You cast more SB so you crit more. It will only have 3% less crit than a 0/21/40 spec. It's a really good build to stack crit. So you can be the 3-in-1 Shadow embrace, malediction, and ISB bitch. Also it gets a bigger boost from 4/5 T6 and takes less debuff slots. IMO a UA build has no place in end game raiding.

The Ruin build wasn't included because everyone that specced it told me that the UA one outdamages it.

After taking analyzing it a bit I have to admit I see no reason for this to be true. It depends on gear levels. I'll add it to the Compendium.

I have now specced 0/21/40 on my warlock, got 1059 shadow spell dmg unbuffed, 136 spell hit and about 16% crit (21% incl. devastate). I was planning on staying this build for pve as I enjoy to see some crits, but was wondering:
Is it worth it to get some of the spell haste gear from heroic vendor, and using it unless I got alot of other spell haste items? I have off-h atm, and was planning on continuing with bracers next. Unfortunately the off-h is the only spell haste item I got :p

As listed in the Compendium, Malediction is 2.73% extra damage for each shadow user.

With 5 shadow users, that's the equivalent of 13.6% of the average shadow user dps, for three talent points, or roughly the equivalent of 70-80 spellpower per point.

For comparison, Fel Aegis gives 10 spellpower per talent point, and most people consider that one decent.


Yes, at your progression, the only reason I'd want an affliction warlock over another spec is for raid support.

At least one lock in every raid should have malediction. It's non-negotiable in my opinion. There is absolutely no reason it would hurt his personal dps if you're already casting all three curses-- if anything, it would help his dps by something like 2.5-3%.

I think this notion that "affliction sucks" is rather mistaken as well. I feel that affliction shines in BT/Hyjal-- that threat reduction helps a lot on all the aoeing that must be done if nothing else. I've seen plenty of affliction locks that do very comparable if not better dps than destruction locks. It all depends on the fight. Destro will shine on "stand still and nuke" fights (TG, for instance), and affliction will win by a mile on fights which require dpsing multiple mobs or significant mobility (Archimonde).

That being said, I personally raid as 0/21/40 and am in a 5/5, 6/9 guild, so we're roughly equivalent progression wise. We run two affliction and two destruction locks.

You want 1 malediction Warlock per raid. Too many people in the average raid will benefit from it to skip it.

You don't really want to decide your warlocks' specs on a per-fight basis unless you want to send them to respec several times per raid. I've performed my best on about half of the tier 6 bosses, including Reliquary of Souls, as a Felguard spec. My personal best Archimonde showing was as Affliction.

Really, any spec for your Warlocks beyond the 1st one is fine as long as it uses Shadowbolt often enough with a reasonable crit rate for good ISB uptime. Find out what your Warlocks are good at playing as and adjust from there.

My casting sequence goes like this when I am am affliction: CoA, UA + Corr, Immolate and Siphon Life. Shadow bolt spam untill redot. It have always worked out good and all dots will be up at the same time

Immolate has a shorter cast time than UA and corruption by 3 seconds. If you refresh UA and corruption at the same time, then immediately afterwards cast Immolate, they will all expire at the same time. When this happens, Immolate should be refreshed first. This allows immolate to roll through UA and corruption, rather than being constantly pushed back by UA and corruption, losing more dps by turning Immolate into an 18 second duration. A timeline would be something like this:

Time: spellcast
0: begin casting UA
1.5: UA completes cast, cast corruption
3: Begin casting Immolate
4.5: Immolate completes cast
6-18: cast siphon life/shadow bolt as necessary
18: begin casting Immolate to allow it to roll through
19.5: all 3 dots expire at the same time, immolate is refreshed immediately. Begin casting UA
21: UA and corruption applied

Alternatively if UA and Corruption were refreshed first:

18: begin casting UA
19.5: all 3 dots expire at the same time, UA and corruption refreshed
21: begin casting Immolate
22.5: Immolate refreshed
this sequence is repeated every 18 seconds


The sequence at 18-21 seconds in the first timeline should only happen once every 90 seconds if you refresh immolate first. You lose 1.5 seconds of corruption and UA time (half a tick for each) every 90 seconds versus the alternative of losing 3 seconds of immolate every 18 seconds.

Has anyone tried 30/21/10 build?

On paper it sounds pretty good, +10% from SM, Empowered Corruption, +15% from sacced succy, imp SB and bane, but just curious if someone has actually tried it and what they think? (Sorry if its already posted. I looked but didn't find anything).

BTW I have around 1200 SD, +9% hit and +9% crit

My Build

Thanks!

Didn't look in this thread, did you? You might try reading post #78 through post #142.

Sorry for not finding the posts and thanks for pointing me to them. I am surprised at the hostility towards this build I have not tried it and do agree that its less raid utility than Affliction (imp/malediction) or Destruction build (ISB). However, this what I see as weak points of other builds:

41/0/15 + 5 -> My build uptil 2 weeks ago. This is a very powerful build. TThe main downside of this is debuff cap and watching all the different dots. Main reasons I left was to seek out something new and hopefully more powerful

0/21/40 -> Fights where you have to move a lot (like VR and Mag), your dps time is much lower which in turn effects your total damage output

7/41/11+2 -> My current build. However, since I don't have 2 T5 pieces, I find it hard to keep my pet alive. Moreover, life tap creates extra pressure on healers (or I have to rely on a SP)

My hope with 30/10/21 is to correct the weaknesses of the other builds. Compared to:

41/0/15+5 it will have:
-5% crit
-No malediction
-No Dark Pact
-No Imp Buff
-No UA (compensated somewhat by SB)
+15% Shadow damage


7/41/11+2
-5% crit
-15% damage from FG
-FG damage
-No Soullink (although this is not very viable in pvp without 2 set bonus)
+siphon life (for mana regen)
+10% damage from SM
+15% damage from sacced succy
+ Empowered corruption

0/21/40
The main thing it will gain here is powerful dots for mobility fights.

