Assuming Shadow Destruction DPS doesn't decrease, there would still be very little reason to prioritize Malediction in a raid. Even if you have 10,000 shadow/arcane raid DPS, the 2.7% more you'd get from Malediction instead of normal CoS is... 270 DPS, correct? Meaning if your affliction warlock does greater than 270 DPS more when specced Destruction, he's actually bringing raid DPS DOWN by speccing into malediction instead. Nothing about this possible change affects that calculation if I understand it correctly.

The extra mana returns returns from an extra 2.7% shadow damage is also probably minimal. An extra 37.8 DPS to your shadow priest if they are running 1400 DPS. So an extra 9.45 MP5 for their group.

I believe that's accurate?

Edit: Forgot to mention.. I believe 10,000 shadow/arcane DPS as a raid is a really high number, but that is guesswork.

It's very important to keep the Improved Shadow Bolt Debuff (ISB) up as much as possible, since it provides 20% extra shadow damage to the entire raid while it is active. (including dots - this is a common misconception). Destruction warlocks consequently put a higher value on crit rating than other builds do, since it helps with ISB uptime..

Is that tru? I only noticed me getting the buff in raids

It's a debuff, not a buff. And yes, it is true.

The correctness of what you're saying strictly depends on the DPS difference of affliction and destruction after you apply the change, which can vary depending on gear level and the effects of the changes on affliction personal dps (either increase or decrease his dps depending on his crit chance).
The extra regen gives my baseline ~1550 dps destruction warlock ~3 more dps. Granted it's a secondary effect and isn't big but it's there and should be taken into account if your affliciton dps + malediction dps are close under the destruction dps.
Note that the DPS difference I get currently between my affliction setup and destruction setup on lieuler is ~50 dps with equal group buffs, and lose additional ~150dps by moving to the tank group. However if you're considering switching your aff lock to destro assuming the aff lock is in the tank group is flawed - as if you want an imp in the tank group you want an affliction warlock regardless of his dps (unless he can't even beat a destro lock running an imp in the tank group... which realistically won't ever happen as far as I know). And if you want imp you probably want shadow embrace even more (as it's actually more useful than imp more often than not, so if you find imp important you definitely find shadow embrace important).

At the end such a change, just like I said, would make destruction warlocks add 0 raid dps over affliction while affliction warlocks will add raid dps, so there will be a breakpoint where affliction will add more raid dps than destruction. Where that breakpoint is depends on a lot of things, including how the change would affect the affliction warlock's personal dps.

At what gear level?

(According to your guild forums your guild has only just downed Vashj, and according to your info here your Paladin is your main, so I'm suspecting your lock is in the gear where affliction is far far stronger than the crit-based T5/T6 gear that people are usually talking about.)

Lock is at the gear that gives ~1500dps on lieuler's, basically ~t5 level, so yeah it's not as big of a dps drop as the people in full T6 that have everything in the game, but the bottom line is there is a breakpoint somewhere in between wher the personal dps starts to beat malediction. Before that there was no breakpoint - if your gear didn't totally suck your ISB contribution would beat the malediction contribution to the raid, and thus affliction would always drop raid dps on top of the personal dps. If this change is to happen, it makes affliction actually have a realistic point where it's worth having, while currently the only point where affliction is worth having is at a gear level of someone who probably doesn't even know how to cast DoTs properly.

I never said not worth having, I said won't increase raid DPS. There's a difference.

I'm curious to see how exactly a destro warlock is to socket their gear. Right now I've got t6 robe/gloves/helm and around 30% destro crit, fully hit capped, with ~1300 shadow damage.
I'm eventually getting t6 shoulders for 4 piece, Tempest of Chaos (ONCE IT FINALLY DROPS =\), leggings of channeled elements, and the slippers of the seacaller (my boots are the most terrible boots out there with random heroic gems, it is only temporary)
With those pieces I'll be at around 32% destro crit with over 1400 shadow damage while staying hit capped.

I have looked up many warlocks in hope to get an answer on how to socket my gear, +12 spell damage gems vs +5 crit 6 damage gems.

Right now I have a majority of my gear socketed with +12 spell damage gems, as I see many end-game destro locks with those gems in almost every socket in their gear. The way I looked at it was if I socketed with 5 crit 6 damage gems, i would gain around 1.4 to about 2% crit over losing a bit of spell damage, but as this spec on a 25 man raid boss with shadow priests, a malediction lock with CoS, t6 4 piece, Imp shadow bolt, as well as the talents in shadow and flame/demo sac, your spell damage scales a lot. (I'm not sure how they work, but if they're additive, it will be around 89% extra shadow bolt damage)
If the talents/debuffs scale like this, that would mean that a 12 spell damage gem = virtually 22.68 spell damage and a 5 crit (.23%) 6 spell damage gem = virtually 5 crit rating (.23%) and 11.34 spell damage

I was wondering if anyone can clear this up for me. Thank you guys.

http://www.leulier.com/ should have all the answers. Overall with any realistic raid 12 damage gems win on total raid dps, although not by a huge margin, as 1 crit rating is more or less equal to 1 spell dmg, even slightly above it.

