Disposition

So what are thoughts on 5/5 dc verus plagueheart?

I think some of the stronger ph pieces are the helm, chest and boots and I don't know if I could justify shooting for dc with all its worthless negative resist. On the other hand with all the sb spamming I do as ds/ruin doomcaller may be the way to go. My initial thoughts are that ph spell damage and stats just blow it out of the water. I'm not really sure how good theh 8 piece ph bonus is either (my guild is up to the 4h now). Can anyone help me out?

9/9 ph - 301 spell damage, 7 crit & 3 hit, 222 stamina
5/9 ph - 189 spell damage, 4 crit & 3 hit, 127 stamina
5/5 dc - 164 spell damage, 3 crit & 2 hit, 118 stamina

 

◊ Quigon

Like most warlocks, you're forgetting that much of the time you are aggro capped, not damage capped.
If you are alliance, this is probably less of a concern I suppose.
Your tier 2 and 3 have aggro reduction.

Obviously you should get both right?

 

NuType

On this topic, there was a post with a spread sheet comparing T2, T2.5, and T3 a while back. I found the thread but the link is dead. Does anyone still have this spread sheet?

Link to thread I am referring to.

 

Mosh

Personally I'm going for 4 piece Plagueheart -- Helm/Chest/Boots as 3 for sure, and random mixed items for the rest. Doomcaller is nice for where it drops, but gets replaced in mid/late naxx. Full Plagueheart is also very much not worth it.

 

Bibdy

The individual pieces of Plagueheart are literally better. The 5 piece set bonus for Doomcaller on the other hand is fantastic. It makes Shadowbolt more mana efficient than Searing Pain, and since it has higher DPS than SP to begin with, it kind of phases SP out as a 'If aggro isn't an issue, use SP for better mana efficiency' spell.

The VAST majority of the time on boss fights pulling aggro isn't the issue. There are the occasional few fights where running in during your first few attempts with 8/8 tier 2 instead of tier 2.5/3 would be more sensible (e.g. Noth), but once you get a feel for the threat you generate it becomes a non-issue. A lot of the time we can't fulfill our DPS potential (and hence be high in threat) because we can only get away with reapplying 1 DOT over and over. If every warlock runs around trying to throw up both Corruption and Immolate then you're just stepping on each others' toes.

Suffice to say that the threat reduction set bonus of tier 3 is shite. It equates to about 10% threat reduction, I think.

Personally I'd for 5/5 DC and 4/9 PH. After getting 5/5 DC a couple weeks ago, I don't think I could live without it.

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

Two

PH Head, shoulders, chest, boots, with Polarity legs should be more dps that 5/5 dc right? I mean you're gaining. 3 Crit, 32 damage 1hit, and 12% damage increase on corruption. In exchange for -15% on Shadowbolt, and 5% increase on immolate. What is the actual DPS increase of 5/5 DC anyway?

 

Darkbond

I think youre being highly unfair to the 5/5 DC when comparing it to 9/9 PH when clearly there is a 4 piece gear gap between the two.

Lets say you get 5/5 DC and 4/9 PH (even though I think 2/9 PH is probably the best thing about the entire set)

9/9 ph - 301 spell damage, 7 crit & 3 hit, 222 stamina
5/5 DC and 4/9 PG (Ring, gloves, bracers and belt) - 276 spell dmg +5 crit +2 hit

Add in the -15% to SB and you have a far superior PvE gear to what Plagueheart can give you. This is not to say dont get any other PH pieces but as to what set i would use to fight Kelthuzad, it would have to be the Doomcaller set.

As Bibdy has pointed out. The 6 piece threat reduction is worthless (its 9.2%, pardon me if I scoff at that). Not to mention that most of the fights AQ and beyond are less about "tank and spank watch your damn aggro". Its more about execution and being able to execute. Doomcaller helps this more than Plagueheart. To me PH is more of a /afk in Orgrimmar/Ironforge set than to wear in a fight.

