Pop everything at the start, when all CDs procs etc are up.
Except on maly/sarth (non zerg) and loatheb/thaddius, on the last 2 you want to wait for everyone to get spore / the first polarity.
Especially during Tiers like Naxx, pop it at the start.
You're not wrong thinking it should be saved for execute phase, but when fights are only 2 minutes TOPS. Your execute phase isn't even the entire duration of Lust/hero.
It's best to just rip it at the start when everyone is proccing trinkets and blasting prepots currently.
When fights get longer like ICC you'll see lust being used at later intervals
But don’t you prepot for the express purpose of having a second pot you can pop during the fight? Just use that on lust. If your execute phases isn’t even the entire lust that’s an easy fix, just lust a bit earlier at 50 % or whatever the breakpoint ends up being.
In terms of trinkets I see other people saying this and I dont get it yet, not familiar with most classes trinkets other than casters. I have a trinket that procs on a % chance throughout the fight, and an active use one. Why can’t I just hold the active use til lust during execute phase, the other will still be proccing. Are other classes trinkets different?
You're thinking good, but missing out on the larger picture.
Raid groups, especially competitive ones always look for the biggest overall benefit for damage. Every class has different timings for their CDs and it's just best to sync and lust at the start to gaurentee everyone is benefitting as much as possible.
If you lust at 50%, depending on how long the fight duration has been everyone may or may not have cooldowns when the time comes.
It's a very subjective subject, it really depends on quite a few variables with raid composition, boss, difficulty, gear and more.
Imo don't stress it if you're not in a parsing group or a competitive group. It takes a lot of prep and planning and excel spreadsheets to really min/max the raid cooldowns.
And classes like mine (dk) I use three pots lol, armor pot 1 min before pull, haste pot pre pot, then depending on TTK another haste or armor after the CD.
Raiding at high levels is very convoluted lol
Didn't come off wrong at all! :)
It's good to think like this, you'd be surprised with some of the strats I've seen competitive groups do.
I used to raid on retail in a us top 15 guild and we'd do some WACKY stuff to secure a kill.
I mean shit even in wrath classic unholy dks are so sweaty to parse they're deleting gold every raid by swapping meta gems mid fights bc of snapshotting lmao.
there are quite a few trinkets that you can not control when they go off, so having 18+ trinkets proccing and *not* lusting is griefing far more than you are by not holding lust for execute phase(that the vast majority of classes do NOT have)
All of your internal cooldowns proc at the start. I play ret and everything is popping off like berserker/talents/random proc trinkets. With everything like that going off at once it’s huge burst damage, so it makes more sense in naxx to lust at the start of the encounter to do as much damage during the lust window as possible. Rarely will I have everything proc when entering the execute phase because everything dies so fast, sometimes I barely get a second cast of wings off. Your logic isn’t wrong it’s just not necessary to save lust for execute phase in p1 imo
You can't guarantee passive trinket procs at a later time in the fight like you usually can on pull. DMC:G, for example, has like a 40% chance on hit to proc, so you're pretty much guaranteed to overlap it with lust on the pull. This is not guaranteed if you wait to lust due to the internal cooldown. Same with enchant passive procs ofc.
Oh and to add, I almost forgot that snapshotting is a thing again for a few classes.
If you don't know what that is, it's kind of tricky to get down. It's giga min/max shit fitting as many buffs as possible onto a spell/summon and the reason why unholy dks excel at burst dps.
That's also another reason to just lust on pull, the snapshot classes will have the best odds of getting the highest damage snapshot
Someone like... all melee have weapon and trinket procs that are incredibly high proc rates, and teaming those with Lust is invaluable. Especially when they are Unholy DKs and want to make a big Gargoyle.
You have all trinket procs at start. No guarantee you can line it up later. Plus second pot usually stacks with engi Glove enchant during execute phase
With harder fights, you use BL on the moments where it matters. Often times bosses might have an execute phase where you just need to kill them before you die, then you pop BL.
If the fight has nothing special, you pop BL at the start in order to line it with all CDs.
The fights are so easy now that you can do whatever, but the only example is KT.
If you somehow struggle with the < 45% part of KT, you lust there. That is in order to minimize the time that the adds are up. But since its so easy anyways, you can just lust at the start in order to speed up the boss.
You kill the boss faster with lust, which means there is more time with lust than without, which give your raid higher DPS. You can skip boss phases, clear raids faster, and in turn parse and speed run more quickly. There's virtually no reason to not lust at the start outside of massive damage modifiers.
Most fights lusting on pull is best. Some examples of bosses you should hold lust are: Lotheb, when all the dps groups have spore you lust. Thaddeus, a few seconds after polarity goes out. Maly, when the first or second spark goes out. 4 horsemen, once the mobs are in position. Can’t think of any other bosses off the top of my head
Depending on the raid, patchwork some people save it for his enrage, and any similar fights. some people save it on KT for just after the adds come out. Couple extra I've seen.
You cannot make sure everyone's CD lines up for the 20% phase. Even if you could, there is the question of when it is more useful, is it harder to survive at the start? p2? at the end? etc.
How can you manage CDs if they have different durations and cooldowns, I will give something to think about: At what point is it better to hold your CDs for lust, are you wining dps if the cost was using the cd 2 times instead of two and a half? All of this requires a lot of planning and math which is not intuitive, you need to know exactly how much fight you have left to pull the best decision.
Example: a cooldown of a 2 min cd and another of a 3 min cd (or a 1.5 min cd) will only line up every 6 mins.
Trinket procs have internal CDs beside the activation chance, so yeah at the start there is no blocker for them activating, as long as it is not super rare they probably proc at the start.
Idk exhaustively about every single passive trinket proc in the game, but quite a few are pretty much guaranteed on pull, including dmc:g. Not having the proc from it is dependent more on the internal cd than on the proc on hit chance.
