Fayrn

1/39/21 or 0/40/21 are completely viable specs for competitive DPS. I recently respecced to 1/39/21 from 43/0/18 to be my guild's Leotheras tank, and I was expecting to take a minor DPS hit from the spec change. I was pleasantly surprised to find that my DPS was hovering around the same 900-1000 numbers that I usually put up (I never seem to be lucky enough to get a shadowpriest or shaman of any sort, and I'm always on CoS duty, so I think my numbers are fairly respectable for my current level of gear).

Of course, some fights are more micro-management intensive than others (Hello Lurker), but for the most part, I can usually keep my succubus alive, and am often able to have her DPS some too.

I'm pretty excited to see how much 2-piece tier 5 helps out with my pet's survivability (hopefully getting my next piece soon, I'll post an update when I do).

 

Sinsei

Or a resisted Soul Shatter, lol

Let's face it, if you're a shadowbolt spammer you have soul shatter hotkeyed, and if it resists you're toast.

Not to mention, going along with what Shed speaks, if you resist a bunch of bolts thats not only damage you lose, it's mana you lose as well and dps uptime because you have to lifetap more. It doesn't take much to get hit capped. If you look at my armory I've got +8 hit gems in EVERY slot practically. Sure I dont have the +dmg or +crit as some do, but I still pull 1000+ dps because my efficiency is high.

I get enough resists as it is being hit capped, I wouldn't even want to try it with anything less than 99% to hit.

 

Flamingcloud

I am fairly certain that someone with 0% hit would not have 17% of their soul shatters resisted.. Seems to me that it has built in hit or less of a chance to be resisted. The only people toast when soul shatter is resisted is those about to pull aggro, and destruction is not higher aggro for any reason other than it is better damage(with the right gear).

People completely overrate hit (especially 6-16% in affliction) it might be the best stat, but it isn't the end all you are worthless without it stat that people seem to make it out to be.

 

Sinsei

You would rather prefer something like resist, crit, hit, hit, resist, resist, crit, resist, hit, crit?

When I went from Affliction to Destro, I had 9% chance to hit, but I had alot more +dmg. My average dps would be like 850, 1100, 750, and during fights it would jump from 500-1200-700. I remember doing a Gruul three weeks ago and had 5 fully resisted shadowbolts in a row. I ended up #9 on the meters.

I'm a consistant 1000 dps now, by changing out +dmg for +hit and a little +crit. Consistancy is never a bad thing.

On top of that there is no evidence of a "built-in" hit amount for soul shatter, it's a spell just like shadowbolt. I see no reason to believe otherwise. However you are free to waste 500+ minutes of your life proving that +hit does nothing for soul shatter. I mean, you can't be "fairly certain" unless you've done the testing and have proof correct?

Pulling aggro is easy with destro, x3 7/8k crits in a row is deadly, it happens, thats why we have soul shatter in the event we get a string of crits. Would you prefer just standing there waiting for your tank to get more threat, or shatter and continue killing mobs?

 

aymie

I tired out the demon spec last night a Morogrim and Karathress and I think I did pretty.

but a simple question; doesn't the demon benefit from your +hit? because I think my noobguard is around 13% misses <.<

Wow Web Stats

 

Whisight

What are some good dot rotations and expected # of shadow bolts in between. I've been using a UA / Corrup. / Immolate / CoA / Siphon Life rotation for the most part but just not producing the damage i've been wanting to.

 

Ele'

I don't think you can speak of "dot rotation", as you won't be able to keep an exact "rotation" between latency, resists, etc.
However, you can define a "spell priority" and use it to know which spell to cast after this one. For example when I play affliction, I always try to refresh UA, then corruption, then siphon, then immolate (siphon before immolate to prevent it to fade exactly at the same time as UA), then a mix of shadowbolts/connexion/dark pact while waiting for my dots to fade.

Using a rotation slightly different from your peers should not impact your dps much. Asking yourself "what will I cast next", however, can greatly impact your dps if it adds "decision latency" to your cast time. In short, always cast something and you should do fine...

(Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but if there's a "magical rotation" I didn't find it...)

 

Ritzy

I echo everything that Apoq says here and it is from experience. There are may times were I would get 3-4 resists in a row and lose a ton of dps. Capping hit is one of the best things for a destro lock to do. This really comes into play on longer encounters. I will post some of my stats from boss fights later today.


The +hit I had with all the encounters below was at 14.98%-16.4%. If you click on my name you will get to see my miss %. I wish I had my stats from the boss fights where I only had 12% hit but they have been deleted. When I only had 12% hit, my miss % was anywhere from 8%-12%.
Karathress
Wow Web Stats
Hydross
Wow Web Stats
Lurker
Wow Web Stats
Moro
Wow Web Stats
1900+ DPS Moro
Wow Web Stats

Also, we had 1-2 shadow priests in the raid and I was grouped with a SP and a shaman. Sometimes I was with the shaman that dropped totem of wrath and wrath of air. And sometimes I was with the shaman that dropped mana spring and wrath of air. I have found that I get pretty much the same results on single targets. However, the +3% crit is nice to have when Seeding.

