I have taken the time to look over all of the information on this thread. I was quite pleased to learn of the decent experience that Nyarlathotep had while raiding with the Felguard.

My question is in concerns to whether or not I can make the transition from affliction to demonology for 25-man raids. My guild is currently progressing through SSC with Lurker down and Hydross soon to be. We also have Void Reaver on farm. I had been affliction for the longest of time, and wanted to try something different. Thus, I have been experimenting with demonology the past few days in heroic 5-mans and have been pleased. I am concerned about my lack of 2 pc T5 for the 25-man raid viability of this build. What are your suggestions? Would it be best for me and my guild to remain affliction until I have 2pc T5? I appreciate any comments.

I have now played with every spec except fire-destro builds. I levelled affliction and kept it until mid-ssc, where I then tested demo followed by destro.

After viewing dps calculators I decided to require max hit from myself before doing demo or destro, easily attained by enchanting a second glove pair with hit, and socketing second pieces (spellstrike helm for me and wraps of flowing thought) with +8, or the +hit blue epic heroic gems. In addition to these, OH / wand from kara, as well as the CE exalted ring and terrokar shard ring (replaced now) offer a good switch between trash damage and boss damage.

I also attempted to raid 21/40 shadow spec though had less damage, The reason I believe, and why demo is a good switch from affliction is because demo scales spell damage well... the primary affliction stat.

So yeah, take a look at any metre and it will note how important hit is for raiding any non-affliciton build. I say, max your hit (or get real close) and raid demo... once I get about 25-30% crit range I might try out destro again, but I don't think it'll touch my demo spec until T6.


oh... and the 2pc T5 I find does little unless you're tanking and receiving direct heals, it can easily be done without the bonus... might want more demonic resiliance, perhaps a point in improved life siphon for the learning curve though.

I've played in a few raids with a FG build, it rocked on Morogrim, but sucked on Lurker (this might have been due to bad positioning of the FG, it wasn't getting chain heals). I don't have 2pc tier 5 just yet, we're learning FLK now. Will have to try with other bosses to pass further judgement, but so far the 2pc bonus seems extremely good.

On a different note, Shaaroon liked to pick up the Hydross adds for some reason and got slapped for it - remember to micromanage it and turn cleave off when transitioning.

Although I prefer 0/21/40 at the moment, I've used Felguard extremely successfully for all T4/T5 content (except Kael). Actually, my personal best Hydross DPS (just over 1500) was when I was Felguard. For Hydross, you can keep cleave on just make sure your Felgaurd is on passive (I can't think of a time when it should be aggressive, anyway) and call it back to you for each Nature/Frost transition. Once Hydross hits your tank, just intercept back to Hydross and continue what you'd otherwise do.

Fur Lurker, now that spout doesn't hit pets, Felguard is pretty good (although not ideal). The big problem I noticed, though, is that when I'm in the water my pet bugs out and won't recognize attack commands. Considering I spend a great deal of time in the water (shadow priest allows this), that was a huge problem. I noticed, however, if you put your Felguard on stay at the outer edge of the inner platform, when Lurker dives my Felguard just moves to his stay position and doesn't bug out. Thus, I can keep him meleeing on Lurker for the duration of the fight.

2/5 Tier 5 will be tons better after the 2.2 patch.

Demonic resilience is nearly a must (maybe once 2.2 comes it will not be), unless you always have a shadow priest.


Well spell hit is great to max, you only need 202 hit rating for that, and you have a little bit more than that.

I'd just like to reemphasize this statement. The skill and attention required for affliction is sooooooooooooooo much higher than Destruction. I really think a lot of the better DPS claims people are saying that destro has over affliction come from the fact that they really weren't maxxing out the potential of affliction. It is all good and well to talk about having very good dot uptimes and being efficient when using lifetap etc etc, but to be able to actually *DO* it in a raid consistently takes a ton of effort and a lot of micromanagement. It really is probably the most skill testing DPS spec in the game. To this day, I have not seen one good affliction video where these warlocks were even coming close to what I consider good dot uptimes and maximizing every tenth of a second possible. I am not talking about players from scrub guilds either, but extremely top end guilds like Nihilum etc. I'm hoping to record our Illidan kill this week to show what I think is how dot uptime should be at it's best.

