evilwookie

Since in long fights the worst part about being demo is that you spend so much time lifetaping, I was wondering if having trinkets like Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon and other chance on hit/spell cast that regen mana would be any good to help with the lifetapping problem.

 

• frmorrison

Blue Dragon and other trinkets that work off spirit are worthless to Warlocks.

A good regen trinket would be the PvP +heal one, that gives 900ish health (so 1000 with Fel Armor) every 2 minutes.

So that is almost a free tap every 2 minutes, which gives about 1700 mana, which is equal to 14 mp5, so that isn't bad, but not that great either.

It seems best to me to Life Tap as needed then use Drain Life as needed, rather than worry about a regen trinket.

Know Thy group function; Thy DPS shall avoid aggro, Thy tank shall not attempt to DPS, and Thy Healer shall not go AFK without notifying Thy group.

 

Myul

Let's take your demonology warlock with 0/5 demonic embrace, raidbuffed (+50 from divine spirit +20 blackened basilisk, 18 from motw, +10% from human bonus, +10% from bok)

160 (this is your average, naked base spirit at 70 as ctprofiles claims to) + 50 +18 +20 =248
248*1.2=297

Round up to 300, take another 80 from gear (even if 50 spirit from a spelldmg/hit/crit gear might be more then you may ever dream off), round up again to 400 spirit.

Now let's use [Bangle of Endless Blessings] + [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon], reaching 12% chance for meditation. You a a smart warlock doing 25 casts per minute, ending in 3 meditation states at perfect interval of 45s (generously 23 ticks)

400/5+15*0.15*23*=327 mana/minute

Wow, thats awsome! Losing 2 trinketslots for this huge amount of mana per minute :/

So, as you may see, this is no real option. What can you do?

a) get a personal healer
b) get a shadowpriest for your group
c) sacrifice your felhunter or your voidwalker (check your hp:mp ratio and deside)
d) use more consumeables to restore mana
e) you allready reached the maximum possible, congratulation!
f) be smart, use bandages
g) drop lology and learn affliction for darkpact :/

 

• frmorrison

You lose many of the great deep Demon talents if you sac.

Using consumables is a great idea.

For a Lock, it should be better to Drain Life (1600ish damage and 2000ish healing) vs Bandaid (2500 healing). However you get a spirit tic (yah 129 mana!) out of the bandaid usage.

With SL and Dark Pack mana isn't that much of an issue, but that Demonology is a fair raid spec (but is the lowest raid dps tree).

Another option is to craft the Frozen Shadoweave sec, it gives about 400 HP/minute, so that is a free life tap every 2 minutes.

Know Thy group function; Thy DPS shall avoid aggro, Thy tank shall not attempt to DPS, and Thy Healer shall not go AFK without notifying Thy group.

 

Lamaros

Spend so much time lifetapping? What do you mean?

Are you saying demo has greater mana usage than Affliction or Destro?
Or are you saying you can't afford to life tap due to health concerns?

The first just strikes me as being wrong; all warlock specs need to get mana - and even dark pacters need to lifetap in long fights.
The second is a problem for destro locks even more, as they usually have less health than demo.

So I don't understand what you think your specific concern is. If it's just a general "should warlocks use mana regen stuff?" then the answer has been covered. Life Tap is about 3 million times more awesome than mana regen: it is our mana regen of choice by far. You just need to accept it.

 

Lamaros

Drain Life is best for Demo/Affliction locks to be sure, if they don't have a shadow priest or a friendly healer. Otherwise they don't need to worry.

Siphon Life is useful, but mostly overheal I've found. I can get away with not casting it without worrying too much.

Demo doesn't have to be the lowest raid dps spec I don't think. I'm respeccing tonight to tell you for sure, but I'm thinking the 0/40/21 or 1/39/21 (keep that corruption efficient) with a MD succubus about would be very respectable. Ruin with a high crit chance and impsb, extra +damage (especially when your pet is raidbuffed too), and those DoTs a ticking away...

And yeah, that 3 piece bonus is pretty handy, if not amazing. If your DPS is around 1k (doable to be sure) then it's 20 health a second, 1800 a miniute - and then boosted by fel armor to almost 2160! (havn't actually checked this to be sure, didn't think it was so high.. my maths might be off)

 

Myul

Heavy Netherweave Bandage
Requires First Aid (325)
Use: Heals 3400 damage over 8 sec.

