I'm 2 levels away from Incinerate and I've been pondering the usefulness of this spell compared to Shadowbolt. First, let's see the stats on the two:
Incinerate (Rank 1)
325 mana
403-467 Fire damage (+100.8 if target has Immolate on it)
2.5 seconds
Shadowbolt (Rank 10)
380 mana
482-538 Shadow damage
3.0 seconds
If you have Immolate on the target Incinerate seems better, with higher damage and lower mana cost, not to mention lower cast time. But I don't use Immolate that often. Well, now I do, because I'm Destruction spec'd, but otherwise I would settle for Corruption and Drain Life with a Shadowbolt tossed in there for good measure.
My first impression was "Sweet, a faster Shadowbolt!" and then "Uhm, but I don't use Immolate," and then "Ooh, Destruction plus this owns!" and then "But with Destruction my Shadowbolt is just as fast."
When do you use it, why and is it good?
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Incinerate vs. ShadowboltFollow
Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.
Well, I'm 66 and use Demonology/Felg. So when I pve I sic Felg, CoA, Imp Cor, and Immo. I then Tap and Drain. Outland mobs are tough. Sometimes at this point I do Incinerate - which will land before immolate burns out.
It shortens fight and keeps Felg from being so beat up. But it uses mana, and over many fights forces me to either drink or do a "slow draining fight" (a fight where I tap and drain in the right amount to rebuild mana and then health - and then mana again - hehe).
It's still worth casting w/out immo, but it's so much better w/ immo.
In instances on quick-to-kill mobs, I often just do sic Felg, Immo, Incinerate, and wand (while coa and imp cor are insta cast, the mobs die way too fast for them to contribute much - whereas immo is frontloaded in damage, gets to run a good portion of its short course - and then gives me a nice, amped up incinerate) -- anyway, seems to help my dps in groups & in instances.
It shortens fight and keeps Felg from being so beat up. But it uses mana, and over many fights forces me to either drink or do a "slow draining fight" (a fight where I tap and drain in the right amount to rebuild mana and then health - and then mana again - hehe).
It's still worth casting w/out immo, but it's so much better w/ immo.
In instances on quick-to-kill mobs, I often just do sic Felg, Immo, Incinerate, and wand (while coa and imp cor are insta cast, the mobs die way too fast for them to contribute much - whereas immo is frontloaded in damage, gets to run a good portion of its short course - and then gives me a nice, amped up incinerate) -- anyway, seems to help my dps in groups & in instances.
Well, I can't say this's better or that's better, they are basicly the same spell, but with shadow or with fire element. If you're SM/Ruin, you won't use Incinerate that much, but if you're Fire Dest 'lock, you won't use SB, so, you've now Incinerate to compensate SB.
For me, Incinerate just replaced the lack of SB in my Fire Dest build. I wouldn't chose SM or Fire spec based on SB or Incinerate, both are same spell to be used upon your build choice.
For me, Incinerate just replaced the lack of SB in my Fire Dest build. I wouldn't chose SM or Fire spec based on SB or Incinerate, both are same spell to be used upon your build choice.
Im running 0-40-21 atm. I have the 2.5 sec SB, so the choice of whether or not to use incinerate seems to be whether or not immolate is up. Now, as a matter of practice...Ive been using CoA, pause a beat then Immolate and skipping corruption entirely unless its a long boss fight, followed by a parade of shadowbolts or incinerate. Sometimes I get to Soulshatter in the middle and run at the tank as my health plummets... :P
I dont know if this is particular to something about my character, but I SEEM to get better dmg and crits with SB than with incinerate regardless of whether immolate is up or not...which it usually is.
Im carrying +477 spell dmg from gear, up to +826 shadow dmg with pet out and +849 fire dmg...so my fire crits should actually be higher. I have a little over 20.5% crit rate self buffed. Ive seen up to around 4200 SBs, but nothing over a 3800 Incinerate crit. Natural dmg for the spells seem to be around 1600 and 1300 respectively. Dunno if this is wierd, just my experience. :P
Hope this helps :)
I dont know if this is particular to something about my character, but I SEEM to get better dmg and crits with SB than with incinerate regardless of whether immolate is up or not...which it usually is.
