Oh Conflagrate, how I hate you
by Bakka on May.25, 2009, under General
So I’ve been sitting here in front of a target dummy, naked as a jaybird trying to figure out the math behind conflagrate. And I’m stumped at least when it comes to using conflag against immolate. So I’m a naked orc with no fel armor up. I show 0 for my spell damage. I cast immolate: 667 dd, 5 x 237 (dot). Cast conflagrate at any point during that time and 982. Now this clearly doesn’t add up. 237 x 4 = 948. There’s something I’m missing which contributes to conflagrate dmg in regards to immolate. If you perform this same experiment only with shadowflame you find that the total dot dmg from SF is the amt of dmg conflag deals. So it leads me to believe that the initial DD portion of both spells is not included into the conflagrate dmg; only the dot portion. And for SF this holds true for as I added on more pieces of gear. All the way until I put on 2pc T8 at which point conflagrate does more dmg than the dot portion of SF. I’m guessing this is some sort of bug related to how 2T8 affect immolate dmg. And it’s not an exact 110% increase to the conflag/SF dot ratio. So yeah…
So anyhow if anyone has run across any enlightening data in how conflag is working these days, esp. in regards to immolate, please post it up.
May 26th, 2009 on 7:13 am
Whatever it counts for SP if you have exactly zero, it seems to me like an effect of “Fire and Brimstone”. Take the last tic of 237, add 15%. So you have 3×237+272.55
You get 983.55. So 982 could result from some roundings in the calculation.
Its just a guess, but it seems to fit for me.
May 26th, 2009 on 11:50 am
On an offhand chance, not sure how many runs you did at this, but… If you are critting conflag, Pyroclasm might be popping up and creating the discrepency. Pure conjecture
May 27th, 2009 on 10:17 am
I made some tests. Naked. With small sp. With more sp. With full sp. I always got the same conclusion. Three times the normal immo-tick plus one with something around 17%-17,5% more. I’m wondering if emberstorm affects Fire & Brimstone, and it goes to conflag = 4.1725 ticks of immo.
But there’s the problem. That doesn’t fit with bakka’s results.
Feels like more testing is needed.
May 27th, 2009 on 1:11 pm
What does Fire and Brimstone have to do with conflagrate dmg? It should only affect the crit rate of conflagrate. Unless you’re saying the tooltip is wrong, or it’s a bug, and it is indeed affecting conflagrate dmg.
May 27th, 2009 on 3:41 pm
What spec are you using Bakka?
May 27th, 2009 on 3:48 pm
And is your nakked crit rate ~3.58/9%?
Here’s my theory: Conflag base damage figures in crit rating for the Immolate DoTs. Not that they can crit (right?).
982 – 948 = 34
34 / 948 = 3.5865% more than it should be.
If I get some time I’ll test it out by getting an intellect buff, and a grey weap with a firestone on it.
May 27th, 2009 on 3:56 pm
But it doesnt make the same consideration when using SF. Will be interesting to see the results of that test, though regardless I find it odd that the behavior between SF and immolate based conflags are so different.
May 27th, 2009 on 6:00 pm
Well, it could be an odd discrepency because of how Immolate ticks? The first tick doesn’t occur for 3 secs. So from the first immo tick to expiration, and rounding some here and there to account for it?
I started testing it as well and saw a descrepency at the naked to fully geared.
The difference naked was the 3.5% listed above, but fully geared, it was 4.06%
May 27th, 2009 on 6:08 pm
Okay, I think I found it sorta.
Emberstorm is goofing the calc slightly for conflag. 1 tick of Immo*1.15 + 3 normal ticks of immo = 983.55 which rounded up is 984
May 27th, 2009 on 6:09 pm
err rounded down 983, which is what I’m seeing as a gnome lock naked.
May 28th, 2009 on 3:30 am
Take 236,5 rounded up 981,475…
Fire & Brimstone: “Increases the damage done by your Incinerate and Chaos Bolt spells to targets afflicted by your Immolate by 15%, and the critical strike chance of your Conflagrate spell is increased by 25%.”
I’m not talking about the crit chance, bit about the 15% +dmg for immo.
May 28th, 2009 on 3:32 am
Oh… there’s my fault! forget what I said.
The german tooltip is irritating. sorry!
May 28th, 2009 on 9:05 am
Well theres another problem…
Immolate:
Burns the enemy for 460 Fire damage and then an additional 785 Fire damage over 15 sec.
And the debuff:
157 Fire damage every 3 seconds.
That makes sense so far, 785/5 = 157 per 3 seconds…
But, looking at talents that increase immolate’s DoT effect, 15% from Ember, 6% from aftermath, 30% from improved immolate, and 10% from glyph…
That should come to, 157×1.15×1.06×1.3×1.1 = 273.67 damage ever 3 seconds, shouldn’t it? That is ~15% higher than the observed value.
Even the direct damage portion isn’t right, it only benefits from ember and imp. immolate right? thats 460×1.15×1.3 = 687.7 not the observed 667…
May 28th, 2009 on 9:21 am
Ok, scratch the last part of my comment, I forgot that ember and improved immolate are additive, that is: 460*(1+.15+.3) = 667 exactly. But my first part about the DoT still stands, unless of course, Bakka, your tests did not include the immolate glyph? In that case I withdraw that part too, and ask that these comments be purged.
May 28th, 2009 on 9:38 am
If anyone could post some other immolate / conflag numbers I’d love to check a forumla. It doesn’t make logical sense, but it might to blizzard…
For that actual immolate: (157)*[(1+.3+.06)+.15] = 237
For conflag : 4*(157)*[(1+.3+.06)*1.15] = 982
Basically, in immolate, emberstorm is additive, in conflag its multaplicative. I have no clue why blizzard would do that, but would love a bit more data to see if that is the case…
May 28th, 2009 on 9:57 am
I dont use glyph of immolate. Will experiement with the idea that emberstorm is acting differently in conflag than in immolate tonight. Very interesting if that’s the case.
May 28th, 2009 on 12:48 pm
I think I’ve found it. According to a post on EJ by Zakalwe (http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t47797-3_1_patch_notes_discussion/p26/#post1154051) Emberstorm is multiplied separately for Conflag, So the multiplier for aftermath + improved immo + emberstorm goes like this:
For immo, multiplier=(1+0.06+0.3+0.15)=1.51
For conflag, multiplier=(1+0.06+0.3)*(1+0.15)=1.564
948 / 1.51 * 1.564 = 981.9
And there is your observed result.