• frmorrison

Actually you have 21.6% to crit, since the 5% to desto spells does not show on the tooltip. The only spell that the 5% "missing tooltip crit" does not affect is Seed of Corruption and a blown up UA.


I did the math back before 2.0, where 20% crit was enough to have a decent imp SB uptime, and never have did it since.

 

Nyarlathotep

Hyjal Summit:

All these bosses and screenshots I was doing Curse of Recklessness on targets that had melee users on them, if no melee users were on the target I did Curse of Agony or Curse of Doom.

Waves:

Trash waves damage was good, better than other warlocks by far I guess cause Seed of Corruption gets more damage from high base damage.

Auto cleave:

• Pet gaining agro if you use it very early and die, good example is packs with lots of ghouls
• Chance of breaking shackled abomination / polymorphed necromancer.

Generally I clicked auto cleave on when there was no mobs nearby in start (way we kill necromancers for example). After we were given good to go on AoE, when tanks had enough threat on all targets, you can leave cleave on till next pack comes. Doing it earlier is dancing on the edge especially if you happen to cleave shackled abomination.

Picture of Kaz'Rogal trash, mobs here seem to take closer to normal Seed of Corruption damage, also includes tanking frost wyrm with CoD during that time, other time I was on CoR on melee mobs / CoA on gargoyles.



Rage Winterchill:

First time we killed Rage Winterchill, I didn't have shadow priest and it affected my performance a lot. First kill I was also very uncomfortable using re-summon macro, which ended up felguard dieing few times. This sucks especially on part where your pet loses all raid buffs.

Dodging Death and Decay is not that hard. You just have to see where the line ends, additionally since rage don't seem to target pets with his ice prison, you can send your pet in and take few last ticks of death and decay. I had sometimes troubles with getting felguard back from death and decay, but now with shadow priest it feels so much easier. If you can make distinction where death and decay ends and starts, naturally put pet on follow and park him after the line to be able to resume dps as soon as possible.

Later when we went there I could sustain higher dps with shadowpriest, around 1400-1450 or so, but had nothing to say to our top rogue, who was closer to 1600. But then again we give more bloodlusts for melee than casters, which affects a lot.

One of those fights where Void star would help, but is not necassery.

First kill with felguard:



Better results:



Anetheron:

Anetheron was really easy fight to play as demonology. On first kill though I managed to die. I'll posted shot on the moment when I died. I know it's bit cheesy to post a screenshot just when I died, since staying alive is part of the fight, but since I'm writing about raiding with felguard, I think it's still relevant to see what the build is capable of if the owner plays better. Infernals were not any danger to felguard cause our tanks tanked them away from the raid.

Also this fight I had shadow priest so I didn't have to pay any attention to my pet, could just focus pressing stopcasting macros

Pet won't pull infernals with cleave, if your tanks know what they are doing.

Recount during my death:



Better results:



Kaz'Rogal:

Pet don't get affected by mark of Kaz'Rogal. I had Medallion of Karabor on there to resist some mana drains.

Damage there was very nice, fight was very straight forward, just send demon behind the boss and after you don't need to pay attention to it. Towards the ends this fight favors melee by a lot though (vs mana users). Kaz'Rogal does cleaves, so keep pet behind the boss.

First kill with felguard:



Random shot:



Azgalor:

This fight is one of the fights that I would say are extremely hard without void star talisman and even with that would be really hard. This fights nature is really I guess unfriendly to everyone. Rain of fires hurt a lot and one fire almost kills the pet. This leads you re-summoning pet in fear of losing buffs, which leads less time to dps and you also get those lovely silences to interrupt your casting when you're about to re-summon pet. Frankly as demonology I hate this fight. I managed to do highest damage from warlocks last time we were there, but I have to say, this fight is very very hard for demonologist warlock.

That's why I usually here offer myself for imp duty to minimize casualties for the raid, since just feels playing here without void star feels like holding back the raid.

Also there's possibility of pet being target of AoE effect and getting rain of fire on tanks / melee / Thrall (if you use thrall on boss). I don't know if rain of fire or any other sort of AoE effects like that can target pets, and would appreciate if some one could enlighten me, especially cases like: Winterchills Death and Decay and Azgalors Rain of Fire.

Definitely needs void star and shadow priest. Azgalor also cleaves so keep the pet behind the boss.

One bonus of having felguard there is it will keep damaging during silences, but so will affliction

Trying with felguard (I know pretty sad numbers):



Archimonde:

Old (slow) Doomfires were very nasty from pet point of view. I tried felguard there, but I would say this fight again needs void star and sp minumum to make it work. Haven't tried with new one, but I guess they are a lot harder, making this another fight very hard / impossible for felguard owners.

