Should I macro soulburn?

Post by Frejan

Pretty straightforward question as I level an alt. Soulburn isn't on GCD, which means I can just macro it straight onto any spell that'll take it.

But should I? Or should I be saving it for special situations and hit it seperately?

Post by Kobe008

I'm a demo lock and I have a macro using it with Soulfire.

Post by asakawa

destro shouldn't macro it since an instant refresh on iSF is a very useful thing on demand.

demo and affliction have little use for it other than an incredibly minor DPS gain (the difference in DPET of a single spell going from 2.x cast time to instant/global). there's just little or no point in macroing it for them when they could save shards for instant pets or bigger healthstone heals.

it's also worth noting that previously there had been a bug which prevented these macros from working in certain situations. i'm pretty sure they fixed that bug in a recent patch so it is now possible. with the change to ISF in the same patch, however, it's not something i would suggest doing.

Post by Frejan

well, I'm playing the alt as Affliction, so I'd be macroing it onto Drain Life and (once I get it) Seed of Corruption.

Post by Maltrise

It's a bit touchy, and depends on your spec.

For Destruction, I would say no. A lot of your Soul Burn will be used for on the fly Soul Fire if your manage to lose ISF in your rotation or need to cast it on the move. You need the flexibility of it being available when you need it, not always on cooldown because you used it on a SF that you could have acceptably hard cast while ISF was still up.

For Affliction, I would macro it to Seed of Corruption (if you have the talent), as there are almost no cases where the original cast are preferred to the Soulburn Talent. If you didn't talent into Demonic Rebirth in the Demonology Tree (which you probably shouldn't have) it wouldn't hurt to tie it to your Summons either. In a fight where your demon dies (and especially PvP) being able to get the minion back up without the time of a hard cast can ease DPS loss (or PvP survivability).

Demonology is a bit more dicey. Looking at the Soul Burn options, there's not a lot to work with. SB Soul Fire is probably a waste since Improved Soul Fire is out (unless you need a fast proc for Decimation, but you should be getting that off your Shadow Bolts anyway), and Drain Life suffers from the lack of Affliction talents. Healthstone is going to be hard to see returns on unless you're in a pinch and your healer can stay on top of refilling your new health; but odds are in situations that you use your Healthstone, it's because the healer already needs a hand. You're not going to be doing a lot of Searing Pain spam, either. Ideally, it should be tethered to Summons (again, only if you don't have Demonic Rebirth talented, but if you don't absolutely put it on summons, minion damage is so important to Demo DPS)- otherwise the only time you'd get much use out of it is for Demonic Circle.

Now, don't take the negative tone of that badly. SB Demonic Circle *can* be quite useful (both in boss fight environments where you need to move quickly to different positions and in PvP,) but with Demo it's one of the very few instances where SB has real utility for Demo other than "get an instant Soul Fire out just to pad the DPS numbers a bit".

Post by Philll

not always on cooldown because you used it on a SF that you could have acceptably hard cast while ISF was still up.

Just a small detail, soul fire's hard cast is always the same now.
This raises one question about soulfire being cast under the effect of conflag.
Right now i don't notice any cast time difference between the two, But,, that may be because i only have 1 decimal after the point on my cast bar (which im gonna change after dinner) OR because i dont have the necessary haste level to obtaint a faster cast time.

Has anyone tested conflagrated SF hard cast vs regular hard cast?

Post by Maltrise

D'oh, thank you for that, Philll, I had forgot that for a moment. /facepalm

But I think it still stands that SBSF still has a lot of utility if you keep it flexible when you use, especially with a lot of the mobility required since Cata's release.

Should I macro soulburn?

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