If you truly take the time and effort to pay attention to dot uptimes and min/max as much as possible you will see the true potential of affliction.

aftre switching back to affliction for a few kills after months of destro and demo, I found it so much harder to do the same level of dps.

I will go back to it if I spend the time to relearn all the fights. I was affliction for all of Vanilla WoW and levelling up..getting back into it proved more difficult than I thought it would be

Honestly my most fun spec to play was Felguard. Micro management, split threat and a pet warrior...but not too much compared to DOT rotations ( imo, I was rusty with Aff). Destro has the most INSANE tps, and I love it for that...but it does feel a little simple. I do like being able to get right up to tanks threat then holding back as I see fit, with affliction its not as easy to control your tps

Well we downed lurker again last night this time I went in with 0/40/21 instead of 0/21/40 and I gotta say I like 0/21/40 much better. With the 0/40/21 build I had to still try to keep my pet up and if she died I noticed a big drop in dps. I guess I could just not activate SL but for instance on Lurker she was eating multishots and dying so it probably wouldnt have helped much not having SL.

Also some had mentioned having trouble with Agrro with a 0/21/40 build. I didnt have much trouble with it and I was still able to top DPS meters and pushed an all time high for me the other day with it. I might try a FG build next.

Without wanting to sound like a nob, you will notice with as your gear improves to t5 and above with Destro spec your TPS increases very quickly

24/37/0 spec I see atm...PVP I hope, cos it sure sucks in PVE.

I respecced affliction for one of our Vashj kills to get CoEx up on the striders, and I found myself in a similar situation. After having played affliction for so long and being able to top Vashj meters easily with affliction, it was awkward trying to reacquaint myself with a DoTimer and trying to break the SB spam habit.

On another note, the fights in BT/Hyjal seem a lot more melee friendly and lately us warlocks have been dethroned as a DPS kings in some fights. My only major concern is on Gorefiend, which seemed to be a straight up nuke fest, yet I was outdamaged and severely out DPS'ed by hunters (lolwut?). I'm curious to know if there's anyway to improve myself on that fight. Here's a parse of our kill:

WWS

My lower presence percentage is most likely due to me running off at around 6 or 5% when I had 20 seconds remaining on my Shadow of Death debuff to the back of the room, though I don't think that made the difference of nearly 200 DPS. Is it even worth trying to compete with a stacked physical dps group (feral druid, enhancement shaman, BM hunters, rogue)?

To add to this does anyone find themself above rogues on threat but below them on damage meters? Really irks me

Vanish and Feint I believe. When used effectively they just have licence to run free I believe.

I only mention this because I see Furi and that other rogue doing 2000 dps...and I just wonder WTF their MT has to do to keep up

Warlocks get max 10% less threat from talents + soul shatter which is half threat.
Rogues get 29% less threat + vanish a full agro wipe. For the same dps a rogue will always below you on threat unless you soul shatter early.

Theoretically a warlock can go 29% above a tanks threat whereas a rogue only 9% but in practise most of stay behind our tanks threat.

0/40/21 as has been said many a time it is on paper amazing but in practice not so great. The succubus doesnt scale at all for damage. The FG on the other hand does amazing as a result of frenzy and avoidance. For example, on the trash to kael the entire melee got whirl winded when a polly resisted but the two fellguards took 1 hit and avoided 5 (yes I know its all random and not static) but 50% chance to avoid AOE is huge.

Demo (FG) to me as I stated previously is all about the group to which you belong. If you do not have an SP and a shammy you are going to lag behind a destro build plain and simple. Demo is all about synergy the higher your spell damage the higher is AP the higher his stam and int from buffs the higher your SP thus the higher is AP.

The next patch is going to bring us pet friendly pally buffs - no more asking for pets and what I can only think as the best two set bonus to hit demo since well never .

I have had a lot of questions regarding my choice of the wraith card and honestly it was for the crit increase to keep up ISB as it was my primary job as destro. As of now I have 33% spell critical strike so with the sextant it procs a lot which in turn raises the AP of my demon.

Obviously the voidstar is a must as you are looking at ~230 resist.

