PVE Raiding Compendium - Page 135

Arelenda · 06/27/08, 6:22 AM

Originally Posted by Anexus

Maybe I should have written my post better. I do already have the Vashj chest. Someone in my guild claimed that the leggings of channeled Elements would be better as the non t6 item. So I want to go back and read the discussion again see which one of us was right. The guy who said this is usally right about the things he claim. As for getting the 4setbonus asap that is exactly what I'm trying to do. And to do so I cannot use dkp on any other items. As it is now we're only able to raid once a week at best. Which means MH farming and maybe a boss or two in BT. So the gloves, helm, rage offhand and tempest of chaos are on my wishlist for the summer. And the shadowdmg cloak that never drops.

Do not bother with the chest, the raid will be better off with it going to paladins and priests. They actually want it, and it's junk for you. While it's true that your individual dps might be slightly higher with the leggings, you'll be ditching most T6 you currently have anyway when you obtain Sunwell T6. Denying others of loot so your individual dps improves marginally is not the way to go. Not to mention that dps is mostly irrelevant before SWP. If you have 4p T6 already, just go for the skull of Guldan when it drops and don't bother with the rest. Oh, and get the cloak

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nikitabanana · 06/27/08, 1:33 PM

Originally Posted by mko

Ya they can, was just saying that the difference was not counting pet DPS for the affliction.

And the point is not moot, why would you have one affliction lock instead of destro if you don't have the proper raid and destro would be doing more damage? I'd imagine the point for most guilds players is to contribute the maximum amount of DPS possible, not to be a unique snowflake just cuz.

Well, I've been pondering this and there are some interesting sort of, unique snowflakey stuff for affliction warlocks in sunwell that could prove of high usage to the raid. Something like this build - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
which I'm sure some will argue against, but it should be the best scaling affliction build with all the raid utility aspects. You simply give up range on all schools (not a huge deal, raid placement can be changed for you) as well as 10% less threat on destruction spells (which shouldn't be a huge issue overall compared to a pure destruction warlock).

On Brutallus, for instance - shadows embrace helps, you don't require a shadow priest group to be able to dps fairly well, you have the bonus of the imp, etc. Same thing applies to felmyst, except you have even better aoe potential then a destro warlock with more threat reduction (arguably, until you hit M'uru not too much is difficult if you're in a guild already killing KJ - but let's say you aren't). Keeping dots on the melee twin allows damage reduction as well (assuming you're smart enough to move out of the conflag :P, or you could be designated the warlock tank since you lack nether protection and maledict the other boss come the new patch).

The spec starts to shine more at M'uru. Other warlocks can adjust to dpsing other things a bit more because an affliction warlock will have superior aoe dmg with a lower threat cap. Although it may seem small, it's definitely not. The amount of wasted dps on seeds that don't go off, hit too few targets, etc. is quite high. Add in your prot paladin doing more consecrate damage as well and it's an overall dps gain if you play it smart, and any free time warlocks/shadow priests/mages have is spent on a maledicted boss. Take that useless point out of soul siphon and put it in improved curse of weakness too if you have a prot pally tanking sentinels & voidspawns and you now have something better then a prot warrior's demo shout available as well.

The spec I think is highly useful at a fight like Kil'Jaeden. Assuming, like most guilds, you seed adds - an affliction warlock can start the seeding at about 3-4 seconds in on shadow spikes and alternate seeds with a shadowbolt and probably kill them all solo within a small time period of shadow spike added. A destro lock can start in after shadow spike ends if necessary, but you free up at least 1 destro warlock (or 2 if you run 3 warlocks) to dps Kil'Jaeden the entire time. This lowers the boundaries to hit the various marks (especially the 55% one) and would make the fight significantly easier imo. The other warlocks also can work on shields and not worry about seeding as much, while the affliction warlock's job is to make sure those all die in a timely fashion without pulling them.

So, even if 3% to shadow priests/warlocks/mages in the raid isn't a 100% straight up nuke dps gain, there are other semi gimmicky gains that are feasible and would simplify the raid encounter. I can easily see only bringing two warlocks to sunwell encounters since other classes can keep up dps wise. The main reason you see 4 warlocks on so many of the end encounters is due simply to seed, which affliction warlocks are just better at. They can do more damage for less threat and safely dark pact or lifetap for a better ratio to keep up the aoe damage.

