galzohar

I agree that on void reaver hit for soulshatter would be your top priority. But considering that's probably 1 of the easiest 25-man fights I wouldn't base my gear on that. If you really want you could swap gear for that fight only but I wouldn't gimp myself on most other fights where soulshatter isn't needed.

 

Silverstorm

I personally can't imagine having 5/5 Suppression in a raiding build for a guild that's cleared Black Temple. The gear available to you at that point pretty much covers your +hit. At that level of +dmg, Immolate is questionable whether or not you cast it (and with 5/5 Suppression, and 76 hit, I wouldn't). Without Immolate, 50% of your damage is likely Shadowbolt, so you drop 10% hit on those shadowbolts (5% of your damage) to pick up a little more +dmg. I don't know how much more +dmg you'd need to cover that gap of 50-60 DPS, but I'm sure someone here can figure it out. According to the first post, it's somewhat less than 126 (202-76). Even if you get it, why do that? You'd do the same DPS but lose out on soulshatter resists which effectively lowers your DPS anyway.

Given your current gear (as of now in Armory), you're over the hit cap by 14. I would at least change all those +8 hit gems to the +4 hit/+5 dmg versions. That would drop 20 hit, and put you just under. With the T5 robe you have 3 yellow sockets for more +4 hit/+5 dmg gems which probably opens up some of the other sockets for +9 dmg to meet socket bonuses where possible. They aren't all good, but if your gems let you meet them with good stats, why not?

 

Wraithscythe

I would go Destruction but no other warlock in the raid will go Affliction. Is it that raid viable? Malediction is nice because we carry on average 2 Shadow priests and 4 Warlocks sometimes 5 if the mages forget to come. About the Crit chance as a Aff Lock is it 20% gear or 20% talented base chance? Right now I sit at 18.99% crit just in gear without the 5% chance from the destruction tree. With it it puts me well over 20% so I'm basically wondering if I should drop some crit and stack on more +dmg.

 

gunit12

I've searched all 53 pages of this thread and was unable to find my question, so here goes.

As a 0/21/40 Destruction Warlock, which weapon enchant should I use?
Soulfrost? or +40 Spell Damage?

While the soulfrost gives me an extra 12 shadow damage, obviously... I use immolate in my rotation, so which is greater:
+40 shadow, +40 fire
or
+52 shadow

Most of the time I am spamming SBs, but is the +12 going to increase my dps over the +40 fire to my immolate? 40 seems like quite a lot.

 

filthlord

Hey guys.. i notice you say partial resists are estimated to be 6 percent on bosses.

I have been recording partials for 4 warlocks dps on bosses in BT and Hyjal for about 4 months now.
It has been a very consistant 15 percent partial resist for around 3 percent dmg mitigation all locks all bosses
for many many fights. Curse of shadows always up. Any info on how someone figured 6 percent?

 

Stran

Use the spreadsheet. The answer is heavily dependent on your current gear and rotation. In fact, Immolation usage in your rotation is also dependent on your gear so I would check that out too :P I gain 3.2 DPS from Immo, theoretically, but lose far more unless it's a heavy movement fight.

 

Nicarras

Yeah Stran is right on.

Once you reach a gear point (T6), Immolate is a decrease in DPS and RaidISB/DPS, so it isnt even worth to cast.

Quick answer for you. If you are going to use that weapon for a very long time, say it is the Leo sword or an S3 weapon, then I'd put Soulfrost on it.

 

gunit12

I'm not to T6 yet, is it the 4-piece bonus that makes immolate obsolete? I've been topping the meters on the Vashj fight using immolate so I think its working well for me atm... although the only 25 man drop I have is the Cowl of the Grand Engineer.

 

LockApologist

Vashj is not a DPS fight, and your DPS output is heavily dependent on what your job is, and your luck on charges, p2 jobs, and general p3 stuff. If I'm doing Elem, I have 100% DPS time, and I'm very hard to beat 2-3 shotting the elems. If I'm on striders, my dps is much lower as the threat cap isn't there, plus movement reduces dps time.

P3 you can get rooted OOR. P1 you can waste a good deal of time moving for static charge.

But, to your question, yes, t6 bonus is that good. But, even at t5 level, I find immo questionable unless movement is involved. Faster mana usage, and fewer debuffs to take advantage of.

 

Nicarras

Grab the spreadsheet, and check for yourself. Immolate dies very early in a T5 Dest Locks career, even with fire talents its just a bad use of a GCD. It prevents you from putting up another ISB, and it gives someone a chance to take down ISB, so it lowers RaidISB. And by T6 I mean just getting any T6 quality loot (like a point in time in your raiding career), not just the bonus when you are farming most of the content already.

Like they said above Vashj is not a DPS fight at all. Also, #1 DPS in your guild is great, but doesnt mean you cant be 2-4% better !

Keep up the good work but grab the spreadsheet and throw your data in there and play with the spell rotations, find the best one for your gear ATM.

 

Wraithscythe

What amount of crit does a Affliction lock need? I've heard 20% but is that non talented or talented.

 

Pentamorfi

Don't worry about crit. Get your spell hit capped, grab as much +damage as possible, and crit will come by itself through better gear.

 

Wraithscythe

I am hit capped and I'm in full T5 with some T6 pieces thrown in.

203 Hit rating
23.99% talented crit chance
1181 shadow damage with fel armor up

 

galzohar

Or just download lieuler's spreadsheet (www.lieuler.com also linked on the main post that you should've read) and see how good each stat is and know exactly how much dps an item is going to do for you/your raid given your stats and your raid composition.

 

Nicarras

Need for what?

If you mean just to be affliction, crit isnt something you stack. If you mean to switch to dest, then yes 20.

