PVE Raiding Compendium - Page 115

rouger · 02/28/08, 9:53 PM

i was talking to lock in my guild and we talked about 2.4 damage and gear. so the big problem we were talking about is UA. yes we know that UA is not the best damage spec but it nice to up the raid damage and help the tank. so i think for a UA lock they should look for Haste and damage over other stuff. then destruction should look into damage and crit. the lock i was talking about this was saying no no the other way around witch i think is not good.

atvrider450r · 02/28/08, 11:55 PM

Long time reader, first time poster have a question regarding the dps spreadsheet

I personally use Leulier spreadsheet and love it, but a couple of my warlock friends, use maxdps.com and i was just curious what you guys think about maxdps. It seem to calc more dps then Leulier's does, so im not sure if it as good as the same.

SRneo · 02/29/08, 1:21 AM

Hey guys, I just had a few questions about this "new" incinerate. Now, I know the casting time has been reduced by 10% but I also heard that the spell dmg coefficient is going to be raised a bit too. Is this true?

Now, I know for now Incinerate and Shadowbolt are pretty much on par for eachother with personal DPS, but:

If Imp. Shadowbolt does indeed get nerfed to 15% with the charges only being able to be consumed by your own Shadowbolts, which one edges out the other?

My other question is should locks go incinerate if this happens? I mean, the high end mages I know of are predominately Arcane, so there isn't anyone to put scorch up. So maybe this Imp. Shadowbolt nerf does lower raid dps, but if no one is there to put scorch up, should we still go Incinerate?

PSGarak · 02/29/08, 2:12 AM

I've heard nothing about a coefficient buff for incinerate. Decreasing the cast time will give a relative coefficient boost in the same way that bane does, but no word of anything other than that.

There's also no indication the ISB changes will go through. If it does go through a couple of things change. If you have a lot of shadowpriests, and high haste, your personal ISB uptime might go up instead of down. On the other hand, since it's only your personal DPS and not the raid that's affected any more, it's okay to go fire if that ends up being more damage overall.
Without that change, grab a spreadsheet that has raid ISB damage estimation. That way you can see if the higher personal dps is costing the raid or not. It might not if you have other shadow destro locks, and your shadow preists don't nuke.

Improved Scorch should be up, because your mages should be fire. Arcane died in 2.3(?).

Ammanas · 02/29/08, 3:25 AM

Originally Posted by Dalus

My guild normally raids with 3 Warlocks (usually one of each spec) and 4-5 Melee DPS. (not including the 2-3 tanks.) The warlocks refuse to put up Curse of Recklessness up under any circumstances, claiming that the gain is too minor to be worth the additional damage risk to the tank and/or to be used instead of CoA/CoD. From what I can see with the numbers, this appears to be groundless. Are they correct, is CoR sub-optimal here, or are they just being stubborn?

(P.S. My guild is working on both Vashj and Kael ATM, everything else at that level is on farm, to give you an idea of the boss situations we'd use it for.)

Didn't see this answered yet, and its a pretty easy answer: your warlocks are wrong. CoR should always be used over a damage curse if it is safe to do so (and if you have a warrior keeping up Imp. Demo shout it is almost always safe). Not only will it help the melee DPS greatly, it will benefit the hunters (not sure if you were including them as melee) and also result in additional threat for the tanks. It is certainly not a minor gain, and on most fights it poses basically no additional risk to the tank. Actually, if you have 5/5 Imp. Demo up and the Screech debuff from a Hunter's owl it completely nullifies the attack power gained from CoR.

Just use your better judgement, on a lot of fights its impossible to keep the boss fully debuffed the whole time and it can still result in some nasty spike damage on occasion (IE Azgalor or Mother) - but 99% of the time it is going to be safe to keep it up.

Mugorim · 02/29/08, 5:42 AM

Originally Posted by galzohar

I don't see how you get improved imp without significantly gimping yourself. While shadow embrace, having an imp out and malediction are the only real reasons to even go affliction in the first place, improving that imp just costs too much - at best you will be losing range, anything else will be losing DPS.

To illustrate: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft the only talents you could argue are in the first 3 tiers of affliction, but you can only swap those to other talents within the first 3 tiers of affliction, which do not include improved imp. Anything from the 4th tier and above is pretty much a must-have for affliction raiding. 17 in destruction is also required for every warlock. Unless you want to give up range and/or dps you cannot put more than the 1 leftover point in improved imp, and even that may be better off in Intensity or maybe even CoEx. 3/3 improved imp is not possible with a viable build. The tank will live with 14 less stamina better than you managing with 2% less shadow damage to the raid if you take out malediction, 2% less damage reduction if you drop points from shadow embrace or if you lose range by dropping either of the range talents (range=survivability+dps).

Even if for some reason you have such insane gear (T6++) that malediction/ruin becomes a better build for DPS, then having to pick ruin means you're at the exact same position. In fact, you'll have 2 free points instead of 1, but will only have 2/5 contagion (3% less damage to corruption - remember to take that into account when comparing UA to ruin on the spreadsheet!).

Bottom line if you think an affliction warlock should have improved imp, you probably didn't look at the talent calculator carefully enough, or just don't care about anything other than 14 more stamina on the tank. Note that I say 14 becuase if you really want improved imp you can put your last point in there having 1/3 which already gives 7s tam out of the 21 you'd get from 3/3 improved imp.

This is how I usually do a raid focused affliction build

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

(tiers 1-3 subject to change)

I've yet to see any fights where more than 1/2 points in each of the ranged talents is all that crucial. Anything you'd want to avoid usually has a max range of around 30yrds.