Just my thoughts, feel free to say if you think I'm utterly wrong :P.

Edit: By more damage, I don't mean % based. I simply mean, they lifetap/darkpact for more so they're able to output more dmg assuming equivilant mana pools. That, and affliction warlocks tend to favor straight +dmg gems vs. other types.

Drac'thor · 06/27/08, 2:15 PM

I understand that Destruction seems like good DPS tree, why even spec Affliction? And without Improved Curse of Agony, Amplify Curse, and Unstable Affliction, what kind of Affliction Warlock are you? You're curses and DoT's set aside to do what? Improve DPS by going into Destruction? I don't understand...

Sydane · 06/27/08, 2:39 PM

Imp CoA and Amp Curse are both essentially useless in a spec that is intended to put up CoE (or at best situational). Ruin eventually out scales UA (ballpark is 25% paper doll crit but spreadsheet can tell you specifics).

A lot of the early numbers are showing that with the buff to CoE, a typical raid build will benefit enough from malediction that the cumulative raid dps from an affliction warlock will be competitive with destruction, enough so that I believe bringing one Affliction warlock to the raid, something that is already fairly common for SE, will basically become the rule. Because of the gear available, most of those locks will be 40/0/21 in some variant (there's a lot of flexibility in the lower part of the affliction tree for situational talents).

Morwen · 06/27/08, 2:45 PM

Originally Posted by nikitabanana

Edit: By more damage, I don't mean % based. I simply mean, they lifetap/darkpact for more so they're able to output more dmg assuming equivilant mana pools. That, and affliction warlocks tend to favor straight +dmg gems vs. other types.

I am having a hard time buying this part of the argument (and with it, the assertion that affliction warlocks have better AoE potential). SoC eruption does scale with spell damage but it is also subject to an AoE cap, so for 'mass' AoE (for Felmyst certainly, and for M'uru if using a strat that stacks more than one spawn wave) it only scales with haste and crit. So we're left with the 10% threat reduction and larger lifetaps. Can you really open up sooner on AoE just because you have -10% threat? Seems rather risky, since crit variation is much higher than 10%. And since for all these fights you know when you're about to need to start AoE, you can typically lifetap to near-full before it happens. So the advantage is mainly in situations where your AE period has to be sustained long enough to actually expend more than a full mana bar each time.

• frmorrison · 06/27/08, 3:16 PM

Originally Posted by nikitabanana

Well, I've been pondering this and there are some interesting sort of, unique snowflake stuff for affliction warlocks in sunwell that could prove of high usage to the raid. Something like this build - Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Good idea for an Affliction Lock in 2.4.3, however you picked up Cataclysm instead of less threat/more range on Destro spells? 10% less threat (really about 6%) is more useful than 3% less mana on Immolate/Bolts. I would also get grim reach via dropping 2 out of Contagion, 2% better Corruption and Seeds doesn't look at as good as attacking from further away.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft would be how I would do it.

I you wanted to get imp CoW for Voids, I would drop two out of Fel Concentration, since that is more suited for drain tanking and PvP.

Drac'thor · 06/27/08, 3:26 PM

Originally Posted by Sydane

Imp CoA and Amp Curse are both essentially useless in a spec that is intended to put up CoE (or at best situational). Ruin eventually out scales UA (ballpark is 25% paper doll crit but spreadsheet can tell you specifics).

A lot of the early numbers are showing that with the buff to CoE, a typical raid build will benefit enough from malediction that the cumulative raid dps from an affliction warlock will be competitive with destruction, enough so that I believe bringing one Affliction warlock to the raid, something that is already fairly common for SE, will basically become the rule. Because of the gear available, most of those locks will be 40/0/21 in some variant (there's a lot of flexibility in the lower part of the affliction tree for situational talents).

But that talent tree doesn't include CoE, so what is the point. I've been looking at it and that Affliction build should not even exist. It would be much better if he were Destruction. Besides, you need Amp Curse to unlock CoE, so...

nikitabanana · 06/27/08, 3:53 PM

Originally Posted by frmorrison

Good idea for an Affliction Lock in 2.4.3, however you picked up Cataclysm instead of less threat/more range on Destro spells? 10% less threat (really about 6%) is more useful than 3% less mana on Immolate/Bolts. I would also get grim reach via dropping 2 out of Contagion, 2% better Corruption and Seeds doesn't look at as good as attacking from further away.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft would be how I would do it.

