Roaminggnome

Is there a specific reason why an affliction warlock would not sacrifice 2 points in Demonic Embrace and pick up 2/2 Destructive Reach? It seems somewhat counterintuitive to have Grim Reach for your DoTs and still be forced to stand closer to a boss to keep your shadowbolt spam going. Also, the threat reduction on those shadowbolts can only be a good thing. More stamina is great of course, but it's hardly a limiting factor for dps, given the large amounts of it present on our gear anyway, yes? Anyway, even though I am very much a new and somewhat casual raider, I consider maximizing my personal effectiveness to be important. Could somebody give me some feedback on this?

 

Arelenda

Hmm. Good point.

Specs listed aren't set in stone, obviously. Destructive Reach does beat stamina in most fights. I'll fix it.

Grim Reach tends to be more valuable since you actually cycle through possible targets more often with dots. Shadow Bolts will usually be directed on a single target.

 

clavarnway

It's very frustrating to have range on one set of spells but not on the other when you use both on the same targets. I definitely recommend picking up both or neither if you are Affliction.

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

 

Roaminggnome

This is a good point. Grim Reach is certainly not mandatory for every fight. The conflict I noted is if you have one but not the other, but I didn't mention that having neither resolves the conflict just as effectively as having both.

 

lavis

I've always wondered about 40/0/21 spec it definitely requires some nice gear to pull off and would be a interesting spec for a lock first entering bt/hyjal with 4 piece T5 being that you really only use a rotation like CoS > Corruption > SB x7 > Corruption etc.

Does anyone have experience with this spec? And how much DPS could you push out on a fight like Teron Gorefeind where you didn't get ghosted? I really would like to do some theorycrafting on this one! Thanks.

 

• frmorrison

I have played 40/0/21, it is a great spec once you have around 20% crit (so 25 with devestation) and 1400 damage and as a plus you use one less debuff slot.

You could do 38/2/21 to get imp imp and/or imp HS, since instant Howl isn't a raiding talent.

 

lavis

Edit: oops double post lag o.0

Thanks for the info.

 

Eph

Assuming you want SE, Mal, Ruin and 2/3 Imp Imp, you wouldn't be able to drop Howl, more like Reach or something, right?

 

sappari

Leotheras procs nether prot. I tank him as destro spec

edit: just tanked him again and doesn't proc any more. But I'm sure prior to 2.3 he did. The other lock in my guild tanked too for a while and he's the one that initially tried it.

 

Arelenda

I'm 100% sure he didn't do this before. When did this get changed? Got shots or proof?

 

Antoine

I think he's saying that he procs nether protection, but he doesn't switch targets when you have the buff on you.

 

kaib

I was just wondering about that. It'a kinda tough to test as you'd need a crit sbolt and a syphon proc at the same time. The weapon does not work like you explain it there though. It is a proc that comes up as a buff on the player using the weapon and then each of his melee attacks does the 20 (+modified from +shadow dmg debuffs on the mob) life drain. It works just like the lifesteal enchant but it's 100% while the proc is up.
It seems to me it should work like a straight shadow dmg attack and any dual wielding melee dps would clear up ISB procs on the mobs instantly for the duration of the weapon proc.

talking about Syphon of the Nathrezim ( Syphon of the Nathrezim - Items - World of Warcraft ) here.

 

Ammanas

Alright, I've been an affliction lock since TBC came out first for DPS purposes and lately for raid utility purposes but I am finally going to be able to respec destro since we recently picked up a new lock that is utility specced. I have a few questions for the veteran 21/40's out there:

1. Reguarding spec, is 5/5 Cataclysm better than 5/5 Imp Immolate / Emberstorm? I know eventually immolate becomes obsolete, but I'm not at that level of shadow damage yet - and I always open with curse/immo/corr to give the tank a little room to build threat anyway. Also, I see the default build having 3/3 nether protection - how useful is this in MH/BT raiding? I can imagine it being pretty nice, but is it worth not having the point to buff immolate?

2. Darkmoon Card: Crusade - how is this for destro? Since I'll be casting CoD, I won't have be able to just recurse to keep it stacked. I was about to buy one (have a guy willing to sell a premade deck) for affliction, but is it worth it as destro? FYI the two destro trinkets I would use right now would be Scryer's Blood Gem (until I can hit cap without it) and the 40 crit rating battlemasters trinket (don't have a sextant, lacking a little crit since I've been Aff so long).

