rochan

A couple notes:
-Mana Attuned Band (ZA Timed Chest) and the new Jewel Crafting Ring (has this dropped for anyone yet?) seem like solid rings due to the hit that we'll all need.
-I think my strategy will be to socket +12s in reds and 4d/5hit in yellows (noble topazes), until my gear is almost set and I can figure out how you'll reach the hit cap.
-Bust out your Scryer Bloodgems =P Gul'Dan/Bloodgem will be a great trinket combo.
-Tempest/Chronicle definately looks to be the best now, but remember you'll get a new weapon eventually, and possibly the haste offhand (dropped from Brutallus I think)

 

Lanzoni

I got this posted to me by a guild mate, it's about gemming T6 chest. Spinels vs "the rest"

Are these calculations correct?

According to simulation craft you gain 0.760 per spell damage and 0.492 per crit rating (ignoring other shadow casters so your Imp.SB is not increasing as much if you are by yourself).

10crit + 12 spell + 6 spell + 5 spell + 7 stamina = 23 spell damage + 10 crit + 7 stamina = 22.4 dps + 7 stamina

36 spell damage = 27.36 dps

Again from simulation craft, looking at Imp SB uptime with 2 shadow priests and 2 destruction warlocks, you have on 8% increased ImpSB uptime going from 200 to 300 rating and 4% increased ImpSB uptime gong from 300 to 400 crit rating. So lets assume you are going to see a 0.6% uptime increase at the 300 crit rating mark with 10 crit rating.

0.6% uptime at 20% damage increase is 0.12% damage increase overall for all shadow casters. We already assumed 4 shadow casters, say at 1250 dps which gives 5000k dps total. 0.12% of that is 6 dps. So the revised numbers look like this:

10crit + 12 spell + 6 spell + 5 spell + 7 stamina = 23 spell damage + 10 crit + 7 stamina = 22.4 dps + 7 stamina + 6 raid dps = 28.4 total dps + 7 stamina

36 spell damage = 27.36 dps

 

Ammanas

Just a rough and very preliminary list of the interesting announced as-of-now 2.4 loot as far as warlocks are concerned:

Weapons:
[Sunflare] Not much to say but wow, we can safely assume its probably from Kil'jaeden.
[Grand Magister's Staff of Torrents] Intriguing because of the massive +hit, which could be useful in replacing the hit that is missing on a lot of the 2.4 gear.

New T6 Pieces:
[Bracers of the Malefic] Clearly a big upgrade over the previous best-in-slot (crafted BT bracers). Although the Akama hit bracers are looking more viable with the aforementioned lack of hit on the 2.4 gear we've seen so far.
[Boots of the Malefic] Again, another clear-cut upgrade over the Naj boots. Between the Boots/Bracers it should be pretty easy to upgrade some of the weaker T6 pieces (chest/legs) while maintaining the 4pc.
[Belt of the Malefic] The hit and haste are nice, but a damage downgrade from the BoB and the Noose.

Crafted Pieces:
[Sunfire Robe] Wow, this thing completely blows away the T6 robe/Vashj robes. Hard to imagine anything beating this out.
[Sunfire Handwraps] Tons of damage and crit, but no hit or possible T6 bonus.
[Pendant of Sunfire] Decent upgrade over the RoS neck, but with the lack of hit it may not be viable.
[Loop of Forged Power] Very similar to the ZA ring, is a nice potential source of hit.
[Annihilator Holo-Gogs] Tons of damage/crit and a penalty-free blue socket, worth considering for engineers.

Sunwell Cloth Drops:
[Leggings of Calamity] Ridiculous amounts of damage/crit/haste and nice sockets to boot, looks like a run away winner as best in slot legs to me.

Misc. Drops
[Wand of the Demonsoul] I personally think the two hit wands (Gurtogg/Solarian) are going to be better with all of the haste available elsewhere, but we'll see. 34 damage and 18 haste is nothing to laugh at on a wand.
[Timbal's Focusing Crystal] Looks like a great trinket for affliction locks, pretty useless for destro locks. Its going to be interesting to see exactly how the mechanics of it work, and whether or not it will be able to beat out the HSH/DMC:C.

