Hit capping provides stability in your destro half of the DPS. Although your "theoretical max" DPS goes down by dropping some hit for spell power (you're losing oomph on affliction spells that are already hit-capped), you justify this with a consistency factor on shadowbolts, specifically. Once you break 13/14% with affliction, you start to hit this question and it's best answered by yourself and how you like to dps. Most of the community feels hit capping is the way to go, as consistent sustained dps is preferred over uncontrollable moments (missing) -- this is the crux of min-maxing.

Freeing up points in suppression wouldn't be a big deal for you -- you could pick up intensity or put more into shadow embrace if you don't have a raid warlock with 5/5 SE already. The point of hit capping is not to free up points on suppression, but to maximize your shadowbolt DPS as much as possible.

My suggestion is to re-socket for hit-cap, and then reintroduce spell power to the best of your ability. If you're in the 15% to hit area, you should be realistically fine -- don't do anything too drastic, as you'll probably be seeing gear upgrades soon anyway.

--

As an aside, why are people still talking about spell penetration? It is a dead issue. Here, I'll even link the thread again: [Shaman] Elemental PvE - Spell Pen?. We don't need to repeat an issue that's already been done again.

Imp shadowbolt is modelled in the spreadsheet.

As for raid circumstances, I've actually tailored this specific spreadsheet to include everything favorable to shadow, and nothing to fire, and it still doesn't support the statement. Nox, could you clarify the circumstances where dropping immolate is acceptable?



No need to be spiteful either regarding the search feature.

Edit: I've highlighted the damage per cast time cells in pink for clarification.

In the essence of research for warlocks do me the favor of snapping a wws with your current penetration please!. Now that i have seen the mitigation i can expect from zero penetration it will be easy to see how a penetration enchant to my cloak will affect the slight mitigation i am seeing here in my current parse. I think at this point hit>crit>pene it still seems to hold very true (definitely so from affl point of view) destruction may have a slightly different balance in between hit/crit around cap level for hit. If we can determine a numeric value of useful penetration that actually *works* on raid bosses it would be a fantastic piece of information for warlocks.

No need to talk down to people either about the search feature.

Imp shadowbolt is modeled several ways in the spreadsheet and DOES NOT account for other warlocks in your raid. It cant. I see no option to input how many other locks are present, their crit rate, etc.

One more time. Casting a shadowbolt favors proccing isb. Even if you fathom immolate being a fraction more damage for youself, without adding in other warlock's uptime, you still aren't providing a crucial buff for EVERYONE else that uses shadow spells if you cast immolate. Be a team player.

For the penetration discussion thread previously mentioned the parsing i have seen thus far (all fire/frost/arcane dmg, btw) seems to indicate there are some resists that can be overcome. I.e. a related log with magtheridon showing an innate 20 arcane resist through log calculation.*page 93 of the mage thread*. While i am happy to accept many things at face value generally, sparq has mentioned he anecdotally recognizes a difference in the pattern of his partial resist for spells. Further research is never a bad thing, imo and can only lead to either further knowledge either way for the warlock class.

Indeed. I'll cap my hit for testing purposes tonight then. Put this penetration gig to rest.

I hope I'm wrong, more stats for me if I am, but my instinct says otherwise. We'll see.

Of course capping hit I'll have to sacrifice some +spelldmg, but hey, as long as we learn something >.<

sup.

Thanks again for all the info. (the CoA was most likely on trash as I adjusted my macros to remove it from my Gruul rotation)

I respec'd for Mal, so I was CoS'ing this fight compared to the past log and my DPS still went up. I am still trying to find the right timing to re-apply DoT's before he starts his knockback and shatter. Even with Deadlybossmods the timers can be off and sometimes I'm caught without having DoTs on him while I run back into range.

On another note, I was able to achieve 700dps on a Prince fight in Kara without a SP thanks to everybody's tips and my new casting rotation. I know its not much, but its almost 200dps more than any of my previous runs. Ill be sure to forward all this information to all our locks. You guys have helped me out tremendously as well as our guild as a whole.

I've played around with the Leulier spreadsheet and have a strange problem to confess. It's so counter to everything that people are saying that I feel I have to be missing something huge and crucial, but here goes.

I can't figure out any universe in which 0/21/40 is even remotely a good idea.

Consider for instance this forum's own Extih, who has a pretty standard 0/21/40 build and is obviously knowledgeable about his class, has decent gear, etc.

Link to his armory

Now, if you plug him into the Leulier spreadsheet, and throw in all the positive assumptions (can cast COD, succubus sac, ISB up 60% of the time), I end up with a max theoretical dps of 1165.61.

But if you put him on a fairly standard Felguard build (which could probably be improved for pve a little, frankly), then his dps goes to 1409.

There are obviously some circumstances where felguard is not feasible, but we're talking a 250 dps difference here.

Why is anyone even thinking 0/21/40?

What the heck am I missing?

I looked at specifically your Gruul attempts, which splits out all trash, and still saw CoA usage. You can see the same in the logs.