For my own gem choices I always try to get the socket bonus with the orange crit/dmg and dmg/stam purple gems. This mainly since on highend gear the socket bonus is mostly worth it.

What I do miss here and frankly on alot of places is that Screech (Owl/Bat hunter pet ability) stacks with demo shout. Since the AP of a raid boss is around ~350 having a hunter with a owl or bat in your raid will bring the boss its attack power to 0 even when you have CoR up, meaning CoR can be safely used on every raid boss where you can keep the screech and demo shout debuff active on the boss.

That's really weird, for some reason that link isn't working for me. I tried google searching it and nothing came up either lol.

Here is the post I made for my old guild forum a while back for locks that are interested in it.



What we know!

Maximum Attack Power Reduction on Raid Bosses: 340AP

Roar, Demoralizing Shout & Curse of Weakness DONT Stack
Screech (Owl/Bat Hunter Pet) is the ONLY AP Reducement Ability that does stack with the above

Attack Power Reduction from Roar: 240AP
Attack Power Reduction from Demoralizing Shout 0/5: 300AP
Attack Power Reduction from Demoralizing Shout 2/5: 348AP
Attack Power Reduction from Demoralizing Shout 5/5: 420AP
Attack Power Reduction from Curse of Weakness 0/2: 350AP
Attack Power Reduction from Screech (Rank 5): 210AP

Attack Power Increase from Curse of Recklessness: 135AP

What can we make from this!

A Raid Boss Without Curse of Recklessness has: 340AP
- Debuffed with 0/5 Demoralizing Shout: 40AP
- Debuffed with 2/5 Demoralizing Shout: 0AP
- Debuffed with 5/5 Demoralizing Shout: 0AP
- Debuffed with Roar: 100AP
- Debuffed with 0/2 Curse of Weakness: 0AP

A Raid Boss with the Debuff Curse of Recklessness has: 475AP
- Debuffed with 0/5 Demoralizing Shout: 165AP (With Screech: 0AP)
- Debuffed with 2/5 Demoralizing Shout: 117AP (With Screech: 0AP)
- Debuffed with 5/5 Demoralizing Shout: 55AP (With Screech: 0AP)
- Debuffed with Roar: 235AP (With Screech: 20AP)
- Debuffed with 0/2 Curse of Weakness: 125AP (With Screech: 0AP)

Synopsis

- When we have a hunter with a Owl or Bat pet with Screech (Rank 5) Curse of Recklessness can be used safely on ALL bosses while still getting the MAXIMUM Attack Power Reduction Possible (Exempt: Roar)

- When we do NOT have a hunter with a Owl or Bat pet with Screech (Rank 5) Curse of Recklessness can be used safely on most bosses depending on if we have a warrior with 5/5 imp ds or not. Bosses we do NOT want to use CoR on currently are: Azgalor, Mother Shahraz and Illidan, Reliquary of Sould (Phase 1).

Resources:
Wowhead: NOM NOM NOM
A brief primer on Attack Power - TheorySpot
http://elitistjerks.com/f33/t7058-de...g_shout_et_al/
Demoralizing Shout - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

All above information can be found through these and other various resources.

Can you give me a working link to the spreadsheet? Thank you

Edit: Nevermind, I found a working link, you mispelled lieulier lol. Thank you though.

New topic: How good are the new dawnstones(8 spell haste rating) and topazes(5 spelldamage and 4 haste rating) with haste? Aside from the raw data that the spreadsheets and shadowseer give us, are they better then runed living rubies? runed crimson spinels? was i stupid for buying out all the dawnstones i could at 30g a pop?

It seems that the Quick dawnstone is the new runed living ruby, at least for destruction.

What I wonder is how to model lieuler's to adjust haste to affect the GCD of lifetapping. Although you can simply calculate 15.7 haste rating = 1% DPS increase for destruction shadowbolt spamming.
Scratch that, X% dps in fact causes more than X% increase in lifetapping:
mana consumption = regen + lifetapping
And therefore: (x>1)
x*mana consumption =/= regen + x*lifetapping
x*mana consumption = regen + y*lifetapping (y>x)

So the more regen you have the less % dps increase per haste rating you'll get... but still do more # DPS per haste rating you'll get.
The idea is that with more regen haste multiplies a smaller portion of what allows you do to damage (doesn't multiply your regen! only your lifetapping) but your damage that does get multiplied is bigger to start with which more than makes up for it, so more regen means you'll see less %dps and more #dps per haset rating.

