The Firelock

Ozzmar · 10/01/07, 1:51 PM

I've poked around in several threads about Destruction builds (specifically looking for information about Fire-spec Destruction warlocks) and only came across a few posts saying things like "Shadow does better DPS" and "You lose damage by not using DoTs". I in no way mean to trivialize those comments as I'm sure they're accurate, but I'd like to see a more in-depth discussion about Firelocks and how they perform end-game. The concept has always interested me, but I couldn't find much information here. If there's a big thread I glanced over, feel free to point me in the right direction.

The things I'm interested in are questions like

- What is the optimal spec? (Assuming 0/21/40)

- How do they compare to other specs in terms of raid damage output?

- Do they have any hope of holding their own in a Battleground? In Arena?

- Are they extremely gear-dependent?

I'm mainly curious because I do enjoy my Warlock and had pondered taking up Spellfire Tailoring (mostly just to try something new and different), but I'd hate to pigeonhole my Warlock in doing so.

Thanks in advance for any responses!

Torrential · 10/01/07, 1:59 PM

I think probably the #1 reason firelocks aren't popular is that they do not provide the Imp shadow bolt buff of a shadow destro.

If Incinerate spam DPS equaled shadow bolt spam DPS, shadow would in hands down just for the Imp shadow bolt debuff.

Ozzmar · 10/01/07, 2:09 PM

But their willingness to provide CoE doesn't make mages fight for their favor?

Imp SB is huge, no one can question that. But what about individual damage in a smaller setting like Kara or Heroics?

Is the negative stimulus mostly based on raid damage capability (or lack thereof), or is there more to it? Poor mana efficiency I'm assuming is one of them...

Zaq · 10/01/07, 2:51 PM

Mana efficency for destro specs are never the reason to roll them, and there's really not much difference between fire/shadow for that. Conflag is generally not worth casting as anything but a pvp burst. And generally you still want to use a curse, be it CoE or CoD/A.

To answer your questions, a 0/21/40 build, be it shadow or fire, is a raiding build, just one doesn't benefit shadowpriests and one does. If you're pvping demonic sac isn't nearly as potent as an ae stun. Spellfire is ok, but it will leave your lock incredibly light on stam, and consequently fairly squishy. Fire is perfectly functional, it just doesn't have the extra bonus utility of ISB, and the gearing could leave you more vulnerable.

Trickykid · 10/01/07, 2:54 PM

If you're afraid of wading through them yourself, I recommend some searches within these threads:
1) General Warlock info
2) Destro Raiding

The reasons are simply better personal DPS (and better scaling) and at the margin, you increase raid DPS more with shadow.

In KZ/lower, you'll probably be fine with any spec, so play what you want.

Totemologist · 10/01/07, 2:58 PM

Originally Posted by Ozzmar

But their willingness to provide CoE doesn't make mages fight for their favor?

Imp SB is huge, no one can question that. But what about individual damage in a smaller setting like Kara or Heroics?

Is the negative stimulus mostly based on raid damage capability (or lack thereof), or is there more to it? Poor mana efficiency I'm assuming is one of them...

Incinerate would be more mana efficent than Shadow Bolt (355 vs. 420) and the debuff from Immolate helps to bring in close to what Shadow Bolt can do.

Where you will see Shadow Bolt start to strongly overtake Incinerate is in higher damage gear (3.0 coefficent) and crit gear (i.s.b.).

You could make a strong argument to spec fire if you are raidng with a good fire mage and have little in the way of shadow casters, but largely Shadow/i.s.b. is the key to success.

vokzhen · 10/01/07, 4:26 PM

I ran a DPS spreadsheet test of what I deemed the best destro lock gear in SSC/TK (from memory, hit capped, 31% crit, and ~1300 damage fully buffed). Shadow overtook fire in paper DPS at about 45% ISB uptime, and that was assuming talented CoE, which it seems is often left off. Higher dmg/cast with shadow, but more time life tapping. If you want the specifics, I can dig it up.
However, the loss of ISB uptime when you're running with 1-2 spriests and 1-2 other locks more than makes up for it.

In 5-man and heroics, I wouldn't expect the difference to be that noticeable provided the player behind the character knows what they're doing. Certainly not a difference to the point of making a difference between downing a boss and dying.
PvP I'd expect shadow to be better, since Incinerate relies on Immolate being up in order to put out comparable damage.

Ozzmar · 10/01/07, 4:47 PM

Thanks for all the info everyone!

Vok, from what I read here, 45% uptime for ISB isn't that difficult to maintain is it? I'd be curious to see the math or other "specifics" if you have them close at hand (mainly what spells were being used in the rotation for each).

A buddy of mine is a well-geared Arc/Fire mage, and we enjoy running 5-mans together, so it sounds like this may work for me afterall.

I appreciate the contributions guys!

vokzhen · 10/02/07, 12:26 AM

Yea, 45% is definitely on the low side, and I think it's even on the low side with spriests eating up the charges with Blast/Death. Also, with the level of crit rating, that lock's going to really be boosting uptime compared to your average afflic lock, so having them go fire hurts a fair amount for overall raid dps (that said, in 5-mans and heroics the differences won't be anywhere near as apparent I wouldn't think, especially since you won't have a bunch of other people dealing shadow damage).

I just plugged the spells into the DPS spreadsheet that's here on EJ somewhere... firelock was CoD, Immolate, Incinerate, shadowlock was CoD, sbolt. Didn't include Corruption because apparently at that gear level, without ImpCorruption, the actual DPS gains were extremely minimal (~10 iirc). As I said, it was also with incredibly good gear, though if you're sticking to 5-mans and heroics, getting hit capped will be much, much easier.

novasphere · 10/02/07, 12:45 AM

Originally Posted by Totemologist

Incinerate would be more mana efficent than Shadow Bolt (355 vs. 420) and the debuff from Immolate helps to bring in close to what Shadow Bolt can do.

