Most recent Demo priority on SimCraft - Hard Summoning Felguards

[shapow]

checked simulationcraft, looks like a handful of spec's priorities got changed. Demonology is currently at 2nd of all the specs, and there was a pretty noticeable change they made.

summon_felguard,if=cooldown.demon_soul.remains<5&cooldown.metamorphosis.remains<5&!pet.fel guard.active

You summon your felguard in combat 5 seconds before you're going to meta/moonwell/ds, thus giving you a badass metamorphosis and his felstorm damage with moonwell, and then soulburn out a felhunter again.

Thoughts on this? Is this too idealistic, or can you see yourself doing this in combat?

You could do this 4 times a fight if you pre soulburned and soul harvested going in to combat.

Basically, we're just exploiting the living hell out of this moonwell chalice!

[Stridulent]

Could be ideal, I suppose. It isn't must different from an arcane mage evocating after each burn phase, except we're doing it at the beginning.

[Penguin FTW]

Yeah I'm not looking forward to this

[Viceversa]

: | .

[Greyarea]

I can see the reason behind it, but it just seems to be just too clunky in an already clunky spec.

Also is that just summoning the felguard, demonsouling then burning the felhunter again? cos teh felhunter scales better than the felguard from memory in a single target fight (sure AoE phases felguard is king).

Any idea on how much of a DPS gain doing this is in BiS 391/397 gear? If it's a minimal DPS gain, I'm just going to ignore it I think, too much BS for DPS gain. Saying that I'm still doing felguard, demon souling and soulburning a felhunter on the pull.

[Harsesis]

I've been doing this since I picked demo back up and simcraft is just now updating to it. I've brought up the pet swapping situation before and I guess others and now realizing it. To give you and idea on pet dps my felguard crits for about 18k with Legion Strike while my Fel Hunter crit upwards of 30k on Shadow Bite and they have the same 6 sec cd.

[kneeo]

Yeah I'm not looking forward to this

Me neither. Doesn't help that I really, really hate demonology for raiding. It's just so, boring. And soul fire doesn't feel like an execute anymore. But that's offtopic.

Also, as Greyarea said, it's just too clunky of a playstyle in a really clunky spec. They need to just fix whatever went horribly wrong with the felguard so it's useful for single target again, and then we don't have to worry about this obnoxious mid-combat pet swapping crap.

[Harsesis]

The simplest solution would be to buff Legion Strike to be on par with Shadow Bite but I don't know how that would affect overall balance.

[Hrishi]

How much DPS do you realistically lose if you don't bother with this and simply keep the Felguard up? In place of soulburning a Felhunter and then hardcasting a Felguard for each Demon Soul/Meta/Chalice proc. Was just wondering how much DPS you realistically lose..

[Micke]

Think I read felguard is 2k dps behind felhunter

you'd gain more just having the felhunter out all the time if you're not going to switch at all

[Jahrastafari]

checked simulationcraft, looks like a handful of spec's priorities got changed. Demonology is currently at 2nd of all the specs, and there was a pretty noticeable change they made.

summon_felguard,if=cooldown.demon_soul.remains<5&cooldown.metamorphosis.remains<5&!pet.fel guard.active

You summon your felguard in combat 5 seconds before you're going to meta/moonwell/ds, thus giving you a badass metamorphosis and his felstorm damage with moonwell, and then soulburn out a felhunter again.

Thoughts on this? Is this too idealistic, or can you see yourself doing this in combat?

You could do this 4 times a fight if you pre soulburned and soul harvested going in to combat.

Basically, we're just exploiting the living hell out of this moonwell chalice!

I certainly start the fight with the felguard, use his demon soul and felstorm before I soulburun summon the felhunter, but I leave the felhunter up for the rest of the fight.

In a Patchwerk-style, no movement fight I'm sure that hard summoning with Master Summoner would be a small DPS increase, but I don't think that would play out well in any actual encounter. The sim looks at the hard summon as a loss of 2.5 shadowbolts, but in the more chaotic world of actual encounters, you're going to be missing shadowflames, immolate falling off from missing a Hand of Gul'Dan, muti-dots falling off secondary or focus targets or you'll find yourself forced into heavy movement moments after the hard summon, negating much of the bonus.

It's just not realistic in an actual encounter, I won't be doing it.

