srg

Hello all, first off I'd like to say that even though this is my first post here I have been reading the threads here for quite some time and really enjoy the site.

Now on to my question, I am a level 70 affliction lock and kind of @ the point of a hard decision on where I'd like to go with my gear. I am a 375 Tailor wearing the Frozen Shadoweave set and have currently have it paired up with 2 piece T4 (Helm & Gloves). One major shortcoming I have on my gear at the moment is I am wearing BM pants (~10 Opera kills and 0 TF pants droped and lock T4 is terrible).

For this thread lets disregard my current pants and do a little "theorycraft". Before I start rambling stats, please assume that when I post the +dmg of a item that they are max slotted with +9 damage gems. Also I am not factoring in enchants on any item because regardless of the item they can both have the same enchants so they need no be included.

I am torn between 2 gearsets for primary raiding. The first being 2 piece T4 and Trial-Fire Legs. Stats are as follows:
Total:
Stamina 99
Intel 92
Crit 33
Damage 154
Bonus: Your shadow damage spells have a chance to grant you 135 bonus shadow damage for 15 sec and your fire damage spells have a chance to grant you 135 bonus fire damage for 15 sec.

The second option is to have the Spellstrike Set crafted and pick up the Attumen gloves.
Stats are as follows:
Stamina 47
Intel 39
Crit 50
Hit 50
Damage 196
Bonus: Gives a chance when your harmful spells land to increase the damage of your spells and effects by 92 for 10 sec.


Which for a affliction lock would you recommend? The +41 damage from spellstrike is quite nice , however it comes at a loss of 52 stam and 53 Int. The difference of +17 crit is not a huge game breaker since only 2 of my 6 spells I cast can crit and even at that +17 is not dramatically large. +50 hit is nice.


Is the set worth the expense + stat loss of T4 + T-F? Also does anyone have experience with either set bonus? Does Spellstrike proc more frequently then lock T4?

Thanks in advance for some suggestions!

Regards,
-Srg-

 

Xerogen

I dont know what your bracer/belt situation is but I would definately craft Bracers of Havok(20g at most) 30 something spell dmg 1 socket.

If you have the money craft Girdle of Ruination(2 socket 39 spell dmg with spell crit).

 

srg

I actually already swap between Bracers of Havok & Plagueheart.

As for Belt I have the belt off High King Maulgar. Slightly better stats for a affliction lock. (Belt of Divine Intervetion).

More so concerned about the helm / gloves / legs combo.

 

Tempestra

Spellstrike procs 5% of the time and has no internal cooldown, but you know that because I constantly harp about how good it is. =)

 

Scrublock

As of now the T4 2 piece bonus procs only off direct damage spells IE. Shadow Bolts, Death Coil, Shadowburn etc.. However, next patch the bonus will proc off of all shadow spells, including dot's.

I'm pretty sure that means that it will proc off the initial application of the DoT, not the ticks. As for the proc rate, currently it sucks due to the direct damage spell requirement. I'm sure it will proc more often after this patch though, we'll just have to wait and see.

If you're doing this for PvE and are willing to get the mats the Spellstrike pants are worth it in terms of damage. If you think you'll just replace them soon or don't want to farm the mats just get TF legs.

 

srg

LOL forum troll even here too!


Scrublock: Yeah I pretty much knew that the Spellstrike set far out proc's the T4 set. How I actually meant to word it was based off of PTR proc rates, but even then its not a huge determining factor. So more so you think the +dmg +hit outweighs the huge stat loss of Stamina and Int?

This is obviously strictly for PvE purposes only. I have a totally different gear set for PvP (or at least working on one slowly but surely). Lower mana + lower hp = lifetapping a bit more frequently. Any other thoughts?

 

Vodrin

affliction warlocks get through a lot of mana, the extra int at the start is used so quickly (1-2 global cooldowns).

lower mana = first lifetap sooner, but no change in frequency.
lower hp = riskier lifetaps on aoe fights. dark pact is there anyway

 

Scrublock

Anything PvE I typically don't typically look for stats over damage, unless it's a ridiculous sacrifice for one over the other. That being said if you are doing mainly PvE affliction I try to keep my mana above 65-70% at all times, keeping my health high enough to survive and healers will always have me topped off if they're not sleeping.

As for lifetapping more with less sta/int if you've got 2 points in Imp LT you shouldn't be lifetapipng more than twice if you try to stay about 70% mana.

