Contents

1Introduction 2General 3Talent specs 3.1Affliction 3.2Demonology 3.3Destruction 4Notes 5Changes

[top]Introduction

This thread will serve just as a bridge between wotlk and cataclysm for those who will continue to raid. Information here is mostly still new and could likely in some areas still be improved upon. If you have suggestions or such feel free to post here. This thread will in general not use any very specific numbers but instead focus more on guidelines that should be appropriate for most levels of gear.

[top]General

• Spirit is bad, replace it if you can
• Intellect now gives spellpower
• You now need 17% hit
• Intellect + Hit gems are purple
• You can reforge your gear near the enchanting trainer
• Glyphs are now re-useable
• Dots are best refreshed shortly after the before last tick
• All talent specs can and should use guardian pets (Doom Guard / Infernal)
• Soul Shatter is now 90% threat reduction
• Currently destruction appears to be comfortably the highest DPS spec

[top]Talent specs

[top]Affliction

First thing you should know is that you'll probably want to reforge as much of your crit to hit/mastery as you can, keep in mind you'll need 2 blue gems (hit) for the meta gem, so first fill your blue sockets with hit+int, then reforge crit to hit until the hit cap- and once hit capped reforge the rest of your crit to haste (if you can't reforge to haste, reforge to mastery).

There is a viable drain life and shadow bolt spec, at high end gear levels with sufficient mastery the drain life spec starts to gain an edge on the shadow bolt spec; the drain life spec however does have slightly more difficulty in preventing shadow embrace from falling off throughout the fight.

Stat priority:
Shadow Bolt Focus: Hit (until 17%) > Int >> Haste > Spellpower >> Mastery >> Crit
Drain Life Focus: Hit (until 17%) > Int > Mastery > Haste > Spellpower >>> Crit

Talent spec: WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie
Prime Glyphs: Haunt, Lash of Pain, Bane of Agony
Major Glyphs: Life Tap, Soul Swap, Shadow Bolt
Notes:

• If you use Shadow Bolt as filler, use the succubus.
• If you use Drain Life as filler, use the imp (and use glyph of imp instead of glyph of lash of pain)
• If you use Drain Life as filler, you can move up to 3 talent points from Bane to Dark Arts
• If you use Drain Life as filler, you can replace glyph of Shadow Bolt.
• If you use the Imp as pet, you should use /cast [@pettarget]Firebolt macros
• At high haste levels (~1400+) you can replace glyph of Life Tap
• Optional talents are optional, feel free to rearrange those as it pleases you.
• Pandemic and Nightfall are 2 fairly week talents that you could (Probably should) drop to pick up Soul Burn: SoC.
• See notes at the bottom.

Spell priority:

• Corruption
• Haunt
• Unstable Affliction
• Bane of Agony
• Shadow Embrace (IE: Shadow bolt if its not at 3 stacks)
• Drain Soul (Target HP less than 25%)
• Shadow Bolt or Drain Life

[top]Demonology

Start with Regemming your blue sockets to hit+haste- then reforge spirit where you can, if you cant reforge spirit reforge your crit; to hit until the cap (17%), then to haste where possible and mastery otherwise.

Stat priority:
Hit (until 17%), Haste > Int >> Mastery = Spellpower > Crit

Talent spec: WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie
Prime Glyphs: Immolate, Incinerate, Metamorphosis
Major Glyphs: Life Tap, Shadow Bolt
Notes:

• At high haste levels (1400+) you can replace glyph of Life Tap
• Read the notes at the bottom

Spell priority:

• Metamorphosis
• Immolate
• Hand of Gul'dan
• Bane of Doom
• Corruption
• Immolation Aura
• Shadowflame
• Incinerate (If molten core is up)
• Soul Burn -> Soul Fire
• Soul Fire (If Decimation is up)
• Shadow Bolt

[top]Destruction

To start, Fill blue sockets with hit+int. After that, reforge your spirit/crit to hit until the hit cap, and reforge the rest to mastery.

Searing pain has been nerfed and is no longer worth using.