---------- Post added 2011-07-22 at 08:18 AM ----------

How much DPS do you realistically lose if you don't bother with this and simply keep the Felguard up? In place of soulburning a Felhunter and then hardcasting a Felguard for each Demon Soul/Meta/Chalice proc. Was just wondering how much DPS you realistically lose..

Start with the Felguard, pre-pot, demon soul, chalice, meta, doomguard and then felstorm. Soul burn the felhunter in immediately after the felstorm and leave him up for the remainder of the fight.

Leaving the Felguard in for the duration of the encounter is going to be a 2-3k dps loss.

[Deleted]

...The sim looks at the hard summon as a loss of 2.5 shadowbolts, but in the more chaotic world of actual encounters, you're going to be missing shadowflames, immolate falling off from missing a Hand of Gul'Dan, muti-dots falling off secondary or focus targets or you'll find yourself forced into heavy movement moments after the hard summon, negating much of the bonus...

The sim does not equate the summon cast time to Shadowbolts, it simply attempts to perform the summon at a time that abilities with a better DPET than Shadowbolt don't need to be cast. You could do this yourself in actual play just the same.

Given that the only time you pet swap is just before you're about to get a huge buff for doing so, delaying using hard-hitting cooldown abilities a little such that they gain advantage of this bonus doesn't actually sound like that bad an idea anyay.

[Jahrastafari]

The sim does not equate the summon cast time to Shadowbolts, it simply attempts to perform the summon at a time that abilities with a better DPET than Shadowbolt don't need to be cast. You could do this yourself in actual play just the same.

Given that the only time you pet swap is just before you're about to get a huge buff for doing so, delaying using hard-hitting cooldown abilities a little such that they gain advantage of this bonus doesn't actually sound like that bad an idea anyay.

I just don't see it playing out. While it put Demo to the top of the heap the zero-movement Patchwerk sim, the hard summoning priority list absolutely decimated Demonology in the heavy-movement Patchwerk sim. Put the old priority list back into the heavy movement sim and watch Demonology pick up 2k+ dps.

On the rare occasion that the opportunity presents itself I'd certainly take advantage of it, but to make it my default priority every 2 minutes just won't work, IMO.

[wanax]

I had no idea that the difference between the two pets was THAT much...ffs. WTB more balance more my spec specific pet.

---------- Post added 2011-07-22 at 12:44 PM ----------

Me neither. Doesn't help that I really, really hate demonology for raiding. It's just so, boring. And soul fire doesn't feel like an execute anymore. But that's offtopic.

Also, as Greyarea said, it's just too clunky of a playstyle in a really clunky spec. They need to just fix whatever went horribly wrong with the felguard so it's useful for single target again, and then we don't have to worry about this obnoxious mid-combat pet swapping crap.

I don't see where demo is anywhere near as boring as Affl right now. I mean you just app dots and only have to reapp like one of them if you do it right.

[saosin]

I've been doing this since I picked demo back up and simcraft is just now updating to it. I've brought up the pet swapping situation before and I guess others and now realizing it. To give you and idea on pet dps my felguard crits for about 18k with Legion Strike while my Fel Hunter crit upwards of 30k on Shadow Bite and they have the same 6 sec cd.

Im sorry but what are you rambling about? How I read your post you seem like you think this thread is about felhunter out dpsing felguard single target and that have been known for months. This is not relevant to topic what so ever though...

Furthermore, felhunter crit for 80k+ with proccs

[Greyarea]

I've been doing this since I picked demo back up and simcraft is just now updating to it. I've brought up the pet swapping situation before and I guess others and now realizing it. To give you and idea on pet dps my felguard crits for about 18k with Legion Strike while my Fel Hunter crit upwards of 30k on Shadow Bite and they have the same 6 sec cd.

I honestly don't know your gear level or stats, but if your felpup is only hitting for 30k crits in a raid setting, there is something SERIOUSLY wrong. My felpup for my lock in ilvl 374 or so crits for over 70k when all is well with the world. I have no idea what damage legion strike does at my gear level in a raid situation, I've never looked, or if I have, it's not been fantastic enough to make me notice. Also I've been lazy and still a week off from getitng the chalice, I forgot about dailies for a few days here and there...woops . With that up, I'm expecting 80k+ crits from teh fel pup if it aligns right, and nice doombolts.