 

• GokieKS

DT/Ruin is a spec that is alternatively incredible, and incredibly infuriating. I gave it a try after deciding that I hated the 6/44/11 FG spec (no extended range, no spellcast pushback resistance, no threat reduction) since it was the last "looks-to-be-viable" spec that I had yet to try and, on paper, seemed like it would be, with MD/SL/DK/Devastation, one of the best specs for spamming Shadow Bolt in terms of both DPS and ISB uptime. And also we're still learning Kael'thas, and our warlock who normally respecs to tank Leo/KT is out of town, so I figured I'd pick it up.

Anyway, on fights where there's no real incidental damage to worry about (Morogrim, for example), it's great, as I could keep her up without doing more than timing my LTs so she got some indirect heals via 2pc T5. But on some other fights where you can't help but take a few thousand damage randomly, trying to use the Succubus is just a frustrating exercise in futility. On Vashj, for example, I ended up eventually just dismissing her and switching to a Phase Shifted Imp after Phase 1, because her mortality rate in P2 and beyond was pretty much 100%, even if I didn't have SL up. And Karathress isn't much better, what with the random 7K Shadow Bolts present enough of a headache just with LT w/o also having to worry about keeping a pet alive. Everytime I do that fight as Demo, I've just ended up DSing a VW until only Karathress is left and then switching to a Succubus or Imp. I still do well on the fight, but it's just all around annoying.

Maybe having a Shadow Priest would have helped (our guild almost never has more than 1 available on any given raid, so it's a lot more likely that I get an Elem. Shaman than a S. Priest), and maybe the change to the 2pc T5 will be a buff and keep her alive better. But for me as of right now, DT/Ruin is a spec that requires A LOT of conditions to be met to be truly viable. I'd say 0/21/40 is the all-around better choice as long as you don't need to, or mind respeccing for, tanking/PvP.

 

Sinsei

Unfortunately no he doesn't benefit from it. I believe the only way to improve his hit would be with party buffs, like heroic presence.

I think my Felguard was getting a 17% miss rate, check back a few pages I believe I posted a morogrim fight at 7/44/10.

It sucks being at 16.01% to hit and not having any effect on pets.

 

Fireye

For the warlock calculator, you need to input the proper damage values.

+Spell Damage = what you see on your character sheet.
+Shadow Damage = Difference you see between +Spell Damage and when you hover over it. Only input the amount of +shadow gear you have.
+Fire Damage = See above. Only input amount of pure +fire damage.

 

Flamingcloud

I'd try the other spreadsheets, the website calculator is probably the worst of the three. No options for partial talents other than suppression, can't choose use CoD, lag can't be changed from 200ms, and you can't set dot uptime, or malediction.

 

nuzzlefutz

I was wondering what other destro locks are trying to get there stats too for best dps?

I raid as a 0/21/40 spec and do to no fire mages in are raids im pretty much just spam shadowbolts and keep CoS up. My DPS is stays between 1100 - 1325 depending on the fight and resists with just SB spam. Unbuffed I have 1100 shadow dmg, 13.79% hit and 30.5% crit with talents.

Also have a question on the Tier 4 2p bonus. To me it seems for destro it is way to good to give up 135 extra dmg as its about a 10% gain for me and since the T5 bonus is crap for destro I don't see the need to upgrade it at this time. I'm planing to keep my T4 gloves and shoulders untill im able to replace them with a 4 peice T6 bonus.

Back to my stats, I'm trying to get my hit to about 15% and then start stacking more dmg and crit, but I have to think at some point too much crit is just going to get you into trouble.

Thanks for any help you can provide
The Armory

 

Wingalock

Yes, and I did enter the values accordingly. Check my armory to verify them

 

kbd

Do any of you guys know how +hit affects mitigated (resisted) damage since the change in how it works. It used to be that you always got fixed resists (25%,50%,75%,100%) and that it averaged out based on some mechanics relating to resistance (and spell pen).

Does +hit have any effect now on the amount of damage resisted - or does it just affect the chance of the spell to hit in the first place ?


I concur with what others have been saying about +hit. I've recently increased my hit rating and seen good results. Rather than trying to achieve an "ideal" hit rating (as some seem to do), I've got a spreadsheet where I try to estimate the equivalence of hit rating in +dmg terms. For my build and gear I estimate 1 hit rating to be about equivalent to 1.7 dmg (and crit alot less - but I have UA).

Then I just calculate the effective "value" of my gear by taking into account my effective values for each peice (taking into account the ceiling for hit of course).

