Stran

Unless your hit is maxed I wouldn't even consider crit, no mater the spec. Do keep in mind raid composition maters to some degree. If you can guarantee an elemental shaman in your group most raids, 12% hit is good enough. 15% is good enough if you can guarantee a draenai priest, mage or shaman.

 

• Emolate

Most warlocks were at some point in a similar situation to yours.

Going to +crit gems is silly as Affliction, as +spellhit and +spelldamage gems are far better off for you.

You need Improved Shadowbolt, Bane, and Destructive Reach.

You need to build out your Frozen Shadoweave set, ASAP. The T4 robe is nothing special, in fact, the only T4 piece I ever wear (check my armory) is the shoulders, and my guild is in TK now and it is only a matter of time before I can upgrade those shoulders, too.

Check out how I am gemmed and my gear. You can have almost all of it crafted or pick it up in Karazhan or a couple of Heroics. The Scryer's Bloodgem is a Revered rep item, you should try get that. If you are Exalted with CE, get Ashlyn's Gift, etc. Focus on that +spellhit first and foremost. Be the CoS/CoE mule, use UA, Corruption, Immolate and Shadowbolts.

The Terrokar Tablet of Vim is a stupidly easy trinket to get with spelldamage, a Use damage boost, *and* a spellhit bonus. It is probably one of the most under-appreciated trinkets in the game for new raiding warlocks. Once you start really building up your +spellhit rating, you can start to take points out of Suppression.

Spend a little bit of time, and seriously, if the spreadsheets are a pain in the ass for you (and they can be), warcrafter.net's sandbox is a great way to get some modeling time done in a much nicer way in their Sandbox, though the talent tree data isn't 100% accurate it will let you do gear swaps/modifications all day long with a great degree of certainty.

If you're Malediction, when reviewing the WWS, remember your role in the DPS of the Mages and Shadowpriests as well as your fellow Warlocks. You are a very valuable contributor to any raid's success with that talent. (I would strongly recommend looking at Shadow Embrace too, even if you have to wait until you can start pulling some stats out of Suppression.)

But seriously start looking at Frozen Shadoweave and Spellstrike gear -- the only piece I use of T4 are those shoulders just because everything else I have is better, and all I needed was a tailor, an enchanter, and a gemcutter.

 

Lianya

Awesome. I *think* this is what I need to do:

Spec:
Use the default Affliction spec (see Post #1) with this variant:
Drop 2/2 Intensity
Move the 2 Intensity points in to either Shadow Embrace (4/5) or remove Shadow Embrace completely and put them in to 3/3 IMP 1/2 Healthstone (Curious as to thoughts on that)

Gear:
Change my wand back to Tirisfal Wand of Ascendancy (+hit instead of +crit)
Change yellow games in pants from +crit to +hit gems
Either change gems in Robe of Oblivion to +hit or +spell damage, but get the +stam out (Or remove robe entirely)

Does that make sense? I'm interested in opinions on the blue text above, those talent points.

 

• Emolate

I didn't notice you had the trial-fire pants. Compare those to how you could gem and enchant Spellstrike pants. Make the decision.

Go with Veiled Noble Topaz wherever you can, if you can do them in 2's you're better off than doing a dedicated +hit and +dmg gem. You will get one more point of damage (10 instead of 9) and the same amount of +spellhit you would with the +8 spellhit gem.

I do Intensity because it can come in handy soloing and questing. I pretty much always farm in my raid spec (PVE server). Intensity doesn't hurt to have and I would miss it more than I would miss the other two bullshit talents in the Destruction tree I could use to pad myself out to Ruin.

If you aren't going to Ruin, drop Intensity, IMO. And at your gear level, you should ignore Ruin anyway.

Destructive Reach and Bane are the most important things in Destruction for you right now.

Edit: I recommend putting points into Improved Healthstone depending on the rest of your raiding locks. I am probably dropping mine down to 1/2 because another lock is 2/2 and the other two are 0/2. But since we are probably going to start rotations on TK so we aren't stacked on warlocks, I may as well leave it 2/2. Even if I have the other 2/2 Lock with me, that is 20 big healthstones without waiting for cooldowns.

 

Lianya

Currently all our raiding locks have 2/2 in the HS, however only 2 of us have been showing up consistantly, so I'm torn on that. It would be nice to drop to 1/2, so we have 2 versions, but like you point out, if there are only 2 of us total in the raid, that's sucky for a lot of people. I think I'll try 1/2 for now, and put the other 3 in to the IMP, unless Shadow Embrace makes more sense.

 

Stran

I have always considered 3 points into imp somewhat of a waste (high mobility fights etc). SE will help your tank out far more as it can be considered a direct 5% boost on the tank's hitpoints.

As far as gear, get more hit. Going tailoring and getting spell strike + FSW is something I would have recomended before. But if you have a T5 guild, you are likely to be getting gear fairly soon. I suggest to concentrate on your utility to the guild and wait for the gear to come in.

