Didn't comment on magtheridon because i didn't have any real recent experiences. We bothered killing him for the first time in 3 weeks yesterday, and i don't think anyone bothered with a parse. Will probably run SSC/TK using shadowbolt only and put up a couple of comparison parses.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...q3&s=3621-4052

I need some advice for our warlocks - they all think that 35/5/21 really rocks … i told them to specc something like 41/0/20, get more spellhit and to keep their dots up.
Blackfire did so but still sucked at DPS. They all have about equal equip except Scaara who is running around in BWL epics … and still does a lot of dmg somehow …

Yes overall DPS is bad … cant be normal that an unbuffed rogue without shaman in grp is actually on place 2 in the DPS meters … but main focus should be on warlocks.

Keep in mind with that many warlocks and a shadow priest, you're going to run into debuff slot problems, so you're limiting yourself. I suspect this is why immolate is pretty much absent from all the warlocks.

And with that many warlocks -- not a single curse of shadow up on Gruul? Sheesh.

Also, WWS log linking might be better served here:

The WWS Thread

I thought it was already said WWS has issues showing curses but also from the other poster I woudln't rule out the option that they're just nubs (come on BWL gear in lvl70 raiding? I'd mock lvl65 players running around in BWL gear).

As for DPS, players that can't pick the right spec usually also don't know what's good for them which usually comes along with simple lack of ability to cast the appropriate spells at the appropriate time. It's not a rule, but watching such players play when I'm dead for one reason or another and looking at what they're casting, and well you just see them having delays between their spells as well as high idle time and doing stuff such as not keeping dots up as they wear off, or keeping scorch up as a fire mage etc. Even 10-20% idle time can turn the tides between top dpser to last on the DPS chart.

It's fairly normal that rogues are high on Gruul since they don't get silenced. It seems your warlocks don't know how to spread out either. Alot of them would go down 1-4 positions in total damage if you remove shatter dmg they caused.

The other effect is the max 40 debuff slots. You have 6 warlocks that use 21 debuff slots to themselves. They are most likely losing alot of dot's that are being pushed off regularly. None of your locks are casting CoS or CoE (unless Mumiefreak is, since he's not logging a curse - since he's fire, he's probly using CoE which doesnt benefit the 5 other locks). One of your locks is Fire, he should not be using Soul Fire, Conflag or Corruption.

You should educate your warlocks about the debuff limit, Malediction and Shadow Embrace. Other than what I mentioned, it would come down to their spec and gear. The 35/5/21 spec is very respectable for Karazhan and early 25 man raids, but as you gain more gear and raid with 3-4 warlocks, they should spec in order to apply as many raid buffs/debuffs.

For example:
- Two Malediction locks (One CoS and one CoE)
- 5/5 Shadow Embrace lock (using CoD)
- Improved Shadow Bolt lock (Destro, not casting dot's, prioritizing +hit, then +dmg, then +crit - +dmg vs +crit varies, you can use leulier's spreadsheet for this)

Edit: Sorry, a couple things got repeated from the two last posters as I started typing when there were no replies, but then got distracted at work and posted a little late. :P

Considering everyone has CoA on their meters, I doubt that this is the case. =)

Well we'll have to go with the other option then ;p
I suggest doing some recruitment lol

I did not know that. Thanks. I won't derail this any further but if you have proper positioning, almost half of your ranged dps should never be punted.

This may be a random aside to the current discussion, but I was wondering what the norm is for DS locks to sac on "boss" fights? I've recently respecced to 0/21/40 and can go fire or shadow depending on whether there's a shadow priest or a fire mage present, which I like very much. I've only been doing Kara on a regular basis; my guild's a little slow and we're on an extremely low pop server. We basically just stated Gruul's and hopefully will be bouncing off of Mag and greater soon.

But from my experiences in Kara, I normally sac the imp/succubus on everything except for Illhoof (where I'm on aoe duty) and Prince. For these I sac the felhunter. Prince is the longest fight in the zone, and I've found that saccing the felpup is better just so I'm not life tapping all the time and eating our healers mana (sometimes our better healers aren't able to go...).

Is this the norm? To sac a felhunter for the mana regen on bosses? Or do people sac the damage pet of their choice and hope for some healer love/shaman totem/pally regen hax? I guess that's another question: which Blessing do you usually go for? On trash I get salvation, but on bosses I'll usually take Wisdom or Kings. Like I said, I really only have experience with Kara as we just started Gruul's and I haven't been able to go, but I'd like to get your feedback on actual 25 man raid content.

Edit: Oh yeah, shadow priests. Add them into the equation, too. With everything (BoW, Mana tide/spring, and shadow priest) do I even need to worry about the felpup sac?

When I was DS/S&F I always sacced the dps pet. Our healers are good about throwing out hots to the warlocks so mana was never really an issue, and the extra dps from the sac is a significant portion of your dmg.

I wasn't usually in a Spriest group, but being in one made things even easier on mana. If you're really strapped for mana you can always eat a healthstone or a pot or bandage.

Felhunter Sac will never outdps Succ/Imp Sac. Salvation is bar none the blessing of choice for locks past 1000dmg. Otherwise its Wisdom or Kings, depending on the fight and your spec. I can still burn through my mana bar with 1x spriest + 1x resto shaman, or 2x spriest, it requires no breaks it casting but its still pretty easy to do. We have fel armor for a reason, the occasional renew is definitely worth the dps it provides the raid. Once your +dmg gets high enough its worth switching to shadow/destro though, and possibly putting some points in soul leech to be more self sustaining. SBolt scales better with gear and provides a useful debuff for the rest of your shadow classes.