I you wanted to get imp CoW for Voids, I would drop two out of Fel Concentration, since that is more suited for drain tanking and PvP.

I was looking at it from mostly a M'uru/Kil'Jaden standpoint, in which case less destro threat wouldn't matter nor would grim reach due to being able to position yourself properly. I'm guess I'm not looking at it from an overly generic spec, but rather fight specific ones.

Edit: Agree with the lifedrain note.

nikitabanana · 06/27/08, 3:55 PM

Originally Posted by Drac'thor

But that talent tree doesn't include CoE, so what is the point. I've been looking at it and that Affliction build should not even exist. It would be much better if he were Destruction. Besides, you need Amp Curse to unlock CoE, so...

You've made the incorrect assumption that I'm this spec (I'm always fire or shadow destro depending on the fight) - the problem however, is you're looking at it without any context of the fight the spec would be utilized on. Once context is added it makes a bit more sense.

Drac'thor · 06/27/08, 4:58 PM

I guess, but I still think if you're Affliction you should at least have CoE and Unstable Affliction... w/e

Pentamorfi · 06/28/08, 12:22 AM

Originally Posted by Morwen

I am having a hard time buying this part of the argument (and with it, the assertion that affliction warlocks have better AoE potential). SoC eruption does scale with spell damage but it is also subject to an AoE cap, so for 'mass' AoE (for Felmyst certainly, and for M'uru if using a strat that stacks more than one spawn wave) it only scales with haste and crit. So we're left with the 10% threat reduction and larger lifetaps. Can you really open up sooner on AoE just because you have -10% threat?

No, you can't. If your tankadin is competent, you can seed exactly after the 2nd sentinel dies and you won't ever pull aggro (assuming 3 warlocks). If you do the first seed before the sentinel dies, prepare to soulshatter and have a stroll back to the pala's concentration while praying for nether protection to proc, because the threat you'll create on the just-spawned adds won't be helped by having any threat reducing talent.

Pentamorfi · 06/28/08, 12:29 AM

Originally Posted by Drac'thor

And without Improved Curse of Agony, Amplify Curse, and Unstable Affliction, what kind of Affliction Warlock are you?

The good kind. I suggest you read the initial post and see for yourself - imp CoA and amplify curse are equally useless in a raiding affliction build and Ruin outperforms UA pretty much once you've got 4 pieces of t6.

Drac'thor · 06/28/08, 12:34 AM

Ok... I understand now. In raiding, UA becomes useless after t6... and CoA and Amp Curse are worthless anyway. I just looked at the charts and the difference is significant. Sorry, I was a little confused. But what about before t6? Are UA and CoA and Amp Curse good before t6?

Arelenda · 06/28/08, 7:50 AM

Originally Posted by Drac'thor

Ok... I understand now. In raiding, UA becomes useless after t6... and CoA and Amp Curse are worthless anyway. I just looked at the charts and the difference is significant. Sorry, I was a little confused. But what about before t6? Are UA and CoA and Amp Curse good before t6?

UA, yes at lower gear levels.
Amp Curse, probably not in raids, although it's one point and might occasionally be useful.
imp CoA, pretty much never. You have Malediction and will be using CoS everywhere (or CoS+CoE after patch)

Krazen · 06/28/08, 10:48 AM

Originally Posted by nikitabanana

The spec starts to shine more at M'uru. Other warlocks can adjust to dpsing other things a bit more because an affliction warlock will have superior aoe dmg with a lower threat cap. Although it may seem small, it's definitely not. The amount of wasted dps on seeds that don't go off, hit too few targets, etc. is quite high. Add in your prot paladin doing more consecrate damage as well and it's an overall dps gain if you play it smart, and any free time warlocks/shadow priests/mages have is spent on a maledicted boss. Take that useless point out of soul siphon and put it in improved curse of weakness too if you have a prot pally tanking sentinels & voidspawns and you now have something better then a prot warrior's demo shout available as well.

The spec I think is highly useful at a fight like Kil'Jaeden. Assuming, like most guilds, you seed adds - an affliction warlock can start the seeding at about 3-4 seconds in on shadow spikes and alternate seeds with a shadowbolt and probably kill them all solo within a small time period of shadow spike added. A destro lock can start in after shadow spike ends if necessary, but you free up at least 1 destro warlock (or 2 if you run 3 warlocks) to dps Kil'Jaeden the entire time. This lowers the boundaries to hit the various marks (especially the 55% one) and would make the fight significantly easier imo. The other warlocks also can work on shields and not worry about seeding as much, while the affliction warlock's job is to make sure those all die in a timely fashion without pulling them.