That doesnt even bring into question the 5 pieces and their corresponding Plaguehard pieces (Robes and Ring are still hard to get). Individually some of the pieces are extroadinary (boots and helm come to mind). But as a whole I cant help but think the more PH you put on the more you gimp yourself and youre begging to be min/maxed as our class has been subject to since 1.11.

 

Darkbond

Its 14% increase to damage over a 10 minute fight (there are several to choose from). Basically the longer the fight becomes the more Doomcaller 5/5 will distance itself from any other set of gear. Though I havent run the simulation for the 3 crit pieces out of Naxx, but I also feel those pieces would be better served with a fire mage than us seeing as we have a very capable set.

Information taken from here and verified using the warlock spreadsheet as well as the simulator on the website: http://www.skav.org/theorycraft/warlock_study_t3.php

As you can see that 4 piece PH bonus is a joke (my Corruption ticks for 260 per tick, with the 4 piece it would tick for 265, yes I do hate blizzard everytime i think of that, wasted set bonus)

I also think its wrong to assume -resistance has "no" affect in PvE. I dont think Blizzard has EVER commented on AQ40 gear and the -resistances on the set gear from that Dungeon. They have commented on so many other things regarding resistance of target but never in how the AQ gear affects it. All they have said is that a boss 3 levels higher than you has inert resistances that cannot be removed (some say 18 some say 24..doesnt matter). Frankly I think its all speculation as to what happens and no one has done any real amount of study on it to see what kind of difference it actually makes. Its of my opinion that there are bosses out there whose resistances exceed that of 100 or 120, which ones, I dont know, and not willing to argue but after carefully looking at the warlock Tier 2.5, I cant help but think there is a reason for -resistances other than PvP.

 

Bibdy

Does the 4 piece plagueheart bonus overwrite Shadow Mastery or something? Why is the bonus so low?

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

Darkbond

Wait..wrong calculation.

12% of a 1560 Corruption is like 187. Which means your Corruption should tick for 291 with the 4 piece and 260 without the 4 piece. The 4 piece is known to be bugged and the calculation is seeming to give 12% of one tick of corruption and dividing it amongst all the ticks. So basically taking 12% of your first tick of corruption and dividing it by 6. So it ends up giving 265 instead of 291.

Its just bad coding and I dont know if Blizzard has fixed it as yet ( I dont have 4 pieces, dont want it either, but thats what I understood the bug to be)

In the end it still doesnt amount to anything significant. Sure for PvP your dots will tick oh so much harder but +187 dmg is kind of a drop in the bucket if you ask me. Though I must admit in TBC that 12% will be HUGE.

 

Maledict

See http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=8323

Spell penetration has 0 effect on any PvE encounter, barring a few fights in Molten Core and the gauntlet whelps in BWL.

No parsing, on *any* boss, has ever shown them to have resists above 75 beyond MC.

Spell penetration on raiding gear is a touchy subject for the mages here - poor Kel'Thuzad staff... :(

 

Bibdy

Does everyone who has the bonus have Shadow Mastery? What they're obviously experiencing is only a 2% increase, but it might be because its not stacking with SM (for whatever stupid reason) and just overwriting it.

Either way, they should be shot for not fixing it by now.

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

Darkbond

Thats the thing Maledict. Look at all the gear this stat is being "wasted" on. It just doesnt make any sense. And Blizzard has yet to make any comments towards it.

Even the OP of that thread has his/her speculation: "Blizzard needs to come out and tell us already exactly what spell penetration does."

I mean it all boils down to that. Blizzard needs to say something. It makes no sense using item level points on something useless. Its like putting intellect on a rogue or warrior piece of gear. Sure you can level your swords faster but it has no true affect on how you play the game.

@Bibdy

In the end that 4 piece bonus still leaves a whole lot to be desired. It entrusts a DPS increase to a DoT which can be canibilized rather easily depending on how many warlocks are in your raid. Its quite sad the best set bonus on the tier 3 is the 2 piece bonus.

