Eph

I forgot it was 10%, my last post and one before it put it at 20%.


70 Human Warlock

And, finally, I believe this is the best gear set for a warlock with an elemental shaman, other raid buffs, and food/flask/oil, though no shadow priest which only matters on the spreadsheet's mp5. After entering all the data to the spreadsheet I got 2222.85dps. After tinkering with this for quite a while I found most dps changes were within 5dps of each other, with only one set at 14dps difference, so most gear setups will probably all perform the same with all endgame gear. Though if anyone see's a better option I'd be glad to try it.

 

weet

You should definately drop Nethervoid Cloak for council/illidan cape and swap in a Mana Attuned Band or Belt of Blasting.

 

Eph

EDIT Cloak + Belt of Blasting actually increased dps by 0.56. Updating outfit link above.

 

Krazen

I want to say the skull is superior, even if you don't need the +hit, mainly because the skull can be used to magnify your Icon.

I'm actually considering going for the Skull before Zhar'doom.

 

galzohar

Anyone done the math on immolate for affliction? As in wether it's worth refreshing early to get 100% uptime or just refreshing it after every time you refresh UA+corruption? I've seen this brought up before but no answer was found.
Basically 2 possible rotations:

UA-corruption-immolate-bolt/tap/pact/dance-repeat

-OR-

UA-corruption-immolate-bolt/etc-immolate-UA-corruption... In a way that your UA and corruption will not be delayed (as in, the early immolate will be finished casting 3 seconds before it wore off losing 1 tick and 1.5s of shadowbolt spam time). Then every rotation the immolate will move closer and closer to the UA-corruption portion and when it needs casting immidiately after the UA-corruption the loop starts over.

Every you get:
-1.5s shadowbolting ever 4 rotations (=15/3-1) (and +mana cost affiliated with it)
+immolate direct damage every 4 rotations (and -mana cost affiliated with it)
+immolate tick every 4 rotations

Of course since all the gains and losses only happne once every 4 rotations the fact it's every 4 rotations doesn't matter at all.
I will do the math myself to verify of course but I want to make sure I'm getting it right. Overall seems to be a DPS loss regardless of your stats and you should just let immolate fall off and refresh it after UA+corruption as shadowboltX1.5/2.5>immolate tick+immolate hit

 

PSGarak

If you're using immolate at all, you should be refreshing it as soon as it drops off. You cast it because it has higher DPCT than shadowbolt, and if it does you want to take advantage of that higher DPCT as often as possible. You will, in general, prioritize UA and corruption and just about every other spell in your spellbook as a higher priority except shadowbolt. It will have a higher DoT-gap than any of your other DoTs, which means that it's increasing your damage by less than its theoretical max, but still more than refreshing it every 18 seconds.

Whether or not immolate is worth casting in general depends on everything. I believe the presence or absence of frost mages in your guild is about the only thing that doesn't affect whether or not immolate is worth casting. It tends to hover on the edge of worth casting, being pushed to one side or the other by just about everything.

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

 

Krazen

Basically my experience. I tend to avoid it (except on shahraz) just to simplify my play. 4 pc t6, though, should push immo over to the 'don't cast' side.

 

Drained

I have begun to read over the compendium and even after a considerable amount of time I have not made a dent in the information presented here. For this reason I wanted to directly ask the community a few simple questions. A little background info before I list my questions though. First, my guild is rapidly progressing and is 2/5 Hyjal thus far since our conception 3 weeks ago. Second, our raids usually consist of 2-3 fire mages, 1-2 spriests, 1 ele shammy, and anywhere from 2-4 locks (50% aff, 50% destro). Third, my self-buffed (fel armor only, no consumables) stats are as follows: 203 hit, 1223 shdw dmg, 1115 fire dmg, 14.83% crit.

My questions are:

1)Should I effectively be able to go destro with these stats? I tried it out on a full SSC clear and a Rage kill in Hyjal but was unimpressed. My crit felt low, thus not taking advantage of Ruin that often (cast sequence was Imm>SB spam). Or was my cast sequence garbage?

