My place on DPS charts has been dismal lately, and I'm looking for advice on how I can get it up higher. Not because I care about DPS ranking so much, but because I don't feel like I can contributing as much as I can to the raid DPS and something just doesn't feel right. So I'm thinking I must be missing something.

During MC days, I could hit top 3 pretty much every run. When we moved into BWL, I was still top 5 most of the time, and always top 10. But now that we're hitting AQ40 and Naxx, I'm lucky to be top 20.

My gear can be seen at: http://ctprofiles.net/42077

I swapped out the exalted Brood of Noz ring for the Band of Forced Concentration, because I feel like my to-hit is too low.

My spec is MD / Ruin. Outside of a few fights, I usually have the buff from Demonic Sac'ing the Succubus available. I'm not pulling aggro, so I'm not limited by the threat ceiling. And now with the changes to lifetap, mana isn't much of an issue. We usually have 3 - 4 warlocks, so some nights I'm not on CoS/CoE duty and can use CoA if the fight will be long enough to justify it. Given these things, I don't have the usual excuses of 'always have to have the imp out' or 'mana just doesn't hold up', etc.

I guess what I'm wondering is what do high-DPSing warlocks do in AQ40 and Naxx? I find trash tends to die so fast that I get 1 shadow bolt, and often that doesn't even land in time. Sometimes, if the melee is slow to get to a trash mob, I can get 1 shadow bolt and 1 shadowburn on it, but the shadowburn cooldown is so long that it won't cool down fast enough for the next trash target. Naxx trash (Up to Razuvious and Anub) feels the same way, with things dying faster than I can get a spell off for.

It seems like mages should suffer from the same problem with short trash kills, yet they top the charts along with rogues. I know in AQ40 they get a big leap on the Warrior-bug packs and the Pre-Fankriss tunnel due to their AoE advantage, but it doesn't seem like it should put them *so* far ahead.

Should I be sac'ing the imp and just spamming Immolation on AQ40/Naxx trash pulls? Or should I just not worry about it and only concern myself with doing the best DPS I can on fights that last more than 5 seconds? Just looking for some advice here. If it really is just normal for warlocks to be down around 20 on the DPS lists, I can live with that. But if there are things other warlocks have found that helps them contribute more to the raid's DPS in the newer instances, I'd love to hear it. Like what spells should I be spamming on what mobs? Etc. Thanks.

I don't think any trash mob in AQ40/Naxx can be killed in less then 3 sec (SB+Shadowburn cast time). So I think you overreact a bit. If they are killable so fast, it means they are AoE fodder. Hellfire (preferably with Fetish of Sand Reaver).

Nevertheless, you should exploit your multimob fighting potential. Being MD/Ruin doesn't help here, as you have only 1 instant DoT. I suggest switching to 9/21/21, improvement will be visible.

Start with sacrificing succy. Each time you pull group of mobs, you drop CoE/CoS/CoR (or CoA if allowed) on the first mob whole raid focuses fire on, then Corr on each off tanked mob, then CoA on each off tanked mob, then you SB few times (maybe not even that - you can use Searing Pain instead), then you refresh your DoTs. Voila, no mage can match your DPS, unless all the mobs are put in one place and AoEd.

There is no reason for warlock to have lower DPS then mage on short, multimob pulls. Mages will own single target fight DPS, but that's whole different thing.

Thanks for the feedback. I am playing mostly as a shadowbolt-spam bot, with only refreshing corruption if the fight was long enough to justify using it in the first place. Debuff slots are constantly filled up with crap, so DoTs just didn't seem worth the waste of time or mana to cast. I'll try talking to the hunters more to get them to drop the stings, since those occupy several debuff slots.

I was wondering if a 0/21/30 build (Demonic Sac, and 30 points down destruction for the +fire damage talents) would be any good, or would the loss of conflag be not worth the +15% damage bonuses available from DS? It seems to offer the exact same shadow bolt damage as my current spec, but also gives me a lot more immolation damage for the short fights. The only thing I'd be losing would be MD, which I only use for the +60 resists on pulling the TE's or being in the wall on Huhuran anyway.

We follow a MA for our targets, and by the time the MA has picked the target and I start casting, it seems like the typical AQ40 trash mob is at 75'ish %. Even if I finish casting before the target dies, the travel time on the shadow bolt makes it still not land before the target is dead. Our rogues are really high DPS so the low HP trash targets in AQ40 just get chewed through pretty fast.

