Crepe

I don't think so, but you can estimate it by using SP as your filler and multiplying the DPS from it by the threat multiplier for SP - I think it's 2x threat?

 

Narisane

In the Eye this weekend, the de facto leader of our warlocks set up groups in a way I thought was incorrect. We had three locks, one 0/21/40, one heavy aff (43/0/18 I think) and one demo (7/43/11). The destro lock was placed in a group with the shadowpriest and some healers, and the afflock was placed in the DPS caster crew with a moonkin and elemental shaman. Demo was providing the imp to the MT group. Gear is relatively comparable for all the locks.

It's my belief that the raid as a whole would benefit more from the DS/destro lock being in the DPS caster crew, receiving the crit buff from the moonkin aura and totem of wrath, and helping to maximize ISB uptime, as well as the fact that a crit from someone with S&F and Ruin provides more raw damage than one from someone without. The other lock made that decision based on "destro needs mana regen more than aff and crit is good for aff too."

Given that I was neither playing my warlock nor leading the raid, I went with it, but for future raids I'd like to be able to give him more accurate info regarding setup. Any thoughts?

 

Eph

Seems obvious in that situation it should have been:
Affliction in tank group. He already has an Imp out.
Destruction in Moonkin/Elemental group. More personal damage from 8% more crit.
Demonology in Shadow Priest group. Helps to keep the FG up.

 

Krazen

Does that include 1 pt in imp searing pain, as well as Salvation on the SBing lock?

 

Trickykid

Ah yes, you're correct for longer fights.

If you call C the time of the "first shatter" where the cooldown is 300, then we need tank's threat (multiplied by 1.3) at the end of the end of the cooldown to be greater than post-shatter lock threat plus accumulated threat:
1.3*(300+C) > 0.65*C + 300W.
or
C > (300*W/.65) - 600

So given any W, you would see the best time for "first shatter" if the fight goes another 300 seconds.

Interestingly, time N (the time of the "last shatter" from my earlier math) eventually precedes time C. For instance in a 7 minute fight (420 seconds), a warlock capable of generating W=1.6 gives N=133 seconds, and C=138seconds. Unless I'm effing up some math somewhere, that means deriving shatter time from the cooldown length is suboptimal for some fight lengths and levels of threat-gen.

 

tedv

The real question is why if they only have one shadow priest, they went to the healers instead of the mages. The moonkin especially was probably crying due to the lack of mana regen. Sure, when you are farming T6 content, it's hard for mages to run out of mana, so you might as well put the shadow priest with the healers and have them use less efficient heals for a better margin of error. But in T5 content? Sorry, the shadow priest goes with casters.

I'd change the setup from:

1x Elemental Shaman
1x Moonkin
1x Aff Walock
2x Mage

1x Shadow Priest
1x Destro Warlock
3x Healer

To this:

1x Elemental Shaman
1x Moonkin
2x Mage
1x Shadow Priest

1x Destro Warlock
1x Aff Walock
3x Healer

Now that said, it's true that the destruction warlock can use a shadow priest more than affliction, and they use crit better too. But in the grand scheme of things, Mages need the mana more than Warlocks do, and they use crit even better (due to ignite giving better returns than ruin). If you had one open slot in that caster group, it would go to the destro warlock over affliction though. That way they get both the shadow priest and the 8% crit.

 

Narisane

I believe the spriest went to the healers because we were a little bit undermanned for healers on this raid, and we were asking them to work harder than usual. More time casting to make up for the healers who weren't present means a lot less time outta the 5-sec rule. There was another shadowpriest elsewhere in the raid but I'm not sure who he was feeding. One of the curses of raiding without a fixed roster, we never know who's coming along until the invites go out.

 

Trickykid

If you include ISB charges into increased DPS per crit, a warlock will likely pull ahead of an igniting Mage on returns from crit. Using the 1.19 sheet's raid ISB addition, my toon would see 1.12% increase in DPS from 1% crit. A 210% critting mage would see 1.1%, no?

 

Stran

Increased ISB uptime would also contribute to raid shadow damage, and at this point the ignite 10% bonus pales in comparison.

Warlocks also scale better with +damage that the wrath of air totem would provide. Fireball has a 115% bonus damage coefficient. a 43% damage multiplier would be applied to that bonus damage. (15% Scorch, using 10% curse, 5% misery, 13% from talents) SB has a 105.71 damage coefficient. 50% Multiplier without ISB. Assuming 50% ISB availability, that would average to 60% multiplier.

