Arelenda

If you are only interested in what a particular talent build or piece of loot does for you, I recommend using the spreadsheet by Leulier, linked at the bottom.


Talent choices

Warlocks have many great talents, and there is lots of room for customizing your spec. Consequently there are many viable hybrid builds, each requiring a different play style. To keep this guide short, I'll focus on the three main tiers and their most sensible pve raid builds. Even within those there are a lot of variations possible.


Affliction

Affliction focuses on dots. Typical demon choice for this style is imp. Even though your crit chance is lower than that of destruction warlocks, you'll want to have improved shadow bolt.

Examples
classic Spec
Raid support with UA
Raid support with Ruin

As mentioned before, there is plenty of flexibility in the early parts of the Affliction tree.

Play style
- Optimal strategy is to keep Unstable Affliction, Corruption, Siphon Life and a curse active on your target. When all your dots are up you will be using that time to throw Shadow Bolts or Dark Pact/Life tap. Good timing is important: never refresh a dot effect before it has run its full duration, but minimize the time between the last tic and reapplying. For example, you want to start casting Unstable Affliction before the last tic hits, so that the last tic happens during the cast and UA is reapplied almost immediately after.
- You probably want to use an addon like DoTimer | World of Warcraft @ Curse.com or Forte Gaming / Forte Warlock Addon for this. There is no fixed rotation since your dots have different durations.
- Get your imp buffed, blessing of wisdom helps a lot for his mana regeneration, which you can siphon off with dark pact. Imps can only be buffed when they are not phase shifted.
- Despite Drain Life getting a lot of benefits, Shadow Bolts will always outdamage it. Drain life is the most mana efficient spell since you're effectively gaining life/mana.

Strong and weak points
- More mana efficient and self sufficient than other trees.
- Ideal in situations when two or more mobs are being tanked, as you can dot them all.
- This spec provides less burst damage, and scales worse with gear than other specs.
- Bloodpact can be nice to boost party hit points, especially on fights where a tank can get flattened fast, or where there is lots of aoe damage on the raid.
- Can come with Malediction, which scales with the amount of Shadow/Arcane users in the raid. It adds 2.7% over the untalented CoS. (113% talented, 110% untalented, 1.13/1.1 = 102.73%)
- Can come with Shadow Embrace, which reduces the melee damage on the tank by 5%. This effect is multiplicative: if your tank would take a 1000 hit it'll be 950 with SE.
- Due to the high amount of raid benefits (Blood Pact, Malediction, Shadow Embrace), having at least one affliction warlock in a raid is recommended.
- This build uses a lot of debuff slots. As soon as the cap of 40 debuffs on a mob is reached, the oldest ones will start falling off. For this reason, too many affliction warlocks in a raid will hamper one another. If you're having trouble with debuffs being pushed off, you can use a lower rank of CoS (see Curses, below), have all warlocks use only the optimal dots, or get Warlocks to respec to another tree. (also, see the Debuff count addon linked at the bottom of this post)
- Most affliction warlocks use Suppresion to reach the hit cap early on, and spec out of it when they obtain more +hit on their gear.

Variants
Affliction builds have access to several talents that can support the raid: Improved blood pact, Malediction, and Shadow Embrace. Most variants are therefore tradeoffs between these and talents that will increase the Warlock's personal dps.

Optimally just one warlock in the raid should have them. The UA support build is recommended at starting levels, with the Ruin support build likely to perform a bit better at end level raiding, due to high amounts of hit and crit rating on pieces at that level.

30/21/10 keeps popping up as an alternative build. It's been harshly criticised every time it was proposed. See post #78 and beyond in this thread for details.


Basic gear choices (see below)
Spell hit (until capped with suppression) > Spell damage > Spell haste & Crit

After obtaining 76 hit rating with 5/5 Suppression, warlock dots are hit capped. Further extra hit rating only affects Shadow Bolts/Immolate, and is worth less than spell damage on a point-for-point basis.






Demonology

Demonology in raids is about making best use of your top tier Demonology talents. The strength of these can make up for the lackluster mid tier Demonology ones.

Demonologists get a boost to spell power, get a 5% damage bonus due to soul link, and get +5% to crit with spells. It is vital their pet stays alive, though. A Demonologist without a pet is very ineffective.

Raiding With Felguard (SSC, TK, Hyjal, BT) - The Warlocks Den is a great resource for aspiring Demonologists.

Examples
Standard Spec with high focus on ISB
Another version with improved Life Tap
Demonology without a Felguard using a Succubus instead to obtain Ruin.

Play Style & tips
- Keeping your Felguard or Succubus alive is key. Micro managing your pet is vital, since it dying means losing a lot of dps.
- Spell rotations are similar to affliction, with a higher accent on (improved) Shadow Bolts.
- Remember to have your pet attack from the back. Melee attacks from the front can be parried, which can cause a faster attack on the MT. Avoid this at all costs. Update: this has been patched, and demons will now position themselves behind their target.
- Ask for buffs on your pet. His stamina and intellect will boost your attack power, and it'll allow him to stay alive longer. BoW should help too
- One point in Mana Feed will allow the Felguard to cleave for 5 minutes
- If you choose to use a Succubus, don't have her use Lash of Pain on the primary target, as it eats ISB debuff charges.
- [Sporeling Snack] and [Kibler's Bits] work on Warlock Pets. The latter is a reward from the cooking quests from the goblin in Shattrath.
- Greater blessings cast on warlocks will also affect their demons, except the Felguard. Felguard and hunter pets get the greater blessings cast on Warriors instead. Phase shifted imps do NOT receive buffs.
- Demons about to die can be dismissed and nearly instantly resummoned with Fel Domination. This will conserve their buffs, and bring them back with full health and mana. The command to dismiss a demon is /run PetAbandon(), which can be macro'd and assigned to a button.

