I'm curious since I never tried 0/21/40 until I had mostly all T5 and T6 + BT/Hyjal gear, but are those claiming that a destro build would out dps a affliction build with T4 quality gear actually have full frozen shadoweave crafted?

Again, I'm simply asking because frozen shadoweave + other pure dmg/hit items are a lot easier to get and should offer more overall raid damage.

I can easily understand that destro at lower gear could be just as viable as affliction if the warlock wasn't a tailor.

Also I'm not really stating an opinion based on fact, I went from tailor'd gear + dmg items right to full T5 and then right to full T6 with other slots from each instance covered.

I know there is quite a bit of crit gear early on, but it seems you won't be hit capped unless you start using some bad trinkets/rings since the budget for crit is too high while higher ilvl items can only really mix hit/crit to make it a nice item.

I fully agree with both posters that have positive experience with destruction pre Hyjal. It's definitely viable. I've been using Shadoweave myself ever since we were clearing Karazhan and I realised I would always be outgeared by tailors. So I got FSW myself as destruction, and complemented it with every piece of good hit/crit gear I could find.

My experiences are completely on par with what they're saying. I've yet to see an 0/21/40 warlock get consistently outdamaged by an affliction warlock, given equal gear level and similar tasks.

This was true throughout my entire SSC and TK career. Of course, it's quite possible that the affliction warlocks I've met weren't playing well. This is all anecdotal.

But when my experience which spans 3 raid communities, goes against the apparently common knowledge that affliction is better preHyjal, I'd consider it a warning sign.


But in my opinion it is just common sense to have a mix of affliction and 0/21/40's in your raid. You don't want to see debuffs getting pushed off, you want Malediction, you want an imp somewhere, and you most definitely want the incredibly powerful ISB debuff up.

Yes, I was late to start raiding post-BC, and when I did I jumped straight into working on Kael’thas as an affliction Warlock with full FSW/Spellstrike, and pretty much all the best I could get pre-Karazhan save two pieces (trash neck and the Mindblade) that I got on a "pug" with friends before I transferred off the server to raid in my time zone.

I kept playing as affliction till the week after our first Rage kill and by then I was hit capped as affliction with probably around 1230 shadow damage with only fel armor, and pretty low crit of course. At that point my gear wasn't very different to when I started raiding, only differences were 2 pieces of T5 and the belt of blasting, and as a result I only used the boots from the FSW set. When I first swapped to destruction I noticed my DPS jump by 100-150 on a consistent basis for a week, then it was just improving since then, even though I have only received two upgrades since my respec. Now I out-DPS myself as hit capped affliction by 300+ DPS very consistently, and that is on burn fights where DPS wont be skewed towards Destruction on WWS because of movement.

I haven't done Teron Gorefiend (the ultimate stand still and burn fight) as affliction, however a Warlock that was pretty much on par with me while working on Kael on almost every fight, was present, and he is still affliction with stats that are better than mine were back then. And again, the DPS difference on Teron is 300+ consistently. I'd share our WWS but we've had a bad experience with that recently and are keeping it private for the time being, I'm sure you'd understand, but I assure you the numbers I am quoting are accurate and by no means exaggerated.

I've learned allot from the Class mechnics post, and since i started reading them, my dps has greatly improved! But now i have a few concerns. After i respec'ed to Affliction, i have issues on certian boss fight of contorlling aggro. Im not say I pull aggro, i stay under the tank, but i have to stop SB's just to stay under. I feel i lose allot of DPS when i do this. Also, on most fights, i wait till Omen reads MT's threat to about 20%, again, i feel i lose more Boss dps. It really started after i decresed my crit and raised my Spell hit. Now with lower rate of spell resists, is this the reason im having aggro issues?

My last concern is about the 4 set bouns of the T4 set. I have a hard time of wanting to replace gear due to the 3 sec increase on both a Immolate and Corruption. Will i really lose that much dps without that extra 3 seconds or each dot?

-Shaunalock.

I know this doesn't particularly help, but I have had minimal aggro issues as affliction due to the nature of the damage being dealt (no spikes, steady damage most of the time), all I can think of is your DPS probably has increased since you invested into hit rather than crit as an affliction Warlock (wise choice, crit really isn't an affliction stat), and as a result your DPS just happened to be too much for your tank.

Only thing I could suggest (other than getting another tank heh) is maybe give Felguard a go? Without ruin you won't be getting the huge damage spikes you would as destruction, and you will have the added bonus of splitting the threat generated between you and your Felguard. I am surprised you are having those kind of issues as affliction on boss fights with Salv, but if it really is as bad as you make it out to be (not being able to DPS at all for prolonged periods of time), then perhaps being able to DPS all of the time with well timed soul shatters may be the ideal solution.

