Mallock

Hi,

My guild and I are going to (hopefully) get our first Illidan attempts in this Sunday. I have been doing some reading and it looks like I should be fine to tank with a 0/21/40 build (minus Nether Protection of corse). Since this is our first attempt, would it be better to use a more Demonology heavy build (like a Leo tanking build) or should I be fine with one of the standard Destro builds?

I appreciate any insight you can give me.

 

Krazen

He doesn't hit all that hard, and most starter guilds typically don't DPS much during Demon phase, so aggro doesn't matter.

Might as well keep your 21/40 build to do some tolerable DPS the rest of the fight.

 

Mallock

Cool, thanks for the quick response.

 

Roywyn

I was looking for Demon stats, but could only find the 30% sta/int.

Looking through Leuliers, it seems Demons get 30% of you sta/int, 15% of your maximum of fire and shadow damage as Spell Damage and 57% of your maximum of fire and shadow damage as Attack Power.

Firebolt then seems to get 45%, Soothing Kiss (no-no due to ISB, just for completeness) gets 42.7% of the pet's spell damage.
Did I get that right from the sheet?

If so, could you add that to a demon section on the frontpage?
It's not very relevant right now (only on Brutallus for Imps), but will become interesting for Wrath.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

TangoDigital

1 Point just makes the spell that much more efficient. Keep in mind Corruption is very attractive to Demolocks since they sport abnormally high amounts of spellpower. As you get some haste you can actually push the spell down to and below GCD, which is pretty much what you get from 5/5 minus the instant cast mobility bonus. Not bad for 1 talent point.

1/39/21 is something I generally wouldn't recommend at all. It's basically the same with 0/40/21. Throughout my raids I've never been able to keep the little beauty alive in any serious encounter. Even the slightest bit of AoE will instagib her and kill your DPS. If you're going Demo - which despite all naysaying provides very decent DPS up until Illidan if you actually have the skill required to play it - Felguard is your friend. His avoidance makes all the difference in addition to his 9k buffed HP which allow him to survive most of the AoE that he does take. Succubus is just not an option currently with the way encounters are designed. However, this will radically change in WotLK.

 

Arelenda

I could. But demons don't get the standard 10 hit points per 1 stamina. It's demon dependent, even. I vaguely recall 14 for tank types and 7 for casters, but it's been a year since I checked. Not to mention talents affect it.

Considering mechanics are not that relevant now, and are likely to change with WotLK, I'm not going to do the research for this. If someone with more time and respec money wants to, feel free to do it and let me know the results.

 

Xenicore

Is it possible that overkill damage (i.e., damage done that went over what was necessary to kill a mob) skewed your results? That could be another possible explanation aside from your corpse theory. In other words, the damage done is calculated and included in total damage output, but that excess damage is not included in the AOE damage cap?

/edited for clarity

 

Arelenda

Possible, but I doubt it. Feel free to test it in RFC, where mobs have very little hit points. Grab them with a voidie and toss one seed, observe results. Determine exact mob hit points by using drain life with no fel armor first, to establish a baseline hp (or use the mobhealth addon).

Not doing this myself due to being alliance, and deadmines mobs have too much hp for it to be clear cut.

Make sure to use /combatlog before you go, so you record the combatlog, it's easy editable with openoffice.

 

black

Well I found your thread very interesting to read. I had a question myself but I don't have the priviliege yet to make a new thread, so I'll ask it here. I'm an affliction warlock, and I'm wondering if "ruin" isn't better than "Unstable affliction" I have very decent gear (5/8 t6 etc.) I think when you got good gear ruin is better than UA, it gives you also more burst dmg on trash. I have nothing to prove my state, so I'll be very happy if someone could answer my question here so we can discuss it thanks.

 

Sydane

At your gear level ruin definitely outscales UA. The spreadsheet can give you specific numbers, and there's several discussions on the topic throughout this thread, though they can be a bit tough to find. If you're running SW as affliction, 40/0/21 with Ruin, 3/3 Malediction, and 5/5 Shadow Embrace is definitely the way to go.

 

• frmorrison

I have seen some numbers, and pets in Wrath are scaling different than in Live (since the devs would like Warlocks to use pets for damage).

In addition, Warlocks don't have the tools Hunters have for pet upkeep yet and pet pathing is stupid, so those are the big reasons why no raids with a pet today.

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

 

clavarnway

Page 141 had a good discussion on fire vs shadow.

http://sigs.guildlaunch.net/sig.php/1424974uXyta.png

 

Ammanas

In regards to the whole fire thing, everyone talks about how it is more personal DPS in theory but I think they miss out on some things. First of all, with the new CoS/CoE change the chances of getting to cast Curse of Doom are higher and you have to factor that in. A fire lock should never be on CoD duty, and the personal DPS difference from being fire won't outweigh CoD.

