How many sprirests do you guys run with?

I'm still trying, in vain, to explain to the (mage and rogue) raidleader that "but you can lifetap" doesn't mean it's not a big dps loss when I do. We lose out on them constantly to mages, hunters, and healers. If I'm lucky I can slip in as destruction, but not always, and I think they're just shutting me up :p.

Optimized raids require multiple shadow priests imo ;p it's just too good to have them.
Just think that a group of 5 shadow priests would regenerate mana faster than they spend it through VT alone... And it's not like SPs fall much behind in DPS if at all.

Oh we have two too. They just go to other classes, heh. Last night it was three mages (two frost one fire), three hunters (two BM one MM), a (holy) paladin, and one warlock (me, destruction), while the other two locks were in random groups. And I think the only reason I got the spriest is because I fuss a lot about lifetap, time efficiency, etc., and they know I chug mana pots at every cooldown.

I really wish the mages here could've produced some numbers about their DPS, so that I could have some more rational discussions with our (frost) mage raidleader about why "but you can lifetap", while true, is not necessarily producing the highest raid dps. I mean heck maybe it is, in which case I'll shut up. But I tell him "but you can downrank" .

So far most of what I've gotten is statements like "I run OOM at X minutes in", when what I'm curious about is things like, I take a 15% dps hit to keep up my sustainability. When you look at things like getting in some spirit ticks during pauses on fights, or, say, downranking (which is what our lifetap is), or I don't know...... what do the numbers actually look like.

Not that I don't necessarily believe mages when they passionately say that warlocks never need a shadow priest and all mages always need one -- but I'd like to see some numbers .

I went and looked at your setup. Not sure I entirely agree with your choices (pyroclasm?) but setting that aside....:

I note you have the crusade trinket also. What tricks have you found to keep up the stack as destruction when you have a casting interrupt? All I've figured out to do so far is to try to be within 20 yards ("fun" when trying to do a cube on mag) and hit shadowburn.

Thanks, I'll take a look at those, that's exactly what I was looking for. With the change to how read posts are saved, I've found it's harder to keep up on threads here now.

I'm curious for Demikeke's response, since it sounds like they use spriests exclusively for warlocks. Although perhaps they have a warlock raidleader, and we have a mage (and rogue) raidleader, and that is the difference .

I've been meaning to get back into raiding on my warlock after taking a 6 month hiatus. Being affliction for as long as I can remember, I want to try destro in the raid game.

My specific question is, what about firelocks? I've been thinking about it, since my guild is heavy on fire mages and light on warlocks and shadow priests.

Some basic raw calculations that I did say that discounting Imp. SB, incinerate does more damage than shadow bolt untill roughly 1700 spell damage, providing max available debuffs on the target. Considering my guild rarely has even one shadow priest in attendance, even with Imp. SB incinerate comes out on top, if even just barely.

Is there something I'm missing? I'm asking because I basically never see people discussing the spec. People only ever really look at 0/21/40(my intended spec as well, btw) using SB.

You must be thinking bane has an effect on incinerate, which it doesn't. Fire is a mana efficient build, but shadow still out damages it because the coefficient for SB with SnF is over 1, while Incinerate's coeff is only 0.91. While you do get the bonus from Emberstorm to incinerate (and the raid buffs are roughly equal), ISB pulls shadow destruction ahead of fire destruction. I don't know the break even point, but it's certainly less than 1700 damage (I was ahead of it with only ~1000 damage).

As to the OP's question, according to the spreadsheet on http://www.leulier.com/, hit is entirely the way to go to maximize DPS (until you reach the hit cap). Crit is certainly important, but you should have a decent amount by just looking for decent caster gear in general, as well as the 8% you get from talents. Once you get to the hit cap, +damage is still better point-for-point than crit, but a good mix (3 or 4 to 1) of damage to crit rating will dish out more DPS.

Hit capping is entirely possible in tier 4 gear - I'm at 193 now and can alter some stuff to get there once I have the gems (waiting for the tier 4 robe atm). Don't underestimate the actual tier 4 set - both the chest and robes are better than FSW for destruction. This is due to the high amount of spellhit and ability to shove more spellhit gems into them than FSW.