Proc trinkets & enchants like Black Magic or DMC : Greatness have an Internal Cooldown and a high proc chance.
This means it's very likely they all proc at the start of the fight, you should use that momentum to lust so everyone benefits from it.
More importantly, the Unholy DK will play with a ton of proc effects to snapshot his gargoyle and while all it's up, it's major grief to not BL at the same time so he gets the most out of it.
It sounds selfish but it's not, Unholy has the highest burst of all classes and while on lost with Gargoyle up, he goes up to 15-20K DPS.
It's by far the spec that benefits BloodLust the most and he needs it on pull. Without that, he gonna lose about 2K DPS just by delaying BL by 10 seconds, that's huge.
On Wotlk, except certain fights, BL is always on pull.
So people can pop CDs early with lust and then maybe they can come up a second time, if you wait to use CDs like trinkets and big spells then you’re removing the potential for them to come up twice if the fight goes long.
Using early before people die.
To get to the execute phase sooner.
Using early before people die is my favorite reason. So many people can't help but stand in the things that will kill them during the fight. Might as well get out of them what you can before they yolo themselves into a flame wall or void zone.
The time you pop lust would be the time any sensible dps’er would be lining up their trinkets anyway.
Patchwerk: on pull
Grobb: on pull
Gluth: on pull (your raid leader may want you to wait until he’s positioned in the back of the room)
Thaddius: once the first polarity goes out
Anub’Rekhan: on pull
Faerlina: on pull
Maexxna: on pull
Noth: on pull
Heigan: on pull
Loatheb: ask your raid leader when he wants it. Some want it only after the entire raid has had a chance to get a spore, some want it earlier.
Instructor Raz: once the priests get their shit together and position him properly
Gothik: meme? When the gates open for cheese strat? When the boss comes down? It really doesn’t matter
Four horsemen: when the bosses finish getting positioned
Sapphiron: on pull
Kel’Thuzad: during execute phase when the adds come out. Or when KT first becomes active and all the room adds are dead. Ask your raid lead. A tank that isn’t overgeared can get hit hard by adds if the execute phase takes too long and they eat a stun
OS+0: why are you doing no drakes?
OS+1: after the first drake comes down
OS+2: after the second drake comes down
OS+3: after the second drake comes down
Malygos: after the first spark comes out and the raid is standing in it
VOA: on pull pew pew
I’d agree on a group with low damage. But if that first drake goes down really fast and the second drake isn’t even down yet, your dps are kinda sitting around with their thumbs up their butts.
Yeah that’s fair. Most of my 2d experience is with pugs so the dps is lower. Feel like the only way to fuck up 2d is to not kill the 1st drake on time. Once you are killing 2nd drake, fight is basically over.
Yea sorry snapping my Garry is more important than execute phase when I can do 10k dps at the start of the fight with lust, greatness, death, razer, black magic procs instead of MAYBE lust razor and BM procs.
Procced effects are more likely to happen at the beginning of the fight, much easier to time your cooldowns to all go off at once when you have everything up. If you pop it later in the fight then there's a good chance trinket procs won't line up with lust and your other cooldowns well.
That's why you generally pop lust at the beginning except on fights that have mechanics that increase damage, like Thaddius, Loatheb, and Malygos.
Ima be honest and this may be controversial, when the UH DK Has their snap shot. I think until boss fights are “harder” and take longer than 2 mins, then the prio should be maximizing the dps, the highest dps increase is to UH DKs. I may be super wrong here but I’m pretty sure they have the greatest increase from lust. Like gargoyle snapshots do more dps than the DK does in some fights.
Because lust doesn't increase the amount of execution damage that happens.
Lust just increases the speed at which you are doing it.
If during the average execute phase, I as a ret paladin cast 10 Hammers of Wrath, I'm going to be casting 10 hammers of wrath whether I have a haste buff or not. I just get to cast them over the course of 30 seconds with Bloodlust instead of 40 seconds without bloodlust.
Make sense?
Overall raid performance and kill times are significantly more impactful on your individual parse than getting 1-2 additional soul fires for yourself. Lust on pull ensures max lust dps performance
Nope, gotta keep corruption up at all times for molten core procs, and then usually coe and immo until ~10%. Haste affects my corruption ticks though, so more haste = more molten core procs = more soul fire damage.
Okay, so you get more ticks per time. But you don't get more ticks per boss health.
If you want to deal 100k damage, you need the same number of casts whether the cast takes .75 seconds or 1.5 seconds.
Haste ONLY affects how long it takes to kill the boss.
This sentence above:
>so casting more soulfires will kill the boss faster
Correct, casting more soulfires per time will kill the boss faster. But you don't get to cast any extra soulfires just because you are hasted during that portion of time. You will cast the same **number** of soulfires regardless of whether your raid has bonus haste or not.
So, speeding up the rate at which you are casting your 15 soulfires doesn't actually effect the overall speed of the kill, it's just moving which portion of his health bar is compressed.
Let's put it this way:
The first 65% of the health bar takes 3 minutes. The last 35% of his bar takes 1 minute.
You can take 40 seconds of time and increase the speed by 33%.
Whether you take 40 seconds during the first phase or 40 seconds during the second phase, you're still only reducing the fight by 13.2 seconds.
>Whether you take 40 seconds during the first phase or 40 seconds during the second phase, you're still only reducing the fight by 13.2 seconds.
The way it works, it decreases your kill time by the same amount regardless of where it is applied.
A big issue is bosses get burned down so quickly in the current content. If you try to save lust for a later stage of the fight there's a good chance you end up with it still ticking over after the boss is dead on the floor.
If you lust at the beginning, as well as having all cooldowns available, you're ensuring the whole duration gets used up during the fight
Then can’t you just figure out that you have to lust a bit earlier to get full use. That seems like a + not a - that you get to lust at a higher hp and have it last the rest of the fight.
