Ok, my current problem DPS wise is that I can't seem to break 566DPS when I'm the CoE/CoS bitch. I've got 1010 +dmg at the moment (That rat Bastard Prince has dropped the rogue dagger a half million times and we only raid with a sword rogue. Even our priests have Malchazeen now).
Sounds like us when it comes to Gorehowl, 14 Prince kills, 7 Gorehowls...
I do have 4/5 Suppression and 54 hit rating and I think that may be a huge part of my problem. I was thinking of re-gemming some of my gear to max +hit but I was wondering what the best way to do that would be. Should I take into account the 8% from Suppression and the 5% from gear or just the 5% from gear?
I'm showing you have around 12.3% hit for Affliction and only 4.3% hit for non-Affliction, that hurts. I run with 3/5 Suppression (6% hit) and around 9.5% hit from gear (and I want to get as close to hit cap as I can without the need for Suppression). So you're looking at around 12% of your Shadowbolts getting resisted which is gonna hurt the DPS pretty bad (while 5% on the DoTs is annoying, atleast you can recast immediately and only lose a small amount of time on the DoTs ticking).
My dot rotation is flawless and I get quite a bit of shadowbolts up in between, but I just can't seem to break the 600 DPS barrier without CoA or CoD on Hydross even when I'm popping my trinkets every time they're up.
See my comment above on your +hit, you really do need more.
Edit: It also doesn't help that half my frozen shadowweave and my battlecast are gemmed with +12 stam, until recently my schedule wasn't open for raiding and I was full time PVP, I can't re-gem all of my set until I get gladiators replacements as I still have a 5v5 commitment that is turning out with quite a high win:loss ratio now that we've re-structured our team.
If someone on your server has Veiled Noble Topaz, get as many as you can for your yellow sockets. That will help out a lot giving you +5 damage and +4 spell hit (3 gems is almost +1% hit).
Sounds like us when it comes to Gorehowl, 14 Prince kills, 7 Gorehowls...
I'm showing you have around 12.3% hit for Affliction and only 4.3% hit for non-Affliction, that hurts. I run with 3/5 Suppression (6% hit) and around 9.5% hit from gear (and I want to get as close to hit cap as I can without the need for Suppression). So you're looking at around 12% of your Shadowbolts getting resisted which is gonna hurt the DPS pretty bad (while 5% on the DoTs is annoying, atleast you can recast immediately and only lose a small amount of time on the DoTs ticking).
See my comment above on your +hit, you really do need more.
If someone on your server has Veiled Noble Topaz, get as many as you can for your yellow sockets. That will help out a lot giving you +5 damage and +4 spell hit (3 gems is almost +1% hit).
Err my bad, its 68 hit rating in my current gear, putting me at 13.59% hit after talents. What do I want to hit WITH talents, 16%? Or 16% without talents? The current trend, at least on my server, is to pack on as many +9 dmg gems with the occasional +12 PVP dmg gem. Should I get Veiled Noble Topaz to replace some of my +9 or Great Dawnstone?
Err my bad, its 68 hit rating in my current gear, putting me at 13.59% hit after talents. What do I want to hit WITH talents, 16%? Or 16% without talents? The current trend, at least on my server, is to pack on as many +9 dmg gems with the occasional +12 PVP dmg gem. Should I get Veiled Noble Topaz to replace some of my +9 or Great Dawnstone?
Still like a reply on this if anyone is willing to go over it more in depth with me, or at least point me in a good direction, all the warlocks I know try to max +dmg and ignore crit/hit/penetration.
For destruction: hit > dmg > crit, untill you hit the hitcap.
200 hit rating 900dmg 0crit is better for your dps than 0hit 1100dmg 0crit which is better than 0hit 900dmg 200crit. (200 hit is a tad over the hitcap for destruction warlock without Totem of Wrath)
Still like a reply on this if anyone is willing to go over it more in depth with me, or at least point me in a good direction, all the warlocks I know try to max +dmg and ignore crit/hit/penetration.