With that in mind, mages gain 164.5 damage from 100 raw spell power. (no crits included) Warlocks gain 169 damage from same 100 spell power. Things change with crit and haste but I could argue they both scale as well in those stats. Scorch would also reduce mage benefit from +damage but not by much, and CoD would increase it for locks.

As long as multiple SPs are available (for both mages and locks) then destro locks should get a shaman over mages. I do agree that Ele shaman, SP, 3 mage group is better for raid sustainability and damage if only one SP is available though.

Another note, most mages are hit capped without any gems due to their 13% hit requirement (in T6 gear). Locks on the other hand could benefit more from the 3% ToW hit bonus as we could gem out hit for damage if we could count on the extra hit.

 

galzohar

Warlock will gain more from crit of course, but a mage will gain a lot more by not going oom, and so will the moonkin and elemental shaman. Ele shaman, moonkin and mage are generally top priority for shadow priest, which means the moonkin/ele buff may get a bit wasted, but at least you're not killing other people's personal dps to take slightly more out of the crit buffs.

Yes warlocks get more out of the moonkin/ele shaman buffs, but the shadow priest priority dictates the group composition in this case.

 

Harik

Hi, I usually come to EJ for any help with classes and things, but I've recently been leveling a warlock and playing with talents.

I plan on going affl at 70 until I build up a better gear set (then switching to 21/40 destro) and I was wondering if, in a pure raiding situation, if 5/5 imp corruption to make corruption instant is really worth it. Or can you just put 2 points in it to make it less than the GCD and then throw points elsewhere?

I tried searching around, couldn't find it.

Because I am under the impression that Corruption is being made instant just for the sake of making it instant, or is there really no other spots to put points in affliction?


Thanks in advance.

 

weet

Well, there are alot of non-essential raid dps talents at the lower end of the affliction tree, so being able to cast corruption while moving is generally going to be more useful for raiding and non-raid content (say, vs fel concentration in the case that you needed suppression), hence why people go 5/5 - and also the lack of needing suppression when having a high hit rating meaning there is nowhere else to put tier 1 points.

 

Anthraxx

Hello,

I've been raiding as affliction since Kara, and now being 4/5 MH 5/9 BT I'm thinkin' hard about going 0/21/40. I'm generally ok on dmg meters, obviously better on high mobility/multi-target dps fights, but falling behind on shorter/straight nuke Teron-like encounters.

Pretty standard UA build, 197hit, 1404 shadow dmg raid buffed w/o card trinket procs, ~18% crit not counting devastation, 4/5 T5.

The pros of this build are infinite mana and pretty good survivability with siphon life and very nice life drain ticks, malediction, shadow embrace (usually have 4/5 due to 1 point stuck in HS talent), having an imp out for low hp spanners.

If I went destro that would leave the raid with none of the features mentioned above. Is it worth it? Will my dps even increase after respeccing but with only 21% base crit...?

Where is the line after which your personal dps gain prevails over affliction dps + raid utility?

 

Gumibear

We talk about crit so much because we tend to have the best crit scaling of the caster classes, but we also have the best spell damage scaling. We should all know by now that crit is not the main stat of a destruction warlock. You will be fine with the other numbers you quoted. More crit will help you. Spell haste will help too. Good DPS is about getting the right mix of stats, not just stacking one.

 

Anthraxx

Well, being high on dps meters is ofc fun but will I make up for the loss of other utility skills?

How big dps/survivability impact on raid will lack of affliction lock have?

 

Silaine

In my opinion, Shadow Embrace is useful when learning new encounters and when your MT has trouble staying alive. Tier 5 and 6 has plenty Stamina, so perhaps the imp buff isn't that necessary anymore. Consider changing to destro and see how the playstyle suits you and how the raid fares without SE and imp.

I'm staying affliction until I get my second tier 5 piece. Might put it off until Solarian drops Void Star Talisman...which'll happen in my dreams.

 

gargosch

NO it only does the normal threat from damage. Use omen Life tab use Siphon Life and watch the thread. Same for Death Coil.

 

notimeremains

hi guys!