I didn't include any of the "Raid Vendor" cloth dps gear, since it seems to be more geared towards shadow priest/mage gear with all of the spirit. The [Robes of Ghostly Hatred] are interesting as they are a clear upgrade over the T6/Vashj chests and it should take a while to have the necessary pattern/sunmotes drop to make the Sunfire chest (which will be in high demand).

This is obviously far from final loot table since everything is still on the PTR and in very early stages, but just at first glance it looks like the best possible 4 piece combination would be the Bracers/Boots/Shoulders and either the Helm or the Belt. Possibly the gloves, if you end up needing the hit. Using the non-set [Sunfire Robe] and [Leggings of Calamity] seem like pretty obvious choices to me. Its also nice to see all the red sockets on the new caster gear. Of course, this is all just for fun as everything is very preliminary and as more drops are either discovered or changed all of this speculation will probably become moot.

 

Ludwig

I think an epic version of the [Reckless Noble Topaz], assuming 5 haste/6 damage, will most certainly be better than [Runed Crimson Spinel]. Not only that, it seems like an epic version of [Quick Dawnstone], assuming +10 haste, will be better than the two.

Playing around with the new haste change of Leulier's spreadsheet with input stats of around 1500 spell damage, 30% crit, and 5% haste with 0/21/40, the following is what I got for the dps conversion per stat.
1 spell damage = 0.89 dps
1 crit rating = 0.89 dps
1 haste rating = 1.10 dps

This would in turn give:
2x [Runed Crimson Spinel] 21.36 dps
2x Reckless Pyrestone (if it exists) 21.68 dps
2x Quick Lionseye (if it exists) 22 dps

I calculated it in terms of 2 gems because Reckless (and Potent and Veiled as well), i.e. orange gems in general, have more "stat point" than their yellow gem counter part. This is why people advocated [Veiled Noble Topaz] over [Great Dawnstone] back in the day since [Noble Topaz] have 11 "stat point" over the Dawnstone's 10, assuming you'll be at 202 hit rating at the end of the day.

In this model, 2x Quick Lionseye (20 "stat point" total) gives more dps than the 2x [Runed Crimson Spinel] (24 "stat point" total) and 2x Reckless Pyrestone (22 "stat point" total). This is all of course very speculative and theoretical and assumes full benefit from spell haste.

 

Knasen

Yes, there is a big lack of spellhit on all the gear we have seen so far but since all sockets are red or yellow its not that hard to put in +hit gems there to compensate? At the same time different gems will be used so you arent forced to stand in queue for 3 months for a spinel.

I really hope a another trinket turns up with +dmg and spellhit, the gap between scryers bloodgem and the illidan trinket is kinda big:P. Turning a rare drop from best to indispensible feels kinda bad. Putting those rare trinkets on the BT-rep vendor and let them be bought at exalted for gold wouldnt be too bad.

 

• frmorrison

The "raid vendor" items are currently unknown how to get the non-sunmote, but they aren't better than T6 anyway.

The Ghost is just slightly better than Vashj (shows how well itemized that robe is).

The sunfire robe's mats are *very* easy, no sunmotes (I bet the mats will change), just need 375 tailoring. However, every caster will want the pattern.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Ludwig

According to MMO-Champion and World of Raids, the non-sunmote token for the vendor are actual usable gear drop from the bosses. I.e. trade in a [Pantaloons of Calming Strife] and a sunmote for a [Pantaloons of Growing Strife]

 

Ashegorath

I've been really disappointed with the lack of warlock-focused gear (aside from Sunfire Robes and other choice pieces), so to keep myself sane I can only put down the lack of decent itemization to the gear being the best gear for leveling in WotLK. Massive crit/haste/damage w/o a thought of hit just points to that with some useless Spirit on the side. Do whatever it takes to get the 202 spell hit rating in the mean time.

http://wow.tachyonsix.com.nyud.net:8...30365VUlAT.png

 

weet

Well given that Leggings of Calamity showed up off of a boss (and were not previously found) and there are already 'token legs' with similar stats + spirit, it is quite likely that there is more non-set cloth drops which are not linked to the token vendor which have not been seen yet. So I would not simply judge all the gear as what our class was given yet.

Perhaps the token hand-in versions that have been seen are all somewhat of a 'refund' version that you can get if the healing one drops yet is not really useful for your raid, yet are not the best-in-game version for a dps caster. Also good as levelling gear when the expansion hits, as a healer can simply hand in all their healing gear for superior dps versions.

