Shabaz

Sorry, I should have mentioned...we do have a raiding Draenai Shammy, but I'm not always in her group (we rotate with the mages) so I try to keep near the hit cap in case I'm not in the Shammy group, or in case I move out of range.

The Spreadsheet clearly shows the ring adds more then the Handwraps, I was asking based on wondering if people had found a level of haste that was to much for my gear level (OOM to often, or not enough crit to keep ISB up) The Ring's better...I'm just worried I'm undergeared to pull it off.

 

Johnneke

There was NEVER any trash that made me decide upon what spec to go, I decide on what I do on bosses not on trash. And I've been fire in SW:P and the dps increase I noticed was almost a flat +200 and it was constant.

Wrong, Shadow mana effiency is worse then Fire, check the spreadsheet and compare DPM.

Why might you ask? A very good reason for this is that Nether Protection is highly recommended on alot of bosses in SW:P. Another reason for the higher shadow dps can be the randomness of it, you can be lucky on eating isb charges and critrate, this flattens out alot more then shadow dps which can be extremely random. Just because someone gets lucky and gets 3k dps on Brutallus as shadow doesnt mean it's better then a fire lock who gets 2.8k dps on him every single week.

If you want to know more you should ask Jynxx from Fusion, he actually played as fire till at least M'uru, I believe they now use a warlock tank on kj so it might very well be possible that jynxx is now tanking him as fire aswell?

Here is a more compressed discussion about fire dps on the Fusion lock forums:
2.4, Fire, warlock specs, raiding - Fusion

 

Flamingcloud

Posting a fire lock discussion from November isn't really relevant. Shadow isn't super random, only slightly more so than fire, and it doesn't take luck to get 3k dps on Brutallus, I had epic bad luck with multiple things going wrong(like only 2 locks alive most of the fight, bad isb uptime, poor totem uptime, a burn, few drums, low raid dps, etc) last Brutallus and was just shy, and have no doubt with luck I could be over 3300 easily. A few crit % isn't gonna equal hundreds of dps.

 

Fafhrd

Summary of fire spec versus shadow from earlier discussion.
In order of importance for high end raiding Warlock:

1. Fire prohibits Nether Protection, which is a huge benefit on certain fights.
2. Fire spec has no raidwide benefit, shadow has huge benefits.
3. Fire has theoretically higher average personal DPS, but shadow has higher max DPS potential (Check WWS).
4. Fire spec/enchants makes your CoD/A tick for less, if you get to use it.
5. Fire is better DPM for lesser gear levels, shadow has better when you have better gear.
6. Flame Caps shares CD with Health Stones, but so does Dark/Demonic Runes.

Miss anything?

The "2 destro shadow locks, rest fire" argument is ok, but you would be relying on the 2 shadow locks to always show up for proper min/max-ing. Also they would rightly claim the damage curse, and win the DPS meter that way.

 

Arelenda

I did. And if you're casting Immolate, you're spending more mana than as Shadow. Which is why I said it. (example: the no haste cycle: 1xImmolate + 6 Incinerate is slightly more mana than the equivalent time spent casting Shadow Bolts)



NP is nice, but no one would take it if it was a 100 dps loss. As pointed out before, each % uptime is like 20 RAID dps, so divided among all warlocks. Your argument boils down to "Fire does more damage. the reason you only see shadow on top dps is because all those guys are lucky". If the wws's were selected solely on warlock dps, you might have an argument. However, this isn't the case. They are the highest raid dps reports.

If you want to continue this debate, please provide real world data of fire dps comparable to the top shadow locks.

 

zezickeltarn

Currently its a fact that you.. The warlocks always show up at the top of the Damage meters when it comes to MH trash via AoE SoC. So I ask you? How does one increase the amount of damage you do.

Heres some info you probably already know about SoC.

The DoT part receives 150% bonus damage from +dmg gear (damage is spread out over 6 tics), the detonation part gets 16.6% bonus damage.

