CHaoTiCTeX

removed

 

Beardyhead

Not sure if you have other pieces of gear to bring you to hitcap, but perhaps you can try Affliction/Ruin. Either 40/0/21 or 38/2/21.

We keep our Aff/Ruin lock in DPS groups when farming BT. We trade the stamina gain, take the SE/Malediction, and ride it into SW.

 

Eradorn

I am curious as to the last few posts about Aff locks. Many of the better Aff Lock Specs don't have improved imp, particularly the 40/0/21, yet you seem to make it sound as though somehow Imp Imp is manditory for Aff.

 

Sumie

Improved imp isn't really necessary imo. It's an extra 21 stam for the tank. But it's not the talent that makes affliction locks valuable, but rather the simple fact that they actually keep their imp out, as opposed to destruction locks.

I recently respecced to 40/0/21, after being 44/0/17 for the longest time, and the former definitely outperforms the latter once you're in T6 level gear. Just toss a corruption and start shadowbolting. I only cast Siphon Life when a) on the move, b) the encounter has a lot of raid damage, or c) the boss hits hard enough where I don't want to risk 5/5 SE falling off. Affl/Ruin may not top the charts like Destro, but it still does respectable damage, while still being able to get 5/5 SE and Malediction.

 

galzohar

With my sample entry-T6 gear level I get SL 2172 damage per cast time with shadowbolt 1320 damage per cast time, using ruin spec on the spreadsheet. I really doubt having any realistic level of gear closes that gap.

Even putting 1700 spell damage and 40% crit and 25% haste and 4pcT6 bonus still only brings shadowbolt to be ~60 damage per cast time under siphon life.

Therefore I don't see any real reason to take SL out of your rotation at any gear level. Well except if you're so threat capped that the slight extra healing aggro is an issue (not realistic).

Immolate required me to lower my crit to 37% and haste to 20% (keeping 1700 spell damage and 1628 fire damage) before it became a tiny bit above shadowbolt. So immolate is generally worth casting as well for any gear level if you're affliction.

The only reason to not cast those would be debuff slots, but if you seriously have debuff slot issues you should check what other debuffs can be removed as well, and compare the DPS you lose from giving up that debuff slot to the DPS the other debuff is benefiting whoever is putting it up.

 

Zasz

Whats your WLs name? I´m curious how you equiped him to get such high spelldamage and crit.

 

galzohar

I didn't actually equip it, I said IF I changed the spell damage crit and haste to be that high those would be the results, and I doubt anyone actually has such numbers which means SL and immo should be worth casting for all affliction warlocks. Note that with the actual gear I input (T6 entry level more or less) SL is very very worth casting, just used the much higher stats that probably nobody has to show that even with those stats you should cast immolate and SL.

 

rochan

With my gear, Immolate has a higher damage per cast time but yield lower dps for me. Perhaps because it is more mana intensive - I have to lifetap more often if I use it. Might not bother with siphon life if have too many debuffs - only a 20 dps loss for me.

 

galzohar

Yeah you're right at the end you should look at the DPS difference triggering it on and off due to mana reasons, but even a 20 DPS gain is a DPS gain, and if someone is using that debuff slot for less than 20 DPS you should have priority on it rather than try to clear it. Remember people try do gem swaps that give less than 1 DPS just to do their best, no reason to automatically give up 20 dps just becuase something important got pushed off, unless there's no less important debuff that can be removed instead.

 

Thanahtos

While it's not mandatory per-say, if you're going to spec affliction anyways, why not get Improved Imp? Remember that you're not there for pure personal DPS, you're in a raid for "raid utility".

 

Zasz

If an affliction wl wants to compete with destrus he has to use everything he got. I personally use a fixed rotation UI -> cor -> Imm -> SL -> SB spam. This way I can recast the first 3 all at once loosing nearly no tick, just the SL needs to be set up when its ticked out. Unfortunately for me I´m always on CoS duty so no CoP. As for destrus, I think its not worth using corr/Imm when you reached a certain DPS.

