6.2 First Impressions - Now w/ Video!

[DravenCarey 3]

First of all I'm not sure if this should go into the 6.2 buffs/nerfs post but I figured I'd throw it here and let others decide. These are my first impressions from a few hours of testing specs/set bonuses/class trinket. 

 

- Video Version (much more informative w/ some video of my DPS testing etc): 

 

 

- As expected, going into the patch we'll see Affliction > Destro > Demo for current gear. These are the numbers I had on target dummies in my live server gear (if I wasn't playing Grim of Service I didn't use Doomguard):  

 

Aff w/ SBH+Sup: 38.4k

Aff w/ Serv+Sup: 35.5k

Demo w/ Serv+Serv: 30.2k

Destro w/ Serv+Serv: 36k

Destro w/ CR+Sac: 36.5k

 

For comparison on live servers with Demo Serv/Serv I do ~35.1k under the same time window. 

 

- Destro T18 2p w/ ServServ results in mana starvation

 

- Destro Serv/Serv ~= to CR/Sac

 

- 4p T18 Demo seems like one more thing to keep track of (maintaining the 25% demon buff will likely become a core aspect of playing Demonology well). Something of note is that the buff is not applied when the ability is cast, but when the ability hits its target - so you'll need to start factoring travel distance with your cast timing in order to maintiain this buff. Also, the RNG of generating MC procs can really be a pain. I fairly frequently found myself forced into Meta to CW just so I could get another SF cast in to maintain my buff (to avoid this we may have to hardcast SF in caster form without the decreased cast time so we can keep our HoG charges which also did decently well).

 

- Demonbolt played surprisingly well! With the 4p T18 bonus having that you should be casting Soul Fire every 12ish seconds it synergized very well with Demonbolt which uses SF to build DF to dump on Demonbolt. Simply make sure you always sit on your last Molten Core charge so you can be sure to maintain 100% uptime on the buff. For me, it slightly outperformed Serv/Serv (by about 2k with DB + Supremacy). 

 

- Demo's AoE nerf is stiff, but not game breaking. With decent RNG you'll still be competative at Burst AoE.

 

- With the T18 2p bonus, Destro with CR + Sac plays VERY nicely I expect this is going to be the go to setup for Destro.

 

- Casting Chaos Bolt with 3 stacks of Backdraft if you have the T18 2p bonus doesnt cause CB to become an instant cast it will simply reduce the cast time by about .4 seconds (for me it went from a 1.3 second cast time to a 0.907 cast time).

 

- The Class Trinket for Destro was really quite underwhelming. It didn't seem to do much (at all) for my DPS despite its remarkably annoying 10 second duration (this becomes hell, if not impossible, to manage on multi target fights). However, it does work with Fire and Brimstone to spread the debuff (so this may be something notable in AoE situations).

 

- The Class Trinket for Demo gave me a SIGNIFICANTLY higher number of imps/molten core procs (I counted 12 imps at one point while testing on the target dummy), however, it didnt' affect my DPS by all that much (definitely made maintaining the 4p bonus a bit easier though). With the increased MC procs and imps i had significantly more Demonic Fury (which was frequently spent on touch of chaos just to dump it).

 

- The Demo 2p T18 bonus looks like it would heavily favor Servitude/Supremacy however even with what could be called quite possibly the best RNG possible (consistnent flow of DF/MC procs/Trinket procs at the right times) Serv/Sup BARELY outperformed Serv/Serv when Serv/Serv had mediocre RNG. I wouldn't expect too much from Supremacy this patch unfortunately. 

 

- Looking at how the Class Trinket plays out for Affliction I ended up doing slightly more DPS when using SBH but slightly less DPS when I used Serv+Sup. My DPS with the trinket and t18 4p was pretty much identical to my DPS without the trinket and using Servitude + Sup, just with the added distraction of having to do more DoT maintenance and refreshing. As it currently sits for single target DPS I don't expect much out of this class trinket for Affliction. I got consistently smoother gameplay without it and very similar results. This could very well change in an AoE setting since our DoTs will put out their full duration of damage in a shorter amount of time (maybe this will pair well with cataclysm?).

 

- Because of the amazingness that is our 2/4p T18 Bonus I found it more useful to forgo hardcasting my DoTs (to refresh them) during my DS burn and instead just used SB:SS since I had a plethora of Soul Shards and I had no need for them since Haunt was 100% uptime during this period. On the whole I was getting about 77% uptime on Haunt (throughout the duration of a test with some pulls going upwards of 90%) and around 48% uptime for Dark Soul (with it going upwards of 60% in some tests).

 

 

I intended to do this as a video but my mic wouldn't get recorded... I may update this post when/if I get that video made. Until then, enjoy!

Edited May 31, 2015 by DravenCarey

[Liquidsteel 279]

Doing tests on target dummies usually produces awkward results so I'd be careful of reading too much into these results.

Your analysis of the Affliction class trinket is contrary to the impression myself and others have taken from it when doing live testing. Affliction looks set to become one of the dominant ST specs in the game because of it.

Destruction with GoSac and CR will continue to be the go to spec, just as it has been in BRF. The set bonuses will render Shadowburn obsolete except for ember generation and havoc purposes. It was already pretty close which is better (has been since SoO) but this pushes it over the edge.

Demonology as a progression spec just doesn't like it will become a thing.

