I was chatting with a warlock the other day regarding Drain Life and was curious to confirm one application he mentioned. Talented and with a concentration aura up is it actually uninterruptable? If so there might well be other situations where an affliction warlock would care to use it. It would seem to be logical to me but I haven't played my warlock in conjunction with a paladin ever.

As an aside, I would of course recommend DoTimer and Debuff Filter to any offensive caster and especially some flavor of DoTimer for affliction warlocks. I can't imagine playing one without one.

To the last post, 0/21/40 is popularly used for fire builds but can be adapted to a shadow build as well. It is suboptimal perhaps but certainly shines in some situations.

The fel concentration talents can give 70% uninterupted draining. In a raiding situation at least, drain life, even with soul siphon, is pretty limited in scope.

Concentration Aura is 35%, the only question really is the stacking.

I'm almost positive it does, but maybe one of the more pvp inclined 'locks could give you a definitive answer. It'd be pretty strange for it to be the only interuption talents that didn't stack with Conc Aura.

Yes, Fel Concentration and Concentration Aura stack so you are uninterruptible while draining. Earth shield also works for the same purpose. Both of those also stack with Intensity.

This is consistent with all such effects, spell pushback resistance stacks additively.

Fire *still* suffers from the lack of Bane affecting it. Regardless of what gear is out there, generic damage or fire or what, SB will get a larger amount of your gear added into each casting-second.

I´ll just quote the author of http://wiki.shadowpriest.com/index.p...0.6_on_the_PTR

A lot of people forget how ISB affects not only their spells. Shadow based destruction is superior at the moment if you only look at your own dps (most likely >5% better). But in addition it boosts shadow dps in general making it far superior in my opinion. As was already mentioned bane is another reason why even the shadow weaving nerf will still make SB superior. Even if the 5% nerf brings fire on par regarding personal dps ISB makes a hole lot of differerence still.

The calculations on this site are based on relatively low spelldmg so with the normal 1000+ shadowdmg most raiding warlocks have right now the gap should have become bigger. because of bane and the better spelldmg coefficent.

I just ran the data with the spreadsheet available in this forum.

With the shadow weaving nerf both destruction builds actually seem to be equal in personal dps. ISB increasing raid dps even more would make the choice easy for me. I don´t understand how lifetap is fitted in the calculation. Since SB based 0/21/40 has worse dpm this could favor the fire spec.

I believe the point was that shadow damage increases the mana return per lifetap, and fire damage does not. One does wonder which build actually spends more time tapping in the long run though.

I'd add an addendum to the don't cast until the DoT is out. That addendum requires you to be running a DoT timer, but start casting Immolate when you see it hit 1 second remaining on the DoT timer and start casting UA when it hits 1.5 seconds remaining on the DoT timer, that way as soon as the DoT does it's final ticket, it is just about to go up again. If your DoT timer doesn't display in half seconds, sit down and play with Dr. Boom until you get good at judging a half second lapse with your DoT timer of choice. By getting Immolate and UA back up just as they're doing their last tick you eek out just a little more damage. One caveat is, don't stop casting a Shadowbolt or decide not to start casting a Shadowbolt if you see these two DoTs with 2 to 3 seconds remaining before they tick out, just finish the Shadowbolt then reapply the DoTs.

Regarding OT'd mobs:

What dots are you affliction locks putting on OT'd mobs? Typically I'll use CoD on the OT'd mob if I know it's going to be up for a while, however absent that guaranteed 1 minute time frame I'm kind of loathe to put anything more than CoA / siphon on the mobs, as they're my longest duration dots.

Also, I typically won't waste any more than 2 GCD dotting OT'd mobs, so if it's a 3+ pull (with 3 not getting CC'd), get CoA on 2 then back to FF the MA's target, but I don't bother dotting any more than 2 extra targets.

I bring this up b/c I've been proven wrong before (with my gut feeling that immolate was bad unless you're spec'd for it) - so I'm just curious to see if any of the math guys have run numbers. Maybe we could assume blowing 2 GCD's on OT'd mobs will still allow you to run full DoT duration on the MA'd mob....

