What is the definite and optimal Affliction opener?

[Scathbais]

This is my opener;

1. Pre-pot
2. Pre-cast Haunt
3. Dark Soul/Berserking/(Synapse)
4. SoulBurn:SoulSwap
5. Malefic Grasp to fish for procs
6. SoulBurn:SoulSwap when all trinkets/berserking/dark soul are up
7. MG spam
8. SB/SS near the end of multiple procs in order to extend the spell power buff.

Hey Xyronic, you don't reapply haunt during this phase? Or did you forget to add it to your list?

[Bonkura]

Potion of the Jade Serpent
Haunt
Dark Soul
SB:SS
MG until both of my trinkets proc
SB:SS
MG/Haunt when it drops
SB:SS once my trinkets/Dark Soul is about to expire

You're overriding dots without not being close to utilizing Pandemic with your 3rd SB:SS. If you just do a Fel Flame after your 2nd Haunt you're saving a Soul Shard for a 3rd Haunt (which you should've gotten from Nightfall by here). Your opening can be greatly screwed by RNG.

[Xyronic]

Hey Xyronic, you don't reapply haunt during this phase? Or did you forget to add it to your list?

Of course I do, just didn't throw it in there. Kinda assumed people know to refresh haunt whenever you can during this burn area XD

[Deleted]

You're overriding dots without not being close to utilizing Pandemic with your 3rd SB:SS. If you just do a Fel Flame after your 2nd Haunt you're saving a Soul Shard for a 3rd Haunt (which you should've gotten from Nightfall by here). Your opening can be greatly screwed by RNG.

well, it isnt so much about utilizing pandemic as it is about getting supercharged dots up for as long as possible, keep in mind that doing what you are saying wont affect agony, so you'll either have to ignore that or use another gcd to reapply it, a gcd you could have use to MG. personally, i tend to wait with the haunt until after i get my supercharged dots up so i can take advantage of my dots with a full duration of haunt.

[Bonkura]

well, it isnt so much about utilizing pandemic as it is about getting supercharged dots up for as long as possible, keep in mind that doing what you are saying wont affect agony, so you'll either have to ignore that or use another gcd to reapply it, a gcd you could have use to MG. personally, i tend to wait with the haunt until after i get my supercharged dots up so i can take advantage of my dots with a full duration of haunt.

You cap out Agony with the 2nd SB:SS. And I don't know about you, but I have plenty of procs that are gone at the time of that 3rd SB:SS that has been suggested.

[Deleted]

---------- Post added 2013-02-12 at 02:24 PM ----------

[/COLOR]

Stop, pls.

There is nothing wrong with this castsequence macro....
/castsequence reset=5 Curse of Elements, Haunt, Dark Soul: Misery, Soulburn, Soul Swap

after the potion and if the boss is taged i can simply smash this button until the initial dots are up...
-> doing so it is the guaranteed way to get up the intial dots as fast as possible without struggeling doing every single spell "manually" (via keyboard, mouse special buttons, or whatever)

[warlockSTAR]

Any of you guys put this in a macro?

I just pre haunt and use macro (/cast Dark Soul: Misery /use Sha-Skin Gloves /use Potion of the Jade Serpent /cast Curse of the Elements), then SB:SS macro, MG spam etc.

[Bonkura]

If you do that you are pulling the boss because... well, you need to drink your potion before pulling the boss. You also waste a global of DS and Synapse Springs with your CotE. Put your CD's in same macro (DS, Gloves, Blood Fury, Berserker etc). Then your opening sequence should be Potion->Haunt->CotE->CD's+SB:SS->MG. As you can see what you could possibly do is macro your CD's and SB:SS together, but that's just another bind for me and I keep the two macros next to each other (in my case shift+3 and shift+4).

Also, castsequence macros for a spec that requires 30 APM is laughable.

[Deleted]

as i do not have OnUse Items (prof: tailoring, enchanting) and beeing human race i can skip those of course.
as i'm the only warlock in the raid (10 man) i have to put coe (no boomkin - rogue not always in raid)

Also, castsequence macros for a spec that requires 30 APM is laughable.

-> thats only for the start of a fight (what this thread is about)
-> afterwards normal rotation (with paying attention to intprocs -> affdots) - spells via mouse special buttons

br,
boulder

[Bonkura]

Putting up CotE after DS is still a waste of global.

[Deleted]

You cap out Agony with the 2nd SB:SS. And I don't know about you, but I have plenty of procs that are gone at the time of that 3rd SB:SS that has been suggested.

you're prolly right, but the fact still remains that the optimal opener is all about getting your fully procced dots up and have them up for as long as possible and thats the whole point about the 3rd SB:SS is to do it, while you still have all your procs up. ofc it can be debated as to whether or not it is even needed.

[Bonkura]

Fact? I've never seen anyone prove anything about an optimal opener. That's the problem with this entire topic.

