deadlights

I think all the metrics are slanted towards the high end. More for what people will be looking like at the end of a tiered (all geared up) than what they should look like at the beginning (with the exception of the stam pool maybe)

1400 damage is completely unrealistic for an Affliction lock to reach in tier 5 gear. Also It doesn't make sense for Demo to have a lower benchmark on damage than Affliction and equal to Destro when Demo is the highest base damage build.

I'd also want any lock app heading into tier 6 content to be at or near the 202 hit cap regardless of spec. Relying on suppression at that point is unwise even if you're the Malediction/shadow embrace tote along.

 

Johnneke

Instead of giving them numbers to play with tell them what gear they should get, if you want to have a headstart into ssc/tk or even bt/hyjal it's a must to have tailoring and to get the fsw/spellstrike set. Combine that with belt of blasting boots of blasting, bracers of nimble thought and mantle of nimble thought. Leaving you only with the fsw robe but getting a great kit for a starting lock without them having to set foot in kara cause apart from a few items there really isnt any great ssc/tk gear in there.

 

Shabaz

Thank you for the feedback. For what it's worth, I was thinking the numbers were attainable becuase I was saying raid-buffed...so adding in 140+ damage from oils, pure death, and DPS food it seemed viable. I'm also counting on things like Devastation which add a 5% crit bonus for destro. That said, I appreciate the feedback...Ill dial the numbers back a bit. Any other comments?

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
+1100 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
+1150 or more +spell damage (raid buffed)
+25% crit (or higher) (raid buffed) (Dont forget Devastation)
+190 Spell Hit rating (or higher)

Affliction
10k or more health
+1250 or more +spell damage (raid buffed)
+90 Spell Hit rating (or higher)

Demonology
10k or more health
+1200 or more +spell damage (raid buffed)
+24% crit (or higher) (raid buffed)
+175 Spell Hit rating (or higher) (150 assuming you have suppression)

I will also list gear suggestions/requirements. Thanks again in advance for the advice.

 

Arelenda

Yes, the example was only illustrating that ISB damage scales with shadow dps. If a destruction warlock does not add to uptime at all, fire would be better. No one argument there.


For comparison, an example of a raid setup:

one shadow priest (1500 dps)
one affliction lock (1500 shadow dps)
three destro locks (2300 shadow dps)

average ISB uptime = 50%


Suppose one destro lock goes fire instead. ISB uptime drops a bit, but his dps goes up. How does that affect raid damage?

The people doing shadow damage (2xdestro lock, 1xaffliction lock, 1 shadow priest) will lose dps. They used to bring 6600, of which 10% was ISB, so that was 6000 without ISB. Assuming Q% uptime, ISB damage will be 6000*20%*Q%. Each % uptime is 12 dps.

The warlock that switched to fire gains dps.

So does it compensate? The problem is that I have to estimate uptime loss. I can plug in some values, but it'd just be guesswork. We have no way of measuring reliably how it's affected.


For reference, the same experiment with only shadow priest, affliction warlock and a fire destro lock puts ISB damage at 5.4 dps per % uptime.



Shabaz: about starting gear: I'd not focus on the exact gear quality, but evaluate applicants on their spec and gear choice. You want players that know how to play and that are dedicated. What their current gear is at not that relevant. Having said that, your baseline seems an ok estimate. The compendium already lists a set of starting gear for warlocks, feel free to expand on that and post it here.

 

Arelenda

What, and have the warlocks argue about who gets to be the affliction bitch?

It's a very good point. Some people simply are die-hard affliction or demonology afficionados, and in Sunwell you really want an optimal raid setup.

 

Roaminggnome

It it is not unrealistic at all to expect a lock to be at the hit cap long before T6 content. Hit is easy to acquire, and provides the best dps boost of any stat until you are capped, so there is really no reason not to have 202 hit.

 

deadlights

That's good advice. Typically the first thing I look at on an app is their spec and any explanation for why they chose their spec. Since gear is IMO the easy part the second thing I tend to look at is their gemming choices and enchants. That can often tell you the difference between someone who grabbed a cookie cutter spec off the internet and someone who really understands what they need to get the most out of the spec. If they understand the class enough to have those two things covered I'll almost always be in favor of a trial unless they are just woefully undergeared. If they are borderline or even slightly behind the gear curve it's nothing that a few drops, that would likely go to offspec or be sharded otherwise, won't solve. And it's not like locks are mages where we have trouble reaching stamina benchmarks for things like Najentus and RoS. If they are already in guild, as yours are, then you should already have an idea of how on their toes they are in raid encounters so that gives you a leg up.

ETA: I don't think I was saying it was unrealistic to be at the hit cap. But I'm not going to really quibble over an apps hit rating if it's only a few points below the cap and they don't have any gems they can change to +hit.

