30k mana is 79 sbolts, say 85 sbolts. with a crit chance of 25%, assuming a non-crit sbolt of 1400 and a crit of 3000 that would be a total of 153k dmg, plus another 5k for deathcoil. throw in a few shadowburns if you want, lets say 165k total dmg. Even if you mix in r4/r10 sbolt you won't increase this significantly (back of the envelope shows about 15k more dmg).

So with a very generous warlock scenario (most locks not hitting for 1400 non crit sbolt rank10 when you first kill loatheb) you are doing damage that would rank 14-20th amongst the DPS classes. You would likely beat all the hunters but still fall below warrs, rogues, and most mages. And your damage is not going to increase greatly with more gear.

To me that sounds pretty broken. Fortunately it does seem a lot better in expansion, but its still to early to tell how well raid DPS will be.

Warlocks bring more to that fight than just pure dps though, you can't factor all their utility into the equation. Take some of the mages dmg and attribute it back to the Warlocks because of CoE, the warriors for CoR, 40 healthstones for the raid for every attempt... Their value is still high even if they aren't the top of the dmg meters.

That was our second kill. The Warlocks there have the Fair buff, but then, so does everyone else. The numbers show where they were in order for the spore buff, and is used to re-adjust the list each week.

The top two Warlocks were being a little more creative on their healing rotation, while the third Warlock was there for the first time and was using the same pot/bandage/stone rotation as everyone else.

Enh. I guess I have two faces.

On the one face (the face I give to my guild and my fellow warlocks as their class officer), I pay close attention to my DM readings and on any fight where I do well, I'm quick to point it out in the raid/warlock channel. These include fights like Noth, Heigan, Sartura, and Grobulus which are 'warlock friendly' and I place in the top 5, as well as the other fights where I rank in the 5-15 spots. I have little competitions with the other warlocks and I brag to my party about 3.5k+ crits. That face is trying to make sure that we don't get ~into~ that feeling of inferiority where it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The other face is the one I put on for the WoW forums face that I present to Blizzard where I work to try to implement changes to my class and get our shortcomings (mana efficiency, threat, and debuff limits) addressed. Based upon the changes planned for BC, and since 1.12, I haven't had to show that face very often.

I know what you're speaking of though: most of our hunters have switched to PvP spec since they feel they can't do significant dps in a PvE setting anyways.

Based on your '79 shadowbolts' its more like this:

79 shadowbolts, Base damage average 510
add 8 hit, 8 crit, 659 shadow damage from gear
Double damage crits with Ruin
+10% COS
+20% from ISB procs being up permanently
+60 crit from Spore Buff
+10 crit from Onyxia or Nef Buff
+5 crit from devastation
~+5 crit from INT

510 + (659 * 3/3.5) = 1075 base average damage bolts

1074 * 1.1 (COS) = 1182
1182 * 1.2 (ISB) = 1418
1418 * 1.88 (Crit) = 2666

2666 * 79 (# of bolts) = 210601

210601 * 0.91 (17% miss rate -8 hit from gear = 9% miss 91% hit) = 191647


Then the other specs and buffs come into play:


Potentially add 10% more for SM/Ruin spec
191647 * 1.10 = 210812

or have Shadow Weaving up:
191647 * 1.15 = 220394

or both:
191647 * 1.10 * 1.15 = 242433


And this is all without flask of supreme power (150 dmg), greater arcane elixirs (35 dmg), brilliant wizard oil (36 dmg and 1 crit), elixir of shadow power (40 shadow), occasional darkmoon faire buffs (+10% dmg). Having all those adds another 40k or so, and puts SM/Ruin and DS/Ruin builds over 300k potential damage provided you actually have shadow weaving up (you should).

Just a quick check - we used shadow pots and basic raid pots, no flasks on anything and got loatheb to 44% at doom 5 which killed the raid (we didn't have any stam buffs on the dps/healers) Does that sound like we're close to the target DPS level, or do we need to really step up the DPS prior to doom 1?

