[Demonology] Replace Shadowbolt with Drain life?

[Unaredon 0]

Hi guys, I was reading through some warlock community and find an interesting topic. There are people believe that when taking demonbolt as last tier talent, it is better to replace shadow bolt with Drain life (taking Harvest Life in the first talent tier and with drain life glyph). the reasoning behind this is: First, drain life is tick based, so when situations forces you to move, you will lose less damage per cast. And their damage and DF generation is of almost equal value. Second, Drain life has significantly less mana consumption than shadow bolt, so it decrease the number of usage of life tap, free some of your gcd, Third, because of drain life's healing and less life tap usage, it will help healers a bit especially for guilds that are in progression. So i would like to ask if  it is viable?  Please share your opinion.

[Bombsauce 3]

try it out and see. I doubt it

[Astynax 24]

It's pretty simple math:

[0.25(sp ratio) x 1.50 (talent) x 6(ticks)]/6 seconds = 0.375 DPET

[1.26(sp ratio)]/2.5 seconds = 0.504 DPET. 150% more damage.

Drain life DOES generate more fury, so there may be some interplay for there, but I can't imagine you could keep up with massive valley that is DL dps just to get some extra powerful soul fires. As for the life tap thing: you should be running the glyph. And in order for you to out dps shadow bolt, you'd have to run oom every other shadow bolt. Which is ridiculous. Maybe something to be played about with the fury thing. But there is not fight that is this hard to position on that this is worth the dps loss. Probably deserves some testing, but I'm going to bet it won't be fruitful. The differential is huge.

[Lockybalboa 618]

On my tablet. Run some sim craft and you can see for sure. I'm going to say no though.I REALLY don't think it will pan out.if I get bored tomorrow I might run the sim.

[Liquidsteel 279]

I definitely think it's viable, from a survival PoV. Shadowbolt damage is so pitiful anyway.

And you wouldn't use Drain Life all the time, just when you need to.

[Lockybalboa 618]

I definitely think it's viable, from a survival PoV

 

 

well ya, in terms of pure survival it is. But doing competitive DPS, I'd have to see log proof.

[Astynax 24]

I definitely think it's viable, from a survival PoV. Shadowbolt damage is so pitiful anyway.

And you wouldn't use Drain Life all the time, just when you need to.

Don't get me wrong: if you're about to die, and need the healing because your raid can't keep up: then sure. Use drain life. But we're still taking about (assuming all else being equal) 65% of shadowbolt's pitiful damage. 65% of pitiful. The original leads me to think he means all the time. I'm not sure.

[Saifadin 0]

Don't get me wrong: if you're about to die, and need the healing because your raid can't keep up: then sure. Use drain life. But we're still taking about (assuming all else being equal) 65% of shadowbolt's pitiful damage. 65% of pitiful. The original leads me to think he means all the time. I'm not sure.

 

Well thats what I understood too. 

It has its uses but lets say in a fight like Butcher this would be a DPS Loss for sure!

[Liquidsteel 279]

Well I mean on my last Butcher kill, Shadow Bolt did less than 5% of my overall damage. 4.1% to be exact.

 

Cutting into that is not a massive DPS loss. I'll give it a try on Sunday when we resume Ko'ragh and see how it goes. 4 healing leaves hp bars often low.

[Astynax 24]

Well I mean on my last Butcher kill, Shadow Bolt did less than 5% of my overall damage. 4.1% to be exact.

 

Cutting into that is not a massive DPS loss. I'll give it a try on Sunday when we resume Ko'ragh and see how it goes. 4 healing leaves hp bars often low.

Let us know. I can see it being useful for DF. It'll be the rest that has me unsure. I'm just concerned since demonbolt has the debuff. It's not like destro where you can in theory use all the embers you can make as fast as you can make them. You're time-gated. And so the filler has to not entirely suck.

[Liquidsteel 279]

I'm purely thinking from a survival point of view. DPS doesn't really matter in this situation, nor does the Fury (if it's more Fury though it's not a bad thing, you can still jump in and ToC a few times if you're capping).

[Unaredon 0]

The original author means use drain life all the time. The text is not in English so I cannot copy paste his exact word but to translate it. 