If you are unwilling to spec more into suppression, you should be focusing on getting other items with +hit on them so you have are at or very close to 16% on affliction spells after talents. The gain of switching to a hit gem as affliction over a +9 damage one is really small, however there are other items that are not too difficult to get which should help you.
some examples:
Prince cape
Gloves from attunmen
spellstrike hat/legs
spirit shard ring
cenarion expedition exalted ring
aran wand/some blue dungeon ones
Err my bad, its 68 hit rating in my current gear, putting me at 13.59% hit after talents. What do I want to hit WITH talents, 16%? Or 16% without talents? The current trend, at least on my server, is to pack on as many +9 dmg gems with the occasional +12 PVP dmg gem. Should I get Veiled Noble Topaz to replace some of my +9 or Great Dawnstone?
Ideally you want 0 points in Suppression and max hit rating from gear w/ sockets. Suppression doesn't affect Shadowbolt at all.
I did last night and currrently playing around with putting crit into my gear/gems or damage.
My plan is "regem", heh.
We finally, finally got the veiled noble topaz recipe, and I gemmed immediately up to 13% hit when I swap in a piece or two. When I get belt of blasting, I'll stop swapping in items. After that.... regem!
Boots of Blasting... I'm so unsure if they're worth it. They seem to give about the same dps as my FSW. I guess they have more stats. And more crit/hit, which is convenient. But I feel so low on damage (1165 or so self-buffed) after being up around 1285 with improved lifetap when I was affliction . But the belt I'd kill for.
That said... destruction is treating me well. Even with the nerf to shadow priests and my spec swap from affliction to destruction, I was #1 on Mag (and Gruul of course, but that doesn't really count.)
And it's fun to choose between various pieces of gear rather than just piling on the damage . Can't wait for June 4th so I can turn in my Blessings deck..
I am very happy with destruction too. I have decided to save up for vestments of sea witch now / get a good crit trinket / get crit on my wand/neck. Then I will be cooking on serious gas!
BoS > BoW > BoK, unless you need the extra hp from BoK, in which case it's BoS > BoK > BoW
(disregarding fights where you don't need the threat reduction of course...)
Threat will be your limiting factor dps-wise without Salvation, and Wisdom lets you lifetap slightly more seldom, which is a bit more dps for Affliction than the extra 0.4% or so crit I'd get from BoK. A destruction warlock might not agree. BoW also works whenever you are moving or otherwise unable to cast, unlike the extra spell crit from BoK.
EDIT: I did forget one thing though, the 0.4% or so more crit increases ISB-uptime slightly, so considering the difference in personal dps is so small (with my gear/talents, about 9dps in BoW's favor), and the added hp/survivability of BoK, it might actually be the best choice.
EDIT again: Ok, did some calculation's using Bolche's spreadsheet, and for around 4500 shadow dps in the raid (3 warlocks, 2 shadowpriests at 900dps each not uncommon for my old guild), the contributions to raid dps from BoW and BoK are about the same for me. And increased ISB-uptime means more regen for the shadowpriest groups. In addition to the other benefits of BoK, I'd actually go with BoS and BoK if I ever were in the situation of only having two paladins (which honestly, no guild should want to be )
Guess I should have thought this through a bit more before writing the post in the first place, messy post this now .
Basically what Kruthal said, although we're Horde and our paladins seem to fall off the edge of the world regularly (yay for an app being the only paladin raiding this week! yay for being lucky enough to get another solid app tonight so tomorrow in SSC we have *two* apps raiding!)
It's salv and then whatever the other warlocks want. They often like Kings, the paladins like to slip mp5 on us -- I'll go either way since they both have their advantages just in different ways, so someone who cares is welcome to choose. The only time I put my foot down was when they tried to give us mp5/kings on Mag instead of salv/something (I have yet to not take #1 on that fight, even post-2.1, and without salv I'd be in a bad place threat-wise.)
All the other regularly-raiding warlocks in the guild are affliction (probably because I sold them so well on the spec *cough*.)
I think I posted this before but: while my DPS is definitely a bit lower, we're definitely seeing more ISB uptime which makes up for it, and I think the gearing flexibility post-Karazhan is a large factor as well. I'm still mourning affliction though -- it just felt more... skilled... to play.