 

Latas

"THE" affliction bitch? in most cases unless you are very very low on the classes that could use them its always best and the warlock should unaquivically do CoS CoE and CoR, now not every situation is good for CoR, but you are almost always looking at at least 2 "affliction bitches". that is unless you are talking malediction, which while it is nice it is far from needed.

 

Kvlt

Well...yes. Generally there will be one warlock who goes affliction to pick up shadow embrace and malediction for CoS. There's absolutely no reason to be affliction if you're responsible for CoR, and while I'm not certain offhand how many mages you'd need to be dragging along for it to be worth having a second warlock pick up malediction for a talented CoE I'm guessing it's more than most groups run.

 

Smurrf

It's just about a standard to have one - count 'em, one - warlock be affliction for the express purpose of having Shadow Embrace, as well as the side benefit of having Malediction. What would the second afflock bring? Another Malediction, and that's it. Nothing else. Remember, Shadow Embrace doesn't stack either. In exchange for another 3% dmg boost to the second set of schools, you lose: ~5 debuff slots, possibly as much as 400-500 personal DPS (or more, encounter dependant), some small amount of ISB uptime (because he's not spamming bolts as much, and as well won't have as many crits), and you have to find a group where you get some use out of his imp. There's only one spot in the tank group for an imp, and the buff doesn't stack. So unless your raid has between 9 to 11 mages and locks combined, and maybe not even then, it's not worth bringing a second affliction lock along.

So yes, THE affliction bitch. 3% is good, but it goes to whatever side does more DPS (say CoS in this case), the other lock does CoR or the other magic curse(CoE, in this case) - depending on who does more damage, melee or the off-magic team, and the third lock if you can get one does the remaining curse. You don't gimp your raid, and piss off your locks, to get an extra 3% more curse. A destro lock's 10% curse does well enough.

 

Arelenda

Unless you're alliance and expect a shaman.

I'd expect trials to know about hit and prioritize it, but I wouldn't demand of them to actually be capped. If you require apps to gem for 202 hit and then they end up in a +hit group, you'll look like an idiot.

 

Latas

Well what i was saying is, if you meant "affliction bitch" in the terms of non damage curse application aka "curse bitch" then you should have at least 2 more often than not if not 3. Now i was also saying if you instead meant "affliction bitch" in that someone who is forced to go affliction for shadow embrace and malediction (which now it seems you did) my point there was while they are nice, you dont really NEED to have one (but the debuffs are nice nonetheless if someone wants to go affliction), esp in MH/BT which is the area you were refering to when the other person mentioned all locks going 0/21/40 or something.

 

LockApologist

RE: Minimum stats.

I think your minimum stats are rather high. And why are you requiring a health min? I started T6 with 9k hp raid buffed, and topped meters without dying too much. HP comes w/ tier gear, generally.

I haven't looked at what you can build with the new badge gear, but, with tailored gear (the previous standard, and what I started T6 with), getting over 20% crit is not easy without heavy crit gemming. 1.2k buffed + dmg is easy, but getting all of the hit/crit at the same time is a bit more difficult.

Recruit the person, not the gear. It's more important to find someone that will fit in your guild/raid more than someone that will immediately compete for top dps spots.

Regarding being in the 'hit group', I don't think expecting to be in that group is a great idea. I suppose as alliance, having a draenai is easy, but as horde, I almost never re-gear for the 3% from ToW. For one, our ele shaman is not always present/spec'd elemental. And for another, you can be out of range or have him die. Then you're gimped. Finally, in a decent set of tier gear, it may not be possible to drop hit w/o using an inferior piece. I could drop hit to make use of ToW but I'd be dropping my Tempest, or similar for a worse item.

 

Flamingcloud

Ya I think 190 hit is the norm for what alliance are shooting for, I don't see any reason to go for 203 unless you are a really shaman light guild.

 

Latas

Well, I shoot for full cap because really you can't count on anything. the shaman being in range, being in your group, or even alive. As far as how far during my gearing i was always willing to deviate from hitcap, anything 190 or over i was comfortable with sitting at till i got the next puzzle piece (piece of gear) in my plans that filled that gap, or i just sucked it up and regemmed a bit. Also you might want to make those gearing numbers, just self buffed, without consumables since you might not always have every raid buff you want. Its a more baseline reading way to go, and then just require all those consumables in raid, also it might help make it seem like a much more feasable task for them if the numbers are lower cause raidbuffs arent included (just for morale among them and such).

 

Flamingcloud

Meh, a shaman needs to be in your group and in range like 60% of your time to make your damage higher on average but gemming something else instead of hit. Aside from like Supremus I can't really think of a fight where I wouldn't have range on the shaman near 100% of the time. Almost always at least 4 shaman in our raids. I think people are far better off doing things like replacing t6 robes/gloves with badge loot to get down to 190 if they are over.

