galzohar

I don't see the point of saying a spec is "dull" in a thread that's supposed to be about how to play effectively. If you find something superior boring in comparison to the inferior choice, nobody will ever be able to convince you otherwise, as "interest" is a very personal thing. If you want to play "what's interesting" instead of "what's effective" why are you even reading those forums? As you're obviously ignoring what actually effects your dps...

Bottom line, you can theorycraft what will do most dps, you can't theorycraft what will be most fun, so I wouldn't even bother trying

 

Nerull

Any warlock also has questions about how the supposed change with haste in regards to global cooldown is going to affect affliction dps ? ( Haste will reduce the GCD in 2.4 )

Can it be a significant improvement for affliction dps ? I am troubled by it as now spellhaste will affect ALL spells so it should ( ? ) be better than crit point for point, but thing that troubles me is that you are going to lose imp. SB uptime which means a dps loss again. Other problem is is that you are going to have an about normal amount of crit ( BT geared : 20% raidbuffed ? ) and then take spellhaste gear , I feel that you are going to lose too much spelldamage to gain any benefit from it at all in fact I think you will even lose quite some.

So question : Is pumping up spellhaste even a good way to go despite the changes that might favor it ? Or is there an ideal amount of spellhaste to go for ?

Im sorry I havent been able to provide any math, I admit it is too complicated for me. Basicly what I want to know is at what crit% does spellhase become more important than crit and is there gear obtainable to have both without losing spelldamage ( which still seems most important stat to me ).

Variables :

Spelldamage ( assuming 1500 raidbuffed in BT gear ? )
Crit rating
Haste rating

Many thanks in advance !

 

galzohar

Your DoTs will not tick any faster and thus the extra haste will only mean a reduction to time spent casting 1.5s spells on top of what it was already giving, meaning you can fill in more shadowbolts. According to lieuler's spreadsheet in tank group aff lock would spend about 10% of the time DP/LT, and ~44% casting non-shadowbolt spells, so haste will be quite better for aff than it is now. However:
On a X minute fight, 1% haste will increase cast time used on *shadowbolts* by X/100, and still not a 1% dps increase. Since with the stats I put in shadowbolts are only 1221 dps, 1% haste will increase the overall dps by 12.2 which is less than 1% of the total 1455 dps. Since this is just for showing the general idea I'm not going to go into mana costs.

Overall modifying lieuler's spreadsheet to account for the change should be pretty easy, except for "the next stat" part since I'm not sure how that is calculated.

 

PSGarak

The haste change will make 1% haste give a full 1% damage increase to destro locks, instead of the sub-1% they used to see because of lifetap, bringing them in line with mage types for haste scaling. For affliction warlocks the picture is considerably more complicated, but I can tell you flat out that 1% haste will be noticeably less than 1% damage. Until haste starts accelerating the rate at which DoTs tick, you are still hard-capped on how often you can refresh your DoTs. They will still do the same damage. The haste-GCD means haste now allows you to cram more additional shadowbolts, although realistically the additional shadowbolts will not come out to one full shadowbolt, except in bloodlust/heroism situations, meaning no real benefit.

Note that while 1% haste means more than 1% additional shadowbolts in an affliction (or otherwise cooldown-limited or pseudo-cooldown-limited) situation, some quick and easy thought experiments can easily show that without duration hasting, it will always be less than 1% raw damage so long as the cooldown-limited spells are worth casting at all (ie better DPCT than the filler).

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

 

galzohar

I already said it was fight length X1% spent on shadowbolt casting rather than 1% more shadowbolts, which is still less than a 1% DPS increase since the DoTs are higher DPCT and you're not casting more DoTs.

 

Talosh

For DPCT sure, but two aspects why I personally don't:
- more ISB-uptime, more raiddps
- the stupidity of a one-button-spam allows me to care more for the felguard

It will be a buff for Affliction and Mages, but not that much.
It only results, that all kind of caster classes are going for the haste items no matter if its even less worthy than for another raid member (in my guild now ALL mages and warlocks wants the trinket and the staff, before the news were released only one fire mage and me were interested in the haste items).

