No. Simple as that.
Getting [Sunfire Handwraps] would be a better use of the sunmotes. Or putting them to use on physical dps or less fortunate casters who doesn't have the ZA ring.
You will lack a litle hit that way, but there's plenty of upgrades in other slots where you will gain hit, Skull and Staff being the two most obvious ones.

My friend, who usually knows more than I do about how to do good damage (or thinks she does), says that for my affliction lock, the most important stat on gear is shadow damage or spell damage and everything else is of almost no importance. So, he claims that the [Draenethyst Wand] of Shadow Wrath is better than [The Black Stalk] because it has +24 shadow damage as opposed to +20 spell damage. I think that the increased stamina and crit make up for the 24 damage difference. (And besides, why would I want to trade out a lvl 70 epic for a lvl 68 green?)

Which of us is right?

There is a grain of truth in what he says. But even then, it is a bit outdated. Affliction warlocks at low gear levels benefit most from +damage since +hit is easily capped, and +crit does relatively little on everything that isn't Shadow Bolt. Haste is still pretty good though, no matter what you're casting.

The thing is that you don't really raid with those low gear levels these days. You have badge loot and easy-to-get KZ/ZA stuff. It's not hard any more to get hit/crit up to acceptable levels. Most MH/BT raiding affliction locks will probably be casting Corruption and Shadow Bolts with the odd SL, dropping UA in favor of Ruin. When a decent amount of your damage comes from SB, 11 crit rating (and +sta) is more valuable than +4 shadow damage.

So yeah, you're right. Unless you both raid naked.

Well, I'm not raiding anything but Kara on my lock at this point. It's mainly just heroics right now but I take your point. Thanks very much for the info.

The spreadsheet does list a 25 shadow damage green wand for comparison. It is a pretty respectable wand, especially if you can't get the Stalk or the Kara wand to drop and haven't picked up the badge wand yet. It is technically better for affliction than the Black Stalk but it's very marginal, and worse for other specs, plus it doesn't have the stam as you mentioned.

And I always raid naked. Life is better that way.

Where is this spreadsheet of which you speak?

Also, when I'm ready to respec for Ruin, is there any advice anywhere for how to make the transition? I tried specing for the Felguard for a while but I hated it and went back.

Imagine you´re at brutallus and no shadow in your group. How do you manage lifetaps? Share your expiriences with me

I for myself cast bolts till the tank of the other group taunts so I´m free to lifetap because no more meteorslash. The issue is I´m very often running low on mana when my tank infront of me taunts back. I lifetap when I have some druid hots on me so I dont have to worry about dying to meteorslashs with 2-3 debuff stacks. I still have a hard time reaching 2k DPS or more. I wasnt at brutallus the last 3 weeks so I couldnt test with my current equip. Yes, I lifetap when I´m moving.

Easy, change the talent points and forget UA. Haste and crit become a bit more valuable than they were. Anything else should be covered by the compendium.




I've always done Brutallus with 3 slashes on each team. If that's what you're doing, I wouldn't life tap right before the 2nd or 3rd slash would hit your side. Other than that, it shouldn't be a problem. Just don't string them together, or healers might panic. If all else fails, use Drain Life.

I almost never have a shadow priest for Brut. Rule 1 - use a mana pot as soon as you've used your first 3,000 mana and then every time it's on cooldown. That's 3 uses during the fight. Otherwise, just tap judiciously, i.e. when you're not taking Slashes, or after the 1st Slash (as it doesn't do much damage and you'll be getting plenty of heals). With no SPriest, ele shammy or Moonkin in my group as well as doing a utility curse, I can average about 2,100 - 2,200 DPS. Just make sure you have a good level of mana if you're going to use a trinket or get a bloodlust/heroism as you don't want to tap during the buff period.

Speaking of the spreadsheet.

It claims that with KZ-T4 gear (27% crit, 14% hit, 1237 shad, 10% haste) the builds yielding the highest DPS are: 1/44/16, 7/43/11, 0/40/21 Succ, 0/21/40 Fire (with 100 less +fire?!), 0/21/40 Shadow, in that order.

That seems way out of whack to me, especially the fact that 0/40/21 ranks higher than 0/21/40.

Is it just me, or is something amiss?

Yeah, without 4t6 felguard demonology should be highest dps. That is if you can keep the pet alive without 2t5.
I tried that build in AV and it died at Drek...

0/40/21 has very similar scaling to 0/21/40. Having a succubus out you gain 10% spell damage + 5% from soul link, which is essentially the same as 15% from Demonic Sacrifice. The difference comes in comparing the static spell power bonus from Demonic Knowledge to the scaling spellpower benefit from Shadow and Flame. At low gear levels, the static amount from DK is higher. Also, the spreadsheet assumes you will attack with your succubus, which is sometimes possible but certainly much more difficult to actually manage than using a felguard.