It depends on how critical it is for the main mob to die. If it's not important that it die very quickly, I'll spend more time on dots because that better optimizes the raid's time. (healers will have to drink anyways, if the main mob is up for just a few more seconds it's not a big deal. and the question is how fast can we take down everything in play, not this one particular mob.)

That said, what I put on the OT mobs is directly a function of what gives me the best damage per casting second (this is with my gear, with 41+ affliction, but the relative ratios will be similar):

CoA: 2385 dpcs
Corr: 1935 dpcs
UA: 1874 dpcs
SL: 1382 dpcs
Immolate: 1168 dpcs

Shadowbolt: 781 dps (same as dpcs for a nuke)

(in other words, I use the top 3 dots mostly, unless I can just dot two mobs, because kill-speed doesn't matter, in which case I keep up the full set on both of them and rarely SB. I'll put SL up on adds regardless of the situation if I think I need the HP returned.)

It's not quite such a disparity if you're 40 destruction. With shadow&flame and emberstorm, the coefficients come out to:

Shadowbolt:
(0.857 + 0.20) = 1.057

Incinerate:
(0.714 + 0.20) * 1.10 = 1.005

Still less, of course, but the gap isn't quite so big.

If you add the fact that Incinerate benefits of +15% from mage debuff, whereas SB benefits "only" from shadow weaving :
SB : (85.6+20)*1.10 = 116,16%
Inci : (71.4+20)*1.15*1.10 = 115.62%

So in terme of coefficient of +dmg, they are equal in a raid environement. The big difference is ISB debuff, wich is up very often in a raid.


And to say something about the initial topic : If all your warloks are affliction, it is possible that you reach the debuff limit. With afflic. warlock taking 5 slots each, the limit (40 ?) can be reach, and that there dots gets pushed out. Ask them to check it.

Problem is, with ISB, it isn't this close. I know it should look like the gap closes in theory, but in practice is doesn't when you're dealing with mulitple warlocks all having ISB in the raid. Even with Shadow Priests occasionally eating one of the ISB ticks, the likelihood that it will be refreshed is pretty high when you have 3 Warlocks with about 15% or so crit each throwing SBs when their DoTs aren't needing to be refreshed. I had really, really wished when I tried out Incinerate that it would have proven to be a worthy successor to spamming shadow spells, but ISB just makes it inefficient. If Blizzard were to change ISB to something else that put up a debuff that affected both fire and shadow, then I could see Immolate-Incinerate spam being viable, but it just isn't right now until Blizzard does something to remedy the situation.

Overall though, 0/21/40 is the highest damage build available if you're in a fight where you don't have to move much (ha ha, like you see fights like that very much in tBC... :p) and your hit is quite high (11%+) while spamming Shadowbolts with a sacc'd succubus.

Our last (recorded) Gruul kill

That's 955 dps without any kind of consumable use (and, sadly, without shaman buffs), against a single target. The reason for it is pretty much as people have mentioned, keeping DoTs up by watching DoTimer and then spamming shadow bolt in between.

I used to use immolate a lot in raids, but lately we've recruited more warlocks and shadow priests, so we are often capping out at the debuff limit. Immolate is my lowest damage per cast time DoT, so I dropped it.

With respect to multi-DoTing, as others have said I will usually do it if there's no great rush to kill one mob very quickly, this covers probably at least 80% of trash.

Some mobs (the warrior murlocs in Tidewalker's trash room) will de-agro their tanks, and I usually avoid DoTing them. We usually have tanks building cross-agro on them, but the amount of threat they're able to generate on the mob they aren't tanking sometimes isn't enough to outweigh my full DoT stack, so I play it safe and don't DoT them, or I just cast agony and no other DoTs.

If I had to pick one quality that defines a good warlock, it would be attentiveness. We have more to keep track of than most DPS classes do, and as a result being lazy or distracted hurts us more than it hurts other classes. A mage can be watching TV spamming his fireball button and do reasonable damage (although the other mages might get mad that he never helps refresh scorch), but if a warlock is just watching TV and spamming his shadow bolt button (because he doesn't notice or care that his DoTs have expired) then his DPS is going to suck. An affliction warlock's damage should be at most about 40% shadow bolt, so if you look over your parses and see that your warlock's shadow bolt damage makes up the majority of their total damage, then they are being lazy about their DoTs.