 

niado

I agree, and I think this is an important point of distinction. I prefer recruits who are able to make their own (competent) decisions regarding gear/enchant/gem choices, rather than just denying them because they don't have their stats perfectly optimized (e.g. 202 hit).

There aren't that many instances where you really have a choice to make regarding hit vs. another stat aside from gemming. And as others mentioned, the draeneii issue and a few other variables (mag's eye, elemental shaman, etc.) make hit capping not always optimal. There are also 'gear gaps' where you can get stuck with low hit (e.g. early sunwell) and it may or may not be worth regemming twice to keep yourself at hit cap for that period of time.

 

Shabaz

Thanks for all the great feedback and ideas!

 

Arelenda

I thought it was fairly obvious that we were talking specs (affliction with Shadow Embrace, in particular), not curses. Any guild working on progression will want SE.

 

Fimotik

In relation to the +hit debate, Allliance shammies aside, I'd recommend at least 190 for any spec. When my guild was in T5 instances, our locks played around with hit and looked at WWS. 190 seemed to be a good 'sweet spot' at that level. To Shabaz, the reason you don't put different hit figures for specs is because Suppression is limited in its scope. It provides hit for Affliction spells only, so does not cover Immolate, Shadow Bolt, Searing Pain etc, and most importantly Soul Shatter. Nothing will gimp a lock's DPS more than a resisted Soul Shatter. SB should make up about 40% of an Affliction locks damage, so hit is king for all specs.

In relation to the poster who was querying why we're not seeing fire locks topping WWS scoreboard, I have a few theories. Firstly, I think sample size has something to do with it, shadow destro had such an entrenched spot that people aren't willing to move from it. However, I have seen quite a few locks now on Kil'Jaeden who have specced fire, so they are around at the top gear level. Why aren't they topping DPS? A couple of theories:

1. Theorycraft overvaluing haste. As has been debated recently in this thread, it may be that haste does not realise the same sorts of DPS increases that theorycraft dictates, due to factors such as movement reducing the ability to get in the extra possible casts. As fire gets its DPS increase from a haste talent, this factor should at least be considered.

2. Assumptions of theorycraft;

(a) Immolate uptime. I know that Leulier's spreadsheet assumes that Immolate is always up on the target. Unless you have several fire locks, one of whom is responsible for keeping Immolate up, this will not hold true for most fire locks, especially if they run with first 2 locks shadow, extras fire. So most fire locks are casting Immolate themselves. Inherent in this is: Immolates effect on DPS, the risk that Immolate drops so that Incinerate occasionally hits with no Immolate up, or that Immolate is overwritten (recast before final dot ticks).

(b) ISB theorcraft. Crit can be spikey, so ISB uptime will increase if the shadow locks get a much higher crit rate than their gear rate (tooltip rate). In a fight with only 1 shadow priests where the shadow locks get a very high crit rate, that would give the shadow locks an edge over a fire lock.

The theorycraft mostly works on averages. Shadow destro will benefit more from abnormally high crit rates than fire, due to ISB mechanics. To understand which spec will demonstrate the highest damage at extremes, then you'd need to theorycraft on a graph. I'd hazard a guess that shadow would win when it benefits from the top of the crit deviation.

 

Pentamorfi

Another rule of thumb to keep in mind is, you don't get an affliction lock because of Malediction. If you want more rDPS, the best way to get that is by having all locks spec destro, and the benefit of that usually outweighs Malediction (unless of course you're running silly numbers of shadow/arcane users). It's been so from the start of BT/Hyjal and it's still very much the same thing in Sunwell.

You spec Maleffliction because your raid needs Shadow Embrace; that's the main selling point of this build.

Also, even supposing you want to bring an affliction warlock to a Sunwell raid, you definitely don't put him in the tank group. His damage will plummet even more and if tanks need that ~700 health that badly, they're doing something terribly wrong. You still want to put the imp in a caster group, since those are generally squishier - and it's just more rDPS to do so.




I don't think we're missing something. It's just that Shadow is still the superior spec because of its raid enhancing character. It's also that Sunwell doesn't favour mage stacking over shadowpriests, which would in turn favour Firelocks instead of Shadow. In ideal circumstances (and by that I mean RNG, Heroism stacking, good mages who don't let Imp Scorch drop etc), I have no doubt one could show better DPS as Fire than as Shadow, it's just that not many guilds that have good enough DPS to be on WWScoreboard provide the suitable circumstances for that to happen. Perhaps I'm wrong.

 

koalachan

Although I personally didn't feel Fire was higher personal dps than Shadow when I tried it, the post above yours hints at why the scoreboards are showing Shadow locks on top.

A scoreboard is per definition the high end crit spectrum. Basicly, the warlocks who had an exceptional string of crits during a fight will be topping the scoreboard. The fact that Shadow crits are higher and the way ISB mechanic works, it's a given that you will find Shadow on top if you just look at the 'max' results.