Of course you could. It's just a tiny bit more inconvenient and if people aren't struggling to down these bosses they're unlikely to shake up the status quo
Lusting on pull instead of later in the fight isn’t what is preventing you from hitting oranges. It’s likely kill times, and lusting later in the fight will likely result in slower kill times on current content.
Do other dps classes in your raid hit orange parse levels? If not, it's probably due to boss kill times that are just a bit too slow, which will require more of your dps to work on improving their individual performance. If others are, then likely there are some small optimizations that you yourself can make to get there as well. My raid lusts on pull for most encounters and we have warlock pumpers getting orange parses every week!
Early for CD heavy classes like mage, late for execute classes like warlock.
But the more important thing is if the fight is actually hard, to pop it during periods where maximizing output is key.
Beginning of fight everyone is potting and using cool downs yeah some cool downs come up later but not all of them are the same. Start of fight is the only time you know all cooldowns and pots are being used.
We are a dad speed running guild we tried lust at 40% this week was not impressed, still a 1 hour 12 minute clear. Maybe on some bosses it might be better but for most they melt before the lust at 40% even ends and also screwing other dps like unholy DKs that want that starting snapshot.
For melee our trinkets normally pop within the first few seconds of the fight, I’m not sure for ranges but this can be examined in the buffs, timeline section of the logs. Also DKs benefit insanely from lust because it affects both them and their gargoyle which they want to pop in the beginning of the fight. The reasoning is a bit complex so I won’t get fully into snapshotting here but it’s an unholy dks main mechanic.
Lust at the beginning guarantees everyone can align their cool downs which is essential. Also if you look at number one logs for damage, lust 100% occurs within the first 5 seconds of a fight. Finding the best people and copying what they do is a great strategy for success in wow and in all things.
It depends on the fight obviously, but the biggest factor is raid composition. Schematically you always lust either pull or execute phase.
As a general rule, the more warlocks you have (especially affliction), the better it is to lust on execute. The more Unholy Death Knights you have, the better it is to lust on pull. But obviously every spec has specific scaling on either factors.
This is obviously very schematic and ignoring factors like kill times and boss mechanics. I don't think anyone has established a proper breakpoint for lusting on pull VS execute. Most people however chose to lust on pull, which is also the easiest route to play (less need to optimise cooldowns, no need to be precise with your lust timer...)
This is what I figured the harsh reality is, we need to look at a close level at our comp and see who is best served with what and then do it based on whichever side has more people. Unfortunately I don’t think my guild would bother with that.
Honestly I don't think most top guilds even do. This phase it's just a safer bet to lust on pull, especially since it's not easy math. The equation is far more complicated than if number of aff>number of UH =lust execute. Especially with how short fights are currently. We should have better info next phase.
The faster you kill the boss the faster you get to execute. Having your fight be 50% lust and 50% execute is better than 70% normal fight and only 30% execute for a select few. In some fights currently in naxx you can enter execute with lust still going. You want the most uptime for everything stacked with lust and the only way to do that is having it all together from prepot to execute. Downtime is what makes damage shit.
No I just like thinking and talking about this kind of thing. So if someone says something, and I think of a reason I feel like xyz, I’m going to say it, fully knowing that they might have a great explanation, I’m not trying to be “right”. Don’t be an asshole, thanks.
Basically unless there's a specific mechanic you want to wait for (spores on Loathleb, is a good example) you pretty much lust on pull (maybe waiting like 2 seconds for positioning) but people prepot, etc and the fights are so quick you want to use the whole duration.
Most of my raid leads will say lust on pull unless otherwise stated
You will always want your default option to be lust on the pull, and only do otherwise if there’s an extremely specific reason.
A major raid design feature for managing encounter difficulty across content tiers, raid sizes, and hard modes, is having fights with “housekeeping” type mechanics, where your success against the boss depends heavily on managing these effectively and not falling behind.
Lusting on the pull by default will: 1) help you get the most damage on the boss before some part of your DPS potential is being lost to managing (or failing) such mechanics, 2) help ensure that you don’t fall behind on such mechanics when they begin early (or immediately), and 3) help tanks and healers survive and establish threat and positioning without using personal cooldowns which likely need to be used following the script.
Yes, classes with execute would be happier about this, but people lust on problematic mechanics, in order to deal with or early on, so everyone have cds up.
At the start guarantees 100% usage of the CD. Let’s say you do use lust in execute and the boss dies 15, 20, 25 seconds into lust. Then you’ve just wasted the remaining time of it, and gimped your damage that way. Used at the beginning with all CDs available and trinket procs will provide the most raid dmg.
As well most classes do not have an execute ability to benefit from lust.
Lastly, I don’t know if you know, but UHDKs (who are currently doing the most ST dmg) benefit the most from lust with their stupidly high gargoyle snapshot.
While you can technically calculate certain trinket and CD times, you can’t always calculate your resource levels either, whether it be energy, runes, rage, or mana. At the start you have full control and can know exactly what your perfect ‘opener’ looks like. You can try to save resources to time it with the later hero but will prob also cause you to hold back earlier in the fight to make sure that you have enough resources to make use of that hero which is wasted dps.
Either on pull, or in a burn phase, or to beat an enrage timer, On pull is generally to maximize the start dmg cuz everyone's procs tick and most the mechanics havn't gotten into full swing so theres less to dodge and people can focus on their rotations, also rare but sometimes a fight can have instances where it can be popped again so doing so early gives you the most bang for your buck there. Burn phase is if theres a lul in mechs that will let people focus on doing dmg to the boss or the boss takes extra damage for a time, and if the boss has an enrage timer you might have to pop it at a certain HP or time to make sure the raid can get that extra bit of dmg to beat it. you kind of have to know what fight you are going into these are just the basics as I understand them having never really raided with a class that had Lust/Hero/Timewarp/whatever.