Thanks for the advice on the spec change. I think I'll try out the 9/21/21 build for a while. Rotating DoTs seems like a good change from the single-target high damage I currently aim for.

I'm not sure what to tell you about Naxx, but as far as AQ40 goes, I have to agree with the 'overreaction' suggestion above. Trash *does* die fast, but you should always be able to put three bolts into anything, not to mention the numerous multi-pulls where you can be DOTing 4-6 targets. With the gear and spec you have, even as a nukebot you should be top 10, not scraping the bottom of the top 20 (*especially* with a succubus sacrifice, which is how I go as 7/21/23). I am curious to see how your damagemeters roughly go as far as top 10--is it melee-heavy? Mages?

I wouldn't necessarily recommend a respec (while Conflag is definitely 'i win' for tentacles, I can reliably two-shot them with succubus sac (and one-shot a crit)), but I certainly wouldn't recommend only going 30 in destruction. If you're going to rely on one DOT, make it Corruption. It scales far better.

Other things:

1) I can understand pulling TEs, but they make you sit in the wall, too? NR is craftable now, that shouldn't be necessary. -_- Like you had a lot of bag space already...

2) Agree with above: Rend, Deep Wounds, Serpent Sting, so on are the devil. Actually, I don't think these things should be knocking your DOTs off any more--but if they _are_, kick the offenders in the head. Your Corruption does the DPS of about two Serpent Stings. Which deserves the spot more?

Lifetap and hellfire whenever possible and don't tell anyone that it shows up as damage on swstats. Sbolt critters whenever you can too.

Seriously though, there really are two types of damage that dps classes do. There's "real" damage, like on boss fights and AEing and then there is padding/trash damage. Upping the first one is hard and requires you to use every ability you have intelligently and there are many suggestions already laid out above here which I endorse. While they don't shine so much on fights like patchwerk, DoTs can indeed be extremely potent in many other encounters. Epeen padding is another matter though and really requires you to maximise the damage you do during the expected period of existance for what you are killing at the moment. Trash dies fast typically and if you are consistantly poofing that last sbolt, you need to adjust if you want to be high on the meters. Of course being high on the meters for trash is really quite pointless but it can be an amusing minigame at times and especially if you can get your tanks to go insane. To quote Tasmen: "Really, I try to judge what spell is best to cast based on the amount of health left on the mob and how long it takes to cast a spell. " As a mage, I am also never shy about switching to a new target once the present one is ticking down to 10% or so. With the Warrior legions snapping off executes I grew weary of losing so many fireballs in the air and even scorch would often just not complete. If your melee officers start whining about assisting then Nejyn's sagely advice is what I usually fall back on. It's not my damn fault they need to run 10 yards to engage the next target after all =)

Top 10 is almost always mages and rogues. Top 5 tend to be rogues and 1 mage, with the rest of the mages filling in the rest of the top 10. There is a DPS warrior that is in the mix as well, typically around 4'th ~ 6'th.

Good point about the wall though. I think I'll move to having the warlocks taken out of it. I think they ended up in it because back before the NR was craftable, they were able to get their NR up the hightest the soonest. And it's just been habit to leave them in it since then.

I didn't mention before, but I am an officer, so I can make the changes to the raid necessary to improve the warlocks' DPS. If that means telling hunters to quit casting serpent sting on everything except Nature Vuln mobs in BWL, then I'll do that too. I'm not really interested in the fake DPS padding, but thanks for the tricks anyway Northerner. =)

I noticed you are alliance, generally in AQ I tend to spam searing pain way more than I would in other instances (mobs die faster etc.) Agro generally won't be a problem especially with your spec and salvation.

You can try multiple dots on different mobs that arent the main target as well. I wouldn't suggest CoA at all for short single target DPS trash pulls. The amount of damage it would put out would probably end up doing less damage than a searing pain would do (both 1.5 second cast/global cooldown)

I'm NF/Conflag (19/0/32) and I do pretty damn well multi-dotting and single-nuking. For multi-dotting it's simple really, put up immo corr and CoA then conflag whenever it's up making sure you keep the immolates and corruptions ticking for maximum NF/Conflag action. For single target fights with healing it's about spamming Conflag whenever it's up, keeping immolate up and attempting to keep Corruption up a decent amount of the time too. Fill in the rest of the time with shadowbolts.

But then, stuff like being alert and making an effort to always be casting some damage spell goes a long way.