Am I the only one that finds it mildly irritating that the Greater Dreadstalker 2 set tier proc for Demo takes the Dread Calling buff… So many times I’m about to pop a juicy buffed Dreadstalker with Tyrant only to find out that the Greater Dreadstalker stole the buff at the end of the fight…
I don’t particularly mind, specially when 1 Greater Dreadstalker = 2,65 Dreadstalkers and getting a proc +guarantee proc on tyrant in the burst is such a huge huge burst.
Hmm yea I suppose I didnt take that into consideration, I was just focusing on the fact that im about to bust with a big dreadstalker tyrant buff and then the tier set dogs take it out of nowhere
But if it takes it before you cast your tyrant, then it could be a DPS loss since the normal dreadstalkers would last longer (and is impossible to plan around).
It’s debatable.
You see, due to the the presence of the [4] the power x duration isn’t 1 for 1, this is even more true when we have duration-limited effects in play.
so while the pure math of +26% damage to 2 100k dps sources for 27s (6.8m damage across 12s) would be better than +26% damage to a 265k dps source for 12s (4m damage across 12s) the presence of the [4] tierset bonus would be trigger way bigger Dreadbites
There will be situations where what you say is true, where “those Dread Calling stacks would be better on a Dreadstalker” but its more complex than just “oh its a tyrant dreadstalkers”.
Take for exemple this Greater Dreadstalker /www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/4PdqCxXH8MBNKQfp?fight=27&type=damage-done&source=95.1&start=8703492&end=8761961
versus
Dreadstalker 1 /www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/4PdqCxXH8MBNKQfp?fight=27&type=damage-done&source=58.1&start=8703492&end=8776253
and Dreadstalker 2 /www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/4PdqCxXH8MBNKQfp?fight=27&type=damage-done&source=58.2&start=8703492&end=8776253
And this “Dps loss” is more than mitigated by the fact that you got a second Greater Dreadstalker proc while bursting
The real big issue happens when you get a Great Dreadstalkers before Vilefiend, and its only because he won’t get the Houndmasters +50% damage buff in this case.
Who also can be seen in this same log, as it’s the case of Greater Dreadstalker 2 /www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/4PdqCxXH8MBNKQfp?fight=27&type=damage-done&source=95.2&start=8745069&end=8810359&view=events
In this case, he proc’d without a Vilefiend active, and he did get 6~9 stacks of Dread Calling who could have been used in the next Call Dreadstalkers, making the stacks on him worse than the ones for Extended Dreadstalkers.
But for each time this happens, there is many more times where it took from normal non extended Dreadstalkers making it a bigger dps gain to have stacks on them than on Dreadstalkers meaning on average its a dps gain to have Greater Dreadstalker consume stacks.
Look i help with the warlock module for simulationcraft/raidbots and when we originally implemented the tierset the Greater Dreadstalker did not consume stacks of Dread Calling or get buffed by it and after it got implemented it increased the power of the tierset.
It’s part of why when the first few videos talking about it said the tier was 15% overall but in fact its more like 18%~
*For the curious, the reason why he had a infernal bolt at the start is that he used a succubus summon before combat to start a ritual out of combat
On an additional note: IF they fixed the issue related to Vilefiend not retroactively buffing existent Greater Dreadstalkers, the issue i mentioned would be even less relevant.
It’s wild that they haven’t fixed Greater Dreadstalkers not retroactively getting Charhound buffs… this seems like a major oversight, no?
Well it originally didn’t get buffed at all by houndmaster’s so i am not surprised it don’t work retroactively.