I MAY try this pet swapping out when we do heroic shannox again as thats pretty much a stand and nuke the shit outta teh boss fight from my point of view, or maybe firedruid dude, cant spell his name. I would concider this for Alysrazor. It would be worth it to line everything up on the crash and burn phases. After all target swapping and moving hurts demo more than the other lock specs, so may as well optimise at the best time. It would also be good to use on Beth phase 2, phase 1 would be a waste really if your demo, you will more than likely be on add duty whilst teh DK's and stuff blow the hell out of the drones.

Looking at it now, I can see how it would be good to do, but as I've stated before, the spec is very clunky and adding this just makes it feel like instead of round wheels for our new car, we went out and bought triangle shaped ones and are wondering why people don't want to ride with us.

[Frewt]

The timing on this would be crucial.

Remember, your current Demon is stunned for something like 5s when you start to summon a new one, so you'd have to begin the Summon Felguard just after your Felpuppy's Shadow Bite.

All in all I doubt this will be worth it on anything other than a pure Patchwerk fight as it just seems impractical.

It's similar to abandoning Haste entirely and reforging purely to Mastery - While it beats out a 1993 (1999) Haste profile in SimCraft by 100-200 DPS, in reality a single second of movement during Meta and you've lost the benefit already. I've been simming and Raid-testing the former extensively and it just isn't practical (and as such I'll be moving back to a 1993 Haste setup, atleast until I can get my hands on more HC Firelands loot).

[kushlol]

On a very specific fights that could come out in the future I could see this being worth it but with the fights currently in this tier I would definitely never hard summon a felgaurd. Not only is it risky due to the fact you might have to move while hard summoning it aloso stuns your pet which is already a dps loss. not to mention you will be missing out on putting things on cd's already in the basic rotation ex: HoG,Shadowflame, or just keeping dots up.

If it could be done without being so clunky and just be seamless instant swaps to pets it would definitely be a boost but the fact that we'd have to hardcast it during heroic encounters is extremely shitty and just won't work imo.

[Frewt]

They should swap Demonic Empowerment with Master Summoner (so only Demo can get Master Summoner and Affli/Destro can get Demonic Empowerment for PvP).

Then they could make Master Summoner reduce Summon Demon cast times to 1s.

Do want.

[avengingbt]

The timing on this would be crucial.

Remember, your current Demon is stunned for something like 5s when you start to summon a new one, so you'd have to begin the Summon Felguard just after your Felpuppy's Shadow Bite.

All in all I doubt this will be worth it on anything other than a pure Patchwerk fight as it just seems impractical.

Whilst I agree the practicality of the priority list is definately questionable, your first statement is simply not true. The simulationcraft priority list uses the following action:

summon_felguard,if=cooldown.demon_soul.remains<5&cooldown.metamorphosis.remains<5&!pet.fel guard.active

In other words, it summons the felguard if the cooldown of demon soul AND meta is less than 5 seconds, and if your felguard is not already active.

There is absolutely no mention of the cooldown of shadow bite. This priority list does not require shadow bite cooldown watching in order for it to be the current highest dps priority list. It may be true that carefully planning your summoning around your shadow bite cooldown could lead to higher dps, and I may test that theory out by modifiying it, but at the moment you do not need to do it for demonology to come out ahead.

Edit: I've just been playing around with the priority lists for demo and modified it in order to delay casting summon felguard unless your shadow bite cooldown has 4 or more seconds remaining (Basically to stop it from casting summon felguard if there is going to be a shadow bite coming soon). I actually found that I lost approximately 200 dps by doing that. I guess it's because every time you reach a DS/Meta phase you have the potential to delay using Meta/DS by upto 5 seconds. If that happens 2-3 times, you could potentially miss 15 seconds of Meta/DS throughout the fight.

I also tried lowering the condition to only delay casting felguard if the cooldown of shadow bite is 1 second or less, and that resulted in a loss of approximately 20 dps.

Basically the point is there is absolutely no point in worrying about the shadow bite cooldown unless you are 100% certain that delaying the use of DS/Meta will not impact on the total uptimes. On simcraft it varies the fight length, so there's no way of knowing whether delaying casts will result in loss of uptime or not. It stands to reason that delaying the use of ds/meta will be a dps increase if you KNOW the duration of the fight will not be a problem, but on a fight like simcraft where the fight length is unknown, it's a dps loss more often than not.