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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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... :(

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.

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.

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?