The other problem in our raid is, I cant go full dmg sometimes in fights like EoS, bloodboil or sometimes archi (depends if I have to run much) because our tanks cant keep up. If I have full support like elemental, shadow priest (in raid), drums, destrupot, trinkets and so on, I would be more dead than fighting.

Other than that I´m happy to be affliction in fights like EoS because I dont kill myself if I get some good crits like our destrus :P Or supremus in the spank phase because I can do dmg while running after him. Destrus do an nearly instant dps stop once they have to run, I dont. My dps drops abit but doesnt stop.

As for calculating each dps, guess I´m too stupid for that. I just work up my spelldmg and watch my timers.

Just my POV.

 

Trickykid

You are in the raid for Utility but you're still able to do DPS and as such should be trying to maximize it. Having an imp and SE is already the utility piece, after that you decide if being able to do more DPS from 3 talent points is worth the incremental stamina for the tanks.

 

galzohar

While sacrificing personal DPS for raid utility is nice and all, you have to keep things in prespective. The #1 reason to spec affliction is to have shadow embrace, since once you placed 25 points in affliction for it, filling up affliction up to UA (or malediction and ruin if that provides better dps for your gear) will provide the most raid DPS.

This leaves you 2 points for non-DPS talents. The most considerable options for those are:
1. Intensity - probably the best choice for DPS, at least on more than 1 or 2 fights. However its actual value goes from nothing to a lot depending on what fight you're talking about.
2. Dark pact. Quite the same mana per global cooldown as life tap, but doesn't require someone to heal you.
3. CoEx - probably useless if you're not doing vashj anymore unless I'm missing the maybe-1-more-fight-where-it's-useable.
4. Improved healthstones - highly NOT recommended due to healthstone coordination, as destruction warlocks should cover the 2/2 and 1/2 healthstones leaving your job to be the 0/2 stone - they can't really put these points anyway in anything but pet-buffing talents for a pet that's getting sacrificed anyway...
5. Improved imp - While you can't keep your DPS and go 3/3, 2/3 is definitely an option.

All of these can be argued as viable choices, and it's not really possible to bring any hard evidence that'll prove otherwise in an undisputeable way.

However, the most reasonable choices are 2/2 intensity or 2/3 improved imp, and you'd have to choose wether 140 more HP for your tank is worth the pushback, based on what fight you're going to do. But at the end it's not a world of a difference due to it not being as important for affliction and even on fights where it does matter it's probably not that huge, and 140 extra HP on the tank isn't amazing either.

Bottom line is just becuase you're raid utility spec with shadow embrace doesn't mean you should discard all raid DPS talents. If you think 140 HP on the tank is more important than pushback protection then go for it, but don't do it becuase you don't care about your DPS, but rather because you considered the benefit VS the cost and decided that your raid is better off with 140 HP on the tank than whatever DPS is lost by the pushbacks you're going to take.

3/3 improved imp is not possible without some noticeable gimp to DPS - some kind of important DPS talent needs to be dropped and I really can't think of a fight where it would be worthwhile to pay that cost to get 3/3 improved imp. Again remember that while affliction is utility, it's still supposed to do DPS while doing that utility. Giving up 70-210 HP to increase your DPS in a noticeable way is quite acceptable, as you're still providing the primary raid benefits of shadow embrace (and non-improved imp) affliction is meant to provide.

Obviously as an affliction warlock you'll always be on CoS duty. Your CoS is better than everyone's else and there is absolutely no reason to ever bring more than 1 affliction warlock (except for having skill+attendance+gear+respec cost issues all at the same time). While affliction at high gear levels is still not worth speccing into just for malediction (it's actually a total raid DPS loss at the higher gear levels even if it's lower than 4/5 T6), since, as I said, the best way to DPS while providing shadow embrace is to spec affliction, there isn't really a reason not to grab that talent and use it.

It's not like other warlocks get to use damage curses unless you run with more than 3 warlocks and/or less than 2 fire mages.

