My favorite 21/0/40 build:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IirbbMczZZxx0tr0tmuq

(edit) which I just respec'd to, whee! because it'll be fun to run lazer pew pew again for a week .


Affliction notes:

I don't farm tons these days, and I'm fine just SB'ing things down and picking up the pieces afterwards . You also have SB-Immo-(SB)-Conflag as an option. So I don't mind the fel concentration loss, and if you're farming shards, just start draining as your last bolt is flying (since you can nuke them down so effectively), or just take the re-casting loss on rank 1 drain soul while dots are ticking -- it really isn't a big deal.

If you want fel conc, you can pick up 4/5 without effort though, just drop the improved curses.

i don't think anything beyond 1-2 points in suppression is meaningful, now that we have Soulshatter which we *need* to have a low resist rate and isn't affected. Missing a soulshatter is a bigger deal than missing a few SB's -- so I run with at much +hit gear on bosses as I can if it doesn't sacrifice dps (12% now, a bit more once Prince actually coughs up his cloak when I'm there.)

Empowered Corruption gives more of a dps increase than nightfall last I checked, so I take it.

The reason I like the two affliction/destruction hybrid builds more than any build involving demonology is having both reach talents. Worth their weight in gold, and awesome for dps too if you think about being able to get away with moving less.


Destruction notes:

The emberstorm points can be moved around between nether prot (if you pvp), soul leech (overrated IMO but shrug), and emberstorm (adds little/nothing to your raid dps.) That area of the Destruction tree annoys me :p.

Arguably there's also cataclysm for those points.


I did originally try this build as 20/0/41, and while Shadowfury was awesome for 5-mans without another AE class (trigger your own seeds) and keeping me alive in Kara AE'ing, siphon life was far better for a raiding lock.




(edit) on this topic: does anyone know if the healing from Soul Leech causes threat?

I still want to verify that the frozen shadoweave set does indeed cause threat as someone claimed, because if it does it totally negates my subtlety enchant on my cloak and I'd really like to find a way to ditch a piece of it.

So, I ran with my normal setup on Gruul tonight and 21/0/40 definitely underperformed 41/0/20. Usually I'm #1 with around 12% of the damage. This time I only had 11% (still #1) but we also lost some of our top dps so I should've been able to get a higher percentage.

I was also lower than I usually am on Maulgar.

In Kara now, and it feels weaker there too, although we don't have a shadow priest here it's harder to know, and one of our rogues got a major weapon upgrade since I last was with him.

Common sense dictates a nuke focused build wont do aswell on Gruul.

For Kara I would say it would take a little longer to optimise your rotations/trinket usage. You also mention not having a shadow priest and a rogue getting a pimped weap.

I think with perspective the template did quite well for its first night out..you still got nr1 spot with rusty rotations. You have lost your edge on movement fights, but for things like bashing down Hydross adds/Keeping up shadow debuff for all to use..you got it nailed baby!

Actually if you want to replace, the chest might be the peace. According to my calculations the Robe of the Crimson Order is quite a clear DPS-upgrade anyways.

------------------------------

Another thing that has not been mentioned yet and that I would like to throw into the discussion: One advantage of nuke-heavy builds, in particular 0/21/40, is that they do not require as many debuffs slots.

I am currently 0/21/40 shadow-destro, and my shadow bolts have basicaly the same damage/cast time as my Corruption. Which means the Immolate/5x Shadow Bolt cycle is for all practical purposes the optimal DPS-cycle (also it allows me to operate from 36 yards away), and I need only one debuff slot.

Compare that with 41/0/20, which needs 4 debuff slots (UA, Corr, Immolate, Siphon Life) to be fully operational, and you might have a real advantage if your raid is warlock-heavy.

I am not saying all warlocks in the raid should be 0/21/40, but for the third or fourth warlock you might be better off with 0/21/40 than with another 41/0/20.

Eh. I've run with this build plenty before. It was my spec until 1-2 months ago, I'm quite comfortable with it and was actually 21/0/40 the first time I met (and died repeatedly to) Gruul. If I had to pick a "favorite" build for sheer playstyle, it'd be 21/0/40. I switched to affliction because I thought it'd be higher damage, although I find the extra concentration it requires to be a tad tiring.

I had a safe spot the entire Gruul fight, and Gruul wasn't moved OOR (which is rare) so movement wasn't an issue, and in fact was less of an issue than it was other nights -- I just couldn't avoid the silence and the actual brief freeze of the shatter.

We don't run with enough locks/spriests right now for debuff slots to be a big issue. If that changes, obviously I'll reconsider.


How do you figure that? You need to value +hit pretty darn high to have it be a "clear" upgrade. I don't see it worth more than 16-17 +dmg at most for me, and even at that they're equal (although with no stamina, it's hard for me to justify it for boss fights.)

These are reasonably easy to find out. Take out your VW, and pull 2 mobs with it in a way so that it only gets proximity aggro on target 2, and starts attacking / building aggro on target1.

Now, throw a shadowbolt against T1. If VW hasn't done any aggro towards T2, T2 should move immidiately against you, as Frozen Shadoweave procs. Remove Tailoring set and try shadowbolting again, or use incinerate till you proc Soul Leech.

