Pentamorfi

Nether Protection is simply one of the best talents you can have in Sunwell Plateau (assuming you're not on any tanking duty). It procs off everything;

-Sathrovarr's shadowbolt volley, Curse of Boundless agony (even though it only makes you immune for the first few ticks)
- Meteor Slash: if NP procs you take the damage but become immune for the fire damage increasing debuff, meaning the next Meteor Slash will hit you for the same damage as the previous one.
- First few ticks of Burn.
- If it procs off the Shadow Images Shadowfury, you take the damage but gain immunity to the stun effect.
- If it procs off Flame Sear you become immune to some of the ticks after the initial one, meaning you'll be taking less periodic damage (for example, 600 instead of 1700 per tick) until a Shadow nova clears it off you. Same thing goes for Shadow strike, you gain immunity to some of the dot ticks and therefore less -healing debuffs are applied on you.
- It can't proc off M'uru's Negative Energy, but it does proc off Void Spawns' Shadowbolt Volley and Void Sentinel's shadow damage aura (which of course you shouldn't be taking, but that's a different matter ).

A few other things i'd like to add, there still seems to be a large misconception concerning the relative value of Stamina vs Intellect for a Warlock. There's absolutely no reason why you'd stack Stamina in favour of Intellect. A bigger mana pool lasts longer resulting in fewer lifetaps and you also gain some crit on top of that. Stamina only improves your survivability, it doesn't increase your DPS in any tangible way other than just that, survivability. If you are aware of what's happening to you and around you, there's nothing even in Sunwell Plateau that will kill you because of lack of stamina. We get more than enough health through our normal gear (and Demonic Embrace) to be well above any "safety net" minimum health limit.

As for haste vs crit, things are pretty much as Arelenda described them. Haste is always there once you get it; Crit chance is just that, a chance. You can have 50% crit and only see 30% during a raid, you can have 20% crit and have 40% during a raid, there's absolutely no guarantee you'll gain any benefit from stacking crit instead of haste. Given a choice between the two, I'd go for haste all the way because it's ALWAYS there.

 

Sardaukar

For the first time last night, I had a meteor slash proc Nether Protection, was targeted by burn 2 seconds later and didn't get hit by it because I was immune. It was glorious :P

 

koalachan

Ironically, I have died because of Nether Protection on Twins. Being Immune when I counted on catching the Shadow Fury lead to a fiery demise :p

 

Twinbladez

I had that a few days ago, watched the lock next to me have it today

It was so awesome I had to air guitar when the boss was dead :P

 

Ammanas

Yeah, Nether Prot is generally very good on twins but it can kill you if you aren't careful. Gotta be ready to click it off when you hear "Shadow to the aid of fire".

 

Turbo Moses

So I was tanking Illidan last night, and since I had Nether Protection (which IS an amazing talent), while I know it's possible to tank with it, and have on things like Capernian, I didn't want to risk a mess up considering it's still a fairly new fight to us (3 kills now), so I respecced to a SL sorta destro build specifically for the fight. Since I didn't like risking my felhunter dying, I just wore the SR cap on my own gear and busted out a voidwalker, who practically had as much HP as me.

While of course in a gimped spec, SR gear, and a VW out my damage was very low, but I wasn't bothered by it because our DPS is by far our strongest aspect, I didn't mind too much. I kept him out even during P1, and thought, "I wonder if suffering works on bosses." Lo-and behold, Illidan's chance to hit was reduced by 10% for 15 seconds, I was kind of amazed by this fact, that it'd work on bosses. Given it's on a 2m cooldown, which means it can only be up 1/8th of the time, it still seems like a useful tools that Aff locks might want to consider using for tough transitions in some boss fights.

For example, during the rest of that fight, I used it at the start of P3, and during his enrages in P5. Giving tanks an additional 10% avoidance for 15 seconds could very well be the difference between life and death in some situations, and seems like a kind of viable oh shit button to use on a reasonable cooldown.