Stat priority:
Hit (Until 17%) >> Int >> Mastery = Haste = Spellpower >>> Crit

Talent Spec: WoW Talent Calculator - Sigrie
Prime Glyphs: Immolate, Conflagrate, Imp
Major Glyphs: Life Tap
Notes:

• At high haste levels (1400+) you can replace glyph of Life Tap
• You should use /cast [@pettarget]Firebolt macros
• Above 1406 haste there is a steep decline in the value of haste
• Above 1406 haste, any additional haste will reduce the value of shadow flame

Spell Priority:

• Improved Soul Fire (If target is above 80%, make sure this buff is up)
• Immolate
• Conflagrate
• Bane of Doom
• Shadowflame
• Corruption
• Chaos Bolt
• Soul Burn -> Soul Fire
• Soul Fire (If Empowered Imp has procced)
• Incinerate

[top]Notes

• Affliction (Bane of Agony)
  Unlike essentially all other dots, you should not refresh bane of agony while it's still on your target (after the before last tick), the reason for this is the ramp up mechanic of bane of agony. If you reset bane of agony early the result will be that you miss out on some of the heavier hitting ticks.

• Demonology (Cremation):
  The way dot haste works (To the best of my understanding), is as follows: The server takes the time it takes between each tick (ie: 3 seconds), reduces that with haste, and then takes the full (normal) duration of the dot, divides it by the hasted tick speed, and then rounds the outcome to determine the number of ticks the dot will have. For example, immolate at 10% haste: 15/(3/1.1)=5.5, that is rounded to 6 and so immolate gets 6% haste. However at 9% haste, it's: 15/(1/1.09)=5.45, and so it's rounded to 5, the duration now (due to the hasted speed) becomes 13.8s. Because Hand of Gul'dan has a 12 second cooldown and 2 second cast time (before haste) it can at certain specific haste values become very difficult (or even impossible) to correctly refresh immolate using just Hand of Gul'dan. The best thing you can do is just make sure you're at a haste value where this doesn't happen and hope for blizzard to fix this issue shortly.

• Destruction (Shadowburn)
  Shadowburn has been made quite powerful in cataclysm, however at this point it does not scale with any talents at all. It's certainly worth picking the talent up, and at low levels of mastery it's even worth casting (However the benefit is very, very small). The main reason for choosing this talent however should be to replenish soul shards on fights with adds, using shadowburn should net you 3 soulshards to soulburn away.

• General (Shadow flame)
  Shadowflame's damage is buffed a lot in cataclysm, making it worth using for demonology and destruction Warlocks. Similar to immolation aura however many boss fights won't allow you to use it due to either a significant risk involved or notable movement requirements while in melee range. When you can not be in melee range, don't try to force it- you'll more than likely end up losing DPS instead of gaining it if you do try force it.

• General (Scaling / Scale factors)
  The question of why I havent updated scale factors to redlect exactly simulationcraft has come up a couple of times. The answer is important and can be read in this post

• General (Haste thresholds)
  (As mentioned in the last point) Due to the new haste mechanics; if you are Destruction or Demonology there are certain points at which your DPS will go up significantly for a relatively small amount of additional haste. If you are slightly below (ie: ~100 rating or less below) one of the haste thresholds, I recommend you rearrange your gems to hit these thresholds. Note, getting closer but not reaching the threshold will not get you a portion of the benefit, you have to actually hit these numbers (or slightly surpass them). The thresholds (in a raid situation) are as follows 157, 781, 1406, 2030.

[top]Changes

2010, Oct 20: Updated affliction information, added haste threshold note.
2010, Oct 17: Added Shadowburn, Shadow flame and scale factor notes
2010, Oct 16: Added notes
2010, Oct 14: Updated destruction glyphs, removed Searing pain. Moved Soulburn usage down in priority.

Good job. But why affliction need to use Succubus with Lash of Pain glyph? On PTR I tested only Imp and Felhunter and Felhunter did 1k dps (premade warlock). What about Succ? My servers is still on Maintance, cant test myself

I'm a little confused why you'd take the soul swap glyph for raiding (not like there is much else useful, but I see you left out a third for other specs). Would it be specialized for a Putricide style fight where the adds actually last 10 seconds?

This is curiosity from the tool tip only, I haven't had a chance to go play with our new toys yet.

Do we still need to recast UA and Corruption under 25%?

The cooldown kicks in when you apply the dots with the second swap, not when you pick them up with the first one. I can only imagine one scenario where you wouldn't want this glyph active: If an encounter mechanic required you to be able to recall all your dots on the spot.

Hi, nice post - thank you..
I have a question about Shadowburn. You skilled it, but it´s not in the priority list, why?
Do you use it every 15 sec while a boss is below 15% HP?

