the lock in my guild brings out felguard most of the time or if it isnt pet friendly like al'ar he takes out a succie.. so far he is the top dpser in my guild by a big margin

WWS

all names r different as its a public report

I apologize if this has already been stated but I have been unable to locate a definitive yes or no answer.

In most raids, is it generally a good idea to force 1 warlock to spec Malediction? We usually raid with 2-3 SP's, 3 Arcane Mages, 1 Balance Druid, 2 locks and 3 hunters.

My guild don't like to force anyone to spec a given way, but I'd say that with such configuration, a malediction-speced 'lock using CoS would be a huge advantage...

With that kind of setup, having one lock spec'ed Malediction for CoS would be a huge damage increase. You have at least 7 classes that would benefit from it. 3% more damage for 7 classes is a lot and very significant. Like the previous poster, my guild wouldn't force someone to spec it, but there would definately be a very noticable raid dps increase if someone did.

What are both of your warlocks' specs? Another thing you may want to consider with a setup like that is having one lock Malediction and another 21/40 SB spam for ISB uptime.

The (theoretical) dps difference of affliction vs 21/40 is small enough that it is most definitely worth it if one warlock goes affliction for malediction and shadow embrace. It's usually worth it just for malediction (ie your second affliction lock) as well.

Calculational exceptioptions are malediction vs ImpSB uptime. In order to mitigate this, make sure your aff warlock specs full devestation, and uses immolate (to decrease time spent SBing).

Maladiction forcing is usually pretty staple with one affliction warlock. Most raids tend to be very slanted towards one school or the other, and eventually shadow will become the curse of choice here for your raid.

That being said, also make sure you have one token shadow embrace warlock. This talent should not be underestimated.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

5/5 SE, 3/3 Malediction. You don't really need Imp Howl or CoEx for raiding, and you can switch some points from Fel Conc to Supp if you need the +hit.

Out of curiosity, what are the high end shadow bolt crits you guys are seeing with the end game gear? It seems like 10k's vs a normal mob would pop up every now and then with just trinkets and consumables.

Question, Spellstrike vs T5:

I have been having a hard time deciding whether or not to replace my spellstrike set, or even just break the set with either/or both of Corruptor legs and helm. I do realise that the legs are roughly on par with spellstrike as far as dmg/hit/crit goes, but of course you get a nice stamina boost by going with T5 legs. Switching to the T5 headpiece on the other hand would lose me 16 hit rating but I will gain 7 crit rating, 9 damage (equiv of one runed ruby), a lot of extra stam (some from the glowing nightseye I'd use to get the bonus as well) and a meta socket.

I am currently fairly low on health at the moment, I am sporting a 0/21/40 Destruction nuke build and fully buffed without blood pact I would have roughly 10.5k health. We are currently working on Azgalor in HS and Gurtogg in BT - so we are going to be running into encounters where high HPs is very desirable.

However, I am still having a very hard time getting rid of my spellstrike set, I do realise from all the reading I have done that the bonus isn't all that, but the individual pieces of ST already have the edge as far as damage enhancing stats go - would getting rid of those be a good idea?

Another thing is the Meta socket, I'd need more blues than yellows to get MSD to work? How the heck am I going to manage that? I need the few yellows I currently have socketed to cap hit, and I will be losing some hit going with T5 helm, making me need even more yellows. Seems to me I would be sacrificing more than what the Meta is worth by doing so. RED, sure is nice, but seeing how I just respeced to Destruction from UA around 2 Weeks ago I don't believe i have the crit% needed to make that meta worth it, I run ~20% crit *including* all talents, very low amount. Seems to me that the *good* destruction meta gems are not feasible in my case at the moment, making the ST individual pieces pull even further ahead of Corruptor.

Has anyone been in a similar situation, and how did you end up deciding what to go for?

Thanks in advance

I went from SS to T5 once I had the helm (and legs which I had for a while, but were in the bank) and put in MSD. The next week I upgraded my legs and MSD no longer worked, so I switched over to RED even though my crit was only 15% on the tip. But since then I've picked up a few more pieces and made my way up to about 20%. I don't know how soon you'll be getting gear upgrades, but socket RED and plan to get more crit along the way.

