Bloodvine vs T2.5

[Denbts 3]

Is there any general consensus on whether it's better DPS to wear 3 piece Bloodvine with Doomcaller's head and shoulders, or 5/5 Doomcaller's for the 15% more mana-efficient shadow bolts? I haven't seen much debate on this topic, but it seems a lot of people disagree when I ask around. 

With Bloodvine, you gain 4% hit, and lose 20 spell power and 15% cheaper shadow bolts. How might one go about crunching numbers on what the set bonus means DPS-wise? I'm not quite sure how it translates. I get that it means more casts before you have to cast your first life tap, and that subsequent lifetaps will provide more shadow bolts per use, but is the loss of hit worth it?

[Magrim 0]

Get an add-on to track your dps.

[Lifealert 19]

Not going to make much of a difference considering that once everyone is geared up boss fights won't last more than a minute in aq (a few bosses excluded). That was always my interpretation.

[Haestingas 30]

For warlocks you are using full bloodvine until Naxx, hit is just too valuable.

[Denbts 3]

On 3/13/2017 at 3:02 PM, Lifealert said:

Not going to make much of a difference considering that once everyone is geared up boss fights won't last more than a minute in aq (a few bosses excluded). That was always my interpretation.

Wouldn't that mean that Bloodvine is categorically better because you spend the first minute or so without having to cast lifetap, thus making the T2.5 set bonus useless?

[Lifealert 19]

What I mean is you won't run out of mana before the fight is over with bloodvine. Could be more useful on long fights where you generally lifetap a lot, but hit always reigns supreme. Also there's 2% crit from set bonus (tailoring 300).

Edited March 14, 2017 by Lifealert

[harple 0]

bloodvine + Head and shoulders T 2.5, you will replace Bloodvine with T3 to get the 6/8 bonus.

[Agnome 0]

On 3/14/2017 at 4:47 PM, Lifealert said:

What I mean is you won't run out of mana before the fight is over with bloodvine. Could be more useful on long fights where you generally lifetap a lot, but hit always reigns supreme. Also there's 2% crit from set bonus (tailoring 300).

 

I'm going to list the pros for both:

Pro Bloodvine 5/5: 4 more spell hit

Pro Doomcaller 5/5: 30 spell pen, 15% cheaper SB, 20 more spell damage, 22 more int (2% more crit if you're not a tailor)

 

Once you get 10ish hit w/o bloodvine, I would gladly drop it for full Doomcaller.

There are plenty fights that last longer than 15-17 shadowbolts. (calculated for an AVG of 5700-6800 mana raidbuffed with bloodvine)

 

Edited March 16, 2017 by Agnome
Details and stuff

[Haestingas 30]

I find it funny that you are trying to fight the bloodvine logic when your math is ridiculous. Are you not world buffed? Are you not using consumes? Are you not factoring in blessing of wisdom, mana spring/mana tide? Then sure if you are a mediocre player then doomcaller may be better. If you are striving to be the best then it's bloodvine all the way. There's a fair amount of opportunities in many fights during transitions or repositions where you can lifetap on the run and not eat into SB spam time. If you take advantage of those times and consume,  I really cant think of a fight where the doomcaller would pen out from MC-AQ40.

Really the primary benefit of doomcaller to me is that while your dps is certainly a bit lower than bloodvine, your stam is way higher which is beneficial on a ton of trash where there's lots of raid dmg going out and you want to beef up to keep world buffs. That's where Doomcaller shines IMO.

 

[Agnome 0]

2 hours ago, Haestingas said:

bloodvine logic when your math is ridiculous

 

What math, what bloodvine logic?? I am mostly trying to give perspective to an otherwise very one-sided bunch of opinions.

In answer to your weird reasoning:

1. Over 6800 mana raidbuffed with Bloodvine is quite hard to reach even with full consumables.

2. The notion that you would be grouped with a shaman is a little bit silly if not extremely laughable because: Windfury goes to melee groups, Mana tide goes to healer groups.

3. BoW gives you about a shadow bolt/min.

 

About the fights where you just stand still and cast: Ebonroc, Flamegor, Nef p2, Rag, Huhuran, Patchwerk, Geddon, there are probably a good bunch I forgot about.

Edited March 17, 2017 by Agnome

[Synapse 0]

It depends on which raid and how long the fights last, and last but not least the rest of your gear composition. On my lock on Kronos I use a crit set up with some T2.5 and some random epics since the fights are so short in MC and BWL mostly and you can cover your mana usage by mana pots and runs. As for AQ I use BV on the shortest fights and doom caller on the rest. 

