[Classic] Why not 0/30/21?

[Angrie]

Most Warlocks will run SM/Ruin:
https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...50500051220001

or DS/Ruin:
https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...50500051220001


I played in vanilla and played SM/ruin almost exclusively. However, being that it's been many years later with a much better understanding of WoW, why isn't 0/30/21 used?
https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...50500251020001

The way i figure it. SM/Ruin has mostly useless talents for shadowbolt spamming other than Nightfall - but only if you're allowed to put up corruption (not likely).
DS/Ruin has you taking a bunch of pet talents only to sacrifice it for 15% damage.

0/30/21 however, has no downsides other than pet death. You get Improved Succubus (30% more LoP damage), Improved Lash of Pain (50% CDR on LoP), 10% to ALL damage, 20% more pet melee damage, 15% more total stamina, and 20% bigger healthstones. The spec still has all the benefits of 21 points in Destruction, but with the added benefit of Master Demonologist providing 10% more damage to both Shadowbolting and RoF/Hellfire.

Is there evidence to support 0/30/21 being bad? or is it solely community opinion?

[Nemyhlol]

Pets die extremely quickly without 90% avoidance -> damage gain = 0
Succubus ooms in 12 seconds -> damage gain = 0

The 5% bonus from sac is more than your pet will ever contribute because the first cleave or aoe effect will literally one shot it.

[Angrie]

Succubus ooms in 12 seconds -> damage gain = 0

Saying things like this immediately makes me dismiss your whole comment, it's simply not true.

[Zinnin]

That is the spec that I've been playing because I wanted to know if it was more viable to play with a pet than how people remembered. I think the spec is strictly better on 6/11 of the fights, and during most gameplay.

There are fights where there is heavy AoE around the boss, and it is impossible to keep pets up on those fights. That said, you still have Demonic Sacrifice and still have the option to sac your pet, you are really just missing out on 5/5 Imp Corruption and 2/2 Imp Life Tap.

Fights where you can use a pet without much risk: Lucifron, Magmadar, Garr, Sulfuron Harbinger, Magmadar, Onyxia
Fights where it's outright impossibe: Shazzrah, Baron Geddon, Ragnaros
Fights where it's unlikely to live: Majordomo, Gehennas (I've had some luck here)

Succubus can go oom fairly quick, but that isn't super relevant since most of her damage is AutoAttack anyways. I think Improved Lash of Pain is actually a DPS loss because of how bad it is and it will take a stack off of Improve Shadow Bolt. I wouldn't be surprise if just turning off Lash of Pain would end up being an overall raid DPS increase.

This is the spec that I've been playing with: https://classic.wowhead.com/talent-c...50500051220001
If you wanted to dig through some logs, I have been playing this spec for the last 2-3 weeks: https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/cha...atiesh/zinnin#

[solarfallz]

It's a well-known spec usually called "MD/Ruin", and it was used by all high end raiders until they nerfed jumper cables. After the cable nerf it generally wasn't worth going past DS as your pet gets shredded by many (most?) bosses and damage output is pretty similar even if your pet stays alive, with MD doing only a bit more DPS but only if your pet stays alive. It's plenty viable though, especially if you have healers that will keep the succubus up.

[kranur]

Is there evidence to support 0/30/21 being bad? or is it solely community opinion?

It's bad mainly because the succubus can't stay alive most of the time. Also pets don't scale at all with gear, so even if it stayed alive, as you get better gear, it won't be able to keep up with the extra 5% from sac.

[Angrie]

It's bad mainly because the succubus can't stay alive most of the time. Also pets don't scale at all with gear, so even if it stayed alive, as you get better gear, it won't be able to keep up with the extra 5% from sac.

Lol What? Pets do scale with gear...

LoP has a spell coefficient of 42.90%, so it does scale very good for a pet ability, it just has a low base damage of 99.
Succubus auto damage has a spell coefficient 4.28% (compare to agony's 10% per tick)
Shadow Bolt is 85.7%
Confirmed on WoWhead and WoWWiki.

