Demonbolt Rotation Controversy

[Liquidsteel 279]

Interesting theory Cardio, but I guess if you do that twice in a fight you could possibly deny yourself another full Demonbolt burn by adding an extra 20 seconds onto your cooldown. 

 

Currently with Shards and a BL on pull, I can do 2x then 3x inside the 40s bloodlust thanks to the heavily reduced cooldown first time round. No idea if this is good, but I like it.

 

Demonbolt is something you need to treat on a case by case basis and is VERY subjective. I'm not getting hung up on any exact rules for it and I'm doing fine :)

[spikeysquad 50]

Thanks everyone for sharing and helping me to understand a little more.

 

It was more the case Liquid that there seemed to be people saying very exact rules however these people also said different rules. I understand now it is much more fluid and depends on a lot of factors. I am ok with that, I just need to learn better what is the most important. 

 

So in order of strongest to weakest proc (for DB) do I have this correct?

 

DS (22.5% Mastery)

Synergy (15% damage)

CC (1210 SP)

Potion (1000 Intellect)

Ring Proc (370 Intellect)

Weapon  (500 Mastery)

BL/TW (30% Haste)

 

Doing it unbuffed so the numbers may be slightly wacky and because of how it is shown on the character tab I can't really work out how much 22.5% Mastery is. It sounds gigantic but is it on top? I can't see haste having much of an effect on DB (except lowering the CD but I am probably not going to have enough fury anyway to dump quicker). The potion anyhow I am going to use with big procs so doesn't matter too much where that is. 

 

How badly did I go wrong?

 

P.S. Just edited to move Synergy up a bit. Realised that I was thinking 15% of overall damage not 15% of DB. 

Edited January 22, 2015 by spikeysquad

[Liquidsteel 279]

Potion gives more than CC because iirc 1 int is equal to 2 SP.

I think the biggest thing is Dark Soul tbh. Anything else is a bonus.

[spikeysquad 50]

Thanks Liquidsteel. Yeah I don't really know what Spell Power is anymore as in game the explanation isn't very clear but from a random quick Sim they seemed really close and that was how I chose my answer. 

 

                         Int SP Mastery Haste Mult Crit Vers

Scale Factors 5.28 4.73 3.10 2.59 2.29 2.24 1.94

Normalized 1.00 0.90 0.59 0.49 0.43 0.42 0.37

 

I probably will be holding back a potion for DS and CC though and hence it doesn't matter as much. 

[Nyanchan 2]

Thanks everyone for sharing and helping me to understand a little more.

 

It was more the case Liquid that there seemed to be people saying very exact rules however these people also said different rules. I understand now it is much more fluid and depends on a lot of factors. I am ok with that, I just need to learn better what is the most important. 

 

So in order of strongest to weakest proc (for DB) do I have this correct?

 

DS (22.5% Mastery)

Synergy (15% damage)

CC (1210 SP)

Potion (1000 Intellect)

Ring Proc (370 Intellect)

Weapon  (500 Mastery)

BL/TW (30% Haste)

 

Doing it unbuffed so the numbers may be slightly wacky and because of how it is shown on the character tab I can't really work out how much 22.5% Mastery is. It sounds gigantic but is it on top? I can't see haste having much of an effect on DB (except lowering the CD but I am probably not going to have enough fury anyway to dump quicker). The potion anyhow I am going to use with big procs so doesn't matter too much where that is. 

 

How badly did I go wrong?

 

P.S. Just edited to move Synergy up a bit. Realised that I was thinking 15% of overall damage not 15% of DB. 

 

So we should aim for aligning DB with DS and synergy right? I wonder if it would be worth delaying it a bit for it to line up with synergy since it procs quite often.

[Liquidsteel 279]

So we should aim for aligning DB with DS and synergy right? I wonder if it would be worth delaying it a bit for it to line up with synergy since it procs quite often.

I don't think so. Just treat Synergy as a passive tbh. If it procs that's great, but don't go delaying 10-15s for it or you might miss another potential Demonbolt window (boss dies with 5s left on debuff, for example).

 

I think it's worth delaying if you know you will only get one more cycle (boss dying in 30-40 seconds) but otherwise Dark Soul is the only thing I actively try to line up.

[gahhda 95]

Interesting theory Cardio, but I guess if you do that twice in a fight you could possibly deny yourself another full Demonbolt burn by adding an extra 20 seconds onto your cooldown. 

