I would point out that for a single shadow lock ISB uptime is very easy to estimate using 1-(1-c)^4.

Expanding that out for a whole raid can be done relatively simply by weighting the crit rate of each member by his share of nukes on the target. Using this weighted crit rate in teh above expression will yield a pretty accurate reading for expected ISB uptime in raids and helps to estimate the gains of crit rating on items outside of personal DPS.

EDIT:
I would also add that more than most other classes (puuuure speculation) warlocks have a larger variance in their DPCT available to them at any point in time. For example, an affliction lock's DPCT over time varies depending on which DoTs he has active (and what procs/buffs/debuffs are going). Once all his dots are up, his DPCT drops since he's forced to use his lowest DPCT spell, shadow bolt. Saving LT/DP for those low-DPCT valleys, using pots when you have no mana but are in a high DPCT peak, and similar decisions will increase DPS quite a bit over time.

This is something I've put a lot of thought into while watching myself raid, and I've come to the conclusion that the biggest factor of evaluating CoA vs CoD for a damage-only basis (ignoring special stuff like say Curator) is the bossfight itself.

Due to the lost time, as you say, CoD beats CoA on it's own. However, that is assuming one is always casting when Curse of Agony needs a refresh.

Depending on bossfight, it can very well happen that at say 50% of the times when you'd need to cast CoA again, you're moving anyways, not casting shadow bolts. In those situations CoA's superior damage (and superior scaling I think, although this is off top of my head, no calculator at hand) can outdo CoD due to not actually losing much casting time at all.

Good point. I hadn't thought of that.

However
- The type of fight is rather rare
- Affliction locks probably have better things to cast
- You can also life tap (or dark pact) during movements instead. This is in fact what I usually do, as 0/21/40.
- And if you need to be moving that much, you might want to stick with CoD since it requires less attention, allowing you to focus on what you're running from in the first place
- the difference is marginal at best. Over a two minute duration you hit 2 CoD (8400+4*sp) or 5xCOA (5x1356+6*sp). For affliction warlocks with imp CoA it probably is better, since CoA gets 10% from Shadow Mastery and 10% from imp CoA.

I'll mention it in the guide.

Specific notes for common raiding thingies:
Darkmoon Card Crusade: Any spec, but especially affliction, has a really easy time keeping this stacked, and getting it stacked while the tank builds threat, because we have spammable low-cost low-agro long-range curses. It's often worth the time to debuff a target to keep the stack rolling.

Clicky Trinkets and affliction builds: Clicky trinkets should be saved for when all of your DoTs are going to be refreshed in a small window. If at all possible, on 20-second clickies, try to double-tip corruption and unstable affliction. It's worth saving the trinket for a few seconds, it probably won't cost you an extra activation.

Procs and DoTs: Recasting a DoT and overriding a previous one is never, ever worth it, no matter how awesome your proc is. You lose half a tick on average, and the damage gain from the amped DoT is not worth that half a tick. For example, 2pcT4 proc is 135 damage. Over the course of a corruption this comes out to 170ish before debuffs. The lost half-tick of corruption is 250 at that gear level. Ignore your procs, and keep casting as if nothing happened.
In a similar vein: while you want as close to 100% DoT uptime as you can manage, you want to absolutely avoid clipping DoTs, and also avoid waiting for DoTs finish. If a DoT is half a second out, cast a shadowbolt and refresh it late.
The exception is UA, and untalented corruption: it has a cast time. Remember this.

Finally, affliction builds actually do scale really well, it's just that they only scale with damage since crit is marginal and we hit-cap easily. Higher-end gear tends to spend a lot of itemization points on crit and haste, which help destruction far more. It's not exactly a matter of scaling, it's a matter of scaling with the itemization that we will actually encounter in higher raid settings.

And yeah, I hear enough about 0/40/21 that it should probably be mentioned. It plays essentially like a felguard build with a sexybus instead of a felguard, but it gears more for crit. Example spec(?):
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Talent Calculator

As far as affliction builds go, I would list this:
WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Talent Calculator
as the absolute bare-bones affliction build, with most of the rest being determine by gear, playstyle, and raid group composition. You will note it's not a viable build: it requires fleshing out. I don't know how to make wowhead's talents do that.

After doing tons of test and theorycrafting and writing a complete addon to measure my damage, I've discovered that I've been downranking Immolate for about a year and a half now.

I must have forgotten to update the spell when I learned the AQ20 book. And because it wasn't top rank, it didn't get autoupdated when I learned the new max rank in TBC.

No wonder I always hated fire so much.


So uh... always use top rank of your dps spells.

