The problem with that statement is that we're talking about a computer game. It is built on spreadsheets, math and statistics. I'm not going to claim that the sims we use are flawless or that our information about the game is perfect, but your personal experience is of much less value than the data gathered from not only sims and spreadsheets, but an abundance of raid logs as well.

Worth noting, Unholy has the most to gain from the T9 set bonuses and may surpass Blood even on single target fights before all is said and done. Right now, we're just not there if all you look at is personal dps.

ive been wondering how good would be [Favor of the Dragon Queen] against [Broach of the Wailing Night], for a combat rogue that is, given that we now have epic gems available. its not showing on the spreadsheet neckpiece items btw.

I would disagree with dropping either FFB or Molten Armor glyph for LB. No doubt LB is nice, but it shouldnt replace primary glyphs such as FFB and Molten Armor, I would suggest dropping Scorch instead. I know the instant 5 stacks in nice, but it is a very small dps increase and losing the stack can usually be avoided by prior planning and knowledge of fights.

As for low dps on hodir, this fight really depends on a couple of things. First is time, how long your raid takes to kill him, with hodir the longer you go the lower your dps. Second your ability to maximize the uptime of the NPC buffs. These two usually go hand in hand. I usually sit over 11-12k on hodir at least because my old guild was able to get the HM timer, but part of making that timer was being able to keep at least 2 if not all 3 buffs on me. Also one of the biggest things people mistake on hodir is the storm buff, which looks like lightning on a player (which is usually a debuff). You want to stand by the person with this buff, it will give you massive crits (50k FFB's).

On haste over SP, that is much more for FB and Arcane than FFB. You have to remember that FFB benefits more from crit than does FFB and Arcane. Because of this FFB places crit above haste (though debatable and really personal opinion).

Doesn't make much sense there. Glyph of Living bomb is "the" primary glyph for FFB and FB/TTW specs. If somehow tomorrow you logged on and had only one glyph slot you would be best running with Living bomb glyph for those specs.

As to the issue of running Improved Scorch glyph in the first place, there is a number of different circumstances that you need to consider when using that.

#1 Is your raid lacking an affliction warlock?
#2 Is it likely that your scorch stack could fall off in this fight?
#3 Is there going to be a large number of targets where you would want the scorch debuff on?

If the answoer to any of these questions is Yes, then you should consider using Imp Scorch glyph.

I think Landsoul has removed it from filefront (at least I couldn't find it). So patience is our only recourse

First off heres my Armory link.. The World of Warcraft Armory ..now for my question. I have basicaly just finished regearing from Affliction to Destruction and i have heard from allot of other locks that crit needs to be no higher then 25% and to stack haste. Is this true and if so then with focus on newer raid TotC and further what kinda gear choices am i looking for. Also why is haste more important then continually grabbing crit.

Thank You very much for your advice in advance..

~Msfear

I have been a combat rogue for quite some time, I am gemed for ARP. I am currently the top melee dps in the guild in most fights. I was wondering if some one could show me a spec for HAT. I want to try it out before the glory of it is gone. From what I have red, it sounds like its even better than combat at this point. Also I was wondering what Gear i should be aiming for. If there is a place here on Elitist Jerks that has all that info, plz provide a link.

Also, if there is a rotation to it besides spamming Evis i would like to find that out as well.

Thanks

1) As stated above, auto attacks will be performed during killing spree. So you should have SnD up while using KS.

2) ArP Cap as far as I know is 1232. ArP has no diminishing returns - the opposite is the case. The more ArP you have, the stronger it gets.

3) In theory you can reach a cap for white crits due to the mechanic of the one roll table for white damage. IIRC 24% of your white hits are glancing and thus can't crit. Depending on hit rating and raid buffs a certain amount (usually about 10%) will miss and in addition depending on Expertise some white hits will be dodged. So if misses, dodged attacks, 4,8% boss crit reduction and Glancing Blows add up to let's say 40% and your Crit Chance would be higher than 60% your crit chance would be capped to 60 for white damage.

//Edit: Sorry - just saw Q2&3 answered in the post right above mine//

Firstly, sorry if my english is bad, im not a native speaker

I wanted to know if the point i quoted is really true: i just looted Mjolnir runestone and before that, i never had Gt and was fully gemmed Ignore armor (Sep value on the spreadsheet was higher than everything.)