 

Zasz

Thats the thing that bothers me. I run CoS because I skilled it like the other affliction warlock and our destrus can sometimes use CoA. WTF?! Then ppl complain that I dont do enough dmg when I cant use the full arsenal of spells. I got used to do CoS now and I even removed the 2 points in Improved curse of agony to get 3 points in Contagation. But the main thought that destruction warlocks use damage curses and affliction dont sounds plain wrong to me.

 

Arelenda

If people complain that you're below other warlocks when you're affliction, they're pretty clueless. You're the raid support build, while destro is the sacrifice-everything-for-dps build. If you were equaling their damage, why bring them?

Also you should bear in mind that destro has an incredibly good CoD. No well equipped destro warlock should use CoA over it, unless the target won't live 60 seconds, or there is a threat wipe. Curse of Doom isn't affected by Shadow Mastery but Demonic Sacrifice does affect it.

Let me clarify just how good CoS is. Assuming there is 5000 shadow dps, CoS is equivalent to the following:
"Target takes 500 damage per second for 5 minutes". Good luck beating that with any other curse.



Malediction CoS vs imp CoA:

For Malediction CoS + destro CoD to be outperformed by affliction CoA and destro CoS in a 5000 shadow dps scenario, you'd have to beat the 180dps that Malediction gives + the 10-12k damage per minute for the destro's CoD + the extra shadow bolt that you lose because of CoA refreshes.

Rough overview:

Damage per minute: scenario 1: 13% CoS + CoD
13% CoS adds 680dps or 40800 per minute. CoD adds about 11200 per minute or 52000 damage total
Lost cast time per minute: 1.5s due to CoD

Damage per minute: scenario 2: 10% CoS + affliction CoA
10% CoS adds 500 dps or 30000 per minute.
Affliction lock gets 2.5x CoA in.
lost cast time: 3.75s (difference is about a shadow bolt, considering CoA is more expensive than CoD, let's assume 3000 damage)

Roughly speaking, your CoA needs to hit for 10 000 in total. (40800 + 11200 + 3000 - 30000) / 2.5 for it to be equal.

This is actually a bit closer than I expected it to be.

 

galzohar

In other words, you can't expect your raid to have 10% CoS instead of 13% CoS just because you want to get more personal DPS, even though your amped CoD is probably better than a non-amped one - it's just not enough to make up for the weaker CoS which will cause all shadow users in your raid to lose damage.

As for the other affliction warlock, not only you shouldn't have brought a 2nd affliction warlock in the firstplace (have him spec destruction so he can do some actual DPS or bring a better DPSer in his place), if you're alreayd bringing him he should be on CoE duty, and a destruction warlock on CoR. If you see warlocks regularly using damage curses you're probably not running with CoS+CoR+CoE which is a serious lack of organization from your raid leaders. CoR always wins on the damage curses (have a tank or dps warrior spec 5/5 improved demo shout to negate its attack power effect) and CoE wins in most raid setups.

Anyway if personal DPS is what you're looking for, you picked wrong spec (and/or wrong game...).

 

dakalro

At this point ig the game with decent ele/shadow dps-ers, CoS/CoE is better than damage curse even with just 1 of that damage type.

 

Smurrf

For me, it's solely due to the lack of talent points available.

I have a 44/0/17 spec, that gives me the absolute most in threat reduction talents possible from the destruction tree. I guarantee, if I didn't have Destructive Reach, I would be dead on the floor about half the fights out there. My threat as an affliction lock is usually right up there behind whoever's doing the tanking, especially on longer fights. Certain ones, obviously, there's no issue on...but others? I'm doing soulshatter twice if the fight's long enough...the bonus reduction in threat provided from Dest Reach is just absolutely necessary for me.

As far as the affliction tree goes...the only point that I can find that I would be able to free up to put into the imp is the point in Curse of Exhaustion...and since we're just starting Vashj, that's not necessarily an option at the moment. Every other point is in something that boosts the damage I cause, or helps the raid in some way. (And before you mention it, yes, I have points in CoA...because I solo as well, and hate respeccing. Not only that, but those two points are going to get spent somewhere in the first three tiers anyway, due to how the affliction tree is set up.) I can't even find pts to put into IHoT like I usually like to have. Although, as soon as we move out of SSC, that pt in CoEx is going straight into Devastation for that last pt of crit chance for SB.