Thanks for the useful posts, I'll merge them with the guide as soon as possible.

For those who raid with a pet out - Sporeling Snacks work on warlock pets (20 stam and spirit).

I'm not sure how long it's been like this as I've only tried felguard recently, but they get the same greater blessings as warriors. Worth knowing when you want to swap light for might, but keep kings for example.

Hey. Ive got this problem. We had a fight with my guilds warlock CO cause of other warlocks performance. Ive noticed a 300-400 dps diference on single target encounters and asked whats the problem.

The answer was: "warlock 1 is in the tank group and he has raid buffing talents so you cant count his dps....... warlock2 is affliction till he ups his +hit, affliction is a pore dps raid bild i dont really want any in the guild. That leaves warlock 3 his gems dont go well with his gear then his spec sucks! ive told him what i want from him, if hes still dose nothing about it i an going to kick him................"

I dont believe that builds,group setup can make your dps get stuck at ~600, 700 at best while others in top 5 do ~900-1000 dps. Raid dps 9500-10000. ~12000 dps on hydross/morogrim. Their gear is about the same lvl as rest in guild.

builds
lock CO World of Warcraft Europe -> Talents

~maxet hit, ~19 crit, ~1270 spell damage

lock 1 (tank group) World of Warcraft Europe -> Talents

arround 936 spell damage, 15.44% to crit, 125 hit rating

lock 2 World of Warcraft Europe -> Talents

1010 shadowl damage, 141 hit rating, 15% crit chance

Lock 3 World of Warcraft Europe -> Talents

899 spell damage, 43 penetration, 54 hit rating (horrible i guess), 18.60% crit chance

The stats may be slightly diferent cause of grinding/raiding gear and stuff, none was wearing pvp gear though. Shouldnt be much diference id say.

Now can anyone confirm that the group setup or hit chance can be the reason of the huge dps diference? Or is it actualy slacking?

What would you suggest in such situation? If theres any kind person that would also want some more details i could pm reports and armory links.

Haste is 15.7 = 1%, right?
Curse of Recklessness, which bosses in BC have an ability based on melee damage?

First of all, Spell Damage is very misleading, I would very much rather have their Shadow Damage instead, but since I don't I'll just make a very rough analysis of what is going on here.


Going off the info you have posted:

The Warlock CO seems to have quite a gear advantage over the rest, even when accounting for Demonic Aegis. Capping hit is very important, and he has done well by capping it. As for his spec I am assuming is uses a Soul Linked Succubus to DPS? If so then his spec makes sense, otherwise I am not too sure, as I haven't heard of anyone using such a spec for anything other than Succy DPS (which is pretty decent damage).

Warlock 1: Firstly this warlock is probably always providing a utility curse instead of a damage one, using a damage one would net him an extra 100-150 DPS roughly. Secondly, if I were him i'd drop Imp. CoA (as he's always on CoS/CoE anyway) and put those 2 points into Soul Siphon, 10% threat reduction to affliction damage is nothing to be scoffed at. As for his gear, his hit is low, if he has any gems other than hit ones or ones that contribute towards a hit socket bonus then he should probably regem. His crit is a bit high for an affliction warlock at his gear level (i'm guessing pre-SSC mostly), so I suspect he's using either crit gems or is favoring crit heavy items over something far more useful to his spec, such as hit.

Warlock 2: His gear doesn't seem to be too good, he has very low spell damage and way too much crit for somone at his gear level, again, I am guessing he either has crit heavy items or the wrong gems, might want to consider getting some more hit either way. Looking at his talents, the affliction tree is fine, has some talents I wouldn't get but that is a matter of personal preference, he does have all the important ones and that is what matters. However, I would get Destructive Reach in Destruction if I were him, instead of putting 5 points into Demonic Embrace. Then again, I somehow doubt he is having threat issues with his gear setup (unless he has a *lot* more shadow damage than spell damage, which is possible), but if he does, then getting 10% less threat on his Shadowbolts/Immolates would help him output that bit more damage.

Warlock 3: Yeah, 18.6% crit as affliction, very low hit and spell penetration (proven to be a useless PvE talent, save for very few bosses such as Supremus, and a number of trash mobs) lead me to believe he really doesn't know what gear suits him best. Need more hit, ditch the crit unless it comes with a piece that is great otherwise, and no spell penetration other than the cloak enchant (20). As for his spec, it is good, it's a common malediction utility build, and you would want two Warlocks with malediction assuming your raid has its fair share of fire mages. And if he already is providing a utility curse most of the time, then that would account for ~100 dps he would have if he were on a damage curse.