2)If destro cannot be pulled off with these stats, what spell rotation would be most beneficial to my spec (42/1/18)? I currently use CoA>UA>Corr>Imm>SB spam till first dots fall off>repeat.

3)Is haste worth it when I switch to destro? When I say worth it, I would be taking the Waistwrap of Infinity, Nimble Thought Bracers, and Ring of Ancient Knowledge. Or would it be better to go with pure dmg/crit over these items? It seems like haste would not be worth it if I stuck to the Imm>SB spam rotation because I would not be able to obtain enough haste to squeeze in an extra SB before reapplying Imm, hence rendering any haste virtually useless (using a rough calculation, I came up with ~185 haste rating needed to be able to squeeze in 6 SBs without losing a tick of Imm. This may be way off though.).

I apologize in advance if this has all been covered. I am asking because I am extremely competitive and have noticed being passed up by a destro lock, and an arcane mage (surprisingly enough) on the meters. Please offer any and all advice you can. Thanks in advance for the help.

 

• moghed

We recently had a new warlock app who was speced destruction. His gear seemed slightly low for it, so I plugged it into the spreadsheet. Turned out destro was better. Slightly.

The World of Warcraft Armory

It's a very good illustration of the gear level you need for destro to be better. And it is late kara/early SSC.

 

Shai

Your crit rate as destro would be closer to 25% after talents and raid buffs, which is perfectly fine for that spec, as is the rest of your stats.

Why you were still below other casters can have many reasons, a look at a WWS parse would probably answer that best.

 

Fafhrd

1) Basically yes. However you should take into account the upcoming bosses. Azgalor is much better as affliction, so is Archimonde and Supremus. In my opinion, don't go affliction until you have those bosses down unless you have huge problems with debuff slots. The threat reduction to affliction spells will also help you a lot on the trash.

2) Siphon Life is also worth casting.

3) Yes, up to 5-6% haste (in my experience). But drop Immolate, it's a distraction.

One thing that isn't mentioned much here: Your dps depends most of all on how good a player you are. If you want to max your dps you can't lose any time at all not casting a dps spell. That means
- always always having a Shadow Bolt going
- plan when to use trinkets
- discuss when to use drums and Bloodlust with your group
- macro your mana pot use and plan Life Taps for breaks in the action or if you are high on threat

Every boss is different and you want a personal and raid wide strategy for each.

 

Bolche

Can you explain this please ?

 

• Emolate

First off, /wave to another server-mate. Hardly ever see people from Eitrigg here.

1) Yes, you can be very effective at Destruction with those stats. The only reason I am not 0/21/40 anymore is that my guild needs a 3/3 Improved Imp and I need threat reduction or I spend 40-50% of a fight threat-locked.

3) Check the spreadsheet. You can find out what the rate of return on spellhaste is for your specific builds, specific stats. You can also play around in Warcrafter for the sake of easily changing out gear/gems/enchantments if nothing else. I generally find that going out of my way to stack spellhaste in my gear level (craftables/kara/gruul/tk) is not as valuable as stacking damage. This is something that changes frequently with gear acquisitions.

I use two spellhaste items because they work best for me. I use the badge-reward bracers because they do 3 more spelldamage than the ones I got in Karazhan, and I use the Fetish of the Primal Gods because it has a stamina boost that Orb of the Soul Eater does not. I switch between those two off-hands.

While it would be nice to be able to really use spellhaste gear and stack it, I know from using the spreadsheet that raw damage helps me more.

For what it's worth, I have never gone out of my way to stack spellcrit on any gear. Most people find spellhaste and crit are about the same in DPS value, though spelldamage is typically going to end up being your best place for improvement.

 

Drained

First of all, thanks everyone for the quick responses. Keep them coming! Few questions though:

1) I assume you meant "...don't go destro until you have these bosses down...". Are you suggesting do the fights the first time through as affilction, then respec destro when our guild has them down?

2) If I do add SL to my DoT rotation, when would be the best time to cast it?

