Shadowpriest no longer best targets for DI?

[Prossy]

Dark Intent is given to someone who benefits the most while giving the most benefit to the Warlock who is giving it. Fire mages do benefit but the warlock who's giving it wont have much up-time of DI

The number 1 targets for DI will always be SPriests and Resto Druids and Boomkin's because both the target and caster of DI will have the max benefit and thus bigger dps overall

You only use DI on fire mages if none of the class i listed above aren't in the group/raid with you

[eErike]

Agree.

You aren't looking for highest DPS, you are looking for highest DPS gain.

For instance; you give the top DPS fire mage DI, and he gains 3k DPS (numbers pulled from the magical place that is my butt).

Now, you give it to the SP, and he gains 5k DPS.

For the raid the SP grants an additional 2k DPS overall.

And, as mentioned by an earlier poster, the fire mage may have higher DPS, but their spells and talents do not necessarily benefit from additional haste in the same fashion that a SP will.

Seeing that the dot damage no longer differ by such amounts your numbers should go gack to your butt

---------- Post added 2011-12-02 at 10:16 PM ----------

Dark Intent is given to someone who benefits the most while giving the most benefit to the Warlock who is giving it. Fire mages do benefit but the warlock who's giving it wont have much up-time of DI

The number 1 targets for DI will always be SPriests and Resto Druids and Boomkin's because both the target and caster of DI will have the max benefit and thus bigger dps overall

You only use DI on fire mages if none of the class i listed above aren't in the group/raid with you

I would love it if any of you "never give it to fire mages"-sayers actually could provide any sort of real numbers. Seriously, any number at all.

[antigravitydogs]

Sounds like your fire mage is just greedy and wants the buff to himself. Your raid dps will go up with your spriest as the target for DI. The prio list for DI has been known for a long time. If both the mage and the spriest are doing optimal dps, your raid dps will be higher giving it to the SP. No argument.

[SoulJnr]

Choose the player, not the class.

You wouldn't give it to the 15k DPS fire mage when you can give it to the 30k DPS Spriest

[antigravitydogs]

Seeing that the dot damage no longer differ by such amounts your numbers should go gack to your butt

---------- Post added 2011-12-02 at 10:16 PM ----------



I would love it if any of you "never give it to fire mages"-sayers actually could provide any sort of real numbers. Seriously, any number at all.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...tent-%284.2%29 There you go.

[Yvaelle]

Ok - since apparently there are a large number of you who have apparently never read any numbers at all regarding Dark Intent - but insist that we supply numbers to support giving it to spriests who have always been the Only Best Option For Any Way You Measure It.

In 4.2 the increase in dps from dark intent for an average shadowpriest was about 2600 dps, versus fire at 2300 dps on single targets - fire mages however have very low uptime where shadow has 99% uptime tied with boomkins (because mind flay counts as a dot and ticks a good bit faster than once per second in addition to 3 dots and then we stack haste and scale better with haste than any other class, meaning pretty much everything we cast except blast is a dot).

Fire mages only have 88% uptime on DI meaning while they personally gain a good bit of dps from it - they give the warlock much less dps because they drop stacks more often. This means that while it might only appear as a 300dps difference between shadow and fire, in practice its about a 500dps loss to the raid because you cost the warlock 200dps by putting it on a fire mage over a shadowpriest, and that's single target.

In multi-target scenarios, where shadow's periodic and haste values contribute Far more to their dps than fire's does - and shadow's overall dps rises much faster than fire does in multi-target scenarios (hint: 90%+ of raid encounters are multi-target), that difference grows even More.

Now lets look at what changed for fire that might alter this:

Living Bomb DoT ticks 10% harder, this causes a 0.3% (not 3%, 30% of 1%) increase in a fire mages dps this patch as LB DoT accounts for about 3% of a fire mages single target dps.

Pyroblast dot ticks 100% harder, this causes about a 5% increase in a fire mages dps as pyroblast dot is about 5% of their dps on single target fights.

Neither of these changes has Any impact on the uptime (which is the biggest issue with putting it on a fire mage, not their personal dps gain) - meaning that the warlock still loses 200dps (in 4.2 gear for all characters, more dps loss in 4.3 gear) by giving it to the mage.

Conclusion:

Maybe the personal dps gained by fire mages from getting dark intent went up 50dps (at most) this patch, which means that you should clearly give it to a fire mage now over an elemental shaman, frost mage, arcane mage or feral druid - but there is still Zero comparison between giving it to a shadowpriest or boomkin versus a fire mage Unless there is an enormous discrepancy in the dps of your mage versus your shadowpriests and boomkins.