 

Trickykid

Sometimes I wonder how short this thread would be if every poster asked himself if "Check the spreadsheet." would answer his question.
I realize once upon a time someone said the number 20 to this issue, but there is no magic crit percent you need to make destro work for you. If somehow you do have some math that backs up this claim, I'd love to see it, but otherwise arbitrary lines in the sand don't affect locks.

I imagine early on someone thought that 20% from gear and 5% from talents gives ISB a near perfect uptime and the number has managed to survive to now... but really every stat plays a factor continuously (aside from hit) along all gear levels. The spreadsheet can be manipulated to show you almost every scenario and you can see for yourself what gear is best and when respeccing is likely to increase/lower your damage output. Also you might just try doing an extra hour of farming and respec for a night/week! See if you like the build more or if your needle moves at all.

 

Ammanas

You have a very high crit rate for affliction, especially relative to your gear level (mostly T5). You need to work on your shadow damage, lose the crit gems. You want to gem for pure +damage (assuming hit capped), the crit will come with gear - and as affliction you don't prioritize crit at all. With your gear you would up your DPS pretty substantially by going 21/40, and since you have the 4 piece T5 and lots of crit 40/0/21 might also be worth running some numbers on.

Even as 21/40, shadow damage is still the best way to increase your DPS (again assuming you stay hit capped) so you should definitely do some re-gemming.

 

genchaos55

First let me say that this is an extremely helpful site and is much appreciated.
I have been trying to find more information about the 40/0/21 spec.
char:
The World of Warcraft Armory
spec : WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Warlock -> Talent Calculator
i realize it is a bit of an odd spec in that it has improved dots as well as high crit SB's. the idea was to have at least one lock with this spec to keep ISB up at all times, amongst other advantages. I tend to out dps most of the raid and am in at least the top 5 fairly consistently. This is especially true for long fights and fights with no aggro table, IE alar. this is even with my crappy gear.
basically, i am wondering what you guys think about this build and if there is a better direction to go gear wise or a better suited build. i was going for a build that was a nice mix of good quick dmg as well as good duration fighting. the only thing that has been a slight challenge is the high aggro from crit'ing every 4th SB. Thus far it has not been much of a problem. also, 6k+ SB crits are pretty cool and not super uncommon in raids. lastly, should i bother upping my +hit, or is it about right with the suppression? i think i'm only a few off, i wasn't sure if it was worth replacing a socketor something.
any information y'all could provide would be greatly appreciated.

 

galzohar

If you actually bother to look at the spreadsheet you'll easily see shadow embrace+ruin specs are not viable until very high gear levels (generally 4/5 T6 and/or gear with similar stats). If you want to be an imp/SE-bitch you should be full affliction (43/0/17 with last point either in CoEx, improved imp or 35% pushback protection).

Since destruction scales better than affliction with every stat in the game (as in, the dps increase for 1 spell dmg, 1 crit rating, 1 hit rating and 1 spell haste rating are all bigger for destruction than affliction) the crit chance you "need" for destruction to outdps affliction will depend on your other stats - the more spell damage/hit/haste you have the less crit is required to make destruction beat affliction. Then again I've yet to see anyone who actually bothered to pick up reasonable gear for both specs that would do more DPS as affliction than destruction.

 

Arelenda

15% seems a lot. I'll do some quick checks.

Update: 15% for around 3% seems a fair enough estimate. Compendium updated. Additional information welcome.

 

galzohar

Note that the chnace for partial resist is rather noticeable, but at the end since it only resists 25% of the damage most of the times it actually resists, the overall damage reduction seems to end up as ~5%.

 

Nicarras

I think that 20 from gear is an easy number for aff locks to hit coming out of aff gear to make the switch. It is what I shot for when I switched and I didnt see a decrease in my dmg output from when I was aff. No it's late and that's not a math answer, but real raiding experience is better than mathcraft anyway.

 

Nerull

Sorry to bring this back up again : Spellhaste for affliction.

I have checked latest leulier with the implementation of spellhaste for 2.4 patch.
It seems that that spellhaste at my level roughly equals 1 spelldamage when Im raidbuffed, the value of spelldamage varies from 1,02 per point to 1,09. Considering that spellhaste is probably cheaper budgetted, it seems like the way to go ?

Example : Bracers of nimble thought suddenly becomes truly awesome compared to any other bracer available in slot at the moment.

My raidbuffed stats : 1550 shadowdamage ( with 10 stacks of darkmoonfaire up ) , 22% crit ( although Im going to lose some in favor of haste ofc ).

I intend to go 4 piece tier 6 , Zuljin neck ( maybe not that much better compared to RoS neck, but I like items with stats over statless items as warlock ) , bracers of nimble thought, mojo boots from ZA seems like a very nice upgrade from FSW boots considering this. Also the ring of trash from BT with spellhaste seems unrivaled compared to any other ring ?

Anyone else played with the leulier sheet with the haste changes for affliction dps ? Anyone else have any other item that seems to become very very powerfull under the assumption of 1 haste equals 1 spelldamage ? Seems not worth breaking 4 piece tier 6 for though.

 

Kalle

I think this post might be what you're looking for. However, it's 6% resisted damage and not 6% of your spells which do less than full damage.

Data from BT will be skewed because of the chromatic resistance aura from the illidari council's paladin.

EDIT: I don't know how you recorded your values, but if you used WWS, you might find this post interesting.

 

Bogeywoman

Void Reaver's just one example. If I had 6g for every time soulshatter saved my repair costs when a mob gets loose in the Hyjal trash wave aoe pulls, then I...wait, I do have 6g for every time that happens, because I'm hit capped.