A lightning arrester on a steeple is the strongest vote of no confidence against our beloved god.

 

Trickykid

You need to watch the line between ISB uptime and personal DPS. Include it in your calculations, but dropping spells which will easily up your DPS is probably detrimental to overall Raid DPS. The SB-spam out of a FG spec isn't that spectacular, so I would suggest making sure you're casting the right spells. An extra DoT or two isn't going to sap too much attention from pet management.

 

Yugra

I'm looking for advice on increasing my DPS, given the roles that I currently fill in raids - Strider kiter and Leotheras tank. My current spec.

A little background: I'm in a raiding organization, not a guild - so our raid composition can vary greatly from night to night, and I've respecced to support both my Leo tanking and Strider kiting roles. When I was 21/40 (before we got to Vashj, our first kill was last night), I could put out around 1.2k DPS on a non-AE fight with my current gear (no frozen shadoweave) and often troubled connection. On the same fights now, my DPS is down in the 750-850 range - and so I'm feeling pretty gimped.

I've got CoEx to help keep the striders slowed (and DoT boosting talents to help with threat), and improved searing pain for Leotheras (and the striders, when netted). CoEx is pretty necessary here, as I need to run with the assumption that the only other slowing/immobilizing effect will be nets (we usually have more slows, however I need to spec for the worst-case scenario).

Are there any suggestions as to how I can increase my DPS - perhaps an improved spec that allows me to support both roles? Or am I pretty much stuck with my current performance level given my raiding situation?

Thanks.
(armory may not be accurately reflecting my gear for boss fights, so please don't yell about my spellhit >_>)

 

Trickykid

I would say that since you have Vashj down, Leo is probably not too hard for your guild. At that point you really don't need to worry about speccing for the fight anymore as any of the lock specs works fine as long as healers know what to do. Given that you can spec to do DPS as well as kite striders. For this I'd argue you only really need to pick up CoEx, which means you could go the typical 43/0/18 type spec. You should do fine holding aggro and this lets your DPS not suck for the rest of the fights

 

Valgasha

Apologies if this has been asked before, a search of the thread produced nothing -

I am looking for some further commentary / verification of the first post's claim that Affliction is better off with 76 spell hit and 5/5 Suppression, gemming for +damage, than gemming for hit cap. I've recently been switched from 0/21/40 to the Affliction utility Warlock; I am still gemmed with a good number of +8s for the hitcap. I'm wondering if it's worth it to re-gem. Price is no object, just whether +9 spell damage gems are worth more, point-for-point, than +8 spell hit gems.

 

galzohar

You need 44 in affliction to get CoEx and keep all the basic raiding talents.

 

Bogeywoman

40% of affliction's damage comes from shadowbolts, and in several fights, threat cap may come into play. If you're OK with having 10% of your shadowbolts resist, and having a 10% chance to have your soulshatter resist, then go for pure damage, but that's risky play imo.

 

galzohar

If your tanks can't out-threat an "imp-bitch" affliction warlock then you have bigger issues. If you're speccing for dps rather than imp/shadow embrace might as well consider destruction, as it will add more raid dps than affliction assuming your gear doesn't completely suck (and if it does you won't be threat capped anyway).
Shadowbolts resisting is perfectly fine as in the end you're doing more dps with stacking damage - you lose some shadowbolt dps and gain quite a bit of dot damage in comparision when you drop hit for dmg. Overall it's a net increase in DPS.
Banishes and any other CC are never done on "boss" mobs, so your 6% hit that even affliction with 5/5 suppression should have will more than hit-cap you on level 72 mobs.
The only thing you're losing is avoiding soulshatter resists, which shouldn't really be a problem not to mention even if you cap your hit it'll still have a 1% chance to resist. So even with 6% hit it'll resist on 10/100 fights, out of the many many more fights where you actually need it. See warrior thread for more about threat capping.

 

galzohar

If we know the AOE caps can they be included in the main post with explanations?

 

Arelenda

I'd love to add this if we have definitive data.