Another thing you may want to take into consideration though is that RED may not (probably will not?) work in 2.2 which could come out at anytime.

I was hitting 9.5Ks the weeks before, this week I'm starting to see some 10.1K shadow bolts on a normal boss (Rage Winterchill), no nightfall buffs on boss too.

With the reversal of the RED affecting spells, will it be better to socket for +12 dmg/minor run speed or attempt to regem for the Mystical Skyfire?

Mystical skyfire is better by a fair margin. Was the reversal intended, or still no word from blizzard?

Are you sure RED will no longer work with spells? My understanding was they were merely fixing the double multiplier effect which caused it to be better than intended.

On the PTR its not working with spells at all. And seeing as the PTR is now closed, this is probably going to go live...

Did you read his post? 2 locks and 3 shadow priests? The affliction warlock shadow bolting is going to increase not decrease ISB uptime. All other things being equal (ie impact on personal dps), he should maximize, not minimize, his time spent shadow bolting.

It depends how often the shadow priests use mind blast and SW. If your crit rate is above the raid-average, including shadow priests, nuke more. If it's lower, nuke less. If you're not sure, start parsing. It could go either way with that makeup, it really depends on the shadowpriests.

I failed at finding a post where it was calced at which point one should stop hoarding up crit as a SB spamming destro lock, and go for damage instead. I´m atm sitting on 1220 damage and abit over 25% crit(30% with devastation), with hit capped as 0/21/40 specced. Anyone have calculations on this, or if it has already been posted could you direct me to correct post?
Thx in advance!!

Nas, I went from full FSW/SS to 4/5 t5 with just FSW boots, and it was a great upgrade, at least for a bolting spec. Like Eph, I waited til I got T5 hat to make the big transition, though I wore the legs and shoulders as soon as I got them, I didn't take the t5 gloves until I had the helm. I took them before the vashj chest just because we got double hero and I didn't want to let one go to waste, and luckily I got the chest the same day. This allowed me to swap out the attumen gloves and stay nearly hit capped. (I usually have totem of wrath and virtually always have a draenei, so I'm capped as far as I'm concerned).

My total damage is slightly lower now, but I gained a ton of stamina, got hit capped, and also gained a bunch of crit. I shouldn't be vague though...here was the tradeoff:

SS hood + pants + FSW chest + FSW shoulders + attumen gloves
vs
t5 hood + t5 pants + vashj chest + t5 shoulders + t5 gloves

Total:
+117 stamina (!!!) with demo embrace, fel stamina, and BoK that's 1,594 HP. It's also a nice buff for pet HP for demo locks like me.
+ 64 int with fel int and BoK that's 1137 MP and 19.9 crit rating
+17 hit
+44 crit
+15 damage
-2xred -2xblue +meta
+4x tier 5


For simplicity we'll call the reds and blues +9 damage and the meta +12 damage, causing the gems to net -24 damage (worst case scenario). Total shift:


1594 hp
1137 mp
17 hit rating
64 crit rating
-9 damage
+4x tier 5


assumptions:
you didn't bother with FSW socket bonus, but you do with vashj robe and t5 shoulders/helm (but not legs).

Another thing i was pondering on. Spellhaste that you can get... 2x rings, 2x craftables(shoulders and wrists) and staff from Illidan. That should be 184 spell haste rating, 11.6% increase. Which means 2.21 sec SBs. Now, what i was wondering is, how do you calculate how much dps you win/loose using those items in terms of dps? If you have the best items you can get from hyjal / bt that is. I´m having a hard time calculating the dps loss when it comes to hits/crits.

Filthie, are you using the dps spreadsheet? I'm guessing with a bit of experimenting you'll get your answers from that - or at least something you can work off of - you just have to be willing to spend a bit of time tallying up stats and inputting them. It won't be giving you and exact number for when dmg>crit, but with a bit of experimentation you can figure out what's best for your gear level.

I didn´t have that spreadsheet you are talking about, but i found Apoqs post on page 69~ where he states +haste with the 4 pieces(not the shoulders as fifth piece) are better then the stats you loose from the other items so... that question got answered