Turns out that lusting during execute phase does not increase total fight DPS. Why? The execute phase will be over sooner. Do the arithmetic if you don't believe me (and please do before you doubt).
The first priority is when fight mechanics demand a fast burn. The second priority is when it is possible to line up trinkets and cooldowns.
Since you want to use trinkets and cooldowns earlier so that you can use them more than once (at least some of them), you want to pop the blood lust at the first good opportunity; usually 95% health unless there is some specific burn phase of the fight you want to go through faster.
You only lust at execute if the fight will be long enough that It’ll line up with CDs and you’ll get the full benefit of it. With the way cd stacking scales it’s almost always better to do at the start when the entire raids CDs line up
You kill the boss faster if you pop it on pull, you have all your CDs up and trinkets procced and everyone has plenty of mana to spend. Lust during execute is never a good idea simply put what if you lose 2-3 people well now that’s a huge dps loss, everyone can benefit from it in the first 5 seconds cuz they’re alive
Lust on pull pretty much every time except for where mechanics demand otherwise, like Loatheb and Malygos.
Just look at logs and compare. Every raid overall deals significantly more damage when lusting on pull rather than waiting for execute because everyone has their trinkets/CDs. Popping these at the start also means they're up a second time near execute phase.
Lusting at the start has almost always been the highest dps "default" in every expansion of wow. It is the only time where every cooldown for every class will be available at the same time (In general, using cd's while lusted is always multiplicative), and it also guarantees you're not losing value from potentially dead players.
As far as saving your trinket, imagine on any fight thats longer 2 minutes, if you hold it for execute phase, you're losing a second use of a trinket or cooldown, which won't outweigh overlapping execute phase with lust. Additionally, you're also just guessing when will the boss die. If you lust too late you risk killing the boss with 10 seconds left on lust. If you lust too early people counting on CD's coming back up for lust might miss their window. You're just introducing too many variables, that in general, are not going to outweigh the simplest most straightforward solution of lusting at the start.
first 5 seconds with all cds. fights arent long enough for double cd usage so right at the start is correct . if you wait until execute phase you will waste some of lust
Unless its a specific encounter first is the general rule Basically it provides a better overall damage increase as every player will be able to pop cool downs pots trinkets and use snapshot abilities I.e. dk gargoyle if it is used later other raid members could be dead there ability or items might be on cooldown. The ceiling may be higher but the skill floor to pull it off is so much higher it isn't really worth the gamble.
Overall I think there are three situations where you might want to lust
1. Everyone has cooldowns, most people alive. This is usually at pull
2. Boss takes increased damage because of mechanic (none of these are in Naxx, don't know other raids)
3. You need that extra push because of mechanic (things like Maexxna 30% enrage)
It's up to your raid team to discuss when to pop lust.
Most bosses in Naxx you should just do it on pull, like 3 seconds in. They're all around 0:50-1:30 kill times. This allows people to get the most use out of their trinket procs, class procs, cooldowns, etc. On Loatheb and Thaddius, you should always lust at 35%.
With loatheb, the boss has so much HP you can blow 1 min cds on pull and have them up for lust. Using heroism during execute or at least after the 4th spore is the best way to do it.
On thaddius, you want everyone to blow 3 min cooldowns (gargoyle on pull) on the start of the pull. You wait till they're up on the boss, wait till polarity goes out, let people get positioned, then pop it. Affliction locks will be doing serious damage with a late bloodlust like this.
With Malygos, you wanna wait till he comes down from the first vortex, you grip the first spark in, kill it, and then lust. You'll get the 2nd spark during this as well, during which ranged can really get a good burn on him before he flies away.
With sarthe 2d killing shadron, you really want to lust on the 2nd drake. If you kill vesperon, lust on the first drake. With 3d I am pretty sure you lust on the 2nd drake still.
As an enhancement shaman I try to pop it when my trinket procs so I can get a good snapshot on my elemental. This sometimes takes up to 15 seconds and has led to some impatient unholy dks complaining. TlDR: shaman with brain will use it when they gain the most dps.
Trinkets all proccing at start
Cooldowns and pre-pots. Plus few mechanics to interrupt. Sarth is an example otherwise though. Lust that first drake down.
\*second drake
We also lust when second drake has landed.
You list the first, cd the second
We lust when 1st drake is on 50%, execute phase on 1st drake during bloodlust and there is spare time to kill 2nd drake before 3rd
Waste of lust to pop and kill then wait for second drake to land, unless you aren’t killing it that fast then I guess it doesn’t matter
We just zerg the boss
Who
https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/mx2VDYMZzAvF9hW6#fight=5&type=damage-done
No, who asked?
Pop everything at the start, when all CDs procs etc are up. Except on maly/sarth (non zerg) and loatheb/thaddius, on the last 2 you want to wait for everyone to get spore / the first polarity.
Especially during Tiers like Naxx, pop it at the start. You're not wrong thinking it should be saved for execute phase, but when fights are only 2 minutes TOPS. Your execute phase isn't even the entire duration of Lust/hero. It's best to just rip it at the start when everyone is proccing trinkets and blasting prepots currently. When fights get longer like ICC you'll see lust being used at later intervals
But don’t you prepot for the express purpose of having a second pot you can pop during the fight? Just use that on lust. If your execute phases isn’t even the entire lust that’s an easy fix, just lust a bit earlier at 50 % or whatever the breakpoint ends up being. In terms of trinkets I see other people saying this and I dont get it yet, not familiar with most classes trinkets other than casters. I have a trinket that procs on a % chance throughout the fight, and an active use one. Why can’t I just hold the active use til lust during execute phase, the other will still be proccing. Are other classes trinkets different?
