SM/ruin vs DS/ruin 16 debuffslots

[Fell 0]

So SM/ruin does become better then DS/ruin on single target boss fights from launch of ZG and 16 debuffslots? 

Cant figure it out yet... DS/ruin gets that bonus 5% dmg, but SM/ruin gets corruption and chance of nightfall proc for instant SB.

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

Shadow Bolt is a 3 second casting time spell.

With all else being equal (including crits, etc.), +5% damage bonus difference means that in order to deal the exact same amount of damage (common denominator) using Shadow Bolt only (spammed), you're looking at being able to cast 20 Bolts on a DS/Ruin build vs casting 21 Bolts on a SM/Ruin build, for a grand total of 60 vs 63 seconds of casting time spent doing nothing but casting Shadow Bolts.  But if you're mixing in Corruption to proc Nightfall, you can basically do a rotation of 1 Corruption followed by 6 Shadow Bolts, yielding a 3+18 spells cast over ~60 seconds (we'll call it 60 just to keep things convenient for comparison purposes).

Corruption will tick 6 times per 18 seconds.  With 2/2 Nightfall, that's 1-(.96^6)=21.7% chance that Nightfall will proc per Corruption casting (assuming all of the DoT ticks hit for effect).  Odds are good that Nightfall will proc at least once per minute, if not more, meaning that if the Player is spamming Shadow Bolt and refreshing Corruption when it expires (pure theorycrafting here) then you're looking at a damage throughput of more like 3 Corruption casts + 19 (or 20?) Shadow Bolts per minute in a SM/Ruin build ... versus only casting 20 Shadow Bolts per minute in a DS/Ruin build when spamming nothing but Shadow Bolts.

Granted, those Corruption spells won't crit, since Corruption is a DoT, but the point is that the SM/Ruin build isn't all that far behind the performance of the DS/Ruin build strategy once Nightfall comes into play.

Of course, the alternative to doing that in a SM/Ruin build would be to use Corruption+Drain Life as the main go to spells, Lifetapping to keep mana up, and letting those two spells make Nightfall go "proc crazy" so as to instant cast Shadow Bolt a lot between Drain Life channeling.  This makes an apples to apples comparison with DS/Ruin build very difficult indeed, primarily because sustaining a Corruption+Drain Life cycle with intermittent Shadow Bolt use only on Nightfall procs becomes something that's very difficult to anticipate a "reliable" rotation for due to the presence of the RNG for proccing Nightfall (and thus Shadowbolts).  The main difference here though is that such a strategy is more consistent with Drain Tanking where the Warlock is operating under an assumption of What's Mine Is Mine And What's Yours Is Mine Too thanks to the draining being done, rather than taking a purely offensive Shadow Bolt Spam Only posture that does not drain/steal resources from the enemy to sustain spellcasting while spamming Shadowbolts continuously.

At least, that's the way that I would want to be looking at the two options.  But you're right that Nightfall is the complicating factor as far as the spreadsheet analysis goes.

[Fell 0]

SB cast time is 2.5 sec (from talents)

So r9 SB does aprox 480 dmg per hit. (192dps) Bonus dmg from spell power is aprox 85% (+ SB can crit) (r10 SB comes in AQ)

Corruption deals 666 dmg over 18sec, 111 dmg every 3 sec. (37dps) Bonus dmg from spell power is 100%

Source for bonus spell power formula https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=20831

 

DS/ruin 15% bonus dmg. 

SM/ruin 10% bonus dmg + nightfall proc 4% chance per corruption thick to get instant SB. 

 

Little calculation for both specs dealing dmg for 1 min without bonus dmg gear... Ignoring hit/ crit/ life tap.

• DS/ruin 1 min counter is roughly (24 SB x 480 dmg) = 11,5k dmg +15% extra dmg is 13,2k dmg total adding corruption in rotation total dmg is aprox 15k dmg. 
• SM/ruin 1 min counter is roughly (23 SB x 480 dmg) = 11k dmg + corruption 2k dmg is 13k dmg + (aprox 75% in min that nightfall will hit, say 75% from 1SB dmg = 360) +360 dmg from nighfall proc  + 10% = 14,7k dmg total

So seams that DS/ruin with corruption does like 2% more dmg then SM/ruin with corruption. But since on some boss counters there are multiple targets to add corruption, for SM/ruin spec nightfall can proc more resulting more overall dps on boss. Also I used 75% of SB dmg, cause chance of nightfall proc is 75%, still will hit 100% dmg. And in 1 min I guess most of times it will proc 1-2 times... So I would say dps is the same also keeping in mind that corruption is 100% and SB 85% bonus dmg from spell power. 

