How many people need to be doing a certain kind of damage for a curse to be worthwhile? has anyone crunched the numbers or seen the numbers crunched? With 40 man raids, it was obvious that CoE and CoS (and usually CoR too) were good investments, cuz they increased the DPS of ~5 mages and ~5 warlocks and all the rogues, warriors, and hunters too. With 25 mans and 10 mans, these curses help like 1 to 3 people. How many people do there have to be who benefit from a curse, to make the curse worth using? When does the benefit of a CoS or CoE to a raid overshadow the damage a warlock's CoA does?

maybe I should do the math myself, and enlist a mage or something to tell me what his DPS is with and without CoE, provided he has an addon that shows that sorta thing. And on the side I can watch my own dps with and without CoA... it seems like the math would be pretty simple. find the difference between a mage's dps with and without CoE. if that number is greater than the difference between a warlock's dps with and without CoA, it's worthwhile. If not, figure out how many times you would have to multiply the mage's increased dps for it to be greater than the warlock's CoA dps, and then you'd have how many mages have to be in the raid for CoE to be worth it... of course it's not that simple but it would give a general idea. For CoS, you have to also factor in shadow priests now...

While I'm on the subject, what's the concensus on CoR these days? I never really understood which bosses it was a definite no-no for, and I certainly don't know which bosses it would be bad to use on in the expansion. maulgar and gruul probably? and when is CoW worth using to counteract heavy-hitting bosses, if ever? since melee classes kinda got shafted in terms of many/most raid encounters in the expansion, I'm thinking CoR isn't very useful anymore...

At least CoT is probably pretty self-explanatory - if a boss can be affected by it, you should probably use it =p

It depends on the fight really, some bosses are susceptible to melee damage (Aran) so CoR would be good, other/most fights ranged damge is better, so CoE is usually choice.

For hard hitting bosses where we arent dps'ing them too heavily or letting them sit after dps (Romulo comes to mind) CoW is awsome to have. Using the same example of Romulos & Julianne; since we have a lock's felpuppy eating J's buff and all the ranged dps on Rom while melee is on Jul, its best to put CoR on Jul and either CoW on Rom or a damage curse on Rom followed by CoW once we have him at 20% and are working on Jul.

Curator would be Curse of Doom definately, time it right and it hits like a truck.

Moroes would be another example of where CoW would be very good to have while your dealing with his adds. Also with the Maulgar fight, putting it on M while dealing with his adds would be smart.

In lieu of more random examples, I'll cut it short and just say it really depends on the situation of the fight, never forget you can change curses during the fight aswell.

Does CoW stack with demo shout? I don't see a reason to use it if it does not. I ask because every time I've ever seen CoW, it vanishes when I put demo up.

It does not (un)fortunately depending on how you look at it. It's better then demo shout and only costs 2 talent points to improve instead of 5 for a warrior for demo and it's still better then the warrior's demo shout with the talent points invested.

Edit: They dont stack, I misread and thought you asked if CoW was better than Demo shout.

Hell I couldnt even tell you off the top of my head, however I do "believe" that imp CoW is > Imp Demo shout.

However to "my" raid group it doesnt really matter since we have a druid MT'ing and he doesnt have imp demo, our lock 'does' have imp CoW, and I am OT (fury/prot) and I dont have Imp Demoshout.

Although for R+J it wouldnt matter if I had imp demoshout or not since our bear tanks him (atleast for now, dunno about after bear changes) and we keep them split up so I couldnt hit R with my demo if I tried.

I know that regular demoshout is greater than demo roar; and I know that imp demoshout is greater than imp demo roar. While I am not sure on untalented CoWeakness, I am pretty sure imp weakness is greater than both.

And if you run a pally tank you dont have either shout! Also most full prot tanks dont have them, although our MT specced into it to play with since you usually dont have multipule warriors for Kara to keep it up and its not a very good talent for Furies.

Imp Demo and Imp CoW are both -420 AP, so neither is really better. I was just wondering if they stacked since I have imp demo in my MS/DW build.

if that's the case, demo shout is probably the way to go because of the opportunity cost of a warlock not being able to use another curse while CoW is up, while a warrior only loses a global cooldown to put it up... right?

Some tanks spec imp demo but most that I know dont. For furies its a pretty crappy talent to have since unbridaled is so much better.
Most Arms/Fury warriors do have it though.
I am no expert on feral druids but ours atleast does not use it. He is atleast 41 feral with the rest in resto as he used to be the servers top resto druid (8/9 DW is still better than most of the TBC stuff or so he says).