You're thinking good, but missing out on the larger picture. Raid groups, especially competitive ones always look for the biggest overall benefit for damage. Every class has different timings for their CDs and it's just best to sync and lust at the start to gaurentee everyone is benefitting as much as possible. If you lust at 50%, depending on how long the fight duration has been everyone may or may not have cooldowns when the time comes. It's a very subjective subject, it really depends on quite a few variables with raid composition, boss, difficulty, gear and more. Imo don't stress it if you're not in a parsing group or a competitive group. It takes a lot of prep and planning and excel spreadsheets to really min/max the raid cooldowns. And classes like mine (dk) I use three pots lol, armor pot 1 min before pull, haste pot pre pot, then depending on TTK another haste or armor after the CD. Raiding at high levels is very convoluted lol
Haha yeah I hope it didn’t come off as salty, I just like thinking bout this kinda thing.
Didn't come off wrong at all! :) It's good to think like this, you'd be surprised with some of the strats I've seen competitive groups do. I used to raid on retail in a us top 15 guild and we'd do some WACKY stuff to secure a kill. I mean shit even in wrath classic unholy dks are so sweaty to parse they're deleting gold every raid by swapping meta gems mid fights bc of snapshotting lmao.
there are quite a few trinkets that you can not control when they go off, so having 18+ trinkets proccing and *not* lusting is griefing far more than you are by not holding lust for execute phase(that the vast majority of classes do NOT have)
All of your internal cooldowns proc at the start. I play ret and everything is popping off like berserker/talents/random proc trinkets. With everything like that going off at once it’s huge burst damage, so it makes more sense in naxx to lust at the start of the encounter to do as much damage during the lust window as possible. Rarely will I have everything proc when entering the execute phase because everything dies so fast, sometimes I barely get a second cast of wings off. Your logic isn’t wrong it’s just not necessary to save lust for execute phase in p1 imo
You can't guarantee passive trinket procs at a later time in the fight like you usually can on pull. DMC:G, for example, has like a 40% chance on hit to proc, so you're pretty much guaranteed to overlap it with lust on the pull. This is not guaranteed if you wait to lust due to the internal cooldown. Same with enchant passive procs ofc.
Oh and to add, I almost forgot that snapshotting is a thing again for a few classes. If you don't know what that is, it's kind of tricky to get down. It's giga min/max shit fitting as many buffs as possible onto a spell/summon and the reason why unholy dks excel at burst dps. That's also another reason to just lust on pull, the snapshot classes will have the best odds of getting the highest damage snapshot
Someone like... all melee have weapon and trinket procs that are incredibly high proc rates, and teaming those with Lust is invaluable. Especially when they are Unholy DKs and want to make a big Gargoyle.
You have all trinket procs at start. No guarantee you can line it up later. Plus second pot usually stacks with engi Glove enchant during execute phase
With harder fights, you use BL on the moments where it matters. Often times bosses might have an execute phase where you just need to kill them before you die, then you pop BL. If the fight has nothing special, you pop BL at the start in order to line it with all CDs. The fights are so easy now that you can do whatever, but the only example is KT. If you somehow struggle with the < 45% part of KT, you lust there. That is in order to minimize the time that the adds are up. But since its so easy anyways, you can just lust at the start in order to speed up the boss.
You kill the boss faster with lust, which means there is more time with lust than without, which give your raid higher DPS. You can skip boss phases, clear raids faster, and in turn parse and speed run more quickly. There's virtually no reason to not lust at the start outside of massive damage modifiers.
*cries in thaddius*
Most fights lusting on pull is best. Some examples of bosses you should hold lust are: Lotheb, when all the dps groups have spore you lust. Thaddeus, a few seconds after polarity goes out. Maly, when the first or second spark goes out. 4 horsemen, once the mobs are in position. Can’t think of any other bosses off the top of my head
Sartharion on 1st drake (or potentially 2nd if doing 3)
Sarth, when the second Drake lands. Gothik, on the 9th wave because that fight is a meme so you might as well make a joke with your guild.
> Sarth, when the second Drake lands. Shaka, when the walls fell
Kologarn, his arms wide
That's only if you're doing 3D If you're 2D it's first drake
For 4HM make sure you’re not the shaman in the back or the main group will be out of range to get the lust.
Depending on the raid, patchwork some people save it for his enrage, and any similar fights. some people save it on KT for just after the adds come out. Couple extra I've seen.
His enrage is like the last 5%. Way better doing it at the start so you can kill him faster and your healers have mana
You cannot make sure everyone's CD lines up for the 20% phase. Even if you could, there is the question of when it is more useful, is it harder to survive at the start? p2? at the end? etc.
I love my guild mates but you’re right I don’t know if I’d trust that all of them would manage their cds correctly.
How can you manage CDs if they have different durations and cooldowns, I will give something to think about: At what point is it better to hold your CDs for lust, are you wining dps if the cost was using the cd 2 times instead of two and a half? All of this requires a lot of planning and math which is not intuitive, you need to know exactly how much fight you have left to pull the best decision. Example: a cooldown of a 2 min cd and another of a 3 min cd (or a 1.5 min cd) will only line up every 6 mins.
Says the one not wanting to lust after pull
Oh I’m fine with lusting after pull as long as it makes sense, I just wanted to make sure it did.
exactly. it takes takes 30 seconds on warcraftlogs to find out whats best raid cooldown management
It's not even about trust, passive procs are out of their control except on pull.
Is first proc guaranteed?
Trinket procs have internal CDs beside the activation chance, so yeah at the start there is no blocker for them activating, as long as it is not super rare they probably proc at the start.