I seem to have noticed my DPS dropping considerably when I am on COE or COS duty.

The difference between my damage when casting curse of agony seems to be up to 3%. Am I doing something wrong or is this realistic?

I'm starting to worry that I am under performing, from reading this thread and some others I can see why I'm not reaching 1k dps even when using curse of agony which I can address, I mainly think it is to do with reaching the debuff cap and other warlocks rotating siphon life into their cycles (considering we have 4 warlocks in the raid normally this would make a huge difference).

Anyway any insight/observations on this would be great.

Get Debuff Filter to keep track of debuffs on the boss. Coordinate your other locks to cut Immolate if you pass 40 (and Siphon Life after that if needed, but make sure the rest of your raid manages debuffs too). Keep special track of curses, since new ranks of CoS/CoE aren't protected it seems. I got my CoS pushed off several times last Gruul, which hurts, bad.

And, CoD > CoA. I won't go through why here, since it comes up in more or less every warlock thread, but it is :-). By around 45dps with your gear according to the warlock dps spreadsheet. Also simplifies dot-refreshing, allowing less dot-gap. That should let you drop iCoA as well, and get that last point in supression for instance. And yes, the locks on CoE/CoS will have lower dps than the third and up, it's just how it is. 3% sounds low though, you should gain around 10-15%, I assume you wrote wrong there? Just count yourself lucky you have more than two locks with malediction so you ever get to do another curse than CoE/CoS as affliction :-)

Lag is another thing, you should consider a stopcasting macro for your shadowbolts and and addon like Supercast as well if you're having issues (I'm at around 0.5 seconds lag for instance, that's a pretty huge dps loss...)

Also, gear-wise (you probably know this, but I thought I'd mention it anyway), the 50 spirit shards ring > exalted VE ring. Get Bracers of Havok as well (it's cheap, though the enchant is not), and farm heroic Hellfire instances till you have the Icon and the exalted HH sword. I'd also think that the spellstrike-set plus the gloves from attumen is better than what you have atm if you have a chance at getting it, and have a lot of gold to spare =P.

Sorry I should have clarified when I said 3%. I meant 3% additional damage done as per the damage meters (i.e. Stangg 8.9% damage done, random coa lock 11.9% damage done)

To be honest its rare I get to cast anything other than COE and COS at the moment due to only a couple of us being more active than others if you know what i mean

I'm aware my gear still needs work, I am currently farming for the Icon of the Silver Crescent and I have the spellcloth I need for spellstrike just working on the primal mights, I dont have a lot of spare time at the moment as we are raiding hard to try and progress through SSC and bring the guild back into how it was pre-TBC, doing my part as much as I can with the locks. I'm also top of DKP thanks to a lot of hording so as soon as Gruul drops the caster sword its mine, I will then enchant it with soulfrost which i have the mats for (he hasn't dropped it once in all of our kills so far, sorry a small whine there). The violet eye ring is a placeholder for either another ring with +hit or the scryers exalted ring, whichever comes first for now. Would you not think that the gloves from Magtheridon are better than the ones from Attumen, we don't really raid karazhan anymore and when we do I normally sit out.

thanks for your interest though, first time I've posted here, it's nice to get such an involved reply straight away

The VE ring will be getting buffed, but for boss fights the 50 spirit shard ring is better (due to +hit being great because you *never* want soulshatter resisted). For that same reason, Attumen gloves are better than Mag's gloves. I don't know the point where +hit would be worse than crit, but likely around 16% to hit .

The reason why this logic is flawed is that the global cooldown makes the cast time irrelevant in a sustained fight. If you cast an instant spell you have to wait 1.5 seconds before the next spell. If you cast UA you have to wait 1.5 seconds before the next spell. Except for situations where you are on the run a lot, it's generally identical to an instant cast. And, in those situations where you are on the run a lot, you don't get to SB as much so Ruin isn't as relevant anyways.