3. Mana Pots. How often do you use these? Chug on CD? Only on really healing intensive fights/emergencies where you can't tap? Somewhere in between? My guilds healing is not much of an issue, I'm not too worried about straining them with tapping.

Thanks for any advice, I read as much of the thread as I could really sorry if any of this is repeated.

 

◊ Kyth

Rejuv pots, if you can afford them, are simply amazing.


3/3 nether protection is more because there's nothing else to spend the points on unless you're buffing fire spells.

 

kaib

You need to take cataclysm. It makes quite a difference in the long run. Nether Prot is ok, but nothing to be excited about. It's somewhat useful at teron and I imagine you can get a lucky proc on first rain of fire hit at azgalor and then don't take an additional tick, but that's about it. Archimonde's doomfire completely ignores nether prot, won't proc of the dot at least. Or I was terribly unlucky last week, but I think chances are it won't proc. :P
The fire talents are all pretty bad if you do not plan to do searing pain tanking, but as you consider taking nether prot, I suppose you do not. Immolate is just fairly useless. Even if sbolt is a bit less dmg, ISB still makes it worth casting it instead. And no the pull there should be a misdirectoin in 25 men raids, so it's not bad really. Sometimes I just open with curse, corruption (good old cast time) and then sbolt. That's pretty safe.

For pots, I don't use any non-AV mark ones on farming content. If you want to maximize your dps, you gotta drink obviously, makes quite a big difference.

 

Arelenda

I personally prefer Cataclysm over Emberstorm, but the difference isn't that huge. Nether protection is nice on Archimonde (his fear and grip procs it, making your immune to doomfire), and useful on Theron. It's a filler talent, though.

Crusade is one of the best trinkets available. 80 spellpower is pretty impressive.

Mana pots: If healing isn't really tight, a mana pot gains you less than two Life Taps worth, that's 3 seconds of dps, or 3000 damage if you do 1000dps. If healing IS tight, and they can't spare a single heal, then Rejuvs will pay off more.

I use mad alchemist pots, they're identical to rejuvs (alchemists only). I tend to try and keep my pots off cooldown for emergencies instead: rejuv pot+healthstone (plus death coil, if really needed) is a nice panic button.

Don't focus on crit only, though. If you have other spellpower trinkets (like the Icon of the Silver Crescent) you probably want to use that instead. Roughly crit rating and damage give you about equal gains, but it depends a whole lot on the amount of shadow users in the raid.

 

Ammanas

Thanks a lot for the replies, and yeah I have the icon/quags eye (the two I used as affliction) but I kind of feel I need the crit from the BM trinket since with it I am still only at ~19 crit unbuffed/~24 counting dev (I have 0 crit gems and I'm still using 2 pieces of FSW). I know damage is > crit, I just think you need a decent amount of crit to really benefit from ruin and contribute a respectable amount of ISB uptime.

And is immolate really that useless due to ISB? I know SB scales better and gets bonuses from SW/ISB where Immo doesn't, but shadowseer still has my damage per casting time on immo a good bit higher than SB so I figured it would still be worth it for now.

 

Krazen

I just switched from affliction to destro at a gear level a bit under what the common suggestion is:

The World of Warcraft Armory

Tack of a belt of blasting and this is what I probably will raid with on Tuesday. Will report results.


Also, I think the compendium could use some analysis on what a meta socket is worth. For example, I'm debating whether to pick up my tier 5 or the Grand Engineer Helm. Or tier 4 v Spellstrike.

 

Masafumi

Last raid I obtained my second T5 part so I have the 2/5 bonus now. This week was / is our last SSC and TK raid and from now on we gonna focus on BT en MH. So it's time to get rid of Affliction since it's getting boring and to try something else.

A fellow warlock in our guild is currently raiding with his felguard and kinda beating the shit out of everyone. He wears the Solarian trinket and got the T5 bonus aswell. I do not have the trinket but would love to raid with it myself.

So would it be worth speccing felguard with a build like this Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft ?
I'm open for some tweaks aswell.

Armory is bugged but my current stats with the gear I will wear are 13/14% hit, 18% crit and around 1150 spelldamage, everything is without talents.

Otherwise I'll spec 21/40 Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Thanks in advance

 

Zinaida

About immolate usage as 0/21/40: I see a lot of people saying how much immolate sucks, but from playing with the spreadsheet it seems that immolate is only a dps loss at unattainable gear levels or if your shadow damage is significantly higher than your fire damage. However someone talked about shadow bolt being better due to increased ISB uptime. At what sort of raidbuffed damage would you stop using immolate? Or perhaps i've missed something obvious.

