Cataclysm would have no effect on ranking the trinkets listed on that website.

Hit cap is 16.0% not 16.9%.

And if you were at hit cap Mag's Eye is actually pretty dismal in comparison to other trinkets. Looking at that trinket ranking website if you see where it says Mag's Eye at or above 16% hit it shows it being pretty far down the list. At 16% to hit you'd almost never get the Mag's eye proc because you wouldn't be resisting spells left and right. Making it practically a static 54 spell dmg. It's much better for those people who aren't hit capped or for an affliction lock not capped on hit for destro spells when he starts spamming bolts after his dot rotation.

For 0/21/40 destro you will want to go for trinkets like the Icon of the Silver Crescent and The Blessing's deck trinket, as long as you are hit capped.

I recently switched to Quagmirran's Eye from my Crusade trinket because it's been difficult to keep up. Perhaps I'm managing the buff poorly, but it seems more difficult to me as 0/21/40 to maintain it in fights with movement (Supremus), interrupts (Azgalor, Archimonde) and other general distractions (Naj'entus shield burst, Kaz'rogal's mana burn).

Would it be worth my time to reapply a curse (as I'm usually on elements) on the move or before/after an interrupt to keep the Crusader buff rather than risk having to rebuild the charges or using another trinket?

Ya I found it easier to keep up as affliction than as destruction. Maybe my problem is being around 14-15% hit most of the time, but a resist with crusade is killer especially if it was before/after a few life taps or movement. Right now I use icon/mag, with crusade over icon when I can keep it up, when I am sitting at 16% hit permently I will use icon/crusade all the time unless I know crusade will run off alot.

It is probably not worth reapplying elements in your case unless its at like 2 minutes and there is 4-5 minutes of fight left, or you have nothing better to do.

Even at 16% hit the only trinkets(not counting skull) ahead of mag are quags eye(by not much), essence of sapphiron(and realistically no one uses their trinket 100% of the time every time it comes up so I am pretty sure this is worse), icon, and Darkmoon Crusade which for some reason is given a rating of +80.7dmg.... so even at 15.5% hit mags eye would be 3rd best, 2nd best if you can't keep crusade up.

I know that "dot rotations" don't exist in theory, but I'm curious if anyone has theorycrafted the following...

When I cast my "big 3" as affliction, I cast:

UA -> Corruption -> Immolate

This makes all the DoTs end at practically the same time, barring resists.

My question is, is it better as far as DPS to have them all end at the same time? Or is it better to stagger them and refresh them separately?

It seems that a staggered rotation would garner more DPS from DoTs and make DoT uptime higher, but it also seems that it would reduce the dps from shadowbolt, which should be the lion's share of DPS.

I also wondered if anyone had an approximate "magic number" of spell damage and crit before you really see the full benefit of a 0/21/40 shadow build?

Thanks!

I always cast UA and corruption back to back as affliction, because you can pre-cast UA to hit just after the last tick, and follow immediately with corruption. I would stagger Immolate, since you'll be losing up time if you try and cast all 3 at the same time. I usually throw SL in between there and that gave me plenty of time to recast it w/o losing up time.

As far as destro stats check out [Warlock] Destro raiding and minimum stats

Thanks for the link and the cast order tip! I usually cast SL last off the bat, so I will give it a shot 3rd instead.

When I was affliction I preferred the UA->Corr->SL->Immolate order.. I have no experience at all with CoA in the rotation tho. This order should reduce immolate down time, and give you a solid 3 seconds of global cooldown to do any moves and repositioning you need. Also immolate is the most likely to be resisted if you aren't hit capped and it is really annoying when immolate reason in the middle of a dot cycle and wrecks your rythem.

In a perfect world, where you always have just enough time to refresh a DoT with a cast time just after it runs out, it doesn't matter at all when you cast it (at least not after the first 18 secs).

In the real world chaining 3 DoTs together will inevitably lead to a situation where you do not have the time or opportunity to recast the first DoT right as it runs out and when that happens you don't just loose uptime on that DoT you loose uptime on all 3. I still cast UA, corruption, and immolate in that order, however, because it makes for the most usable SB windows. DoT gaps are a DPS loss but having random chunks of time between 1.5 and 2.5 secs long is much more detrimental to your DPS in my experience.

This is true. Though even if someone decides to start with this rotation a single resist will quickly throw a wrench in chain, on top of losing a global for each DoTs uptime. And while they all come off at generally the same time you will automatically lose 3 seconds of immolate each time you keep up this rotation. In the long run, it won't matter what you start with, since you'll almost always be winging DoT casts for a majority of the fight.