Over 15 seconds (the duration of Immolate), the mana cost for 6xIncinerate + 1xImmolate and 6xShadow Bolt is almost exactly the same; in fact, Incin/Immo actually costs very slightly more.

The bottom line is that Shadow vs. Fire is basically the same thing; however, Shadow pulls ahead due to slightly better scaling on SB, as well as the fact ISB exists.

Xerophyte · 10/02/07, 1:11 AM

If you're going to be 5-manning with a scorch-debuffing mage but not a spriest then, yes, firelock is superior.

For raids, less so. I think the total effect of me whining at the local destruct-o-'locks to go shadow from being fire was that their dps didn't move much while our spriests and affliction 'locks went up by 100 or so. I suspect the 'locks might need - *gasp* - an additional lifebloom every other minute each to sustain the additional lifetap, which manawise is peanuts compared to the mana gain from the additional spriest dps. That some tree gets a 1.5s healtime loss per minute is real, 'course: I guess we'll just have to grit our teeth and try to pull through with the handicap.

PSGarak · 10/02/07, 1:28 AM

Being shadow also frees up as much as 10 talent points in the destruction tree (improved immolate and emberstorm) to be spent on better utility functions like cataclysm and nether protection. Oftentimes you end up spending the points on improved immolate anyways; the destro tree is actually relatively sparse on straight-up shadowbolt damage talents.

I will say that any warlock silly enough to want to go fire should still spec improved shadowbolt and be willing to play shadow instead of fire when the situation demands. They will shortly find out the situation always demands.

Full destro, with the fire spells and the 41-point talent, strikes me more as a PvP talent tree than a raiding talent tree, with its focus on stuns, dazes, and burst abilities at the cost of long-term damage. However, I'm not sure it can really compare to demonology as a PvP spec because of warlocks' reputation as a high-profile target. I haven't heard almost any mention of the nightfall/backlash build since TBC came out, I suspect it's not as great as it looks, which is sad.

jibblets · 10/02/07, 7:36 AM

Something that has been grating at the back of my skull - I understand the concept of ISB uptime.. However, is the damage gained from Shadowbolt spam really higher than Incinerate/Immolate, given equal footing?

A Shadow Lock will conceivably have;
Sacrifice - Succubus.
Shadow Weaving.
Misery.
Improved Shadowbolt.
Maledicted Curse of Shadows.
Shadow and Flame {Shadowbolt}

A Firelock will conceivably have;
Sacririce - Imp.
Scorch.
Misery.
Sacrifice.
Emberstorm.
Maledicted Curse of Shadows.
Shadow and Flame {Incinerate}

Is the bonus from Improved Shadowbolt enough to overtake the combination of percentile bonuses for both Immolate and Incinerate? If someone has the time, I would love to see the math for 1300 spell damage, at hit cap, for the above.

Granted, I may be missing the point of Improved Shadowbolt. Is it assumed that ISB will be up and running 100 percent of the time for these tests? If so, what is the raid setup required for Shadow Destruction Warlocks to pull ahead of Firelocks? What if the raid only contains two Destruction warlocks?

So, so many questions. I appreciate it in advance.

Roywyn · 10/02/07, 8:34 AM

Originally Posted by jibblets

Is the bonus from Improved Shadowbolt enough to overtake the combination of percentile bonuses for both Immolate and Incinerate? If someone has the time, I would love to see the math for 1300 spell damage, at hit cap, for the above.

Granted, I may be missing the point of Improved Shadowbolt. Is it assumed that ISB will be up and running 100 percent of the time for these tests? If so, what is the raid setup required for Shadow Destruction Warlocks to pull ahead of Firelocks? What if the raid only contains two Destruction warlocks?

So, so many questions. I appreciate it in advance.

Shadow Bolt gets 14.3% more from your spell damage gear, Incinerate gets 10% more damage and 27 more base damage. Shadow Bolt should overtake Incinerate at 1487 spell damage, before any mob debuffs. In reality, it takes over way earlier, at 533 damage accoreding to other posters.
Imp. Scorch is +15%, Shadow Weaving is +10%. ISB is +20%, with 30%-60% uptime.

If you have only 1 malediction warlock, you'll have 13% CoS and 10% CoE. You need two full fire/frost casters to make CoE better than CoDoom. If you have only 2 warlocks in the raid, CoReck is probably better than CoE, while CoS will always be up.
I know you wanted equal footing, I'm just showing you the bounds of your assumption.

What does Improved SB bring from a shadow destruction warlock?
A raid with 2-3 shadow priests, 3-4 warlocks may have around 6k shadow DPS. If ISB was up 100% of the time, it would be 1200 DPS.
Numbers I've seen in other warlock threads claim that one destro SB spammer will increase ISB uptime by 15-20%, and the second one will increase it by 5-10%. The uptime increase of further warlocksare smaller, under the 5% mark from what I remember.
That's another 100-200 DPS increase just from higher ISB uptime on the raid, depending on your setup.

If you want a spreadsheet, WoW Warlock DPS Spreadsheet is pretty good.
Good luck tailoring a setup where fire outperforms shadow

Edit:
SB vs. Inci was before any debuffs, I guess Leulier includes debuff, favouring shadow even more. My number is a bit pointless, since it assumes no mob debuffs.
Sorry about the confusion. If that's wrong again, I'll just remove it.

Fafhrd · 10/02/07, 8:45 AM

Originally Posted by jibblets

Something that has been grating at the back of my skull - I understand the concept of ISB uptime.. However, is the damage gained from Shadowbolt spam really higher than Incinerate/Immolate, given equal footing?

Yes.
Read the linked threads in post #5.