Great Thread, I have learned a ton over the last couple of weeks reading / re-reading it.

I am in need of some advice.

First: Aff Lock 43/0/18. Guild is 5/6 MH, 3/6 BT. I am like 8th in caster
DKP so I am not going to be getting much gear from there any time soon, but have most of what is avail from TK/SSC.

Statement: I have 4 Set T5 and as an Aff lock that primarily uses an imp as a mana battery so the 2 set bonus is wasted. My rotation is generally curse->UA->Cor->Immo->SL-> SB Spam (or tap/sb in there).

Issue: I am losing 2 to 3 ticks of corruption that are not being boosted by the T5 4 piece bonus due to the dot rotation.

That seems like a lot of damage that is being wasted by doing the Immo/SL after corruption.

Question: Do I just need to adjust my rotation and maybe move immo to a non-optimal place where it might not be up as much to maximize the T5 set bonus? or would that just "shift" dps lose from the bonus to immo just not being up as much?

or

Should I think about changing specs? I don't think I have the gear to go destruction (16%ish crit from equipment) but maybe doing a demo build (1,42,18) might be something I should consider as it would allow me to take advantage of both the 2 set and the 4 set bonus much more.

I tried doing the math on the immo vs 4 piece bonus and it sort of appeared to be a wash. Also, it "feels" like the 2 Piece T4 bonus being missing hurts. If I am not getting much use out of the T5 4 piece, then should I think about continuing to use 2 pieces from T4?

Any suggestions / feedback would be great.

Thanks.

There are so many places where the boss re-evaluates who the MT is often that you usually have to stay below 100%, not 130.

Sidewalk, my impression of the 4pc bonus is that doing corr-bolt-bolt-bolt-tap/sl is better than corr-tap/sl-bolt-bolt-bolt because you get bonuses of 10%-20%-30%-30% on ticks rather than 0%-10%-20%-30%.

This is a pressing concern of mine as we are starting Hyjal/BT. We've been running with a minimum of 4 warlocks and 2 shadow priests with as many as 8 shadow dpsers in the raid at times. Recruiting an elemental shaman is unlikely. [Here] is our latest Hyjal kill. I've been 21/40 for 2+ months and now have the option of being hit capped w/out gems.

Are 9 (and subsequently 12) damage gems the best choice for destruction at the Hyjal/BT level?

Of course, our 3 affliction warlocks want me to continue to gem for crit but I argue that it makes more sense to have one of them switch to destro for more ISB procs. Our other destro warlock happens to be the least active. I don't see the point of stacking crit if 5 other shadow damage dealers are diluting ISB uptime. Why not try to minimize crit when math and spreadsheets all say that 5 dmg + 4 hit > 9 dmg > 5 dmg + 4 crit > 8 crit? Destro naturally already has a 3% extra crit rate as well as much higher % of time spent bolting.

[Here] is my setup gemmed for crit (disregard my weekend aff build for PvP). As you can see, spell damage is much lower than I would like but crit would be 25.91% tooltip unbuffed.

Option A: Do what math says
Basically, hit > dmg >> crit. It's not rocket science. Wear [Ruby Drape of the Mysticant] over [Brute Cloak of the Ogre-Magi], [Tirisfal Wand of Ascendancy] over [The Black Stalk], [Darkmoon Card: Crusade] over [Sextant of Unstable Currents], and switch my gems to 9 dmg for 203 hit from gear alone. This should up personal dps and allow me to wear the same gear for aff/demo/destro. I could keep it simple by using 9 dmg gems for all future upgrades even if it causes me to dip slightly below the hit cap. Switch from staff to MH/BT/Season 3 1-hander.

Option B: Partially resocket
Move some hit gems to chest and then ditch the stam gems/socket bonuses in helm, gloves, belt, and legs. The shoulders, chest, and bracers with a damage bonus with yellow requirements are worth keeping even if crit gems are used for them.

I don't quite trust the weight place on crit based on the ISB models in the dps spreadsheet. We run with too many shadow priests and affliction warlocks. That Shadowseer mod seems nifty but I won't be able to test it until our next raid on Sunday.

This is definitely true on some fights: Prince Malchezaar and Teron Gorefiend are prime examples. But those are exceptions. Knowing where the limit is important, obviously.

Especially if you have Soulshatter as backup and are standing at range, I'd say 115% isn't an issue. I wouldn't push it much higher, though.

Maybe ask for more misdirections on the MT, hunters sometimes don't bother unless asked.

If you risks aggroing despite using soulshatter, just take it easier and use it a bit later to ensure more threat being removed.

This is the most important thing, I think. If you find yourself high up on aggro really early on in the fight, just chill out for a little bit. Use it later on in the fight, and you'll end up being able to do more damage overall.