So the talent may be situational at best but if you have an affliction lock they might as well get it and use it when they can.

This is a pretty fluid statement depending on what boss you are killing. For DPS race bosses the warrior should be the one that uses demo shout. Especially if they have imp demo shout. That extra curse application can be a significant amount of dps added to the boss for such situations.


But as far as if you should use CoE/S you need to look at the raid comp and what classes will benifit from the curse. Generally speaking if you only have 2 warlocks and no shadow priests then CoS is less DPS than if you were to both run agony or doom. At 60 we used the 3 class rule to base our curse applications and the idea is still basically the same since ranged DPS mechanics have not changed much at all.

Where would a tank take the talentpoints for imp demo shout from? 41 prot, 11 arms means already 1 point short.

11 arms eh? I think thats your problem.
Imp demo shout is basically the best talent points a warrior can spend in terms of mitigation.

Yes, another -120 AP is significant, especially when the bad guys hit for 2k+. In fact, another -50 AP from the untalented Curse is significant.

While a Lock can get buff his CoW to match a imp Demo Warrior with only two points, it is unlikely to be a common talent choice for a Lock.

If the Warrior has untalented Demo Shout then it will not override regular CoW, however if it is 5 point talented, then it will overright the curse.


For using CoA/CoD over CoS/CoE, I use the 3 person rule (if three people will benefit, then it is better to use CoS than than other two choices).

Imp thunderclap is done by the warrior with the 4% melee damage talent. You're not going to be switching to battle stance against a 16 stack Gruul. And imp HS is definitely not necessary. Aggro is only a problem in 5 mans, and even then... not so much.

I've been using a 2-3 person rule, but another warlock on my server swears that CoS is worth it because he gets a lot of partial resists in Karazhan.

I'm still using CoA, but posted on the lock thread to see if anyone else has experience that backs up CoS being worth it with only one warlock in Kara.


I use CoE on hunter-trapped mobs and CoS on sheep/shackle mobs, however, as our CC'ers have said it makes a difference.

Adding to the raid composition factor, here are the DPS modifiers for a Shadowpriest:

SForm (1.15) * SWeaving (1.15) * Darkness (1.10) * Misery (1.05) = 1.527 (~53%)
SPriest (1.527) * CoS (1.10) = 1.679 (~68% -- 15% CoS increase)
SPriest (1.527) * Malediction CoS (1.13) = 1.725 (72.5% -- 20% CoS increase)

This doesn't include Imp. Shadowbolt. And while not as extreme, mages and warlocks have similar talents that work multiplicatively for increased returns over the raw 10% per curse.

For a fight like Gruul, one would probably not want CoR up past 8 or so growths, death count of melee not withstanding (worst slams and Cave-In crowding). Not to mention Gruul's melee multiplier.

While I definitely agree with you, the calculus does change significantly if bliz really does make thunderclap available in Def stance.
At that point, 3 points in Imp TC will rival Imp Demo shout for the best mitigation talent points a warrior can spend.

Granted, Imp demo does chop tons off spike damage from boss specials and is therefore probably superior death prevention, 20% boss slow is nothing to be dismissed.
In both cases though, there are alternatives (TF, or a non-MT talented war shouting/TCing).


for reference:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patch...atchnotes.html



[edit] oh, and Quigon, could you add your ctprofiles link to your EJ profile? I hate having to search your server for it just so that I can prove we still have the same spec :P

10% curse of shadows is always a 10% relative boost. Calling it 15% over 'base' is really useless. Factor in +damage gear or something and use the base spell damage and it would be 50% or something equally useless.

10% is 10% is 10%.
13% is 13% is 13%.


This is not semantics. 10% from CoS increases a shadow priest's dps by 10%. Period.

CoW is -damage, Demo shout is -AP iirc, and they do stack from wha I have seen

Isn't this relatively easy to figure out? Figure how much dps your CoA does on a boss fight and figure out how many of the dps are effected by CoS/CoE. The only thing worth considering is if you are aggro capped, or if there is a shadow priest in the raid. If there is a shadow priest you want CoS up because it serves two purposes in making his spells more efficient, and providing more hp/mana back to his group.

Unless without CoS/CoE you happen to be getting partial resists. Then that curse does more than giving 10%.

CoW is -AP now.

http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=30909

Curse of Weakness and Demoralizing Shout do not stack (I have tried this many times during instance runs, every single time I put up Curse of Weakness, it immediately knocks off Demoralizing Shout).