Affliction T16 2piece set bonus :)

[Deleted]

I was playing on the ptr last night as affliction and wondered what the uptime on the T16 2 set bonus would be if i had a few UA's ticking.
The buff is 'Empowered Grasp: Malefic Grasp and Drain Soul's damaging effects are increased by 15%'
So i went to the test dummies and SB:SS'd on to one target and manually applied UA on the other 3.
I was using Breath and Wush (no UVLS!) sat at 13222 haste (not 5% buffed) and with 4 UA's ticking the 2 set buff NEVER wore off. In fact it was constantly being overwritten!
I then wanted to see what it would be like if UA was applied to a secondary target, whilst full DoT's and MG were rolling on the main target.
Again, the 2 set buff NEVER wore off.
However if i only applied DoT's to one target, the 2set buff would appear occasionally.
I was playing without add ons (no skada) so i didn't know what the damage difference between the two was; it felt pretty good though having another buff up

The question is, is it worth rolling a 2nd UA?
By 'damaging effects' does it mean that the damage MG and DS deal is increased by 15% or the instant damage of the DoT's on target increased by 15%; or both?
Is the damage lost from MG uptime on main target to cast UA on another target, gained back (+more) by having the 2set buff up all the time?

I'm no mathematician and don't have the first clue about how the game works 'behind the scenes', so if anybody who is and is interested by this wants to test this, then please post your findings here.

If this is worth it, then i'm sure there are scenarios where it'd be worth just keeping a UA rolling on a target whilst nuking another. (No point wasting shards on SB:SSing the 2nd target when they could be spent on Haunts on nuke target?)

thanks, look forward to any discussion
Morz

[rijn dael]

At work so I can't test - but if you want to confirm dots being scaled, or if it is only the drain ticks, unequip everything you have with procs (weapons, trinkets, cloaks(tailor) etc) and repeat, checking the dot damage done on malefic grasp ticks with and without the buff.

[Deleted]

It's only 1 global more to copy over an entire row of dots using Soul Swap (no SB), and that way you get a full pandemic UA instead of a regular duration one. So effectively it's only 0.5 GCD more expensive.

I don't think there are many fights where there's a second target you don't want dots on anyway. For 2 globals, you get so much damage on your secondary target compared to channeling MG for that time. I don't think there is any mob in SoO that needs to die so badly that MG on it is better than dots on a second target. Increasing 2set uptime reinforces that even more.

Regarding your first question, it increases all damage done by MG/DS; i.e. the direct ticks as well as all the triggered dot damage.

[rijn dael]

It's only 1 global more to copy over an entire row of dots using Soul Swap (no SB), and that way you get a full pandemic UA instead of a regular duration one. So effectively it's only 0.5 GCD more expensive.

I am not sure how clean that ends up as a decision, once you factor in dots at different points in their lifecycle, and procs on yourself etc.

I wrote a dodgy little addon to work like affdots for soulswap on the ptr, based off the expected dpct of casting fresh dots vs the dpct of soulswap (damage of all three dots remaining / 2gcd's of cast time). Even accounting for coa stacks being reset on a 'fresh set', I found it seemed to only be a gain about half the time to copy from my target, rather than recast. I might be over-valuing buffs, but they seem to have a bigger impact than the extra gcd, as soon as your dot expirations aren't aligned.

After the first set of dots on a new target, I can't see soulswap becoming a good approach to propagating dots either, because you lose your existing dots remaining damage - they don't extend via pandemic.

Of course on the pull, if you sbss to refresh your dots as all your procs go up, and then standard soulswap to spread the full pandemic extended and proc-buffed dots onto secondary targets, it is a huge gain. But that isn't most of your dot refreshes for a fight. You also won't have uvls giving a huge incentive to clip before pandemic-range on the dots.

Assuming your current buffs aren't worse than what is on the boss, when adds spawn you could sbss the boss to get at least somewhat extended dots, and then soulswap those dots onto the adds, but you have already given up a gcd in the sbss, which puts you at parity with triple-dotting the first add - so your gain is whatever duration extension pandemic gave you, at a loss of any dot damage was above 50% duration remaining. In this case an addon could tell you if it is worth sbss'ing to then soulswap your dots around, but at best that is a grey value, assuming you can spend the next 3+ gcd's on dot swapping, rather than losing any more dot duration as they keep ticking down.

[Deleted]

any one mind telling what our 2 t16 bonuses does, seems they changed since i read them=)

[Deleted]

the 2set for Affliction is 'Every time your Unstable Affliction crits, it has a 50% chance to increase Malefic Grasp and Drain Soul's damaging effects by 15%'

[Deleted]

i think its a small comparision to singletarget dmg in multitarget scenarios. if we get UA on more than 1 Target it nearly 100% active.

[Deleted]

Hmm very interesting idea for an addon to show the value of Soul Swap vs hard-cast dots. Like you said, if you have full pandemic dots with mass procs (such as on the pull), it's obviously better to SS. It gets a lot more tricky when your current buffs are lower/higher than your dots, or with a lower duration on your main target.

It will be very hard though, because it depends not only on the dots you have on your primary target plus your current buffs. It is also very important how long and how strong your remaining dots are on the secondary target you want to refresh.

The way I see this working out is you get a full set of pandemic extended dots with all procs on your main target, and then you copy that to any other targets with SS. Then you Haunt your main target and channel away. At first, your dots from the pull are very powerful, so overwriting them is almost never worth it. So refresh all UAs manually, since they run out a long time before Agony. After that, Corruption will run out on all target with ~6s remaining on Agony. I don't think losing a couple seconds of Corruption on your secondary targets is a big deal, since it deals pretty low damage and you only get Nightfall from one of them. So you refresh your Corruption on main target as well as Agony. Then it starts getting tricky, because if you SS now you are just getting a normal Agony and Corruption (UA is alrdy the same as main target).

Actually this is looking very interesting for how we play ^_^ You now have to consider SB:SS vs SS vs hard-cast, and have to consider the value for a Haunt for the shard. Considering many fights have multiple targets, this could make it quite hard to play close to optimal.

Does SS make your Agony start at 10?

[rijn dael]

Agony via 'normal' ss is an exact copy, ie if 4 on inhale, 4 on exhale. Note that exhale completely ignores existing dots on that target - you can wipe off a 10stack agony with a 1stack if you aren't paying attention.
Agony via sbss is whatever was there before, or 1 if a fresh cast.

I really hate the idea of allowing dot downtime (ie, letting corruption fall off, then refreshing when things are better). Dots are so much better dpct than anything else, that I find that really hard to justify. With tri-dot MG and haunt on a primary target, it might end up being the correct decision, but it still feels wrong.

I miss wotlk/cata affi :P I dislike needing anything other than a dot timer to do best dps, it doesn't really feel like skill if all I do is obey an addon - and there is no way this will be human judge-able.

As far as my addon, I am currently showing red/amber/green style, where red = hardcast is better than swap by far, green = swap is best by far, and anything in the middle is "sbss if you can, otherwise do what you want". Of course sbss is always better than hardcasting, but the player can make that decision imo.
I am also only comparing your current target against a theoretical 'new' target with no dots on it. I can't predict what you want to inhale from, or exhale too. I can tell you which would be best to inhale from at any point in time I guess. Maybe an alert for "you should swap focus > target" or "you should swap target > focus".. but I still don't like that, it is too much to pay attention to.