Standard durations for the dots are Agony: 24 sec, Corruption: 18 sec and UA: 14 sec. MG with DS up is around 3 sec long.

minutes:seconds:centiseconds
-00:02:00 Potion+Haunt
00:00:00 Curse of the Elements
00:01:50 CD's+SB:SS (dots now at 24s/18s/14s)
00:03:00 MG
00:06:00 MG (Both trinkets proc'd at 00:04:50 but we decided to finish this MG)
00:09:00 SB:SS (dots now at 36s/27s/20.5s = all max but 0.5s on UA)
00:10:50 Haunt
00:12:50 MG
00:15:50 MG
00:18:50 Haunt
00:20:00 SB:SS because trinket procs are almost gone

Before your 3rd SB:SS (which is your 6h used Soul Shard, which you magically gained from Nightfall, even if you didn't have 40 ticks of Corruption yet) your dots are at 25s/16s/9.5s. That's 1s above Agony's, 2s below Corruption's and 4.5's below UA's standard duration. At this point you're telling me that you want to SB:SS again? Your option could simply be to Fel Flame to put all your dots above normal duration, followed by a last MG with DS and then use that Soul Shard later to use Haunt again and get some final value of your powered up dots.

Not convincing, but I'm not going to dig deeper into the math of it because I might get stuck in a hole I can't get up from . With this point of view of I just don't understand your reasoning.

[Deleted]

bonkura, you're completely right in what you're saying if you're focusing on utilizing pandemic but that isnt my point, im not interested in utilizing pandemic at all during the opener, im interested in getting supercharged dots up on the target for as long as possible, as long as the final SB:SS maximizes all my supercharged dot's duration, im happy but you're prolly right, when you say that my "opener" could simply be done with using fel flame but i still feel that a SB:SS is the better option, its just a matter of what our focus is.

also, just to clearify, i normally dont use my first haunt until after i get my supercharged dots up on the target and i dont use the last haunt on your list until after ive refreshed my dots when the procs are about to expire, as it gives me a bigger chance to get a nightfall proc or 2 in the meanwhile, so it would be something like:

00:02:00 Potion
00:00:00 Curse of the Elements
00:01:50 CD's+SB:SS (dots now at 24s/18s/14s)
00:03:00 MG
00:06:00 MG (Both trinkets proc'd at 00:04:50 but we decided to finish this MG)
00:09:00 SB:SS (dots now at 36s/27s/20.5s = all max but 0.5s on UA)
00:10:50 Haunt
00:12:50 MG
00:15:50 MG
00:20:00 SB:SS because trinket procs are almost gone
00:20:50ish Haunt(assuming ive gotten atleast 1 nightfall proc)

doing it this way will make it fit perfectly in terms of shard usage assuming you get atleast 1 nightfall proc during this time as you remove the first haunt you use, as i dont feel its necesary to use a shard for haunt on your standard dots or to be more precise, i refuse to use haunt while i have standard dots up on target unless i have 4 shards already.

edit: saw that i had made a double paste of the rotation list, should be fixed now.

[Bonkura]

Not using a Haunt for a double MG that does have CD's+potion in the beginning makes this even more confusing to me. You're partly ignoring Haunt but still relying on RNG for your burst. The argument you're making about supercharged dots is still kind of hanging in the air and being hard to grasp without the facts(?) you were claiming to have of it being somehow obvious that we should aim for.

I'll be waiting eagerly to see what results Rustjive will be able to find. :P

[Surutcra]

The math to back any opener will be complicated or make important simplifications.

First, you need to define what optimal means : maximizing expected damage, minimum damage, maximum damage, expected - lambda*std_dev (procs timing can change things a lot, especially Jade Spirit which is unpredictable and EoT which may take a long time to proc) ? Also need to specify the timeframe (i.e. maximize damage after 30s, 1 min, 1min20s, +infinity), because as strange as it may sound, this can change the optimal course of action.

Assuming you go for the simplest one, i.e. maximizing expected damage @time=+infinity, then this pretty much comes down to comparing "1 shard out of CDs + FF damage VS increased agony damage for the ~10s before the final SB:SS refresh + SS damage". But also taking into consideration the randomness that EoT may take a long time to proc and you may not want to wait for it before refreshing. If ayone is willing to go through the effort of doing that math, I'd be glad to see the result !

[Rustjive]

The randomness of EoT is big but ultimately all the other procs (which all proc very quickly) and the set-in-stone nature of the pre-pot limit it. It's the pre-pot specifically that sets a pretty good bound for the duration of the opener, and I don't see why we wouldn't try to maximize expected damage over an infinite timeframe (which is why a lot of these 3 SB:SS openers won't make the cut).

I agree that there would be simplifications being made, but I think they're very close to reality.

[Deleted]

Not using a Haunt for a double MG that does have CD's+potion in the beginning makes this even more confusing to me. You're partly ignoring Haunt but still relying on RNG for your burst. The argument you're making about supercharged dots is still kind of hanging in the air and being hard to grasp without the facts(?) you were claiming to have of it being somehow obvious that we should aim for.

I'll be waiting eagerly to see what results Rustjive will be able to find. :P

well, it wasnt supposed to be an actual arguement, but rather an explaination of what i prefer to do but as i said in a previous post, you may have a point about using fel flame instead of the 3rd SB:SS and then use that shard for along with the cd+pot dots. ive just always done it this way and old habbits die hard, i guess.

[Deleted]

but cant it be right that in the first 10 sec of the fight u have used all your SS ?