Asking for an well-versed aff-lock to point out any issues please.

[Delia]

I honestly doubt it makes a terribly huge difference either way, when I'm not paying attention and miss the countdown, I just lead with Haunt, cause casting a "non-free" shadow bolt is lame.

But having your DoTs up for basically the duration of haunt's cast time (1.15 seconds for me) longer, is not even a tic, and it makes it so you have 1 less stack of SE, and no S&F until you reach your filler phase, which is in an ideal situation with my current raid buffed haste (~30%) about 6.4 seconds into the fight.

0: haunt, Corruption
1.15: UA
2.3: BoD (dunno how in your example your UA's cast time+GCD is less than your Corruption's GCD)
4.45: Shadowbolt
6.37+Travel Time: Shadowbolt hits, you gain 5% crit, and 5% damage from SE
8.24+Travel Time: Second Shadowbolt hits, last stack of SE is gained.

Lost Damage: ~10% damage missing from ~2-3 DoT Tics of Corruption,
Lost Damage: ~10% damage missing from 2 DoT Tics of UA
Has all 3 stacks of SE about 8.3 seconds into the fight

0: Shadow Bolt, Haunt Cast
1.15: Corruption
2.3: UA
4.45: BoD
6: Shadowbolt
7.92+Travel Time: Shadowbolt Hits, you gain the last stack of SE

Lost Damage: ~1.15 seconds less of UA, Corruption, and BoD... not even 1 tic of any of them.
Has all 3 stacks of SE by about 8 seconds into the fight

In either situation, any number of different procs could be up at different times (I have Lightweave, Power Torrent, and DMC:Volcano)
Both situations I'd activate Demon Soul and Rune of Zeth before casting my first DoT.

Edit: I have heard before that S&F is the exception to the rule (for debuffs), and doesn't auto-update your DoTs, meaning your BoD if opening with haunt would be missing 5% crit for its entire duration. Haunt does auto-update for DoTs.

[Manguadi]

Yeah you don't get the crit benefit for bod because of the way s&f works. UA glyph appears to reduce the gcd as well as the cast time. I agree that pushing bod down in the priority is an increase, but EJ suggests you do it before corr and ua.

So in your example I'd be 5% behind in SE stacks for 4 ticks of corr, and 3 ticks of UA. Say UA is ticking for 3500 and corr 3300 for me. His UA is doing 3675 (3859 with 5% crit) and his corr is doing 3465 (3638 with 5% crit). So I'll get about 4 ticks of corr before I catch up the difference (~9 seconds), and 3 ticks of UA. He'll get 3 ticks of corr and 2 ticks of UA in that time. So that gets him an extra 1753 damage, but I've gotten an extra tick of both before I catch up. Also, at 1.15 gcd I'd tick at around 2.3 seconds, so ua would be 1522 dps, and corr would be 1435 dps. Since he's lost 1.15 seconds, he's lost 3400 damage from corr and ua.

I'm just not convinced that 10% more damage on your best spells is worth waiting to cast your best spells. How can it be optimal to open with lower dpet?

[Delia]

How can it be optimal to open with lower dpet?

dpet takes cast times into account, if shadowbolt and haunt were both 0 second cast time, and had no GCD (that part is key), shadowbolt would likely have a higher dpet. And your first cast, since no time is wasted (assuming you cast it before pull) is essentially a 0 second cast, with no GCD.

That's also why if you miss the countdown, you should just cast haunt.

[Manguadi]

Yes, I agree, but I would assume that corr->ua->bod->haunt, or wait for procs and hit bod a few gcds later would be superior to a cast time haunt opener.

[Subetei]

The problem I have with the ej opening is that in order to gain 5% crit [for all the casters in the raid if you don't have a fire mage which no one does] you push your highest dpet spells back in the casting order.

i think you are missing something.

[Alhazrid]

I truly appreciate the assistance everyone. That was the only log that gave me a real shot at getting a patchwerk style comparison, but as you can see, for some reason the raid just fell to shit there after our heroic attempts. given the spriest died, and i believe DG was on cd for that pull, I will focus quite a bit on obtaining better dot uptime and lining up BoD with SP procs. given the dead spiest, and lack of dg, am i at least doing passably for my gear? i hope its not as horrid as it sounds :O

[Manguadi]

i think you are missing something.

A good point.

[Brauhm]

You want to open with shadow bolt because its a raid dps increase as well as a technically slight personal DPS increase since any dots applied before shadow bolt won't have shadow and flame. In addition, you should be launching shadow bolt so it lands just as the fight starts, timed right it makes the loss of dot ticks that could be there minimal.

[Alhazrid]

latest log: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=6654&e=6878

still needs a lot of work, but learning is occurring