Using specced (he's a demonology lock so i assume the has 3/3 demonic aegis) fel armor, he receive 4080 hp while not taking damage over 8s or 510 hp/s.

Drain Life is a quite nice idea, but you may forgot about something in here. Ok, damage dealing is fine - but you'll have some more mana for it, missing while tabbing. You can choose between 8s of non dealing damage and 4k hp without any mana costs (you allready mentioned the great mana reg from spirit tick(s)), able to tab more often.

With Drain Life and 1000 spelldamage you receive 208 dps & 262 hp/s or 1040 dmg & 1310 hp in total (including fel armor with its talents) for 425 mana.

If you pick sl how you can't reach dp and turned around the same thing. And with dp you won't reach all the quite nice demonology talents worse not sacrificing your pet as you mentioned above. But you can pick siphon life instead of Ruin if you want to, quite nice hp reg for only 2 global cooldowns every minute (but again a massive lose to your dps imho).

5% crit
150-200 spelldmg
-20% threat or +10% dmg

vs ~ 6k hp regged should allways be on top, i have to agree - but he's lacking mana so he can't make right use of them all the time.

 

spronk

Since the longest boss fights in game atm are 8-9 minutes, and there are threat cap issues for most fights, it really is not a big deal lifetapping 2-3 times and then drain lifeing it back up. Be glad you are playing the warlock class, mages and shadow priests have no mana regen options other than potting for fights like Gruul and Hydross.

There are also no real patchwerk fights so far in TBC where you just go all out DPS for 5 minutes, most of the time you start out slow, ramp up a bit, and really only go all out the last few 2-3 minutes. Its pretty easy to regulate your mana/HP so that you can hit the critical last few minutes with full hp/mana and do insane burst damage tossing out shadowburns.

And yeah, trinket slots should be saved for these burst times (icon, quag, shiffer, etc) instead of trying to regen a pitiful amount of mana. We have lifetap, learn to love it.

 

Deathwing

What? Maybe without the pet demonology is about even with other specs, but if you can use your FG to his full potential, no spec can come close.

As for lifetap, tell your priests to drop you a renew once in a while. His mana will pay off when you show him how much more damage you did than the mages and hunters because they ran out of mana.

 

Mondragon

thing is, most raid leaders wont let you use Felguards in raid situations :'<

http://hosted.filefront.com/mrpboy/ - My WoW PVE Movies. SSC/TK/BT

 

Deathwing

Why? We're still progressing through karazhan, but I've been allowed to use my FG whenever, only using an imp on maiden and curator.

You do make a good point, though. I've considered respeccing to a DS build or affliction so I can have the imp out all the time. The DPS potential of demonology is just too apealing.

 

Mondragon

addicted to the hp of the imp. I guess its just a trait from pre BC..and with this all being progress nowadays, every HP helps.

Having just completed my suit..I am tempted to try 0/40/21, 0/41/20 and 21/0/40.

in your opinion would you say the dps potention of demo is the best of the three specs?

http://hosted.filefront.com/mrpboy/ - My WoW PVE Movies. SSC/TK/BT

 

• frmorrison

Do you love the imp? If so, 1/39/21 should work best for you (1 in corruption to makes it a 1.4sec cast, so you don't lose much by casting it).

If you don't mind missing the imp, try 1/41/19, that is more potential dps than the first one, FG is powerful if you keep it alive.

21/0/40? I assume you mean 21/40, that is the weakest spec of the three (using Incinerate instead of SB?), but you would have better corruptions and SL for mana efficiency on long fights.

Know Thy group function; Thy DPS shall avoid aggro, Thy tank shall not attempt to DPS, and Thy Healer shall not go AFK without notifying Thy group.

 

spronk

I really love 7/5/49, especially as I am still running 5 mans (heroics) where stuff like Shadowfury is great for certain situations. If I am grouped with a shadow priest its CoS/sbolt, if I am grouped with a fire mage its CoE/incin/immo/conflag. The spec isn't the absolute best for 25 man raiding, but allows a lot of versatility in 5 and 10 mans. At some point in the near future I'll be pretty much 25 man raiding only, and then probably switch to an affliction build. 7/5/49 also allows for some wicked burst damage, especially if you go for crit gear - I am currently at around +950 dmg but 22% crit unbuffed, easily pushing to 25% with minor pots.