 

He admitted that replace shadow bolt with drain life is a dps loss, but this dps loss is rather insignificant. (Though he did not provide any prove). He emphasize on situations when there is movement involved, drain life is more "flexible". Say in butcher fight when boss knock everyone back, it might interrupt your SB cast, but if you are using DL, u will have few ticks fire off before you got knocked back. Put it in other way, DL is channeled spell with multiple ticks, so it can be interrupted before its full time and still does some damage, while interrupt SB cast means a total waste of a gcd. Given  their almost equal damage and fury generation, DL seems a better choice. Mana preservation and added survivability is cheery on the top. 

 

I hope I made his point clear. 

[Zagam 1,982]

Here's another point - if it becomes to the point where you use a different filler than what Blizzard intended, they won't buff Shadowbolt - they will nerf Drain Life.  Remember what they did to Fel Flame when it was the filler for Destruction?

 

Whether or not this is viable in terms of DPS, survival it adds some juice to your HP.  In terms of positioning, though, it roots you a lot - no different than Incinerate and Drain Soul.  If Shadowbolt's damage is really that pitiful, what are you really losing stopping the cast to move?  The partial ticks you get from Drain Life would make up a very small portion of it.  All in all, this looks to be a fraction of a percent while adding complexity which is something non-elite players shouldn't worry about.

[Starbuck 1]

How would you summon imps?

[Astynax 24]

I'm purely thinking from a survival point of view. DPS doesn't really matter in this situation, nor does the Fury (if it's more Fury though it's not a bad thing, you can still jump in and ToC a few times if you're capping).

That's valid. I just find that generally, if I'm in trouble as a warlock, I have screwed the pooch with like my 4 defensive CDs. As for DF. I was mistaken. It's moot. In terms of survivability, I guess...

In terms of maximizing damage: nope. For OP.

[Astynax 24]

How would you summon imps?

Hadn't thought of this. You would lose the essentially instant pus consumption of wild imps.

[Liquidsteel 279]

You'd still be casting Soul Fire, but more importantly you can just track the cooldown of Demonic Calling and plan ahead.

[Astynax 24]

You'd still be casting Soul Fire, but more importantly you can just track the cooldown of Demonic Calling and plan ahead.

That's like... Work though...

[Unaredon 0]

So based on the discussion above, can i conclude that replace shadow bolt with drain life completely is not recommended, but when situation is really tight, switch to DL for sometimes would not be a huge dps loss, so it is a viable option? Then would you suggest taking harvest life instead of soul leech as first tier talent?

[Liquidsteel 279]

I prefer Dark Regeneration with Glyphed Healthstone to be honest, but tonight I am going to take Harvest Life and Drain Life glyph and try it out. There are 2 points in that fight where health drops low and it's tight (we're 4 healing) so this could help.

 

After that I have the shield and take no damage for the rest of the fight :)

[Liquidsteel 279]

Just tested the healing with Harvest Life and Drain Life glyph.

 

Over 5.68 seconds without the 5% haste buff, I healed for just under 109k. I have 324k HP buffed.

 

That's a 33% heal in what will be closer to 5.5s once buffed. Obviously the perk makes the final ticks stronger, so it's reliant on getting the full channel off, but still. Standing in the Ko'ragh shield I'll be spamming my arse off with this, and during the fire and ice and shadow phases I can fire off 1-2 channels and ease the healing required.

 

Thumbs up.

[Sabertorous 0]

Would like to see more testing by the pros on this. Tried simple dummy target test of building DF with SB and then with DL, found that using MC procs to cast SF lines up nicely with demonic calling for imps and the dps loss building to 1000 DF was only about 200, and took almost exactly the same amount of time to build the fury.

Very happy about this find, I always try to be easy on my healers and with ember tap being so weak now, this is another way I can justify playing demo and getting better with it.

[Nalar 0]

Tbh I lvl'd demo in WoD and at 92 when I got improved drain life, I tried drain life over shadow blot and was super awesome as mobs we're going down faster Than If I used shadow bolt, but just has to remind myself that I had to use shadow bolt at the start for my imps, but I would recommend trying it out, we could possibly have our own mindflay .