Zakalwe for some details on simcraft modelling, and this was one of his replies

We assume all crit is additive in the same way all hit is additive. Problem is, crit buffs aren't something you can easily test with any sort of accuracy. If you can come up with a practical way to test whether that talent is additive or multiplicative, be my guest

I just find it hard to believe that shadow and flame has been tested definitively, but not whether crit is additive or multiplicative.