 

Currently with Shards and a BL on pull, I can do 2x then 3x inside the 40s bloodlust thanks to the heavily reduced cooldown first time round. No idea if this is good, but I like it.

 

Demonbolt is something you need to treat on a case by case basis and is VERY subjective. I'm not getting hung up on any exact rules for it and I'm doing fine

 

On a 4 minute fight like butcher, it makes almost no difference if you delay for dark soul, only cast 3 times outside of DS, cast 4 times whenever possible, or roll your face on the keyboard. Shorter fights mean you're significantly less likely to have downtime on dark soul when a DB cycle ends. The longer a fight goes, like say mythic margok (/wrists), the more dps you'll lose by delaying for dark soul. This is because all those 10-30 second periods of demonbolt debuff falling rapidly start adding up to losing entire DB cycles.

 

Side note, we're talking <3% dps on a long fight. Intelligently planning demonbolt usage is much more important than using it absolutely perfectly. In that case you take a ~3% dps loss, but you gain massively increased burst on a 1 minute interval. Alternately you can mix/match how you use it based on fight timers.

 

Add coming up 20 seconds from now, DB is about to fall off, DS has 15 seconds remaining on it's cd? Save the DB cycle, melt the add.

 

And to clarify, the optimal way is to use as many as possible every time the debuff falls.

Edited January 23, 2015 by gahhda

[Liquidsteel 279]

Yep, Demonbolt cooldown lined up perfectly with every large add in p3 this week - topped damage on it by a decent margin.

[gahhda 95]

Yep, Demonbolt cooldown lined up perfectly with every large add in p3 this week - topped damage on it by a decent margin.

 

I'm debating trying my hand at demo on mythic margok. Namely because once you get to cho'gall it's the single best spec in the entire game. HoG pad the adds, get infinite DF, spam DB/ToC into the bosses dick.

[Liquidsteel 279]

It works really well. Top boss damage. Top Cho'gall damage. Do good on mages, do good on big adds.

[Karigg 0]

Last week I had a look at the top 5 parses on Butcher and Twin Ogron for demo. These are the only fights that wouldn't involve adds or damage buff cheese. Results might have changed since then, but out of those 10 parses, only 1 was starting their burn as soon as the debuff wore off, that being this forum's very own Liquidsteel. 

 

Could tell how they were playing by checking if they regularly had a significant amount of time between debuff wearing off and re-applying (5 secs or more) indicating waiting for fury/procs/CDs, or if they ever cast 3 DBs immediately after the debuff wore off indicating they were just waiting for the debuff, although that could also be a wise player taking advantage of procs. I didn't cross check with buffs. 

 

It would seem that both methods can be successful, with the wait for a full burn strat producing more top parses, but the sample size is too small and there are lots of things to consider. Boss mechanics are the obvious big variable that will alter play in every situation, but for the purpose of general discussion, would prefer to consider an infinite length single target fight. 

 

Firstly, I want to strike out the idea of casting any less than 3 DBs during a burn, except during the opener. With the current debuff length, it's generally always going to be possible to gen 480+ fury before the debuff wears off. Two possible exceptions are Hans & Franz while learning the fight, and Beastlord during the first 2 minutes while you're casting lots of dooms and the imps haven't started rolling yet, but I'm getting side tracked. In general it's better to cast all your demonbolts back to back so that the debuff time is reduced. Casting 2 DBs and filling in other spells or weaving HoGs before casting more DBs the rest of your fury will result in a longer debuff. You want a shorter debuff so that you can; 1) potentially cast more demonbolts and, 2) so that you have a bigger window with which you can wait for procs. There is a possible exception to this that I'll get to later.

 

Seeing as fury efficiency has been brought up, I want to just check that most people here would consider demonbolt to be the most fury efficient spell in single target situations? Even though the 4th demonbolt is far less efficient than the first, I would say it's much more efficient than say casting 4 soul fires in meta. If you've got heaps of fury to burn, then a chaos wave during Dark Soul would be the next most efficient use of fury.

 

Now. More demonbolts or stronger demonbolts. Tough question. To be honest, I don't know, but tend towards waiting for 800 fury and a proc, or a significant number of overlapping procs (ring+weapon+Syn for example). I don't bother picking up haste on gear, and aim to have Dark Soul up for every burn. Demonbolts without Dark Soul are pretty weak. Interested to know what other people are doing and more importantly, why.