One of those fights you can ask if anyone needs an imp and still do ok, but you could also be doing lot better with 41-0-20 (or similar) or 0-40-21 builds in those fights.

Now some experiences from Archimonde with felguard:

First of all before each doomfire it's safe to move pet bit closer to yourself and set it on stay.

Pet disappears when you leave it on Archimonde and get flown away by airburst. If this happens you should use dismiss macro to retrain buffs on pet or set pet on follow when you get blown away, might work.

Pet can be targeted by Grip of the Legion and rarely gets decursed, also grip of the legion seems to stick over dismiss macro, which is a major issue. Unless you will agree with some mage / druid to take care of pet decursing, will be an major issue.

If this would be major problem for first 90% of the fight, you could use imp until then and during 10% instantly summon felguard (before shield is given) and use it to do higher damage on 10% -> 0% burnphase, but since last 10% is sure kill, it's really first 90% that matters.

But question raises if pet gets Shield of Elune, if not it's surely dead when hit by finger of death.

 

Hephaustus

Demo is pretty good for the later half of BT. It does very good damage on Gurtogg and you take less damage from Bloodboils and explosions, but your right in that Aff is far far better for that fight since its not a dps race, its a healing check. Oh, and if you get fel rage good luck keeping your pet alive.

Reliquary of Souls has to be broken apart for obvious reasons...
Phase 1 - Extremely, extremely broken because (a) pets dont get aggro, (b) soul link is the only working mitigation outside of shield wall/priest wall/evasion/deterrance. Easily the highest damage of our three trees.

Phase 2 - Pretty bad here. You have no interuption talents so your spells will be getting pushback constantly. You pretty much struggle to get casts off while your pet does most of your damage. Aff is definetly superior here because destro has problems with killing themselves (I have to summon another pet to cancel my sacc'd demon or risk death).

Phase 3 - Its OK for the first half but then after some time your pet is going to die horribly, leaving you to spam dots and shadowbolts like an affliction lock, but obviously not doing nearly as much. Destruction wins here because it scales the best with the damage buff that you get.

Mother Shahraz - Demonology is definetly the best spec on this encounter. You have to sacrifice less to get the same shadow resist, and you have 13-15k buffed hp, with soul link helping too. Some people may need an imp but generally they should have enough HP with shadow resist. Other specs get raped by Prismatic Shield.

Illidari Council - Tank and spank, so demo pulls ahead here, little bit of pet management but its predictable and relatively simple.

Illidan Stormrage - Demo is alright, it takes a lot of pet control (pets train demon phase fire) but work fine when hes in night elf form. Destruction is PROBABLY best here but a good demo lock or affliction lock could give him a run for his money.



I myself dont really spec demo, just heard from our demo raiding lock about the encounters =P

 

Gobe

Not to derail the thread, but I heard the question mentioned before without an answer I could find. How does Quag's Eye compare to Scryer's Bloodgem for any non-affliction builds, assuming you're just under the hit cap? From the spreadsheet it appears 32 hit > 37 damage, but I'm not positive how the procs and on-use effects would compare.

Also, 1 hit = 1.6 spell damage seems a bit high to me. That would indicate that great dawnstone is even better than the veiled noble topaz.

 

Demi9OD

If you're still low on hit, great dawnstone is the best gem available. Be careful though, I've already had to replace a number of veiled noble tops with potents to stay around hitcap with BT/Hyjal gear though.

 

probiscus

The % distributions are pretty much spot on 38/19/19/11/10 - so it looks like you're being consistent w/ your dot application.

The only thing I'd work on would be your overall hit rate - with your sbolts "missing" at 7.4% - despite that they're 38% of your damage.

A definite improvement from the previous parse though - good job

One thing I would comment on is the use of the moonkin in your group. Affliction warlocks are basically the caster class that derives the *least* benefit from the 5% crit aura, so that might be worth looking at if you're trying to min/max. That being said, it really looks like the next step would be getting your mages to improve their performance. 384 and 410 DPS is pretty low.

 

galzohar

Shadow priests gain even less from crit ;p

 

Sinsei

I've been on a search for the ultimate lock spec myself. As I used to do on my rogue. Using input from warlock friends, spreadsheets, theorycrafting. My job as a caster is to maximize DPS while providing whatever utility I can.

