Plea

If you are expecting me to have 15% more performance as a warrior, its my right to expect the same from you, the warlock. Heck, im getting extremely pissed at those 'hey im a warlock, all my job is ss and hs, i dont dps, but i still look for prot warriors and holy priests' kind of shitty play.

Exceptional players' 15% increase is larger than the noob players'. That's not a way out.

 

Mearis

No shit, and I agree completely.

You can either be completely fine with people specing how they want, or if you want your warriors to be prot and your priests to be holy, you should require your dps classes to spec accordingly.

 

Vazu

I switched to 5,35,21 for Gruul (and it's actually good for PVP) and was in the 700 range for DPS on Gruul, using Adept's Elixir and a Wizard Oil only. Sitting at 1070 shadow spellpower and 126ish +hit. I donno. I guess the people in the 800-1000 range would say it sucks, but we killed him and I was #1 on our DPS meters at 14 growths.

 

Deathwing

Zprotoss:

Don't look at this as an inflammatory response, but I'm genuinely curious how you saw the dps advantage of 0/21/40 outweighing the benefits of:

Dark Pact
Siphon Life
Blood Pact
Instant HoT

Now, I will admit the last three are either small or situationally usefull, but together it can make a difference, especially in a 10-man. Now, personally, even with a fire mage, I don't think fire lock outperforms an affliction lock without a shadow priest by that much.

What I'm trying to get at is that you started a thread about whether guilds should force PvE specs, but then yourself are specced just pure dps. There are a lot of benefits to the affliction tree beyond dps, and even then it can provide some of the best dps. Also, if your guild is as adament about PvE as you make it seem, I would assume they have a shadow priest. Why didn't you spec shadow destruction then?

Or, if we're going to go the tangent of "best possible dps at any cost", why not a 1/39/21 spec?

 

Vazu

Because I'm on an arena PVP team, and instant Corruption is pretty much one of the best talents in the game for that purpose, along with Shadowburn. I really do like 5/35/21 though. Lots of room to PVP effectively and picking up Ruin has boosted my DPS on Gruul by almost 100.

 

ZProtoss

Three of the things you listed there are completely irrelevant. In 10 man content, there's always plenty of extra healing, so siphon/dark pact dont matter (likewise in 25 man content a lock should be in a group with a shadow priest which more than covers the overall healing need). I can't really think of anything off hand where an instant HoT provides anything amazing (worth the dps loss anyways), in any current 10/25 man content. Finally, blood pact is a minor benefit at best in kara (where no boss really requires it at this point), and in 25 mans only one warlock has to cover the MT.


As far as builds go, if I were to go shadow it certainly wouldn't be 1/39/21. If anything it'd be 1/21/39. Why? The damage benefit you gain from 39 demonology is 15% (10% succubus, 5% soul link), a bonus 130-140 spell damage, and 4% spell crit. This comes at the cost however, of having to keep your pet up and *healed* in encounters where you take damage, as that 5% damage from soul link also comes at a penalty of keeping your pet out and alive. Compare that with 1/21/39 however

In 1/21/39, you gain 15% from a sacrifice (eliminating the issues of dealing with keeping a pet alive), 16% extra spell damage from effects (which at raid buffed levels of a minimum of 1300 spell damage, etc), ends up being well over +200 to shadow bolt. As well as 3% crit from backlash, and the option to use a fully effective fire build as well.

Question is (which I still have to test), is whether or not improved shadow bolt and shadow bolt scaling outweighs the significantly cheaper cost of incinerate (83 mana per spell cheaper), and the 10% extra damage modifier provided by emberstorm.

Regardless of what certain theorycraft/mathcraft tends to say, as far as top warlock dps specs go, if shadow does beat fire, it's certainly not by much.

edit: only reason why I haven't tested all of this through yet, is my comp died last week and im still waiting for my stuff to arrive from newegg :P

 

Quixotic

How can you neglect the damage your succubus does with imp. succubus, and imp. lash of pain with a 1/39/21 build?

 

Mondragon

Possibly because keeping it alive is a pain in the arse most of the time (aoe stuff) . that would be my first guess.

http://hosted.filefront.com/mrpboy/ - My WoW PVE Movies. SSC/TK/BT

 

Deathwing

Exactly, even keeping the felguard alive with his 50% AE avoidance can be a pain. I've easily killed him through just soul link many times.

 

ZProtoss

Because you can't keep it alive. As already stated, even the damage just from soul link is enough to face plant your pet, and in a 1/39/21 build, having your pet die means your dps also dies because of all your passive buffs that are reliant on your pet being alive. Certainly there would be some fights where you could keep that pet alive and have it doing damage, but the vast majority of fights in wow will either kill your pet through soul link, or simply straight up through AOEs. A 1/39/21 build requires additional maitenence and upkeep well beyond what the warlock himself can provide as well, it requires that a healer spend time watching your pet and keeping it up, which quite honestly is not the best idea given other dps options that are just as viable and high.

 

Hypatia

My primary worry about guilds that have required specs for raiding (aside from “Uh, games are for having fun”) is that it makes the assumption that there are in fact “best specs”.

And yeah, I know there are definitely more or less optimal specs. I guess the idea I want to get across here is that any kind of “required XYZ” system means there has to be an authority that decides what is and is not acceptable... And, well, what if they’re wrong about what’s best? One person for a whole guild is probably a bad choice, because that person is unlikely to know all of the latest mechanics research for every class. One person per class isn’t safe, either, since the more people who are involved, the more likely you are to get some moron who cares more about being “the guy in charge” than actually making things work well.


Now, I will say: that isn’t to imply that I want people coming to raids with the world’s crappiest PvE specs. But there’s an easier rule to apply there: “If you don’t pull your weight, you don’t get to raid.” It has nothing to do with mandatory specs, it has to do with doing the best job you can.

After you have that rule, you encourage folks to actually talk back and forth about mechanics, and to help each other improve. Now the people who were making poor choices are learning about why the other way is better, and make adjustments. And if it turns out that the common wisdom on what was better is mistaken, you figure it out, instead of just saying “No, you must spec X/Y/Z”.


That just leaves the kind of people who reply with things like “Screw you! I’m not listening to anything you say about what I’m doing, I’m just going to do what I want!”... and they’re quite handily covered by the “if you suck, you won’t be invited to raids” rule.

 

Samelina

Personally I think that if you want to PVE you should spec for it and be prepared as best as you can be. The same comment goes for PVP as well, sadly there are very few classes if any that can have a PVE/PVP spec and be cream of the crop from their classes perspective. But as a general rule we don't "force" people to spec one way or another. It could be a reccomendation that a priest spec's shadow or a warrior specs prot but it is in no way forced. However this could be a statement that changes later in TBC raiding game. Especially after the DPS requirements of these entry level raid bosses are known.