Have any other locks considered using this in this sort of manner to aid tanks? Are any bosses known to be immune to it? It seems like with the Sunwell Radiance buff, where tanks' avoidance gets turned to crap, a 10% reduction to that could be life saving. On the other side though, you would lose your imp buff to your party, which depending on the fight, could be a fairly small deal.


Can anyone think of some other good uses suffering could provide? It kind of reminds me of trying to use a Doomguard in Pre-BC to keep the cripple debuff up, except more viable, and no potential to end up warstomping your own raid.

 

Pyralissa

The prevailing wisdom with Suffering is that most bosses are immune to the effect. However, Illidan would be a fairly noteworth exception to the rule. Is it possible it was just the threat effect placing the debuff on him?

With such a long cooldown and short effect how would you go about testing if the debuff is actually reducing hit chance?

 

Turbo Moses

Well, when you use it, the debuff of "10% reduced chance to hit" shows up on his debuffs. So I assume that, yes, it is reducing his chance to hit. I mean, the threat is instant, and wouldn't leave a debuff on anything, like how it used to be.

 

• frmorrison

The taunt is a spell so has a 17% to miss, however it sounds like it works on Illidan, since the taunt is instant.

Even if it does work, it is better to spec Destro to make the boss die faster.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Turbo Moses

I know, but that's hardly a DPS race anyway, people just need to hold their shit together and you'll be fine. But I'm saying, for guilds that run with Aff locks, wouldn't it be possible for them to just run with a VW for suffering at points of intense healing? Instead of an imp or something. It seems like a hassle but might be good for learning some fights to counteract Sunwell radiance somewhat.

 

Johnneke

I was wondering if anyone by know actually came to some definate conclusions on which spec is the most dps between fire and shadow in endgame raiding (mix t6/sunwell). Jynx suggested that the ideal setup for a current raid would be 1 shadow destro lock and 2 fire destro locks as it is now. I'm not yet convinced completely, I respecced fire 2 days ago to test it but havent had enough experience to come to any conclusion. The only thing I 'know' is that leulier's suggests that I would gain ~50dps from going to fire. Looking forward to killing Brutallus again to see how it will turn out there.

 

Pentamorfi

There's no way one can answer that for sure, there's just too many variables to take into consideration. My personal experience with the fire spec indicates that while I'd do more personal DPS , the raid DPS loss would be greater than my gain. Of course, that depends on the raid setup you're running. In my guild's case, with a minimum of 2 shadowpriests and a moonkin on top of the usual 3 warlocks, fire wasn't worth it. If you're running with a lot of mages you may find Fire suits your raid best, but it's all relative.

 

Arelenda

-10% every 2 minutes is nothing. There might be theoretical encounters where it could be useful, but I haven't seen any fights like that yet. It's simply not worth bringing a VW, he's lousy in raids.


Shadow gets better when you have more shadow users. It's my personal opinion that the gain in fire damage is offset by fire's Immolate/Incinerate and by ISB. Both "one guy affliction and Malediction CoE + all fire locks", and "all warlocks shadow" are good raid setups. It's almost impossible to measure the difference, and both setups require significantly different gear throughout the entire raid group for optimal performance. There's Sunfire/Soulfrost, +shadow/+fire items, and Shadow values crit higher. With few locks and Shadow priests, you probably want the former, with more locks you probably want the latter.

Either way, the differences are not stellar.

 

Zenith

Hello. Currently i'm an officer in a guild that's progressing through BT, and we use a caster group tailored towards the warlock's needs. So here's my question, how viable is a shadow priest in the warlock group? We already use one in the healer/mage group, so the damage bonus from it's debuffs is irrelevant. Is the reduced life tap downtime worth the loss in personal dps from using the SP over say a mage? The group setup i'm thinking is 3 x warlock/resto shaman/SP. Another option would be 3 x warlock/Ele shaman(moonkin)/mage. Thanks in advance.