What I've found is that my theory for a warlock to do well is to do as much damage as possible, is slightly skewed. I've played the rogue class for far too long and I've quickly found out it's not about single player DPS with casters as it is with rogues.

I'm still not convinced 41 demo is the "ultimate" spec, mind you it can be really good. I actually did more dps over the felguard with 0/40/21 having ruin and using a succubus for pet damage. It even shows this in L's spreadsheet(didn't want to butcher his name). In fact I'm just not convinced any one spec is ultimate over another. Read on.

I believe the best warlock spec for any one guild is one that is synergistic with the other warlocks, a team spec. Every fight is different, too many affliction locks overload debuff limits, etc.. I find having 1 shadow destro lock, 2 affliction locks for malediction, and 1 or 2 demo locks provide far greater utility AND damage.

I've tried 42/0/18, 0/41/20, 0/40/21 (using succubus), and 0/21/40. I seem to be decent at all of those specs. I placed in the top 5 dps 99% of the fights I dont screw up and die. You know what though, our guild has 3/4 affliction locks, 2 demo locks and ZERO shadowdestro locks. Because I did well with each spec, I decided to go shadowdestro and stay destro because having at least 1 person spamming s.bolts is just better overall for everyone.

I just so happen to have good enough stats for isb uptime. So /cheers. The added bonus of critting 7500+ sometimes pleases the rogue aspect in me so. Im happy, and I believe my guild is happy with me.

*Small Hint for all the warlocks out there*
I also switch gear out for trash mobs and certain boss fights depending on how much +hit is needed, ie lvl 71/72/73 mobs, which helps dps considerably on certain encounters. Hope this helps the "howto: doing more damage" cause.

 

galzohar

While I support the idea of 2 aff 1 shadow destro as a base since they all do similar damage but that combo buffs eachother and the raid the best with malediction and imp shadowbolt, it only stands true if the destro warlock actually has gear that makes shadow destro at least equal to affliction and appropriate crit rate. After all if you spam shadowbolt without a major crit advantage over the affliction warlocks, your contribution to the imp SB time goes to near-0 if shadow priests don't eat up your imp SB (and they shouldn't, although if they do then I agree every shadowbolt casts contributes to the imp sb uptime).

 

shed

Hey Sparq :x

 

Krathis

This is a bit off topic but since it was mentioned earlier in this thread (and I've been digging around elsewhere all day for it) what exactly is the slash command for dismissing a pet?

Trying to put together a dismiss/summon macro for the felguard and so far /dismiss /dismiss pet and /cast Dismiss Pet are all not working.

 

Tunch

Not sure why you say its really bad on Lurker. As long as you know how to use the available pet commands to your advantage, you can keep your pet out of every whirlwind, and your pet will probably have more in-time than the melee in the raid. He'd just need a heal or two after each spout (shamans are usually chain healing the melee anyway). Or you can sac your succubus and just go to town w/ that method. Our demo warlock does great on this fight.

 

Nyarlathotep

From my experience felguard got singleshotted from first spout. He just fell down, didn't even see health go down a bit first, but killed straight away.

Whirlwind is not the problem, that's easily healed by shadow priest.

Also if you read the whole post, I said there when I said not usable i ment felguard:

I did sacrificed succubus as well there when my felguard died (posted in first post about demonology testing) and still managed to do very nice damage.

I tried dissmisspet as well which resulted my felguard being stuck on platform where my spot is in the fight and swimming and waiting when felguard teleports next to lurker, isn't an option.

Felguard is not just working there, you can have imp or succubus or whatever you think is best for the raid.

This is why I would say felguard is not working in that fight at all.

edit: But after reading I do agree my choice of words there isn't the best if you just look the list, I will edit them to reflect more what I originally meant.

 

Sinsei

(Off topic sorry)
lol hi

Why you mean to me =( /frown

Tell Azule I'm terribly sorry again, poor guy felt the wrath meant for a different but oddly similiar female DR shadowpriest. Wrong place wrong time =X

(Back on topic)
Most warlocks are probably better off choosing a playstyle that fits them the best. Whether it's micromanaging dots, coordinating with your pets, or nuking.

 

Nyarlathotep

 

Mondragon

After reading Nyarlas posts, i specced Demo last night.

BT Trash, Teron and Magtheridon, I went from nr 2/3 lock dps over time to number 1, beaten only by a BM Hunter on trash and our best geared rogue on the boss fight.


I began TBC as Afflic, then got tired of dots being bumped. I then went Destro and had insane fun. Went Demo to try it out, and very positive so far..however keeping the beasty alive without any T5 or the trinket is gonna be hard on boss fights.