Maybe it won't work out...and I will waste 30g, but I guess its worth trying.

I think you would be better off casting immolate 1.5-3s earlier every 90s (assuming your 90s is correct) and cast UA and corruption on time, thus losing an immolate tick instead of 1.5s of both corruption and and UA which are obviously more damage than 1 immolate tick or else everyone would have immolate top priory and maybe even spec fire destruction... The thing is this requires immolate to be higher DPCT than shadowbolt even with the last tick lost, as if it isn't the immolate that was cast before wasn't worth casting, which means you may be better off in this case (where immolate -1 tick is less DPCT than shadowbolt) just not casting that one immolate that'll end at the same time as UA+corruption and just skip it and start your immolate cycle so your immolate finishes casting right as you should start cating UA.

So the rotation would either be:
UA+corruption immolate spam SB immolate(early) UA+corruption(on time)
OR
UA+corruption spam SB immolate UA+corruption(on time)

And afterwards obviously refresh immolate on time as it shouldn't interrupt with your UA+corruption casts.

These "rotations" should be more DPS than what you suggested and more DPS than the standard UA+corruption+immolate spam SB repeat, and the one chosen depends if immolate lacking the last tick is more or less DPCT than shadowbolt.

Of course I wasn't taking into account the fact shadowbolt isn't exactly a channeled spell that ticks every 0.5s... So that also needs to be somewhat taken into account and possibly making slight adjustments to those "rotations", although they still seem better than what was suggested in the quote.

EDIT: While they are more DPS they should only be used if the quoted "rotation" is actually more DPS than the standard UA+corruption immolate spam SB, which really depends what your immolate VS UA/corruption DPS.

With the changes to Ret Pally and Mage and the recent addition of another shadow priest, now there are debuff issues in my guild. I had to drop Immolate (currently UA build)

With my gear, 40/0/21 from the spreadsheet is only 10 dps less than 41/0/20, plus you use one less debuff slot.

Maybe I'm stating the obvious here but why don't you just go DS/SnF?

I took a look at the "Haste" thread, but can't seem to find an answer, many apologies if its in there. Does +haste work on the untalented cast time of the spell?

eg - with 25% Haste (I know, but easy to demonstrate), a Rank 11 Shadowbolt (untalented) casts in 2.25 seconds. However, if you have Bane Rank5, does this drop it to 1.75 Second ((3*0.75)-0.5) or to 1.87 ((3-0.5)*.75).

I realise with the new Blizz latency checks of doom, this isn't so important, but I'm still curious - would it also do the same for corruption? as it makes Imp corruption a 4/5 pointer.

What would really make this guild uber nice would be if somebody would compile a list with the best gear for the different speccs. Perhaps listing the 3 best item for each slot.

It's talented cast time (although Paladins get a 0.5 cast time bonus after casting Holy Light which doesn't count towards it).

So 10% haste off a 3s second Shadow Bolt that's talented to become 2.5s makes it 2.25s instead. (= (3-0.5) * 0.9)

It's a 20% difference, so pretty important. Updating the compendium.

As has been stated previously in this thread, because 40/0/21 offers all the valuable Raid Debuffs (Malediction, Shadow Embrace) that 41/0/20 brings and 0/21/40 does not.

I won the T5 robe off Kael tonight and was in a dilemma whether to use the gloves for the 4 piece bonus or the studious wraps for raw damage. I did some testing with the 4 pc bonus on Dr.Boom and observed the following.

Casting shadowbolt & immediately following it up with corruption (before sb lands) results in the 1st tick receiving the 10% bonus.

With 1389 shadow dmg unbuffed (6/44/11 spec) each tick of corruption did 404 dmg without any shadowbolt casts (2424 dmg total).

Using the shadowbolt, corruption, shadowbolt, shadowbolt, shadowbolt, shadowbolt shadowbolt cycle resulted in ticks of
421, 439, 459, 481, 505, 532 (2837 dmg total).

A 400ish net dmg increase with no debuffs every 18s does not seem that bad overall. Has anyone else tested this extensively in a raid setting? Is it worthwhile to drop immolate from the rotation to maximize the sb casts?

I have a couple of questions about FR tanking Leotheris. First of all with stackable buffs and FR. If i have 166 fr from gear, +70 from FR aura, +35 from flask of chromatic woners, +25 from GoTW, and 70 from master demonologist by having the felhunter out...does all of this stack just fine with each other. This gives 366 which i believe is max

The other question...does chaos blast proc nether protection. i have seen conflicting reports.

In addition to using lootzor, it may be a good idea to download the dps spreadsheet, enter the relevant info (spec, damage, hit, crit, etc.) and then use the gear spreadsheet also linked in the same thread where you enter the dps values of hit/crit/damage/haste and it'll do a comparison for you.

Gift of the Wild does not stack with FR aura or totems (and totems don't stack with auras either), so you'd be ~35 FR short. And yes, his blast does proc NP and it will cause him to behave strangely (attack other people and whatnot).