Citations:

I typed "best target for dark intent" into Google and the first result was:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...tent-%284.2%29

In addition to like 2 pages of results from Shadowpriest.com which I disregarded because we're obviously biased. Since the above is from the warlock forums and based on tens of hours of simulations for various specs, I take it to be both accurate and objective/unbiased.

If the above is not reason enough for you, download Simulationcraft - run a fire mage sim with and without DI for 10000+ simulations, run a shadowpriest (or even boomkin) for 10000+ simulation with and then without DI - and then come back here and report on your findings ;p

[Siafubringer]

SkillOverKill! Thank you! I was about to dive into the number scheme but you summarized it perfectly!
I will also note: Nothing about the dots has changed for Fire Mages, their damage has increased since 4.3 but their spells have essentially not changed.

That's it boys and girls, /end thread!

[Crummy]

SP will always scale better with the haste then any other class.

The fact that the Mage is telling you that it's better for him is no surprise though. Why wouldn't he?

[Strykie]

Shadow priest is 65-70% dot damage.
For anyone else to be a better choice for DI they need to superseed 70% dot damage.
As long as MF stays a DOT spell, no class will EVER be as good as a shadow priest to have DI on.

[FieryBull]

In 4.2 the increase in dps from dark intent for an average shadowpriest was about 2600 dps, versus fire at 2300 dps on single targets

Ok, first off, those figures are raid dps increase and not personal dps increase. Just clarifying.

If the above is not reason enough for you, download Simulationcraft - run a fire mage sim with and without DI for 10000+ simulations, run a shadowpriest (or even boomkin) for 10000+ simulation with and then without DI - and then come back here and report on your findings ;p

If you wan't to do that, you'll need to simulate both the priest and warlock at the same time. And then both the fire mage and warlock at the same time. If you don't, simulationcraft by default assume a 100% DI uptime, which in that case kind of defeats the purpose.

---------- Post added 2011-12-03 at 06:18 PM ----------

Ok just did a quick series of simulations.

Shadow Priest ilvl: 389
Fire mage ilvl: 392
Demo warlock ilvl: 388

They all have the legendary weapon.

The results I obtained:

Shadow priest raid dps increase: 2926 dps
Fire mage raid dps increase: 2438 dps

I think I'll do the simulations again but with the BiS profiles this time, and with different warlock specs, but the priest will most likely win.

---------- Post added 2011-12-03 at 06:43 PM ----------

Using T13H BIS profiles, 50000 iterations, 360-540 fight length, build 430-1 (15005)

With focus magic on everyone

Ranking by RAID DPS GAIN (Caster is Demonology)

	Class			RAID DPS GAIN
1) 	Balance Druid		3921
2) 	Shadow Priest		3818
3) 	Fire Mage		3717

Ranking by RAID DPS GAIN (Caster is Destruction)

	Class			RAID DPS GAIN
1) 	Balance Druid		4561
2) 	Shadow Priest		4466
3) 	Fire Mage		4390

Ranking by RAID DPS GAIN (Caster is Affliction)

	Class			RAID DPS GAIN
1) 	Balance Druid		4788
2) 	Shadow Priest		4618
3) 	Fire Mage		4541

Without focus magic

Ranking by RAID DPS GAIN (Caster is Demonology)

	Class			RAID DPS GAIN
1) 	Balance Druid		3817
2) 	Shadow Priest		3690
3) 	Fire Mage		3579

Ranking by RAID DPS GAIN (Caster is Destruction)

	Class			RAID DPS GAIN
1) 	Balance Druid		4454
2) 	Shadow Priest		4314
3) 	Fire Mage		4237

Ranking by RAID DPS GAIN (Caster is Affliction)

	Class			RAID DPS GAIN
1) 	Balance Druid		4665
2) 	Shadow Priest		4496
3) 	Fire Mage		4371

[Kilee25]

I am mildly curious if we can create a better set of gear to change those numbers. I've not done enough research on the new sets yet, but in the past I was able to get 1000+ dps by changing the default simulationcraft profile that was made at the start of 4.2. In any case, based on those numbers it seems clear to me that shadow priests and balance druids are better targets for DI atm.

Although I would still say if your balance druids and shadowpriests suck compared to the fire mage, they still might be better targets.

[FieryBull]

The quality of the player is almost always a more important factor, because when you look at the numbers, the differences aren't gigantic.