I did the math @ 500 spell power. The MD/Ruin pet build will do higher dps than DS/Ruin by roughly 3-5%. However my math does not add in sunderarmor, battle shout, or other debuffs that increase the succubus' damage.

It seems it boils down to if you can keep your pet alive. In classic it's pretty simple to pull your pet back, since there isn't much complexity in spell rotation. Honestly other than fights that truly destroy your pet with consistent aoe, it's a dps increase. Thinking of BWL: Nef for example will shadowflame when landing and kill your pet, but you can Fel Dom-resummon since the fight is long. Flamegor, Firemaw, Vael, Chromaggus are all manageable with pet micromanagement/group comp. Broodlord and Razorgore and may require a Fel-Dom summon. Ebonroc is no issue.

[kranur]

Lol What? Pets do scale with gear...

LoP has a spell coefficient of 42.90%, so it does scale very good for a pet ability, it just has a low base damage of 99.
Succubus auto damage has a spell coefficient 4.28% (compare to agony's 10% per tick)
Shadow Bolt is 85.7%
Confirmed on WoWhead and WoWWiki.

I did the math @ 500 spell power. The MD/Ruin pet build will do higher dps than DS/Ruin by roughly 3-5%. However my math does not add in sunderarmor, battle shout, or other debuffs that increase the succubus' damage.

It seems it boils down to if you can keep your pet alive. In classic it's pretty simple to pull your pet back, since there isn't much complexity in spell rotation. Honestly other than fights that truly destroy your pet with consistent aoe, it's a dps increase. Thinking of BWL: Nef for example will shadowflame when landing and kill your pet, but you can Fel Dom-resummon since the fight is long. Flamegor, Firemaw, Vael, Chromaggus are all manageable with pet micromanagement/group comp. Broodlord and Razorgore and may require a Fel-Dom summon. Ebonroc is no issue.

Then have fun managing/resummoning your pet. I remember trying out to swap some gear and there were no chnages to pet's stats, maybe I was blind. But I'm pretty sure scaling was added in BC, are you sure you're reading classic data?

[Angrie]

Then have fun managing/resummoning your pet. I remember trying out to swap some gear and there were no chnages to pet's stats, maybe I was blind. But I'm pretty sure scaling was added in BC, are you sure you're reading classic data?

https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=11780/lash-of-pain

School Damage (Shadow)
Value: 98 (SP mod: 0.429)

WoWWiki shows the same information except in a percentage form: 42.9%

[enigma77]

I tried this in MC with the 5p tier 1 bonus (100 pet resist against all) and a fully buffed Succubus. The result was that the pet constantly died.

I suppose if you asked the healers to heal it might work.

[Kaesebrezen]

https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=11780/lash-of-pain

School Damage (Shadow)
Value: 98 (SP mod: 0.429)

WoWWiki shows the same information except in a percentage form: 42.9%

Now you have to shows that pets inherit your spellpower (or some part of it) for the coefficient to have any effect.

[Kagthul]

Lol What? Pets do scale with gear...
.

... not in Vanilla/Classic they dont.

So.. lolwut indeed.

[kranur]

https://classic.wowhead.com/spell=11780/lash-of-pain

School Damage (Shadow)
Value: 98 (SP mod: 0.429)

WoWWiki shows the same information except in a percentage form: 42.9%

That's for the succubus's shadow spell damage. Not yours. Would have been absurd to have an increase of 40% of your sp lol.

[EvreliaGaming]

I think a lot of people really underestimate the utility that MD offers aswell. 90% of the time in BWL the thing capping your damage is your threat, not how much spell power you have. For Horde especially the 20% reduction in threat is huge.

[demonicpanda]

MD/Ruin was a very underestimated spec and is 90% of the reason I'm tempted to play classic. (Havent yet because school...)

Not needing resist gear and gaining dps from that was big. Less threat when you're in the tank group allowing you to go ham also being an option.