Strong and weak points
- Demonology relies on having the Felguard/Succubus out, so the effectiveness varies a lot. Some fights are brutal towards pets.
- It is the most versatile spec due to the demons each having different effects on you.
- Best choice for Warlock offtanks in specific encounters (Leotheras being a prime example)
- Demonology is probably the least gear dependent of all three specs. Exception is the tier 5 two piece set bonus : [Hood of the Corruptor]. This set bonus make a vast difference. [Void Star Talisman] is also really useful in keeping your pet alive. Before obtaining those items, demonology is likely to perform less well than the alternatives due to the extra healing required on the pet. Shadow Priests in your group will obviously help a lot for pet survivability.
- Demonologists want a raidbuffed demon out at all times. Make sure to resummon it before raid buffs are applied, or you'll end up having to ask for buffs on your pet. These buffs have huge effects on your demon and on your spellpower. It can become quite a hassle to have to ask for buffs: most healers don't have pets included in their UI and having to ask for buffs on a pet can become quite tedious. Especially the Succubus is prone to dying quite fast.

Variants
The Succubus build is an alternative to 0/21/40. It has Demonic Tactis (5% crit) and Soul Link and Demonic Knowledge (typically around +200 damage for a raid buffed succubus). It doesn't have the 0/21/40 Backlash (3% crit) and SnD (20% spellpower to Shadow Bolt/Incinerate). For reference, a Succubus has a lot less hit points and has no avoidance to aoe effects compared to a Felguard.

Basic gear choices (see below)
Spell hit > Spell damage > Spell Haste > Spell Crit

As mentioned before, tier 5 two part bonus is very useful for this spec, as is [Void Star Talisman] which drops from Solarian in TK.

Stamina and Intellect and Demonic Knowledge:
Demons get a Stamina boost equal to 30% of their owner, same for Intellect, which translates into 15% Spell power.

With talents:
1 stamina on items =
1.15 stamina on Warlock (Demonic Embrace) =
0.3968 Stamina on Demon (Fel Stamina 15%, Demon Sta contribution 30%) =
0.0595 spellpower (15% Demonic Knowledge)
0.0720 spellpower with kings on both demon and owner

So 1 sta = 0.072 spellpower with BoK.

It also boosts your Succubus hit points with 2.9 without kings (update needed for Felguard, can anyone tell me the stamina to hit point conversion? It's demon dependent, Succubi get 7 health per sta)

1 intellect =
0.345 int to demon (Fel Intellect 15%, Demon Int Contribution 30%) =
0.052 spell power (15% Demonic Knowledge)
0.062 spell power with kings on both demon and owner.
So with Kings 1 int = 0.062 spellpower (and 0.3 crit rating, as listed further in this post)

Gearing for Stamina or Intellect in order to obtain higher spellpower through Demonic Knowledge will yield very insignificant returns, especially compared to how buffs like Fortitude and Arcane Intellect on the demon will affect it. Because of this, Stamina's only real function is to give you (and to a lesser extent, your demon) a larger health pool.



Destruction

Due to Shadowfury's limited use in raids, the typical Destruction build is 0/21/40, taking a few subpar talents in Demonology to obtain Demonic Sacrifice, which boosts shadow or fire damage by 15%.

This build focuses primarily on Shadow and Flame, Ruin, and Demonic Sacrifice, resulting in Shadow Bolts with a high damage coefficient from spell power. (3/3.5 + 0.2 from talents, or rougly 105.7%).

It's very important to keep the Improved Shadow Bolt Debuff (ISB) up as much as possible, since it provides 20% extra shadow damage to the entire raid while it is active. (including dots - this is a common misconception). Destruction warlocks consequently put a higher value on crit rating than other builds do, since it helps with ISB uptime..

Updated for 2.4:
Since 2.4 Emberstorm was buffed, making Fire destro a valid alternative that uses Incinerates instead. It is currently being debated which is better.

This spec scales best with gear, and will clearly outperform affliction on high gear levels (Hyjal/BT). For starting raiders, affliction gets a head start due to the hit bonus of Suppression and the mechanics of dots putting spell damage to work while needing virtually no other stats. When +hit gear becomes more easily available, the gap closes.

There has been much debate about what the exact gear treshold is, for destruction to outperform affliction. Opinions are divided on the matter. Both specs require different play styles, resulting in boss fights typically favoring one spec over the other. ISB damage is hard to measure. Because of this it is virtually impossible to get solid evidence. The debate is unlikely to cease any time soon.

The old rule of thumb "you need Hyjal/BT gear for destruction to be viable" is most definitely untrue. Anecdotal evidence suggests Destruction warlocks with Kharazan or tailored gear outperform equally geared affliction warlocks. Your mileage may vary, as player skill and latency are likely to be far more determining factors.


Examples
Default build
Hybrid Fire Destruction
Full fire destruction
Destruction with Siphon Life
Destruction with Shadowfury

Play style
- Spam Shadow Bolts and curses. Life Tap at opportunate times. Bring potions, healthstones and bandages. Fire destro will use Incinerates instead, and needs to make sure Immolate is up.
- Curse of Doom and Curse of Agony still provide higher dps over regular spells provided your target lives long enough.
- At lower spelldamage levels Corruption will be viable, provided you have enough debuff slots, you get the full 6 tics, you're not threat capped and you don't need to move to cast it (no extra range talent).
- for Shadow destro: if CoE and improved Scorch are up, talented Immolate will outdamage Shadow Bolt on damage-per-casting-time at every realistic gear choice, even if accounting for the extra mana cost and ISB procs. If all of these factors are absent, Shadow Bolt might be the better choice depending on gear (better gear favors SB).
- At the start of a fight you may want to apply a curse, Corruption then Immolate regardless of gear, since starting early with Shadow Bolts can easily outaggro the tank if he gets an unlucky string of dodges/misses/parries on the pull, and you crit your first couple of spells.
- Since you require Life Taps, having some way to monitor raid health is recommended. When the raid is topped up, a Life Tap or two will result in Flashes of Light or Renew/Rejuvenation on you, all of which are very mana efficient. Moderation is key, since a string of consecutive Life Taps will set off alarm bells, diverting healer attention.
- Summoning an infernal will not remove your Demonic Sacrifice, and is a nice way of increasing dps. It does around 30-40k damage in the 5 minutes before it breaks the enslave. It's usable in Sunwell (notably on Brutallus) and in Mount Hyjal. It is not usable on Archimonde or Kalecgos, as being out of range of your infernal can set it off on the raid. Changed in v2.4.3 - Infernals are level 50 now.