Also, do shamans feel they do better casting LB while healing, or whipping out a 2H and meleeing? (All our shaman are 31 resto at the minimum so we're not spec'd heavy into either of the DPS trees.)

a tsa hunter does more then any other spec

i crunch numbers every day on how to be better at dps, i think everyone should

dont use edgemasters

Malan, 44% is pretty light. Doom 5 is at 4:10. We have most of our raid die at 5:25 using a pot, nothing, bandage, stone, pot/bandage strategy. (You could last until 5:40 with an extra bandage at 5:10, although you'll lose at least 8 seconds of DPS doing that.) So you're doing 56% of the damage in about 77% of your available time.

If you guys are working on it, though, schedule a raid for Monday and kill him with the faire buff (along with flasks and other world buffs). The faire buff is the nicest buff you can get, and if you use it on Monday, you'll be able to use it again after the reset.

So whats these other gloves a warrior is supposed to wear that offers more DPS?

I use flametounge + shocks, that gives decent dps if you are in a spore group.

Your numbers are completely forgetting fungal bloom exists in the fight.

Of course you won't get #1, but the point is you'll be getting significantly higher than #20 with 100k dmg done like most of the people posting here say their locks do. Forgot to SS but at tonight's kill I was 11th with 175~k while having to curse spam, first warlock was 230+ at 6th or 7th. We had no buffs the other classes didn't have. I'm sure our gears a little better than the average lock killing loatheb for the first time, but enough for double the dmg? Like you said, the small gear upgrades in naxx isn't going to be a significant dmg upgrade. Just saying that if your locks are barely breaking 100k dmg, no matter the circumstances (have to spam curse/no COS/last spore groups) then they must be pretty horrible at this game/not care. Blaming it on "warlocks are bad in pve qq" isn't very smart.
Considering this is one of the two fights in the game where the mechanics truely fuck locks over more than any other class, being able to do a respectable amount of dmg doesn't sound very broken to me.

press CTRL pls

Yes but the reduced damage reduction is still good to have. Especially when you dual wield and want to HS every main hand attack (which is possible with a 2.8 speed MH) it's pretty good not to have 60% Glancing blow offhand hits.

But you forgot the Vice versa - Glancing Blows cannot crit. Non-Special melee attacks get capped at 60% Crit due to glancing blows always being 40% vs 63, the only way around this, as far as I know, is Recklessness. Past your first 10% Crit, the rest of your Crit from gear/talents is only helping your Special Attacks on Loatheb, while +7 Skill from Edgemasters is reducing the Glancing Penalty on your white DPS from 30% to 9%. Edgemasters has the added benefit of increasing your Hit%

If you normally would do 500 white DPS, you'll do (500 * .6 * 2) + (500 * .4 * .7) = 740 White DPS on Loatheb. Edgemasters Raises that to (500 * .6 * 2) + (500 * .4 * .91) = 782 DPS. 5.67% More white DPS.

This is of course, assuming the Spore Buff removes the need for excessive +hit gear, which I could be completely incorrect about (please correct me if I'm wrong)

Normal Chart:
0-300 Glancing
301-556 Miss
556-?? Dodge/Parry/Block if applicable
??-?? Hit
??-100 Crit

As you get more Crit, it reduces the regular hits, without special crit modifiers like Reck/CB you get capped at 44.4% Crit until you pick up more % Hit (assuming 0 Dodge/Parry) Crit consumes Hit, Hit consumes Miss (and Dodge/Parry), Nothing but specials consume Glancing.

No, Recklessness on Loatheb is actually counterproductive because you take more damage but you can't turn glancing blows into crits =)

Shield wall is the best timer to use on Loatheb.

Ok so we're a bit confused right now. Last night we did a solid 3-4 hours working on Loatheb with dry runs, and then did 2 runs with shadow pots and melee DPS pots to see how close to the mark we could get (and to get people used to the doom healing).
We were short our 2 Fury Warriors (due to some emergencies the 1 Fury warrior had to tank Loatheb) but the raid make up looked like this-
Group1 - 5x Fire mages
Group2 - Warrior (Fury, but not the best geared up) 3 Sword Rogues, Shaman
Group3 - 1x Arms Warriors, 2 Rogues, Shaman
Group4 - 2x Arms Warriors, 2 Rogues, Shaman
Group5 - 1x Frost mage, 3x Hunters, Shaman
Group6 - 3x Warlocks and 2 priests/druids
Group7 - priests/druids
Group8 - 1x Warlock for Bloodpact, the Main Tank, and some healers

With only MotW and Totems, we were hitting ~74% at the 2 minute mark. We did that pretty consistently so we did 2 dry runs with shadow pots and whatever pots the melee decided to use. No flasks or Wizard Oils on the casters. On the 2 shadow potted runs we hit ~45% at Doom # 5, as I noted above. Spore order is groups 1-8. I can say with certainty that none of the shaman had searing totems down last night, which we'll correct next time.