 

Crepe

Most of the immolate>SB calculations assume 100% uptime of the mage scorch debuff, 5/5 emberstorm, 5/5 imp immolate, and very little gap between recasts of immolate. One of these conditions failing will usually put immolate on the same DPCT as SB. My empirical evidence found that by Lurker, it just wasn't worth casting (net DPS loss of around 10-20) and it has only gotten worse from there. After demonstrating to myself immolate was no longer worth it, I dropped imp immo and conflag (which I miss a lot) for cataclysm.

If you're going to tank anything as a warlock, get emberstorm over NP. Capernian and Illidian's bolts do proc it and will wipe the raid, no matter your /cancelaura macros. While Leo's bolts do not proc it, emberstorm gets you more TPS, which is better for there anyway. [0] If you're not tanking things, then feel free to pickup the situational utility of NP.

[0] While Imp Searing Pain is probably a better place to spend the points (10% vs. 8% more damage), I'm more of a fan of guaranteed better TPS than risking my pickups on crits. Of course, a well-timed doom or shadowburn beats all, but sometimes those aren't an option.

 

SSJones

Immolate is a minor DPS loss at my gear level if you don't have 5/5 Emberstorm and Improved Immolate. That's according to the leulier spreadsheet. If you do have improved immolate and emberstorm, it's a very minor DPS gain. That being at 1130 Shadow, 993 fire damage, 23% crit non raid buffed. I got from 1174 without immolate to 1157 with.

With 5/5 in both fire talents, I go to 1187 according to the spreadsheet for a gain of 13 dps.

Also note that immolate at 1.5 second cast doesn't benefit from spell haste, where shadowbolt sees very noticable gains from spell haste, and the numbers above are with 4.75% (75 haste rating). Without haste rating, It's 1130 for pure shadow without Immo, 1119 for pure shadow with Immo, and 1150 for 5/5's with Immo.

Whether or not speccing into Immolate actually makes that 1-2% difference worth it for you probably depends more on taste and playstyle than anything else.

That's at a T4/5 gear equiv. As you progress further towards T6, shadowbolt scales better with spellhaste. Also scales better with crit? I forget if the dot percentage of Immolate gets a bonus from crits. I imagine the gap continues to narrow there if it does not.. Also the 4 piece T6 at a 6% gain for shadowbolt is, in my opinion, the final nail in the coffin for Immolate regardless of destruction talent choices.

I'm a dirt Torpedo!

 

zepi

I fail to see how this would affect things too much. Either Immolate is more damage per cast-time than SB or it's not.

If it is more (which is assumed all the time, or whole Immolate idea is dead anyway) then you'll get DPS-boost every time you cast Immolate instead of Shadow Bolt assuming you don't overlap Immolation dots. You can easily leave 1.5sec gaps after Immolate dots and gain 90% of the DPS boost from 100% uptime if that makes it castable without wasting any SB castingtime.

So: It's not necessary to have 100% uptime on immolate for it to be a DPS boost over SB, the only and sole condition is that (Immolation initial damage + dot damage over 1.5sec - manaefficiency drawback - Imp. SB effect reduction) has to be greater or equal to (SB damage * 1.5/2.5) in order for Immolate to be usable without drawbacks. This ofcourse might require imp. scorches etc.

In addition, Immolate should be DPS boost in movement fights compared to pure SB spam.

As mentioned by others, haste scaling and +crit should favor SB over Immo.

 

SSJones

This is only true if two conditions are true:

#1 - When you need to move, you do not already have an Immolate up so you aren't clipping the dots.

#2 - You have 1.5 seconds before you need to move, but not 2.5 seconds.

If these two aren't true, then it's back to simple Damage per Cast Time as you mentioned earlier. In most fights that you might think of as 'movement' fights I have not often felt I could reactively cast an Immolate instead of a Shadowbolt and be gaining much. At least in the fights I have encountered so far.

On Void Reaver for instance, I used to cast Immolate just before orb dodging, but found I can really just cast a shadowbolt as well and then move without issue. I still use Immolate on targets moving away from me sometimes due to the faster cast time (Supremus, Thaladred) if I am worried about them moving out of range before a shadowbolt would finish.

I'm a dirt Torpedo!

 

Crepe

In order to go from DPCT to DPS, you have to make uptime/gap assumptions. Thus, if you're not matching the uptime conditions in the spreadsheet, you're not going to match the DPS bonus it theorycrafts.