As far as the imp goes, untalented he provides 70 stam, which gets boosted by all the various raid buffs the tanks have. An additional 21 stam (well, more like 26-27 or so, with raid buffs) would be nice, but it's not worth the loss of anything else I have currently, and is only a nice buffer at this point.

To answer the question of 'you're not there for personal DPS'...that has always read to me like 'you can't do maximum DPS like your brethren can, so you might as well lop off a leg and both arms, and just stand there. Don't die, just...be there, and stay out of the way.' Screw that. I might not be able to top the meters, but on most boss fights, I'm still hitting around 1050-1100 dps, and usually end up in the top 7 or so on the list of damage done at the end of the night...and in about half the boss fights, I'm in the top 3-4 for both DPS & damage done. Am I really supposed to nerf myself for an additional 2-300 hp for 4 other people?

 

galzohar

Your spec has shadowburn which is a lot less useful than 1% extra crit, and as already said 70 more HP on the tank may be more useful than dark pact considering dark pact will rarely give any DPS boost (you'd have to run oom at the same time as you're being low on HP and not getting healed). All in all as I said getting imp imp is very argueable, but at least that point in shadowburn is quite wasted.

Even if you don't have threat issues, maxing your range is quite important as far as my raiding experience can tell. Had countless times where my main spells that were talent-enhanced were in range and other spells weren't (so without the talent I'd have to move) and other times where I wished my spells had that extra yard on them.

 

Smurrf

I'll say again:

I use Shadowburn quite extensively when farming...and while it may not be a big DPS boost in a raid, if the mob is about to go down in less time than it takes to shoot off a Shadow Bolt, yes I will sometimes hit it with Shadowburn. Could I be better served in a raid setting with 1% extra crit? Sure. Am I better served by taking it over Shadowburn in an overall raid/solo/5man spec? Your mileage may vary...but to me, with as much as I use it, no.

Dark Pact is, once again, extremely useful while soloing...and I'll use DP in place of a mana pot at the beginning of a long fight, so that healers can concentrate their attention elsewhere. When your MT is hitting around 20k HP, an extra 300 (at most) HP isn't going to really make that much of a difference, and to me, is not worth those talent points.

Like I said, once we get done with Vashj, CoEx is going right back into Devastation anyway...until then, I'm happy with what I have.

 

Stilfor

Is anyone else having serious threat issues now with all this haste? Being a LW in a mostly LW group I'm basically sitting at 290 haste at all times peaking at 465 haste (1600 shadow, 34% crit) and almost always threat capped. I think we're going to start seeing some huge threat issues as we progress further through Sunwell and our hastened threat scales faster than our tank's.

Edit: We generally have 2 MDs and I know our tanks don't suck. It's just started being a huge issue since 2.4 and I gained ~180 haste between gear and drums.

 

rochan

If you're saying there are times where you just stand there and do nothing because you are threatcapped then something is wrong. TA for first 30 secs of each fight makes it virtually impossible to pull agro. Of the first 3 bosses, the only one I regularly soulshatter on is Felmyst.

 

Exilersess

TA? whats that? I too have alot of threat issues on a decent amount of fights in bt/za(timed events)/and hyjal. Our guild is working on the 1st boss in sunwell, and I havn't really had threat issues there since you have 2 different targets to dps back and forth on.

 

◊ Caffeine

Tranquil Air Totem

Rochan, and to other Warlocks on Brutallus, do you really never run into threat issues? I tend to wait to start dps for an awful long time, about 20 to 25 seconds or 25k-30k tank threat. It's usually ok, but sometimes it isn't. Seems like a lot of wasted dps from waiting as well.

 

PSGarak

Tranquil Air Totem. There's a critical point where the extra DPS time from TA totem outweighs the extra 100 damage from Wrath of Air totem, and that critical point is not very far past the threat cieling. If you can reach that threat cieling without the 100 spell damage, then you are better off with the 20% agro reduction. Although, as Rochan points out, a smart shaman can swap from one to the other and let you ride that line exceedingly close.

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