When to second pot ? [Bloodlust Vs. Execute phase]

[Deleted]

Hey,

this question might have been asked one million times. But here we go again. At what point do you guys second pot ?

In a fight were bloodlust is used before execute phase, which is better ? To pop it while bloodlust is active, or wait with the pot till execute phase with twist of fate and SWD ? I know there is a lot of different scenarios were one solution might out weight the other (like dmg bonus on Velhari in execute), but i guess this question is more about what is best in general?

I guess it's matter of..

30% Haste + Trinket Procs + Draenic Intellect Potion

Vs.

15% Damage + SWD + Trinket Procs + Draenic Intellect Potion

thanks in advance

[Deleted]

I'm not sure what choice in this situation results in the most dps so my answer might not be what youre looking for..(i play a healer)

From my understanding the best time to use second pot from a progression point of view would be when you need the most damage on the boss (p2 Tyrant comes to mind). Which is usually when u bl. Because u normally dont wipe in P3 on Tyrant the best answer is p2. If you can cheese more dmg if u pop it p3 u can, but for the sake of the kill you should pop it when dmg is needed the most? :O

[Deleted]

I'm not sure what choice in this situation results in the most dps so my answer might not be what youre looking for..(i play a healer)

From my understanding the best time to use second pot from a progression point of view would be when you need the most damage on the boss (p2 Tyrant comes to mind). Which is usually when u bl. Because u normally dont wipe in P3 on Tyrant the best answer is p2. If you can cheese more dmg if u pop it p3 u can, but for the sake of the kill you should pop it when dmg is needed the most? :O

I'm clearly asking from a dmg perspective, and not when it would be best during progression.. Like when would your damage output be the highest, in a bloodlust around lets say 30% or would it be wiser to save it for execute in such a scenario.

[Deleted]

Shadow priest below 20% is purely disgusting damage. Constantly spamming Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Death and Insanity means you are a powerhouse of damage. I tend to save my second pot until this point to really poop on everything in the world. But obviously if there is a crucial moment in your raid where a certain add has to die immediately or anything like that (was a certain add we bursed down on Brackenspore Mythic I remember as an example of this) then you go ahead and use it at that moment.

Remember the key is not just outputting insane numbers, its outputting insane numbers where they are needed

[Deleted]

It depends on how long the fight is,if ur trinkets/procs are up,but mainly our spike dmg comes at 20%< for cop at least.For AS it's kinda more complicated but generally there are more factors.IE (u can pot on council when the mirror image phase is up and cascade will hit everything and u will have a shit ton of spirits for procs.

[cuervos]

Pot when it's important, failing that... whenever your DPS is the highest and relevant.

[Priestialiti]

Every fight is different, council you pot during lust on Gurtogg, Archi you hold your pot for infernals around the 3rd set to focus damage on them even though your numbers won't shoot up.

[Deleted]

Remember that <20% phases often are shorter than the 25s of the buff the pot provides. Also, you are asking about the "pure damage perspective". Well from that perspective Bloodlust is always used on pull (maybe except for mannoroth?!). But given that Bloodlust is not used on pull but 1 minute into the fight and ends before the 20% phase starts (or 35% for soft execute or utilizing ToF via adds respectively) and the <20% phase is >= 25s, then yes, use it in the execute phase. But that is a ton of conditions to be met.

- - - Updated - - -

But when Bloodlust is not used on pull, that usually has a reason. What hasn't been mentioned is that it will in that case still be aligned with the ring. Depending on the level of your ring, Bloodlust + Ring probably outperforms the potential of of your int pot used during execute, depending on the ringlevel and your gearlevel especially your haste-rating. But it might as well be that you have a 2 min gap between bloodlust+ring and execute phase. When you can use the ring again in the execute phase .... well I think you know where I am going.
In a nutshell: there is no flat answer.

[Regia]

Let me preface this by saying that I am no kind of experienced mathy theorycrafter, just looking at my own warcraftlogs and trying to eyeball it for a rough answer for you, since I would like one as well. It turned into a bit of a project. Just note that my word is not gospel and I consider this conjecture for the most part.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...eline&source=8
This is a timeline of my casts on a heroic Fel Lord Zakuun kill.
What it looks like is that overwhelmingly Nithramus (ring) is what made the difference between 135k and up to 270k DPS spikes.