SoC detonation can be set off by any damage, not necessarily from the Warlock. For example, casting SoC on a mob being attacked by other members of the group is likely to produce an instant explosion. SoC detonation consumes the effect (hence stops the damage-over-time). It does not damage the target itself, only those around it. The direct damage from the explosion can crit.

Its damage is affected by talents and gear, but the detonation threshold is not. In other words, SoC will detonate as soon as target receives 1044 damage, even though it may only take 2-3 ticks of the DoT to deal this much damage. In essence, extra +dmg gear will "shorten the fuse"

Aoe cap: if your seed of corruption detonates for more than 13580 on all targets combined, it will do less damage. When this happens, the detonation damage will be scaled down so that the total is 13580. This reduction is done after calculating +damage gear, talents and buffs so it is the same for every gear and spec.

Example, if you hit 10 targets with SoC detonation, you will hit each for 1358.


Some multipliers (crits, CoE, etc) are not affected and will allow you to hit individual targets for more.

Example: SoC hitting 10 targets will hit each for 1358, but crits will be 1358x1.5.

So, by looking at all of this information you should glean this by happen stance.

+ spell damage only shortens the fuse on it, not increasing your max damage of SoC.

Crit chance will increase your DPS from casting SoC because it can increase the damage cap.

You do not need to shorten the fuse considering others can set it off.

So why do I bring this up you say? Very simple. I have been suggesting to warlocks for awhile a little game of "What if?" What if you built a set that was designed for very low Spell damage... and instead stacked... Spell haste? Since SoC is a 2 second spell. Spell haste is actually one of the Only effects that will actually directly increase your DPS when casting SoC. Also a little what if.. why don't you also stack with this SoC Spell crit? the more you crit the more the maximum damage you can do with those SoC. this doesn't scale as well with Spell haste but it is quite powerful for another reason.

As all warlocks know, your biggest concern currently is Aggro, as of right now without even Building a SoC set, you pull aggro off your Tankadin, and I a simple prot warrior suggest you build a set designed to increase your dps.

Heres my thought on how to counteract this [Prism of Inner Calm]
it has a special effect on critical hits to lower your threat by -150 for melee, or -1000 for spell crits. I've heard it has a hidden cooldown, however i have yet to see the actual documentation on it showing it has one. I've cruised around wowhead, here etc and i've only seen 1 post about it having a cooldown involving a mage using imp scorchs.

Now you can see a bit more why Spell crit could be useful here. however let me spell it out for you.
SoC caps at a maximum damage, and scales to the amount of AoE Targets there are. so... lets say that we are halfway through Mount Hyjal and we have a group thats 10-20 AoE Targets on your tankadin, in fact lets put it to a definite number such as 15.
Since SoC cannot hit the target you put it on it would effect 14 targets.
13580/14=970
the damage on one of those that crits will be.
970*1.5=1455
Now lets add in your Anti Threat mechanics.
you have Imp drain soul which is -10% base
Non Crit 970*.1=873
Crit 1455*.1=1309.5

You have Salvation on which is -30%
Non Crit with Imp DS 873*.3=611.1
Crit with Imp DS 1309.5*.3=916.65

you have Prism of Inner calm on which is -1000 threat given to your target
Non Crit with Imp DS and salv 611.1-0=611.1
Crit with Imp DS and salv 916.65-1000=-83.35
It seems to me you just lost threat on every one of those targets you critted.

And heres why. the Prism of inner calm doesn't effect any anti threat mechanics you have, it just adds a static -1000 to the targets threat on you. which means it does NOT interrupt or messup the anti threat you have goin for you. the exact second you crit, -1000 threat is done, and then all the damage you do and the anti threat mechanics are effected and given which means that when you crit a target like this. you are actually receiving 916.65 Threat to that target. While also receiving the Prism's effect of -1000 threat.

