5.4 Destruction Tips and Quirks

[Ilyenna 1]

The number of Emberbits generated is calculated at the end of the cast as an immediate calculation.  If you have 40 Emberbits (4 embers) and you fire a FnB Incinerate, you instantly get credited for all of the hits...if you hit enough targets to generate 10 Emberbits and offset the cost, you don't lose or gain any Embers thus being stuck at 4 full embers.

Didn't realize it worked like that. Makes sense. Tossing self heals out every so often I can imagine is appreciative from healers I imagine too :D

[Omaric 246]

Didn't realize it worked like that. Makes sense. Tossing self heals out every so often I can imagine is appreciative from healers I imagine too

 

Yup!  FnB Conflags are also a good choice as they chew through your Embers faster, but also provide a good chance to proc the T16 2-piece if there are enough targets.

[Aezrael 0]

I'll help you out then.

 

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-llj1u8xdr9ftwqz4/details/3/?s=4481&e=4674

 

Your logs, Malkorok, posted directly in this thread.  You cast 14 Chaos Bolts, 6 Shadowburns, for a total of 20 ember uses.  You procced ember master 13 times, with total uptime of 63.3s (12.66 procs of 5s duration).  Even if you started the fight at 4 embers, you are missing procs.  Should you compare logs of T16 tier bonuses to T16 bosses?  Doubtful by your standards.  Hundreds of logs reviewed my ass.  

 

Either provide a reason that you are right or show me why I am not reading the logs correctly, don't dismiss me because I happened to use a different punching bag when I noticed the issue.

He cast 14 chaos bolt

He procced ember master 13 times.

14 - initial ember = 13 ie. the number of ember master procs

 

Shadow burn doesn't seem to cause an ember to fill up, it just gives you the ember back, so I don't think it's proccing the 4 piece.  Good?

[Ilyenna 1]

Yea I use it for the faster fnb incinerates.

[Zagam 1,982]

I'll help you out then.

 

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-llj1u8xdr9ftwqz4/details/3/?s=4481&e=4674

 

Your logs, Malkorok, posted directly in this thread.  You cast 14 Chaos Bolts, 6 Shadowburns, for a total of 20 ember uses.  You procced ember master 13 times, with total uptime of 63.3s (12.66 procs of 5s duration).  Even if you started the fight at 4 embers, you are missing procs.  Should you compare logs of T16 tier bonuses to T16 bosses?  Doubtful by your standards.  Hundreds of logs reviewed my ass.  

 

Either provide a reason that you are right or show me why I am not reading the logs correctly, don't dismiss me because I happened to use a different punching bag when I noticed the issue.

63.3 seconds is 13 procs.  The 3.3 seconds means that it was up for 3.3 seconds when the boss died.  Procs come in whole integers, not decimals.

 

I'm a leading Warlock theorycrafter who has ACTUALLY ANALYZED HUNDREDS OF LOGS.  There are lots of issues posted on here that require looking at things, but looking at the relevancy of a tier set procing in content 5 tiers ago qualifies as irrelevant to me.  Hell, I've analyzed 4 or 5 people's DPS logs today ALONE.  This doesn't count the 15-20 that I do daily through personal messages.  Before you discredit my work by just assuming the volume is impossible, take a look through these forums and see where the information is coming from.

 

As for Malkorok, I'll hyperanalyze it for you. 

 

The number of Embers SPENT is irrelevant to the number of procs.  The number of Embers GENERATED is what is relevant to the procs.  You're pointing out Shadowburn and Chaos Bolt, but that's irrelevant when it says that it procs when an Ember is filled, not spent.  Assuming I was absolutely perfect in not capping Embers, let's look how many were GENERATED:

 

Incinerate casts: 39, or 39 Ember bits (3.9 Embers)

Incinerate crits: 39, or 78 Ember bits (7.8 Embers)

Immolate crit ticks: 37, or 37 Ember bits (3.7 Embers)

Conflagrate crits: 8, or 8 Ember bits (0.8 Embers)

 

TOTAL: 3.9 + 7.8 = 11.7 + 3.7 = 15.4 + 0.8 = 16.2 Embers GENERATED.