 

But on Kronos spell penetration is not working as intended and is a weaker stat. I do not know how spell pen works on your realm, but you could download "Glock" and see in AQ how the stat is and if retail like spell pen should have a real value dps wise in AQ which might make it absolutely worth using 2.5 eider way. But, if you are going to use doom caller you should have tear, hit ring/bracers at least. 

[myaka 4]

Spell penetration is worth it in AQ but not in BWL (since bosses don't have any resistance there anyway). The 30 Spell pen you get from ditching BV is easily worth it compared to the hit on fights like Huhuran, Twins, Ouro and C'Thun.

[Lifealert 19]

3 minutes ago, myaka said:

Spell penetration is worth it in AQ but not in BWL (since bosses don't have any resistance there anyway)

I get partial resists in BWL too.

[myaka 4]

30 minutes ago, Lifealert said:

I get partial resists in BWL too.

Yes. But in BWL there is only level based resistance that is 8 per level. So bosses in BWL have 24 level based resistance that can't be penetrated (not by curses or by spell penetration).

Edit: The same is of course true for bosses in AQ. 8 per difference in level.

[Horten 9]

All the AQ40 bosses/trash have 75 magic resistance before curses. After CoS/CoE this is reduced to 0, you can't overcome the 24 level difference based resistance with spell penetration. Spell penetration is a meaningless stat for PvE Warlocks in current content, the only boss I checked that has more shadow resistance after CoS is Lucifron.

[myaka 4]

8 minutes ago, Horten said:

All the AQ40 bosses/trash have 75 magic resistance before curses. After CoS/CoE this is reduced to 0, you can't overcome the 24 level difference based resistance with spell penetration. Spell penetration is a meaningless stat for PvE Warlocks in current content, the only boss I checked that has more shadow resistance after CoS is Lucifron.

That's not correct. You can see the resistances here: https://github.com/elysium-project/server/commit/e1236c29ef04eb51431a8d2ff83f8e037c8ca29b

It goes from 115 to 215 depending on boss.

If spell penetration is needed (which it is on basically all bosses in AQ40) it is much much better than hit.

[myaka 4]

Apparently. What I wrote is no longer correct. They have changed it back to 75 res before curses even on AQ bosses. It's just not updated on GitHub yet.

[Netherfrost 1]

Keep in mind 10 spell penetration is worth ~2.5% avg dmg gain.

[DPS 6]

3/3 bloodvine with setbonus(300tailor) is ~same level as T3 gear... T3 just provides you more stamina =) Vanilla item normalisation...

[Ram 11]

1. Get Glock (addon to calculate spell resistances of bosses by your resists)

2. If the fight is long, without lifetap phases aka movement, the boss has more resistance than your curse takes away and you habe proper hit items like tear and rings, use t2.5. Each 10 resistance you can penetrate with spell pen gives you 2.5% more damage, which adds up with the t2.5 bonus in long static fights.

3. If the fight is short and you most likely not run oom before life tap phase aka moving, use bloodvine, ofc as a tailor. 4% more hit have a bigger influence in short fights than 2.5% more damage from the spell pen. Why? If you miss one out of 25 shadow bolts (short fight scenario with bloodvine), you effectively hit 24 SBS. One shadow bolt missed is a bigger dps loss than having some shadow bolts hit harder (and with t2.5 you have 4% more chance to miss).

4. For trash use full t2.5 because the mana cost saved will add up if chain pulling and you usually do not COS mobs that die fast/you aoe, making the 30 spell pen more efficient for trash.

[sojs1 1]

bloodvine is superior in ALL current raiding situations

 

the fights that are long enough for the 15% reduced mana to come into effect are all fights with movement where you have spare gcds to tap

[Ram 11]

^ not true if you fight trash mobs which have resistance and do not get COS. Then t2,5 is superior.

Also note that 15% less mana cost means that every 6.66 casts (1/0.15) you get one shadow bolt "for free". Every life tap is 60% of a shadow bolt and it gives you mana for how many shadow bolt?

T2.5 is not bad per se and if a static fight goes long enough, it pays off.

[wickedwizard 2]

2.5 Head and shoulders with Bloodvine set is the way to go, too much crit and more importantly hit to pass on 

//Reasons to go 5/5 t2.5

-You don't have tailoring for 3/3 set bonus

-You have 12% + hit 

 

Ideally, I'd like to get 12-14%hit

 

 

[hugo790 0]

Doomcaller is AV spec :) dot supreme last all day. But if the hp helps you survive go for it. You're of no use dead

[Digge 0]

Like already mentioned, this set is pretty good on trash.

The only bossfight that is worth using the full set atm is Razorgore, since you don't need more than 6% hit for this fight.

Maybe on Majordomo, depends on how your guild handles this encounter tho.

Lucifron & Gehennas could also be  good for the spellpen pieces since those have more than 75 SR