 

At the moment, most of our buffs are either quite predictable or not very powerful. With Blackhand's trinket, I'm thinking it'll be ideal to fish for a proc or two. The window is from the debuff wearing off (or 480 fury), until ~950 fury. With good procs, you're looking at 30-100% more damage from a burn. The full 20 stacks of Multistrike alone is ~50% MS on the final demonbolt. 

 

 

 

Lost a bit of concentration so I'll stop blabbering and end with an idea for higher short burst. Consider Primal Elementalists in the Blast Furnace Encounter which are up for 25 seconds. Wondering how viable it would be to get 5 Demonbolts in on them. Have 1000 fury ready, open with Corr>HoG>DB>DB>HoG>build to 960 fury>Dark Soul>DB>DB>DB. Two charges of Dark Soul might not be worth it. If time for fury allows, could possibly squeeze in a doom there. Hopefully not necessary. If fury is short, imp swarm. The other option is DPSing them outside meta and waiting for procs to do a standard 4xDB burn. What are your thoughts?

Edited January 27, 2015 by Karigg

[Liquidsteel 279]

Itching to respond but can't put decent thoughts down on phone. Will reply later tonight.

Preface with: I still don't 100% know what I'm doing and still figuring stuff out.

[Gruxa 1]

Bottom line, find a rhythm where you find yourself comfortable with. The DB rotation isn't set in stone and i can't imagine all these different rotations (wait for this or that or don't wait, or 4 or 3 casts or whatever!) is gonna break the spec that you'll end up at the bottom of the meters :D

 

As far as i can tell demonbolt is all about decision making on the spot. gotta improvise that rotation according to the fight, which makes it imo one of the most interesting specs atm.

[Liquidsteel 279]

So now that I'm home I can write a bit more freely. I'm just going to ramble on here...

 

First of all is the question of holding Demonbolt vs waiting for Dark Soul. My general rule is that I wait for Dark Soul, obviously I haven't always done this. Indeed on Twin Ogron I went against this. Why? Dunno, was trying stuff out.

 

I think on Twin Ogron Fury generation is higher, and I didn't want to possible 'waste' Fury on less efficient spells, so I opted to burn early. Considering that the Demonbolt debuff was done 20s before Dark Soul and Trinket were ready, and that Demonbolt has a 33s cooldown for me, I elected to dump early and only delay DS and Trinket by 20s. That was my reasoning, however to tell the truth it's hard to tell if I gained anything. Delaying DS and Trinket caused me to waste trinket uptime at the end of the fight, and I didn't really gain an extra cycle out of it. Had the fight lasted another 20s, my decision would have been correct.

 

I guess the bottom line is it's hard to judge and depends on the fight. As long as every time you use Dark Soul you get over 3-4 Demonbolt's and you don't sit on charges you won't go too far wrong. Indeed Demonbolt DPS seems to vary far more on whether you get crits and if those crits come at higher stacks...

 

I think what might be interesting is if we can get Demonbolt cooldown down to the pont where we can always fit in a cycle between each Dark Soul. I'm going to be aiming for Mastery > Haste and the BiS profile has about 500 more Haste rating than I currently have. Obv this is BiS and not relevant to progress, but it's food for thought especially as we move into T18 later in the year. 

 

I think my strategy will be to not delay and see how it pans out. Especially once I don't have an on-use that can potentially lose uptime. I'll be going for Darmac's (Haste) in conjunction with Crucible (Multistrike), primarily due to Mages and Shadow Priests going for Crit gear. I won't be second guessing getting a multistrike proc. Same as I won't be delaying for Synergy either.

 

If it comes out that delaying for procs IS better then I'll switch, but my concern is that if you delay for 10-20 seconds too many times, you might lose out on multiple burns. Also if this delay causes you cap on Fury and be forced to spend it on 'inefficient' spells then that further causes me to lean to just dump when possible.

 

HAVING SAID ALL THAT - I really don't put too much thought into it, but considering I'll be going mainly Mastery > Haste I'm going to go for more Demonbolts > bigger Demonbolts. We'll have to see how it pans out. I feel with the 4 set and most fights having multiple targets, Fury generation is going to be through the roof. 

[Oldtrout 7]

If it comes out that delaying for procs IS better then I'll switch, but my concern is that if you delay for 10-20 seconds too many times, you might lose out on multiple burns. Also if this delay causes you cap on Fury and be forced to spend it on 'inefficient' spells then that further causes me to lean to just dump when possible.