 

rochan

I have roughly calculated the new gains from haste. Assuming ~115 Haste, 1600 shadow dmg, you'll gain about 20 dps from the quicker lifetap and IF they make it so haste affects dot duration (which it should) your CoD will go down to ~55 seconds, which is an improvement of ~20 dps also. Man that would be pretty sweet.

edit, although looking at it again, unless they decrease the CoD cooldown, it won't actually gain much benefit.

 

Indaril

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this should be absolute end-gear for 0/21/40 atm?

70 Human Warlock

 

Roywyn

WoW Forums -> Sunday morning PTR AoE Cap testing

Post 50

Seed of Corruption AoE cap is 13580.

Cap is the total amount of non-crit damage on all targets that are hit and didn't resist. The cap includes +damage gear and talents, and damage buffs like zone buffs, arcane power, power infusion and (most likely, needs a quick test demonic sacrifice.
Crit allows to go over the cap. Debuffs on the target might allow to go over the cap as well (CoE/CoS/Misery/Vulnerability) - debuffed targets in a pack take more damage than non-debuffed ones.


That should still be up to date, I hope.

 

Roywyn

Get Belt of Blasting, Mana-attuned Band and use Zhar'doom.
Use a dmg/crit orange gem in your hat. Maybe into your gloves too.

Try the Illidari Council cloak, you should be able to bridge the hit cap with the Ring of Captured Storms or a dmg/hit gem in one slot. You need to experiment a bit there.

 

Eph

Try getting the socket bonus in the helm and meeting the gem requirements for the meta.

I posted the ideal set for a lock with an elemental shaman a few pages back ( 70 Human Warlock ), for a lock without one I believe the only changes were [Tempest of Chaos], [Chronicle of Dark Secrets], [Wand of the Forgotten Star] and getting socked bonus in the gloves and shoulders for max dps. Both of these setups were tested with every other gear change I could think of and compared on the spreadsheet. I could have missed something though.

 

Indaril

• Zhar'doom is worse then the main/off-hand combination...according to leulier's table, its about 15 dps lower. In that calculation, i wasn't even considering losing 36 hit.

• Belt of Blasting is 5dps worse then Anetheron's Noose as well.

• Considering I'm already at the hit-cap, ring of captured storms is 10 dps lower then Ring of Ancient Knowledge...Mana Attuned Band is only usefull as well when you need hit else its almost 10 dps lower then RoAK

• Illidari Council Cloak would in fact be better, I'm gonna compensate for the hit using veiled pyrestones to add to the 2 blue gems in shoulder and feet(changed)

• The gem in the head is my bad, as well as I forgot about the 2 blues for the CSD. (changed)

Wanted to get 202 hit simply because I didn't want to really rely on a shaman in my group.

So the link is updated, any more feedback?

70 Human Warlock

 

Bogeywoman

There are several fights -- Void Reaver in particular -- which occasionally halve main tank threat. Even with soulshatter and maxed hit, I find myself spending a lot of time examining the scenery. 10% extra chance to resist 40% of your damage (i.e., a 4% drop in hits and ISB proc chances) is probably not as good as going for 7% hit and gemming the rest for damage, for personal dps, but the randomness of having 11% chance to get resisted on threat cap fights and where you've accidentally pulled aggro is a bit much.

Remember, there's damage meters, and there's dead bosses. You want to maximize the latter.

 

Eph

Gotta be careful with comparing say [Belt of Blasting] and [Anetheron's Noose] without trying other gear changes at the same time. Try all combinations of neck/belt/back and see which comes out on top. It'll be a minor dps difference, but if you are going for the best you'll want it to be the best.

 

Wraithscythe

Hey I'm wondering if there is anything I can change in my gear and spec to improve my raid dps. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Talented Crit chance - 23.99% is this to much for the raid Affliction warlock?
203 hit rating this is maxed.
1181 shadow damage with just Fel Armor on. Guessing this should be alot higher.

Armory Link

 

Krazen

Spec 0/21/40.
Replace neckpiece with Rittsyn's, ZJ neck, or Kael neck.
Make a Belt of Blasting.
Replace t5 gloves with badge gloves.