I Pose this question Again. If you were to build a Spell haste set With heavy Spell crit on it, While using this trinket, the Prism of Inner Calm. What do YOU think your DPS would be at. I currently see Warlocks in the 1700-2400 DPS range currently, with spell haste it will increase by a %, while with crit it will increase by 1.5%*your increase in Crit Chance. If you get your 2 second SoC to go towards a nicer 1.5 second cast, you are going to get 2 extra SoC Every 12 seconds than you would have with your 2 second cast. And if you can get your Spell crit to be around... 25% (adding in 5% for boomkin, and 3% for Elemental Shaman)you will Crit 33% of the time on all mobs effected. Which depending on how many of the mobs are out there could actually Guarantee you will Maintain Less aggro because you are critting!

Now you may be thinking, Well if I decide to stack all that im gonna gimp a very important Stat Spell hit! Supression effects SoC since it counts as a Dot or more importantly as a Corruption.

After obtaining 76 hit rating with 5/5 Suppression, warlock dots are hit capped. 76 hit rating... I think thats easily obtainable through Spell crit and Spell haste pieces do you?

now I made this post on the wow forums a couple of days back and i have a bit better numbers for some of the calculations, Apparently Salvation will curb 300 of the threat reduced off the prism. so instead of making it -1000 it will show as -700. In addition to this, when i suggest the 5/5 suppressions with the imp drain soul, i am suggesting this gear setup for Trash only, as well as suggesting someone to have those talents only if your already playing around in the afflict tree for your guild, via malediction etc. I am not saying that killing trash faster is better than downing a boss, I am suggesting that during the raid of Mount Hyjal, where there is nearly continuous AoEing could we justify making an AoE set and use it for the first 7 to 8 waves of any Hyjal encounter, then switch it back up to your regular set for the boss. IMO the trash of MH is 60-75% of the difficulty in the encounter, I believe that we have once gotten through trash in any of the boss encounters and failed the encounter, and we lost due to lack of players to dps etc. meaning we messed up on trash.

Please... I want to know what you think of my Insane idea?

 

Arnath

Just to get the word out, Rawr b15 was released today with a MUCH improved (it actually works) warlock module that's based on the spreadsheet. If anyone has any feature requests or bug reports, please send me a private message or comment in the Rawr thread on these forums.

 

Splot

The trash are not a DPS race. As an affliction lock you should also have next to no issue with threat on those pulls. As a destruction lock currently learning Archimonde I get to see that same trash every week (extra if somebody stuffs up). The idea is novel, but I cannot see it being of real value.

As destruction I get no threat reduction to seed, I have ok crit, haste and shadow damage. I normally sit at around 2200-2400 dps for the evening just doing the first four bosses. We normally carry in 4 locks and all of them bunch up for DPS and damage done, 2 are demo, 2 are destro. Now that we've learnt the trash, we only ever die if the paladin tank dies.

My thinking on your "insane idea":

• Start slowly, rain of fire on the paladin if you aren't sure all the mobs are well tanked
  Don't specifically set out to stack haste to AoE, you'll go OOM, or worse life, too fast
  Put omen on AoE mode and stop casting when you hit 95% if all of your seeds haven't gone off
  Pay attention to where the mobs are and what is happening to the tank
  Run into the AoE mess and out the other side to let the mob take damage from other seeds going off and the pally
  Save shatter for the "oh shit" moment as all your seeds explode at once

 

◊ manly

I'd rather cast COS(COE) on mobs that aren't tanked and/or tank has low threat on them.

As far as the other conversation goes about aoeing scaling, thats really basic stuff. If you are under the aoe cap, then spell damage will help, although you wouldnt really want to put much focus on it. The only way to scale aoe dps under the aoe cap has always been through either haste (with the exception of arcane explosion pre 2.4) or crit.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Arelenda

Thing is, you don't to use the prism because you need to be below the tank on all mobs, you can't rely on crits for this. It's true that Haste does increase dps on Soc spam, and pretty much nothing else will.

But I wouldn't bother making a set for trash. We're mostly threat capped there anyway, and it's not really a stumbling block. Ask for TA, it'll increase your dps by 20%.