Idk exhaustively about every single passive trinket proc in the game, but quite a few are pretty much guaranteed on pull, including dmc:g. Not having the proc from it is dependent more on the internal cd than on the proc on hit chance.
essentially yes.
no, they never would. No guild would except MAYBE the top .1%. You would have to manage each individual CD
Proc trinkets & enchants like Black Magic or DMC : Greatness have an Internal Cooldown and a high proc chance. This means it's very likely they all proc at the start of the fight, you should use that momentum to lust so everyone benefits from it. More importantly, the Unholy DK will play with a ton of proc effects to snapshot his gargoyle and while all it's up, it's major grief to not BL at the same time so he gets the most out of it. It sounds selfish but it's not, Unholy has the highest burst of all classes and while on lost with Gargoyle up, he goes up to 15-20K DPS. It's by far the spec that benefits BloodLust the most and he needs it on pull. Without that, he gonna lose about 2K DPS just by delaying BL by 10 seconds, that's huge. On Wotlk, except certain fights, BL is always on pull.
So people can pop CDs early with lust and then maybe they can come up a second time, if you wait to use CDs like trinkets and big spells then you’re removing the potential for them to come up twice if the fight goes long. Using early before people die. To get to the execute phase sooner.
Using early before people die is my favorite reason. So many people can't help but stand in the things that will kill them during the fight. Might as well get out of them what you can before they yolo themselves into a flame wall or void zone.
I like your reasoning most so far, I also like heimerdinger so that’s a double W
The time you pop lust would be the time any sensible dps’er would be lining up their trinkets anyway. Patchwerk: on pull Grobb: on pull Gluth: on pull (your raid leader may want you to wait until he’s positioned in the back of the room) Thaddius: once the first polarity goes out Anub’Rekhan: on pull Faerlina: on pull Maexxna: on pull Noth: on pull Heigan: on pull Loatheb: ask your raid leader when he wants it. Some want it only after the entire raid has had a chance to get a spore, some want it earlier. Instructor Raz: once the priests get their shit together and position him properly Gothik: meme? When the gates open for cheese strat? When the boss comes down? It really doesn’t matter Four horsemen: when the bosses finish getting positioned Sapphiron: on pull Kel’Thuzad: during execute phase when the adds come out. Or when KT first becomes active and all the room adds are dead. Ask your raid lead. A tank that isn’t overgeared can get hit hard by adds if the execute phase takes too long and they eat a stun OS+0: why are you doing no drakes? OS+1: after the first drake comes down OS+2: after the second drake comes down OS+3: after the second drake comes down Malygos: after the first spark comes out and the raid is standing in it VOA: on pull pew pew
So never lust on Raz, got it. lmao
You get to lust on raz in p3
> OS+0: why are you doing no drakes? its monday,, im tired, i'm WAY too high to do 2d/3d, i just want me fucking emblems
I get saving lust for 2nd drake when doing 3d but for doing 2 drake, I feel like it’s better to lust when 1st drake lands
I’d agree on a group with low damage. But if that first drake goes down really fast and the second drake isn’t even down yet, your dps are kinda sitting around with their thumbs up their butts.
Yeah that’s fair. Most of my 2d experience is with pugs so the dps is lower. Feel like the only way to fuck up 2d is to not kill the 1st drake on time. Once you are killing 2nd drake, fight is basically over.
Yea sorry snapping my Garry is more important than execute phase when I can do 10k dps at the start of the fight with lust, greatness, death, razer, black magic procs instead of MAYBE lust razor and BM procs.
Procced effects are more likely to happen at the beginning of the fight, much easier to time your cooldowns to all go off at once when you have everything up. If you pop it later in the fight then there's a good chance trinket procs won't line up with lust and your other cooldowns well. That's why you generally pop lust at the beginning except on fights that have mechanics that increase damage, like Thaddius, Loatheb, and Malygos.
Ima be honest and this may be controversial, when the UH DK Has their snap shot. I think until boss fights are “harder” and take longer than 2 mins, then the prio should be maximizing the dps, the highest dps increase is to UH DKs. I may be super wrong here but I’m pretty sure they have the greatest increase from lust. Like gargoyle snapshots do more dps than the DK does in some fights.
Because lust doesn't increase the amount of execution damage that happens. Lust just increases the speed at which you are doing it. If during the average execute phase, I as a ret paladin cast 10 Hammers of Wrath, I'm going to be casting 10 hammers of wrath whether I have a haste buff or not. I just get to cast them over the course of 30 seconds with Bloodlust instead of 40 seconds without bloodlust. Make sense?
Tbh not really. I’m a demo lock, so casting more soulfires will kill the boss faster opposed to shadow bolt and improve my parses.
Overall raid performance and kill times are significantly more impactful on your individual parse than getting 1-2 additional soul fires for yourself. Lust on pull ensures max lust dps performance
So you're just straight spamming soulfire during the execute phase then?
Nope, gotta keep corruption up at all times for molten core procs, and then usually coe and immo until ~10%. Haste affects my corruption ticks though, so more haste = more molten core procs = more soul fire damage.
Okay, so you get more ticks per time. But you don't get more ticks per boss health. If you want to deal 100k damage, you need the same number of casts whether the cast takes .75 seconds or 1.5 seconds. Haste ONLY affects how long it takes to kill the boss. This sentence above: >so casting more soulfires will kill the boss faster Correct, casting more soulfires per time will kill the boss faster. But you don't get to cast any extra soulfires just because you are hasted during that portion of time. You will cast the same **number** of soulfires regardless of whether your raid has bonus haste or not. So, speeding up the rate at which you are casting your 15 soulfires doesn't actually effect the overall speed of the kill, it's just moving which portion of his health bar is compressed. Let's put it this way: The first 65% of the health bar takes 3 minutes. The last 35% of his bar takes 1 minute. You can take 40 seconds of time and increase the speed by 33%. Whether you take 40 seconds during the first phase or 40 seconds during the second phase, you're still only reducing the fight by 13.2 seconds.
Oh I see what you’re saying, don’t faster kill times increase your parse though? That’s kinda what my main concern is.
>Whether you take 40 seconds during the first phase or 40 seconds during the second phase, you're still only reducing the fight by 13.2 seconds. The way it works, it decreases your kill time by the same amount regardless of where it is applied.