Raiding demo to me is a lot like pulling the teeth of the healers, it was almost the mantra of healers that pets get no attention they are your responsibility. It has taken sometime but now they get some heals as they account for between 200-300 dps depending on the fight.

My only wish is that we could buff our pets another way. My felguard took a BM hunters scorpion to 60% and a normal hunters cat to 45%. Here is hoping come WoLK we might be able to equip a different weapon or maybe attach special armor.

BT/hyjal still has a lot of fights where you can shine on damage. Granted, you probably won't be able to beat out rogues on gorefiend since they can sit there dpsing him the entire time, but you can still top Supremus, Gurtogg, Illidari council, and even Illidan as affliction. Besides Illidari council you just need to know when not to dps.

EDIT: I wouldn't even worry about damage meters on Shade of Akama, Reliquary of the Lost, and Mother Sharaz simply due to fight design.

I admit, I used to play a rogue pre-bc and a good deal into BC. It was soo much easier to manage threat 8)

BTW, If you're a crit maniac and you have to hold back on DPS because your burst TPS is 1500+, keep your eyes on [Prism of Inner Calm]. I have a feeling it's getting stealth buffed. Supposedly it already benefits casters > melee. As shown Threat Reduction - Spells - World of Warcraft and Threat Reduction - Spells - World of Warcraft

yeah, I find the only way to keep a consistent hit around 202 one needs to change gems, or gear in the higher end world. Right now i'm stacking hit up a bit for the loss i'll pick up from T5 gloves, to be regained on vashj' hat and chest... perhaps a belt of blasting if the damn thing ever drops on our server.

actually, i'm just being cheap and not spending the cost of 1-2 gems each item change...

but yeah, 202. Gem up to it if you're transitioning from afflicition or one does not have cap, switch in pure damage gear for bosses (16%) or trash (5%) and as one aquires gear alter the gems for optimal output.

The question I have to put out is... at what level is destro better than demonology?
Is there a certain composition requirement either personal or raid-built?

I will assume a major contributor to shdow-destro is ISB uptime, seeing as I sit around 1300-1600 spell damage on bosses buffed, and 20-28% crit with 2-3 affliction warlocks I don't know if I can make it viable...

I can't remember from earlier though, and we never have a shadow priest, would you guys consider fire-destro the highest dps spec when a shadowpriest is not available with ideal stats? (16% hit 25% crit 1100 damage).

At my gear level affliction and destro seem to be about equal in terms of DPS, at least on a Gruul Benchmark (a fight where I assumed affliction would come out ahead). I had been waiting for better gear to go destro, but when our raids were consistently hitting 40 debuffs and knocking mine off, I decided to give it a try.

I do far better on trash, and on bosses I've tried (vr/gruuls), I'm hitting slightly higher DPS as destro (but not nearly the 200-300 dps some people were reporting).

Until 2.3 comes around, one of the main advantages to using a shadow bolt spam spec is that it's easy to incorporate "/stopcasting" macros into them. Depending on your latency using these macros can give you a HUGE increase compared to what these specs would be doing normally.

What Faradin said.

Anyone that's serious about putting out DPS should be using stop casting.

I found a combination of:
1) not getting fucked by the RNG (gg 3% parsed crit rate) and;
2) implementing stop casting for my 7/43/11 spec

Led to something like a 300 DPS increase on my guilds last mag run (before the guild blew up). Parsed crit rate in line with tooltip (not gamed), and low DPS time b/c of cube clicking and I still did in excess of 1200 DPS or something dumb (and I've got crap gear) while topping damage done.

Stop casting really is an awesome edge.

This is true, although I used stopcasting for affliction as well. It takes off quite a chunk of the Immolate and UA cast bar.

I've been deciding which dots are worth using depending on the fight. Corruption is still worth the cast time, but the reduced range and increased threat are a huge turn off for some encounters.

/Stopcasting is great for anyone with a cast bar, although I still mess up once in a while by hitting the macro 0.1 seconds too early. With a 2.5 cast, that example given is much harder to run into.


Corruption is still good before Tier 5 level, but after that not so much (threat + lesser range + possible spell pushback), plus it has been explained many times just spamming on spell is easier than using more spells.