If boss don't have some sort of aggro reduction / reset, then it's problem with tanks. Last raid I didn't shatter at void reaver doing around 1200 dps, 2 x feral tank 1 x warrior tank.

Might be stupid to say, but get better tanks. Tanks should build up enough threat unless you lack BoS.

Reviewing the WWS for that fight, I was doing about 1300dps. Telling me to get better tanks isn't very useful. I doubt you personally are doing 1200dps, your felguard would be doing a significant portion of that dps, so you don't have to deal with the aggro from that portion of damage. Perhaps I should just respec felguard and avoid the problem entirely.

If any destruction locks have suggestions about dealing with aggro, I would be interested in hearing them.

I don't know many options Severed. I have the same problem. I did stop using corruption and that has helped a bit (no threat reduction on it in 0/21/40.) So has getting grouped with our elemental shaman, who also runs into threat ceiling issues, so sometimes drops tranquil air (on top of salv.)

I've thought of demo too, to split threat with my pet, but I don't find the spec that appealing.

You could always soulstone yourself and helfire to death then ressurect for a full agro wipe on a 30 min timer at no cost to durability. Granted it's a very long timer and would require leaving a healer without the stone themselves but if it's a boss on farm where you're threat capped it might actually be worth it when the alternative is fidgeting for 2 mins.

So I got into an argument with someone about the benefit of Darkmoon Card: Crusade vs Darkmoon Card: Wrath for an Affliction build with ISB. My stance is that the 80 damage would be better than the increased crit chance even though it "might" increase the up time of ISB. We raid with 4 warlocks and occasionally a shadow priest atm, 1 Destruction, 1 Affliction (me) 2 0/40/21 and of course all of us have ISB. So far we haven't had any problems keeping ISB up between the four of us, is there a situation where having the crit trinket would be better than having the 80 damage?

I think you just answered your own question, if you have no problems keeping isb up in a raid setting then you shouldn't really be concerned with crit.

Pet does around 20% of your damage at max, and you have no threat reduction talents, so it's not helping that much.

check this thread: Modeling Darkmoon Card: Wrath

you can never have ISB up 100% of time, and Wrath will increase uptime slightly, even with 4 locks. But ISB uptime is increased less than 1% due to Wrath. That is 0.2% shadow damage per shadow user, so 1% shadow damage increased in raid with 4 locks and shadow priest.

Equivalent of those 0.2% shadow per warlock would be under +3.5 dmg per lock. So for 5 shadow users it would be around 17.5 +dmg equivalent.

Now, for afflic lock with 15%crit&devastation, Darkmoon:Wrath has equivalent value of only about +23 dmg, while Darkmoon:Crusade has +77 dmg (considering time needed to gather all buffs). That means Crusade is better for +54 dmg, which is more than above +17.5 dmg that Wrath would bring to 5-shadow users raid. Even in best case, when Destro lock has Wrath, Crusade would be better by +37 dmg equivalend.

So, in short, +dmg gain from Crusade (as opposed to Wrath) on one lock is better than +dmg gain on 5 shadow users due to Wrath on raid.


I have threat reduction as Demo, for afflic spells: Improved Drain Soul (-10%)

Since over 35% of my own threat is due to affliction spells, that would mean my total threat reduction is about 24%, without BoS.

That is 14% more than Destro talent-based threat reduction (-10% to both afflic/destro). And that, together with BoS, should be enough for Demo lock not to pull aggro. Even if we ignore fact that tanks should hold aggro above casters, even if they dont, Demo lock shouldnt be one to get aggro 1st - Destro/Afflic locks, and other DPSers should get it 1st.

Of course, threat is based on your damage, so if you have noticeably better gear than other locks in your raid, no matter what you spec you will have more threat than they would - although that shouldnt mean you would have more threat than MT ;p

But ignoring others, and looking just at your threat, if you respec to Demo, you will generally doing about 10% less damage than if you were afflic or destro (41/0/20 has comparable damage to 0/21/40). And as Demo you would have same talent for aggro reduction as afflic. So if we look at same warlock in 3 different builds, i would say that for threat Afflic > Destro > Demo, even if differences between each is only about 5% threat.

Possibly, I don't have it.

I do agree that, if you spec having aggro reduction from talents, threat would go like you say.

I wouldn't go so far yet as judge demonology damage much lower (from warlock itself), pet damage is only 20% and for example on our last Void Reaver and Solarian (probably due to increased AoE damage on solarian and low armor) even if you cut my pets damage off and compare to fellow warlocks damage (erii who can match my damage and has similar gear in same build) they are close to each other, now I have only BoS to reduce my threat and erii has both imp drain soul and destructive reach + BoS.

From what it feels I think problem really lies with your tanks. I don't think it's that bad idea to give one bloodlust for tanks to get more threat so that you're not limited by threat cap.

But saying that you use soulshatter optimal, really sounds like your tanks are doing something terribly wrong, or your palas are giving BoS for tanks as well :p (joke).

I'll take a shot from some tank and spank fight, see how omen looks there and you can try to compare to your raids if you want?

Aggro problems more or less always boils down to the tank. If I know we have a tank that have problems building aggro on a fight I usally let him get a very long head start compared to other fights. Using Soul Shatter is nice, but saving it as long as you can will give you more out of it. I often wait until 40-50% of the bosses health even if that means holding back a bit. By using the Shatter late you will wipe more aggro and be able to do more damage.

Something entirely different...

We have just started with SSC (Hydross and Lurker down), but sooner or later we will face Leotheras. And in the Leotheras fight it is a distinct possibility that our raid leaders require a soul link warlock to tank in the demon phase. Now none of our warlocks are too happy about respeccing. But let's assume it is requiered because otherwise we are not able to beat the fight initially. Let's further assume that respeccing each week just for this fight is no option. Hence my questions to those of you with extensive SSC/TK25 experience:

Which warlock spec that includes soul link would you recommend overall for a 25 person raid, considering all the encounters in SSC and TK25? Is it 1/39/21, 0/40/21, 7/41/11+2, or something else I have not yet thought of?