[DravenCarey 3]

Yea I agree with pretty much everything. It's a shame my mic wouldn't get picked up (I recorded it twice and no luck) but in the attempted video I noted all those points: take my results with a grain of salt since its a target dummy test and that the Aff trinket DID give me like +3k DPS on a really solid pull (and that it may very well work out to give us some competent AoE Damage when coupled with Cataclysm). The class trinket gives the biggest DPS boost for Affliction (its actually somewhat noticable) and does next to nothing for Destruction. In theory it should produce good results for demo, however that's just not what I had (maybe I had poor luck with procs or something). But yea all in all these were just my quick and dirty first interpretations :) thanks for taking the time to add in =D.

[DravenCarey 3]

This is an extension of a post someone had another forum about using Glyph of Dark Soul (GoDS) as Affliction given our T18 2/4p bonuses.

 

The idea is that by using GoDS and getting the shorter duration DS (with the possibility of extending the duration with the Tier 18 bonus) that you could essentially end up getting a longer (collective) Dark Soul uptime correct (through the higher percentage of Drain Soul uptime during the Dark Soul buff)? And if that's you're question I did give that a look too! What I found was very disappointing however. I gave this a look with the class trinket and what I found was (all tests were done with SB:H + GoSup unless otherwise noted):

 

- Due to the nature of RNG and the very real chance of NOT getting many T18 2p bonus procs using Glyph of Dark Soul in conjunction with the Class Trinket is a DPS loss. On average I would get about 45% uptimes on Dark Soul (4p t18 + class trinket and no GoDS) however once I started trying GoDS it was frequently in the low 40's (~42%) uptimes - even when I had some pretty decent RNG. I mostly attribute this to the more frequent refreshing that must be done to maintain our DoTs - and with those extra casts comes the loss of valuable Drain Soul channeling time which we need to extend our already shortened duration for Dark Soul. 

 

Now, that was all I had really tested and called it a wash with GoDS being pretty much balls and therefore not useful. However, I got the idea that this might not be the case had I not been using the class trinket. So, I went and gave that a shot and here's what I found:

 

- When pairing GoDS with the T18 4p + my Live trinkets I was able to boost my Dark Soul uptime to ~56% (a non-negligible boost) however this type of result should not be expected in all situations (I had done tests with Servitude + GoSup where my uptime was only 45% and other SB:H + Sup tests where it was only 50% so it really comes down to how lucky you can get).

 

- Now, none of this is really all that useful unless you know what the uptime for DS is when unglyphed so looking back through the attempts I found that on average I'm getting about ~42% uptime with Dark Soul unglyphed.

 

So all in all my impression of this Glyph as a DPS boost is to expect a solid return on this glyph choice! It routinely raised my DS uptime by about 10% (hey maybe I just got lucky a number of times?) and as a result gave me a much higher Haunt uptime (going from ~70% to ~90% uptime!) which of course culminated in about a 3-4k DPS boost . This will likely hold true and be a strong trinket on single target fights (or fights where you can solely focus on one target for the duration of DS) and become rather useless when there are multiple targets in which you must maintain DoTs on. Additionally, due to the increased frequency of casting your DoTs while DS is active (if you have the Class Trinket) you can expect this glyph to strongly diminish in value when/if you obtain that trinket. Hope this helps someone 

[DravenCarey 3]

Updated the first post with a link to the audio/video I took for this post. It's rather long (over 30 min) but quite informative. Enjoy :)

[Soulzar 42]

From my dummy testing (in Shatt, so with full raid buffs)  After 5 mins Aff was sustaining 50-52k, Destro around 40-45k, and Demo 36-40k.

 

Only thing I wish I could test better was how they compared with lust... I did not use SB:SS at all, perhaps lust would afford the shards to spare but I found I needed them all to keep SB:H up.  I have not played Aff since MSV, so i'm quite dated on on playing it and its still crushing Destro/Demo ST.

 

SB:H/GoSac is simming higher, though only marginally.  I wonder if we will still default to GoSup, given that robot level perfect play on patchwerk only yields 300dps gain.

 

DemonBolt so far has had the highest ceiling for me as Demo, but also the lowest.  Its purely based on DB crit RNG.  Most pulls would be down in the gutter with 3 of 30 DB crits... then 1 time out of 10 tests I'd be "competitive" with twice the DB crits.  My hope for this talent moving forward is a change to address this discrepancy of power.

 

I think the Demo 2p plays really well with DB, but not at all well with Servitude.  Perhaps its a matter of learning how to best spend fury in relation to maintaining the 2p, but I just found I didn't have the MC charges to burn off enough fury to prevent the need for ToC spam (without DB as a fury dump)

[DravenCarey 3]

Fantastic feedback Soulzar! That's quite impressive what raid buffs can do lol - assuming I'm not royally screwing up rotations. What makes Shatt special in that you get raid buffs? Or did you just beg enough ppl to hook u up with buffs lol? I hadn't thought of SBH with GoSac, I might have to look into that a little later. And maybe I just had some good RNG but Demonbolt didn't seem to swing too drastically in DPS with me (could have been the trinkets I was using too?).

[Lockybalboa 618]

PTR servers Shatt has target dummies that give buffs. During beta and alpha they also had potions and food, not sure if the PTR does or not.

 

I dont remember if the buffs were from and NPC or just zone wide, I think it was an NPC you talk to and get it from.

 

 

EDIT: also, neither of you posted armory or ilvl - that could have made a lot of the swing between your two tests. Even a 5-10ilvl difference would be huge.

[DravenCarey 3]

Apologies, I stated it in my video but forgot to do so in the text. I'm ilvl 700-701 (depending on which trinkets I'm using).