GC said that every time a dot ticks damage modifiers are dynamically recalculated, so no.

Another thing: Didn't we get 3% hit just for choosing a talent tree? My PTR character sheet says 0% miss vs. level 83 creatures and I'm at 14,something%.

Hit talents for casters are largely gone; the hybrid classes have a functional spirit to hit conversion implemented in their place. We will now need to hardcap.

Thanks for the post but I have some questions please?

1. what is the best opening cast sequence for affliction ?
2. Can we clip bane of agony too, shortly after the before last tick ?
3. Why corruption in destruction rotation (we must always keep up corruption)?

Double check that you are looking at SPELL hit. The others will read 0% miss.

This doesn't make sense?

What does that mean?

To answer what has been asked in several posts:
If i'm right, "Dots are best refreshed shortly after the before last tick" means, if a dot has 10 ticks, refresh it shortly after the 9th tick (the tick before the last tick). This way, your dot will just tick on without having downtime between tick 10 and the first tick of the next dot-application.

Could you clarify in your guide what to do with backdraft charges in the destruction rotation?

As I understood it as long as threat is no issue Searing Pain is better than Incinerate even when the target mob is above 50% health, so Incinerate should be dropped completely in this scenario. But how should one proceed as long as backdraft charges are left? Let them rot, or switch to Incinerate for them. The answer potentially differs once the target drops below 50%.

There must be something obvious I'm missing here, but if reforging grants just 40% of the stat you reforge from, and scale factors (pulled from simcraft thread) are:

Warlock_401_Affliction Int=4.1835 SP=3.0770 Hit=5.0114 Crit=2.0733 Haste=3.2885 Mastery=2.6345


Why would I ever think of reforging crit to anything but Hit?


EDIT: thank you for pointing out the "obvious" part I managed to miss in all the previews.

You still keep the other 60% on your gear.

When you refresh a dot the ticks do not clip, and the new duration of the dot is "time to next tick" + "full duration".

For example, corruption. For simplicity's sake lets say 0 haste, thus 18s, 6 ticks each 3s interval.
If you refresh it at 17s, then the new duration becomes 19s, if you refresh it at 16s the duration becomes 20s.

Refreshing at that point reducesthe downtime of dots to 0 while still effectively maintaining a maximum interval between recassts.

--

Regarding affli best pet: I'll double check to make sure.
I took glyph of soulswap because it could lead to a DPS increase, none of the other glyphs can.
I took Shadowburn because most bosses aren't festergut, you can utilize shadowburn on a fight like Saurfang or Putricide- it's the same reason I took Bane of Havoc- although useless on most fights it can be useful on LDW HC.
I'll check incinerate vs imp- keep in mind that in the real world you're likely using a 50% searing pain rotation instead of a full sp rotation. Anyway- even so imp could beb etter- I'll check.
Bane of Agony is weird, try not to poke it too much or it might get angry (Seriously, BoA is weird; I'm not sure of best practice when it comes to recasting it).
Corruption is powerful now due to it getting 6x 20% of our spellpower and is instant cast, at high levels of mastery it may no longer be worth casting Corruption though.

It is most likely not viable threat wise to use a 100% SP rotation, if it is for you due to great tanks (or if I am perhaps underestimating tank threat in general) then you would still want to use incinerate during backdraft when above 50%. This may not have been the case previously- however since Blizzard fixed Shadow and Flame Incinerate has become slightly better at competing with Searing Pain.

I wonder why you specc "Improved Howl of Terror" in the Affli-Tree and not e.g. Seed of Corruption which might be of bigger importance in certain raid situations (LK ghosts) or 2/2 SL.

About clipping...
So for example we are destro, 0 haste. We're going to make last tick clip at 14. So the "new" immo is not standart 5-tick, it's a new 6 tick immo.
So the question is: will this affect the conflagrate ? Can anybody test, 'cause european servers will be up not soon (

And 1 more: Bane Of Doom has possibility to be upgraded by 1+ tick?

p.s. Great guide.

Needed Improved Howl of Terror to move down the tree- if Soul Burn SoC were available at that level I would've taken it. Like I notced however, optional talents are optional, feel free to move those around.

[edit] @ Vo1os: I never considered that, and am also on a EU server- so I can't test it. Interesting question however.

Know that it can be clipped at 1-14 sec left without damage loss. Interested about haste influence on base spell, not the +1 clipped tick )

As I said, it's not affected by haste at all