Flamingcloud

I don't really think we were that much if any behind hunters last patch. I could put out 3k dps in august on brutallus with all the group buffs. Only real problem we had was threat, it was basically impossible to do more than 3k dps do to being threat capped.

Now we are over 1000 dps behind, I think it is pretty bad to go from plus or minus a couple hundred dps behind to over a thousand. Our dps would be even lower compared to them if fights were longer than 3 minutes.

 

dakalro

True, I guess. I haven't had tanks with group buffs for a while now and it's pretty much evident when you have to tread carefully, using LTs, some more spacing between SBs just to not overaggro.
But I doubt we're that much behind, 3k and a bit should be quite doable for affliction. Only high dps in this week's Brut kill was Legendary bow hunter with ~4k, everyone else was 3.6k or lower. 4 people above me were in the 3k-3.1k range. I was 10th without the Felhunter dps-ing and a total mess of a rotation (not that bad but wasted a few 10s of k of dmg). Though looking again, I had 58% crit on all the spells that could crit, and 24% on pandemic.

Still have to wait for all the remaining bugs to be fixed, check again and then conclude. Even if there's something wrong with warlocks (not talking about 2 viable specs, but at least 1; though considering how complicated destro has become I wouldn't mind having that being viable also) they won't be fixed by Wrath. I don't expect balancing to be final until close to Ulduar, assuming Blizzard doesn't go the "we don't have time anymore" way.

 

Aybabtus

Locks scaled to extremely OP in SWP due to the stacking of ISB on the boss...

Sadly what Blizz did was remove the ISB stacking on the boss AND then nerf touch of shadow and the effect of ISB..

If they had just moved ISB clientside on its own we would have been fine...

Right now I am finding around 2.3k dps by using 0/21/40 and summoning a doomguard right before the boss fight...

 

jeffason

Has anyone tried soul fire in a destro spec rotation (i.e. when after conflag w/ 30% haste?). Is it worth it?

 

dakalro

ISB was both a blessing and a curse since it could skew warlock dps by upwards of 200 dps simply from luck with catching ISB charges (same crit - 32%, 150 lower non-crit SBs, 600 lower crit SBs simply from ISB/partial resists is a lot). I am glad it's gone personal, if I'll ever use it again.

 

Flamingcloud

Locks dps was not too high in sunwell. The problem with locks were they were top 3 in almost every fight in existence. Best at m'uru, kj, felmyst, very good at brut, and kalec, twins were their worst fight the fight where dps matters the least. The fights where locks werent the best they were extremely close to the best. Locks were easy to heal due to fel armor, had the best aoe, had high health, never went oom, didn't require stacked groups to do acceptable dps. If there was no aoe fights and no anti-melee/pet fights locks would not have been considered op in the least(aside from when compared to the other dps casters)

If we were doing 3.6k dps in gear like mine I would be fairly happy, we don't need to do the 4k dps of the legendary bow hunter but we shouldn't be 65-75% of the highest dps.

 

Tauraherion

Hey guys, my first post ever.

I was wondering if blizz ever read EJ. I mean, There are so many good ideas and constructive criticism here that i just wish i could link the whole topic on blizz forums.

Anyway, I´m a brazillian lock in pre-SwP gear who plays with an average of 400-500 ms latency and since the patch hit I'm still trying to find a good spec to me.

We went to SwP on wednesday (first kill on Brut). And after reading all the simulations and remarks ppl were posting here I specced affliction. My dps was terrible. I was struggling to reach the 1000 dps mark while having to keep an eye out for what was happening around me. These are the things that gimped my dps, in my opinion:

- Things get killed too fast (trash AND Bosses). I mean, kalec were at 30% health before 5th portal!
- We had 3 SP in the raid, so i´m pretty sure my dots were being dropped from the boss before it´s full duration.
- High Latency
- Messed up rotation since i didn´t have forte warlock working and was a little rusty for being spamming shadowbolts since I can remember.

Too bad i didn´t have recount data to back up my thoughts.