However... 2 things --

1. Notice that the first nithramus spike at the start of the fight was significantly smaller than the second one which occurred during heroism and Twist of Fate -> Execute phase. So while Nithramus is overwhelmingly the most important, if you are going to have more than 1 Nithramus in a fight, pick the one where other buffs are also up.

2. Obviously Nithramus is, at its max upgrade level, a 44% DPS gain for 15 seconds with an explosion for 44% dmg at the end (mine did about 1M dmg). You won't gain a bigger buff than that from your skillset (Discussed below)

I did some math to see what this would average out to over 25 seconds, since that's how long the pot lasts for.

Let's say I am doing 150k base dmg.
With +44% dmg, I am doing 216k DPS for 15 seconds.
For the other 10 seconds I am doing 150k DPS.
If the ring DOESN'T hit the boss for some reason, I did an average of 189.6k DPS over the 25 seconds. (+26.4% DPS gain)
If the ring DOES hit the boss, I did an average of 246.6k DPS over the 25 seconds. (64.3% DPS gain)

The above percentages are for a maxed-out 795 ring. If yours is not 795, you will have to do the math yourself to figure out what your total gain was, since I am not skilled with using spreadsheets or anything and did my math by hand :P

Here's what I did in case something is wrong with my math or you want to calculate your own ring gain for some reason:
[Base dps]*[1 + Ring buff percent] = How much damage you do during each second.
Multiply that by 15 (for the 15 seconds of ring buff) and you get the total damage you did during ring.
Next calculate the ring pop, which is the above number times your ring buff percent.
Add those two numbers together (the dmg during ring + the ring pop).
Next take your base dmg and multiply it by 10 (for the remaining 10 seconds of pot).
Add this number to the previous number, then divide it all by 25 seconds -- that is your DPS over the 25 second duration with a ring in there.

To find what percent gain that was, subtract [Base dps] from [Ring DPS]. Multiply the result by 100, then divide it by [Base DPS].

After ring, buffs come in this order of usefulness:

1. Nithramus with the pop hitting your target --- ~64% DPS gain (variable)
2. Execute phase (<20% boss health) --- ~25% DPS gain (taking ToF into account) I eyeballed my own logs. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=8
3. Twist of Fate but no execute (<35% boss health) ---- ~ 15% DPS gain -- Says it right on it :P
4. Heroism --- ??? Unsure but I assume it is below Twist of Fate. I am looking through my logs from both HFC and BRF and unable to find any example where I can see the difference Heroism makes without having it paired with ToF, ring or execute. In BRF I can't see this on Gruul because of the proc trinkets I used to use. Feel free to argue if this should be listed above 15%.

Basically math those together to find out where is the optimal time for you to maximize your damage. Don't do #2 and #3 together. Unfortunately you can't simply add the percentiles since they stack together (i.e. execute normally gains you 25% dmg, but with ring, your execute dmg is also amplified) and I'm not totally sure how to calculate the way they stack, so I'm estimating.

Any external buff that amplifies your damage like Feast of Souls is obviously more important than all of those put together. Even if NONE of those buffs are up, a +100% DMG buff for greater than 25 seconds is worth potting on. If you expect to gain other buffs on top of the external though -- do it.

I assume you have content on farm if you are trying to push your dmg like this. Velhari is going to require a lot of guessing on your part as to when in p3 to pop your pot. If you are in a super geared group and she is going down fast, try to time your pot so that it is just barely running out when she dies (so 25 seconds before death) but doesn't have any time remaining after death. This is going to take guessing and RNG. If you really want to go hardcore and you're running with the same group you have run with before, check your warcraftlogs and make a rough timer (based on either time or health percentage) as to when you should pop your pot to make sure the pot ends as close to her death as possible without ending AFTER her death.
Velhari p3 can get some pretty ridiculous numbers with that ramping damage buff she gives, which is conveniently aligned with our executes >
She's also an exception to the rule with Nithramus, though. The max buff you can get out of Nithramus is about 64% over your 25 seconds. If she is staying up for long enough for her dmg buff to ramp up to like 200%, it may be worth disregarding the ring pop and paying more attention to the external buff instead (but obviously you want to overlap both the ring AND her external buff if this is lulzy farm content and the dream scenario comes true).