3) Can dropping immolate and just pure SB nuking really add to DPS? I have always heard immolate is worth casting. Very interested to hear any math/reasoning behind this.

Thanks again for the help!

 

• Emolate

2) When you have time to do so. The initial "rotation" doesn't mean much when you are going to be juggling them all from every point onwards. In a long fight you aren't going to have a rotation, you're going to be playing Whack-a-mole and filling the gaps with Shadow Bolts.

3) Check the spreadsheet?

It is very dependent upon the individual. The math is on the first post in this thread, as is a link to the spreadsheet.

There is even information on the very first post about Immolate versus Shadowbolt. I'll even quote it for you:

 

Cohren

There is no reason to wait for boss xx to be on farm. Doing high DPS as Destruction is just like doing high DPS with Affliction, you need to learn the spec and the play style. Also it comes down to what Fafhrd said, you need to be a skilled player. If your going to spec Destruction then try it over a period of time, not one clear of an instance.

 

Trickykid

I'm pretty sure he just means remember to pot as destro in order to minimize your DPS-time spent Life Tapping. Saving life tap for non-DPS times (or lower DPS times) will increase your damage by a fair amount. Just be mindful of upcoming movement, BLs, drums, trinket cds, "Stop DPS" calls, etc.

 

Knasen

I wonder why felguard gets so little attention. The personal dps is alot better than destro in early t6, do the ISB uptime really do so much for the raid? Sure, the felguard is useless on Archi and Najentus but on the rest of the fight he really shines (done up to Bloodboil). I don't dare to think of what petscaling would give the specc.

 

Krazen

The [Waistwrap of Infinity] is a lousy belt. Stick with your Belt of Blasting.

 

Trickykid

I think it has received proper attention. There was plenty of talk of it in the previous Warlock thread and posts describing strategies on how to use it effectively in different fights. I think it gets held back long term as it requires you to keep 2PT5 and maybe even the Solarian trinket to keep the guy alive. Once you have access to 4PT6 that hurts even more since you see lower return from the SB-buff. For me, I won't spec into it since the upcoming difficult fights (and hardest farm fights) don't favor pets at all.

 

Fafhrd

Use a simple macro for taking mana pots, minimizing time lost casting:
-
/use Super Mana Potion
/cast Shadow Bolt
-
For Life Taps, sometimes it's more beneficial to do a tap as soon as you can to fill the mana bar up, but you should plan it so you have enough mana to go all out during Bloodlust/drums/trinkets. This also depends on if you can expect healing or expect to take damage.

About using Immolate: On paper it's often a few dps more than just SB - even taking ISB uptime in account, but in real life it often interferes with your timing and you lose either casting time or part of a dot. If there's movement in the fight I usually put it up before moving though.

 

galzohar

For affliction it seems on the spreadsheet to not really matter what variables you try to change, immolate is always worth casting. For destruction I agree it's different.

As for dot juggling, since you always cast UA+corruption together (unless you get a resist), no matter when you cast immolate, sooner or later (in fact, in the 5th UA+corruption cast at most if you're not moving every time UA+corruption need refreshing), immolate will run out at the same time as UA+corruption. At that point you obviously choose to refresh UA+corruption first and immolate later. However I was looking into the option of refreshing immolate too early instead of too late so that it has 100% uptime without losing any UA/corruption damage, however it just doesn't seem worth it. The result is if you stand and shoot you will always refresh immolate right after UA+corruption (ignoring resists), which means once every 18 seconds (plus whatever dot gap you have that applies to all dots). There is no way around this that will actually increase your DPS.

 

vreki

Per that setup right now the meta gem is inactive, remember to swap the boot or shoulder gems.

 

Eph

Two blue? Belt + Wand. Or am I missing something?

 

Shai

Was Darkmoon Card: Crusade changed to proc on all SoC hits or did it always do that? I seem to remember it only added a charge on the initial spell hit, but while doing Hyjal trash I just noticed it goes from 0 to 10 in one explosion.