As far as group setup, if none of the warlocks save the CO are getting a Shadow Priest/Elemental Shaman then I would say that could well contribute to the DPS difference, as well. However, they have other things to worry about right now, such as optimising their gear and specs in some cases.

I would also like to touch on the Warlock CO’s comment about Affliction being a horrible DPS spec and that he doesn't want any in the raid save the "utility warlock". At the gear level your guild is at (judging by your own gear and by your mention of early SSC fights as a basis of comparison) Affliction is definitely a more viable spec than Destruction, I personally was affliction till we first stepped into Mount Hyjal, and with the right itemization and dot uptime it is far from being a "poor DPS spec".

Double dipping on 20 second trinkets for both UA and Corruption is going to be quite difficult, since you have 1.5 seconds of UA cast + 18 seconds of dotting before the 2nd Corruption can be cast. It's almost impossible for me, even with /stopcasting. Hopefully, the changes in 2.3 to spell casting will alleviate this issue.

As far as affliction scaling and hit-capping....yes, it's difficult to scale beyond t5 content, since the gear moves toward crit and haste. However, we hit-cap just like any other warlock. Many people mistakenly count Suppression toward hit-capping. True, it helps your DoTs, which are a majority of your damage, but Shadowbolts are still a significant portion of an affliction lock's DPS.

As far as affliction wisdom goes, here's my experiences (43/0/18, 6/6 SSC, 3/4 TK):

I recently dropped Immolate from my rotation due to poor scaling and no raid synergy (all mages went arcane), and as a result, my Shadowbolt damage has increased it's percentage of my damage. My DPS increased slightly, probably due to less DoT uptime issues given the differing lengths of UA/Corr and Immo. I continue to use Siphon Life, as I'm nearly healer independent if I take no additional damage, however, it's generally a filler spell to get me to the end of a UA/Corr cycle, or cast while moving, provided I don't need mana.

I am still very competitive with my damage, despite being the Malediction lock, usually placing top 5 behind the arcane mages, the other affliction warlock, and occasionally a BM hunter. The additional 125-150 DPS from CoA would easily let me catch up, but the increased raid DPS is easily more than 125-150 when you consider we have 3-4 locks, 3 arcane mages, 2 shadow priests, and a boomkin. Unfortunately, the other locks vary from night to night (we have 5, and the two of us that are most consistent are me and the ISB Destro lock).

Lesson: Look carefully at your raid makeup and determine if Immolate is worth it. If it's close, test it both ways.

Updated: warlock 2 has 1010 shadow damage. Thanks anyway. Got the idea of what the problem is.

I am Destro, and I have to agree, pure +damage will help Destro at least as much as Affliction (you forgot Siphon Life in your calcs, which will add a few dps). I still use the FSW boots because they are just that good (if you are hit capped).

However, if Blizzard designed items with pure +damage (think Solarian's pants or Kael's 44 damage cloak), they aren't really that good compared to items that mix stats.

Note that if the item designers instead just use +shadow damage (the 53 shadow damage BT/Hyjal trash drop cloak or the Kara trash drop +shadow neck), then it comes out really good due to pure schools being much cheaper in the item budget.

I've seen from a lot of posts here that Curse of Doom isn't affected by Shadow Mastery? Can anyone give me an explanation as to why? Is it simply because of the 200% spell coefficient on Doom or what?

If Shadow Mastery does not affect it, then does the demo sacrifice Succubus 15% affect it?

Don't think anyone knows why it doesn't affect it. We could guess all day, but you'd have to ask blizzard to get a definite answer.

yes

I've got a question about Suppression and hit, I'm a little confused about the two. Say I have 5/5 supression and I've got 6% hit on my gear does this mean I've hit the hit cap for a warlock?

Alright so bascially I should still try and stack hit on my gear and respec out of suppression when I've got the correct amount of hit?

That is more or less the idea.

Incinerate and Shadowbolt gain the same from spell damage in a standard raid environnment, the only differences are ISB vs better mana efficiency (and ISB > mana efficiency).

Base coefficients :
SB : 85.6%
Inci : 71.4%

In a desctruction build, both SB and Inci gain +20% from S&F, fire gets x110% from emberstorm. And in a standard raid environnment, SB gets x110% from shadow weaving, inci gets x115% from improved scorch.

SB : (85.6+20)*1.10 = 116,16
Inci : (71.4+20)*1.15*1.10 = 115.62

As Eph said a list of bosses where using CoR is (or isn't) suggested would be a nice addition to this raid compendium.

Good point. Anyone have information on that?

One thing I would like to see is the math of CoD vs CoS/E/R in a rading environment, as our warlocks are rather reluctant to put up anyone but CoS.