Languish Explained

I want to take a quick look at Languish and the 4T10 set bonus. I've seen several forum posts and received several e-mails that indicate to me that this mechanic is not as well understood as I thought. In this post I hope to make the mechanic a little clearer for those that might be confused on how it works.

The Mechanic:

Tool Tip: Your critical strikes from Starfire and Wrath cause the target languish for an additional 7% of your spell's damage over 4 sec.

The impact of this set bonus is actually very simple to explain. It increases the damage of your critical strikes by 7%. It is that straight forward, but how it works is a little confusing. The first issue is that the additional damage is applied over time, but it does not behave as a normal DoT. Languish is best thought of as a bank with a 0.0% interest rate. What you get out is exactly the same as what you put in. Therefore, damage modifying buffs and debuffs like Genesis have no impact on the damage of Languish if they are applied while it is ticking.

Second, the damage done by Languish is determined when you crit, and is based entirely on the damage of the crit. Therefore, Languish does benefit from things like Earth and Moon and temporary buffs like potions, but the damage is not modified while Languish ticks. So, Languish does not benefit from Earth and Moon (or any other buff) twice.

Third, the timer on Languish is set every time one of your spells critically hits, but the DAMAGE IS NOT LOST. To use the bank analogy again, every time you crit you make a deposit into the bank, and the bank agrees to pay you back in 2 payments for the full balance in the account. Each time you crit you reset the agreement but the balance in the account keeps getting higher. So, if you crit several times in a row you will not see Languish tick during that time, but when it does tick they will be huge.

If your familiar with how a fire mage works then you've seen this mechanic before with the talent Ignite. WoWWiki also has a very good explanation on how Ignite works here if you're interested.

The Examples:

This mechanic is probably best explained with examples, but I want to make this as simple as possible, so lets make a couple of assumptions. Lets assume that we have only 1 spell and it can be cast every second. A normal hit will do 5000 and a crit will do 10000.

Example A: The Basic Structure

Time (sec)	Nuke Damage	Languish Damage	Languish Bank
1	5000	0	0
2	10000	0	700
3	5000	0	700
4	5000	350	350
5	5000	0	350
6	5000	350	0

If you only crit once, how the process works is pretty simple. The Languish damage is divided into two ticks that happen 2 and 4 seconds after the critical strike took place.

Example B: The Double Crit

Time (sec)	Nuke Damage	Languish Damage	Languish Bank
1	10000	0	700
2	10000	0	1400
3	5000	0	1400
4	5000	700	700
5	5000	0	700
6	5000	700	0

The most common misconceptions I see happen when we talk about what happens when you crit multiple times in quick succession. In the example above, the first cast is a crit and adds 700 damage to the Languish Bank. Before Languish has a chance to tick a second spell cast crits, resets the Languish timer, and adds another 700 damage to the Languish Bank. So you now have 2 Languish ticks for 700 damage each starting 2 seconds after the last crit.

Example C: The Middle Crit

Time (sec)	Nuke Damage	Languish Damage	Languish Bank
1	10000	0	700
2	5000	0	700
3	5000	350	350
4	10000	0	1050
5	5000	0	1050
6	5000	525	525
7	5000	0	525
8	5000	525	0

The example above illustrates what happens if you have another spell critically hit in between the two Languish ticks. The first crit adds 700 damage to the Languish Bank, and the first tick hits 2 seconds later for half the damage in the Languish Bank. Then the caster has another critical strike. As I've said before, this resets the Languish timer. The Languish Bank still had 350 damage in it, and the new crit adds another 700. Now Languish will deal 1050 damage over 4 seconds starting from the second crit.

TL:DR

At it's core the 4T10 set bonus Languish is very simple. It increases the damage of your critical strikes by 7%, but since it is applied over 4 seconds this has some players worried that they are losing damage by crit multiple times in a row. Others are wondering if they can buff it by extending the DoT to receive a buff or if it benefits from talents like Genesis. These are not significant concerns.

First, the Languish damage can not be buffed in any way that I know of. The damage is calculated at the time of the crit and is not modified again.

Second, you do not lose damage by Criting multiple times while there is damage still in the Languish Bank. Each crit just adds more damage to the bank, and resets the timer. You will lose some damage due to Mob death, I don't think this is a big concern. In these situations the target is dead. The lack of damage did not prevent you from succeeding in the encounter and extra damage would just pad the DPS meters slightly.