Strong and weak points
- This spec has the most powerful burst damage. This is a boon when things need to die quick, but it makes it harder to manage threat while still maximizing dps.
- It is the least mana efficient spec, requiring the occasional heal to be able to keep dpsing.
- Destruction warlocks will need a healthy amount of healthstones, healing potions and bandages in case healing is scarce. Having to stop dpsing to bandage or drain life will make your dps drop dramatically.
- Scales the best with gear, due to Shadow Bolts getting a 106% bonus per +damage (3/3.5 + 0.2 from talents), which result in more dps bonus than any other spell for any spec.
- ISB uptime is hard to measure or model, but provides a boost in shadow damage to the entire raid.
- This spec requires a lot less management since there are no real dots to keep track of, and no pet that can die. Some warlock dislike the lack of variety in spells used, others prefer it because it allows them to focus on other things, like keeping an overview of what is happening.
- Conflagrate, like Shadowburn has very limited use in raids, as Shadow Bolts outdamage it.


Variants:
The fire specs use Incinerate over Shadow Bolts. It is more mana efficient, but has no synergy with other Warlocks/Shadow Priests since you're not contributing to ISB. Since 2.4 fire is competitive, and both fire and shadow destro 0/21/40 are without a doubt the highest dps specs.

The Siphon Life spec drops Demonic Sacrifice for Improved Life Tap and Siphon Life, making you more self reliant. Key talents are the standard destro ones (SnF, Ruin, +8% crit) and Siphon Life. Not as high dps output as the default build, but does require less heals and Life Taps and provides Blood Pact. Listed mostly for completeness.

The Shadowfury spec drops Demonic Sacrifice for Shadowfury and some affliction talents. Not as high dps output as the default build, but gets improved Life Tap, Shadowfury and provides Blood Pact. Shadowfury has very limited use in raids, but is very powerful in encounters where it does work. (Hydross, Morogrim, Vashj, Solarian and in Hyjal / ZA)

Nether protection is good on only a few encounters (Illhoof, Theron Gorefiend, Archimonde). It does not proc off Leotheras's Demon phase Fire Bolts, so this will not affect your ability to tank him. This is not the case for later bosses (Capernian, Illidan) that can normally also be tanked by warlocks in certain phases: you will not be able to tank these reliably with Nether Protection. Use of a /cancelaura Nether Protection macro can alleviate but not solve the problem. NP has been reported to be really good in most Sunwell fights.


Basic gear choices (see below)
Spell hit > Spell Haste /Spell damage / Crit.



General gearing issues:


There are 4 main statistics for a warlock for dps:
Spell damage
Spell hit
Spell haste rating
Spell crit


Each of these has diminishing returns. As a result, there is no fixed tradeoff rate for one versus the other. Different specs will also focus on different stats.

Tools to determine tradeoffs for hit/crit/haste rating and spelldamage for your specific talent build and gear selection are linked below.

Spell hit is a special case, because it provides the most effective way to increase dps on bosses and is useless on everything else beyond 5%. The hit cap versus bosses is 16% (202 spell hit rating, unless you have a Draenei or a Totem of Wrath). Typically Warlocks will use two sets of gear, one for bosses and another for trash mobs or add fights.

Spell haste rating largely depends on the spells you use. Destruction warlocks will favor it most, affliction ones will like it the least.

Spell crit is only useful if you have ISB (which, however, all raiding warlocks should). Even then, the high amount of rating required for one crit % make it worth less than the other ratings.

This post describes well how tradeoffs work. That post is written with destruction warlocks in mind, but it is equally valid for Demonology and to a lesser extent affliction.

Rating vs ratio rates:
22.1 crit rating is 1% crit
15.77 haste rating is 1% extra casting speed.
12.6 hit rating is 1% hit



About Haste, how it is calculated and how it affects dps
15.77 haste rating increases your casting speed by 1%, this is not the same reducing as your casting time by 1%.

Example: take the spell shadow bolt, with talents it has cast time = 2.5s.
Assume 315 haste rating (20% haste), the casting time would become 2.5/1.2 = 2.08s.
If you would also get Heroism, this would stack with your haste: cast time becomes 2.08s/1.3 = 1.60s

Haste still suffers from diminishing returns due to your MP5 not contributing, but for most purposes pretty much provides linear increase to your dps.


Base stats:

Stamina
Having enough Stamina will prevent you from dying to random aoe abilities. After a certain treshold it will hardly affect you at all. See above for effect on Demonologists.

Intellect
Intellect will increase your base mana, which isn't very important in pve. In addition, 82 int grants 1% spellcrit, so it roughly 1 int = 0.27 crit rating. (0.3 with kings).

Spirit
If you have a Priest with Improved Divine Spirit present, 10% of your Spirit goes to spell power. Therefore 1 Spirit = 0.1 spelldamage. (0.11 with kings)



Meta gem choices:
[Imbued Unstable Diamond] from the Bash'ir event. Requires 100 apexis crystals and surviving the Bash'ir onslaught.
[Mystical Skyfire Diamond]
[Swift Starfire Diamond], obtained from Spirit Shards.
[Bracing Earthstorm Diamond]
[Chaotic Skyfire Diamond]

Chaotic Skyfire Diamond makes crits do 209% damage of a normal hit. (150% x 3% = 154.5%, with Ruin the crit damage bonus is doubled, so 209%)

For Destruction and Demonology, [Chaotic Skyfire Diamond] will be the best choice, but for Affliction there are multiple choices.


Basic gem choices:
Most obvious are:
[Veiled Noble Topaz]
[Runed Living Ruby]

Gemming to get the hit cap (202 hit) is the most common strategy, as it allows you to do straight tradeoffs of hit vs crit, spellpower or haste.

