5.4 Changes and Notes as of 7/10

[Furiyers 10]

felhunter is curious where all this bacon is coming from

[Zagam 1,983]

Let's take a gander in present gear and logs. Here is my Ra-den kill from last night, which is almost as close to a single target fight as you can get. Some minor adds and switching, but mostly single-target.

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-2ox6bvvm5zzhom42/sum/damageDone/?s=3913&e=4238

Now, Shadowflame uptime is low because I was pooling HoG charges for higher DF for the balls rather than using them spread out. So my Hand of Guldan usage is a bit skewed, but in a 5:25 fight, I got out 19 HoGs. With them on a 2 charge system every 24 seconds, in 5:25 (325 seconds), I could have used a maximum of somewhere in the neighborhood of 26-27. Eh, so I messed up a bit. Whatever, let's look past that and check out Shadowbolt and Touch of Chaos uses:

103 Touch of Chaos

34 Shadowbolt casts / 100 Shadowbolt hits

137 total casts that could have proc'd the new set bonus. At 20% rate, this would have generated an extra 28 Hand of Guldans which is HIGHER than the maximum I could have done in this window. This is why I said no way it goes live. At 8%, it's a bit more reasonable to assume that we'd see about 12 Hand of Guldan extras, or almost 35% more than we normally see. Adjusting HoG and Shadowflame damage up 40%, I'd give this rough calculation:

My HoG damage = 991450 x 1.35 = ~1.3M

My Shadowflame damage = 2707736 x 1.35 = ~3.6M. This number would be augmented if Shadowflame could stack beyond 2. It also goes without saying that the timing of the procs could allow for better overlapping of Shadowflame to create longer and better uptimes.

Now an additional 4.9M damage, estimated VERY roughly, of course, would correlate into DPS by dividing 4,900,000 into 325 seconds. 4,900,000/325 = 15,000 DPS. Out of the 206k that I did on that fight, 15k would represent about 7.5% additional DPS. It still feels pretty strong considering most set bonuses have been in the 3-4%, but this is an end tier.

Now...the real question will need to be answered. Does glyphing Shadowbolt increase the chance of this proccing? Does each Shadowbolt count as a 'Shadowbolt' as it does in the combat log? I counted the casts only (34) in the calculation. If each hit counts, then the total cast number goes up to 203 and we see a much larger increase. I'm betting against this.

[Omaric 246]

Poor Felhunter. I bet he's actually good in PvP with a succubus on service call. So much stuff.

[Zagam 1,983]

Archimode's Vengeance...Warlock version of Hunter's Stampede. See an Imp, Succubus, Voidwalker, Succubus, and Felguard come out, high five each other, form a Power Ranger-esque form, and wreck your enemies. Yeah?

[Kaboozey 16]

With your number Zag, that's seriously going to screw with figuring out rotation concerning when and how to eat up Molten Core charges. I mean.. with the 2 piece in mind, you have to use them at some point.

[Zagam 1,983]

I'm all about guaranteed damage. Me and RNG have had a rocky relationship, so I go with the reliable, trusty decision to guarantee increased damage. I wouldn't "fish" for procs with ToC and Shadowbolt. They'd just passively happen when I used those spells. I would not change my spell priority at all with an 8% proc rate.

[Omaric 246]

Archimode's Vengeance...Warlock version of Hunter's Stampede. See an Imp, Succubus, Voidwalker, Succubus, and Felguard come out, high five each other, form a Power Ranger-esque form, and wreck your enemies. Yeah?

I like it. But change high-fiving to over-exaggerated hand summoning motions while talking in demonic in time with each new gesture.

Also, still don't know wtflip is going to happen to UVoLS.

[Annoroth 5]

Archimode's Vengeance...Warlock version of Hunter's Stampede. See an Imp, Succubus, Voidwalker, Succubus, and Felguard come out, high five each other, form a Power Ranger-esque form, and wreck your enemies. Yeah?

That would be amusing. But only if they start yelling stuff out in the process.

From what I can gather though, it appears to be in a form similar to tank vengeance. You get hit, you do more damage. The obvious differences being that it would work in PvP, and might scale slightly differently. Not the clearest assumption, but that's what I get from this:

Source: https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status/347767452911939585

[JvChequer 43]

Zagam, Shadowflame can stack until 3, that's confirmed for testing at one HOF MOB.

So, bacon sounds more tasty.

[Zagam 1,983]

Got a screenshot or something proving it stacks beyond 2? It's impossible unless you have the set bonus on the PTR. I don't dabble in PTR stuff, so I can't test it.

[JvChequer 43]

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1248982-5-3-Demonology-Warlock-Guide/page36?p=21428452#post21428452

Hand of Guldan (Shadowflame) stacks to 3. I was able to confirm that on the trash before Amber Shaper last tier. If you target the add that reflects attacks to the other add and hit both with HoG, the 2nd add gets 3 stacks from 2 HoGs. Feel free to go test it yourself, works in LFR.