Im carrying +477 spell dmg from gear, up to +826 shadow dmg with pet out and +849 fire dmg...so my fire crits should actually be higher. I have a little over 20.5% crit rate self buffed. Ive seen up to around 4200 SBs, but nothing over a 3800 Incinerate crit. Natural dmg for the spells seem to be around 1600 and 1300 respectively. Dunno if this is wierd, just my experience. :P
Hope this helps :)
basically it's all down to how you equip yourself. if you have alot of +damage but not so much crit then fire is the better choice as fire dps relies less on crit and is more mana efficient.
shadow relies on having at least 25% spell crit rate to 'statistically' maximise the dps (keeps imp.SB proc on 'constantly' and lets 1 crit benefit from it) because shadow is less efficient so to maximise it's dps you basically have to keep your damage bonus up as much as possible.
I've personnally spec'd to use both shadow and fire, i'm more shadow but i use can fire just as easy. for me the deciding factor is if I have a shadow priest or fire mage in the party or if the boss i'm doing is one where tapping is/isn't a good choice.
shadow relies on having at least 25% spell crit rate to 'statistically' maximise the dps (keeps imp.SB proc on 'constantly' and lets 1 crit benefit from it) because shadow is less efficient so to maximise it's dps you basically have to keep your damage bonus up as much as possible.
I've personnally spec'd to use both shadow and fire, i'm more shadow but i use can fire just as easy. for me the deciding factor is if I have a shadow priest or fire mage in the party or if the boss i'm doing is one where tapping is/isn't a good choice.
IponemaGirl wrote:
Well, I'm 66 and use Demonology/Felg. So when I pve I sic Felg, CoA, Imp Cor, and Immo. I then Tap and Drain. Outland mobs are tough. Sometimes at this point I do Incinerate - which will land before immolate burns out.
It shortens fight and keeps Felg from being so beat up. But it uses mana, and over many fights forces me to either drink or do a "slow draining fight" (a fight where I tap and drain in the right amount to rebuild mana and then health - and then mana again - hehe).
It's still worth casting w/out immo, but it's so much better w/ immo.
In instances on quick-to-kill mobs, I often just do sic Felg, Immo, Incinerate, and wand (while coa and imp cor are insta cast, the mobs die way too fast for them to contribute much - whereas immo is frontloaded in damage, gets to run a good portion of its short course - and then gives me a nice, amped up incinerate) -- anyway, seems to help my dps in groups & in instances.
It shortens fight and keeps Felg from being so beat up. But it uses mana, and over many fights forces me to either drink or do a "slow draining fight" (a fight where I tap and drain in the right amount to rebuild mana and then health - and then mana again - hehe).
It's still worth casting w/out immo, but it's so much better w/ immo.
In instances on quick-to-kill mobs, I often just do sic Felg, Immo, Incinerate, and wand (while coa and imp cor are insta cast, the mobs die way too fast for them to contribute much - whereas immo is frontloaded in damage, gets to run a good portion of its short course - and then gives me a nice, amped up incinerate) -- anyway, seems to help my dps in groups & in instances.
Same thing here, 66 demo, same way of soloing.
When I play with my mage friend I found out the most efficient is just immolate and incinerate, I loose very little mana and contribute with quite nice damage.
Besides I like to burn them up :D
Perhaps Curse of Elements would be good here. My friend happens to be a Mage as well and I'm guessing we could make quite a team.
Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.
Yes I use Curse of Elements quite often too on some tougher mobs, otherwise we are simply overkill..... mage/warlock combo can do really great damage.
Together we managed some quests that people usually search full team for.
67 DemoLock and it use it quite often. Either to drop a mob really fast or on a tough one (elites) once I know the felguard will hold aggro.
15 posts
IMO this spell was given to us so we have an alternative other than Searing Pain when a mob is resistant/immune to shadow dmg. It's basically equal to a SB in most respects.
With full destruction/demonology this spell is better than Shadow Bolt, otherwise it's worse. The base stats indicate that it's better, but with a 10% bonus to shadow damage it's worse. A reduced cast time makes SB better again, but if you go far enough down the destruction tree you'll get emberstorm (no more SM for that) which stacks with Shadow and Flame.
My suggestion, download Dr.Damage and use it. It will give your coefficients, as well as a number of other tasty little bits of knowledge to help you decide which spells are the best to cast.
My suggestion, download Dr.Damage and use it. It will give your coefficients, as well as a number of other tasty little bits of knowledge to help you decide which spells are the best to cast.