Alternatives are:
[Great Dawnstone] Used early on to reach the hit cap
[Glowing Nightseye] Used only to meet exceptional socket bonuses or Metagem requirements.
[Potent Noble Topaz] Used only to meet exceptional socket bonuses or Metagem requirements after reaching the hit cap.

These same cuts are available for the Black Temple and Mt. Hyjal epic gems.

Todo: There are new haste gems in 2.4. They're likely to be better than the hit/crit equivalents and should be looked up. Feel free to help me out with these.


Crafted Gear for warlocks

The Spellstrike set is a good option.
[Spellstrike Hood]
[Spellstrike Pants]

[Belt of Blasting] is craftable using two nether vortexes. The pattern drops in SSC off trash.

Regardless of spec, tailoring warlocks can get the Frozen Shadoweave Set, which remains useful even in BT.
[Frozen Shadoweave Boots]
[Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders]
[Frozen Shadoweave Robe]

For engineers, the [Destruction Holo-gogs] are by far the best choice. They can be upgraded to [Annihilator Holo-Gogs]. The schematic is boe and drops in Sunwell Plateau (from trash, apparently, confirmation needed).

Leatherworking provides [Drums of Battle], duration 30 seconds and cooldown is two minute. Chain using these gives the rough equivalent of 20 haste per person, or 100 haste for one person. Note that using drums to boost your own dps produces no result, as they do cost you a GCD. They will, however, boost your party's dps.

Alchemy provides [Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone].


Trinkets

vendor purchasable trinkets:
[Darkmoon Card: Crusade] (Darkmoon card reward)
[Scryer's Bloodgem] (from vendor, requires scryer reputation)
[Icon of the Silver Crescent] (vendor, 41 Heroic Badges)
[Ashtongue Talisman of Shadows] (from vendor, requires exalted reputation with the Ashtongue Deathsworn in BT)

about the talisman:
The highly situational use of this trinket renders it useless to almost all warlocks, given its place in gear progression: Warlocks exalted with the Ashtongue typically already have very good trinkets. On single targets the Icon is better, even for Warlocks that have Instant Corruption. It can outdo the Icon on multiple targets, the theoretical threshold is around 20 Corruption tics per minute, provided you have Corruption talented.

As already mentioned [Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone] required SSO exalted reputation.

[Timbal's Focusing Crystal] drops off Priestess Delrissa (3rd boss in Magister's Terrace) on heroic mode. It is relatively easy to get, considering how good it is. Cooldown is supposed to be 15 seconds with a 10% proc chance. The effect is a mini shadow dot that does not eat ISB but is boosted by it. (confirmation needed).


Magister's Terrace and gearing up a new warlock

The loot in the new 5 man instance, introduced in 2.4, is far superior to all other dungeon loot in quality. In addition, Kael'thas drops heroic items in normal mode, and all bosses drop epic items in heroic mode.

Notable drops on normal mode:
[Bindings of Raging Fire] off Selin
[Band of Arcane Alacrity] off Vexallus
[Cloak of the Betrayed] and [Duskhallow Mantle] off Priestess Delrissa
[Gloves of Arcane Acuity] and [Kharmaa's Ring of Fate] off Kael'thas

Notable drops on heroic mode:
[Jaded Crystal Dagger] off Selin
[Fel-tinged Mantle] off Vexallus
[Timbal's Focusing Crystal] off Priest Delrissa
[Scarlet Sin'dorei Robes] off Kael'thas


Consumables to boost dps

Oil: [Brilliant Wizard Oil] or [Superior Wizard Oil]
Food: [Blackened Basilisk], [Crunchy Serpent], [Poached Bluefish]
Elixirs: [Flask of Pure Death]

Potions:
Using [Super Mana Potion] on every cooldown will boost your dps by reducing Life Tap downtime, especially if you have a [Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone]. [Destruction Potion] are the second best option. In fights that have down time where you can replenish your mana or where mana is not an issue, they're the best option.

[Drums of Battle] are the most effective way of boosting raid dps. (requires LW)
[Flame Cap] are useful for fire destro (shares cooldown with healthstones)

Warlock sets

Tier 4
[Voidheart Crown] - Prince Malchazaar
[Voidheart Mantle] - High King Maulgar
[Voidheart Robe] - Magtheridon
[Voidheart Leggings] - Gruul the Dragonkiller
[Voidheart Gloves] - Curator

2p set bonus reported to have a 10% proc rate and does proc off dots (confirmation needed).
4p set bonus grants both Corruption and Immolate an extra tic, increasing total damage per cast of Corruption by 16% and Immolate by roughly 12%.

Tier 5
[Leggings of the Corruptor] - Fathom-Lord Karathress
[Hood of the Corruptor] - Lady Vashj
[Gloves of the Corruptor] - Leotheras the Blind
[Mantle of the Corruptor] - Void Reaver
[Robe of the Corruptor] - Kael'thas Sunstrider

2p set bonus is incredibly good for demonologists, and useless to everyone else.
4p set bonus is worded strangely, it only applies to the base damage of the spell, and only to your own spells. The exact mechanics are detailed here. It is very weak.

T6
[Leggings of the Malefic] - Illidari Council (BT)
[Hood of the Malefic] - Archimonde (MH)
[Gloves of the Malefic] - Azgalor (MH)
[Mantle of the Malefic] - Mother Shahraz (BT)
[Robe of the Malefic] - Illidan (BT)
[Bracers of the Malefic] - Kalecgos (SWP)
[Belt of the Malefic] - Brutallus (SWP)
[Boots of the Malefic] - Felmyst (SWP)

2p set bonus is nearly useless in raids.
4p set bonus grants 6% to the total damage of Shadowbolt. It is the equivalent of roughly 120-140 spellpower towards shadow bolt at that stage, depending on spec and gear.


Spell power contribution per spell

Every spell does a base amount of damage, and gets a bonus from your +damage items. I use the term "spell power" to refer to the total amount of +damage you have.