Then, on thursday I respecced to Felguard/Ruin to try Felmyst and I felt more confortable. My DPS both in raid and heroics was about 1400-1700 dps.

Guess I´ll try the good old 0/21/40 now.

 

awl2010

Hey everyone I'm a 70 BE lock on Hellscream US and like many of you have been struggling to come up with a new (viable) warlock pve raid spec. Here are some observations and this is my first post on EJ so please comment!

Since 3.0 patch Day I specced heavy affliction having heard it was revamped and could hold its own (Warlock - Talents - Thottbot: World of Warcraft). I wasn't very pleased with the output and how UA ran out before Haunt could really get in there. I tried all variations on rotation and could not get much higher than 870.

Next I tried destruction having previously been 0/21/40 for TBC. I saw that the power of shadow destro locks had been nerfed and fire seemed the new way to go. So I tried a fire-heavy build (Warlock - Talents - Thottbot: World of Warcraft). My dps increased to about 950 but it was extremely difficult to master the rotation in my opinion. Every revolved around Immolate, I would have to be careful for when I decided to throw in a Chaosbolt. Conflagrate didnt help my threat either =/. I oomed too quickly and had to life tap far too much. My empowered imp would oom quickly and would often die from the raid environment (too squishy). Backdraft was nice but one of the 3 spells would be another immolate for the better Incincerates. I decided to try yet another spec.

After reading on EJ about the Felguard/Ruin spec I decided to give it a try in ZA. I hovered around 1.1k dps and was second on charts after the well-geared ret pally (figures). The felguard wasn't squishy at all and did a good amount of dps. With corruption then shadowbolt spam I felt right at home like when I was 0/21/40.

I am debating whether or not to try a new spec and was wondering if you guys could give some feedback on it. I'm interested in a demo/destro build like Warlock - Talents - Thottbot: World of Warcraft. I would use a succubus for the 5% shadow dmg buff from 5/5 in the Master Demonologist talent and shadowbolt spam. The point that would have gone to the felguard would get me Devastation which would up my crit by a good 5%. The crit talents in the demo tree bring it way up as well, and my crit would sit at roughly 29% with the talents. I know that I don't pick up SnF in the destro tree and it worries me a bit. Any feedback/criticism would be awesome!

thanks

 

kendude

I have been playing around with this spec and am enjoying it myself. I tried the fire spec and also had some trouble with the rotation as I did with aff. The rotation in aff is just difficult to get down with consistency. The 0/40/21 spec is pretty much curse-->corr-->SB spam. Of course, I use the corr glyph and SB glyph. My dps is is higher with this build than with the 0/21/40 spec- post 3.0 only. My crit increased by 15% and my spell damage bonuses places me around 1370 shadow (about a 200 shadow damage increase with fel armor before and after speccing). That spec is the one I'm sticking with until WotLK comes out. At that point I may respec full demo for leveling.

 

Splot

I've found that using firedestro (7/3/51) with conflag is giving me a demanding rotation with too much variance in cooldowns. I have now dropped conflag from the talent build and simplified the rotation so I have greater mana longevity and less demand on watching my timing. I am certain that with practice I'll find a rhythm even with Chaosbolt appearing on demand in the middle of rotations.

My opening spell is normally Chaos Bolt and then I'm applying as a rotation:
CoE (Initially) -> Corr -> Immo -> Incin (repeat) -> LT when Immo drops

I've found that with the new tanking buffs on most trash I can just aoe (rain of fire) and not pull agro. On bosses I'm yet do get anywhere near threat on a tank and spank.

I'm using a combination of DiHud, Dottimer and Xperl to have the information of debuffs up and cool downs. I am currently using the imp and corruption glyphs.

Like the above poster I'm considering felguard/ruin with SB spam.

 

awl2010

I tried the 0/40/21 in ZA and I'm not sure how I liked it. Not having shadow and flame bugged me and my crit(with boomkin aura) at 33% was terrible for my threat. I think I'm gonna stick with Felguard/Ruin. And the felguard owns my dailies ^-^

 

TangoDigital

Try this:

Curse, Corruption, Chaos Bolt, Immolate, Incinerate spam, Conflag. Keep spamming Chaos Bolt as soon as it's up.