DS/ruin is just spam SB...

SM/ruin keep an eye on corruption timers, apply when needed, besides SB spam.

Despite how many locks in raid 3-4 corruptions is probably max can be used in debuff slots for raid. So its max performance gain for total raid progress. And prio of using corruption should be ofc for SM/ruin specs. Prio specing to SM/ruin spec should be locks that got best performance gear between guild locks. But probably all can go just SM/ruin too doesnt make much of a difference.

Better ofc test this live in action, then on papper.

Pls correct me if Im wrong somewhere.

[Horten 9]

1. Curse of Elements

2. Curse of Shadows

3. Curse of Recklessness

4. Sunder Armor

5. Faerie Fire

6. Gift of Arthas

7. Shadow Weaving

8. Shadow Word Pain

9. Mind Flay

10. Improved Shadow Bolt

11. Improved Scorch

12. Ignite

13. Thunder Fury attack speed reduction

14. Thunder Fury shitty NR debuff

15. Nightfall

16. Judgement of Light/Wisdom

Don't use Corruption on Bosses. Pre AQ you can remove the firemage debuffs with Winter's Chill/Expose Weakness although it is questionable if a Corruption from the highest spelldamage warlock wouldn't contribute more Raid DPS than the damage gain ~3 hunters would get from a debuff slot.

[Horten 9]

Anyway a corruption from a DS/Ruin Warlock does more damage than the Nightfall proc would contribute to a SM/Ruin lock anyway so it's a pointless argument in terms of minmaxing boss damage.

[Fell 0]

Gift of Arthas - Pot use: Increases resistance to shadow by 10. If an enemy strikes the imbiber, the attacker has a 30% chance of being inflicted with disease that increases their damage taken by 8 for 3 min. Lasts for 30 min.

Mind Flay - Assault the target's mind with Shadow energy, causing 426 Shadow damage over 3 sec and slowing their movement speed by 50%. (only 60% increased dmg from spellpower.) Debuff is only for slow effect its get low prio buff and will get pushed of by others, the dmg thick will still go on.

Improved Scorch - Well talking currently more about ZG patch. So all mages still frost. In place is winter chill debuff.

Ignate - Same thing all mages being frost atm.

Thunder fury 2 slots - not all guild got Thunder fury.

My thoughts how it can look in ZG ptach is:

1. Sunder

2. TC/TF -Speed

3. Demo Shout / TF -NR

4. CoR

5. CoE

6. CoS

7. Faerie Fire

8. Winter's Chill

9. Imp Shadowbolt

10. Shadow Vulnerability

11. SW:Pain

12. Corrupt

13. Corrupt

14. Corrupt

15. HMark

16. Nightfall/Expose Weak(T2 Hunt)/Taunt/Judgement of Light/Wisdom

[Horten 9]

Why would you drop Gift of Arthas but add Hunter's Mark rofl

[Fell 0]

Yea probably HM<GoA Im  not so much into melee and physical dps classes.

[Drain 19]

SM/RU is indeed better if you can use corruption. With 16 debuff slots, at least a few are available for warlocks to drop dots onto. If you have too many warlocks, then you'd want to start switching some to DS/RU. If so, this would be a good time to mix stones. You can get up to 3 stones at once by mixing talents, 0/2, 1/2, and 2/2. Most warlocks are SM/RU with 0/2 on talent, meaning it falls upon DS/RU warlocks to get the other ranks.

[Oxyda 0]

I would like to add, on top of all the common 15% vs 10% + Nightfall, that DS/Ruin has some neat utility talents that are often overlooked :

- 1440 health stones instead of 1200 ;

- +30% Stamina from Blood Pact's Imp's Buff. Agreed, you're not supposed to have your imp out since you usually sacrifice, but there is some fight you usuauly have an imp bitch because it's needed

- +15% stamina

- Sacrifice is not only about +15% shadow damage. You also have +15% fire (godlike in AQ) and the HP/Mana regen. You don't use them that often, but it's very handy to farm and has its uses in some PvE encounters.