We're trying to figure out how in the world we're going to hit 65% with NO buffs whatsoever by the 2 minute mark, as I'm having a hard time figuring out what to do differently. We can probably shave out 2 warlocks, but our locks are interested in trying some of the DPS methods mentioned in this thread (they just weren't doing it last night though). So as I said, our 2 best Fury warriors weren't there, would them being there have pushed us to the proper DPS point? (They have just about every top end DPS warrior item available) Any other corrections I should make on the group setup that might improve the DPS?

Few question about warlocks on loatheb:

If a warlock reaches 230k damage on loatheb as a warlock, you are actually on par with mage dps. So how you can say that this fight actually favors other classes more? If you count the average of your mage damage, you hardly ever come up with higher than ~220k for mages. You can test this easily by checking the numerous dmg-meter, swstat and recap SS:s from this thread. For me it seems that warlocks are a viable DPS on loatheb, and actually benefit more from the critbuff than frost mages for instance, since they dont usually reach similar ~770dps numbers... It's just not as straightforward fight for 'locks as it is for mages, so they need to think about it a bit more and prepare a good plan for consumable usage etc.

It'd be intresting to hear a bit from the well performing 'locks:
Spec (DS/Ruin I suppose is the best, but SM/Ruin might work also)
Assuming DS spec, which DS sacrifice? (Felhunter, Succy, WW?)
Shadowpriest stacking Shadow Weaving?
Shadowpriest healing warlock-battery with VE(even better...)
Consumable use?

Assuming 7000HP raidbuffed warlock with DS spec gives 210HP/4sec regen = 12600 HP Regen over 5minutes = removes the need for bandages, healthstones completely to stay alive and allows the use of Major manas, Bandages, Healthstones, Dreamlessleeps whatever for mana to feed SB'ing.

Or Succy for just 15% more raw damage?

I have to admid that warlocks in general seem to outgear their fellow mages as there are less raiding locks -> less competition about lockdrops etc.

We've killed him a few times now. The first time with 2 prot warriors swinging Nightfalls. And the 2nd time with 8 mages and 8 rogues. We also only use 13 healers. I don't appreciate this fight as a raid leader because unless I can re-adjust the entire raid before Loatheb and stack it with DPS, I know we will struggle.

See if you can't get some of those MS warriors to use Nightfalls. Or try to stack the raid a bit more with dps. More rogues and mages. Worst comes to worse, grab an Ony buff / Hakkar buff and see how that helps.

For what it's worth, even on our 3rd kill, world buffs (just Ony+Hakkar) were the difference between a 9% wipe and a 5min (on the dot) kill, all other consumeables (including flasks on mages) being identical.

If you're at 74% at 2 minutes unbuffed, you're not that far off. If you can hit 69% unbuffed at the 2 minute mark, you'll have him fully potted with world buffs and the darkmoon buff. Grabbing spores efficiently is the one issue I would imagine you'd want to look into. Try and get as close to the ideal of the group grabbing the spore all reaching the spore at the same time, killing it instantly, and getting back to DPS with no pauses. If you're already making that happen, then it's simply up to DPS to pick it up.

Having the fury warriors will make a difference. You might also consider throwing a good warlock with improved shadow bolt in group 1 (provides an imp to the mages and all warlocks benefit from the improved shadow bolt buff), spread out hunters with TSA in groups 3-5, and don't stack MS warriors early on in the rotation. Keep them spread out in later groups so that every melee gets battle shout. I personally don't worry as much on dagger rogues what their position is as much as I try and make sure they have battle shout and TSA if possible. They hit the crit cap pretty quickly in here.

If you can reset him reliably, a great way to practice is to burn him until 2 minutes and do a reset (and having everyone bandage after the first doom isn't a bad idea, since this ends up being about the most complicated action in a very simple fight).