Depending on a spec, but if you are not hitcapped, 1 hitrating > 1 dmg > 1 critrating for a warlock.

For example 0/21/40 really benefits a lot from +hit up until 190+ hit rating. If you are partly hitcapped (affliction specs for exaple) hit diminishes in value, as does crit...

I simply wrote a little DPS-spreadsheet and was looking at the results. Bear in mind this is only for 0/21/40 shadow-destro, which indeed does value hit rating rather high until it reaches the cap.

What might also be the reason is that this was for the Immolate/Shadow Bolt x5 cycle, and for the Immolate in that cycle the Robe of the Crimson Order is most obviously the clearly better choice, while both are about equal for the Shadow Bolts.

With my gear hit is more valuable than +damage with a 0/21/40 build, on the order of 1.27:1.

That's not enough to make the robe more valuable than the vest, however -- and not clearly more valuable. That was my point -- I'm not trying to pick on a single word ("clearly"), but it implied to me a substantial upgrade, which I'm not seeing.

30 hit vs 40 spell damage, at 1.27, turns that 30 hit into 38.10 spell damage: a downgrade.

(although arguably hit has intangible components such as not making you re-cast a dot, which have to be recast so you have to notice it failed; as well as the benefit for soulshatter.)

FWIW Mana Etched Shoulders & Vestments and their 2 pc make them the best 2 pieces in the game atm. This should change once we can slot hit gems in our gear (and get higher dmg items or items with dmg & crit instead) and something like the Illidari Shoulderpads from SSC would be better than breaking the 2pc bonus.

Yes, I hate that 2-piece bonus.

It's making me pick up crap like the Crown and Legs (barely passable by themselves) for that bonus (Over 3% hit), since I'm a tailor and there's no chance I'm dropping one of those pieces.

3% more threat causes you to pull aggro?

i was told today by my Guild leader that all warlocks need to spec destro for SSC. He said it was a more effective build because fights require more burst dmg and less sustained dps. Can any locks with SSC experience give me an opinion on this? Im hoping i can stay affliction. A 21/40 or 21/0/40 build seem so boring. Id also have to work on a different set of gear with more crit. If i do have to switch to destro, which build would be better?

Uh... Affliction is fantastic for basically everything in SSC. Tell your raid leader that you will suck up more than double the healer mana of an affliction build, but do equivalent damage, with far more potential for pulling agro on the multiple fights with agro resets (Hydross, Leo). You might also want to remind him that none of your tanks will have the imp buff, and that you will be incapable of keeping up with affliction locks on highly mobile fights such as Lurker.

The only mobs in SSC that die faster than 30 seconds (the time for a full siphon life, where afflic reaches full potential) are hydross adds and summoned demons on Leotheras. You are incapable of going all out with S+F bolts on Hydross adds due to agro, and as long as you can kill your demon on Leo before the debuff expires, it doesn't matter if it takes 10 seconds or 20.

All said, the only reason to spec destro would be 0 shadow priests in the raid, in which case fire would outperform everything else. Not that I'm knocking destro, it's an easier build to play to its full potential and it can perform, but if you are good at dot refreshing and prioritizing, you will do just fine as an affliction lock.

edit: To answer the other questions, 0/21/40 is far better dps than 21/0/40. Crit is less important than you think, but you would absolutely need to max out hit with a destro build.

Your guildleader is daft. Frankly.

ill definately bring up those points to him. Hes a good leader and always knows what he is talking about so im sure there is a reason somewhere. Just hope he hears me out and we are able to keep some affliction locks for imps and DoT fun.

Based on when the spell is cast, so you may conflag when incinerate in the air.

We lose 5% damage from the shadow weaving nerf.

Which is interesting, because I think it changes the math for shadow vs. fire for 0/21/40. Testing with 1.07 of Bolche's spreadsheet, fire is doing about 73 DPS more than shadow with that build. Note I'm having to fudge it with 1.09 shadowweaving coeff., so it's not a perfect number. My investment in Frozen Shadowweave may be moot.

...

Hmm. On further testing with 1.10 of the spreadsheet, I'm getting very similar numbers for either school with similar gear - just shy of 1100 DPS with around 1000 +damage(all), 12% hit, and 18% crit. So tailoring gear gives the shadow bolting spec a slight advantage, even with shadow priest nerfs.

"- The Warlock Talent "Improved Drain Soul" no longer gives mana back"

Confirmation from anyone on the PTR? Seems a random and petty change if it's true, and I assume they'll have to change the name since we'll just get to put 2 points in for -10% threat and nothing else.

My patch notes say:
"Improved Drain Soul": This talent will no longer trigger when a creature other than the one you are draining dies.

That bug happened to me a few times when the pet died. Too bad they didn't fix the pet killing the killing blow bug, so you still have to /petstay /cast drain soul to get your mana back.

Yes, the bug report I got via a guildmember was that it doesn't trigger at all; my chars aren't on the test realm yet and I was curious.

However I was actually just now coming back here to edit my post and say "Ahhhh I bet, if this actually is true, it's just a bug when they were fixing the bug they said in the patch that they were fixing."