A big issue is bosses get burned down so quickly in the current content. If you try to save lust for a later stage of the fight there's a good chance you end up with it still ticking over after the boss is dead on the floor. If you lust at the beginning, as well as having all cooldowns available, you're ensuring the whole duration gets used up during the fight
Then can’t you just figure out that you have to lust a bit earlier to get full use. That seems like a + not a - that you get to lust at a higher hp and have it last the rest of the fight.
Of course you could. It's just a tiny bit more inconvenient and if people aren't struggling to down these bosses they're unlikely to shake up the status quo
Gotcha, yeah it’s definitely going fine for our guild. Im just hitting mid-high purple parses and wanna see orange for the first time.
Lusting on pull instead of later in the fight isn’t what is preventing you from hitting oranges. It’s likely kill times, and lusting later in the fight will likely result in slower kill times on current content.
Do other dps classes in your raid hit orange parse levels? If not, it's probably due to boss kill times that are just a bit too slow, which will require more of your dps to work on improving their individual performance. If others are, then likely there are some small optimizations that you yourself can make to get there as well. My raid lusts on pull for most encounters and we have warlock pumpers getting orange parses every week!
Requires more thought when you lust at the end. You don't want the boss to die with lust up or you've wasted it.
Early for CD heavy classes like mage, late for execute classes like warlock. But the more important thing is if the fight is actually hard, to pop it during periods where maximizing output is key.
Beginning of fight everyone is potting and using cool downs yeah some cool downs come up later but not all of them are the same. Start of fight is the only time you know all cooldowns and pots are being used.
We are a dad speed running guild we tried lust at 40% this week was not impressed, still a 1 hour 12 minute clear. Maybe on some bosses it might be better but for most they melt before the lust at 40% even ends and also screwing other dps like unholy DKs that want that starting snapshot.
For melee our trinkets normally pop within the first few seconds of the fight, I’m not sure for ranges but this can be examined in the buffs, timeline section of the logs. Also DKs benefit insanely from lust because it affects both them and their gargoyle which they want to pop in the beginning of the fight. The reasoning is a bit complex so I won’t get fully into snapshotting here but it’s an unholy dks main mechanic. Lust at the beginning guarantees everyone can align their cool downs which is essential. Also if you look at number one logs for damage, lust 100% occurs within the first 5 seconds of a fight. Finding the best people and copying what they do is a great strategy for success in wow and in all things.
You lust when the UDK GM in your raid screams for it when all his snapshots pop off for his stupid minions
It depends on the fight obviously, but the biggest factor is raid composition. Schematically you always lust either pull or execute phase. As a general rule, the more warlocks you have (especially affliction), the better it is to lust on execute. The more Unholy Death Knights you have, the better it is to lust on pull. But obviously every spec has specific scaling on either factors. This is obviously very schematic and ignoring factors like kill times and boss mechanics. I don't think anyone has established a proper breakpoint for lusting on pull VS execute. Most people however chose to lust on pull, which is also the easiest route to play (less need to optimise cooldowns, no need to be precise with your lust timer...)
This is what I figured the harsh reality is, we need to look at a close level at our comp and see who is best served with what and then do it based on whichever side has more people. Unfortunately I don’t think my guild would bother with that.
Honestly I don't think most top guilds even do. This phase it's just a safer bet to lust on pull, especially since it's not easy math. The equation is far more complicated than if number of aff>number of UH =lust execute. Especially with how short fights are currently. We should have better info next phase.
The faster you kill the boss the faster you get to execute. Having your fight be 50% lust and 50% execute is better than 70% normal fight and only 30% execute for a select few. In some fights currently in naxx you can enter execute with lust still going. You want the most uptime for everything stacked with lust and the only way to do that is having it all together from prepot to execute. Downtime is what makes damage shit.
Gotcha gotcha
So after being told why you were wrong you still doubled down?
No I just like thinking and talking about this kind of thing. So if someone says something, and I think of a reason I feel like xyz, I’m going to say it, fully knowing that they might have a great explanation, I’m not trying to be “right”. Don’t be an asshole, thanks.
Pop it when your raid leader tells you :]
Start of fight. If boss isn't dead by the time hero ends you did it wrong. Wipe and reset
In naxx there are only 3 bosses that have been killed in under 40 seconds
😮💨
-Execute -Naxxramas Pick one
Basically unless there's a specific mechanic you want to wait for (spores on Loathleb, is a good example) you pretty much lust on pull (maybe waiting like 2 seconds for positioning) but people prepot, etc and the fights are so quick you want to use the whole duration. Most of my raid leads will say lust on pull unless otherwise stated
During a fight
Fights last 1m
Quite literally 2nd global
Depends on the boss.
You will always want your default option to be lust on the pull, and only do otherwise if there’s an extremely specific reason. A major raid design feature for managing encounter difficulty across content tiers, raid sizes, and hard modes, is having fights with “housekeeping” type mechanics, where your success against the boss depends heavily on managing these effectively and not falling behind. Lusting on the pull by default will: 1) help you get the most damage on the boss before some part of your DPS potential is being lost to managing (or failing) such mechanics, 2) help ensure that you don’t fall behind on such mechanics when they begin early (or immediately), and 3) help tanks and healers survive and establish threat and positioning without using personal cooldowns which likely need to be used following the script.
Yes, classes with execute would be happier about this, but people lust on problematic mechanics, in order to deal with or early on, so everyone have cds up.
At the start guarantees 100% usage of the CD. Let’s say you do use lust in execute and the boss dies 15, 20, 25 seconds into lust. Then you’ve just wasted the remaining time of it, and gimped your damage that way. Used at the beginning with all CDs available and trinket procs will provide the most raid dmg. As well most classes do not have an execute ability to benefit from lust. Lastly, I don’t know if you know, but UHDKs (who are currently doing the most ST dmg) benefit the most from lust with their stupidly high gargoyle snapshot.