 

Skav

Note that my study was done some times ago, and doesn't take the new lifetap into account. The sacrificed voidwalker has become a very good regeneration method on the long run, without any burden on the healers. That would make Plagueheart with its tons of sta better for long fights (well, I'm not sure it's a problem anyway), and the -15% cost relatively less intersting.

 

Qira

I'm not getting where the 14% number comes from. On a prolonged shadowbolt spamming fight, the 15% mana reduction means you should have to do 15% less life tapping. Before the scaling change to life tap, we would typically need to spend roughly 30% of our time tapping, and now it's more like 15%. So the bonus would cut out 0.15*0.15 = 2.25% of that time. 2.25% / 85% = a 2.6% damage increase. Of course, this is contingent on getting heals after life tapping.

Still, the 5 piece Doomcaller bonus is pretty significant. In my opinion 5/5 Doomcaller with the remaining slots filled with miscellaneous non-set items or PH is fairly comparable to 9/9 PH. I did the theorycrafting on my guild's forums a while back and this 5/5 bonus as well as the difference from taking non-set items better than DC roughly compensates for the difference between DC and PH. For players like me who aren't in elite guilds, I think going for DC and letting priests and mages get the tier 3 first will benefit the guild most.

BTW, does anyone have numbers on how frequently the Plagueheart 2 piece bonus procs?

 

Zoner

People choosing damage to an extreme degree over health are for the most part, delusional. This applies to many classes (even mages with endgame gear and still under 4k health wondering why they die so easy . . .)

Looking at the naxx gear I will end up with there are basically two ways to do it: max damage, or take a small hit in damage for a ton of other things.


HP Centric:
http://ctprofiles.net/63157
9/9 Plagueheart
5884 hp
5683 mana
+8 hit
+10 crit
+736 shadow
+716 fire

DMG Centric:
http://ctprofiles.net/3648961
3/9 ph and mixed Cthun&Naxx cloth
4844 hp
5398 mana
+8 hit
+13 crit
+785 shadow
+765 fire


So less than a 5% real damage difference in what many people call an agro limited class, at the cost of over 1000 hp and 300 mana. If you are already agro limited, then the best way to increase your damage actually is to increase your health, so you can do things which would otherwise kill you. In addition that health and mana difference is around 20% before raid buffs, which translates into more damage on health limited fights (Patchwerk and Loatheb).

 

• frmorrison

The 1.12.1 notes say that the 4 set bonus is fixed to stack with SM, it also fixed the enchants taking buff slots issue.

Sure, it has taken some time, but at least it is going to be fixed.



I agree with the lot of people that posted here, 9 PH is very powerful, in fact I would say it is the best gear for Locks currently.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Hangman

Wear 5/5 DC + tier3 or other good pieces. Break the 5/5 doomcaller if you can get at least 3 of tier3 boots,gluth shoulders,thadius leggings,tier3 head,tier3 chest. I am going for all random pieces after the lifetap change.

 

Bibdy

Damn I'm good.

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

Two

Thats exactly what i was gonna do, try to wait for Polarity, then pick up head/shoulders/boots. However, i don't know if i can be bothered to get the enchants on legs and head. So who knows

 

Bibdy

33% of the reason I won't take the Plagueheart helm. The other 67% include the look and the minor upgrade over DC compared to some of our guys still using Nemesis.

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.

 

Darkbond

It still scales though. 7 shadowbolts at the cost of 6. With one lifetap I can get probably 4 shadowbolts out with the amount of mana generated from it. Sacrificed Voidwalker is good for fights like Patchwerk and Loatheb. Im not so sure I would do it on many other encounters though.

To me the 14% dmg increase comes from STILL having to lifetap less. It still takes off ~60 mana from your Shadowbolt which is our number one spamming spell making us just more efficient. Every 6 Shadowbolts we save enough mana to cast another one for free. The threat issue to me doesnt even come up. Most of the fights in Naxx are not terribly threat based, so increasing our efficiency is great.

