While there has been no formal testing, I can tell you my experiences. We often raid with 3 shadow priests and 3+ warlocks, and Rank 3 CoS fell off all the time. Since I switched to rank 2, I have never seen it fall off. Perhaps it's luck, but that would be one hell of a streak.

I had one of my locks put up the level 60 CoS and he claimed it got knocked off and he went back to level 70 CoS, so idk.

I haven't had the level 60 rank of CoE get knocked off in 2-3 weeks of raiding.

As far as I know they never removed the previous debuff priority "system" after they upped the limit in 2.0. Not that this system was ever really anything beyond making sure CoE/CoS would stay up for as long as their duration allowed.

Question for you felguard locks, how do you handle positioning of the big guy on various BT/Hyjal fights? I'm not always in a situation where I can send him in from behind and am wondering if anyone has developed some tricks that I can use when I finally get around to trying the spec.

That doesn't mean that lower rank of CoE have higher priority than higher rank. Do a proper test using same debuffs on mob except for CoE.

I think my guildies can attest to me and other locks bitching about curses (and everything else) falling off mobs during raids, including a CoD 10 seconds after casting it. Switching to the lower rank of CoE is the first time i've had a curse stay on for the duration in a while. That's all the 'testing' i need to stick with it.

We had a thread dedicated to going through WWS parses and figuring out what debuffs had to go at one point. At the end of the day, depending on the raid composition the problem still pops up. And i'm not quite catching why downranking is rubbing people the wrong way, because as far as i can tell it hasn't made a lot of difference as far as resist rates go. Unless i'm missing something.

Does anyone have strong thoughts regarding 7/4x/10 spec vs. 1/4x/17 specs?

I am looking at the two, and have tested the two through ssc+tk. With the former spec I gain mobility (corr) and 20% mana regen via imp LT. With the ladder I gain 5% crit, threat reduction, and range.

From a spreadsheet basis I see the crit increases personal dps, ISB uptime, and a higher threat cap making it seem superior, the instant corruption does not increase dps while stationary, and with range another nuke might hit while out of range.

From real testing imp LT allows for 20% more time casting damage spells and instant corruption offers mobile damage offering even more time to cast. In a healing intensive encounter a warlock expends 20% less health offering less time draining life or stopping to heal.

I am looking at many fights with periodic damage and mobility, while mobile a ladder spec will only life tap or apply a secondary curse. A former specced warlock can apply two curses and life tap less offering close to the same time spent mobile.

Stationary with mana a ladder spec will have everything the former spec has with 5% more crit, which assuming all ISB are used increases the next 4 nonperiodic damage shadow spells by 20%.

Considering the two specs, I see the ladder spec wins on stationary fights with available healing. I can see the former spec win on mobile fights where the raid takes general damage.

I can see the ladder spec superior on trash, instances, and karazhan (excellent when encounters only last a mana bar). I believe the former spec is superior for long encounters, new encounters, and mana/healing intense encounters. From my P.O.V. use the ladder spec to excel in old content, use the former spec to excel in new content...

I do believe demo offers the highest dps spec for T5 encounters until 4/5 T6 with the exception of locks in stacked groups (shaman moonkin shadowpriect etc etc) or mobile health/mana intense encounters.
For a stacked supported stationary encounters: 21/40 > 1/4x/15+ > 7/4x/10 > 42/x/15+.
For damaging/mobile encounters 42/x/15+ > 7/4x/10 > 1/4x/15+ = 7/xx/40+ = 0/21/40.

or something like that. <3 multiple raiding specs.

oh, and it will be interesting to compare mag gloves + either eng. hat or VR hat vs 4pc T5 in 2.2 have at 'r

I think the most important, and oft ignored factor in VR hat vs tier 5 hat is whether or not you plan to show helm. Have any spreadsheets been updated with a showHelm toggle?

In all reality if you have been gearing yourself up for one of the two builds you started your post off with, your better off going 0/21/40 as the gear is very very similiar. There are many pet unfriendly fights in BT/Hyjal which will actually decrease your DPS as your spending more time either summoning a new one or micro managing it. Also at some point your going to replace your T5 and the Solarian trinket which really help the survivability of your pet. The T6 4 piece scales very very well with a 0/21/40 build.

As a general rule of thumb, X=2 for CoS and CoE. CoR, we're not sure about yet.

I have done a few scans of this thread and done a few searches for 'Warlock spec 0/40/21' and not come up with any modeling with this spec versus a x/4x/x or 0/21/40 spec in a raid situation.

The Spec would allow for all the standard demonology buffs (to output) and an additional 5% more from MD over using the Felguard. In addition to this, you recieve full Devistation and Ruin.

In the build I linked, the Succubus (obviously inferior in output and survivability) would take place of the Felguard and offer sustained DPS (in most situations that the Felguard could). The Succubus would also be improved to have 6 second lash of pain that are increased by 30% via destro talents. This attack should be modified by debuffs affecting shadow damage (CoS, Misery).