If you're going to spinel anything in the near future, I would wait to see the finalized patch notes first!

I doubt they are adding "epic" versions of the new haste cuts to BT, so 12 damage is still king.

However, the haste/damage topaz is better for 21/40 than Runed with the new GCD reduction.


Note the patch is a while aways.

Hi guys i just downloaded an addon call " ItemValue" basically its to calculate the item value of the gear so as to select the best gear. Therefore i've search the forum and can't seem to find the gear formula to put it into the addon. Some help will be appreciated =p thanks!

Interesting development, the 8-piece T6... now demo locks will be able to keep 2T5 and still get 4T6, should make them more efficient. And I almost wonder if someone will try to keep 2T4 and 4T6 to get the two best set bonuses.

If I were (which I am) a casual PvE raider with no plans on ever seeing MH/BT before the next expansion how would I value haste rating as a warlock with the new 2.4 change incoming?

The thing is that with the "new" badge rewards, ZA and Sunwell 5-man drops and factionrewards I am seeing an increase in items with spell haste on them. As a hit capped (w/o suppression) affliction warlock (42/2/17) I'm feeling kind of content with chasing more +damage and the occational +crit boost (I have an abyssmal 12% crit but 1200 shadowdmg) and I'm worried that spell haste will mess up my cast cycle (UA, Corr, Curse, Immo, SL, SB-spam) but I'm even more worried that I miss out on a very important stat. Is spell haste of spellhit-ish importance for raiding and something I should strive towards and perhaps even sacrifice +dmg for? SB is after all almost 50% of my damage output.

So my first question is, as a warlock just starting slow progress into SSC/TK should I sacrifice spelldamage for spellhaste? - EDIT: This has already been partially answered in this thread. I'd appreciate some further input though.

My second questsion: I've always thought that 1000+ dmg, hit capped and 20%+ crit would be some kind of treshhold before I starting trying destro in raid. Now that spell haste has become more accessible outside of MH/BT should I change this treshhold in any way to incorporate spellhaste as a possible substitute for some dmg or crit? (It's no easy thing to reach 1000dmg, 20%crit and hitcap with loot from Kara/ZA/Maggy/Gruul and heroics, believe me., so I'm hoping that the addition of easy access spell haste will make destro valid sooner)

I'm horrible with theorycrafting so I don't know if there is anyway to theoretically check the importance of spell haste after 2.4 but perhaps someone with alot of theory experience could make an estimate.

/Cuddle

Cuddle, your first question depends on spec. Since you are currently Affliction I will answer with a solid: it depends. Are you Affliction with Ruin or Affliction with UA? If you are UA then the answer is: haste is still not good for you. Your instant dots will go on the target slightly more quickly with a lowered GCD and sure, some haste will make your bolts go faster, but you won't gain as much benefit from it as more +dmg. If you have Ruin instead of UA however (which is a better choice for Affliction at higher gear levels) then you will want some haste because I have seen 1300 dps parses of a Warlock in t6, spec'd affliction, but really wearing destro gear and something like 60% of his dmg was Shadowbolts. Even when I was spec'd affliction in t4, 40-50% of my damage was still from Shadowbolts. Haste will always be useful, you just don't need to aim for it if you're UA.

The only comment I would make about your 2nd question is that the 20% crit is dependent on the other Warlocks in your raid, namely: what is the ISB uptime for your guild? In my guild we will stack 4-5 Destro warlocks into a raid and our ISB uptime is something close to 90%. I was therefore able to go Destro prior to 20% crit because I was essentially able to mooch off of them. Why not just go Destro for a week? Does your guild use WWS or at least have some form of "reliable" damage meter that is tracked and watched? Just let the guild know that you are trying it for a week and want to see how it goes, then compare your results to your affliction dps. As a general rule of thumb from theorycrafting I did, your Destro dps needs to be at least +250 from your affliction dps for it to be worth the swap. That is going purely off Malediction and a shadow-heavy raid.

Personally I'm not anywhere near the GCD with my Shadowbolts, so going purely off your "with the new GCD reduction" comment, how does reducing the GCD help destro at all? GCD reduction is being put in place to help all those classes that use instants, such as the affliction spec. Unless you have so much haste that your bolts are dropping below GCD? If so, how much haste is that...

I cast Life Tap about 10%-15% of the time as well as some Curse. Having those spells go faster than 1.5 seconds will help my dps.