Typically, any spell with a cast time of 3.5 seconds gets 100% bonus from your spell power. Shorter spells are scaled down. This table lists all of the warlock spells and how much they gain from spell power. It's mostly here for reference, as I couldn't find a reliable source of it anywhere else.

Regular spells:
- Shadow Bolt: 3s/3.5s = 85.7 + 4% per talent point in SNF (up to 105.7%)
- Incinerate: 2.5/3.5s = 71.4 + 4% per talent point in SNF (up to 91.4%, 100% with emberstorm)
- Shadowburn: 1.5s/3.5s = 42.8%
- Searing Pain: 1.5s/3.5s = 42.8% (Searing pain is double theat, so it gets 84.8% threatwise)
- UA: 18s/15s = 120%

Regular spells that have halved spellpower contribution due to life gain or aoe
- Drain Life: 5s/3.5s /2 = 71.4% total (14.2% per tic)
- Death Coil: 1.5s/3.5s /2 = 21.4%
- Shadowfury: 1.5s/3.5 /2 = 21.4% on all targets
- Siphon Life: 30s/15s /2 = 100%
- Hellfire: 15s/3.5s / 2 = 214.2%. This is 14.2% per tic (note that damage to self is boosted 10s/7s/2 instead)
- Rain of fire: 8s/3.5s /2 = 114.2%. This is 28.6% per tic

Exceptions:
- Corruption: 94% + 12% per talent point in empowered Corruption, over 6 tics.
- CoA: 120% over 12 tics. unsure how it is distributed.
- CoD: 200% (unaffected by Shadow Mastery) (no, it really can't crit)
- Seed (dot): 150% total (30% per tic)
- Seed detonation: 21% on each target (aoe cap applies)
- Immolation: 20% (initial hit), 65% (dot). With imp Immolate it's 25% + 65%, with Emberstorm and Imp Immolate it's 27.5% + 71.5% (99% total)
- Soul Fire: 115%

Obviously, talents that increase total damage will also increase your spellpower contribution.

Any multipliers will apply to the total damage. All individual multipliers are multiplied (i.e. Shadow Weaving is 10%, Curse of Shadows is 10%, together they are 1.1 x 1.1 = 1.21 or 21%).



End game loot choices
There is no definitive lists, it all depends on what gear you already have. Hit rating provides most bang for your buck on bosses until it is capped. Everything else is spec dependent.

For a rough list, you can punch in these numbers in lootzor.com - World of Warcraft search and rate items - profile your wow character :
spell damage = 1, shadow damage = 1, hit = 1
and depending on spec:
Affliction: crit = 0.5
Demonology: crit = 1, sta = 0.1, int = 0.1
Destruction: crit = 1.

Note that Destruction warlocks will want 4p T6 over any other available gear choice, as 6% bonus to shadow bolts worth more than 100 spell power. Demonologists will want 2p T5 over anything else.

There are a few good "end game wish lists" in this thread, if you're looking for one.


Area of effect spells
Seed of Corruption provides the highest dps for any spec and any gear quality, by a large margin. This is of course assuming you're not getting interrupted and hitting more than one target.

Hellfire is a bit lower dps, but a lot more mana efficient (although not health efficient, you will require more healing than with SoC + lifetap). Despite the lower damage throughput it still has its uses, especially for destruction warlocks that benefit from the threat reduction on it. It can also be used to instantly blow up Seed of Corruption.

Rain of Fire has received a boost, and is a low risk, mana efficient, ranged aoe spell now. Unfortunately its damage is nowhere near competitive with either Hellfire or SoC.

Aoe cap: if your seed of corruption detonates for more than 13580 on all targets combined, it will do less damage. When this happens, the detonation damage will be scaled down so that the total is 13580. This reduction is done after calculating +damage gear, talents and buffs so it is the same for every gear and spec.

Example, if you hit 10 targets with SoC detonation, you will hit each for 1358.


Some multipliers (crits, CoS, etc) are not affected and will allow you to hit individual targets for more.

Example: SoC hitting 10 targets will hit each for 1358, but crits will be 1358x1.5.


For completeness: Hellfire caps at 5200 per tic, and RoF at 6710 per tic. You hit this at around 10 targets.


Curse selection

General notes on curses: The first three curses in a raid will typically be CoS, CoE and CoR. With decent gear and decent players, even one player benefiting from CoS/CoE will make it worth it, and unless you didn't bring a single melee class, there should be enough physical dps to warrant CoR. Affliction warlocks will typically spec for Malediction to bring a 13% CoS, mitigating the loss of dps that affliction suffers from.

Curse of Shadow - Scales nicely with increasing number of Shadow Priests, Arcane Mages, and Warlocks (and hunters, to a lesser extent). Usually the default curse to put on an enemy. If you use the level 60 version it will not get knocked off by hitting the debuff cap.

Curse of the Elements - Boosts fire/frost mages, Warlock fire spells. An obvious choice if you have several of these present. As with CoS, if you use the level 60 version it will not get knocked off by hitting the debuff cap.

Curse of Doom - Very high Damage-Per-Casting-Time. Does not get a bonus from Shadow Mastery, for reasons unknown. Demonic Sacrifice with a Succubus will boost the damage by 15%, and ISB will boost it by 20%. Amplify Curse will only boost the base damage of 4200, so it's 2100 extra base damage. Curse of Doom can not crit.

Curse of Agony - Ideal for spamming on tanked trash, regardless of spec. Can also be used as an alternative to Curse of Doom, if that one is not an option. CoA is advisable on bosses that reset aggro (unless you can time CoD well), or on anything that will live 24 seconds but not 60. It can outdamage Curse of Doom on a strict dps basis, but you'll need to refresh it more often, resulting in a lower Damage Per Casting Time.

At around 1250 spellpower, affliction warlocks with imp CoA, and Shadow Mastery will obtain around equal dps with CoA over unamped CoD. More spellpower will favor CoA.