Also, I have seen warlocks increase their DPS by about 30% through changes in their rotations, mods etc, without changing a single piece of gear. Make sure you do things right, and at the right time. The gear will come.

 

Lianya

I'm seeing the same thing. I'm the least geared Warlock in the guild/raid (and not a tailor, which means to get those sets I have to level that... which makes me want to cry), but yet I've been the top DPS on many of the fights. Since my gems/gear/spec is pretty terrible right now, that means we are doing something wrong.

I'm trying to fix my stuff up, and reading this board will help me a lot to guide the other locks. For me, I imagine the spell rotation I want to use is:

CoS --> UA --> Corr --> Immolate --> Shadow Bolt until DoT refresh needed. (No Siphon Life, unless I'll take periodic damage)

I saw somewhere in this thread something about not casting Immolate at that time do to the GCD from Corruption. Is there a better order? I'm trying to figure out how the GCD affects these rotations and how I should deal with it.

 

Spline

Here's a question I tried to answer: When is 4 piece Tier 5 better than 4 piece Tier 6?

I'll narrow the question down by using a 0/21/40 build, and focus on the Head, Shoulder, Leg, and Glove pieces. I'll use my current gear level, which is mid T5-T6. I'll cast nothing but Shadowbolt and Life Tap.

First, I found out what stats I lose by downgrading from T6 to T5. I used Rare gems for convenience. I put Runed Living Ruby wherever I couldn't get more DPS stats though a socket bonus. Difference: 33 Hit, 13 Crit, 39 Spell Damage

Using Leulier's spreadsheet, I'll equate this to 83 spell damage, or a difference of 67 dps due to stats. Since wearing T6 puts me up to 1555dps, the 4 piece bonus for T6 adds 90dps on top of this. Now, let's see what it takes for 4T5 to be worth 157dps. In its current state, 4T5 is bugged, and doesn't take the bonus spell damage of the affected Corruption into account. We'll ignore this for now.

With each Shadowbolt hit, 4t5 increases the damage of any Corruptions on the target by 10%. This damage bonus stacks additively. It's not unreasonable to expect 6 Shadowbolt hits through the duration. If the first Shadowbolt hits before the first tick, we get this list of multipliers for each tick: (110%, 120%, 130%, 140%, 150%, 160%). This gives an average of 135% per tick, or boosting the entire corruption by 135%. If the first tick goes off before recieving a shadowbolt, the average goes down to 125%. Let's say 130%.

My destruction-spec corruption does 4500 damage over 18 seconds. 30% of this is 1350 damage, or 75 damage per second. I'll fudge-factor this down to 60 damage per second, saying that I'll have to life tap at some point, there will be gaps between corruptions, etc etc.

So, I'll need at least 3 corruptions on the target, plus a fully functioning 4-set bonus, in order for 4T5 to be as good as 4T6. I apologize for all the hand-waving, and welcome any corrections or criticisms.

 

PSGarak

Immolate is a difficult spell to model properly. For example, at my gear level (350 more shadow than fire damage) it's still more damage per cast time than shadowbolt, but it results in a dps decrease in the asymptotic case because it costs more mana and the extra time spent lifetapping means I do less damage. The biggest problem with using immolate, especially as an affliction warlock, is clipping your DoT cycle. Never refresh immolate if there is another DoT that needs refreshing instead. UA->Cor->immo will lead to immo and UA needing refreshing at the same time but that's a one-time thing that will be corrected on the next DoT cycle and re-emerge periodically no matter what you do.

As far as imp healthstone, if I were in your situation (everyone else is 2/2) I would go 0/2 instead of 1/2. The important thing is just having them, the extra heal from the talent isn't really that great. I'm sure there's somewhere else in the affliction tree that's a better home for that lonely talent point.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Silverstorm

I would coordinate the healthstones with the other locks. Also, drop the soulwell periodically during trash. A couple of soulwells on the way to the boss will let the cooldown timer tick while you clear the next two trash packs. Then drop it again, clear two more packs. By the time you're engaging the boss, everyone should have all the ranks needed/wanted/available. This doesn't work so well coming back after a wipe, but most wipes don't last long enough to use all your healthstones (unless you're the tank) anyway.

 

Arelenda

for reference:
[Hood of the Corruptor] Tier 5
[Hood of the Malefic] Tier 6

I believe it's only your own corruption, and it's only the base damage (900) you're boosting for the remaining tics.

Unless I'm wrong about that, the answer is "never ever".

 

Silverstorm

Stran, in these high mobility fights, does the tank still have the imp parked next to him? There are very few fights where the tank will have to move significantly during a boss encounter. The fully talented Imp provides 91 Stamina, which is enhanced by Kings to be just over 100. That's also a direct 5% increase to the tank's health (assuming health around 19-20k).

If the tank has the imp already, the additional 23.1 Stamina is certainly not as helpful as 5/5 SE.