Now that i can cap myself i have a little problem: i know the cap is 100% but don't know if i should count Battle stance in that or no (like Ff and sunder must not be counted in the 100%)

i made two test on the first mini boss of the beast of norfendre: (the spreadsheet is no longer available and have no other choice to compare dps :/ )

First with ~50% passive arp (no battle stance counted) and ~3700 ap: result on a average 6.5k dps and a 7.1k at one try.

Second yesterday with full regemming str to have ~36.5% Arp and about 4k ap: only 1 try at 5k2 dps.

Did i made a mistake on regemming? or just had a very bad luck on that fight? x)

The biggest reasons why haste is more preferred by a Destruction lock is because 1) there are many buffs in a raidenvironment that provide crit (Elemental Oath/Moonkin Aura, Totem of Wrath, Improved Scorch/Improved Shadow Bolt, not to mention Kings which raises your intellect and Empowered Imp) as compared to haste, 2) crit rating suffers more from diminishing returns than haste does; it requires 46 crit rating for 1% crit opposed to 1% haste which only requires 32 haste rating (not sure about this exact number on the top of my head) and 3) Destruction has a lot of spells with high cast times, opposed to Affliction which is mostly instant cast spells. Besides, Conflagrate (which has the highest DPCT besides Immolate and CoD) already recieves a huge crit % due to Fire and Brimstone.

That being said, however, there are a few encounters in Ulduar where you have might already have high amounts of haste (Hodir, Vezax, Ignis, Thorim if you're MCing Warbringers) reducing the value of it and buffing crit instead.

I have always wondered how the coefficients for the various stats were determined. Clearly they are VERY important in the outcome of any tests or calculations when comparing different stats. They are different for each spec, so just using arbitrary numbers.... why is haste worth 1.275, and crit worth .8613, etc etc?

And i know it is much more complicated than just using constant numbers, but shouldn't those values be changing as your stats change? Not even talking about specific "caps" but just in general. Obviously once you are hit capped the value of hit is zero, and the value of haste goes down once your 1.5 casts hit the 1.0 sec ceiling. But more on a general level, all the stats that increase damage are related and become more and less valuable as each of them move up and down. I know that we are limited to the available loot, so we cant always pick the exact ratio of all stats. But if you take the coefficients as they are, you should cap your hit, and then ONLY take haste. Each point of haste is always better than a point of crit, and given the choice, you should never choose crit.

Your warlock with its current stats, among other things, has an average damage done per cast, an average cast time per cast, and total damage done. Referring to these as AVG Damage, AVG cast time, and total damage. You have the choice, to increase either haste or crit, according to the constant coefficients you should always choose haste. But is that always the right choice? Choosing haste will lower your AVG cast time, allowing for more casts in the same amount of time, increasing Total damage because you were able to cast 1 extra spell (more realistically we are talking about fractions of a spell). So lets just say your AVG Damage per cast is 1000. You increasing haste allowed you to cast 1 extra spell, and increased your total damage by 1000. The other option would be to increase crit, and effectively increase the AVG Damage per spell. I would not gain the 1000 from the extra spell, but every other spell would be doing more damage. Lets say that increasing crit would increase AVG Damage by 100, so now each spell does 1100. If i only cast 5 times, my increase is only 500, so yes, haste is still better. But if i have so much haste already, that i cast 15 times, the 100 increase per cast is worth 1500 total damage, greater than simply casting 1 more spell.

My point is, that as any of your stats get larger, it slowly starts to diminish the gains from that stat, until the others catch up some. This effect is completely lost when you lock in the values for all the stats.

This effect happens with hit also. It is universally proclaimed that you are a complete idiot if your not hit capped. The opinion of so many is that you know nothing, and your dps is completely irrelevant if your not hit capped. The same argument from above applies. Lets consider the hybrid gem, +10 to hit, and lets say you are 10 hit rating away from cap, do you use the hybrid gem, or forget about the last 10 hit and just go pure spell power? 10 hit is less than 1/2 a percent, so we are talking about over 200 spell casts per miss. If you add the hit, you will guarantee that you don't miss that 214th spell, and increase your damage by that spell. Or you could add a spell power gem, and make the first 213 spells do more damage. What if you are only 2 hit rating away from cap? Less than a .1% chance to miss. Meaning on avg you will cast over 1000 times per miss. Im sorry, but i would bet anything that increasing the spell power of those 1000+ casts is better than removing the .1% miss chance. And i understand that not all casts are created equal, take Haunt for example, it hurts your total damage more if a haunt is resisted rather than a CoA. This does not really change anything though, it only skews the value of hit slightly higher to compensate for the random number generation chance.

Sorry for the really long post.