Curse of Recklessness - Stacks with every other armor reducing debuff, and will typically increase melee and hunter damage by around 6% if FF and 5xSunder Armor are present, according to http://elitistjerks.com/498690-post35.html. You typically want as many armor reducing debuffs on a boss as possible, since each one adds more (Increasing Returns, as opposed to Diminishing). It will make the enemy hit slightly harder, though. To be avoided when the boss has an ability that is based on his melee attack power, such as Mortal Strike or Cleave. Useful on enemies that don't hit hard enough for a tank to keep aggro, it will help with their threat generation on those by a small amount.

CoD vs CoR: Which one is more profitable depends on the raid setup. More physical dps means CoR becomes better, obviously. Physical Raid Dps needs to exceed (CoD damage / 3.6) for CoR to be the better choice. (CoD dps = CoD damage/60, and CoR dps = Physical dps *0.06). Note however that you need to refresh CoD twice as often. CoR will under almost all normal circumstances create more dps, but the boss will hit slightly harder.

Curse of Exhaustion - Very limited use. Typical use is for Striders during the Vashj fight, and on Mount Hyjal trash.

Curse of Weakness - Reduces attack power, but it doesn't stack with the other ap reducing abilities (Demoralizing Shout/Roar). It will get overwritten by a talented Warrior Demo Shout, which any raid community should have. The only possible use for it is if you are raiding without a Warrior and have a Paladin tanking.



Immolate vs Shadow Bolt (for non-destro's)

Immolate has a much higher base damage then Shadow Bolt, and both have around the same spellpower coefficient (85%). For this reason, at low amounts of spellpower, keeping Immolate up is clearly a better choice. Some well geared warlocks drop this spell in favor of Shadow Bolt due to any combination of these factors:

- Higher hit/crit/haste rating benefits Shadowbolt.
- ISB debuff
- debuffs favoring SB (absence of CoE, Imp Scorch, CoS, ISB)
- More talents into SB (Shadow Mastery, Demonic Sacrifice, Shadow And Flame)
- More items that benefit SB ([Ritssyn's Lost Pendant], [Orb of the Soul-Eater], [Nethervoid Cloak], [Boots of the Shifting Nightmare], FSW and Soulfrost)
- Debuff slot shortage
- Higher mana cost per point of damage, so more life tap down time

Whether it's worth it for you should be checked with the appropriate tools: Leulier's sheet, DrDamage (all linked below). Even a lower damage-per-casting-time, it is worth it occasionally if you don't think you'll have the time to get a SB off or can't risk threat bursts.


Resistances and Spell Penetration
The difference between level 60 and level 70 version of CoE/CoS: level 60 CoS has lower reduction (75 vs 88) but the same damage modifier. The level 60 version has higher priority, meaning it will not be pushed off by other debuffs. This is a relic from times before 40 debuff slots, and that the higher rank has lower priority is considered a bug. If you are having issues with debuffs being lost, use the lower rank.

With a few notable exceptions (Felhunters in Hyjal, Supremus vs Fire, and Illidari Council) enemies have no resistances above 75. Therefore spell penetration is considered useless in PVE in the majority of fights.

All mobs higher level than you an innate resistance, resulting in partial resists that can not be mitigated. Partial resists seem to happen around 15% of the time, resulting in roughly 3% damage mitigation.


Warlock tanking
For Leotheras tanking, there are a few good posts here.

Additional tips and tricks
- Obviously, bring a healthy amount of shards to raids. This is especially important for demo/destro, since they often summon demons that require Soul Shards.

- There is little reason to use anything but Rank 1 of Drain Soul.

- Soulwells are very useful, and it might be convenient to have all three variants in a raid. Healthstones of different qualities (0/2, 1/2 and 2/2 improved) count as different items, meaning everyone can carry up to 3 healthstones this way. They still share the same cooldown of two minutes, though. Healthstones can crit (based on user spell crit chance) and will heal for 150% in that case.

- All spells and talents that drain life do NOT generate healing threat, nor does Life Tap. Dark Pact causes a very low amount of threat, around 75 per Dark Pact.


Contents of this thread
This is a preliminary description of what can be found where in this thread. I intend to start a new thread after consolidating all this information. I went through all 115 pages and tried to find interesting non-outdated info.

(for some reasons I have issues linking to individual posts in a thread, so I'm listing pages)
30/21/10 spec - page 4
Felguard raiding tips - page 7
When spellpower/haste is calculated - page 7
0/40/21 Succubus/Ruin - page 31
Leotheras tanking tips - page 41
UA vs Ruin data - page 48
effects of CoR - page 55
Best set of gear with sunwell items - page 114
Heroism/Bloodlust for warlocks vs mages - page 115
Which warlock should cast CoS - page 126
Sunwell Miniguide - page 130
Destro pots vs Mana Pots calculations - page 145

Tools for measuring DPS
SWStats (or any other synching damage meter)
The other warlock dps spreadsheet is the default source for warlock theorycrafting.
lootzor.com - World of Warcraft search and rate items - profile your wow character - Gives you a gear list according to stats you fill in
Leulier's ISB simulator - predicts ISB uptime using a simulated model
DrDamage - WowAce Wiki - will give you in-game theorycrafting

Other
Loot Rank - replacement for lootzor
Warcrafter - create gear sets and get stats, works well with planning and the spreadsheet.
http://files.wowace.com/Demon/Demon-r54777.53.zip - Demon, a simple ace debuff counter and filter
Debuff Filter | World of Warcraft Addons | Curse - Dfilter, a simple debuff filter (but not counter)


Thanks for all the feedback and contributions!

 

Tacitus

Erm?

Also, in general you should always gear hit first for bosses, then focusing on spell damage (according to the spreadsheet it gives you more DPS than crit, even with Ruin).

Here's a good site for your trinket choices.
SimulationCraft/Trinkets/Warlock - Shadowpriest.com Wiki

Brotherhood, Peace, Unity

Welcome back, Comrade

 

SchLing

Great summery, but isn't Stamina something more important to a Demo lock than what you make it out to be?

 

Stangg

Just skimming over it, this post seems to have been rushed slightly, could do with cleaning up some of the mistakes, as pointed out above "unstable mutation" and also "There is no fixed rotation since your dots are on". On what? Just a couple of examples.