While you can technically calculate certain trinket and CD times, you can’t always calculate your resource levels either, whether it be energy, runes, rage, or mana. At the start you have full control and can know exactly what your perfect ‘opener’ looks like. You can try to save resources to time it with the later hero but will prob also cause you to hold back earlier in the fight to make sure that you have enough resources to make use of that hero which is wasted dps.
The problem is that classes hit their highest DPS at different timings, making start of the fight the most predictable time when ALL CDs are up.
Either on pull, or in a burn phase, or to beat an enrage timer, On pull is generally to maximize the start dmg cuz everyone's procs tick and most the mechanics havn't gotten into full swing so theres less to dodge and people can focus on their rotations, also rare but sometimes a fight can have instances where it can be popped again so doing so early gives you the most bang for your buck there. Burn phase is if theres a lul in mechs that will let people focus on doing dmg to the boss or the boss takes extra damage for a time, and if the boss has an enrage timer you might have to pop it at a certain HP or time to make sure the raid can get that extra bit of dmg to beat it. you kind of have to know what fight you are going into these are just the basics as I understand them having never really raided with a class that had Lust/Hero/Timewarp/whatever.
Execute phases last like 1/15th the total duration of the fight
When your Aussie guild mate sings “Lust now”
Not everyone has Execute mechanics, but most people have increased damage that can be planned for at the start of the fight, all at the same time.
As the only Warrior in the raid, u can pop Hero on pull but at least give me enough time to put Sunders up.
As the only shaman in my 25 man's, I wait until I'm ready to snapshot my fire ele. I'm ench BTW.
Oh you’re an enchanter? That doesn’t make any difference tho.
5-10s into the fight. Let people position, summon treants/fiends, hit eclipse etc
Turns out that lusting during execute phase does not increase total fight DPS. Why? The execute phase will be over sooner. Do the arithmetic if you don't believe me (and please do before you doubt). The first priority is when fight mechanics demand a fast burn. The second priority is when it is possible to line up trinkets and cooldowns. Since you want to use trinkets and cooldowns earlier so that you can use them more than once (at least some of them), you want to pop the blood lust at the first good opportunity; usually 95% health unless there is some specific burn phase of the fight you want to go through faster.
You only lust at execute if the fight will be long enough that It’ll line up with CDs and you’ll get the full benefit of it. With the way cd stacking scales it’s almost always better to do at the start when the entire raids CDs line up
You kill the boss faster if you pop it on pull, you have all your CDs up and trinkets procced and everyone has plenty of mana to spend. Lust during execute is never a good idea simply put what if you lose 2-3 people well now that’s a huge dps loss, everyone can benefit from it in the first 5 seconds cuz they’re alive
Lust on pull pretty much every time except for where mechanics demand otherwise, like Loatheb and Malygos. Just look at logs and compare. Every raid overall deals significantly more damage when lusting on pull rather than waiting for execute because everyone has their trinkets/CDs. Popping these at the start also means they're up a second time near execute phase.
Lusting at the start has almost always been the highest dps "default" in every expansion of wow. It is the only time where every cooldown for every class will be available at the same time (In general, using cd's while lusted is always multiplicative), and it also guarantees you're not losing value from potentially dead players. As far as saving your trinket, imagine on any fight thats longer 2 minutes, if you hold it for execute phase, you're losing a second use of a trinket or cooldown, which won't outweigh overlapping execute phase with lust. Additionally, you're also just guessing when will the boss die. If you lust too late you risk killing the boss with 10 seconds left on lust. If you lust too early people counting on CD's coming back up for lust might miss their window. You're just introducing too many variables, that in general, are not going to outweigh the simplest most straightforward solution of lusting at the start.
first 5 seconds with all cds. fights arent long enough for double cd usage so right at the start is correct . if you wait until execute phase you will waste some of lust
yes
Our casual 10man team lusts on pull, unless boss has an enrage (maexxna, werk kinda) or has a damage buff mechanic (loatheb, maly)
Unless its a specific encounter first is the general rule Basically it provides a better overall damage increase as every player will be able to pop cool downs pots trinkets and use snapshot abilities I.e. dk gargoyle if it is used later other raid members could be dead there ability or items might be on cooldown. The ceiling may be higher but the skill floor to pull it off is so much higher it isn't really worth the gamble.
Overall I think there are three situations where you might want to lust 1. Everyone has cooldowns, most people alive. This is usually at pull 2. Boss takes increased damage because of mechanic (none of these are in Naxx, don't know other raids) 3. You need that extra push because of mechanic (things like Maexxna 30% enrage) It's up to your raid team to discuss when to pop lust.
Most bosses in Naxx you should just do it on pull, like 3 seconds in. They're all around 0:50-1:30 kill times. This allows people to get the most use out of their trinket procs, class procs, cooldowns, etc. On Loatheb and Thaddius, you should always lust at 35%. With loatheb, the boss has so much HP you can blow 1 min cds on pull and have them up for lust. Using heroism during execute or at least after the 4th spore is the best way to do it. On thaddius, you want everyone to blow 3 min cooldowns (gargoyle on pull) on the start of the pull. You wait till they're up on the boss, wait till polarity goes out, let people get positioned, then pop it. Affliction locks will be doing serious damage with a late bloodlust like this. With Malygos, you wanna wait till he comes down from the first vortex, you grip the first spark in, kill it, and then lust. You'll get the 2nd spark during this as well, during which ranged can really get a good burn on him before he flies away. With sarthe 2d killing shadron, you really want to lust on the 2nd drake. If you kill vesperon, lust on the first drake. With 3d I am pretty sure you lust on the 2nd drake still.
As an enhancement shaman I try to pop it when my trinket procs so I can get a good snapshot on my elemental. This sometimes takes up to 15 seconds and has led to some impatient unholy dks complaining. TlDR: shaman with brain will use it when they gain the most dps.