Smurrf

Yes, merger of CoS & CoE is to still happen with 2.4.3.

As far as end-game, define. It's certainly viable up into the early-mid stage of T6...past that, the only reason to stay Affliction is if your raid still needs Shadow Embrace. The change to CoE, of course, will mean that you have to analyze your raid and determine several factors before removing or putting in an affliction lock.

A) Overall increase in raid DPS. How many people do you have that would be affected? if you're running caster-light, it may not be worth it.

B) The warlock's own DPS, both as affliction and as succ-sac. With a high enough Destro DPS, it will counter the raid DPS lost from Malediction - if the warlock survives, of course. With a high enough affliction DPS as well, that plus the RDPS increase from Mal'd CoE will overwrite personal DPS from destro. If the lock in question is just that good that both run about equal, it should be a personal choice at that point.

C) Does the raid need Shadow Embrace, and do your tanks need the imp? This is the real reason we have affliction locks out there as prevalent as they still are, and should be taken into consideration. Talk with your healers, ask them how easy or hard it is to keep up the tank on some of the harder hitting bosses. That'll give you a better idea.

D) The warlock's own gear. Shouldn't be an issue any more, with badge gear, but if you're faced either with a choice of hit cap OR decent +damage and crit, then you should probably go affliction.

E) What's your raid's debuff counter look like? If your raid group is starting to complain of dots and debuffs falling off, or someone's running a counter and sees 38-39 without an affliction lock, then chances are Destro is going to be better suited for the raid. Remember, an affliction lock takes up a LOT of debuffs - Immolate, Co*, UA, SL, Corr, SE, as well as the occasional DL and contributes to all locks' Imp'd SB debuff. A destro lock only has Co* and the Imp'd SB...unless they're fire, in which case you can throw in Immolate.


I've just recently had to switch over to my paladin to tank now that we've hit T6, and pulled my lock out of the raid, but prior to that I was speccing affliction for SSC. I did find that I could still do a decent amount of damage as affliction, but I was starting to fade a bit. If I were to bring my lock back in for whatever reason though, I'd have to think about which spec I wanted to play. Destro is nice damage, and that's a given, but affliction - if played right - is constant damage, and is uber-fun to play, to boot. We've been running without any afflock for a bit now, and are adjusting to it, but it would be a tough call.

 

nilum87

Relating to the 2pcT4 set bonus, do you mean that it procs off of the casting of the dot, or the dot ticks?

 

PSGarak

Everything that procs off of DoTs procs only off of the initial application, unless otherwise stated, which generally means only Tymbal's.

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

 

Arelenda

Pre merge: it's mostly about SL, which helps a bit. It's by no means vital. In MH/BT you won't be lacking in dps or gear to do encounters, they're all execution based. In sunwell things are a bit different. I'd recommend an affliction lock on Brutallus, especially during learning attempts.

Post merge: with Malediction becoming more powerful, it will compensate more for the lack of dps in affliction. One affliction lock will pretty much be optimal on every fight.

Remember though that affliction locks in tank groups get extra nerfed. And in heavy aoe fights it's better to have them in a caster group, boosting the 9k health priests instead of the 22k health tank.

 

dedmonwakeen

In the first post I found very interesting data on the scaling of pet stamina to warlock gear, but what about the other stats?

My searching has yet to find a "Pet Compendium" that describes the base values and scaling mechanics for pet core/spell/melee attributes.

If it does exist, can we get it added to first post?

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

• Suggestive

Pet scaling

* 1 stam gives 0.3 to your pet.
* 1 resistance gives 0.4 to your pet.
* 1 armor gives 0.35 armor to the pet.
* 1 spell damage gives 0.15 spell damage, and 0.57 attack power to your pet.
* 1 int gives your pet 0.3 int.

Pets have 5% base crit, and a ~9% base chance to miss (on bosses, our pets don't dual wield).
I did not remove the stamina and intellect gained as bonuses from a naked warlock, not sure how it would interact with base mana and hp. I'm only going to list the pets that have a chance of been used to DPS. The felguard's DPS stats will include talent enhancements, since you can't get one without speccing for them.

Imp:
145 strength
38 agility
214 stamina
316 intellect (2568 mana)
263 spirit
0 spell damage

Succubus:
153 strength
108 agility
302 stamina
172 intellect(2880 mana)
122 spirit
286 AP
Attack speed: 2.0,
Base weapon DPS: 70.8 (121-162)

Felguard:
153 strength
108 agility
351 stamina
196 intellect(3157 mana)
122 spirit
323 AP
Attack speed: 2.0
Base weapon DPS: 101.9 (176-232)

 

dedmonwakeen

Suggestive, thanks for all the details. That's exactly what I was looking for: I'm finally getting around to putting physical-dps actors in my simulator (SimulationCraft) and figured I'd start with pets since the Demo-Warlock has been getting the short end of the stick for so long.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Arelenda

Excellent stuff and a great start. I'd need a bit more information to add it to the compendium though.

I know the stamina-for-health rate is pet dependent, but I can't remember what it was. I'd also need to know how their AP and spell power affects damage. And how spirit affects mana regen.