With some of the information a link to sources would also be beneficial, for instance, a link to Nyarlotheps (spelling) write up on demonology is a great resource for people looking to move into this spec. I also remember seeing somewhere a useful tool that can generate figures for raid ISB uptime, I know it's not much help me just telling you these without providing links myself but I don't have time at the moment, if it hasn't been updated at the weekend I'll start searching.

Just some suggestions, I was considering making a consolidation post myself over the weekend, but there is an awful lot of information to trawl through and reference, I wasn't expecting one to appear so quickly.

 

Eph

Couple of things that I see:

The first two Affliction builds links are switched.
Title of each build doesn't really match the actual spec, could just call it "PVE Affliction", instead of "- affliction style - Unstable Affliction (41/0/20)"
Perhaps an explanation of how Malediction is equal to 2.7%, I haven't seen the math on that.
Unimproved CoW is equal to a Warrior's unimproved Demo Shout, but an improved Demo Shout is stronger than an Improved CoW.
The level 60 rank of CoS and CoE will not be knocked off on a debuff capped (40 debuffs) target.
Curse of Doom's damage is not increased by Shadow Mastery.
The ideal level of hit is 16% when fighting bosses and can be reached with 202 hit from gear, or 164 hit with an Elemental Shaman's Totem of Wrath (37.8 hit), or 152 hit with an Alliance Draenei's Aura (12.6 hit.)
Add [Void Star Talisman] to the Demonology gear.

And just a little nitpick to clean it up a little, maybe take out alot of the extra spaces between sections and bullets and capitalize the section titles.


I'll think of more later.

 

doogless

No, it's just not as useless for Demo as it is for other builds.

If you're stacking stamina for the purpose of getting it back as spell damage via DK, you only get 4.5% of stamina as spell damage. Clearly a 9 spell damage gem is way more useful than one giving 12 stamina. Getting stamina (and to a lesser extent, intellect) back as spell damage is a really nice benefit of a Demo spec, since tier gear especially is loaded down with it, but stamina is not something to specifically itemize for.

If you're stacking stamina to keep your pet alive, you need to reevaluate either your pet control skills or whether a Felguard is a viable pet for a given fight. Your pet gets 30% of your stamina, so in order to give him, say, 500 more HP, you would need to itemize for 166 stamina instead of other stats, which is a significant DPS loss. If your pet is dying, stacking stamina is probably not the way to keep him alive - you either need some specific items (2 piece tier 5/void star talisman), a different group composition (read: one with a shadow priest), or better micro skills to keep him out of AoE.

 

Arelenda

All fixed. I can't find the demonology guide so a link would be appreciated.

Thanks for helping me clean it up.

 

doogless

Nyarlathotep's compiled guide for Felguard raiding can be found here - Raiding With Felguard (SSC, TK, Hyjal, BT) - The Warlocks Den

 

Chronitia

Considering the vast size of the warlock megathread, a summary like this for oft-asked questions is a useful thing, thank you.

I feel there is much room for improvement though. Just skimming it I noticed a few things.

1.) Add a section for a 0/40/21 guide.
2.) In the affliction section, emphasize SB spam between dot applications. A common noob mistake is to use drain life.
3.) Also in the affliction section, you tell people to refresh like crazy so they don't lose a tick. This will most likely cause people to refresh a dot before it expires, clipping the last tick and losing a lot of damage. You should tell them to focus on minimizing the gap between dots, but that ~1sec of downtime is normal and fine, and is better than clipping a tick.
4.) Clean up the language. This should not be a casual "this talent is cool" type of thing. Imagine you are writing a thesis. Make statements and support them. If there is a tradeoff, present the tradeoff and provide a conclusion. For example:

Would be better written in a straightforward and confident manner:

This build focuses on three key talents in demonology and destruction: demonic sacrifice (DS), ruin, and Shadow and Flame (SnF). The result is 21/40 scales with gear better than any other build. The order of priority is Hit > damage > crit. The actual coefficients can best be determined using the spreadsheet linked below, or for a rough guide, use the shadowpriest.com wiki linked below.

Q.) Fire or Shadow? Due to the following factors, shadow is always preferred for pve:

1.) ISB generation
2.) Shadowbolt's superior damage coefficient
3.) Prevalence of shadow synergy in raids including shadow weaving and ISB

Q.) When does itemization cause this build to rival or surpass affliction?

1.) Affliction gets a huge head start due to tailoring gear, hit capping with dots quickly via suppression, and the mechanics of dots putting spell damage to work while needing virtually no other stats.
2.) While crit is only important if you are the raid's ISB factory, damage and hit are both very important. You should be hit capped (202 hit rating, less if you are always partied with a Draenei or can count on wrath of air totem). Spell damage also scales very well due to shadow and flame. Consult a dps spreadsheet for exact weighting of hit, dmg, and crit for you.
3.) Generally, SSC/Tk is when the lack of affliction upgrades become apparent, and bolting specs come into their own.

Challenge every assumption, test every possibility, and never trust your gut. The most deadly combatants are borne of a scholar's relentless pursuit of truth.

 

Arelenda

Thanks a lot for the feedback and contribution!

I have some issues with the following statements though:

It's a great set for any warlock, regardless of spec. Demonologists and Destruction warlocks love spellpower too. I'll leave it in the middle.


In a starting raid group, especially if crit ratios are low and more dots are present, the ISB debuff is less likely to be overwritten. If it's not overwritten, then it boosts the next 4 hits by 20%, and all dots in between too. That's a sizeable damage bonus.

And I don't see how one single warlock can provide ISB uptime for the entire raid, so the concept of an ISB factory shouldn't be in the guide, in my opinion.


Everything else has been merged into the guide. Thanks!

 

Arveene

The tailoring set (Frozen Shadoweave) lacks any of the other stats that 0/21/40 needs, mainly any hit or crit. The reason why the Tailoring set is so much better for affliction is because of the fact that you can hit cap your DoTs so easily and crit isn't as important of a stat in an affliction build. We love spellpower, but like you said yourself in the OP hit>haste>damage/crit.



