Sha 25 HC - Demo for AoE?

[Deleted]

Hi all,

Working on Sha and getting to about 20% stage, however the adds start dying too slowly and so the boss damage suffers.
As affliction I've noticed my add damage was fairly decent for the first half of p2, but then I notice everyone else starts catching up and overtaking.

Thinking of going Demo for better aoe damage, as well as burst aoe. Wondering if anyone has experience with it on this fight, particularly:

-Would you reccomend going demo over affli?
-Is burning a lot of demonic power on Chaos Waves worth it?
-Corruption+Doom on all of the adds or would this take up too much time or be wasted if they don't get the full duration?
-Touch of Chaos or spam the fel flame line attack?

[Xyronic]

Demo is definitely a fantastic spec for Heroic Sha. I haven't done any particular math on which spell is best to cast at whatever time, but I did manage to rank 7th overall (#1 US) on the fight last night as Demo.

Basically what I do for every add group is;

Immediately pop Meta and Doom all the adds (spamming Immo Aura while I do this for extra damage, also making sure to make felguard target one of the leading adds)
Felstorm when adds are clumped enough
Corruption all the adds, Double Shadowflame-> Meta
Immo Aura / Void ray spam
Drop meta when the adds are around ~20% to build demo fury for next pack

If I ever get huddled, I tend to just skip the corruptions, or put out whatever I can between the 2 shadowflames. Keep in mind you can still control your pet during huddle.

[Deleted]

Do you run the adds through the boss so melee classes can cleave them? You should also have players assigned to focus on adds
-2 adds, one player is killing adds
-3 adds, 2 players killing adds
-4 adds, 3 players killing adds
-5 adds, 4 players killing adds
-6 adds, boss should be pretty low at this point and everyone should help with adds
And multidotters should always dot the adds.

And i think affliction is better than demo. When there are like 4 adds+boss, just SB:SW till you have one SS left and SB:SoC and then spam soc. And when SHA goes underground and adds are still alive, use SB, but don't use it and then DS dying add and then you should have "5" soul shards. When you spam SoC your DPS should be going higher more adds there are. I start with ~120k dps in the fight(phase 2 only) and when SHA is dead i have like +150k

EDIT: Well looking at the WoL logs, demo might be better.

[Deleted]

Destro is pretty awesome too, especially at the end if this is where you struggle.

Look at Xyronic's log for example, the Destro in his raid is just destroying everyone else in the last 2 minutes : http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-z1...?s=9258&e=9378

But if you know Demo better, no reason to change

[Xyronic]

Fearsom is something else.... Think that was the #2 parse for destro (behind zumzum lol) But yeah, Destruction definitely also destroys on this fight.

[Shauni]

Pure. Rain of fire. Awesomeness

[Deleted]

Thanks for responses all,

I'm liking the love for destruction as I'd much rather use that for demo. Do people reckon mannaroth's fury would be required? I guess the adds should be in range for incinerate spam most of the time, though rain of fire might be annoying to have to cast several times over their travel path.
I can't imagine dread spray or bolt dodging without cunning though..

[Deleted]

I do it with MF, simply because one RoF every 8 sec will be enough to hit the boss and all the path of the adds. But you might want to take KJC until you reach your first P2 of the night and acquire the buff, as the first phase will be rather long without and you will end up dodging bolts all the time.

MF is useful in Phase 1 too, you can RoF the adds and get lots of Embers to spam Chaos Bolts on the boss, but you have to be behind them (I think ? I can't believe I still haven't confirmed that ).

As for the Waterspouts, yeah KJC is awesome but you can use your RoF / Conflags to run. tbh I'm pretty bad with that mechanic but it never kills me...

[Deleted]

Aha, good idea with the RoF on adds.

What do you normally do as your opener for Destro zumzum? I've never really optimised this as I only use it on dungeons or farm stuff. Usually I'll immolate, 2x conflag, spam incinerate and then I can usually pop demon soul and get two chaos bolts out with my trinket procs still up, but there may be a better way..

[kushlol]

Pls note that the extreme amount of shadowburn overkilll in p2 really inflates destros overall dps.