I was wondering if I could get some advice for the locks in my guild. We are currently on Gruul and have downed him previously but it is very sloppy. As a whole our guild needs a lot of work, but I want to make sure myself and the other warlocks are doing our part to help Gruul go a lot smoother so it can truly be put on "farm" status.

Keep in mind on these logs we do NOT have a shadow priest raiding with us. I know this helps tremendously, but every SP recruit never works out and we end up booting or they will leave.

Logs:
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...nm&s=8790-9153

Armory for myself:
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...hridge&n=noffy
(~1080 Shadow damage fully buffed with 8% +hit from gear, 41/5/15)

I use things like DoTimer and am always alternating my trinkets before a full round of DoT's, but it just seems like I cant put out any real respectable numbers. I know I still have gear to work on, but I would think I should be able to put out at least 700 DPS as our guild stands. Is there anything blatently wrong with myself or any of the other lock's I am with?

Did you even read this thread? Or atleast the last 10 replies?

There are many warlock threads that can help you figure it out and you obviously did not do any effort on your own. Here are a couple places to start:

Warlock dmg at lvl 60/70: afflic/demo/destro - Theory
Working Theories of Theorycrafting as of 2.1
[Warlock] Seeking a bit of advice.

Edit: After finding out that this was your first post, I would like to welcome you to the EJ forums. There is a VERY useful "Search" button in the Menu bar (This is how I found those three threads above very quickly for you). You will find this tool to be your best friend. I would also like to encourage you to read the rules before you get un-wanted infractions.

In the WWS thread your raid leader i assume (Dominus) asked the same questions and there is some analysis from several people on your overall performance. Other then the general consensus that your mages and hunters suck, one thing I pointed out in that thread is you and megz were obviously using demon armor instead of fel armor which makes no sense.

Gear wise you should work on +hit before all other things at this point till you hit 200ish (16%).

We never use Demon armor over Fel. I would shoot myself in the face if that was the case.

Edit:

I read your response in the other thread and the reason the health stones are showing up low is they are the base stones. Nobody in our raid had Improved HS that night.

I guess what I'm really asking is based upon all that my guild has going on, I am where I should be as far as my gear and build is concerned? If I could be playing better somehow, I would like to know. I've read over this thread bunches of times trying to get any information I can, but when I am barely breaking 600dps it is very disheartening. Am I expecting too much for where my gear and my guild is at right now?

Ahh that would explain it. The original Gruul before they fixed the encounter was very heavy on physical damage so range was using limited invuln pots, high stam and armor pots to reduce shatter damage, I was worried you guys were doing some kind of hold over to that.

But beyond keeping all your dots (including immolate) up near 100% you are losing a lot of DPS to missed (resited) shadow bolts.

So you like cataclysm over improved incinerate? I was always under the impression that 5% lower mana cost wasn't that big of a deal. Assuming you have 10k mp and all you cast is destruction spells, you're only saving yourself 500 mana. I'm just curious as to your talent choices, I'm by no means criticizing your spec. What is your typical cast rotation, then?

Edit: I only spell correctly half the time.

For a fire warlock, Conflag SHOULD be a normal part of the rotation since with the right gear and raid buffs/debuffs, it should be at least 2k damage non-crit. Soul Fire is amazingly cheap and while its a long cast, its relatively easy to get off with some sort of haste buff, like Quagmirran's Eye. Even without a haste buff, its worth it to cast sometimes because it scales with your damage better then your other spells. Corruption though, I agree. It has its uses in pve as fire, but not in your normal damage rotation.

Erm, im pretty sure it has been proved many times, that 3/5 of the incinerate and one immolate tick u would deal instead of that conflag is more dps, and as u probably know, incinerate with s&f scales more than twice as good as conflag(0.43 vs 0.91), so the gap with better gear will be even larger.

Can you tell me how to spec improved incinerate? I would love to make my mana-efficient nuke better than SB. :-P

I'm going to assume you're talking about Improved Shadow Bolt. ISB is almost always better than cataclysm for the reasons you outlined yourself. Plus, ISB helps the raid's shadow damage out, which is one of the more convincing arguments to go 0/21/40 over affliction or demo.

EDIT: To the question about Conflag for fire destro, I refer you to the stickied post at the top of this forum. Look for conflag under the warlock section.

Working Theories of Theorycrafting as of 2.1

It's all about opportunity cost - to cast conflag (a 43% coeff spell), you lose out on 1.5s you could be winding up a shadow bolt (105% ish coeff spell) or refreshing immolate (a >43% coeff spell) so you don't lose any ticks. You also use up more mana in an already mana-hungry build.

Remeber folks, it's not just DPS. Damage per cast time (DPCT) matters, too.

I'll help -- why are you using CoA? CoD should be your staple; your shadowbolt to DoT ratio is kind of low, some skew is expected based on the shatter mechanics, but you can fit in more shadowbolts if you don't have to bother with CoA. This is mentioned in this thread, as well as the basic warlock theorycraft (Working Theories of Theorycrafting as of 2.1).

Your DoT uptime is bad too -- 69 ticks of corruption means you were up 207 seconds, or 3:27 minutes of your 5:30 segment. Conversely, your CoA was up 282 seconds, or 4:42 minutes, but again CoA is a bad idea, see above. Your immolate uptime was even more atrocious.

Your hit rating could improve, you're seeing an avg of 10% misses on your shadowbolts between your three Gruul encounters.

The rest of your warlocks suffers similar problems. Nikteus needs hit gear, STAT. 25% miss rate on one of your encounters is absolutely horrific.

Dar, I guess what I meant was improved immolate. A couple of the people who replied that going shadow/destro was a good thing, and I understand why you use shadow bolt, but was curious as to why you'd not get improved immolate over cataclysm. The extra damage to me seems > than saving 500 mana over a 10k mana pool.