This is one of the main reasons to have a destro lock. The biggest benefit of a destro lock to a raid is the increased ISB up-time. You sacrifice being able to have a pet out and all the other benefits of an affliction spec for more crit and more emphasis on SB spam for more ISB uptime. In addition to the raid benefit, your own damage will scale better with gear from later on in Hyjal/BT.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....54348qrUOc.png

 

Arelenda

Points taken. I'm guessing my experiences in this matter (I used FSW 0/21/40 until BT, always been near top of damage meter) are coloring my views. Any suggestions as to how to improve it?

 

Arveene

Well, what kind of gear did you have in your other slots? I would also guess that in Kara with Frozen Shadoweave you started off as an affliction spec, no?

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....54348qrUOc.png

 

Chronitia

Frozen shadowweave provides all the stats you need for affliction, to an almost absurd extent. It is possibly the most min-maxed itemization strategy I've ever seen on a set of gear. Socketed appropriately, it provides more spell damage than tier 5, and is available the moment you ding 70.

While it gives a good leg up to any spec due to it's early availablility, it is only the affliction playstyle that it truely fuels. As said before me, it does not give you the hit (and crit) you need so badly with 21/40.

In regards to ISB uptime:

SimulationCraft/ImprovedShadowBolt - Shadowpriest.com Wiki

One 21/40 warlock with 400 crit rating experiences virtually the same ISB uptime (0.64 vs 0.67) as five 21/40 warlocks with 200 crit rating.

All five warlocks upgrading from 200 crit rating to 300 crit rating brings the uptime from 0.67 to 0.73. A 50% increase in crit rating by FIVE members of the raid increases the total ISB uptime by less than 10%.

Also any look at a DPS spreadsheet will show crit rating providing 60-70% the benefit of spell damage, and maybe half the benefit of spell hit.

Challenge every assumption, test every possibility, and never trust your gut. The most deadly combatants are borne of a scholar's relentless pursuit of truth.

 

Cohren

There is definitely more favorable DoT rotations than others. I think the most common or most widely agreed upon rotations are:

CoS/CoE/CoR:

CoS/CoE/CoR-->UA-->Corr-->Immo-->SL

CoA:

UA-->CoA-->Corr-->Immo-->SL

 

Arveene

The problem with a DoT rotation like Curse --> UA --> Corr --> Immo --> SL is your UA, Corr, and Immo timer will sync up every time you refresh them (assuming no resist).
Ex. UA applied at the same time as Corr (1.5 sec GCD) Immo (1.5 cast). When Immo is applied both UA / Corr have 15 seconds on their durations.

A better rotation would be something like Curse --> UA --> Corr --> SL --> Immo.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....54348qrUOc.png

 

Silverstorm

I would say the rotation to avoid is UA -> Corr -> Immo. However, that does provide ease of maintenance because all three end, so you know you have to refresh all three at the same time.

Switching the rotations around works for a a little while, but given the 18 seconds of UA/Corr vs. 15 seconds of Immo, they are going to line up again anyway, and you'll lose uptime on Immo, most likely.

I'm playing around with dropping Immolate from my rotation (43/0/18 spec) because the DPCT is roughly equal to DPCT of Shadowbolt in our raids (no Fire mages right now, all Arcane). So I have an Immolate that only gets Misery to buff it, compared to a Shadowbolt with Shadow Mastery, Shadow Weaving, Maledicted CoS (from me), Misery, and potential ISB debuff (and maybe something else....I can't remember right now).

 

Arelenda

No, but it is so absurdly good that you can compensate for the lack of hit on your other gear, or get the socket bonus for +9 to hit on the set. +damage isn't exactly useless to a destruction warlock either, they get even more out of it than an affliction warlock does.


About ISB theory:

Unfortunately, I don't believe the ISB can be accurate measured by any spreadsheet, as the debuff application lags a LOT after the crit. When I wrote ShadowSeer to monitor it, I logged delays of 0.7s, sometimes up to 1.2 seconds. Good luck measuring that with a spreadsheet.

The debuff removal can also lag, resulting in extra hits being amped.

It also can't take into account how much dots are on the target (dots get amped too). I'll trust ShadowSeer over any spreadsheet, given how much the game mechanics differ from what they're supposed to do in theory. It's still beta, but I think the ISB data it gives me is reliable enough for analysis.

 

djmoccasins

I really think you should put a 7/43/11 build up there its probably much better damage than the 0/41/20 and less down time and is good all around for PVE and PVP.

 

Arelenda

Can you be a bit more specific? I don't mind adding specs I'm not familiar with myself, but I'll need a lot more information than "7/43/11".

Also, I'm modeling raiding specs. PVP viability isn't really considered.

 

djmoccasins

Oh I'm sorry Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft is probably the most popular maybe switching a few points. It provides great damage IF you can keep the pet alive and the instant corruption makes up for the lost crit from the 0/41/20 build

 

Arelenda

I think I got the idea.

I don't see how gaining 0.5 seconds on a spell that you cast once every 18 seconds will increase your damage over 5% crit, provided you have ISB. I'll add 1/40/19 to the list, though.

Instant corruptions is nice when pvping, but for raid scenario's, I doubt it's 5 talent points in a tree you're not specialising in.

 

Antoine

The real gain is in Improved Lifetap. Improved Corruption helps too, but not as much as imp LT.

 

Arelenda

Good point. I can't tell whether it's worth it on the fly. Added.

 

• frmorrison

I think you should add the PvP/PvE hybrid Demo spec, 7/44/10 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
The gain of imp Life Tap is very high, since it means 20% fewer Life Taps.

Also add the note that 1 point in mana feed is enough to allow the Pet to spam Cleave for over 5 minutes.


For 21/40, you should add a comment about Fire destro Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft, saying it is a good spec if you don't have a shadow priest in the raid, and it is more mana efficient (although losing damage over shadow bolt even without a shadow priest around, due to Incinerate only getting 91.4% +damage added to it).