 

vishal

I am posting my guilds wws on brutalis fight, we have just recently started to attemp this guy:


Machine Guild WWS

I am curious about what you guys think about my dps and if you see any blatant mistake I might be making, first 10 attemps on brutalis was made as fire lock, we had 1 fire mage so i wanted to see my dps as fire lock.

Nasency:
My normal Spec

This was my spec:
Fire Spec

Later on fire mage was removed for another shadowpriest, so i had gone shadow:
This is my spec:
Shadow Spec

My group consists of: Elemental shaman, Boomkin, Shadowpriest, Warlock.
We did not use any destruction pots because we are trying to get enrage timer still. I believe my dps is very low for the group I am in, basicly want a confirmation on this fact, and if its true any options to improve.

Any comments would be appreciated.

TY.

 

zezickeltarn

I am putting forth my "crazy" idea based on the fact that my current guild has 4 warlocks, and about 1 will ever show up to any raid. They currently do not have threat issues for any of the trash, however I bring it forth in an effort to help improve what you are already doing so well. In addition to all of this, Although Casting SoC faster will make you go oom quicker, it will provide much more DPS faster, as well as Spell haste reduces the time of your global cooldown, Allowing you to Lifetap faster. I am personally under the understanding that if you go towards the time and effort to blow the badges, get the drops, and craft the items needed to attempt to make a Spell haste Trash set, Your guild might be willing to have continuous hots going, especially if you are continuously on the top of the damage meter, and not by a small margin. Like i said earlier when our warlocks show on a MH night. They are Guaranteed to be the top. I am not putting forth this idea based on the idea that i or my other locks are having trouble, i was putting it forth in the idea that could you change your 2200-2400 dps, into around 3000-4000. Would it be possible?

Its not a huge deal, and i personally will begin to make an alternate gear setup for my warlock in the hopes of coming up with some WWS stats based on it. It will probably get a bit dicey trying to grab a couple of specialized pieces, but in the next couple weeks ill try to have some data on this concept to further explore my idea,

 

Arelenda

Can't spot any obvious mistakes. Having a moonkin and an elemental shaman will get you nice a crit chance.

You can find my most recent Brutallus raid here, for comparison.

 

Arelenda

Any warlock in even basic gear can outthreat the tank and has to hold back. Having better gear won't matter much, you'll just have to hold back more. Even in mediocre gear and no haste, seed cast at 6000 dps (13500 damage per 2 seconds), provided you hit enough targets. I won't stop anyone trying to get to 30% haste for fun, but I'd never recommend it to others.

 

Johnneke

Have you ever considered that that 6000 dps your talking about is divided over 5-10 mobs give you 600-1200 dps on each mob, with good aoe tankers there shouldnt be much reason to hold back other then on initial threat building. The tps our soc does /mob isnt that impressive that its guaranteed to out threat any tank.

 

Arelenda

You seem to be missing the point.

The 6000 dps remark was made in reference to the person stating that with better gear, warlocks could put out 3k dps. I was pointing out that even with lousy gear, that 6K is easily reachable while casting.

I did not mean to imply that you could reach 6k dps on a single target. In fact, you can never outthreat any tank on a single target with SoC. However, if said tank has to pick up 10 mobs that are running towards the raid and npcs, you will have to give him some time to do it. Hence you don't start spamming SoC on the first mob you see, you wait.

The point I was trying to make: regardless of gear levels, you _need_ to give your tank time to gather the mobs. At a point you will decide to start with aoe. Pulling aggro on melee mobs will slow the entire process down, and is to be avoided. If you play flawlessly, you will stay under the threat level of the tank on ALL mobs. Having better gear (more haste) does not change this much, you simply have to be more careful.

 

LockApologist

RE: increasing SoC dps.

1. You don't need hit gear for SoC spam. You are not spamming SoC on bosses, thus hit is mostly irrelevant.

2. Stacking haste and using the prism is counter intuitive. For prism to work, you need to crit, which is probably very low if you're in haste gear. Crit also scales SoC, just not as well.