I found this rotation is rather easy to maintain. Decoupling the cooldowns this way gives you some headroom for correction if you mess up or have to move. Never miss that Conflag though.

Problem I see with Sukkubus is the fact that Lash of Pain is a low base damage shadow spell. The girl just doesn't scale as well and doesn't deliver the needed DPS in consequence. I like the spec, it's very attractive (gotta love the Sukk), but I don't believe the crit adds up to compensate for her lackluster DPS.

TangoDigital

 

morgaine

After having read EJ for ages 3.0.2 has made me doubt why I play a lock at all. I am the gm in a very casual raiding guild on Darksorrow EU. We have had the normal problems when it comes to getting ppl to focus etc which have lead to us not progressing that far at all (1/9 BT and 2/5 MH pre-patch). Now with the patch everyone seems eager to go MH and BT to get a last shot at seeing those encounters which IMHO is great. What is less great is how weird the lock has become.

We did BT on Thursday (server was down all Wednesday so no raids at all) and I have never performed worse. A hunter we asked to come led the DPS and managed to get higher DPS than my lock only from his autoshot and steady shot. The top DPS was an enh shammy who did more white dmg than all my spells combined.

Part of this is not being used to play affliction as I have been 0/21/40 since spring. I tried 0/46/15 in some 5 man instances instead and got royally pwnd by an alt mage. I don't have a clue what to do here but will try to find a spec that is fun to play and that also does some DPS.

So, the big question here is what I should try now. I did try a heavy fire destro build but it wasn't optimal either. I'm so disappointed in the lock nerfs atm that I for the first time ever lost my spirit (been playing my lock since April 2005 and cleared MC, BWL and most of AQ40 pre-TBC). Please help me find the fun in playing a lock again

WWS from BT

 

Arelenda

Assuming you're leading the raid: I'm afraid the days of being high on dps WHILE leading a raid are over for good. You will have to focus on your rotation now, and that is by design. You will have to accept this. You will not be able to maximize dps effectively if you're also busy managing the raid.

However, warlocks seem to be a bit lower on dps than they should be, regardless of rotation/spec. We'll see how that evolves.

 

morgaine

That is one reason I guess... And now it will be impossible to live as I learn and lead the raid at the same time. Well, I guess I have to either stop being a lock and level my hunter in WotLK or stop being an active officer. Tyvm Blizzard.

The rotations are just plain crazy and then i see boomkin doing a two spell shuffle outdpsing locks like crazy. I have no idea what we did wrong but Blizzard obviously thinks we should get the huge bat this time around

Thanks for the input!

 

Faldrath

We just had our first KJ kill yesterday. We had two warlocks in the raid: one of them specced fire (using imp, CB and Conflag), and me, specced good old 0/21/40 spamming Shadow Bolts. My gear is slightly better, but, still, I outdps'd him by a fair bit (almost 100k). I was #11 on WWS, he was #13. So, not very pretty.

It's really hard to avoid the impression that Blizz managed to weaken demonic sacrifice/shadow bolt spam (the fact that we have to essentially waste 6 talent points - almost 10% of our talent points at 70 - to reach DS is rather infuriating) but didn't really give us enough in return. At least for me, the rewards for learning whatever new rotation available right now are simply not worth the effort, and I'd rather just SB spam.

The point of this message, therefore, is: given how warlock talent trees and spells currently work, there is not enough incentive to learn a complex rotation. I do expect things to get better at 80, but, still, players will always strive for efficiency - that is, achieving more by doing less. While pre-patch curse+SB was way too efficient, the current situation (having to juggle 4-6 spells plus a pet, and most of them on different timers) makes the opposite mistake - too much fiddling, not enough rewards.