 

15 procs in the fight meant I ended the fight with 3.2 Embers not spent.  We cool now?  There is no way to track what was generated.  I realize there are 2-3 procs missing, but if you look at the timing space of the Ember Master proc, they are evenly spaced out except for one part of the fight where I don't know what happened.  If there is an issue, it has to be buried inside of something unable to be seen in logs.  Perhaps a Conflag crit filling it doesn't activate it or something shitty, but it's not going to be found and explainable here.  I've seen other results on other fights that line up much closer to the actual theoretical max.

[Omaric 246]

I'm going to assume Zags didn't see the "let's be happy" post first, but that still isn't adding up.

 

You "generated" 16.2 Embers, as you say, but you got Ember Master 13 times.  Where is the discrepancy coming from?

 

Edit:  Also, ending a single target fight with 3 Embers?  For shame!

[Zagam 1,982]

Going back to the original text file, I see durations between procs and all are over 10 seconds.  I know I was pushing Ember generation higher, so perhaps there is an unstated ICD (GASP) that Blizz doesn't let us know about, thus skewing results.  It could explain the gap in the procs being wide enough if perhaps I built another Ember in 9 seconds and didn't again for another 10 seconds making the maximum window of 19 seconds, or of course longer if it takes you longer to make an Ember.

 

Could just be another wonderful thing Blizz doesn't tell us so it's left for open interpretation.  I swear, this patch is just driving me away from theorycrafting at all.  I'm just going to show up, do what works best, and fire at will.  Forget writing all this stuff...it changes or just turns out to be wrong because of bullshit information from the source.  I apologize for the snappiness...this Friday feels anything BUT a happy end of the week. 

[Aezrael 0]

63.3 seconds is 13 procs.  The 3.3 seconds means that it was up for 3.3 seconds when the boss died.  Procs come in whole integers, not decimals.

 

I'm a leading Warlock theorycrafter who has ACTUALLY ANALYZED HUNDREDS OF LOGS.  There are lots of issues posted on here that require looking at things, but looking at the relevancy of a tier set procing in content 5 tiers ago qualifies as irrelevant to me.  Hell, I've analyzed 4 or 5 people's DPS logs today ALONE.  This doesn't count the 15-20 that I do daily through personal messages.  Before you discredit my work by just assuming the volume is impossible, take a look through these forums and see where the information is coming from.

 

As for Malkorok, I'll hyperanalyze it for you. 

 

The number of Embers SPENT is irrelevant to the number of procs.  The number of Embers GENERATED is what is relevant to the procs.  You're pointing out Shadowburn and Chaos Bolt, but that's irrelevant when it says that it procs when an Ember is filled, not spent.  Assuming I was absolutely perfect in not capping Embers, let's look how many were GENERATED:

 

Incinerate casts: 39, or 39 Ember bits (3.9 Embers)

Incinerate crits: 39, or 78 Ember bits (7.8 Embers)

Immolate crit ticks: 37, or 37 Ember bits (3.7 Embers)

Conflagrate crits: 8, or 8 Ember bits (0.8 Embers)

 

TOTAL: 3.9 + 7.8 = 11.7 + 3.7 = 15.4 + 0.8 = 16.2 Embers GENERATED.

 

15 procs in the fight meant I ended the fight with 3.2 Embers not spent.  We cool now?  There is no way to track what was generated.  I realize there are 2-3 procs missing, but if you look at the timing space of the Ember Master proc, they are evenly spaced out except for one part of the fight where I don't know what happened.  If there is an issue, it has to be buried inside of something unable to be seen in logs.  Perhaps a Conflag crit filling it doesn't activate it or something shitty, but it's not going to be found and explainable here.  I've seen other results on other fights that line up much closer to the actual theoretical max.

In the logs I noticed that there were procs at fairly regular intervals as expected until the very end.  13 procs for 16 embers generated seems weird unless there is a weird interaction between shadowburn and the ember regen or if you are capped at 4 embers.  It would be interesting to see other logs and see if proc gets erratic at the end of the fight for everyone.

 

In my explanation I was assuming that you were using every ember regenerated   I still think that is probably the correct explanation since I doubt you would end a fight w/ over 3 embers filled.  ie. you should have generated 16 embers if the forumla was correct but Blizzard's calculations or WoL's parses are a little screwy and you generated less embers.