 

srg

Thanks for all the advice guys, time to get Tempestra moving on my spellcloth

Appreciate the time you guys took.

-Srg-

 

ka

Its also worth noting that having multiple gear sets can be quite nice. Max spell damage for fights where you take little to no damage like the Prince and mixed spell damage/stamina set for healing heavy fights like Aran.

I even keep a FR set for Illhoof. Dampen magic + 25% resist can get you quite a few Valentines cards from the healers come February.

 

sargon

The SpellStrike+Handwraps is definately the better option, IMO. 520HP really isn't a huge amount in the grandscale of things. But 40Spell damage and 50hit is a pretty decent increase in damage, the +crit is also apprecitable for keeping ISB procs on the target.

 

• GokieKS

I actually was facing almost the same choice recently. At that point in time, I was not Tailoring, wore 4 piece Plagueheart (head, shoulders, pants, boots), and had just picked up T4 helm. I crunched some numbers, decided that the T4 helm, when fully socketed and enchanted, was a slight upgrade to the PH helm (taking into account the +12% damage to Corruption bonus), so I went ahead and used that. And then a little bit later, I realized that I was an idiot and that the Spellstrike set was actually NOT tailor-only (only the set bonus is, and I just hadn't read it carefully), so I set out to compare them. Comparing them side by side, I found that a full set of Spellstrike, socketed and enchanted, would cost me 6 blue gems (~300g), 20 Spellcloth (~1000g), 10 Primal Might (~1000g), whatever the crafter charges for the nethers, and another 100g for a head enchant. And for all that, I'd get 25 Spell Hit, 22 Spell Crit, and 32 damage, at the cost of 210 health and 705 mana. I decided that yes, it was worth it. So I dropped JC (the entire profession offered all of one useful BoP item to casters), powerleveled tailoring to 375 and crafted the entire Frozen Shadoweave set in about 4 days (bought some mats, farmed a lot of primal waters, borrowed a lot of shadowcloth).

And then I saw that the T4 2pc bonus was being fixed in 2.1.0. This made me rethink my choice... is all that time spent to farm the mats for Spellstrike really worth it? I was already at the point of never wanting to see a fire elemental again (prior to making my FS set, I had farmed up about 30 primal fires in 2 or 3 days to get a Girdle of Ruination crafted), and I just couldn't stomach going through all that for the gain.

Didn't really mean to go off on a rant, but anyway, I decided to go for 3pc FS + 2pc T4 (have Head, waiting on Pants) + Girdle of Ruination + Bracers of Havok + Attumen gloves (still waiting on these, /roll-ing in Karazhan FTL) - I think that those gloves and T4 pants make for a better combination than T4 gloves and Spellstrike pants (assuming you have access to them, of course), and will cost you considerably less.

 

Zyrexana

Haha, well, just ot be more specific, as a destruction lock, I'd like to mention the t4 pants are actually quite good; for a destruction lock. Exactly the stats we need (good balance of hit, crit, and +damage)... but yeah, for an affliction lock, aren't exactly what one might call ideal.

Have you considered Battlecast Pants, as well, though? Being craftable, it's pretty easy to pick up, 42 stam, 27 int, a red and blue socket, and 46 +damage; I would not recommend spellstrike in spite of its high damage, however, because so many ilevel points are spent on hit and crit, which are less effective for you than for, say, a spell-nuking destro. It depends on what stats you value more, personally, because it's trading stats for damage. It seems to me, though, like a lot of stats for less damage (that is to say, damage you would derive from the +hit and +crit).

 

◊ Kyth

Every warlock needs +hit for shadowbolt and, more importantly, soulshatter.

And spellstrike has more damage on it, counting the sockets, than battlecast. So I'm not sure why you'd recommend battlecast for standard pve wear for any warlock.

 

Zyrexana

What I meant to suggest was, not just look at +damage, but at stats, as well. Stamina, for example, doesn't contribute to damage, but it does help keep you alive so you're not doing an effective 0 dps on the floor dead. It helps, and it's just another way to look at it and stat usefulness imo.

 

doogless

Battlecast gives you 63 more stamina than Spellstrike. How often would 630 (797 with kings and DE) HP be the difference between life and death? Claims of "you do 0 DPS when dead," while very valid, tend to be overstated.