I think there are 2 points to make here:

1. If you run 3 warlocks, the aoe component of this fight is rather trivial to begin with. Pentamorfi already said it, but I'd like to add that your phase 2 single target dps is objectively lower.
2. I suppose this depends on your positioning and strategy, but not every set of adds on KJ is seedable for us, and the 36 yard range does have its benefits on shield orbs as well. Aggro is essentially irrelevant as you can always soulshatter the 55% adds on movement.

It can work, though.

Tolki · 06/28/08, 6:22 PM

I recently heard from some less than reputable sources that all spell casters have a hard spell damage cap at 1400 damage. Is this true? I already am gearing more for haste now than damage, and crit is decent, however with a flask I can currently go far beyond the 1400 "cap" if it exists, and this worries me as I know nothing about this mechanic.

Benafflock · 06/28/08, 9:07 PM

Originally Posted by Tolki

I recently heard from some less than reputable sources that all spell casters have a hard spell damage cap at 1400 damage. Is this true? I already am gearing more for haste now than damage, and crit is decent, however with a flask I can currently go far beyond the 1400 "cap" if it exists, and this worries me as I know nothing about this mechanic.

I have never heard of this before, and it certainly sounds false. Nonetheless, I'd imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to test with Curse of Doom or even Immolate simply by swapping gear or comparing unflasked damage to flasked damage.

Bunhead · 06/28/08, 9:15 PM

the "Spell Damage Cap" has been covered before in many threads.

It comes down to this: It takes more spell damage to increase your DPS by 1% at high spell damage levels than at low spell damage levels.

This is why you must balance your stats and be aware of what you need.

1 point of spell damage will still increase your damage, but it is diminishing returns in terms of % DPS increase. Thus you need to balance Haste / Crit / Spell Damage after you get to the point where 1 point of spell damage is worth less than the equivalent 1 rating point of the other stat.

This is also the point of dps calculators giving you the "next stat worth". Showing you what stats you need to be concentrating on.

Tolki · 06/29/08, 12:01 AM

Originally Posted by Bunhead

the "Spell Damage Cap" has been covered before in many threads.

It comes down to this: It takes more spell damage to increase your DPS by 1% at high spell damage levels than at low spell damage levels.

This is why you must balance your stats and be aware of what you need.

1 point of spell damage will still increase your damage, but it is diminishing returns in terms of % DPS increase. Thus you need to balance Haste / Crit / Spell Damage after you get to the point where 1 point of spell damage is worth less than the equivalent 1 rating point of the other stat.

This is also the point of dps calculators giving you the "next stat worth". Showing you what stats you need to be concentrating on.

Yes, I know you have to balance your stats based on what you need, however I was asking about an actual mechanic that severely gimped additional spell damage at a certain point. From what you are talking about, I beleive you are talking about balancing stats, not an actual hard cap.

◊ manly · 06/29/08, 5:32 AM

Originally Posted by Tolki

I recently heard from some less than reputable sources that all spell casters have a hard spell damage cap at 1400 damage. Is this true? I already am gearing more for haste now than damage, and crit is decent, however with a flask I can currently go far beyond the 1400 "cap" if it exists, and this worries me as I know nothing about this mechanic.

Having tested the game with over 1 million +dmg, I can assure you there is no spell damage cap. In case you ask, for a short period of time on the PTRs there was a bug that allowed you to stack gear indefinitely by moving bags around.

◊ Kyth · 06/29/08, 6:42 AM

Originally Posted by Latas

Actually the logic of scaling because another class can buff is rather flawed, blizz scales classes to stand on their own quite well normally, if they didnt it would be them basically saying "you need to have X class around to be useful" which blizz generally tries to stay away from.

A little late in my reply here, but:

With the push for the destruction tree to continue to become more fire-focused going into Wrath, warlocks need to keep tabs on what their mages are specing. Mages may whine about requiring a lock to get +10% from CoE, but requiring not just a mage but a *fire* mage for +15% fire may prove to be a very strong spec/school determiner for locks depending on what mages do.

SensenmanN · 07/01/08, 1:49 AM

Alright, so I am having a bit of trouble finding the answer with the search function.

