Alright so I'm a 43/7/11 Afflock and I'm looking at these two gloves:

http://www.thottbot.com/i28507 - Handwraps of Flowing Thought

http://www.thottbot.com/i28968 - Voidheart Gloves

Now, I know what you're thinking - the HoFT pwn the voidheart gloves; 2 sockets & sexy spellhit while voidheart just has crappy crit.

BUT, the thing is, I will be getting the Voidheart Helm soon. So the real comparison is whether the 2pc set bonus of Voidheart is worth giving up the great stats of HoFT for.

What do you guys think?

You are correct, sir. The only upgrade to HoFT is T6.

Anger-spark gloves http://www.thottbot.com/i30725 are better than either in terms of damage output and available prior to Tier 6.

I don't like spellstrike, it's very expensive to craft and it has horrible stamina.
I'd rather not run around with 6k health thanks. I don't know if you've done any TBC raiding or not but there are a lot of encounters where everybody will take damage and stamina is important.

I understand that you are exaggerating, but if you have 6k health as a warlock ... you're not 'just' wearing Spellstrike, you're completely unbuffed in bad greens.

Fully raid buffed, as a priest, wearing 5 items with 0 stamina on them (Primal Mooncloth, Gruul neck, Prince ring), I have 8600 HP.

If we assume you have 0 slots without stam, you will easily break 10k HP, especially if you spec a few points in Demonology to pickup the +stat bonuses.

Spellstrike are perfectly viable pieces for warlocks. Don't overestimate the need for stamina. Having a lot is nice, but nerfing your damage is stupid. T4 is categorically less dps than the Spellstrike Helm/Legs, but is stat heavy -- if you don't have access to Gruul loot, then get Spellstrike.

And as far as "it's expensive" -- 5 Primal Mights (80g each), 10 Spellcloth (40g each), crafting fee (75-125g) : 925g. Is a piece of T4 worth 925g? I'd say so.

Is completely correct. By and large, T4 is not necessary for warlocks.

My alt rolls with 2 piece spellstrike and 3/3 frozen shadow weave. He rocks 1045 shadow damage with just fel-armor (43/0/18 spec) and he doesn't have a single raid epic.

Granted, i have like 6800 health or something completely unbuffed, but imp, fort, mark and kings get me close to 9k, which is more then enough.

Oh, and if you are too cheap to pay for spellstrike, then you have no need to worry about serious raiding....it's not for the cheap/lazy. Either work for the best.....or don't, and be an average warlock.

Tier 4 gloves with spell hit enchant plus tier 4 shoulders along with Spellstrike can bring some nice DPS pre-Serpentshrine loot or whatever. You have to break up FSW bonus but whatever.

In my opinion the only 2 pieces of T4 worth picking up for affliction warlocks are the shoulders and robe. And that's pretty much only if you aren't a tailor. There are better pieces for all the other slots. (Handwraps, Trial-Fire Trousers/crafted pants, a couple of different hats).

completely agree with Kestrel. Shoulders and Chest T4, Spellstrike helm and pants, frozen shadoweave boots and soul eaters or the handwraps is the way to go. I gem with all +9 spell dmg and have found that is the best way to go. Even though you are going to lose shadow dmg from losing the craftable chest and shoulders you gain around 25+ hit rating along with some stats with the T4 proc.

As far as TBC raiding goes, I'd be inclined to say that DPS is more important than stamina in a vast majority of encounters (at least, to the point that I've experienced them so far, part way through SSC).

Check my gear for an example, if you want, Spellstrike, FSW, couple miscellaneous Badge/Reputation epics, and I'm around 11k HP raidbuffed (and I don't even have Demonic Embrace).

Unless you're one of those people that has to have +9 damage gems in every slot, you should have no problem topping 10k HP in a raid setting (and even if you're a Runed Living Ruby fiend, you'll easily be above most of the mages and priests).

I'd also second the recommendation to grab a few PvP pieces to sub in when you absolutely need more survivability, even though I seldom run into that situation.

The two piece bonus would be better to have than the stats on the handwraps.

Actually, on a related note, the proc chance on the two piece bonus is 10%, is that correct? I've searched before but didn't find a definitive answer.