 

PSGarak

This has already been much discussed, but the answer isn't really in one single post, so I won't bitch you out for not searching.
The biggest thing taking away from a warlock's DPS is the time they spend lifetapping. Shadow priests, and chain-potting, are big DPS increases. If you're looking for hard numbers, do a search for Lieulier's spreadsheet, in a thread called (another) Warlock Spreadsheet. That should give you a good estimate for the DPS returns from VT, which you can compare to any hard DPS numbers you may have for your mage and shadow priest. But in either case, tell your guys to spam mana pots if they don't already, even if they're using destro pots instead right now.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Johnneke

Going by the isb sim from leulier this is only partly true or to a limited degree. The most common setup out there would probably be 3 warlocks (cos/coe/cor) and 2 shadow priests. If these 3 warlocks are all shadow destro then the last lock will increase the isb uptime to a very limited degree 2-5%.
1 Shadow Destro + 2 Spriests = 40-50% isb uptime
2 Shadow Destro + 2 Spriests = 55-60% isb uptime
3 Shadow Destro + 2 Spriests = 60-65% isb uptime

The second shadow warlock increases the isb uptime but 15 to 20% is full bt gear. So the only real question to me remains if the 15-20% extra uptime outweighs the individual dps increase from the second lock being fire. My personal guess is yes, and I would say you would ideally run with 2 Shadow Destro's + 1 Fire Destro's when your running 2 Shadow Priests.

 

Devilsaur

I've recently uploaded a fraps recording of Reverse Twin Eredars from a lock tank perspective. It's not on WCM or anything yet, so if anyone is curious about the fight - here's one way to to do: WKGvsTwins.avi - FileFront.com

The video is far from perfect, being our second kill and on the last attempt of the night. If you do watch the video and decide to take a few things from it, be sure to notice if CoS fails to be put up in P2 and aggresively use potion consumables if your healers have you topped for most of the fight. :P Also, don't give heroisms (especially three, I don't know what we were thinking!) to the warlock tank. I was mostly hardcapped at 1-2 searing pains until moving anyways, heroism or not.

Also, as said before, you really don't have to go out of your way to prepare for this fight.

Here's the spec I used: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Which is basically 0/21/40, but with healthstone points into Improved imp, and nether protection into emberstorm. This is definitely a useable build for all other encounters, though I'd still respec for nether protection just to min/max for progression nights. Gear wise I just used PvP gear (which was actually gemmed for spell damage/resil) and hit gear. I believe I used the ZA stamina/resilience ring too, just to ensure I could take two hits at around ~12 flame debuffs and still live. I also swapped my shadowbolt key to searing pain .

One thing, that really really helps, is to disable Blaze for Quartz. Here's how I did it:
WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Making quartz not show Deaden castbar on EoS It kinda messes up the Conflagration/Shadow Nova cast sometimes, but I just clicked off and on and it'd be fine.

To pull, I made a macro to target Alythess, and another macro to pop a trinket->shadowbolt->announce to raid. You could also soulfire, since you don't have to sac a succubus if you use an imp. After the shadowbolt's midair, the hunter pulls Sacrolash onto the melee tank (so you don't get one shot from proximity aggro), and I run forward mashing my deathcoil key (could also shadowburn just to shave off air travel time incase the first spell resists). Alythess only really needs Elements, so I put up doom and begin the tanking rotation.

 

Arelenda

I already answered this before. uptime by itself means nothing.

Check out this post.

 

Zed

And why exactly would you do that? I myself downloaded Quartz solely for this fight, to do the tanking better. I only watched the first 1 min of your video but it's fairly clear that you are constantly taking Burn damage. If you use a cast bar and strafe every time the boss finishes a Blaze cast you will take 0 damage from Burn the entire fight.
Also, why would you care for Conflagrate at all? Even if somehow you don't notice the text/sound emotes, you cannot be a target anyway...