Cheers, nice to hear about all the improvements, keep striving.


I don't know the data you used to input Ex into the spreadsheet, but just a quick armory doesn't have his hit capped and such, so I wonder if you caught him in his raid gear or not.

Regardless, 0/21/40 accomplishes two jobs: the first is ISB uptime -- you need shadow priests and other warlocks in your raid to really reap this benefit. 21/40 is the best spec for maintaining ISB as you're buffing crit percentages, and your main dps option is shadowbolt (especially if that's all you do).

The second is that it's a minimal-error DPS spec (again, especially if your style is pure shadowbolt spam and nothing else). You tend to see 0/21/40 rocking out on DPS meters once people have the gear to support the essential stats mainly because it's really tough to screw it up, as opposed to affliction where you can really throw off your DPS by bad DoT timing, or with demonology where the pet can die at any point =).

Perhaps you have me confused with Nikteus or Megz, as I just looked at the logs again and I dont see it casted on any attempts. Maybe I'm being daft, but I dont see it at all. Either way, thanks again for all the help.

No because FG build also casts Immolate and Corruption. Not all destro locks do.

See:

No problem. In regards to other logs, I meant Nikteus'. Sorry about the confusion. Good luck!

Without doing any math whatsoever, the amount of personal DPS you lose for missing Ruin and Shadow and Flame would probably not make this even remotely worthwhile for the small chance of extra up-time which shouldn't be needed with a raid that actually watches the debuff slots.

But even in a universe where the FG build is dropping the ISB uptime from 60% to 50% due to lowered SB duty cycle, the cutoff point for that ISB being better for the raid is at 8 warlocks. Since 8 warlocks are already well over the debuff limit in any pragmatic raid, it seems like FG is never ever beaten by 0/21/40.

Mannie: I advise you do the math -- the spreadsheet shows you're incorrect in this matter.

Well, don't forget shadow priests, who're the real people you're supporting (more mana returned, more dps from mages, or heals from healers, etc).

Anyway, the spreadsheet is ideal theoretical dps; meaning it probably always calculates the FG beating the slop out of someone, as opposed to all the micro management it takes to use it (travel or rez time, especially).

If you page back a few, you'll see Nyarlathotep has been doing some very cool experiments and documenting his FG usage throughout various raid encounters; it's no joke that it's a good build on fights where it's useable. But it requires nurturting. 21/40 does not require it for ISB uptime while maintaining high-end DPS (once geared).

as to avoid another infraction from the forum moderator, lemme rephrase this bump in such a way that it makes me sound like I actually have graduated high school. Can someone please answer my questions? I can't seem to find the answers on any other sources but alot of people here seem to know alot about the topic, and by stroking your ego as such I would hope to possibly attain the answers to my queries.

oh, and spell penetration over stam/dmg is kinda pointless imo... for every little bit of partial resist you negate you probably well make up for in stamina to lifetap and dmg on your spells...that's my 2 cents =)

-Shag

Another thing you should remember is that full resists can never realistically happen from lack of penetration.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...sistances.html
I know this page is near-useless but we know 100 resistance against a lvl50 is like 140 resistance against a lvl70, which is the point where you actually gain 1% chance to fully resist. Somewhere between 70 and 140 is the point where any less resistance will most likely not grant a chance for full resists due to lack of penetration, therefore you don't really need to cap your hit in order to test effects of penetration on a mob where you probably expect less than 15% damage reduction from partioa resists (70 resistance).

I haven't loaded the logs to a host yet, but from what I'm seeing, it looks like I get to resocket my gear with better gems. ^_^

Getting the same level of partials as other warlocks in the raid. In one case I got more partials.

So if I've done nothing else but prove to myself that penetration does not effect PvE fights so be it. The only evidence I've seen up to this point was, from the opposing stand point of not having any penetration.

If you're interested in the logs let me know, but otherwise I'll support the theory that additional spell pen, even on cloak doesn't do much if anything at all.

/cheers and I apologize for being stubborn =P

I would also like to note one thing, since people seem to forget one very fundamental fact about wow.

Not nearly all fights allow players to cast of non stop shadow bolts and ISB to be as efficient. As an example: Supremus runs here and there immolation is well worth casting, since many members from raid is out of range. As well as some fights where your mana capped, like on first phase reliquary of souls.

Also there's a lot of fights where moving is involved and on those fights you have "permanent dot" meaning felguard beating the boss. From my experience raids total dps has gone up since I started using felguard. Some fights where felguard is bad, like azgalor it might reduce raids dps, but just overall when looking our raids dps, I think it has gone up a lot, especially on melee friendly fights like Akama / Teron.

Specific Gear?

2% Crit isnt significant?

The whole conversation is about minimal increases. Felguard spec gives you the most crit, and no you dont cast corruption with it ( 0/41/20). Surely that is the 'best' for keeping ISB up..the most crit?


I just specced Demo from Destro - I cast Immolate with both specs. the dps is easily comparable Mannie..except I have no threat worries now, and have to manage Mr Fel.