Why do you have to stay below 100% when fighting the Prince? I have dpsed him, tanked him, healed the Tank and have never seen him switching aggro.

Oh, I didn´t know that. That's a very good reason not to go above 100%, thanks for the info. Are there any other exceptions, where it would be risky to go above MT-threat?

Gorefiend in BT. I'm going to guess that Mother is also a possibility in BT, having the tank get ported would be terrible, but I'm guessing with all the problems in that fight, maybe there is an extra mechanic now in 2.2.

I wish I could give you a definite answer, but my "logic" very much coincides with yours. I did gem for personal DPS, and since I just do not have enough hit from gear to go all out +9 damage I am sticking with geming pieces that could use yellow gems with Velied Topaz's till I get more hit rating pieces that would allow me to either go all out 9/12 damage or replace some, mostly pure hit, pieces that I have been longing to replace such as the Scryer Bloodgem and Ashyen's Gift.

After a quick glance at the pieces you are contemplating replacing in order to go with "Option A", I would have to say that option does look appealing, each one of those pieces is vastly superior to the one you are replacing and as such I would probably be inclined to take that path. Without doing the maths it seems you would gain greater benefit from substituting those items than you would from replacing dmg/hit with 9 damage.

I was intending to run Shadowseer tonight to see what it gives me, however the link to it seems broken at this time and I have been unable to access it.

It was never possible for the MT to be FA'd pre nerf. If it was, out of all learning attempts, wipes and kills never had our MT ported. However We have had OT's ported.

Since the nerf Saber Lash puts a debuff on who it hits meaning they cant get ported. This by the way was the intended way it was supposed to work pre-nerf but didn't.

Any affliction warlocks finding now that all their mages are going the way of arcane (thus no imp scorch nor CoE), that immolation is fast becoming a non-DPS upgrade? All signs in the spreadsheet point to no. I've juggled the notion of asking the mages to still try and keep scorch up (provided it's a trivial loss of DPS). With at least scorch up, the spreadsheets indicate roughly a 20 DPS upgrade or so. I'll probably ask them to keep it up if we have like three affliction warlocks in the raid, but that's about it.

Anyone else run into this as of late or entertain the thought?

Eh I don't cast Immolate much on fights anymore.

Even under the same scenarios of having no imp scorch up on the mob, I still find immolation only to be like ~10 dps upgrade as full fledge demonology on Welcome by Leulier and Piztai - WoW Warlock DPS Spreadsheet (I haven't raided with a FG personally).

To me, a 10 dps upgrade on immolation falls in line with how immolation (on paper) added like ~+10 dps to a 21/40 build when you ran it on paper, but in practice it seemed to better to drop immolation from the rotation. I planned to not use immolation when I raided with demo (tonight will be the first night), but perhaps I'm missing something.

Edit: Consequently, I wonder if it's worth asking mages to keep scorch up for added immolation dps :>

Using my stats and normal Life Tap usage (not as "needed", just enough taps to end at 0 mana while using a few mana pots, immolate is a 18 dps upgrade over not using using that spreadsheet as Demo. However as Afflction with same stats it is a 2 dps upgrade, but a sizeable mana usage increase, with the same as Demo, so if you don't like to mana pot immolate is not for you , that is likely why you saw a dps decrease as Affliction using Immolate.

Assuming you had 4 Tier 5 on, then immolate is a dps decrease for Demo as well.


Another note, the author put up a new version with spell haste but used 10.5 instead of the ~15.77 for 1% haste, so you have to fix that.

Bingo, now I see it. Thanks! Actually plan on giving myself a shadow priest too, which will probably push the DPS increase up a tiny bit. Immolation, ho!

As for the threat, it may be obvious... But some people need it to be reminded to them - when you upgrade your damage you also generate more threat.... If your tank can't keep up he's the one causing you to lose dps, not you. There's nothing you can do other than improving your soulshatter management but this is almost definitely not your main issue if the tank can't keep up with the threat on most fights.
It is always better to have the ability to do as much damage as the threat the tank can generate as you can always stop dpsing if your threat is high, but you can only increase your dps so much if the tank does generate the threat.
Your best shot about threat is probably to send the tank to read the threat generation discussions on these forums and don't forget salv, and remember if all fails tranquil air totem will let you do that much more dps.

Although Arcane is very popular right now, with the removal of the damage tax in 2.3 fire will be technically top dps again, so it's probably easier to just do with subpar immolate for a few weeks rather than bug your mages (stacking scorch is an annoyance, one of the big perks of AM spamming is no dps ramp-up time). Also is it just me, or is it the height of irony that warlocks are asking mages for debuff assistance :P