[Deleted]

Each spec has its advantages.
I decided to stick to demo purely for the substantial static AOE and great on-demand AOE burst.
For our strat we decided to assign specific cooldowns to sets of adds - I even used service pet and dark soul separately during the middle waves to provide consistently high levels of AOE where other classes did not have cooldowns. Its also very useful if you don't have a rogue to provide the CoE aura constantly - I never found myself starved of fury. It really does make a difference nearer the end having such flexible AOE burst. Dont use Chaos Wave for the adds(HoG is better) and don't forget carrion swarm. If adds were dying easily I would tend to slack off of void ray and focus more ToC on the boss.

Affliction on the other hand does provide a 70% AOE slow which is amazing for controlling the adds, easy ranged aoe dps (eg. during spouts) and probably more dps on lower numbers of adds.

[Deleted]

Pls note that the extreme amount of shadowburn overkilll in p2 really inflates destros overall dps.

Not so much on that fight, I don't do a lot of kills. From quick math maybe 3k dps is overkill, among 200k this is nothing.

[Brusalk]

Thanks for responses all,

I'm liking the love for destruction as I'd much rather use that for demo. Do people reckon mannaroth's fury would be required? I guess the adds should be in range for incinerate spam most of the time, though rain of fire might be annoying to have to cast several times over their travel path.
I can't imagine dread spray or bolt dodging without cunning though..

Mannoroth's Fury is incredibly annoying to have to use in P1, but in P2 it's absolutely amazing. The way my guild does it is to have the 2 healers on the back corners of the boss and then switch between them and the tank. One RoF is big enough with MF to hit all the adds and the boss when they're going between them.

If people are interested in destro on Sha 10H compared to 25H, destro still blows most other specs out of the water.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=14002&e=14655

That's the 2nd phase of our first kill of Sha. On Dreadspawns I was doing 22.5% of the damage to them with 41.6mil done over p2. Next highest was at 27.5mil over p2. During that time I also did the most damage to the boss compared to the other raid members.

The nice thing about destro for sha is that you can generate extra embers off the adds while the numbers are still low with no loss in boss damage (not including the increased damage gained on the boss from the extra embers) as RoF is a single target increase/neutral. Once the adds start getting up in numbers you can begin to generate extra embers off of them while doing the AoE rotation and then dump extra chaos bolts into the boss from there, or you can also get shadowburns onto the boss >20% if the adds are just about to die as he's coming back up.


I think H Sha is probably the one fight on 10M where each spec is equally great.

[kushlol]

Not so much on that fight, I don't do a lot of kills. From quick math maybe 3k dps is overkill, among 200k this is nothing.

just watched your sha video lol....not as much overkill as I thought there would be

[Deleted]

theres no big difference if you look at the overall dps (shadowburn overkill aside), but a destrolock isnt able to destroy one add wave if its needed (unlucky huddles, strong aoe class died, etc.). if your raid wipes because of low add dmg on the later waves and your able to play every spec i would play demo.

for 10man i would always favour affliction. the p1 dmg is more important (at lower gear lvls, not 500+), the utility is amazing (soulburn CoE and especially CoEx) and the p2 add/boss/execute dmg is great.

[Brusalk]

theres no big difference if you look at the overall dps (shadowburn overkill aside), but a destrolock isnt able to destroy one add wave if its needed (unlucky huddles, strong aoe class died, etc.). if your raid wipes because of low add dmg on the later waves and your able to play every spec i would play demo.

for 10man i would always favour affliction. the p1 dmg is more important (at lower gear lvls, not 500+), the utility is amazing (soulburn CoE and especially CoEx) and the p2 add/boss/execute dmg is great.

How in the world is P1 damage important at all? The only time P1 damage would ever be important is if you're wiping in P2 to the actual hard enrage of the fight, and not the soft enrage from raid damage from spikes. Only thing that matters in that fight in P1 is staying alive and keeping up on platforms.

[Xyronic]

I know this isn't necessarily the thread to discuss this, but I have a question about your RaidRankings app Zumzum. What I'm assuming is you take the top parse for whichever spec on every fight, then average all 6 or 4 fights in the instance. Is your app only tracking people who rank in the top 200 for every fight? (I ask because I noticed I'm like rank 12 in MSV and rank 8 in HoF, and that doesn't seem right)

[Woz]

Use Hunters with Lei Shi bows and an Ele Sham to carry add damage and play Aff . DoT all the adds until its sets of 6+ adds then just Seed off Sha. I guess I'm in a different spot though 'cause I'm one of the Light tossers so I have to adopt a different playstyle for that fight. Generally speaking in our raids it goes; DK > Hunters > Ele Sham > Me as Aff - overall; it'll just depend on what your raid needs more.