I've never seen the point in 'Fire-Destro' and 'Shadow-Destro'. Just get generic +magic damage and use every tool at your disposal. Corruption and Immolate do a lot of damage for their cast time no matter if you're not specced for Empowered Corruption or Imp Immolate or whatever build you go for. Just think of them as instant cast nukes for 2-2.5k damage on a 15-18s cooldown.

Sorry, I should have been quoting Phelot in that post, not you, my mistake. While it sounded right when I wrote it, I see completely what you mean now and agree.


Kyth, our raid leader is a warrior so I don't think he has any real bias in SP pairing, although the GM is a SP and really likes to be paired with another SP :P. If I were setting up groups I'd probably just split the priests up and tell them to use a more conservative rotation. It would lower their personal DPS but mana batteries in two groups would be worth it.

Our Hunter's switch specs alot but have been BM pretty consistently lately and say they dont even need VT mana with a fast weapon and an auto/steady rotation. Plus we've just so rarely seen them breaking into top 5 with unlimited mana that the RL is reluctant to group them.

Our mages don't really seem to have allot of mana issues with pots/gems/evoc but we very well could be shortchanging them and I would not know it.

I think the main reason for grouping the way we do is the 2 SPs in the same group. I may be wrong on this but I think no one can use all that mana except for warlocks at around -840mp5 and 0 natural regen. We just eat it faster than anyone besides AB spamming mages (which we tried, but the results were not really stellar). Of course this isn't all fights. On Bloodboil I threw about 5 shadowbolts and spent the rest of the time channeling DL to heal myself through the dot, Shadow Priests were exclusively for healers in that fight, since we only had 7 and most seem to do it with 8-10.

As far as the Crusade Trinket is concerned, I often spam CoE for 4-5 stacks at the start of the fight till the tank establishes some threat, and use searing pain or immolate if I am at risk of losing a stack after moving or switching targets. The 1.5s cast of Immo/SPain and instant travel time make them allot better than Shadow Bolt at getting the proc back up to 10 seconds. If you are on CoS/CoE of course the answer is already clear.

My build might seem a little weird, and I will probably swap it around again in the future. I guess I just wanted an excuse to stop casting Immolate and reduce myself to a 1 button mashing monkey.

No no, the break point is 1700 spell damage. Do the math, with all available raid buffs and a 0/21/40 spec, shadow can get a total of +40% damage(15 DS, 10 SW, 10 CoS, 5 Misery). Fire can get 55%(15 DS, 15 Scorch, 10 CoE, 10 Emberstorm, 5 Misery). For scaling purposes, SB has a cast time of 3 seconds(~86%) while incinerate, 2.5 seconds(~71%)

So the equation for average damage of incinerate is y=(598.5+0.91x)(1.55)(1+crit/100)
SB is y=(572+1.06x)(1.4)(1+crit/100). Since we can assume equal amounts of crit, we can equalize the two equations as (598.5+0.91x)(1.55)=(572+1.06x)(1.4).
So then, 927.675+1.4105x = 800.8+1.484x
Therefore 126.875 = 0.0735x
x = 1726.19

This number used to be 1111 spell damage, however, the change to shadow weaving pushed it back to 1726.

Normally, you could assume that Imp. SB is up all the time, which would push the multiplier for SB to 1.6. In this situation, SB overtakes incinerate at -539.62 damage(ie, always). However, as I previously stated, my guild has few raiding warlocks, most(if not all) are affliction, and no shadow priests. We do however have plenty of fire mages. This means that I will have ample access to imp. scorch but not shadow weaving. My question was if anyone had any experience with the build in that sort of a situation.

Regardless, this is just my proof for what I was saying before.

Furthermore, Imp. shadowbolt uptime from just one destro lock and one affliction lock is at least 40%, for another 1.08 damage multiplier for shadow.

If you assume only your own greedy damage and compare incinerate to shadow bolt, you must at least factor in another 7% boost (35% ISB uptime minimum for a destro lock, probalby more) to shadow. That throws off your "when does SB overtake Incinerate" calculation.