[Ravyna]

hm why did it shift in favor to balance druids in your sim (they did not change anything for boomkins nor spriests)

[FieryBull]

Probably because of the scaling when wearing the BiS sets.

[kenn9530]

hm why did it shift in favor to balance druids in your sim (they did not change anything for boomkins nor spriests)

might be because in BiS gear we get over 3k haste before gems and always over 50% haste with NG active, cant wait fot my corrupted tnk as should get close to 100% haste when it procs.

boomkins have much higher haste than any other class thats why the uptime is slightly higher.

[Yvaelle]

might be because in BiS gear we get over 3k haste before gems and always over 50% haste with NG active, cant wait fot my corrupted tnk as should get close to 100% haste when it procs.

boomkins have much higher haste than any other class thats why the uptime is slightly higher.

It's not an uptime thing, boomkins have more haste than us and three dots (same as us and fire mages), but shadowpriests gain their increased uptime because Mind Flay is technically a DoT that ticks three times faster than all other (3 second tick) dots, because flay ticks faster than every second. In effect while boomkins have high uptime from ludicrously high haste alone - shadowpriests from a Dark Intent standpoint have 6 dots - which puts both of us tied at essentially 100% uptime.

The reason boomkin value on dark intent is rising over the course of the expansion when compared to shadowpriests is because Haste is a multiplicative stat not additive, so the higher your haste value the greater the value of additional haste so long as you don't haste cap (which currently neither boomkins nor shadowpriests can do except on gimmick fights). 3% haste on a fire mage who doesn't like haste all that much is close to just 3% haste, but on a shadowpriest with 33% haste you get the following:

1.33 * 1.03 = 1.37

(33% haste from gear/talents ) * (Dark Intent) = Haste + Dark Intent + An additional ~1% haste

If it were additive you would get 1.36, but 1.37 means Dark Intent is actually giving 4% effective haste on a shadowpriest versus a class that doesn't stack haste as much as we do (for the same reason, giving Dark Intent to your best geared shadowpriest will have a bigger impact than giving it to your least geared shadowpriest, beyond the increase in dot damage would account for).

On a boomkin who procs up to 65% haste you get the following:

1.65 * 1.03 = 1.7

For such a high value of haste (during their 15s proc from talent), Boomkins are effectively gaining 5% haste from Dark Intent.

So the real way to look at this question is to break it down into two parts:

(1) What is more valuable:
3% haste to a Fire mage
4% haste to a Shadowpriest
5% haste to a Boomkin

And (2) which gains the most from 3% periodic damage.

The question to the first is mostly self-evident, but because shadowpriest have much higher percentage of their total damage done coming from dots (VT, Pain, DP, Flay, Sear), and our ability to dot cleave on multi-target fights is higher than boomkins (as a percentage of our overall damage coming from dots) that while Boomkin might appear the clear choice, it isn't accounting for the natural superiority of Shadow: our intent is the darkest, clearly ^^

Oh also to the people saying "500dps isn't a big difference so give it to the best player" - it's not that 500dps is itself a big difference, its that for your spriest or boomkin to gain less raid dps from DI than a fire mage - your spriest or boomkin would need to be like 5k dps (or potentially more) lower than the fire mage to make it the right choice.

TL;DR - Boomkins might be equally valuable as Shadowpriests for Dark Intent in Tier 13, but Fire Mages are still always the wrong choice (yes, unless your spriest/boomkin is AFK).

[axxey]

Because of the balance druid mechanic of nature's grace 15% haste every time they eclipse balance druid have a different attainable haste "break point" for an extra tick on dots which will make a larger impact than sims show if they're using DI to hit it.

[Therdin]

I'm not saying fire mages should get it, even though since I am one i think they should :P lol.

Fire mages and shadow priest share the same haste love. Only difference is since our haste breaks are further out then SP, we keep a rather low number 2005 (1880 goblin) because the next haste break is out of reach with current gear.

However for goblin mages, racial + 3% talent + 5% hybrid buff + 3%DI + T13 2p that next break point is 2080.

I believe SP should still get the buff since they personally benefit from it the most.

even though I want DI so bad lol

[Mistaziggla]

It's not an uptime thing, boomkins have more haste than us and three dots (same as us and fire mages)

Since when do boomkins have a third dot?
The only third dot I can imagine is the 4 piece t10 set which is pretty pro to be using this xpac.

[Skandulous]

boomkins have 2 dots only and in Full BIS t13 they get an extra tick so it pushes them higher then shadow but dont hold your breath till your boomking gets Full BIS t13 cause that wont be for a long time