Also, if you are the only fire lock in the raid you will not have the 100% immolate uptime that the spreadsheet assumes. Theoretically it is possible to get the perfect amount of haste to make your immolate/incinerate rotation line up but in practice it won't due to latency and the occasional human error.

Which leads to another point, there is pretty much no way to mess up straight SB spam whereas even the most attentive and skilled warlock will probably have a mis-step in the fire rotation every now and then - especially over long and/or difficult fights where your focus is on other things.

Also, Nether Protection is a pretty damned valuable talent to have for some of the fights in Sunwell. You can't take a full fire destro spec and keep Nether Prot.

 

zanaris

Fire versus shadow has already been heavily debated, but the above poster has stated a couple of falsehoods.

While CoD is indeed an increase to dps most of the time it is a decrease to net damage because CoD has more threat per damage than destruction spells. Meaning you can pull more damage without using CoD even though your dps will be slightly lower. You can see this in some WWS reports where one player out damaged another player but the higher damaging player had lower dps.

Second, immolate should indeed be used most of the time as shadow spec. It has a higher DPCT and a higher mana efficiency than shadowbolt. Not to mention it's more movement friendly. uptime is probably easier to maintain with incinerate due to it's lower cast time. Besides that if you pay attention to your timers only one of your incinerates should ever not get the benefit from incinerate. If you have more than one lock using immo that incinerate should always be benefitted from. (Basically should be every raid as even shadow locks should use it.)

The nether protection argument is your most solid argument, as it is indeed a great talent. However is limited survivability greater than more dps? That's a philosophical argument that can only be decided by a player by player basis.

EDIT: My point with CoD was that most of the time it's not worth casting as shadow OR destruction so it's damage benefit doesn't really matter.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...ckhand&n=Galik

 

Flamingcloud

Who is spreading falsehoods now? In shadow spec immolate has a lower DPCT than shadowbolt, and in EVERY spec it has a far worse mana efficiency. Just sticking immolate in my rotation is a 94 dps loss in shadow spec according to the spreadsheet. In addition to being a dps decrease, it also increases the risk of debuffs falling off. Maybe pre-4pc t6 it was worth casting, but certainly not in end game.

The only time CoD would make you lose dps is if you were truly and utterly threat capped, which happens on almost no fights, I've broken 2900dps on brutallus 3 times now and never been threat capped, 10k damage in CoD would only equal a few hundred threat more than 10k in shadowbolts.

 

Arelenda

It's rather ironic indeed that you mention others spreading falsehoods and then do the exact same thing.

You are wrong on CoD. The original post was quite correct in stating that shadow destro locks should use it (if CoR and CoS are taken). The difference between 10k CoD damage and 2x5k Shadow Bolt damage is 700 threat. The former takes a 1.5s cast and the latter 5s, ignoring haste since it benefits both equally relative to casting time.

For reference: for my gear and spec (1570 spell power, 30% crit, shadow destro), CoD tends to hit for 10000 and Shadow Bolts for about 4000 on average, if ISB is not up.


You are wrong on the dps field in WWS. I'm not exactly sure how it is calculated, but if one guy did more damage than the other, and WWS says he has lower dps, it is a horrible metric. Take a look at total damage, ignore the useless dps field.


You are also wrong on Immolate. You're wrong about it having higher DPCT for most Shadow locks, although that is gear and spec dependent. For me it's nowhere remotely close to SB.

You're incredibly wrong about it being more mana efficient, since it costs more mana (445 vs 420) and does less damage compared to Shadow Bolt.

In fact, Immolate is so expensive it makes Shadow less mana intensive than Fire, unless you have a very high amount of haste or an Immolate bitch. A 15 second no-haste cycle for Shadow is 6xSB (2520 mana), for fire it's Immo+6xIncinerate (2585).

Note that I'm assuming for that calculation:
- no points in cataclysm. Benefits both either way, so irrelevant.
- By "less mana intensive" I mean you'll be spending less mana per second. Damage per mana point might be better, depending on gear and talents.


Please get your facts straight when posting here, especially if you're going to lecture others.

 

Ammanas

Cataclysm is actually somewhat relevent but only in that it goes further in proving your point. A shadow build that has the immolate talents can not take 5/5 cataclysm which will make the mana effeciency loss of adding immolate even higher.

The reports where one player did less damage but more DPS than another are simply because of DPS time and the way WWS calculates DPS. If I stand there and do nothing on Brutallus except when my CDs are up and/or I'm bloodlusted I could probably do ~4k DPS on the actual WWS parse, but obviously I would do a lot less damage and sites that rank these things (wwsscoreboard) use a more realistic formula of damage / fight time. The only way CoD could have anything to do with that is if you were at some magical level of threat where you were horribly capped while casting CoD and not capped at all without.