The challenge of micro management is something that attracted me.

My stats with pet out at 1340 spell damage, 35% crit, hit capped. It is extrememly nice to not have to worry about my threat like I did with Destro.

Thanks Nya again

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

 

chmoe

Anyone familiar with the exalted Ashtongue trinket, Ashtongue Talisman of Shadows? I'm currently specced 0/21/40, so corruption takes me 2 seconds to cast. According to the spreadsheet, from somewhere on this forum, corruption alone, if used perfectly, should add around 10dps. I haven't checked that out myself, but a guildie told me so. I'm not entirely convinced its worth swapping out Neltharion's Tear for the talisman of shadows.

Anyone bored enough to do some maths on this? I might visit Dr.Boom later today, but if someone knows its worth/not worth using this trinket as a destruction build, it'll save me a good hour testing it myself.

 

Sinsei

If you're casting corruption as 0/21/40 then you'll have less imp shadow bolt time, no math needed.

I'd rather sacrifice 10 dps for more imp procs myself, considering it boosts all shadow dmg the raid does not just your own DPS.

 

Noximus

I completly agree with this, unless you're hit capped, crit capped, 1500 shadow damage (non-procs) then this trinket is useless for any Destro build (The exception being Fire Destro as they ALWAYS have to cast Immolate - that's if they modify it to benefit Immolate like T4/T5 set bonus'). If, in a perfect world, you were completly capped then you could sacrifice a lesser trinket to benefit from 10 dps, but I still think the change would be too minor to lose a shadowbolt cast (Math earlier in this thread proves this.)

Extih <Apocalypse> - Raid Leader - 70 Warlock (Retired)
Noximus <Apocalypse> - 70 Warrior (Retired)

 

zerohourman

Nyar, got a concise list of /commands and macros I can use? I'm going to give this a whirl tonight.

 

Mondragon

What is the crit cap?

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

 

probiscus

I've never heard of any stats close to the same ballpark as these. Is that 35% crit a typo?

/runs off to see your armory.

Update: Holy crap. I stand corrected. Pretty much best in slot items across the board. Very impressive.

 

Sinsei

Never heard of it..

But honestly with 35% crit and hit capped I would seriously consider ruin over a felguard.

The problem right now is that even with avoidance the felguard will plop over on many fights. Sure you can fel dom another, but fel dom shouldn't be the answer to the underlying problem. Right now a felguard doesn't seem too practical for ALL fights when you can just spec ruin. Also as mentioned before you still have the weak points of almost requiring certain gear in order for it to possibly work better. 2/5 T5, void-star, s.priest in group, yada.

Besides that, I've done more damage with 0/40/21 over a felguard with a succy. On melee unfriendly fights stick her in the corner to buff you 15% and for everything else she may not hit as hard, but I have ruin and 5% more damage to make up for the loss. Again, L's spreadsheet confirms this.

Also at some point with your gear progression ruin works out better than having to micro manage a felguard and require certain gear/group setups. If gold and respeccing isn't a problem have fun, but you shouldn't lead other eager-to-learn warlocks to believe it's a good spec when it isn't reliable. Sure it's an amazing spec and does really good on certain fights, it's just not going to be a standard staple for a reliable raid spec without being in a perfect world.

If you're looking for the ultimate day-to-day raid spec, it's just not going to be 41 demo, unless blizzard drastically changes things. Which may happen, never know.

 

shef

Hi guys, after reading every post in this thread, and seeing the various opinions on cast rotations regarding the destro 21/40 spec, i have to say that I'm even more confused than i was before reading this thread lol.

Like i said I'm using the 21/40 spec, and even though my gear is decent (check armory below), sometimes i have trouble sustaining my dps. I'm generally top 5, but i feel like there is something wrong either with my casting order, or i don't know. What i usually do is cast immolate, then span sbolts, and sometimes even use conflag at the end of immolate (but as i read on this thread, that is not a good option). So what should i do? Put up CoD and spam sbolts? Put up immolate and let it tick ...span sbolts, then refresh immolate....?? I'm just confused really.

Here is the link to my armory: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...ckrock&n=Shefu

It's really annoying to see 5 and 6k crits while spamming sbolts, and then ending up 6th or 7th ....

peace

 

Noffy

Thanks again for all the advice on the group placement. We know our mages are really lacking at the moment and we are doing everything we can to get them geared up and spec'd right.

I'm still working on my hit rate, but I'm up another 3% (~11% now) from that latest parse. Looking forward to what that additional 3% will do with my DPS on our next run.