I am wondering what is better to use for potions, Mana pots or Destruction pots?

I've heard and seen both ways. Is it situational? U would figure for a fight like curator (lol I raid up past illidan, but just as an example) destruction might be better, but what about say brutalus, or kael'gos?

If anyone would be so kind as to link the page where I can find more information on the topic, that would be awesome, just having a bit of trouble searching through all 150 pages.

zanaris · 07/01/08, 2:43 AM

I'm positive you guys have talked about AToS somewhere in this post but I've searched all 135 pages with ctrl+f and I've been unable to find any definitive information about AToS aside from leulier's dps spreadsheet. The only information regarding this trinket i could find was

"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.

It's good to explain that it's better than Icon, but where is the math in this? As far as I'm aware there is no internal CD and with 100% uptime of corruption the theoretical average damage would be around 73.3333 I got this by using this math which i believe is a bit flawed.
3.3333 corruptions per minute meaning exactly 20 corruption ticks per minute. (60/18=3.333 and 3.333*6=20) There is a 20% chance to proc so that means we can expect 4 procs every minute (20*.2=4) Since every proc lasts 5 seconds we can expect 20 seconds for the buff being active. (4*5=20) The trinket is active for 20 seconds out of 60 averaging the damage of the proc to 33.3% (20/60=1/3) 33.3% of 220 is 73.33. Everywhere I've looked the damage is 13-8 dmg lower than my figure which makes sense because I'm sure the simulation craft doesnt assume 100% corruption uptime, and i'm pretty sure leulier's wouldnt assume 100% corruption uptime as well.

According to leulier's spreadsheet and the trinket section on wiki.shadowpriest which can be found here. Both sources list Quag's eye as slightly better. Also the fact that when DS/SnF corruption deals 7% more threat than destruction spells pretty much turns me completely away from the trinket but a few of the other locks in my guild strongly disagree. Since I've only seen the end result of what exactly this trinket is worth in terms of "damage" I would like an outside opinion, maybe a real human being explaining the math of the trinket. That way I would be more suited to explain to them exactly why this trinket isnt all they are claiming it is (or show me that it is better than I am assuming).

I'm very sorry if this is a repost, but like I said I've tried to find information about this trinket but have been unable to find anything explaining in detail. I would really appreciate it if I could get some help on this topic or at least have someone point me to where I can find more information, thanks.

EDIT: about the destruction pots versus mana pots it is situational. Mana pots only provide more dps if you can actually use that mana. I am not for certain if a destruction pot would be better on curator evocate situation or not. But I do know that lifetap is about a 13-15% loss in dps when you cycle it in with shadowbolts. (Assuming you are DS/SnF without imp lifetap)

Zasz · 07/01/08, 7:04 AM

Its useless for destruction specs which most of the warlocks have when they reach exalted wit AT.

Arelenda · 07/01/08, 11:50 AM

Originally Posted by zanaris

I'm positive you guys have talked about AToS somewhere in this post but I've searched all 135 pages with ctrl+f and I've been unable to find any definitive information about AToS aside from leulier's dps spreadsheet.

At that stage of progress, you simply don't use corruption. Affliction warlocks might see some us out of it, especially if they bother with dotting multiple trash mobs.

You can get 73.3 spellpower out of it under the best circumstances (except dotting multiple mobs, which will favor the AToC). Icon yields 68.9 spellpower under worst circumstances (fights that last exactly two minutes or a multiple thereof, no heroism/bloodlust or other tricks to combine it with).

Given the lack of control the thing has, and the meager potential benefits, the Icon is simply better. I'm all for stuff that gives you power at a price, but in this case I wouldn't make the bet.

EDIT: about the destruction pots versus mana pots it is situational. Mana pots only provide more dps if you can actually use that mana. I am not for certain if a destruction pot would be better on curator evocate situation or not. But I do know that lifetap is about a 13-15% loss in dps when you cycle it in with shadowbolts. (Assuming you are DS/SnF without imp lifetap)

Generally mana pots are just that much better, especially since they scale better with gear. They buy you about a Shadow Bolt's worth of Life Tapping, and destro pots won't even come close to that, unless you're stacking haste, heroism/bloodlust and a skull. Of course, if mana pool is not an issue and burst dps is, then you're better off with destro pots. Kalecgos would be a decent example of that, since he has a 10% soft enrage.