This is simming really good now. I have only 2 stacked traits and it gets me to like 42% haste along with quick navigation. My 2 traits add 1400 haste rating alone so a third would be insane.
I’ve been messing around with it as well. It’s really nice in mythic+ where you use implosion regularly.
It sucks for boss fights tho because implosion is almost never used.
It’s a weird trait but it can definitely be good in aoe situations
You could also keep it up near permanently, because it only requires 3 imps. 1 hand of gul’dan every 15 sec is easy, but on single target it’s probably not worth the imp loss
If you can get three stacks, based on sims, it’s worth even using on ST. But man I feel like a m+ god being able to keep my haste at 45% pretty much permanently.
It’s now the best trait for aoe and single target at 3 stacks at ilvl 385 or higher. You essentially give up one global out of
10–12 to increase your haste (and reduce global cooldown) by 38-46%. It’s also very fun, and punishes you pretty hard if you miss an implosion cycle. Highly recommend! (Check out my Champion of the light parse for example of how crazy it can get XD)
Do you still do a 2/3 cycle implosion on ST, or would you now implosion earlier? And how do you manage openers with BI?
Normally i’d precast a demonbolt in opener, then bilescourge -> dogs -> SS -> Grimoire -> Tyrant to reset to 5 shards then HoG spam.
If you have 2+ traits, would you slow the opener (i.e. get rid of bilescourge opener to get a 3-imp HoG -> implosion immediately -> Tyrant -> bombers -> HoG) or would you do something different?
As you are doing the fight, do you just toss a random HoG every 12-15s to refresh the buff, or would you instead do you normal ST rotation (i.e. HoG every 4-5 shards while keeping everything else on CD) and implosion after 2-3 cycles, or would you just always implosion? What I can’t figure out is how much imp dps to give up for maintaining the buff.
Other question: Would you ever implode during tyrant? Would you implode right after tyrant vanishes when you have a billion imps?
Thanks in advance!
In general a good thing to remember is implosion does the same amount of damage the imps would have done anyways, at the cost of a global cooldown. This simplified a lot of the more complicated interactions down to a question of “is a global cooldown worth the haste buff here?”, with the added consideration of “if I don’t use it now will my current imps time out before I can use it again?”. Tracking imp count and energy left becomes valuable in this situation, but 95% of the time it’s worth maintaining the buff with an implosion with anywhere from 0-3 seconds left on the haste buff.
As to the opener, most of the damage comes after tyrant is cast so it’s fine to do the normal opener rotation (which will feel slow if your pumping crit/mastery for this build) and use your first 3 stack implosion right after casting tyrant. Side note: if you have baleful trait, the first 3 imps will come from the HoG immediately after tyrant (tyrant -> HoG -> shadow bolt -> implosion -> HoG). This should still allow the second HoG to trigger Nether Portal and sets you up nicely to use implosion again right after tyrant ends.
In regards to using implosion during a Tyrant mid fight, I’m still playing around with it but I believe the lost imp damage while the energy freeze is active is still worth keeping the haste buff up, since the extra damage from your felguard/etc makes up for the difference. I may try to math that out this week.
Hopefully this was helpful!
Very helpful!
When you say that implosion does similar damage to what the imps do, i’m a bit confused. Does implosion take into account the energy remaining on imps? I thought it was a static amount of damage per imp, and it was in general relatively weak damage (in ST) such that without EP x2 it’s not worth imploding a single target?
Really the main question I still struggle with is do I use implosion when the buff is 0-3 seconds irrespective of how many imps I have up, or do I wait until i’m about ready to do another big HoG.
When I’m referring to ST I’m referring to M+ FYI, not a raid scenario. IE I will never be nether portal setup for that scenario.
Thanks for above and again if you are able to answer question.
If you’ve got 3 EP traits you should just implode whenever the buff is about to expire, or whenever you’re in a normal implosion cycle.
The APL that simcraft (and by extension raidbots) uses is:
The relevant lines are 41 and 42. Line 41:
actions+=/implosion,if=azerite.explosive_potential.rank&buff.wild_imps.stack>2&buff.explosive_potential.remains<action.shadow_bolt.execute_time
Basically, if you’re running EP, and have 3 or more imps up, and the buff is going to run out before you can cast a shadowbolt, you should implode.
And 42 basically says if Tyrant is coming off CD within 11 seconds you should go ahead and implode so that you can build up a bunch of imps for him.
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My understanding of implosion for single target is the damage they do depends on the energy they have left, and is equal to what they would have done with firebolts. Secondary targets (not the one the imps are aimed at) take full damage regardless of energy. So in a pure single target fight it really is just a global cooldown trade in. Without nether portal I’d probably weave in 3 shadow bolts during the pre-tyrant phase to get a full HoG right before the tyrant cast which would be followed by an implosion.
Regarding the sim algo, I’m not sure building big imps is worth it before tyrant if it truncates your previous EP buff… if I had the time I would vary line 42 and see what comes out on top in priority system. Maybe I will this weekend. In the end I believe the dps difference between truncating a buff in favor of larger imp swarm on tyrant cast is likely within the variance.
Well that line is at worst costing you ~2/3rds of a gcd worth of Shadowbolt per DT usage, which for most fights mean it costs ~2 shadowbolts which isn’t worth much.
Off the top of my head, that line really just prevents imploding immediately before a Tyrant.
This is such a helpful thread. I’m going to assume then that at 2 EP I shouldn’t bother using it on ST. For now I only have one.
I believe at 2 stacks (assuming ilvl 400) it’s close to even with a more “traditional” trait combo like treacherous or shadow bite stacks. At that point it would be good to swap to using it to get used to the play style. At 3 stacks it is definitely the stronger option.
For Mythic+ what do you think about using demonic apetite and having the cooldown pet eat the imps that way if you implode with him out its not killing extended duration imps and he just hits very hard. I usually use that trait just for PvP but it might work out for PvE with this trait? Anyone able to do their math wizard stuff and figure out if it works good?
DeCon works pretty well with EP. If you implode right after Summon Tyrant you get the EP buff even though the imps are consumed.
Sacrificed Souls is obviously super meh with Implosion, and even though Portal sims higher, it’s really awkward to use in M+. That sort of leaves DeCon as the go-to in M+, imo. Definitely use Portal for raid, though.
Weird I did not know you could implode right after consumption and get the buff that is amazing thanks.
So the elephant in the room is that EP is simming very very high compared to other talents. How long until Explosive Potential is nerfed?
Blizzard has said multiple times that they look out for traits that just blow everything out of the water (Recent Light’s Decree nerf for Paladins comes to mind). How the spec is preforming isn’t taken into account either, it just matters that one trait is a huge outlier that they try to “Balance”.