 

Disposition

Is anyone 30/21/10? I really wonder about the dps of this build. There is always the problem of being forced to use your imp but 30/21 was a solid build pre-bc and I'm curious how it would do with 25% shadowdamage + bane shadowbolts.

 

Deathwing

Actually, 7/43/11 is probably the best FG spec. In sustained fights, people really underate imp LT. Less time tapping is more time dpsing. Also a major negative to fire destrolocks.

 

Barabus

Personally I do not see why a warlock would ever consider running a raid witout the imp out unless asked to by the raid leader for a seduce/spell lock. Personally I have never seen any raid leader ask a warlock to do such but it is not impossible. The pourpose of every player in a raid is to help the raid work more smoothly and with the raid cap droped to 10 adn 25 man raids the nessisity to assist the raid far supercedes any desire to come in top on the DPS meter.

That being said the imp is a valuable tool in increasing the health of the raid, therefore it is the pet of choice for most raid situations. Now taking a look at a x/41/x build for a warlock we see a lot of tallents directly tied to the warlocks pet (hence the name of the tree). However in looking at the damage that this tree has to offer the damage is also centered around the pet. One of the highest increases to damage that demonology has to offer is Demonic Knowledge which direlectly relates to the ammount of health and mana of the warlocks pet demon. the Imp has both the least health and least mana of any pet a warlock can summon so the use of the imp with DK makes DK much less viable then it would be with a FG or even a succy.

Now assuming the raid leader does enjoy health and requests the imp be used the demo warlock is now lacking greatly in damage. To counter this I went with a 7/13/41 build for more raid friendly DPS. Although a 44/13/6 build would be much more raid friendly the warlock would do hardly any DPS to speak of which would hurt the raid by filling a DPS slot with such low damage.


As far as the question the post was origionally about, bandage pop a pot or use your healthstone, that is what its there for.

 

Viktus

I was under the impression that the original post was trying to reduce the time spent regaining mana, not asking how to replace the health lost to tapping.

There should be a simple answer in terms of how mp5 compares to +spellpower for keeping your mana up, and a more complicated one if you want to view it in the context of healing required and sustained dps over x minutes.

 

Deathwing

You make too many uninformed assumptions there. First, a lot of raid leaders realize that seriously affecting the warlock's dps so one group can have 700 more HP is not an equal trade off. When you are 1 of 4 dps in the raid, that amount of dps counts a lot.

Secondly, DK is actually best when used on an imp. It's not mana and health, but sta and int, and all the pets have the same base amount. You get more out of it with blood pact. Other factors such as no MD FG buff, soul link endangers the imp, and you can't use him to attack lowers your overall DPS.

I hardly doubt an affliction spec would suck at damage as you put it. Although, don't know why you would want to drop 13 into demo. At least get shadowburn first. BTW, please tell me how you got a build with 63 points.

 

TheOnly

LOL you think an affliction spec is low dps?

Move along....

41+x/y/10+z is one of the top damage specs, equal but different to 0/21/40 and 30/21/10, the other top two.

Perhaps you have encountered poorly played affliction locks, but I assure you, with equal gear I'd destroy you in damage. And my imp would be out the whole time. 7/13/41 is very versatile but not as good dps as 41 affliction with bane.

I suggest you check out the warlock theorycrafting and dps spreadsheets before making such claims.

As for mana regen, if you need it get soul siphon or improved life tap. Regenerating ~400 +health per second in a raid while doing some damage with drain life works wonders if you don't have backup healing.

If you are worried about having to spend so much time life tapping, the only way to fix that is through mana efficiency or bigger life taps (or dark pacts).
+ damage, imp life tap, dark pact. Thats your reduced life tap time. Nothing else will prevent it without gimping your dps. the 5% mana reduction in destro is also not worth it mathematically. 2 points in imp life tap are far better than 5 points there.

More + damage and less crit, even for ruin builds, typically leads to more damage and fewer life taps. THe most crit-monkey of all our builds still benefit less from crit than + damage per point, by far. This is partly because immolate and corruption are DPS boosters no matter what your spec is, and they don't crit or only partially crit.

 

Jakiri

Unless it's getting pushed off, the damage/cast time of Siphon is much higher than the Damage/Cast Time of even a baned shadowbolt. The only thing that's lacking is the damage/mana, but then Siphon does heal as well.

Affliction warlocks should, in almost all fights, be topping the damage meters unless you run with enough debuffs such that they have to spend most of the fights refreshing them.