Todays Topic: Shadowbolt vs. Incinerate
When it comes to raiding as Demonology, there are 3 major spec choices to pick from – Felguard/Emberstorm (0-41-30), Demonic Tactics/Conflagrate (0-40-31) and Metamorphosis/Ruin (0-56-15). As a Warlock, you have 2 nuke options with Shadowbolt and Incinerate.. but which is better?
Honestly, it just depends on your spec.
The first two spec options are fire-heavy builds that give enough room in Destruction to pick up the Emberstorm talent. This increases your fire damage output and lowers the cast time of Incinerate, ideally making it the much better option.
Going with a Meta/Ruin build only leaves 15 points for Destruction to pick up Improved Shadowbolt, Bane & Ruin, thus leaving out Emberstorm. Without the boost to fire damage missing and spending 5 points in Improved Shadowbolt, Shadowbolt becomes the ideal nuke.
What if you leave ISB out of your Meta/Ruin build?
Even if you opt to leave ISB out of your Meta/Ruin build, Shadowbolt will still provide more damage by picking up Bane (your only other tier 1 option) because Shadowbolt is a 3 second cast by nature and receives more of a spellpower scaling bonus than Incinerate does at a 2.5 base cast time (without Emberstorm). Remember, the longer the cast time the more spellpower bonus that spell receives and that talents that reduce cast times do not cause the spell to scale less.
The bottom line? If you can’t pick up 5/5 Emberstorm, Shadowbolt is king. Even with Improved Shadowbolt being changed to mimic Improved Scorch/Winters Chill, without Emberstorm it will do more damage than Incinerate.
[...] a look at Demonology, Destruction and various combination builds within at [...]
What is the spell rotoation on these builds? Having a real trouble working out new specs for raiding and pvp.
@ Shaftian – That really depends on what build you’re going with. Since this was asked on a Demonology related post, I’m responding with Demonology builds in mind but if I’m wrong, let me know and I can always do my best to answer again lol.
Honeslty, I’ve never used the 0-40-31 Conflag build but I can direct you to http://www.wowmb.net (Warlock’s Den – Best Warlock advice/Q&A Forum) for that. I haven’t been 0-41-30 since 3.1 hit so I’m not quite sure about that one as well but, again, Warlock’s Den would be your best bet (especially their “DPS” thread).
For Meta/Ruin (or 0-56-15)
(If CoE is being used by another Warlock or you raid with an Unholy Death Knight or Moonkin, you want to use Curse of Doom instead, but otherwise CoE)
Curse, Corruption, Immolate, Shadowbolt.
Use Demonic Empowerment on your Felguard every cooldown.
Haste is a better stat than Crit as Demonology because you get enough crit from talents so make sure you’re using your Spellstone (especially with Master Conjurer talented). Other than that, once you hit the 35% mark and can start taking advantage of Decimation, the rotation looks a little more like this.
Make sure your Curse is up, Corruption, Immolate, Shadowbolt x2, Soul Fire, Shadowbolt x2, Soul Fire
Refresh DoTs and Curses as needed and keep weaving in your 2 Shadowbolts, 1 Soul Fire rotation.
Hopefully this helped?
a couple of questions for that rotation. I thought that immolate and corruption couldn’t be up at the same time anymore? If that’s the cause wouldn’t it be better to keep corruption up? Should I be morph’d before cursing or not until I hit my nuke rotation?
with that being asked what about PvP builds? Can’t seem to find one that does good damage at all.
Immolation and Unstable Affliction cannot be up at the same time, not Corruption so you want to use both as Demonology (which is easy because you don’t even have access to Unstable Affliction). Demon Form increases all damage by 20% and it’s a slight damage boost to use your DoTs while in it rather than DoTing and then morphing to spam nukes. If you’re using CoE, use that BEFORE morphing since it’ll be a waste of a global cooldown and gets no benefit from casting it in Demon Form.
As for PVP builds, I have no idea. I’m strictly a PVE Warlock. I would suggest looking in my Blogroll for “Out of Mana”. Megs over there is a big time PVP’er and I think one of her latest posts mentioned she PVPs as Metamorphosis. Give that shot and maybe look in to the Warlock’s Den PVP forum @ http://www.wowmb.net
Thank you so much for the information.
Anytime. Thanks for stopping by =)