Infraction for Aaryndon: General Idiocy

• Aldriana · 10/14/08, 1:35 AM

Post: [Warlock] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion
User: Aaryndon
Infraction: General Idiocy
Points: 1

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/a34-forum_rules/, #5 (Quote splitting).

Original Post:

Note that I, too, have been mistaken before.

Also, there's a lot of misinformation out there right now, but lemme see if I can confirm/refute some of these statements.

Originally Posted by Natasmai

To summarize what I have read lately and make sure I am not lost.

Affliction at 70 for raiding:

Immolate is a DPS increase, but a complication which will probably result in a DPS decrease when timers get confusing?

Seems likely, especially without molten core. 56/0/5 builds have so much shadow benefit, no immo benefit. I've not tried using immo in an affliction 'rotation' yet myself, though.

Haunt on CD, not at last second or after it falls off? I find this works better for corruption refreshing.

I see no reason not to Haunt as often as possible. If any dots tick while the debuff is gone and your new cast is in flight, they are losing 20% damage. Hopefully the Haunt CD reduction (to 8s) will go live soon, at which point it becomes more a question of whether Haunt's DPCT is high enough to warrant "spamming" it as often as possible, or only to keep the debuff from falling off.

CoA talented is better than CoD.

yes

ISB is wasted talent points at level 70. I am planning a 56/0/5 (bane) unless I am required to move points from affliction to 1/2 or 2/2 healthstone. Are healthstones effected by the potion sickness or can multiple be used per fight?

I agree about ISB, haven't tested healthstones, but as they are currently considered different from potions, I imagine they don't have a sickness effect. You could probably healthstone, potion, and HS again in one fight.

Assuming no talents for any pet increases and we have disc priest/mage for buffs, Succy damage is better than fel hunter?

My tests show Felhunter DPS > Succy when you have a full rack of dots and shadow embrace up. Hard to say how scaling will help, but consider that the succubus lash doesn't build the way Shadow Bite does. And they both deal shadow damage and so should both get the same raid-stacking benefits. In my tests on a target dummy solo, the felhunter did about 6-6.5% of my damage, the succubus about 5%.

Corruption is a must for Major Glyphs, but there isnt really a worthwhile second choice. Bolt seems to be the only useful (barely) one we have unless we go to a soulstone or healthstone option for utility.

Don't forget glyph of shadowbolt. 10% mana reduction means fewer taps and fewer taps means more DPS time. As for a third glyph, all the good ones take northrend herbs to get to, so you're right about that.

For Destro:

Imp imp/Emp imp? Start and stop DPS or let him sputter-cast?

As a lot of people pointed out when I made the suggestion that Demonic Power might be bad, you can keep the imp doing good DPS by just letting him stop until he regens. He does a lot more DPS this way because of how fast his regen is, and the fact that he'll steal Replenishment from people less since he gets back to high mana right away (which is good for your healers)

Conflag or no? F&B or no?

Yes and Yes. Conflag isn't working right right now, but it is still worth casting as long as you time it well. F&B Isn't the best talent in the world but if you are using conflag it's a lot of crit. i see a lot of builds sacrificing F&B points for other talents, and I think it comes down to a judgement call of what will add more DPS, but don't underestimate the value of 25% conflag crit, and 15% of 1600+ spell power (that's 240 or more damage) being added to immolate (you do lose a little of that damage to the last tick that conflag eats).

Rotation I would see is CoA, Chaos, Immo, Incin filler, repeat Chaos on CD, refresh DoTs etc etc. Or add Conflag in before last immol tick if used.

I've had more success running Corruption also, and using Chaos Bolt only on backdraft charges. Basically, Corruption itself has decent (if lackluster) DPCT even untalented, and it means much higher Molten Core uptime. As for CB, Destro falls into a very clean, rhythmic rotation if you conflag, immo, CB, Incin filler, and repeat. You end up with CB "rotting" off of cooldown for about 2 seconds every rotation, but in my opinion that cooldown is not there to tell us how often to cast CB, but rather to keep CB as a piece of a larger puzzle rather than a primary new nuke (and also for the sake of pve and pvp balance since it's so powerful). I've had more success with high DPS keeping the rotation rhytmic in terms of immo/conflag/CB, and re-applying dots/lifetapping during the incinerate filler time.

Do you use Corruption instead or in addition to CoA and do you use the Glyph?

Can't answer as for the glyph of corruption yet but I do find the spell adds to MC uptime and thus to DPS. I'm not sure if the shadowbolts are worth it, but it'd be very easy to cast a few sbolts on a dummy to figure out their DPCT as a destro build (assuming the cast time is 1.5 since you are only going to actually use them when you proce a trance), then compare that to the DPCT of your incinerate. If 1.5s of incerate time is more damage potential than 1.5s of shadowbolt time, don't use it. Don't forget to consider molten core. You're looking at 80% uptime or so if you run CoA and Corruption.

Glyphs: Corruption, Imp, or Bolt (useless) are our only choices. I think that might force us to use Corr and add it to the rotation in addition to CoA.

You make a valid point about the lack of good lvl 70 destruction glyphs. Sbolt glyph would be useful though if you decide it's worth casting them during trances. Destruction is the most mana-intensive build we have, anything to reduce lifetap time is going to make your rotations easier (there's a natural rhythm for a lifetap right before you conflag but 2 or 3 taps in a rotation will mess things up a bit)

I still see Affliction being the easier spec to master in our short month left raiding at 70.

I question that statement only because you can "settle" for a rotation in destruction, as I have mentioned. At start of fight you Immo, CB, apply dot(s), then start nuking, then it's a simple: Conflag after 12th second of immo->Re-Immo->CB->back to fill time of incinerate/dots/lifetap.

It's very rhythmic and does solid DPS. Affliction seems to have slightly higher DPS potential but is much more hectic and harder to pull off. Both builds still leave some questions which you posed very well in your post, and we'll see if people agree with my answers.