 

RunsWithScissors

What I am disappointed with is that both of the new dps tailoring pieces require spellcloth (12 and 6) and 0 shadowcloth each. I really hope they add something requiring shadowcloth or change some of the costs around

 

◊ Kyth

This was a lot simpler argument to make when swapping gems around willy nilly involved "only" your own gold.

Gems are not really a good solution to +hit problems due to the cap (high value up to 202, zero value after that point.)

When you're talking epic gems, you basically have to gem way over hitcap and just deal, so you're not wasting gems as you swap back and forth as gear changes (like I at least used to, when gearing through T4/T5.)

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Nerull

I disagree with both statements.

The +hit is lacking on the gear, but the reason is pretty obvious, once you take the best in slot pieces [Hood of Hexing] ( from affliction point of view - stacked with 12 spelldamage gems ) , [Nethervoid Cloak] , [Tempest of Chaos] or [Vengeful Gladiator's Spellblade] , [Chronicle of Dark Secrets] or [Blind-Seers Icon], 4 piece tier 6, its actually quite hard to NOT be over the hitcap. Hence I understand the choice of blizzard to not put massive +hit on most items and its simply not needed.

The belt of the malefic vs anetheron's nose : I say that belt of the malefic is better if you can somehow manage to be under the hitcap so that you are actually using the hit on this item. To judge what is better you just take a look in the spreadsheet of leulier.com what 1 spellhit is worth, 1 haste , etc and then add it to a raw spelldamage value. As UA lock crit is usually around 0,3 , making [Anetheron's Noose] effectively 87 spelldamage, while with the changes in 2.4 regarding haste ( according to leulier 1 spellhaste is worth a little bit more than 1 spelldamage even for affliction ! ) make the [Belt of the Malefic] 111 spelldamage ( 50 + 29 from spellhaste + 20 from hit + 12 from epic gem ) making it considerably better. Even when you dont use the hit, it nets 91 damage which is more than anetherons noose !

 

Laquistifah

Does anyone know how valuable spell haste will be for Affliction and Destruction Warlocks, compared to crit/dmg, once it reduces the global cooldown? I'd like to know if I should start sacrificing damage and crit for haste and how, on a point to point basis, it compares to crit and damage.

 

Arelenda

For affliction: good.

For destruction: great. Obviously, it depends on how much of each stat you already have. For me it beats any other stat, at the moment. Compendium will be updated when the patch is released.

 

Laquistifah

thanks

 

Ammanas

Yeah, with the current best-in-slot gear its hard not to be over the hit cap. But looking at the gear we've seen from 2.4 so far, the Sunfire pieces, Sunflare dagger, ECT a lot of the current best-in-slot pieces with hit are going to be replaced (T6 or Vashj robe, ToC, ect ect) by pieces with tons of damage/crit/haste but that are lacking in hit. The lost hit is going to have to be replaced somewhere.


Even pre-2.4, haste is worth more point for point for me right now than damage (1.08 haste to damage). This is mainly because I have a ton of damage (~1620 fully raid buffed) and only 27 haste, but it should still give you a good idea of just how valuable haste is.

 

Lerker

One thing that recently came to mind but hasn't really been mentioned here, is 2.4 affliction vs destro.

With +dmg and haste becoming the dominant stats in 2.4 gear, is it possible that affliction could out perform sac destro with 2.4 gear and become the most prominent heavy DPS spec?

What I'm thinking is that with the lack of hit, a few of the really good 2.4 items will be pushed aside to maintain the hit cap, where as with affliction these could be picked up for a hefty +dmg and haste upgrade.

Of course my mind may be completely out of the ballpark.. thoughts?

 

Morwen

The answer is no because:
1. Destruction scales better with +hit (Fully usable)
2. Destruction scales better with +crit (Ruin)
3. Destruction scales better with +dmg (Shadow and Flame beats out DoT coefficients)
4. Destruction scales better with +haste (Uniform time compression)

Until some of these issues are addressed we should not expect affliction to win out at the high end.

 

Arelenda

what the other guy said: it's the other way around. Sac destro will outpace affliction even more, since better gear becomes available and the spec simply scales better. Anything that simply gives a combination of +hit, +crit, +haste and +damage will _always_ be better for destro. For it to become more attractive, they'd need to make affliction-specific gear or bonuses. Or make dots affected by haste to some extent.