All that will really affect your performance is how you prioritize DoTs. For instance, if you're finishing up a Shadow Bolt when both Immolate and Corruption fade, then it is better to recast the Corruption before the Immolate. This is why the "what's your DoT rotation" question has always puzzled me.

Looking at the shadowpriest.com warlock trinket page, I am surprised that the BT exalted trinket isn't ranked higher. Is there a hidden cooldown on the proc? And if it works on more than one target, the buff would be up quite often.

While this is somewhat true, there is other issues.. Like a period of inactivity can cause you to start your DoT rotation from its initial cycle.. So doing SL before immolate in your original rotation not losing 1.5 seconds of immolate uptime is a good idea. Also according to this warlock spreadsheet not casting siphon costs me 50dps, and not casting immolate loses me 45 dps, so just another reason to cast siphon before immolate(running 1650shadow 1400fire, double malediction in the spreadsheet fully buffed scenario)

"a single resist will quickly throw a wrench in chain" another reason to do SL first, so the majority of resists just delay your shadow bolt period.

You could look at the oodles of WWS parses at the WWS page, the partial resists and spell hit cap are very much the same as they were pre-2.0.


Regarding the Ashtongue Lock Trinket, I don't recall anyone saying there was a hidden cooldown, however the 20ish% to proc every 3 seconds I guess turns out to be like 62.5 +damage.

very helpful tips. thanks alot!

and to think i had thought i knew it all with just refreshing dots and spamming sb in between

Try Immolate > UA > Corruption

This way, when you have to reapply, you just have to look at the UA timer. When UA is about 2-3 seconds left, you start casting Immolate again, then UA, by the time you finish casting new UA, your old UA just expires. This is to shorten the dot gap.

As for when to cast CoA/S/E, SL, it's entirely up to you, however I find that with this order of Immolate > UA > Corruption, I can start off DPS very late (try not to pull agro), then catch up to climb on top of the DPS meter easily.

Quoting myself here just for reference.


Played with them tonight on raids. I reached new highs on DPS (per WWS) on both Mag and Lurker (1354 and 1350 respectively, pure single-target fights), but it's hard to know how much of that is the drums and how much is just randomness.

Either way, honestly, it's fun to have another little toy.

Bloodfury + quag's + drums = amazingly fast shadowbolt .


Now I just need a hat upgrade so I don't feel guilty about breaking the spellstrike set bonus.



Still curious if there's other locks playing around with them (or who played with them and gave up) who have any words of wisdom on ways to get more of your group in the buff (my only thought so far is to give myself a raid symbol, heh.)

Yes, I'm aware that the partial resistance is consistent with the data previously gathered, and I don't doubt that theory - I probably shouldn't have really included that part. However, I don't ever see WWS parses of someone running above 202 spell hit simply because no one does it. I'm not questioning that you can't get 100% chance to hit with spells, but I am curious whether the hit cap is actually 16% or 16.9%.

Yeah, you're right. I definitely can test this myself, disregard my stupidity. I really need to not post when I'm sleep deprived. I'll /combatlog as bunch of farming and see what I come up with.

I actually did this when I was testing high levels of penetration. Just for the sake of arguement I was using 60 spell penetration and 16.54% to hit. The WWS from that is maybe 4-5 pages back. Same amount of partials, same amount of misses.

Even if the extra .9% to hit did something it wouldn't be worth it over other stats at that point. Consider IF it did do something(meaning anything at all), the chance to hit would plateau at 99% and sharply curve off the charts as X->infinity and Y->100%.

But it's just safe to assume an unavoidable 1% miss rate v/s 73. You gain little to no effect after you reach 99% to hit.

Not sure where to ask this but this seems like a good place. We were talking about Dot rotations in our lock channel the other day and one of our locks mentioned that Curse of Doom crit... I was under the impression that it couldnt "crit". It just hit for a huge amount but not so much crit like a shadowbolt or seed of Corruption explosion.

Am I mistaken?

You're right, and your friend can't read.

Pretty sure at one point it could crit.. But it definitely can't now.

Affliction spells have never been able to crit since day 1, however back in the day they did extra damage from spell pentration (so if one lock put -70 Shadow resist, the Curse of Doom would do extra damage).

For some reason Unstable Affliction's dispel got by that rule (likely due to not being a DoT, just straight up damage) and will always work that way, the same reason why Seed of Corruption's explosion can crit.