 

Lianya

Yeah, I thought about that and that's what I did. I forgot the default spec wasn't maxing out Suppression, which I think I still need for now, so I put 3 of the points there. Since I had 1 left over, for now I stuck it in Shadowburn, instead of putting 1/5 in Shadow Embrace. That may not have been the ideal thing, but as I get a bit more +hit I'll revisit and change up.

Also sticking in some cheap +hit gems for now, getting rid of the +crit stuff. I'll be working on getting those upgraded as well to the Veiled Noble Topaz. I hope I can replace that Robe soon, and get the Mindblade from Kara. That will help out in the DPS department a lot.

Thanks a ton for all your help (everybody who responded). Really helped me to figure out what I should be doing.

Edit:
Here's the Sandbox Link to her. Neat site. 70 Gnome Warlock

 

Stran

SE does not exclude Bloodpact. It only excludes telented bloodpact. So you can have untalented imp + SE, which is better than just talented Imp.

 

tdx

So I bit the bullet and actually tested it. With 1241 fire damage DR damage reported that my max crit should be 1888. I calculated that if the crit modifier was 3% my max crit would be 1833, so anything between the two would mean the modifier is at least above 3%.

Well my first cast was a 1886 crit. I spammed two mana bars worth of searing pain on DR Boom and couldn't get anything higher, so CSD does in fact increase your crit modifier by 9%.

 

Spline

I just confirmed that it's only your own corruption.

But you know, if it ever did boost others' corruptions, and take spell damage into account...

 

Arelenda

It is very unclear on the set bonuses, and not many people have 4p T5. Can anyone confirm that it works as I stated? I'd like to add it to the compendium.

I thought it buffed your active corruption by 10% of the base, so 90 damage over all tics. If this is true, then one SB would boost an untalented corruption by 15 per tic for the remaining tics.

 

Stran

It stacks indefinitely. For the duration of your corruption that is Each Sb boosts the BASE damage of YOUR corruption by 10%. All consequent hits of that corruption will gain the cumulative increase in damage. I will run the numbers tonight and post logs.

 

dotcow

Hi,

I am currently specced 0/21/40 with 5 points in improved immolate and 5 in emberstorm. My stats are 1400 shadow damage, about 1300 or so fire damage, capped hit, 16% crit without counting talents and about 5% haste (buffed). My question is, is immolate still an important factor in my dps on boss fights as well as trash? We usually have 2-3 fire mages btw. Also is there anything I should switch around as far as stats are concerned? I can't link armory cuz I'm on my iPhone but its dotcow on us destromath if you want to take a look. Thanks

 

Arelenda

I'd say no. Want numbers? Use Leulier's spreadsheet to find out. Or ShadowSeer. Or DrDamage. All linked in the compendium.

 

Experiment

Hi, I just wanted to point out something from above for a moment.

Emolate mentioned WoWCrafter.net, and it was completely new to me so I had to track it down. I did manage to find the site itself, which had a different name and URL then I gathered from this quick bit of information.

It's Warcrafter.net ...If I found the right thing anyway.

Thank you very much for the passing mention. It looks like a very useful site for gear and spec planning.

 

Breii

You'll want to stick Siphon Life in there as long as you're sure it'll last its duration (ie Boss fights, long trash pulls etc). While its damage looks pretty mediocre, its damage-per-cast-time is actually a lot higher than Shadowbolt (with my gear, which is similar to yours). I'd imagine this remains true even as you hit cap and start building crit, but a few runs through the spreadsheet could answer that fairly easily. It is also one of our most mana efficient spells, which is a nice bonus.

 

Crepe

Ouch, you don't have FSW and you're still out DPSing them? They are clearly doing something wrong, then.

As for tailoring, it's probably one of the cheapest and easiest professions to level. If you've got decent cash on hand (around 2-3k), you probably can power level it to 375 without much trouble and still have a lot left for shadowcloth, spellcloth, and primal mights. You'll need thousands of netherweave cloth, but its price should be around 3g/stack (or cheaper if people are stupid, which is common). I spent probably around 3-4k about 9 months ago to get full FSW/Spellstrike from 0 tailoring; the bulk of that was the shadowcloth/primal might cost. Additionally, netherweave was anywhere between 4g to 6g a stack then. Shadowcloth prices were also about double.

YMMV, of course, depending on your server's economy (ER is large, release server with a huge "casual" population, which drives prices down).

 

Stran

Like I said, I would have recommended this before, while his guild was progressing through content with worse or similar gear. FSW gets replaced with T5 gear (unless you are a shadowpriest I suppose) so instead of blowing all that gold, he could maximize his utility and slowly up the DPS as the gear comes rolling in. Spending 3k gold on gear that could potentially get upgraded in a few weeks would be silly imo.

 

• Emolate

Good find -- sorry for the confusion. It is warcrafter.net, and I have fixed it above. I cannot tell you how useful the warcrafter Sandbox function is. It has given me back hours of gametime due it to being so easy to model new gems, plan for gear acquisitions, and fine-tune my raiding spec.

Thanks for giving the proper information, sorry for any confusion it may have caused. It will probably be a very valuable tool for any raiding Warlock.