Besides, destro locks give up a pet, instant dots and their self-sufficiency, making that tradeoff has to result in increased damage output or the tree becomes utterly useless.

Also, on a personal note: as a BT farming destrolock, getting upgrades that don't feature a gazillion hit is a godsend. I'll finally be able to use all the really good items that I'm passing on now because they have wasted +hit on them.

 

Trickykid

After looking at some of the gear preliminarily (and obviously the numbers may be tweaked), I'm finding that the three new t6 are "less bad" than their alternatives in-slot and that the new gear is likely to surpass most of the current gear (less than half the slots have pre2.4 gear). With the current gear I'm seeing the 3 new t6 + shoulders for 4p and then best in slot for the rest (illidan's helm actually coming in use?!). This isn't so bad for me (since I'm still in t5ish gear), but means a lot of the farmed bt/mh gear is going to be replaced...

 

Sardaukar

With bosses now dropping 3 tokens and the belt/bracer/boot tokens coming off the first 3 bosses in Sunwell, I don't think it will be long before most everyone has most of their pieces.

 

Turbo Moses

Haste appears to be superior to +damage at even considerably lower levels of gear but seems to suffer from diminishing returns (according to Leulier's spreadsheet, which is oftentimes pretty screwy if you're messing with a lot of numbers), which isn't making a whole lot of sense to me. I was trying to get exact numbers at how much better haste is at BT gear levels, but as I increased haste, it seemed to worsen and worsen, which didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, since it seems that a flat % increase would stay a consistent increase in DPS, but it appears that it isn't, doesn't hit sort of work in the same fashion? As you approach the cap, the increase you get in DPS per point seems to get smaller. Anyway, at higher gear levels (like 1600 damage+) the returns on haste seem to be better until haste is at near ludicrous levels anyway (~30%+) so it seems like a non-issue. For lesser geared locks, they seem to approach that ceiling faster.

With this information in mind, it seems like us locks should start stocking up on the Dawnstones/Lionseyes and regemming all our gear with straight haste instead of even oranges, and much less straight reds. Perhaps socket bonuses would be worth sticking an orange or two in there, since damage is still very good, but it appears that as far as destro locks are concerned, that haste is the way to go.


I do have some questions regarding demo locks though, I myself am a demo lock, and I'm interested to see more of the armor come out so I can make some mock sets and see the DPS myself. I have a feeling then that trying to stretch things like the 2/5 T5 bonus will start to go too far, and demo will be decreasingly viable. While it can hold it's own in BT, I think it'll be difficult to maintain that sort of status in Sunwell. There's no real substantial increase in white stats, which is the only thing that really scales better than destro (given, it's not something you gear for, but something that you get a lot of, especially on lock sets, so it's far from a null point) and a much larger increase in things like crit and especially haste, which still does absolutely nothing for demons, so his DPS won't see much of a boost either. I'm guessing I'm going to have to turn in that demo badge soon. I suppose some concrete numbers would be nice, but some changes to demo are going to be necessary if it ever wants to compare at higher levels of gear. But my guess is that's not going to happen till 3.0 anyway, so best not get my hopes up. Any other raiding demo locks have more definite numbers than me?

 

Trickykid

In 2.3, haste doesn't affect the percent of time you're casting instant spells, so it should diminish with more points. Hit works completely different as for the most part it stays at a very high value until it reaches a true ceiling. Haste doesn't have a realistic ceiling it just sees decreasing returns as you stack it.

 

Krazen

This will pretty much be my approach with the new gear. I don't know if I'll switch from straight reds to straight yellows (thus likely creating a shortage of yellows rather than a shortage of reds), but 1 haste does seem to be better than 1.2 damage at most achievable gear levels.

 

galzohar

All linear stats will diminish (very) slowly as you stack them. Haste diminshest very slightly faster than normal becuase it increases mana consumption while it doesn't increase the regen, so a higer % of your casts will be liftaps. If you had 0 regen haste would have no diminishing returns as you'd lifetap every X shadowbolts, and while haste would not be a straight +% damage, the dps you'd get from haste with 0 haste is equal to the dps you'd gain with a million haste. Either way haste, just like any linear stat, will be worth less and less spell damage the more you stack it. At the end though those difference are rather minoric and only change the value of 1 haste rating by less than 0.1 spell damage equivalent compared to what it would be with different gear/setup.