Varbaro · 02/29/08, 11:35 AM

With 1k spelldmg ( just change it to another one)

Shadow and Flame(20%) & Emberstorm(10%) & CoS/CoE ( 10% - w/o Malediction - 13%) & Shadow Weaving (10%) / Imp. Scorch (15%) & Misery (5%)

Shadowbolt
((541-603) + (1000*0.81*1.2))/*1.1/1.13)*1.1)*1.05 = 1922.26/1974.69-2001/2055.6 (653.8/671.7 DPS w/o Bane and 784.6/806 DPS with Bane)
Incinerate (/w Immol. up)
((555-642) + (1000*0.71)*1.2)*1.10)/*1.1/1.13)*1.15)*1.05 = 2055.7/2111.8-2125.8/2242.3 (836.3/870.8 DPS)

With ISB buff (20%).
((541-603) + (1000*x)*y)*1.2) = 2306.7/2369.6 - 2401.2/2466.7 ( 784.6/806 w/o Bane 821.56/967.2 with Bane)

After 2.4 incinerate cast time will 2.25sec with 5/5 Emberstorm.
Formula same, DPS: (941.5/967.5 DPS)

So max DPS after 2.4 with all:
SB - 967.2
Inci - 967.5

UPDATE
I re edited all, because i counted wrong!

rochan · 02/29/08, 12:09 PM

It's sort of pointless to compare at 1k spell damage. Apparently SB does 967 dps. In raids I can do 2300 dps & have 1700 spell damage.

Really, Leulier's spreadsheet should be all you need. Though it's hard to input the effect of immolate, as keeping it up will be annoying and a drain on your overall dps.

Trickykid · 02/29/08, 12:34 PM

Immolate actually should have a higher DPCT than Incinerate when you spec into fire. So it's a DPS increase to use it yourself.

Presarc · 02/29/08, 1:31 PM

Originally Posted by Mugorim

This is how I usually do a raid focused affliction build

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

(tiers 1-3 subject to change)

I've yet to see any fights where more than 1/2 points in each of the ranged talents is all that crucial. Anything you'd want to avoid usually has a max range of around 30yrds.

Does anyone know whether or not Ruin > UA or not? I see a lot of raid DPS affliction builds going either way, and I would think that ruin would be better, but am unsure how to plug in the numbers into leulier or anything else.

Trickykid · 02/29/08, 2:10 PM

Originally Posted by Presarc

Does anyone know whether or not Ruin > UA or not? I see a lot of raid DPS affliction builds going either way, and I would think that ruin would be better, but am unsure how to plug in the numbers into leulier or anything else.

1) Set all your gear, buffs, talents and spellcasts.
2) Check ruin dps by removing UA from casts and setting Ruin to 1. Note DPS somewhere.
3) Check UA dps by adding UA to casts and setting Ruin to 0. Note DPS somewhere.
4) Compare the two numbers.

Roywyn · 02/29/08, 2:32 PM

Originally Posted by Varbaro

UPDATE
I re edited all, because i counted wrong!

Shadow Bolt has a 86% coefficent, 106% with SnF. Incinerate has a 71% coefficient, 91% with SnF.
So, it's still all wrong

Try Leulier's spreadsheet.

As for UA vs. Ruin - UA is better at early gear levels, Ruin better at later gear levels. Reason being that Ruin scales better with at least crit, haste, hit.
Do what the above poster said. Making 2 copies of a sheet is a good idea as well, you can spec UA in one and Ruin in the second. Or compare gear choices.

Presarc · 02/29/08, 3:33 PM

Assuming 1200 shadow damage, 16% hit, 20% crit, UA is better than Ruin by a factor of 2.53% dps (1317 vs 1283) assuming full-duration on all dots and CoA.

Assuming 1500 shadow damage, 1300 fire damage, 16% hit, 20% crit, UA is better than Ruin by a factor of 2.25% dps (1532 vs 1497) assuming full-duration on all dots and CoA.

So it looks like for you affliction warlocks, no matter how well-geared, UA is the way to go over Ruin.

EDIT: Just to be complete, I changed the crit chance from 20% to 25%, and the respective percentages (instead of what they are above) were 1.01% and 0.78% in favor of UA.

Changing the crit percentage to 30% and assuming 16% hit and 1200 or 1500s/1300f damage, Ruin finally took the cake, but it would be difficult as affliction to gear this high into crit without the help of backlash and still maintaining 1500 shadow damage.

If someone could double-check my numbers, that would be good.

Necrostar · 02/29/08, 3:44 PM

Originally Posted by Presarc

Assuming 1200 shadow damage, 16% hit, 20% crit, UA is better than Ruin by a factor of 2.53% dps (1317 vs 1283) assuming full-duration on all dots and CoA.

Assuming 1500 shadow damage, 1300 fire damage, 16% hit, 20% crit, UA is better than Ruin by a factor of 2.25% dps (1532 vs 1497) assuming full-duration on all dots and CoA.

So it looks like for you affliction warlocks, no matter how well-geared, UA is the way to go over Ruin.

w/o actually digging through the spreadsheet I have to say this cannot be accurate. I have no idea how your coming to that conclusion, but even 1000 shadow damage , 16% hit , 20% crit would blow away uA .

Obviously what makes Ruin so much better than uA is hit & if your hit capped it's almost a given that Ruin will overtake uA.

Stryn · 02/29/08, 4:01 PM

Originally Posted by Necrostar

w/o actually digging through the spreadsheet I have to say this cannot be accurate. I have no idea how your coming to that conclusion, but even 1000 shadow damage , 16% hit , 20% crit would blow away uA .

Obviously what makes Ruin so much better than uA is hit & if your hit capped it's almost a given that Ruin will overtake uA.

Plugging the numbers you presented in the spreadsheet:

40/0/21 spec (Ruin): 1176.28
43/0/18 spec (Raid UA): 1211.95

So no, you're wrong. In the future, check your work before you go off spouting misinformation please.