3. Prism IS modified by Salv/TA. So, you're probably looking at 500-700 threat drop per crit.

4. Not everyone has/can get a prism.

5. Why do you need more Hyjal trash DPS? Our pally tank used to run >800 +dmg for hyjal and it's still not terribly hard to out threat the tank w/ SoC.

6. Building a second gear set is annoying and not practical. You're taking gear/gems that others could use for a main set for your irrelevant trash set. I stopped swapping to my 'trash' dps set long ago. Forget to swap back a time or two and enjoy 12% miss vs the boss.

So, I don't see the point. If you need more SoC dps, ask for TA totem and don't wait as long to start.

 

Krazen

Try doing Kil'jaeden sometime.

 

Scylithia

Ive done a fair bit of reading after searching the term "haste" in this thread, yet I still cannot come to firm conclusion on the haste vs base damage tradeoff question.

I found a post that concluded (based on the spreadsheet) a 6 spell damage 5 haste gem gives 11.5 damage, whereas a 12 spell damage gem of course gives 12 spell damage. This would indicate pure damage is the better choice to increase dps for chain shadowbolting as a destro lock.

In the main warlock post, it is posted that base damage, crits, and haste ALL have diminishing returns. This indicates there is a point where you would want to start adding haste in lieu of base damage.

As a shadowbolt specialty destruction warlock, i am facing the decision to go for more haste or bonus damage, and I would like to know what amount of bonus damage that cutoff point is, and what factors into that decision, assuming capped spell hit and 22% crit chance (including spec bonuses).

Some warlocks have stated they are going for haste with 1100 bonus damage, others have said wait until 1400 bonus damage. Where do the diminishing returns start really taking effect?

 

Krazen

I don't think theres a point in available gear where I wouldn't gem for damage over haste, if that answers your question.

There are only a limited number of choices for regular gear slots, and among those, its pretty easy to evaluate them on their own tier level.

 

Arelenda

The spreadsheet should answer this nicely.

 

rochan

Well you don't really "gear for SoC" on KilJaeden anyways so this is irrelevant. But the whole SoC discussion was pretty dumb. The only thing limiting your damage is agro.

 

Clearly

There has been some terrible misinformation circulating-- posted more on the regular WoW forums than on EJ, meaning that more impressionable artards were exposed to it-- that there is a "magic number" at which a 10 spell haste gem outpaces a 12 spell damage gem. The number most frequently cited is 1334.

What they neglected to mention, though, was that the 1334 number was arrived at with no consideration for crit, and assuming 0 spell haste, so essentially they removed two of the three variables to arrive at a number which, for the vast majority of us, is completely irrelevant, because we don't all have exactly 25% crit and 0 spell haste.

Spell haste, spell crit, and spell damage all scale on curves, and the amount you have of each attribute affects the utility of each other attribute. Truthfully, even a single piece of gear can dramatically change what your gemming philosophy should be at the moment. I'm in all BT/Sunwell gear right now and opt for a mix of spinels and reckless pyrestones at the moment, because that's what Leulier says is best for me currently, but that isn't the case for everyone.



The TLDR answer: It depends.

 

Zasz

Anyone care to explain why crit is not relevant for SoC spam? Normaly my SoC crits 2 mobs on hyjal trash groups per detonation, my record is 7 crits so far with 26% crit raidbuffed. See here WWS Log from yesterdays hyjal run.

 

Sydane

PVE Raiding Compendium

Everything in that post is true, and an interesting read. The only point people are making is that there really isn't any practical value to theorycrafting AoE since you're most often threat and mana limited.

For me, all that matters is if I'm AoE damage capped, then with 12% haste and 32% crit I do over 9000 dps! For 22 seconds until I'm oom.

It would be interesting to see an AoE fight where sustained AoE was actually important, and theorycrafting it mattered, but I'm not entirely sure how they'd even design something like that.