 

Sebalot

I said screw it and went 0/40/21. Succ+corruption+CoA+shadow bolt. I may be a few % lower than optimal dps but it doesn't really matter if I am 400 or 430 dps below the top dps at this stage. I don't have to mess with insanely cumbersome rotations that don't fit together internally and causing my more frustration than it is worth.

Succubus doesn't seem to scale all that well with the melee buffs though. I think she did somewhere around 200 dps on M'uru (but then the boss wasn't properly debuffed) I think it is possible that a 0/41/15 (+6) build with felguard will be more potent. But then I lose 10% crit compared to using succubus (master demonologist and devastation).

I used 4/5 demonic tactics and 1/2 fel synergy in the last demo tier for healing on the pet and it worked fine. It was able to stay on M'uru 100% of the time without being even close to death. That was my biggest worry, that the succubus would be too frail.

It is a fun spec to play. Not overly complicated but more involved than the old 0/21/40. And with destro rotation being what it is and affliction being broken (Shadow embrace being bugged, dots falling off all the time) it is a realistic alternative for the time being.

 

Simonus

Hi,

this is my first post here but I followed the discussions forever.

I was 2/3/56 for both our last SWP and BT raid.
Topped the meters in BT overall but that was due to AoE.
At Teron i managed to pull 3,4k dps which was worth a 2nd place, first was a Warrior with 5k ...
For my first Brutallus I was able to pull 2,75k dps but that was doable before patch as well. I had burn though and messed up my rotation several times I think

I am having some major problems though... With bloodlust, backdraft and skull of guldan, all the spells cast under backdraft are below the gcd.. I tried to cast Soulfires instead of CB, immo and incinerate but that not only costs tons of shards but it seems that even though Soulfire crits for 11k it will lower my dps slightly. There is just no alternative to either cast CB, immo and incinerate or triple Soulfire. This will most likely only get worse come wotlk, because I don't think that we will have less haste than now in endgame wotlk..

This leads to the following conclusion.. If nothing changes with backdraft, say reducing the gcd by 30% also, destruction will scale poorly with haste.

On a side note.. it would be so much easier to maintain a solid rotation if conflag did refresh the immolate on the target. It takes 0,6 seconds to cast under backdraft, bloodlust and skull, this is just...

Furthermore, I keep hearing that using CoA and corruption would lower the dps, but I think that having a 40% molten core uptime with just either corr/CoA compared to about 80% with both corr and CoA will up my dps by quite a margin? Any info on this or any idea?

 

Beveline

I am specced as a Fire Lock and we did Mt Hyjal last night:

Wow Web Stats

Looking at the damage done I have determined that Chaos Bolt is a huge waste due to the fact that it complicates the rotation and doesn't do much more damage than a regular incinerate. So I think what we are looking at is a talent that COULD be much better at 80 but is pretty MEH for 70. What really would need to be done to make it a more viable spell would be making the spell coeffient much better and make it worth chasing down the Destro tree.

I died alot because we didn't have our Pally Tank to hold the adds...the Warriors did a good job...but I was definately pulling lots of aggro.

 

◊ Melbuframa

If you want to try another spec I recommend 2/13/46 Fire Destro with no conflag. The rotation is pretty simple get COR+COA up and then its just Immo/Incin spam while refreshing Dots + your imp. If you have any lag this spec will beat aff on fights like brut, its 3K capable

 

◊ Melbuframa

As Evidicus posted the issues were not the spec by the synergy we had with Shadow priests and our own ISB. What I find strange about this patch is that if blizzard had not changed Demo Sac ISB and Spriest stacking buffs we would still be 1000 DPS behind what some classes are pulling currently.

Very geared locks in stacked groups could hit 3K DPS on Brut pre 3.0 with SB spam, we can hit that again with aff and some destroy specs yet four other classes are getting really close if not hitting 4K DPS on him. That IMO just does not make sense. I do think other classes needed DPS buffs; however I don’t feel we deserved some of the nerfs we got. Personally I hated SB spam, it was boring, ooo big numbers ZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

I’m glad that they want aff to be raid viable again, however a lot of work needs to be done to fix the issues with the near impossible rotation unless you have zero lag and the debuffs being kicked off the boss.