Edited June 20, 2013 by JvChequer

[Omaric 246]

Oh snippy snap!!!!

[Twinkielock 15]

Archimode's Vengeance...Warlock version of Hunter's Stampede. See an Imp, Succubus, Voidwalker, Succubus, and Felguard come out, high five each other, form a Voltron-esque form, and wreck your enemies. Yeah?

Fixed your post for you.

[Cruzan 71]

At 8%, eating Bacon once every 13 casts would result in an average of one strip every 20 seconds using ToC.

Statements like this make me 100% behind the baconology terms for anything and everything related to Demo now. Also, I'm hungry.

[Zagam 1,983]

So, I wonder, theoretically, how high Shadowflame can stack. Does it take movement to 90% reduction? Does a 4th stack immobilize things? Holy wow the damage on a 3rd, 4th, etc. stack!

[Vestion 8]

Looks like they have updated things again. We can now always cast MG, incin, and shadowbolt while moving without losing movement speed. I like this chage, while still a nerf, its much better than what we could of had. They are keeping fel flame the same the though, which confuses me

didnt they change it so we had something to cast while moving? Now we shouldnt ever have to use fel flame.

Another thing is the demonic gateway debuff is 60 secs now. I miss being able to jump around without a debuff at all D=

[Zagam 1,983]

The Gateway change I could care less about. The Soul Leech change is a HUGE survivability loss. We are no longer invincible to raid mechanics, kids. Dark Regeneration just got mildly more attractive.

My old Soul Leech would climb to 640k. Now, it will only be around 96k. Ouch.

[Kaboozey 16]

That would be amusing. But only if they start yelling stuff out in the process.

From what I can gather though, it appears to be in a form similar to tank vengeance. You get hit, you do more damage. The obvious differences being that it would work in PvP, and might scale slightly differently. Not the clearest assumption, but that's what I get from this:

Source: https://twitter.com/...767452911939585

I really hope not. Encouraging players to stand in fire to top meters is bad design. Just complete redesign already.

[Kaboozey 16]

The Gateway change I could care less about. The Soul Leech change is a HUGE survivability loss. We are no longer invincible to raid mechanics, kids. Dark Regeneration just got mildly more attractive.

My old Soul Leech would climb to 640k. Now, it will only be around 96k. Ouch.

Was the Gateway change purely for pvp reasons? If not, what?

Soul Leech nerf shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Between Sac Pact & Unending Resolve, that's plenty of proactive survival. Add in all the other possible reactive survival tools we have and we're already leagues ahead of other classes. 640k absOrb is just absUrb.

[Zagam 1,983]

The Gateway nerf means in 5.4, I won't be able to solo Warbringers. :(

[Kaboozey 16]

The Gateway nerf means in 5.4, I won't be able to solo Warbringers.

BULLSHIT! Time to unsub bro.

[Demyndra 6]

The Gateway change I could care less about. The Soul Leech change is a HUGE survivability loss. We are no longer invincible to raid mechanics, kids. Dark Regeneration just got mildly more attractive.

My old Soul Leech would climb to 640k. Now, it will only be around 96k. Ouch.

Agreed, Nothing like a 100% SL shield + Sac Pact for Rampage on Meg, looks like I'll have to actively watch my health bar during Rampage. Oh well.

On a side note, has anyone looked into the viability of SB + Harvest Life? Looks like it would be a 5% heal every second for 6 secs...plus if you were to glyph it, its an extra 20% heal... I suck at this kind of math, so correct me if I'm wrong, 3-4.5% baseline heal, with glyph it would be (assuming 3.75% baseline avg) an extra .75% HP a sec, then soulburn adds 33% which is essentially another 1% unglyphed, or almost 1.5% with the glyph total a second... for a 6% heal every second?

550k health = 27.5k hp/sec or 165k total heal, unglyphed.

550k health = 33k hp/sec or 198k total heal, glyphed.

Only down side is you'd lose DPS time by channeling... This is all assuming just one target as well...

Edited June 21, 2013 by Demyndra

[Furiyers 10]

The Gateway nerf means in 5.4, I won't be able to solo Warbringers.

you don't need a gateway to solo warbringers! i solo them as destro and just soul link mr voidwalker n move him back n forth like a purple ping pong ball when spirits spawn. if they have scarabs and don't have spirits it's lulz. i assume you solo them in demo though so i'm not sure what that strat entails ;)

[Zagam 1,983]

Demo strat is maintain 250k DPS and kill in 80-90 seconds. I pull aggro off of my Wrathguard and when Warbringer gets to me, I use Gateway. Warbringer sits on Wrathguard until debuff wears off then he comes back to me, rinse and repeat. The Spirits don't even bother me.

Now that has me thinking...is the 15-60 second a permanent fade debuff, too?! This could be HUGE because you could take it before a fight and enjoy 60 seconds of no threat pulling. WOW.

[Vestion 8]

Waaaaaaait what about soul leech?! I dont think I read that part...

OK I have read that properly now.

WHAT?!