 

kilsin

Any tips regarding the following would be greatly appreciated.

I have been playing a warlock since BC started and have always topped meters in my previous guild. However, I decided recently that I wanted a change of pace to a more hardcore/competitive raid environment. Needless to say the guild I am currently in fills these requirements. But I have noticed that my dps is simply not on par with the other warlocks in the guild. And I have gone from being on top to actually bringing up the rear of the lock totem pole within guild. On recent Bruttalus attempts, I find myself barely cracking the 2k dps mark. I find this to be unacceptable. I can't help but to think that my gem socketing is simply off. My gear atm is also not up to par with theirs but then again it's not light years behind. What suggestions would you all recommend that I change with my current gear/gem set up?

Here is a link to my armory:

The World of Warcraft Armory

thanks in advance.

 

Arelenda

I'd recommend losing the sextant for an Icon, and switching some crit gems into haste ones. I wouldn't expect miracles from this, though. My guess is casting issues.

I recommend taking a look at WWS and see how other locks are beating you. Are they throwing more spells? Getting better buffs? Do they simply do more damage per bolt? Did you get burned more? Are they using superior spells? (the latter would be somewhat surprising, but hey)

Also note that 2k _real_ dps (as opposed to what WWS calls dps) is not really bad either, especially if you get burned.

 

taybul

First thing that popped out was the weapon you're using. You're probably not running Hyjal anymore, but if you're killing Felmyst, she's got a good staff, or even the Zhardoom off Illidan if you still run BT.

Other than gear, playstyle is just as, if not, more important. What are your lifetap habits? Do you use mana pots whenever possible? Popping trinkets intelligently on every cooldown (ie, waiting for burn to be cast before popping hex trinket just in case you get it)? Do you still use corruption/immolate (if so, you're better off just casting bolt)?

 

Zed

Blessings Deck (Sextant got nerfed like more than a year ago, it's been a poor/ok trinket since), the ZA ring (re-gem hit for haste) and the Bracers of Nimble Thought look like easy upgrades for you.
Or, if you're already able to spend dkp I'd go for Zhar'doom, T6 bracers and the Sunmote ring (should be the cheapest options). The sreapdsheet can tell you more.

Also you have 3 blue gems instead of 2 might be able to squeeze out a few spelldmg point there, and you cold upgrade to Soulfrost.

Anyway, with this gear you should be able to do 2k+ on Brutallus in a decent group (shaman + 1 BL), I wonder if you have any latency / fps issues.

 

◊ manly

Oh, thats simple. And it sucks. I asked them to fix it months ago, but nothing was done.

Basically it works this way. They take a fight, and divide it into 5 seconds windows. If you deal damage during a 5s window, that gives you 5s of dps_time. WWS dps = total_damage / dps_time.

What most people prefer to use as far as comparing specs and classes go is more like average dps. Average dps = total_damage / encounter_duration. Average dps is a column in wws, but it isnt shown by default.

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.

 

mako

Switching the crit/dmg gems to haste/dmg would be a good start. The only other glaring flaw is the lack of soulfrost.

The other thing you probably want to do is ditch a piece of t6. Pants would be ideal if you can pick up the ones from felmyst or brutallus.

<Bad> Dragonmaw US
www.damnwesuck.com

 

kilsin

Thank you all for your input so far, to answer some of the questions mentioned above:

1) I do often take a look at recount after each encounter and with 2/3 other locks, we are throwing the same amount of bolts generally, but they seem to just be hitting harder than my own.

2) I am aware that my weapon does need to be upgraded but the list is long in guild atm, so I've actually been running ZA as much as possible in hopes that the dagger would drop since that would alleviate some of my hit issues and allow me to regem more towards haste.

3) And the +40 SD is there until I get wub's blade then I'll upgrade to soulfrost. I never imagined I'd be stuck using my weap for this long tbh.

4) As far as rotation goes, I'm a fan of dps consumables. So instead of using mana pots, I tend to lean heavily towards destruction potions and time them with my trinkets. This in itself could be a flaw in my thinking. As a result, yes I do lifetap more than the other locks. And as far as my life tapping habits go, I usually try to stay above half mp, so usually a life tap at around 4-5k mp. The only time I let myself get below that is if I'm lusted since I don't want to lose valuable cast time.

5) I am planning to ditch another piece of T6 once I obtain something that I can replace it with. Caster drops of late haven't been too friendly, so I'm still crossing my fingers.

But thanks again for all the replies, and any other tips are much appreciated.

 

mako

I can't remember the thread off hand, but there's some nice calculations on EJ that show destro pots are inferior to mana pots for dps on an average fight.

<Bad> Dragonmaw US
www.damnwesuck.com