28 posts
Iam wonderig the same thing iam a destruction lock and iam wondering what to use. One thing my brother told me is that fire dmg is bad for lock and only god for mage i dont under stand why cant a lock do fire dmg
Pre-TBC they couldn't because Incinerate didn't exist, meaning that while Conflag and Immolate were nice, the majority of your damage still came from shadow spells unless, for some strange reason, you liked spamming Searing Pain instead. Now, with the advent of a new spell, it's actually pretty good for getting a sizable amount of damage out there. I would still take SM/Ruin over it, but then again, I'm just a fan-boy when it comes to that build. What can I say?
Once i got incinerate i use it all the time now, toss on corruption, immo, curse of elements then spam incinerate im doing more dps for less mana now then i ever was with shadowbolt.
I made a java program where I calcuatet wich one was best if you were 0/21/40 20% crit, 1k spell damage 10% hit, my program took mana cost into acount and used "´bandage + lifetap" to regain mana, and even when "waisting time on doing that more often" shadow bolt still had the best damage.
shadow bolt pwned by far.
damage scaling is based on BASE casting time, so shadow bolt will get 3/3.5, incinerate will get 2.5/3.5. that's 1/7 diffrence. so with 1k spell damage shadow bolt counts as having 143 EXTRA spell damage
second. people forget improved shadow bolt, in a long bos fight a crit means the next 4 spells give 20% extra, simplifyed that's 80% extra damage on a crit, ruin gives only 50% extra
so shadow bolt is in efeckt 280% damage when it crits and incinerate is 200%. ofcourse if you double crit you will loose some of your "efecktive crit raiting", im my program I also took this into acount (stealing some statisticks from another dude) so I think the efecktive crit rate with 25% crit (20 base +5 from bane) was around 266%!
and 143 extra spell damage and 66% higher crits OWNS the minor mana diffrence in sustained dps fights, even if you have 10% extra fire damage and lack the 10% extra shadow damage, if you are 0/40/21 then shadow bolt should rule suprime, cos then with my stats you have 30% base crit and lack the 10% extra fire damage... havn't included that in my "suprime warlock dps speck program yet"
shadow bolt pwned by far.
damage scaling is based on BASE casting time, so shadow bolt will get 3/3.5, incinerate will get 2.5/3.5. that's 1/7 diffrence. so with 1k spell damage shadow bolt counts as having 143 EXTRA spell damage
second. people forget improved shadow bolt, in a long bos fight a crit means the next 4 spells give 20% extra, simplifyed that's 80% extra damage on a crit, ruin gives only 50% extra
so shadow bolt is in efeckt 280% damage when it crits and incinerate is 200%. ofcourse if you double crit you will loose some of your "efecktive crit raiting", im my program I also took this into acount (stealing some statisticks from another dude) so I think the efecktive crit rate with 25% crit (20 base +5 from bane) was around 266%!
and 143 extra spell damage and 66% higher crits OWNS the minor mana diffrence in sustained dps fights, even if you have 10% extra fire damage and lack the 10% extra shadow damage, if you are 0/40/21 then shadow bolt should rule suprime, cos then with my stats you have 30% base crit and lack the 10% extra fire damage... havn't included that in my "suprime warlock dps speck program yet"
Maz I use it when people make me mot able to cast shadow attacks.
Or when I cant cast shadow and my Backlash is up.
Its really just a fire version of SB with potential more damage and lots more aggro.
Other than the above reasons I dont see a point in using it unless you are a lock with lots of + fire damage.
Or when I cant cast shadow and my Backlash is up.
Its really just a fire version of SB with potential more damage and lots more aggro.
Other than the above reasons I dont see a point in using it unless you are a lock with lots of + fire damage.
Even with the shadow weaving nerf in 2.1, shadowbolt still outdoes incinerate for dps. 71% coefficient cannot compete with an 86% coefficient.
For demo and shadowfury locks in 5 mans incinerate can be handy due to its mana efficiency, but in raids improved shadowbolt adds a (surprisingly) massive amount of dps.
And as stated above, a 0/21/40 build will do more as shadow with a succubus sac than fire with an imp sac.
For demo and shadowfury locks in 5 mans incinerate can be handy due to its mana efficiency, but in raids improved shadowbolt adds a (surprisingly) massive amount of dps.
And as stated above, a 0/21/40 build will do more as shadow with a succubus sac than fire with an imp sac.
Quote:
And as stated above, a 0/21/40 build will do more as shadow with a succubus sac than fire with an imp sac.
And yet still less than 40/0/21.
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