TL;DR

For most fights:

1. Ring + Execute + Bloodlust
2. Ring + Execute ---OR--- Ring + Bloodlust + Twist of Fate
3. Ring + Twist of Fate (no execute)
4. Ring + Bloodlust (No twist of fate or execute)
5. Ring with nothing else
6. Execute + Bloodlust
7. Twist of Fate + Bloodlust ---OR--- Execute with no other buffs
8. Twist of Fate alone
9. Bloodlust alone

Exceptions:
Anything that ramps your damage to +100% or above, since this is a higher gain than #1 in the above list.
i.e. Gorefiend's Feast of Souls, Velhari's p3 dmg buff, or other brief opportunities to burst insane dmg like the clones on Council if your group is actually letting them live for 25 seconds.

EDIT: Worth noting that I am playing COP and heavily stacking haste, so that may be why heroism does not make a huge difference for me (global cooldown cap :P) It may make more of a difference for you if you are stacking something else and/or playing AS. However, one thing is for certain - it's not going to make more of a difference than ring :P

[Deleted]

1. Ring + Execute + Bloodlust
2. Ring + Execute ---OR--- Ring + Bloodlust + Twist of Fate
3. Ring + Twist of Fate (no execute)
4. Ring + Bloodlust (No twist of fate or execute)
5. Ring with nothing else
6. Execute + Bloodlust
7. Twist of Fate + Bloodlust ---OR--- Execute with no other buffs
8. Twist of Fate alone
9. Bloodlust alone

Major credz for making this list. Dont know if you saw the post Seriw wrote about how much mastery you need for SWD to be a dps loss during execute. If you take that one into consideration "execute" only becomes "Twist of Fate".

[Regia]

Major credz for making this list. Dont know if you saw the post Seriw wrote about how much mastery you need for SWD to be a dps loss during execute. If you take that one into consideration "execute" only becomes "Twist of Fate".

I have been hearing that lately and found it to be true now that I have more mastery. I'd appreciate a link to the post as I have looked for it but not been able to find it. I have multiple shadow priests and would love to know where the exact mastery level is :P

[Djriff]

Here's a link to the post.

Additionally I've actually been finding that Mind Spike is hitting harder than insanity, however I may be misreading my logs.

[Seriv]

It depends on your mastery amount and RoW version. Apart from moving, increasing ToF uptime or when you just want more orbs (like for Searing Insanity, self heal or target switch) it becomes not worth to use it if 7 MSp deal more damage than 3 SWD, 1 DP and 3 Insanity GCDs.

(3 * SWD * CoP + DP) / (7 * MSp * CoP * RoW - 3 * Ins * RoW)
= (3 * 2.7 * 1.4 + 5.808) / (7 * 1 * 1.4 * RoW - 3 * 1.584 * RoW)
=
720 RoW (1.4925): 2.276 -> 3613 Mastery
726 RoW (1.5205): 2.234 -> 3466 Mastery
735 RoW (1.5660): 2.169 -> 3237 Mastery
741 RoW (1.5985): 2.125 -> 3082 Mastery
751 RoW (1.6575): 2.049 -> 2816 Mastery

Even though those numbers seem quite high (especially when going for 2600 haste first) one should not forget the mastery raid buff and the mastery weapon enchant.

This list was madde shortly before upgrades where available so your exact itemlevel is probably missing but you will get the rough idea.

Additionally I've actually been finding that Mind Spike is hitting harder than insanity, however I may be misreading my logs.

That cannot be since both scale the same but Insanity has the higher spell power coefficient. Don't forget that Insanity ticks twice during one GCD. Also don't compare a buffed Mind Spike with a nonbuffed Insanity (trinket, weapon enchant, ring, ToF).