 

• KingSpeedy

Affliction Sunwell Impressions so far:

Kalecgos: Got ported 3 seconds into the fight and immediately meleed by the demon. If this isn't symbolic of the entire 3.0 patch, I don't know what is.

Brutallus: 2100 with the felhunter sitting at my feet rather than attacking. I'll assume he would have brought another 2300 dps to the table, which would have put me tops of all the warlocks and approximately 7th overall.

Felmyst: Got two resists on dispels at the first gas nova. I'm beginning to think Blizzard has it out for me.

Twins: I tank this fight, so my dps is pretty inconsequential. Still, threat became an issue with the first Twin dying so fast. Traditional tank threat may have increased, but ours didn't. and not having Salv to hide behind makes things a bit more interesting. Still, you'll probably have 5 minutes to kill the second Twin anyway, so no big deal.

M'uru: Somehow managed to pull off 2500 for 2nd on the meter (behind a 2700 rogue). Stayed on M'uru/Entropius the entire time except to clean up Void Spawns during the transition. This might be the only fight where we still have a shot at landing #1.

Kil'Jaeden: This is where I started crying. 1600 on our kill. 1900 was my highest of all the attempts. Between switching off to kill the Orbs and racing off to kill Reflections, I just couldn't keep the DoT uptime that I needed. I'm fully willing to accept that I pretty much just screwed up on the kill and should have been in the 2k area there too, but I still felt like I was doing a decent job of keeping what I needed to on him.


I'm torn between giving a fire destro build (probably conflag-less) a try next week or just to keep plugging away with affliction and try to get a better handle on it. The magical 3.0.3 patch that will bring the 8sec cooldown to Haunt should help a tremendous amount with DoT uptime, and bring Haunt pretty close to being the filler that I'd like it to be.

And I can completely confirm that Haunt's crit rate is bugged. Over the entire night (trash and all), Shadow Bolt maintined a 33% crit rate with Haunt only pulling 15%.

 

Denjinmo

I'm curious about the new stat weights for Affliction. Previously, due to a major lack of scaling, SP outweighed crit and haste by leaps and bounds (though the same held true for Destruction). Is there any news on stat weights relative to 70 and 80 Affliction builds now?

Part of the reason I ask is because I recently talked a friend into regemming from pure crit gems to +12 SP gems assuming that the old weights were still accurate, let alone valid. Even before, I wasn't quite sure of what the math is in calculating that 12 SP was > 10 crit rating (for Destruction anyway) and have probably been in the same boat as many crit based classes in being a little bit suspicious of how, for example, one was supposed to get maximum effect from Ruin without focusing more on crit, and if crit wasn't as valuable, was there a point where if your crit is below X you need to prioritize bringing it up.

So without further redundancy, is SP still far more valuable than crit rating and to what magnitude? Assuming say 1300 SP unbuffed, 66 haste, and 18% crit, how much crit rating would it take to equal +1 spell damage; also assuming Pandemic.

I realize that I could plug the numbers into a spreadsheet, or something to the effect, but I'd prefer to know the math that supports the widely accepted theory (fact?) that says SP is far more valuable than crit, so that I myself can make better choices in gearing.

 

tkoreaper

I too wanted to ask the same question. Some numbers for lootlink, pawn, ect. would be extremely helpful. Mainly I'd like to see how spirit and crit weight out in affliction since spirit is important in many ways for locks now and Affliction benefits from crit now due to Pandemic and Haunt.

Also, I would like to know everyone's take on the new Spellstone/Firestone. it's obvious which is better for each spec, but how is using Wizard oil in comparison?

 

nikitabanana

The opposite is actually true. Our dps would be higher if the fights were longer. If you're below people, it's generally because they have more cooldowns to pop at vs. us (we have none, obviously). Once those cooldowns expire and the time continues, you see the cooldown heavy classes level out more.