the shadow priest's crit rate is not even remotely relevant.

what matters is their nuke frequencies and the various lock's crit rates.

A = destro crit rate
B = affliction crit rate
C = destro nuke frequency
D = shadow priest nuke frequency

if
B > A*C/(C+3D)
then the affliction lock raises ISB uptime.

if a shadowpriest uses SW:D every 12 sec and mb every 10 sec their nuke frequency is 1/5.5. destro nuke frequency is 1/2.5. lets say the destro lock has 0.30 crit

0.30*(1/2.5)/(1/2.5+3/5.5) = 0.127

12.7% crit is pretty low, even for an affliction lock.

i have a question about curses getting knocked off. has anyone experienced this? in last nights Lady Vashj attempts, i noticed my CoS (I'm the CoS duty lock) getting knocked off. I had to re-apply it at least 3+ times during various phase 1 attempts. We brought 4 UA locks last night to handle the elementals.

I can't rem which thread i read on these boards about other ppl getting their cursed knocked off & to prevent this from happening, they used a lower rank CoS. can anyone here confirm these? I won't be able to test this out until next weeks Vashj attempts.

Debuffs like CoS will get knocked off if there are more than 40 debuffs. Just use the lower rank (the level 60 version), and it will stay up or have an Affliction lock spec Destro, or just have all the Locks not use Immolate.

Bringing 4 UA Locks is a bad idea. And lower ranks of CoS don't decrease the likelihood of it getting knocked off I think.

Read back a few pages in this thread. The topic has been well covered.

Tell that to the person asking the question.

my bad.

doesn't change my point though. even the worst geared affliction warlock will have 15% crit.

You can check out my spec if you like as well. It's basically a SM/Ruin spec, but it allows me to squeeze in 5/5 Shadow Embrace, 2/3 Malediction, a medium-size healthstone, do imp-duty for my tanks and I still manage to crank out decent DPS for my gear level by spamming SBs so I don't feel like I've had to sacrifice much.

Pre-raid and kara-level gear doesn't have incidental crit lying around on it, so if you're like me and spec so deep into affliction you can't get devestation, it sits around 11%. If you spec 41/0/20 you will have 15% guaranteed, and at T5-T6 you're going to another 5ish percent. Of course, I usually find myself in a group with two elemental shamans for another 6%, and that ret pally change in 2.3 is gonna add another 3.

But my main point is that you really need to run the numbers for each situation, as you did, to make sure. It's not immediately obvious at the outset, as evidenced by my personally coming close to the line. My reference to shadow priests was their cast cycle and what sort of nuke frequency they run, not their crit rate. In a mana-conservative mode they may not nuke at all, in which case your raid-crit raises and affliction locks want to minimize their nuking. If they talent mind blast and do that every 5.5 instead of 10, it goes the other way.

I'd like to throw a monkey wrench into the works if I may.

My particular guild requires all 3 warlocks to have imps out. We also require two people with malediction and one person with full shadow embrace.

This isn't really a problem, we all like affliction as far as I can tell. The problem we're running into is that with all raid debuffs up we would need 45 slots.

What do I do?

Ask why? Certainly an imp for the Main tank is important (and for Warlord in BT it helps to have the imp out to help your group live), but otherwise it is not all very helpful, especially that you can't always stay near your group.

Tell your raid leaders that one Warlock should spec Destro, so you don't hit the debuff limit, they may be angry at first, but it will increase raid dps, at a minimal cost.

I will not be able to convince them to let one warlock not have an imp, and it won't change. They believe that the extra health in each group is crucial to fights like Archimonde, Bloodboil, EoS, etc, and they could be right.

Warriors do not use rend, hunters do not use stings.

Guess your guild sucks, oh well (rather, officers are dense).

Are you saying those are fights they require you to use an imp on, or they require you to use an imp on ALL fights because it helps on those particular ones?

I can see the argument on EoS. On Archimonde your group won't be in range of the imp most of the time. On Bloodboil... it just doesn't matter. One warlock using an imp for the tank group is all that is needed.

When you say that you won't be able to convince them, have you tried? Maybe show them WWS data with 0/21/40 locks putting out impressive numbers on whatever content is cutting edge for your guild?

Rather than try to find a way to play your class under idiotic artificial constraints, it seems better to endeavor to get those restraints removed.

Don't forget the belt! Waistwrap of Infinity - Items - World of Warcraft

This is somewhat off topic but I'm wondering what cloak enchant to go with for 0/21/40 which I've started raiding with. Just recently picked up a Nethervoid Cloak and with subtlety being available on my realm again on patch day I'm thinking of going with that rather than 20 spell pen.

Neither enchant is all that useful. Spell pen is kind of nice for the trash waves at horde camp in Hyjal, and for Illidari Council. Subtlety is ok for the tier 5 content, but most of the tier 6 content is not at all threat limited, with the exception of Gurtogg, and maybe phase 3 of RoS.

I use spell pen myself, on the rare fight where threat is a large issue subtelty makes such a small difference that a fail to care.

Of course if you're a in a guild with lousy tanks, or where the raid leader doesn't understand how to manage group makeups for threat when needed, subtelty may look a lot more attractive.

The only use for spell penetration for raiding is casting spells on the Felhunters during Azgalor's trash and using fire spells on Supremous, and some of the Illidari Council (have all resist aura)

2% threat is really not worth that much since threat is multiplied. So you normal threat is 10% (talent) * 30% (salvation) = 63 and with sub cloak enchant it is 61.74.

However, assuming you cast Corruption/Curse of Doom, it is 68.6 instead of 70.


So an average of 1.33% threat reduction, that is not worth having over 20 spell penetration, even though it's uses are limited.

It's 2% of the threat you were doing, regardless of situation, as advertised. If you have, say, 50% threat reduction this ends up being 1% of your theoretical threat, but that's still 2% of the 50% you were doing.

There are no good caster cloak enchants. Personally I find myself threat-limited enough to bother with subtlety, even though 2% isn't much, because I can't justify the existence of spell penetration on my gear. If you PvP much, I might even say to go with 120ac, since your PvP will benefit from the armor more than your PvE would benefit from the spell penetration.

Thanks. Yeah I know there are no truly good cloak enchants, it's mostly a best of the worst scenario when it comes to them. I use the honor reward cloak w/20 spell pen for pvp so that's not a concern. So I guess I'll stick with subtlety as it's better than nothing.

Whatever you do choose, wait until Tuesday as all the old AQ20/40 enchants etc are being made avail through vendors/trainers and will be using new world mats (primals etc).

Also, just because there arent any good enchants, doesn't mean you have to pick one. But with the new requirements for me I will likely get the threat reduction enchant.

Eh. At kara / gruul / mag level gear ~10% or so is right around what a hit capped (no supression) affliction lock will have - unless they have some poorly itemized left over non crafted / non raid items.