UA locks, lend me your.....Immolate?Follow

A tribute to GI Joe?

Why not cast immolate? It's extra dps. You can cast Shadowbolt once all your dots are on? As affliction, most of your damage is coming from dots, including immolate - and as full affliction, that extra dot gives more power to your drain life, which may actually be better than shadowbolt spamming anyway.

I would say cast immolate, it only takes a couple seconds and for the extra damage it's worth it. IMO anyway.

Immolate does not make you drain more, only Affliction effects, Immo is a Destruction spell and does not cause an Affliction effect as far as I know.

It IS still worhtwhile to cast, I mean why not, it's still ticking away as your casting your Shadowbolts.

Ahh - well you learn something new every day :) I was under the impression that each DoT effect increased your drain life, regardless of the school. Thanks for that, this is why I love these forums :)

QFT although draining will only lower your DPS by as low as like 20-25 if you do it right and have 0 SB talents, if you've got any talents it can make a HUGE jump, like 100+ DPS (done right).

If I am doing single mobs as affliction specced then I do not usually cast immolate as it is usually overkill and not an affliction DoT. Also, immolate has a higher initial aggro penalty than the other DoTs due to its direct damage quotient. If I am fighting something tough then immolate is certainly in the cast list before starting SB just to get the DoT DPS up at a small cost of 2 seconds.
So, for CoeX kiting immolate is nice to get an initial aggro spike on pull and the 2 seconds is moot as the interval is before the pull. Otherwise it is the last DoT to be added if I think I need it before hitting SB.

Dethgin 65 warlock Llane

I was UA for a while and I'll always respec UA to raid. Yes I always put immolate up, it does roughly the same damage as a shadowbolt, but over time. The difference -- its a 1.5 second cast time. Its worth casting.



I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, shadowbolt spam smokes drain life dps. And why wouldnt you take imp shadowbolt? I just dont get what you're saying "if you do it right and have 0 SB talents". Why wouldnt you?

It's not consumed by DoT ticks, so if you're an Affliction Warlock and there isn't a Shadow Priest (and the other 'Locks are Fire Destro) you can just let it sit up there for the whole duration of the effect and bump your Corruption/Siphon/CoA damage. You want it to remain for as long as possible, so if you can... let it sit up there a little longer, then start throwing more Bolts to refresh it. It's not a bad time to throw Immolates.

The situation changes somewhat based upon the number of Shadow-damage dealers in the raid, of course. If there's a lot of Shadow Priests it's probably going to be consumed almost instantly and you may be better off to just keep spamming it - if you don't get the benefit from it, someone else will, and reapplying it gives a large damage boost. On the other hand, you can work out a system with the Shadow Priests/others Locks in your raid to conserve the proc - such as a shared chat channel warning when it's up, and having the Priests refrain from using SW:D and only casting Flay/Blast to let it stay up longer. There's all sorts of neat things to do with it. *shrug*

It's a lot like Stormstrike, really. If you have any Elemental Shaman in the raid, an Enhancement Shaman casting Earth Shock is a huge waste if it's consuming Stormstrike procs. It'll lower your DPS on the meters, but lead to a much larger gain overall if you let the Elemental Shaman take the procs. (Also less likely for you to die, which is always a plus.)

I only drain life to keep HP up, other then that, keep dots refreshed and spam shadowbolts. A good tank should be able to handle it, especially when you shatter at the right time. I use threat meter, you should definately have it for raiding.

I like to wait until halfway through the fight, tanks at maybe 280k threat, I'm at 265k, then I shatter.

I still fail to understand why it's an either/or issue with you. You can use both and spam SBs while the Immolate is doing its damage. It's still extra damage that's being done to that boss.

It is damage over time.
So I guess its not about damage that much but about time.

I already said lot of times, I leveled on affliction, but I leveled with mage friend and that was somewhat frustrating. By the time I finished casting all my DoTs he would simply blast the mob down.

I will cast Immo even if I know it wont go for full 15 sec, but what if I deal with something that can be killed in like 7-8 sec? One instadot, 2 SBs, maybe shadowburn, plus whatever is global cooldown.

I did not stop casting Immo on trash because I have more shadow damage, I still have around +900 fire damage too, but simply because with SB I can get FASTER damage for the same cost of casting time.

I do think its justified on anything that takes more than 20 seconds to kill.

No, once again, I am talking specifically about boss fights. This was tested last night on Tidewalker, using Immolate dropped my dps by ~37.5. Not a significant drop, but enough to convince me not to use it.

I suppose Critical Strikes are what caused that...

Look at it this way. Instant-cast DoT's have a 1.5 second cooldown. Immolate is 1.5 seconds, so it's the same time as every other DoT. Your Shadow Damage may be pimpin', but a DoT is a DoT. If your critical is getting to like 35 freakin' percent though, then maybe you should ignore Immolate after all :X