 

dedmonwakeen

Blessing of Kings would give two points from which to extrapolate the Str-to-AP coeff as well as the mana regen.

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Warlocomotif

Is there anything known about the chance for enslaves to break early, and factors that effect the likelyhood of it happening?

 

Fireye

1) There is a heartbeat check on the chance for enslaves to break early (ie; every 3 seconds, IIRC)
2) Shadow resist is a factor in the above-mentioned heartbeat checks. If a mob has a higher inate shadow resist, using Curse of Shadows can help prevent an enslave from breaking.
3) There is a higher and higher chance that the enslave will break early after the first enslave. I'm not sure of the exact mechanic of this, however.

(That's my understanding, at least.)

 

Warlocomotif

Has anyone ever done a reasonable amount of testing on normal-condition-first-enslave's (Or simply the likelyhood of an infernal breaking early). We had an infernal break early last night on Brutallus and I want to try figure out basically everything I can on the subject.

 

• Suggestive

I'll try to verify if the amount of X stat gained changes depending on the pet, i'm pretty sure none of our pets has in combat mana regen though, so spirit is a relatively useless stat on them.
Its impossible for an infernal to break early, on the first enslave anyway.

 

PSGarak

It's impossible for an Infernal to break early on a normal heartbeat resist check. There are ways for it to break early, like purposefully dismissing it, as well as going out of range or the warlock dying.

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

 

Sydane

If it happened during the last minute before enrage, it most likely was just summoned too soon and the initial 5 minutes wore out. After that, the re-enslave has huge diminishing returns on it and almost always seems to break within 30 seconds or less.

 

Warlocomotif

I went through the WWS log.

20:00'02.209 Fight started
20:00'14.781 First mention of infernal in log
20:03'18.350 Infernal starts attacking friendly target

Guildmate of mine says it can only break when below spell hit cap, which the warlock in question should have without problems :s

 

Vagabond

I *usually* get a full 10 minutes out of my infernals (cast + 1 enslave). Beyond that, the 2nd enslave usually is 30s-2min and worse beyond. Aka not worth it.

 

Sydane

Then he got out of range, disconnected, accidentally dismissed him, accidentally started summoning a different pet, god farted, or something. The first 5 minutes of Infernal are not a normal enslave, it's a normal pet during that time for all intents and purposes. My guess of all those things is he accidentally started to summon a new pet with a misclick (probably doesn't even know he did it), which immediately dismissed the infernal, setting it free on the raid. The hit cap, resistances, all those things impact enslaving a free demon (which the infernal is after the initial time, which a doomguard is, or just random mobs), but they don't affect the guaranteed 5 minutes you get the infernal to start with.

Edit: Looking at those times again, summoning the infernal 12 seconds into the fight is just asking for disaster in my opinion. Should wait until a little over a minute has passed so that there's no chance of breaking before the enrage.

 

Warlocomotif

Alright, and I agree that summoning 12 seconds in was a mistake to begin with. Anyway I'll post this on my guild's forums aswell. Thanks for all the info

[edit] Did find the reason for it getting free in the WWS.

 

EnKil.

I would like more advice about more general gearing issues, particularly about haste.

Which amount of spell damage, spell crit is comfortable enough for me to start stacking haste, and haste gems? Since I've started gearing up with T6 level items, my crit is getting lower and lower. I've used spreadsheets like Leulier, and from what I've saw, haste and crit give me around the same added DPS, but will I gimp my DPS if my crit gets to low? Do i absolutly need to keep around 25% w/ backlash? So basically, what my crit/spell damage should look like for me to use more haste item, and reckless pyrestones?

 

Arelenda

There is no fixed cutoff point, anyone that tells you "you need x of this stat over all others" is misguided. On point for point basis, spell hit will always have the best payoff until capped. After that it depends.

If you gain crit rating, that makes your SBs hit harder, increasing the gains from extra haste rating. Works the other way around too. I think it is possible to come to the cutoff point where both benefit you equally, but it would require a lot of haste. If you reach that equilibrium, you can boost either stat and get roughly the same benefit.

 

dedmonwakeen

We're so close to having a complete description of pet mechanics....

Can anybody cover these last questions?

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

dedmonwakeen

This implies that Succubus natural "weapon" has an average dmg of ~50?
50+(286/14) = ~70.5

This implies that Felguard natural "weapon" has an average dmg of ~80?
80+(323/14) = ~103

Is my understanding correct?

http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft

 

Warlocomotif

It lists base DPS of felguard/succubus weapon (Before AP). So it should simply be DPS * Speed = Avg damage/hit.

Or am I horribly misreading the terms?

 

evilhacker

Is this really true though? Crit and haste scale the same way - as a percent. Setting aside Imp SB, 1% crit with ruin should increase DPS by roughly the same amount as 1% haste and the increase is stat independant (the DPS value of the 1% changes but the % increase does not)

The difference, of course is that 1% is more expensive with crit than it is with haste ( 22.08 crit rating vs 15,7 haste rating).