This seems like a better way to min/max single target DPS as you a free to use the pet's special attack in multi-mob raid situations (unlike cleave). With what would appear to be about a 20-30% loss in pet damage.

Since this build favors Destro, you would recieve the same modifier (15%) from MD and SL as you would from Sacrificing the Succi. You would still retain ruin, and recieve 10% crit (versus 8% in 0/21/40). You would miss out on Shadow and Flame, but recieve Demonic Knowledge to somewhat make up for it.

So what we need to see is:

How does 2% crit, Improved Succubus (active), and Demonic Knowledge compete versus deeper Destro talents including Shadow and Flame with a sac'd pet?

How does 5% more damage and Ruin w/ a Succubus stack up versus having a Felguard?



I see this as a better way to do Shadow/Destro (limited fire usage). The only compelling reasons I see not to use this would be that soloing and arguably PvP would be poor, however this is already a complaint for 0/21/40.


If this has been answered/modeled already, please just redirect me to the thread.

Edit: Found some of this conversation, the search this thread tool did not seem to pick up "0/40/21' for some reason. Thanks!

It's difficult enough keeping a Felguard up through most t6 fights, a succubus simply will be able to stay alive on the majority of fights.

It has changed, unfortunately. Perhaps the observations before was that Rank 2 CoS/CoE is still highest priority, whereas Rank 3 falls victim to the "oldest debuff" priority.

Right now, I'm seeing the "oldest" debuffs fall off; generally, this is Rank 3 CoS/CoE, and often CoR/CoD. When a 41st debuff is added, I believe the game checked all 40 debuffs to see which has been active the longest. It chooses that one, and replaces it. This is why you'll never really see UA/Corr/CoA/SL get bumped; rarely are they the "oldest".

2.2 will not be this week, so I hope next week some people in BT/Hyjal can try out 2/5 Tier 5 to see how that makes a difference in keeping the pet up (obviously not on Warlord, but on other bosses).
I tested in on the PTR while grinding mobs with 15% damage reduction, the idiot rarely dropped from full health.

I hate that spamming one spell is the best dps, and rather spec Felguard but keeping him up without a Shadow Priest is too much for the small theoretical gain over 21/40.

my guild is considerably too lazy to manage debuffs on farm content. as such in SSC/TK we almost always are pushing the debuff limit. Until we started using level 60 CoS/CoE they were getting knocked off constantly. Now that we use the level 60 versions, they never get knocked off.

on this week's vashj kill my debuff filter was showing a solid 40 debuffs on vashj the entirety of phase 1, and the entirety of phase 3. CoS never got pushed off. given the amount of over-debuffing that was going on, I find it doubtful that we just get lucky week after week.

We used rank 2 CoS last night on Teron and it wasn't knocked off (we ran 5 locks, and a shadow priest), whereas I cast CoR after said CoS rank was put up and it got knocked off. My conclusion that the rank is either protected or has some sort of priority.

After finally getting a hold of some solid WWS's and getting a feel for my damage breakdown, i would like to compare myself to some of the other locks out there(see if i am missing anything). So could some of the affliction locks post some of their WWS's for early BT/Hyjal fights, I wouldn't mind a couple 0-21-40 locks either so that I can compare to our shadow mages as well.

*Edit*
Adding our last WWS to show, was my first time there for Sup. and Shade:
Wow Web Stats

keep in mind that shade is probably drastically under-selling you. WWS doesn't start the parse until the add phase is over. the 1 minute mad burn on shade himself obviously favors destruction locks, and it's the only part of the fight WWS counts.

That would show why i only had like 1 tick of coa, until i switched to cos on shade. I thought something was wrong with the report, lol, thanks for informing me.

If you trim the log to start from Ashtongue Channeler to Shade of Akama you should get the entire encounter logged correctly.

Hey, this is an amazingly long thread. I've rerolled a lock, and have been working on maximizing my DPS, but it seems wildly erratic at times. Admittedly, my gear is not all that hot right now (about 788 Shadow), but then again we're not doing 25 mans just yet due to lack of raiders ATM. I'm Affliction (link to build here: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft), and have kept DoTimer from my old shadow priesting days. Admittedly, my +hit sucks right now (it's a measly 2.17% from gear), but I'm refitting my gear for more +hit gems and taking some of the stam away (used to be Demo for levelling). What's getting me is I'm watching the damage meters, and sometimes I'm just barely chasing the top mage, while other times I'm only a few thousand above the MT.

My rotation is pretty solid; generally I'm asked to keep up CoE since we bring a number of mages, but I'll put up CoS if one of our Spriests can make it. I watch the timer pretty closely, and between refreshes, I'm Shadowbolt spamming, while alternating between my trinkets (still collecting badges, so I've got Illdari and Ancient crystal talisman). Generally, having a Shadow Priest helps, but then the spectrum still fluctuates pretty wildly, it's just that the top and bottom numbers both shift up.

What the hell could be causing that?