[Roxanne Flowers 15]

I suppose the other advantage for SM/Ruin over DS/Ruin, in the context of this discussion, is ... SM/Ruin builds wind up using more of their spells than just Shadow Bolt ... while DS/Ruin builds wind up being somewhat of a One Trick Pony™ in terms of their casting rotations, where you can wind up casting nothing BUT Shadow Bolt.  In that respect, the SM/Ruin build feels like it ought to have some other Options built into it, allowing the Warlock to deal with some edge cases more flexibly.  The DS/Ruin build feels more "specialized" towards doing things in One Way and assuming that nothing will disrupt the underpinnings of that assumption sufficiently to matter.  So in that respect, SM/Ruin feels more like a "hedge your bets" kind of build, while DS/Ruin is more of an "all in" alternative that works ... until it doesn't.

[lorthiras 7]

where is Vamp embrace in yout lists?

[octav3k 0]

On 8/25/2017 at 0:30 AM, Fell said:

SB cast time is 2.5 sec (from talents)

So r9 SB does aprox 480 dmg per hit. (192dps) Bonus dmg from spell power is aprox 85% (+ SB can crit) (r10 SB comes in AQ)

Corruption deals 666 dmg over 18sec, 111 dmg every 3 sec. (37dps) Bonus dmg from spell power is 100%

Source for bonus spell power formula https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=20831

 

DS/ruin 15% bonus dmg. 

SM/ruin 10% bonus dmg + nightfall proc 4% chance per corruption thick to get instant SB. 

 

Little calculation for both specs dealing dmg for 1 min without bonus dmg gear... Ignoring hit/ crit/ life tap.

• DS/ruin 1 min counter is roughly (24 SB x 480 dmg) = 11,5k dmg +15% extra dmg is 13,2k dmg total adding corruption in rotation total dmg is aprox 15k dmg. 
• SM/ruin 1 min counter is roughly (23 SB x 480 dmg) = 11k dmg + corruption 2k dmg is 13k dmg + (aprox 75% in min that nightfall will hit, say 75% from 1SB dmg = 360) +360 dmg from nighfall proc  + 10% = 14,7k dmg total

So seams that DS/ruin with corruption does like 2% more dmg then SM/ruin with corruption. But since on some boss counters there are multiple targets to add corruption, for SM/ruin spec nightfall can proc more resulting more overall dps on boss. Also I used 75% of SB dmg, cause chance of nightfall proc is 75%, still will hit 100% dmg. And in 1 min I guess most of times it will proc 1-2 times... So I would say dps is the same also keeping in mind that corruption is 100% and SB 85% bonus dmg from spell power. 

DS/ruin is just spam SB...

SM/ruin keep an eye on corruption timers, apply when needed, besides SB spam.

Despite how many locks in raid 3-4 corruptions is probably max can be used in debuff slots for raid. So its max performance gain for total raid progress. And prio of using corruption should be ofc for SM/ruin specs. Prio specing to SM/ruin spec should be locks that got best performance gear between guild locks. But probably all can go just SM/ruin too doesnt make much of a difference.

Better ofc test this live in action, then on papper.

Pls correct me if Im wrong somewhere.

You missed the fact that an "instant" Shadow Bolt still takes 1.5 seconds away from your rotation because of the Global CoolDown. This means you won't gain 100% of one SB's damage, but only 1/2.5 = 40% of one when Nightfall procs.

[Aethelwulf 12]

On 8/28/2017 at 9:45 AM, Oxyda said:

- +30% Stamina from Blood Pact's Imp's Buff. Agreed, you're not supposed to have your imp out since you usually sacrifice, but there is some fight you usually have an imp bitch because it's needed

That's what SM/Ruin Warlocks are used for, since they don't lose their damage bonus from having a pet out. The only time you should really be witnessing a 3/3 Improved Imp in a raid is if you are threat-capped and are playing MD/Ruin because you needed the threat reduction to do more DPS.