 

Arnath

AFAIK, +hit has no effect on partial resists. Boss mobs (level 73) have some amount of innate resistance that you can't overcome. This, plus whatever resistance they might have after CoS/CoE (which is usually zero) is what causes partial resists.

 

Sinsei

It's a two check system, first check is whether or not you "hit" the mob which would show as a full resist, the second check is for partial resists, mob resistance + CoS/CoE. Unfortunately there is a built in amount of mob resistance that you cannot overcome with penetration as testing has shown.

+hit helps reduce misses on the first check. You can't do much gear wise about the second check unfortunately. Not on a properly debuffed mob.

 

Bogeywoman

I respecced 0/21/40 last night just to test it out. I was able to use Doom + Sacced Succubus, and maintained a straight CoD -> Immo -> SB priority rotation, no Corruption.

It was interesting. I actually did do more damage than I did with N/41/11, but it was a different kind of damage. It required more attention from the healers, which was not positive. It required a very very slow start to avoid pulling aggro right off the bat. But in that middle stretch when I had a fairly high ceiling and enough mana to spam SB, seeing all the crits boom was pretty amazing.

My new theory on why it does better despite the spreadsheets is that there's some sort of unknown interaction between lag and cast time which people haven't successfully modelled/figured out properly. For specs which cast only 2.5s spells rather than a bunch of little spells, somehow the lag is not factoring in as badly. Or something.

It's boring, though, and it's unbelievably bad for world, bg or arena PVP, so I'll probably stay felguard or return to 41/0/18. Strange to see a result that just doesn't jibe with the math, though.

 

galzohar

Spreadsheets show destruction and affliction pretty damn close in DPS with quite a large variety of gear levels. I don't see how your experience contradicts the theory.

 

Flamingcloud

One reason destruction often beats affliction in practice is malediction, aff locks are often the ones doing CoS/CoE. Also there is quite a few fights you cannot maintain near 100% dot uptime (morogrim, hydross, leo, solarian, etc) If you are casting an average of 1 spell every 2.2 seconds as destruction and 2.0 seconds as affliction you are hit 10% harder by lag. Also there is increased ISB uptime that the spreadsheets pretty much don't count. Another thing is aff locks will often drain life to regain health from effects like earthquake and lose abit of dps.

 

Crepe

I think destro's performance has a lot to do with human lag: as you reduce individual spell cast time, these effects become more apparent. Bumping into the GCD makes things worse.

Also, I'm seeing the SB spam > SB+Immo trend in my personal DPS as well. I'm doing probably 100 DPS more on Lurker (which is pretty much a stand around and spam fight for me, except for the tiny movement you need to do on spout diving) after switching it out of my rotation. It's very counter-intuitive for me, esp. since I've now ditched all FSW and am running pure +dmg gear.

What are we modeling wrong about immolate?

 

Flamingcloud

Idk, Immolate seems very good to me compared to straight up sb spam... Are CoE and Scorch debuffs not up?

 

Phantasie

I still haven't seen much theorycrafting on the new passive spell haste items.

Running through Hyjal/Bt all cloth and misc with passive spell haste:

Bracers of Nimble Thought 28 haste
Mantle of Nimble Thought 38 haste
Waistwrap of Infinity 32 haste
Ring of Ancient Knowledge 31 haste (not unique)
Zhar'doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer 55 haste

So a total of 215 passive spell haste can be attained with all of the items. I think this comes out to ~10.24% faster cast time with the new haste value.

Unfortunately, the spell haste items (minus the staff) are lacking in the other departments of hit/crit/sockets. Max +hit shouldn't be a problem with remaining slots. I just don't know if haste outweighs losing out on the +dmg/+crit from the alternative items.

Also I would imagine ideally this would be good for the old 0/21/40 SB spammer, knocking off a rough ~.25 sec of cast time. But for some reason the only passive haste arguement I was able to find is that haste is better for fire destruction, which unless I'm missing something, makes no sense just on the shear fact that immo is already 1.5cast.

Anyone able to point me into some thoughts on haste? Or any reliable calculators/spreadsheets with haste included?

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....it&s4=&s5=&v=2

 

probiscus

Not having made any such statement personally, what people are probably referring to is bane in relation to incinerate (as in incinerate does not benefit from the cast time reduction talent that sbolt does)... however that doesn't even really make much sense, seeing as how Sbolt would benefit just as much on a % basis (or am I being dumb with my math here).

 

Flamingcloud

I would say haste is probably best for the sb spammer, but then again I don't even think of fire destro as viable(as crit goes up shadow gets even better)

As 0/21/40 I would rate spell haste as slightly worse than crit rating. The ring is extremely good (third best ring after exalted hyjal and captured storms its 2nd best if you are hit capped), the bracers are 2nd best (after Focused Mana Bindings.. again bracers are best if hit capped) . The waist sucks, the shoulders suck, and the staff is obviously second best choice after archimonde sword + offhand.