I was talking about you handing in your Blessings Deck on June 4th..(think I missed something)
New Darkmoon Fair trinkets. The Crusade trinket (from the "of Blessings" deck) is +8 dmg every cast, stacking up to 10 times, (presumably) doesn't fall off until you haven't cast anything for 10 seconds.
Assuming it works the way I and others thinks it does, it'll be a nifty little trinket, and something new and different for warlocks beyond the "+dmg and click to active every X seconds" trinkets that we've been using up until now (I always wanted something fun like Shiffar's or the Lightning Capacitor -- this isn't that fun, but it's a start!)
New Darkmoon Fair trinkets. The Crusade trinket (from the "of Blessings" deck) is +8 dmg every cast, stacking up to 10 times, (presumably) doesn't fall off until you haven't cast anything for 10 seconds.
Assuming it works the way I and others thinks it does, it'll be a nifty little trinket, and something new and different for warlocks beyond the "+dmg and click to active every X seconds" trinkets that we've been using up until now (I always wanted something fun like Shiffar's or the Lightning Capacitor -- this isn't that fun, but it's a start!)
I've been shooting for Icon of the Silver Crescent and Eye of Magtheridon but Mag just won't drop it.
Edit: Also, I was thinking of dropping some if not all of my +9dmg gems for +8 hit rating gems, good idea or bad? Should I stick with Veiled Noble Topaz? Also going to change my +20dmg to gloves to +15 hit rating to gloves.
The spreadsheet claims that 5 dmg / 4 hit is more dps than 8 hit, at least for destruction. Ditto 20 dmg versus 15 hit, although in both cases it's a small margin, so go with what makes you happy (advantage to damage: increases dps by increasing the efficiency of lifetap.)
I don't like trinkets that get worse as my gear gets better, particularly given how much +hit is all over the gear at SSC and later, so I don't see myself ever wanting the eye of mag. DMF trinket + Icon will be what I raid with after 6/4 future (since I don't need the scryer +hit trinket anymore.)
The spreadsheet claims that 5 dmg / 4 hit is more dps than 8 hit, at least for destruction. Ditto 20 dmg versus 15 hit, although in both cases it's a small margin, so go with what makes you happy (advantage to damage: increases dps by increasing the efficiency of lifetap.)
I don't like trinkets that get worse as my gear gets better, particularly given how much +hit is all over the gear at SSC and later, so I don't see myself ever wanting the eye of mag. DMF trinket + Icon will be what I raid with after 6/4 future (since I don't need the scryer +hit trinket anymore.)
Does the DMF trinket have any static bonus or just the 80 damage stacked? Edit: Nevermind I looked it up, I may have to pick that one up but I'm not sure, an additional 80 damage would be nice but the Eye would be nice too for the random resist.
Wrote this up for my guild had a few questions, as at work with no wow access to check:
Do you use death coil every cooldown?
Can you macro say the heroic badge offhands to equip when you cast a shadowspell/firespell, if so does this use global cooldown?
Roughly how much benifit do you get from using shadow burn if shards are not an issue?
This thread is much appreciated so far
Death coil and Shadowburn are instant cast spells, which get reduced dmg coefficients - so it's not worth "spamming them on cooldown" as you appear to be indicating.
I've actually found my DPS has gone up with destruction (0/21/40) vs. affliction, but this mostly due to attention constraints on my part. It's very difficult to keep up cooldowns/boss abilties, lead a raid, dance a jig, balance three zerglings on your nose, and whatever else BC raiding entails AND cast dots and cast SB with /stopcasting macros. Destro lets me spam SB while watching for other stuff. Keep immolate up and change up curses as needed is about all the "personal" timing I need, saving my attention for all the other things I need to watch.
It also had definitely improved ISB uptime, which improves raid DPS as a whole.
Does the DMF trinket have any static bonus or just the 80 damage stacked? Edit: Nevermind I looked it up, I may have to pick that one up but I'm not sure, an additional 80 damage would be nice but the Eye would be nice too for the random resist.
Dont you have to get 8 casts off in 10seconds to get the full 80dmg bonus? Is that possible or am I misreading it? I'd think the passive 54 on the eye alone would be better.