Quick question regarding Shadowflame and WoL

[Strife 6]

I started taking logs and analyzing myself in last nights raid.

 

My only question is how exactly do you measure how successful you were at keeping ideal double tick shadowflames, I couldn't see a differentiation between the type of buff?

 

For reference I had 13 HoG hits and 106 shadowflame ticks on Jin'rohk, not sure if it's just calculated?

Edited August 23, 2013 by Strife

[Zagam 1,982]

Ideal double ticks?  You mean 2 stack ticks?  If that's what you're referencing, you're not going to be able to split the difference.  Unlike Soul Fire, where you see two different spells, one in caster and one in Meta, Shadowflame has no different ID since it just stacks.  Thus, you're really unable to track how many ticks you had at 1 stack and how many at 2.

 

However, with some Haste information, I could calculate if you clipped properly.  It starts with 6 ticks, but at 1330 rating, you get a 7th and at 8064, you get an 8th.  Finally, at 14873, you get a 9th tick.  You also would see this tick count modified if you casted HoG with Tempus Repit/Bloodlust up.  Assuming you sit around 10k Haste, you'd have 8 base ticks of HoG.  That means you could have a maximum of 7 ticks of a 1 stack and 8 ticks of a 2 stack.  This would mean that properly maximizing HoG at 8 ticks would be 2 HoG = 15 ticks.  In your case, 13 HoGs doesn't make sense for optimization, because optimizing them would mean you'd always cast an even number of them.  Regardless, 2 HoGs = 15 ticks means 12 HoGs should be 90 ticks or 14 HoGs would be 105 ticks.  Namely, I'd say you did pretty well clipping to maximize ticks. 

 

Another way to look at how well you did is to calculate maximum possible uptime.  HoG has a 6 second base duration and a 15 second recharge time.  If you didn't care about stacking and just maximizing uptime, you could make sure they never overlapped and never received a full second charge.  Thus, your absolute maximum uptime would be 12/30, or 40%.  Because you're overlapping them, you're losing a bit of max uptime each time.  Typically, without going nutso on Shadowflame damage uptime analysis, a value between 25% and 35% is well-received.  Below 25% means you should look at improving a bit.

[Omaric 246]

I'd say to just use the Affdots addon to track your stacks.  If you pay close enough attention you'll see when you are or are not stacking them.  I don't go through logs looking for that as I know real time when I'm messing up and just fix it.  At my current haste level I can fit in exactly 3 MC'd Soulfires.

[Zagam 1,982]

Yeah, I fit in 3 Shadow Bolts, so 3 MC SF's is smooth sailing.  The goal in terms of damage is to get a 2 stack with 100% certainty.  If you think you MIGHT not clip it properly, do it earlier.  DoTs are calculated in their effectiveness by the amount of damage done divided by the amount of time spent casting it.  If you clip HoG too early, it loses some of its DPET (damage per effective time), but you still maximize your 2 stack of Shadowflame.  If you clip too late, aka don't clip, you CRUSH the DPET of the 2nd cast in half.  It's a delicate balance.

[Omaric 246]

You apparently have hacks then.  Not sure how you're fitting in 3 slower spells with less haste than me.  :P

[Strife 6]

Cool thanks, yeah I'm pretty sure the odd HoG came at the end of the fight. Was just wondering if there was an easy way to tell since I thought I've seen people reference 1 vs 2 stacks in logs before, but I guess not.

 

Generally I'm pretty good at double clipping because I hate destro and pretty much played demo exclusively leveling up and only switch to destro for Primordius. I don't have UVLS or Meta yet and was at 517ilvl in last nights raid, but I feel I'm way better at demo and have alot more fun playing it and generally seem to do good dps compared to people with the same or higher gear based on the few normal raids I've done.

 

I just wasn't sure if I could tell how ideal my clipping for 2 stacks were. I'm sitting at 8103 haste right now and can cast 2 shadowflames between HoGs to get maximum ticks, but my problem is I have 2 haste trinkets right now since I've never even seen UVLS or Hydra trinkets drop (even in LFR) which sometimes makes me waste single ticks.