Does anybody have a strong WeakAura string for maintaining Explosive Potential?
I have a very basic one that tracks the buff, however, my imp tracker seems just a tick behind on keeping track of my imps and I’m getting weirdness where I implode and the imps are despawning simultaneously.
Also, do you not talent Sacrificed Souls with Explosive Potential? You run Nether Portal?
I could give you my string if I wasnt at work so I’m not much help there but I still use SS in m+. The NP rotation is just so long and not friendly to use on trash packs.
I’d be interested in how much damage you give up from SS vs. EP’s haste bonus. I have EP on all three pieces right now, but the loss of fully draining the imps on firebolts and having as many as you can up for maximum Sacrificed Souls damage obviously has some level of tradeoff. I know the haste is worth me (it has to be, right?)
So let me ask you a question, if you have 9-12 imps up during tyrant, and EP falls off, do you blow the imps or do you leave them up for the full duration of tyrant since tyrant (I may be mistaken) makes the imps have infinite energy during the duration.
Getting a refresh of EP in ahead of tyrant is obviously important, but I run into situations where I have 6 up, and will easily hit 12 or so during tyrant (including those 6.) So yeah.
I guess I kind of answer myself, I’d be spending cast times on Stalkers (I run Doom,) Vilefiend, and a GCD on G:FG so there’s actually less to be stressed about as far as refreshing EP right before Tyrant. Or you take the other approach and keep EP up 100% of the time regardless of the number of imps and enjoy the haste your other pets get. I don’t know how to model that.
I would default to maintaining the buff over imo uptime during tyrant, since any lost damage due to energy freeze is more than made up by the increased damage output of your other buffed demons during the tyrant window. I mentioned in another thread there’s may be some optimization that can be done in terms of whether or not to maintain EP as a function of imp count and tyrant time remaining, but at this point the difference is likely in the variance.
In regards to tracking imps, There are several weak auras that can help. If you want to track energy to make sure you don’t clip despawning imps, you can do that, but to me that clutters up my UI too much. I just have a simple imp counter so on ramp up I can make sure I have 3 imps active before implosion, or to make sure I have some buffer mid fight. It’s not perfect but it helps, and you’ll get a subconscious sense for imp count eventually as you play more with EP.
SS is still probably better than NP for m+ on fortified weeks, but outside of that I prefer NP for all raid/tyrannical m+ weeks. Besides just being a very fun spell, it works better with EP than other builds in general.
Any thoughts on Demonic Consumption vs NP? Probably not for single target but maybe moreso for M+
Since you’re already reducing your available imp economy I don’t think EP and Consumption work well together. SS still likely gives you more damage over the course of an encounter and NP gives better on demand burst (and overall damage). The sims seem to show the same.
Incredibly valuable information Chuckle.
Another question for you:
On your opening, have you swapped your priorities to get EP ASAP?
In raids and world bosses, I generally Precast Demonbolt (I try to encourage the tank give me time to do this when I run my weekly mythic+ but I generally don’t push that hard) then immediately go based off damage
Bilescourge
Doom
Grimoire Felguard
Dreadstalkers
Sbolt
Vilefiend
Tyrant
Should HoG be prioritized after Bilescourge now?
I have messed with Portal, but even with EP, I find Sacrificed Souls has a smoother rotation and since I generally run Doom for raiding (doom works amazingly well this tier,) maybe I should be running Demonic Calling for M+. Do you run Soul Strike for Mythic Pluses if you are using Nether Portal?
The opener is one part I’m still not sure how to optimize just yet. As a side note I almost always play NP so it will be a bit different, but I tend to do the front load demons into tyrant into hog then implode that set of imps after a shadowbolt, since most the NP damage ramps up to happen after tyrant (same thing with non-NP openers really). One option is to weave shadowbolts every other cast after Bilescourge so you have a full hog right before tyrant which you would implode immediately after tyrant. I don’t think there is enough value to try and force a full hog into implosion immediately on an opener due to the ramping effect. (Keep in mind the above was all assuming at least one baleful trait: without one, you definitely need to weave in the shadow bolts for a full hog before tyrant).
As for doom/calling and vilefiend/soul strike, I’m personally a fan of calling and vile but doom is theoretically better. I still think vilefiend is the go to choice especially with NP but there’s a good argument that soul strike helps EP rotations run smoother and definitely helps with target swapping. If I’m running NP in m+ it’s mostly because of tyrannical so I would stick with vilefiend. This week I will likely go soulstrike/sacrificed souls due to teaming and fortified.
One nice thing about demo these days is that multiple talent combos work for different situation and allows for quite a bit of flexibility!