 

niska

some locks tend to overdo the stam aspect of their gear. most locks can get away with glass cannon gear moreso than other classes, with the imp buff, the greater possibility of getting a commanding shout because of the imp, and the several self-healing abilities we have. some encounters require the stam, but to craft battlecast for that purpose alone is wasteful imo.

 

◊ Kyth

I need 1-2 lifetaps worth of HP over whatever the minimum level of HP is for an encounter. That minimum level is often "1". (actually I need less, since I have dark pact.)

I raid with ~6.7k-6.8k (unbuffed) and have yet to feel like I don't have enough stamina. When I do need more HP, I put on a piece with more HP (pvp wrists in that case.) Otherwise I'm perfectly happy with Cloak of the Black Void (0 sta), Bracers of Havok (0 sta), and my Flawless Wand of Shadow Wrath (0 sta, but a delicious 25 +shadow.)

I also have the CoT sword enchanted, and a wand with higher stamina, since I can swap those in for just part of the encounter and then swap them back out even though I'm in combat (e.g. p1 mag.)


Given a choice between int and sta, however, I'll take sta.

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Zyrexana

I was just speaking of stamina in general when I made the 0 dps comment, and only suggested it does help keep you alive, though in most cases people don't need as much as they could have, I agree. Anyway, I just listed it as a potential option, I didn't say it was the best one, particularly since he mentioned as his Spellstrike variety option as having the downside of being a loss of stam and int, whereas battlecast has a heavy stat allotment. It certainly has its downsides, though, I concur.

It comes down to a matter of preference, really, far less than necessity.

 

Zaknafein

But isn't that preference flawed? More spell damage/crit/hit (up to the +hit cap) will always increase your DPS, while stamina after a point will not have any meaningful impact on your survivability and will not otherwise improve your performance.

Especially as an affliction lock I honestly don't see the point in sacrificing DPS to push my HP up(and you do that by choosing Battlecast over Spellstrike), since even with some low stamina pieces I'm still comfortably above 9k HP with imp out and raid buffs. I do have some gear to swap in case I feel I need more HP but I haven't seen any encounters requiring that yet.

You may win a thousand battles, but you can only lose one.

 

srg

Sorry for just catching up to your replies now. I don't typically look @ forums during the weekend.

To Zyrexana: I have looked @ Battlecast and to be perfectly honest I don't see much of a benefit to them PvE wise. The damage isn't terrible, but a lot of I-Level is spent on excessive stamina. If I wanted to go that route, I'd rather go with Trial-Fire and socket +9's x 3 rather then x2 of Battlecast. Battlecast is not a bad PvP set, but just too much stam for PvE.

GokieKS: I decided to power level my tailoring about 2 1/2 months ago, at that time (and still currently the Frozen Shadoweave set is more or less the best affliction lock set in the game), and I certainly don't regret doing so. However to go from 1-375 and get the Shadoweave crafted cost me 3800, plus I just bought the mats for 1/2 Spellstrike which was roughly another 1000 gold. Will cost close to the that for the helm as well (by then I can make a couple more spellcloth's on my own). So right now I'm looking at very close to 5k invested in tailoring... I wonder why I don't have my epic mount yet...


To all: The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was focusing on + Stam a bit too much for PvE. I mean lets face it, if you get aggro in 25 mans I'm most likely dead anyway. It's either I'll soulshatter and kick it back to the tank or I'm getting 1 shot. The difference of 1k health is not a game breaker at all. So I decided to go with Spellstrike pants first (have the mats, just waiting on a Nether) since they are a huge upgrade to my BM pants. Since I don't have the Attumen gloves yet, I am probably going to wait out the helm until I have the gloves as a option. T4 gloves on their own, just aren't that strong.

I will of course hang on to the T4 set once everything is complete (and if T-F pants drop) have that ready for fights that require stamina. (IE: Magtheridon & Aran).

Thanks again for all the comments

-Srg-

 

Zyrexana

Ain't that the truth. ;x

It kind of brings to mind the issue with dps class tier sets I believe was mentioned in another thread; how it's a shame dps, unlike "hybrids", have one set, even though, particularly for instance comparing Destro/demo locks to affliction locks, we only get one set, and it rather seems like the Warlock set is better in general to the nukers opposed to the dotters, with only the Robes and Mantle not having spell crit. At least they're fixing the set bonus for afflic locks come patch time. Then again, the 54 inherent crit in the set isn't a total loss, at least, since affliction locks are generally using shadowbolt as filler between dot rotations. I guess it's not so bad.