Edited October 4, 2013 by Aezrael

[Omaric 246]

Come on man, didn't you catch that sweet ass game last night?  Browns and Bills, I don't think a matchup can get anymore exciting than that, you should be pumped right meow.

[Zagam 1,982]

I went through my Paragons log and the same bullshit happened...fairly regular intervals and then boom, a big window.  It looks like there may be an ICD of 10 sec which would make the absolute best possible uptime 33%.  It also devalues the shit out of Haste even more and makes it so you would actually NOT want to generate an Ember unless your ICD was up...this is the kinda stuff that I know people haven't built into the set bonus profiles for Simcraft and other modeling.  I just wish Blizz would lay out exactly how shit works. 

 

I had to help my Elemental Shaman test his new 4pc where it procs an Elemental for him.  Blizz doesn't give info, so he sat at a dummy for 45 minutes and DPS'd while I had a stopwatch and monitored procs and the DPS % he got from those adds.  If Blizz had just said 'Ele's will proc one elemental every 60 seconds and they will do 5 casts', it woulda saved him and me a lot of time.  Same issue here.  Maybe on the next patch notes, it'll reflect something like 'clarified a tooltip to show that Ember Master has a 10 second ICD.' 

[Rakupenda 15]

Going back to the original text file, I see durations between procs and all are over 10 seconds.  I know I was pushing Ember generation higher, so perhaps there is an unstated ICD (GASP) that Blizz doesn't let us know about, thus skewing results.  It could explain the gap in the procs being wide enough if perhaps I built another Ember in 9 seconds and didn't again for another 10 seconds making the maximum window of 19 seconds, or of course longer if it takes you longer to make an Ember.

 

Could just be another wonderful thing Blizz doesn't tell us so it's left for open interpretation.  I swear, this patch is just driving me away from theorycrafting at all.  I'm just going to show up, do what works best, and fire at will.  Forget writing all this stuff...it changes or just turns out to be wrong because of bullshit information from the source.  I apologize for the snappiness...this Friday feels anything BUT a happy end of the week. 

So what about your double/overlapping procs you said you were getting?

[Rakupenda 15]

I went through my Paragons log and the same bullshit happened...fairly regular intervals and then boom, a big window.  It looks like there may be an ICD of 10 sec which would make the absolute best possible uptime 33%.  It also devalues the shit out of Haste even more and makes it so you would actually NOT want to generate an Ember unless your ICD was up...this is the kinda stuff that I know people haven't built into the set bonus profiles for Simcraft and other modeling.  I just wish Blizz would lay out exactly how shit works. 

Thanks for confirming my initial concern.

[Zagam 1,982]

Come on man, didn't you catch that sweet ass game last night?  Browns and Bills, I don't think a matchup can get anymore exciting than that, you should be pumped right meow.

I'm a Steelers fan.  You realize this is the worst football season ever, right?  The fuckin' Browns are atop the AFC North.  Breaking Bad ended.  Dexter's ending STILL pisses me off.  I'm COMPLETELY overbooked on Saturday (helping a friend cut wood from 8a-11a, leading challenge modes for my girl from 12p-6p, WVU-Baylor game 8p-12a), and I look like a cranky bitch on the forums...probably because I am.  Work is just piling shit up and I HATE getting projects on Friday to think about all weekend.

 

TL;DR: I'm being a cranky bitch, I just had a Snickers.  I'll be in a good mood tonight in Mumble, I promise.

[Zagam 1,982]

So what about your double/overlapping procs you said you were getting?

What I'm afraid of is the ICD might exist after it expires.  By my own eyes, I saw my proc refresh itself.  I'm wondering if it can refresh itself but once it expires, it endures a short ICD.  I wouldn't put it past the programming logic to put something quirky in like that.

[Rakupenda 15]

What I'm afraid of is the ICD might exist after it expires.  By my own eyes, I saw my proc refresh itself.  I'm wondering if it can refresh itself but once it expires, it endures a short ICD.  I wouldn't put it past the programming logic to put something quirky in like that.