Arelenda thanks for creating this post, alot of mysteries revealed for me, so thanks and /salute

where i still have some mysteries about is spell hit; currently i have this /me
and i have 131 spell hit rating, i think this is excl. the suppression @ 5/5. now i wanted to change my specc from solo/pve/pvp to full pve raiding specc.
but when can i drop some points in suppression?

do i need to change my gems to + spell hit gems or not?

my second question is what do you think of my gear...
i know my main hand weapon needs an upgrade : dagger (kara) / sword (gruul) / sword (za) just wont drop.
although we do them each week. so spellblade from pvp honour is currently on my menu list... im also working on the trinket from the badges...
but apart from that what do you think?

WTB comments...

THANKS IN ADVANCE!

 

Katinsha

Editted it, because I found one of my answers by using the search function better.

How much would one have to value the Chaotic Skyfire Diamond in terms of a spell damage equivalent with a buffed crit rate of 30% and 1600 spell damage when 0/21/40 specced.

I ask this because it will influence the value of meta socketable items greatly.

My other question was if CSD made crits from shadow bolt do 209% damage with Ruin. Turns out it does (150% x 3% = 154.5%, with Ruin the crit damage bonus is doubled, so 209%).

 

Krazen

Easily modeled in the leulier spreadsheet.

I get about 36 dps with your stats. For endgame locks contemplating a t6 helm, it's better than the [Hood of Hexing] in all situations.

 

• Emolate

If you have read this thread then you have the answers to all of your questions.

It is stated several times in this thread, and anywhere else of any substance, that +spellhit until you are hit-capped is the first and foremost priority of any raiding Warlock. It is not even worth discussing if you need to more spellhit. Of course you do. You can stop using Suppression when it is no longer compensating for your spellhit on Affliction spells.

It is trivial to get to 200+.

Gems, the Terrokar Tablet of Vim, even the quest-reward staff from Consortium all have spellhit. Your Greatsword of Horrid Dreams has spellhit, which the Gruul sword does not. Craftable gear (Spellstrike and Frozen Shadow Weave) will put you well within the requirements for spellhit, which you have blown in order to put spelldamage gems in everything.

I would recommend you actually read this thread to answer all of your questions.

Get hit-capped. Get hit-capped. Get hit-capped.

Edit: Your URL is even on Warcrafter. It is trivial to model your Warlock by making appropriate gem and enchantment changes.

 

Arelenda

I'll add this to the compendium.

 

rochan

Typically 1 point in searing pain or Emberstorm yes. Both locks would have salvation as it's Hyjal trash. The idea is that Shadowbolt scales so much better than searing pain that it produces more TPS in T6 content.

 

Ammanas

Most guilds that don't have Illidan on farm still run with an Affliction lock. Yes, in BT/Hyjal he is not going to be able to keep up with the other casters on the DPS meter - but Blood Pact/Shadow Embrace are huge helps on learning encounters and malediction is always nice. When you are trying to kill a boss for the first time, that 70 stam (more if talented) and 5% damage reduction can be huge. Of course, there is no reason to run more than one Affliction lock.

As far as you're personal DPS, it will go up. Alot. I went from averaging around 1000-1100 DPS as affliction to 1400-1500+ as 21/40 - and I only have ~22 paperdoll crit raid buffed. Keep in mind, a big part of this is the fact that as Affliction you are usually dropping an imp in the tank group and as 21/40 you usually get some kind of group benefit (spriest/WoA/ele sham/BM hunter/whatever).

Like Gumi said, even as 21/40 crit is still the fourth best stat for Warlocks. Because of all the multipliers (Sacced Succy/S&F) damage scales insanely well with 21/40. You are going to want to prioritize Spell Hit until capped (obviously) > Damage > Haste (much better % per point ratio than crit) > Crit. As far as the whole crit in relationship to ISB uptime thing, there has been a lot of math done in this thread(check out pages 21/22) and stacking crit doesn't help ISB uptime as much as you might think. Its also easy to forget that haste also helps ISB uptime, because you are casting more SBs.

 

• Suggestive

You would seriously advocate using the Greatsword of Horrid dreams over Bloodmaw Magus-blade just because of spell hit? I understand telling people to grab as much hit as possible through gems for example, its pretty basic, but advocating inferior items like that is pretty bad. There should be a limit to how much you worship the stat, use the spreadsheet if you need to compare values, somehow i don't see that blue being better than the Magus-blade.