In theory, 0/40/21 scales better than a felguard build. However, the Felguard has far better survivability and does so much more damage that it outscales Ruin basically until you get 4pT6, at which point Destro outscales them both anyway. Any Demo build depends far more on player execution than the destro builds do, so while it may be better on paper, it isn't for everyone. However once you have 2pT5 a large percentage of the encounters are pretty much fire and forget when it comes to the pet.

I'll stick to listing the optimal raid strategies in the compendium, it is big enough as it is.

Feel free to talk about interesting and fun builds in the thread here though, plenty of experienced warlocks read it and might have additional information. We only object to spreading misinformation (i.e. don't say "4p T4 + 4p T6 is super for raiding")

I personally think that the only good mixed set would be 2p T5 and 4p T6, because T4 has inferior stats. But nifty set bonuses are always nice to have. I even miss my FSW set bonus from time to time.

About shadow priests in warlock groups:

How vital are they really? I better dont write down our issues with shadows in our raids, I just feel that our raidleader doesnt understand how important it is for us warlocks to have one. I´m out of mana after 72.5 seconds during raids and all I have is lifetap and every 2min a manapot. Its hard to do full dps when lifetapping, at least is that my impression. I´m stuck to 2k dps atm and dont know how to get further without a shadow.

Here´s a WWS log from our latest Brutallus kill: Wow Web Stats

EDIT:
Spreadsheet says 2389.9 DPS with my current gear, raidbuffs, elemental shaman, bloodlust and no drums.

According to the data in your wws, you did 1940 dps. (damage / fight time, not what WWS called dps). With a shadow priest, you would have gained 24902 mana, allowing you to do, at best, 8 more shadow bolts. That would have resulted in roughly 30k damage extra, so you'd have done 2020 dps.

So the 25000 extra mana during the fight nets you 80 dps. You only used two mana pots, use one early and you could have used 3. Given this other data, that would have been 6 dps.

Not very impressive numbers overall. I'd avoid using this data to argue for a spriest in your group.

I begin to ask myself why other warlocks with almost similar gear reach much higher DPS numbers while I´m stuck to the numbers above. I´ve seen alot of movies from a warlocks perspective and all of them had a shadow priest in their group with DPS reaching above 2200.

Why is there such a big difference between the spreadsheet and the actual numbers? Why should 3 warlocks not get a shadow priest?

The spreadsheet should be very accurate for a destruction spec. If it is reporting higher values than what you attain there are basically two modifiers which you should adjust: the lag time (the affect of your reaction time and/or lag) and ISB uptime %.

I use 0.1 second lag and about 60% isb and it's very accurate. Of course it will depend on crit luck too, but there isn't anything you can do about that.

It’s because of RNG. We run 3 locks and the spread on our DPS can sometimes be huge. It’s mostly RNG on crit. I have WWS's from brut kills when I had less then 20% actual crit and others when I’m close to 40% with the same group/raid comp.

Sometimes you just get really unlucky.

As for whom to give the SPs to a lot of that depends on raid setup, we often run 3 mages and 3 hunters. If there’s only 2 SPs locks are not getting one.

The spreadsheet also doesn't model crit rate depression. It's known that your crit rate is lower against a +3 mob, but not by how much or in what manner. The spreadsheet is assumed to still be very valid for making comparisons between gear and between spec, since everything is off by the same amount (aside from, eg, affliction is better on movement fights), but they do differ from reality, and give an average representation, not a guaranteed one. But anyways, 80DPS is reasonable for what you can expect a shadowpriest to bring you.

So I picked up [Ritssyn's Lost Pendant] on my alt in Kara...I am currently using [Brooch of Unquenchable Fury] and I was lynched for saying that dropping the hit/int wasn't worth the spell damage when my hit was already so low.

Armory: The World of Warcraft Armory

Halp?

Meh, I wouldn't lynch you for it, the difference is not stellar, but I do think you're wrong. At the very least you should grab it as backup for when your hit is capped. Unless someone else needed it, in which case passing makes sense.

You're overvaluing hit a bit. Especially on an alt since +hit only works on raid bosses and your +damage is rather low.

I also suggest getting the fairly cheap +hit enchant on gloves, it's decent enough.

Good luck!

Until you get the gear for it, you will need to develop 2 sets, 63 (adjusted) hit rating for trash and heroics with as high a damage as your tanks can generate threat and 202 (adjusted) for bosses. The adjusted values depend on your talents and group composition. If you are affliction you won't need to worry about +crit. Ristssyn's is a damn good neck item for its ipoints. I still haven't managed to upgrade my brooch in my boss set.