 

Johnneke

There really is something very wrong with what your saying, obviously I'm looking in to if my fire dmg will be higher then my personal shadow damage with 3 locks in the raid (including isb).

So with the isb uptime changing only by a very small margin for the 3rd lock you will get something like 2 shadow locks doing 390k dmg instead of 400k and one fire lock doing 440k. there is a clear difference in the end results and saying the amount of locks doesnt have anything to do with the value of isb is just plain wrong. Obviously your presumed 20% isb uptime is completely wrong aswell, with that one lock in the raid you would use a isb uptime of around 40-50% at endgame gear and with 3 locks you need to use a uptime of around 60% to base your calculations on.

 

Feefes

I think that was actually the opposite of what Arelenda was saying. The specific percentage used in theory-crafting is fairly irrelevant in an example, it's an illustration. The essential principle is that the utility of ISB is multiplied by the number of shadow users in the raid. The uptime could be the same for three as it is for two (or less, even) but the additional damage that it causes will still be greater with three shadow users.

 

Johnneke

But the uptime percentage is in direct line with the value of dps added. I dont count isb as a seperate dmg pool. Off course with 3 locks the damage which isb is responsible for is increased. But if the 3rd lock is not adding to the isb uptime lock 1+2 dmg will not change with the 3rd lock going fire, if his personal dps increases though you suddenly have a increase of raid dps.

And this is directly linked to how much uptime is gained or lost by the 3rd shadow destro lock to see if it's better to run 1 fire lock or not.

 

Kobal

It seems generally accepted that the individual DPS of the Fire Destruction Warlock will be higher than the DPS of a compareably geared Shadow Destruction Warlock, at the cost of reduced ISB-Uptime. All theorycrafting points in this direction - I should know since I have plugged the numbers into the spreadsheets myself.

Now what I am really curious about is why the actual numbers e.g. on the wws scoreboard don't back this up. Yes, some of the reports are outdated, and in some the warlock (being the 4th warlock in the raid) is using CoD, but the remaining amount is still too large to write this off as anecdotal evidence, in particular since not a single Fire Destruction warlock is on the list.

So where is Fire's lead in individual DPS? What is causing this discrepancy between theory and actual results? Do we have to adjust the spreadsheets to consider some missing parameter?

 

Shabaz

Would really appreciate some advice/input from you all. My guild is starting into MH and BT, but currently I'm the only raiding Warlock. (Destro 21/40) We have some new Warlocks gearing who are working in Kara and I'd like to come up with some guidlines for them to work toward for them to join in SSC/TK and eventually BT and MH. Here is what I was thinking. Is this fair?

Into TK/SSC
Destro
9k or more health
+1000 or more +spell damage (raid buffed)
+20% crit (or higher) (raid buffed)
+150 Spell Hit rating (or higher)

Affliction
9k or more health
+1200 or more +spell damage (raid buffed)
+90 Spell Hit rating (or higher)

Demonology
9k or more health
+1000 or more +spell damage (raid buffed)
+20% crit (or higher) (raid buffed)
+150 Spell Hit rating (or higher) (120 assuming you have suppression)

Into MH/BT
Destro
10k or more health
+1250 or more +spell damage (raid buffed)
+29% crit (or higher) (raid buffed)
+190 Spell Hit rating (or higher)

Affliction
10k or more health
+1400 or more +spell damage (raid buffed)
+90 Spell Hit rating (or higher)

Demonology
10k or more health
+1250 or more +spell damage (raid buffed)
+24% crit (or higher) (raid buffed)
+175 Spell Hit rating (or higher) (150 assuming you have suppression)

 

Flamingcloud

You numbers for starting bt/hjyal for destro are really high compared to what you have for the other two specs(especially demo). 29% crit with t5 gear is almost impossible unless you are using crit gems. Realistically you don't want anything but destro locks after ssc/tk, and you probably don't want to be recruiting people who want to stay aff/demo forever.