 

Arelenda

"if your tank need 700 health that badly you're doing it wrong" isn't a valid argument. "If you need the extra 2% raid dps from the affliction warlock so badly, you're doing it wrong" is equally valid after all.

You _needed_ absurd high dps back in the days before they nerfed SSC/Gruul/Magtheridon, when TBC launched. These days, if no one dies, you're pretty much guaranteed to win. Enrage timers are very loose, and Brutallus is a lot harder for healers than it is for dps people. Sacrificing dps for raid survivability is pretty much a given. And where you place the affliction warlock will largely depend on the encounter. At Felmyst, the tank rarely gets pummeled, but on Brutallus, I definitely would put the imp with the tanks.

You also don't have your best tanks available for every raid.

Sure, you can win without. Just like you can win without consumables or addons. But intentionally handicapping yourself isn't the optimal strategy.



I was pretty convinced this was the case too, until I did the math. In the example above, with 4 shadow users doing 6600 shadow dps total, ISB granted 12 dps per percent uptime. So if you lose, say, 5% uptime, fire only needs to beat shadow with 70 dps for a net gain. We are missing something. If Shadow is consistently at the top, I'm guessing that it's plain better. If they were close, we'd see a mix of both.

So what can it be, why are we not seeing what the spreadsheets predict?

- It's definitely not "haste is no good when your cast gets interrupted". If the interruptions come on random times, the person using shorter casts will be hurt less by it, not more. I'll illustrate: take one caster with 3sec cast 3000 bolts, and one with 1sec cast 1000 bolts. Put them both at the same spot and dps, they'll do the same dps. But if they both have to move, the second guy will on average lose less.

- If people do well and end up on high score lists, it's because they performed well and got lucky. That means good crit ratios, which means high ISB uptimes, which benefits shadow. It's also easier to get a crit streak if you cast fewer spells (SB vs Incinerate). It's probably a small factor.

- Fire might simply be harder to play, and people lose out on messing about with the Immolate/Incinerate. Or maybe less warlocks use fire, and we're simply seeing more shadow destros because there are more.

 

Johnneke

Well I just took the test in my own hands. So all theorycrafting aside (have killed Brutallus now as both Shadow and Fire) I have to say:

- Shadow Destruction is much more crit dependant then Fire is, in Shadow I could get the RNG factor benefiting me giving me more then 5% more crit then my gear would dictate, due to the shorter casttime on fire (more Incinerate casts) this is not so noticeable in Fire. So Fire damage is much more constant for me.

- As shadow I always was at 1800-2050 dps range on Brutallus, as Fire I'm constantly in the 2050-2300 dps range which is a 'huge' difference. Maybe there are certain factors I'm missing for this but it definately is a nice gain.

@Arelenda: We are seeing what the spreadsheet predicts, there just are numerous ways why you are not seeing those results, one of them is that all high end raiding locks that are on kil'jaeden will be specced shadow for nether protection. Another one is just like someone posted earlier that they are usually only running 1 mage it seems (these high end raiding guilds). Also it can be people who make a sport out of it, give a lock a moonkin, elemental shaman, shadow priest, bm hunter and surely you can get such results as both fire and shadow but that doesnt mean people test it on both shadow and fire.

 

Pentamorfi

Maybe so, but as I said, neither the imp nor Malediction is the reason you'd want an affliction lock. Shadow Embrace is just a good talent to have in the raid, in pretty much all circumstances. However, considering how well Destro locks scale with high end gear and the very nature of Sunwell fights, where avoidance beats stamina on tanks hands down, you're better off just forgetting about affliction and "brute forcing" your way to beating a boss by using optimal group setups (i.e, good melee and ranged DPS groups).

Back when we were learning both bosses, we used to place an imp in the tank group for Felmyst, but not for Brutallus. We've had our tank being one-shotted by Corrosion=> 100% increased damage melee hits more times than by Stomp=>melee hits. Basically, working around Stomp is much easier than dealing with Corrosion-enhanced hits on the tank, or at least it was for us.


I think these points are valid. Also, I think I've read about spell haste "choke points" in this thread - meaning you need a specific amount of haste to fit a 6th and 7th Incinerate in the Immolate rotation, which leads to certain specific values of haste being much more valuable than stacking haste beyond these choke points (I hope I'm making sense). My point being that perhaps spell haste gear isn't that common yet - most people aren't anywhere near their end-game gear yet, but they're getting there.

Also, those fight on WWS are the fastest recorded kills of certain bosses. It's fights where people stacked shamans, potted up and used Heroisms in order to burst the boss down, getting lucky with RNG in the process. If you make Teron Gorefiend last 2 minutes instead of 3, the value of heroism and ISB enhanced crits will be much greater. Fire is steadier DPS in a longer fight, Shadow is gold for RNG-based nuking of bosses.