 

Having decided to just go with a certain playstyle (delaying) on our Butcher progress, a few things I'd note;

 

- rather than use DS+DB on cooldown when you have them, and then delay ~20 seconds for dark soul to be back up for your fourth cycle, it is better to start delaying even with your second cycle. But what do you delay them for?

- delay for synergy procs primarily. if synergy procs and everything else is ready to go, just pop meta, DS and burn.

- if synergy isn't proccing, delay until you are over 850 fury (850 instead of 800 so that you can refresh doom as well) and cast 4 demonbolts

- delaying incrementally means that you should reach your fourth cycle and not have to wait at all for dark soul to be up

 

To be honest, progress on a boss like this with dozens of wipes would've been a great opportunity to compare the two styles of play, but then we only went and bloody killed it didn't we. On a shitty attempt for me as well.

Edited January 27, 2015 by Oldtrout

[Karigg 0]

Never really liked haste for demonbolt, though I guess with RPPM trinkets it scales better. Given that with current tuning, demo makes affliction practically obsolete, I'm planning to go Mastery>Crit for BRF.

 

The 680 alchemy trinket is an interesting obstacle to deal with. It'll proc 1500 int every ~55-56 seconds. I would be inclined to forget everything else and just burn every time it's up. Quite a rigid playstyle that will only work for a couple of encounters, but the numbers are there. 

[Liquidsteel 279]

Having decided to just go with a certain playstyle (delaying) on our Butcher progress, a few things I'd note;

 

- rather than use DS+DB on cooldown when you have them, and then delay ~20 seconds for dark soul to be back up for your fourth cycle, it is better to start delaying even with your second cycle. But what do you delay them for?

- delay for synergy procs primarily. if synergy procs and everything else is ready to go, just pop meta, DS and burn.

- if synergy isn't proccing, delay until you are over 850 fury (850 instead of 800 so that you can refresh doom as well) and cast 4 demonbolts

- delaying incrementally means that you should reach your fourth cycle and not have to wait at all for dark soul to be up

 

To be honest, progress on a boss like this with dozens of wipes would've been a great opportunity to compare the two styles of play, but then we only went and bloody killed it didn't we. On a shitty attempt for me as well.

The main reason I was so quick on my second cycle was because bloodlust still had about 8 seconds left and I wanted to benefit from the reduced cooldown.

 

Again, I'm not saying it's the right thing to do; I've been pretty firm in trying to come across as still very open about this, however with AD, delaying Dark Soul isn't an issue. I'm definitely open to perhaps delaying for a few seconds as long as I'm not capping Fury to hope for a proc, however, and will likely delay my 3rd and 4th cycles if necessary tonight.

 

I highlighted above that the 2 min on use trinket was a problem, however once we're using 2x RPPM it's ok to delay Dark Soul thanks to AD, as unless you hit 2 charges you aren't losing out on anything.

 

Again, this is all very unexplored still. People have mentioned the alchemy trinket and I think it will be strong indeed. I just don't know if waiting on average 20 seconds for each burn will be wise when over the course of 6+ minute encounter this could lead to 2-3 full cycles lost. It may be that on short, single target fights the more calculated approach is preferred, focusing on a few high power burns, whereas over long encounters with multiple targets and increased Fury gen, a more liberal approach can be considered.

 

I'm not going to pass judgement on anything until a couple weeks in anyway, and whilst I do agree that Crit is better than Haste, the amount of clothies in our guild wanting Crit is far higher than those wanting Haste, and I'm not massively fussed either way.

 

One other thing I saw posted was someone who recommended aligning your DS burn with 2x HoG, and guaranteeing the Mastery buff on this extremely potent DoT. It's something that I was only doing sometimes and not making a conscious decision on, but I can see the merit in making it align as often as possible.

[Bombsauce 3]

I've been running with the 670 Sandmans and MWF Shards. Crit is better than haste, but you still need a healthy amount of haste for fury gen and cooldown reduction. DBS are hitting hard. On our mythic butcher kills i've gotten off my 3DB Opener and a full 4DB burn phase before the first knockback. There were a couple of times that I wasn't, but if your on the edge hopefully you will get a Fox from your raid and you can finish the last cast before he charges. If i can do that, my damage is really good for the whole fight. I think i'm going to try just DB burning as soon as the debuff falls off, but that might not go so well with Dark Soul. I'll just have to try it out.