Also to the person looking at the stam benefits from PH. Yes its true, stam plays a key role but when I look at stam I dont look at how much damage I can take from a boss, I look at how much stam I have to use to Lifetap, especially now with the new Lifetap. On bosses as a cloth wearer you get hit by a boss youre going to die. And saying everyone needs stam and people who dont care about it are delusional. If that were the case I would drink a Titans instead of a spell power. Also comparing the 9 pieces to doomcaller is smoke and mirrors seeing as 240 of that hp comes from the ring, whereas the 4H ring of +1crit +1 hit and 21 dmg is superior (it has a good amount of stam as well).

The 8 piece PH is unchartered yet. No one has done any studies on the 8 piece set bonus to show if with the new lifetap it makes up any ground. I guess the last thing to point out is how easy it probably is to get 5 pieces of doomcaller. To get 9 pieces of PH will take a longer time.

Here are my calculations I did right after 1.12 (I have some new pieces that I didnt have before so my Shadow Dmg would be more like 653 in the 5 piece/3 piece set):

Doomcaller 5 piece with 3 pieces of Plagueheart

Health: 5374
Mana: 5608
Crit %: 16.97
Hit: +8
Spell Penetration: +40
Shadow Damage: +617

Plagueheart 8 piece

Health: 5474
Mana: 5728
Crit %: 19.10
Hit: +9
Spell Penetration: +10
Shadow Damage: +642

Where I feel Doomcaller succeeds is in its -15% mana cost to Shadowbolts. Here is my calculations on them:

Over 7 mins

Doomcaller: 551.33 DPS
Plagueheart: 541.51 DPS

The thing that hurts the most is so many of the minor upgrades in the PH set: Bracers, Shoulders, Gloves, Pants. There are other pieces out there that will do more. Just like Hangman said the random pieces outside of hte PH set in the end will outpace PH, but heck until then youre going to be using DC in any event. Basically by the time you have 9/9 PH you should have things like the crit shoulders and leggings of polarity and the crit bracers from Gothik, so why even wear full PH?

 

Nurru

Not to derail, but for a mage our itemization makes it difficult to obtain 4000 hp wearing strictly raid gear. With one statless ring I have 3880 hp so when I replace that with something else it will be obtainable. I can easily equip the Master Dragonslayer Neck and some other items to get 4300 in pvp, but the loss in pve isn't ideal. Part of the "problem" is our ZG enchants have no stamina on them, but it doesn't help that most of the hybrid geat in AQ/Naxx have low stamina (Eyestalk Waistcord, Rime Covered Mantle) with a few exceptions (Crystal Webbed Robe, Dark Storm Gauntlets). So we often decide between class gear with low stamina or hybrids with low stamina. Enigma was pretty well itemised in that regard though, and Frostfire has decent amounts of stamina as well so it's getting better. Tier 2 or below though, ouch.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

NuType

My guild is currently working on our T2.5 and have yet to get any T3. But some of my locks are thinking of skipping DC all together and going straight for PH. This seems like a poor move due to the 5 piece set bonus of DC. It seems more like a way to hold out on spending dkp.

From the perspective of warlocks who have both T2.5 and T3, how much would staying in Nem hinder you in Naxx?

 

Bibdy

Upgrades from tier 2.5 to tier 3 are overall pretty minor. Tier 3 pieces are plain better, but not by much, and they're a damned sight harder to obtain, ESPECIALLY anything beyond Bracers, Belts and Boots. Upgrading from Tier 2 to either 2.5 or 3 (or the general non-set cloth crap in those instances) is a massive jump in your DPS.

Edit: Is it a coincidence that the easiest bosses in Naxx drop the pieces of Tier 3 that aren't taken by Tier 2.5 gear?

There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.