And Xyronic; If you're just looking at the main page for Locks throughout the instance I believe it's "ranking" you based on your best parses overall (then averaged like you said). If you really wanted to see the rankings for each fight just look at them individually. Since I don't think the CN/KR ranks are even relevant if I wanted to see logs that counted I use his app. Too bad I had to change names when we came to KT so I can't really see my "true" ranks (also doesn't help that we keep bringing in awful alts for our farm now that it's faceroll). But I'm about 95% sure it's done exactly how you explained it.

[Deleted]

How in the world is P1 damage important at all? The only time P1 damage would ever be important is if you're wiping in P2 to the actual hard enrage of the fight, and not the soft enrage from raid damage from spikes. Only thing that matters in that fight in P1 is staying alive and keeping up on platforms.

in 10man you are one out of three dds, in 25 one out of four or five. as affliction your dps is not only way higher you are also able to collect the globes without losing dps. you did almost 90k dps on the platform with dark soul, i do 110-130k without it (=> i can use dark soul twice at the start of p2). thats the difference between affliction single target dps and destruction (KJC also matters, but if you dont have to collect globes its not that important).
like i already said, i think all three specs are quite even in terms of dps, but as a 10man progress oriented player affliction offers way more benefits.

bot: as affliction lock i always have 4 shards when the adds are in range and sb ss every add, until the 5 add waves i usually only keep corruption up (with sb seed) or swap again on the highest hp add, if one dies too slowly (i dont refresh agony or ua without sb ss). sb CoE/CoEx as soon as it will hit all targets. drain soul one add each wave for the shards and keep dots on sha at all times. during the first 5 add wave the boss is usually in execute range and depending on the cds of the others (mainly the boomkin) i start seeding the adds (after doting them up) or i drain soul the boss and refresh the dots with sb ss on the highest adds. in 10man i usually do ~60k (our boomkin does roughly the same) add and 90-100k boss dps, depends on huddles and how many add waves we get.

[Brusalk]

in 10man you are one out of three dds, in 25 one out of four or five. as affliction your dps is not only way higher you are also able to collect the globes without losing dps. you did almost 90k dps on the platform with dark soul, i do 110-130k without it (=> i can use dark soul twice at the start of p2). thats the difference between affliction single target dps and destruction (KJC also matters, but if you dont have to collect globes its not that important).
like i already said, i think all three specs are quite even in terms of dps, but as a 10man progress oriented player affliction offers way more benefits.

I'm not destro on that fight for P1 damage or platform damage as we have no need for it. We always push after the second platform, and orbs are never a problem with the tank and healer getting the orbs. If I do need to move I can RoF, conflag, or fel-flame if none of the other two are up, with fel-flame being only a minimal loss. However between 1 conflag every 12 seconds that I can save if need be for up to an additional 12 seconds and a RoF every 6, I never have to fel flame. I also get 2 dark souls at the beginning of p2. How is that unique to affliction?

As for P2 utility we have a monk keeping the adds slowed with brew, but an AoE conflag snares all the targets within 34 yards of the boss' hitbox.


I think you're vastly overestimating the importance of damage in the first phase. P1 can take all year as long as everyone is alive when you push. P2, where you burn 66% of the boss' health doesn't even last 10 minutes for us, which leaves a super long time for P1 with the extremely lenient enrage timer on Sha H. (I think the new enrage timer is like 25 minutes or something like that?) Anyway you have more than twice the amount of time it takes to go from 100-66 than the amount of time it takes to go from 66-0. P1 really means fuck-all. The only DPS checks are keeping up with platforms (which matters more on 10m than on 25m since 25mans can roll with 3 tanks) and keeping up with adds in the last phase and having enough boss damage to kill him before the spines get to be too much.

As for your last comment, on our first kill I was doing 82k boss dps and 63k add dps. which was the most out of our entire group, including the melee who were on the boss exclusively until the first wave of 4 because we had enough passive add dps to kill them without their help. Do you have logs of you being affliction for that fight? I searched google and couldn't find you except for a youtube of the same name.