Interesting theory. I'll try to run some tests tonight and see if I can kick out a double proc.

[mcg05d 1]

Embers spent = embers generated + embers started (capped at 4)

 

Of course there will be a slight skew if you finish a fight with more than a partial ember, because then you wouldn't have spent a generated one.  It was just a simple way to calculate how many you should have had.  So yes, you generated 16.2 and gained 13 procs.  Has to be an ICD.  

 

I came here specifically to bring this up with you, knowing that you were a prominent member of warlock theorycrafting.  I became upset when you dismissed valid information simply because it wasn't a boss you approved of (which is still illogical dude, combat is combat...) which is where the "hundreds..." comment came from, but we worked it all out to come a conclusion that there is something wonky going on.  Sorry man.  

 

Rakupenda, I'd be interested to see the results.  I'm going out of town so I won't be able to do any testing of my own, but I'll check back here so please post!

Edited October 4, 2013 by mcg05d

[Lockybalboa 618]

Alternative theory, the 4pc cannot proc if there is already one of the procs active.

 

Granted this is just target dummy stuff but I'm quickly and commonly getting a proc much faster than 10 seconds, but I've never see the proc refresh mid proc even though I fill an ember.

[Rakupenda 15]

I've had the buff fall off, fill an ember shortly after through normal generation means (not soulburn), and not proc.

[Zagam 1,982]

Follow me on this journey real quick (to ensure my sanity)...

 

To get a full ember in 5 seconds, you'd need to generate 10 emberbits in 5 seconds, or 2 emberbits per second.  If you fired out 5 Incinerates at 1.000 sec casts and they all critted, that'd be the quickest you could do it single target, right?  I wonder if I saw the buff refresh during AoE with FnB after spending an Ember via Ember Tap.  Doesn't seem logically possible without ridiculous luck and Haste.

[mcg05d 1]

Zagam, I checked the tooltip on Conflag.  It says it generates embers and double on crits.  So that 0.8 you calculated based on crits should have been 1.6, and 9 non crits should have been 0.9, putting your total generated up to 17.9.  

 

Shorting you yet another proc...

Edited October 4, 2013 by mcg05d

[mcg05d 1]

Follow me on this journey real quick (to ensure my sanity)...

 

To get a full ember in 5 seconds, you'd need to generate 10 emberbits in 5 seconds, or 2 emberbits per second.  If you fired out 5 Incinerates at 1.000 sec casts and they all critted, that'd be the quickest you could do it single target, right?  I wonder if I saw the buff refresh during AoE with FnB after spending an Ember via Ember Tap.  Doesn't seem logically possible without ridiculous luck and Haste.

 

I'm not sure.  Incin x4 + conflag at the end all crits should generate you 1 burning ember at t=4s.  

 

That would refresh your buff, if that is possible.  Otherwise it would have to be FnB

Edited October 4, 2013 by mcg05d

[Rakupenda 15]

Follow me on this journey real quick (to ensure my sanity)...

 

To get a full ember in 5 seconds, you'd need to generate 10 emberbits in 5 seconds, or 2 emberbits per second.  If you fired out 5 Incinerates at 1.000 sec casts and they all critted, that'd be the quickest you could do it single target, right?  I wonder if I saw the buff refresh during AoE with FnB after spending an Ember via Ember Tap.  Doesn't seem logically possible without ridiculous luck and Haste.

You're forgetting Immolate ticking.

[Aezrael 0]

Still think the ember generation is wrong unless Zag is 100% sure he had multiple embers left when the fight ended.  I would think that when the boss is at ~2% he would have dumped all embers into shadow burn.

[Omaric 246]

Why Chaos Bolt? Ugh. UGH!!!! Come ooooonnnnnnnnnnn........

 

Also I was messing around on the PTR as Destruction while using the T16 gear off the vendor. Is it just me or does the 4-piece not always proc?

 

I just want to put this here.  Nobody cared then!  /sadface

 

Edit: mcg05d.  Pretend I'm looking down at your post like it's the intro of The Brady Bunch.  I changed your termage to be more in line with rainbows and butterflies.

[mcg05d 1]

It's because you weren't as much of a QT pie as I was.