If your FR is strong enough you also don't need soul link. We have a destruction warlock tank him. Soul link may be good for learninng attempts to help your healers but long term it isn't needed.

It's also less chaotic for the healers in that healing one target is much more easier and mana efficient than healing two.

I would go 0/41/20 if it was a 100% dedicated raid pve build. My current build is 15/46/0 and does fine for many pve encounters but i think my dps would be a bit higher with 20 in destro.

I don't think 0/40/21 would be a useful build, on a typical fight the felguard is 20% of my damage, going with ruin instead would be a decrease in damage on every fight except for the few rare fights where pets are not viable.

Not if it's a shadow priest healing, or if you have 2piece t5. I wonder if prayer of mending would bounce to the pet and heal upon soullink damage.

1/41/19 is the way to go for PVE dps. Cater it to your own taste of course. I use shadowburn fairly often in PVE and would probably lose 1% crit from devestation before losing 1pt in Intensity. Demonic Resiliance is very nice as well but it means losing points in Demonic Tactics.

Regarding being threat capped on VR, are you using Soul shatter twice? (Once around minute two, second around minute 7). Do you have 2% less threat to cloak? Spell Pen is only a PvP stat.


I don't think soul link's damage will proc Prayer of Mending, but I agree that at least the first few times it helps if the Lock is speced Soul Link (if you use a Lock tank on Leo).

Sadly the imp has like 2,500 health so it isn't worth using much in a raid (however, at 1% I sometimes have him throw some firebolts). The issue with imp Firebolt is the imp is affected by the GCD and he does not have a lot of mana, but the biggest issue are there are better talents to pick up when 21 Destro. I would guess that 1/2 may be nice for PvP imp users.


I have some questions on raiding FG users. On Lurker, what do you do? Similar question on Al'ar, what do you do? I would guess use a phase shifted imp without Soul link, so at least you get 1 buff.

Reading the talent I see that each point reduces the cast time by .25 secs, so two would net half a sec. I can't remember off the top of my head but I think the base cast time for the imp is 2 secs.

The thing that turns me off for raiding with a demo spec is the 16% miss rate you can't do anything about for your pet. Would be nice if there was some sort of talent to help this out or some of your hit rating transfered over to your pet.

I only recently specced soullink, previously I was either 0/21/40 for demonic sac destro or some sort of affliction build. I haven't done lurker yet as felguard spec.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...tu&s=4683-5654
Al'ar, I topped the damage meters on many attempts, but there was one annoyance. I would dps al'ar with curse of doom, corruption, shadow bolts while sending the felguard to dps each add during phase 1. The problem I ran into was the felguard actually running out of range and despawning because of our tank's position relative to the middle Al'ar positions. Still, I was typically within top 3 dps each attempt including the kill. For the kill I actually didn't use the felguard to dps adds because at that point I was low on shards and didn't want to risk it during phase 1 when it wasn't really a dps race.

Phase 2 was easier, I just kept the felguard on Al'ar while I dpsed the adds as normal.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...=15610-16384&m
As far as other fights, I used the felguard on vashj during our first kill, dps was very low but I attribute it to not really trying during phase 1 and due to having a raid stacked with warlocks meant our dots were being pushed off around the end.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...km&s=9040-9630
For void reaver, I expected the felguard to do very well but I died on the pull for an embarrassing reason, I was battle ressed a couple minutes later but it was too late to be competative on the damage meters.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...&s=5546-5911&m
For solarian, felguard spec is amazingly good, topped the damage meters on most attempts and on our first kill I came in at #2 while maintaining CoE, the warlock who beat me only beat me by 4000 damage while 31,000 of his damage was due to curse of agony, so I can easily say it's the highest damage spec for solarian.

I am shadow destro for PvE and I never really have problems with aggro, even while sustaining 1300-1600 DPS depending on the fight. Between salv, tranq air at times, and waiting until I am just about to pass the threat threshold before popping soulshatter I can pretty much full out DPS the entire fight. Obviously it really boils down to the tanks that are tanking it. But for the most part the only time I am threat-capped is on trash, which doesnt really matter much anyhow.

Also on Void Reaver for example make sure you adjust your KTM threat meter. Void Reaver's aggro knockback is only 25% but KTM takes off 50% on the meters, which can lead you to believe you will pull aggro when you will not. Your raid leader can adjust KTM for that by setting the percentages himself. (It has it set at retaining 50% threat you need to set it to retain 75% threat)

Edit: Just to clarify I don't use corruption (it doesn't add any DPS for me, just threat) I also do not use Immolate as it actually lowers my DPS. (I know, spreadsheets say it shouldn't but it does for me after many testings on SWstats and WWS) The only curses I use are either CoS, CoE, or CoW, I do not use CoA or CoD. So basically what I am saying is all I am doing is throwing shadowbolts and if healers are very strained a drain life from time to time to help out. I know it may seem retarded to do nothing but throw shadowbolts, but after a lot of testing I have found out to do anything else or throw anything else into my SB timed spam will actually just lower my DPS while also upping my threat.

I have tested Shadow Destro, and once you reach about 1200 shadow and 20% crit, Immolate even with fire talents actually lowers your dps from my testing (due to a large part to sacced Succy and imp SB), and especially so if you don't have Fire Mages around (since some may respec Frost for Al'ar).

The only time I see a DoT worth casting with Shadow Destro once you have that mentioned gear level is when you have 4/5 Tier 5 set bonus for buffing Corruption.